[Info-vax] Ods2 reader utility mount

[ChrisQ]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:

>> The last time I looked at the ODS2 utility it was little-endian only. 
>> Aren't Sparc boxes big-endian?
> 
> Yep.
> 
> Arne
> 
> 

Being in a hurry (lazy ?) and looking for the line of least resistance 
first, the ODS2 distribution had a Sparc binary that ran, so assumed 
that the writer knew what he was doing :-).

Apart from lack of docs, the problem was not primarily with ODS2, but my 
lack of knowledge re the Solaris device numbering. The device directory 
(/dev/dsk) contains device special files for individual partitions, ie: 
c6t1d0s2, where the s2 denotes partiton number, However, there is no 
device special file for the whole unpartitioned drive, ie: c6t1d0. On 
Tru64, there was a procedure that involved adding up the sum of various 
bitfields to define a oddball device special file, but Tru64 is offline 
here and makedev is gone from solaris. Gave up trying to find the method 
after an hour or so. Of course, the whole raw drive is needed for ODS2 
and vmscd.

In the end, it was easier to use a linux box, where the drive is probed 
for on boot and provides a dev special file for just the whole drive id 
where it can't figure out the filesystem type. For example /dev/sdb, 
without partition qualifier.

Linux is very good for this sort of data recovery / diagnostic work...

Regards,

Chris