[Info-vax] Copying VMS SaveSet Under Windows

[John Wallace]

On Nov 21, 5:31 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> smithfarm wrote:
> > SimH (a VAX emulator that runs on Linux and Windows) will not help in
> > this case: with it you can fire up an emulated VAX and install VMS on
> > it, but SimH lacks the functionality for connecting a real, physical LTO
> > drive to the emulated VAX.
>
> Aren't VMS tapes created with ANSI standards ? Shouldn't even Windows or
> a Unix be able to read the header followed by the saveset files from the
> VMS tape ?
>
> From there, you can invoke SIMH to use backup on the saveset that is now
> on disk. (You need to create some shared access between the windows and
> VMS file systems to allow VMS to read the save set form thw windows file
> system.  I am not sure if simh can do that.

A VMS backup saveset is indeed "just another file", whether it's on
disk or tape or network (I'm ignoring record attributes, there are
ways and means of fixing that). But that's about as far as it gets
before things get murkier.

Unfortunately Windows as shipped has never (?) had the capability of
understanding ANSI standard magtape, so you can't get meaningfully get
the data off the tape without a third party app that adds ANSI magtape
support, and then depending on requirements there may be the small
matter of unpacking the saveset.

For Windows, how does this one look:
http://software.reinhardt.nu/vms/index.htm - look at vmsbackup

Wrt UNIX: Similar story. Tru64 used to have the ltf utility("labelled
tape facility") and there was even a freeware reader, also called
vmsbackup, for VMS backup tapes.
http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/computing/buns/tapes.html

For Unix-derived OSes (Mac, Linux): one set of vmsbackup references
(untouched since 2008?) appear to be at
http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/817

Would be good to know what "the big picture" is here, there may be
simpler alternatives.