[Info-vax] Reconfiguring VMS 6.2 - Shadow set question

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Paul Sture wrote 2012-10-22 15:51:
> In article <k63aok$kcr$1 at dont-email.me>,
>   Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>
>>
>> Now if this were an existing server in an existing production
>> environment, then I wouldn't be suggesting that option directly, though
>> I would be working toward it.  But a new-to-the-owner box?  I'd wipe
>> and install the box.
>
> My attitude is that I would rather not have someone else's potentially
> sensitive data on a machine that I have acquired.  Put another way, if
> someone has beeb kind enough to donate me an old piece of kit I feel it
> is my responsibility to eradicate anything which shouldn't be there.
>
> In an inherited setup, there could also be maintenance jobs which do
> something you don't want to happen.  For example back in the days when
> disk space was tight I had nightly jobs which did an aggressive PURGE
> and deleted stuff like compiler listings.
>
> And of course on used systems there's also the question of malware and
> back doors, or more likely on VMS, lurking bugs in startup procedures,
> or startup procedures which are so heavily tailored you need someone
> else's documentation to understand them.
>
>> I don't understand why VMS folks are so allergic to the nuke-and-pave.
>> Like the folks striving for "uptime", system management isn't a
>> contest.  Nuke-and-pave gets a clean environment, with known settings,
>> with pristine files, and with fewer lurking weirdnesses, and an
>> environment that more directly matches the OpenVMS documentation.  It's
>> more maintainable.
>
> If it ain't broke, don't fix it applies to a certain extent, but yes, I
> know I have all sorts of cruft on my main Alpha installation.  The main
> disincentive here is the thought of applying all the patches again.
>

Now, if it wasn't clear...

*My* view was that the only thing that had happend, was the loss
of shadowing members. I had no idea of this beeing an "acquired"
system of any sort. There was nothing at all in the post that
pointed in that direction.

With the inforamtion *in the post* there was no particular
problem with the system, just continue to run with single
member shadow sets. No problem at all.

Jan-Erik.