[Info-vax] set fil/enter on a dump file

[Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER]

In article <kj6duo$903$1 at online.de>, helbig at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes:
>First, I don't think I need SWAP/PAGE disks.  These days, machines have 
>enough RAM.  Also, despite asking many times and providing all details, 
>no-one has been able to tell me while AUTOGEN sometimes swaps the 
>primary and secondary files.  (Yes, I realize I can use page and swap 
>files without AUTOGEN.  Still, I would like to know what is going on.)  
>In this case, I would nevertheless like to have somewhat larger page and 
>swap files on the system disk (now, I have just small ones there and 
>larger ones on another disk).  

*) I always used DUMPFILE=0, PAGEFILE=0 and SWAPFILE=0 in MODPARAMS.DAT
so I can't comment on the AUTOGEN behaviour (for decades now ;-)
*) You always need PAGE/SWAP Files (on Systems less than say 16GB RAM)
*) I recently was bitten by having only one PAGEFILE on my XP1000 w/ 2GB
because I run a (TCPware) IMAP Server there, and one single IMAP client
(Thunderbird with default setting of 5 threads) brought it down fast.

>Is it possible to have one real dump file per system disk (apart from 
>satellites, which is a separate issue, only one node uses the system 
>disk) and have SYS$SYSTEM:SYSDUMP.DMP exist only via SET FILE/ENTER?  
>That way, I could have many dump files without using up the 
>corresponding space.

I always used one single dump file per system disk with alias links
for every node. Worst thing that happens is that you overwrite a
dump with the next dump (of the same or a different node) and
you therefor save the dump (if crashed) during startup...

>For that matter, could this be done for swap and page files as well?  
>(Again, satellite files obviously have to be separate.)

Could be done of course, but this is begging for problems,
like you do boot (temporarily) a second node from the same disk
and there they are (either the 2nd system doesn't accept
the file - because in use - and then you have problem of no
page file, or the 2nd system accepts it and you have corruptions)...

-- 
Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTÖGER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail  Peter at LANGSTOeGER.at
A-1030 VIENNA  AUSTRIA              I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist