[Info-vax] "proper" ownership for high-level system files

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <m848qk$v5f$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
<seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 

> On 2015-01-01 18:18:06 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:
> 
> > What is the "proper" ownership for
> > 
> >    SYS$SYSDEVICE:[000000]*.*
> 
> $ help initialize /system
> 
> INITIALIZE
> 
>   /SYSTEM
> 
>      Requires a system UIC or SYSPRV (system privilege) privilege.
> 
>      Defines a system volume. The owner UIC defaults to [1,1].
>      Protection defaults to complete access by all ownership
>      categories, except that only system processes can create top-
>      level directories.
> 
> That's for system-created and volume-level files in the root directory (MFD).
> 
> User-created files in the root directory (MFD) have user-specified 
> protections and ownership.

Right.  Sorry, I should have said the basic files after a fresh
installation of VMS and basic layered products such as TCPIP. 
Presumably, the ownership could be changed after creation. 

> >    SYS$SPECIFIC:[000000]*.*
> >    SYS$SYSDEVICE[VMS$COMMON]*.*
> 
> Go read <http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/84final/ba554_90015/apb.html>.

Exactly what I was looking for.  Thanks!

> The VMS$COMMON.DIR is an alias directory entry for all of the 
> [SYS*]SYSCOMMON.DIR directory entries present; that's all the same 
> directory, and the same files.

Right, but actually it's reversed: all of the [SYS*]SYSCOMMON.DIR are 
aliases for VMS$COMMON.DIR.

You can DELETE SYS$SYSDEVICE:[SYS*]SYSCOMMON.DIR; and it will work, even
though the directories are not empty, since these are aliases.  (Hein
explained this a while back; DELETE internally does SET FILE/REMOVE in
such cases.)  Not recommended on a running system, of course.  :-)

> Given you are a professional provider of IT services for VMS, 

Not really.  At home, I'm just a hobbyist.  At work, I do work with VMS,
but do neither system management nor hardware, but rather application
support, mostly in conjunction with Rdb.