[Info-vax] directories other than SYS* on the system disk

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <m8699u$q9c$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
<seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 

> >> Apart from SYS* and of course 000000, there are also various TCPIP$*> 
> >> directories on the system disk, as well as DOC$TOOLS.
> >> 
> >> I would like to have them somewhere else.
> 
> So you want to hack this VMS system.  Do you have a specific reason?  
> Well, other than those excessively and ridiculously small disks?

Nothing to do with the disk size.  Rather, I want to make it easier to 
upgrade one disk then "clone" it to use on other nodes, rather than 
upgrading each node individually.

> source of errors and weird behaviors, and upgrade failures.  Not 
> everybody copies all the files back to the system disk for an upgrade, 
> which means that servers and applications can have to deal with file 
> formats that need post-upgrade format conversions, for instance.

I agree.  It would be nice if it "just worked".  However, many of the 
default configurations stem from the time of much smaller disks (even 
smaller than mine), only one system disk in the cluster, etc.

> Hopefully VSI can spend some time and effort and bring a more 
> consistent management interface and more consistent tools and verbs to 
> TCP/IP Services, and to VMS itself.  

Indeed!

> The scattered data files[1] and 
> the DCL commands and foreign commands and programming interfaces and 
> the tools --- I just found yet another TCP/IP command tool, this one for 
> SMTP --- have accreted over the years, and are accordingly inconsistent 
> and somewhat scattershot, and there's no central place to deal with 
> what should be common management tasks.   Resolving and rationalizing 
> the current system and network management and removing this 
> complexity[2] will take years and multiple releases to design and 
> deploy and migrate, of course.

There used to be the TCPIP> interface, then at some point stuff there 
stopped being developed, and things went into hand-edited text files 
and/or unix-style commands.  A step backward, in my view.  And not even 
that was done consistently: TCPIP> SET INTERFACE/CLUSTER works, but 
TCPIP> SHOW INTERFACE/CLUSTER no longer does.  (What is more, it stopped 
working from one release to the next, without being deprecated but 
available in-between.)

> [2] Tried changing the host name of a VMS box lately?  That should be 
> one tool and/or one dialog, and in one spot.  Not what we have now.

It can be made easier than it is.  First, move all system files off the
system disk which can be accessed with logical names.  Second, use
CLUSTER_CONFIG_LAN to add a new node.  (It can be a satellite; this can
be changed later.)  Configure TCPIP.  Copy the disk.  Boot from the
appropriate root.  To keep the stuff I need to remember at a minimum, I
use the same number xxx for a) DSAxxx for the name of the system-disk
shadow set, b) e.g. ALPHASYS_xxx for the volume label of the system
disk, c) allocation class (and tape allocation class), d) SCSSYSTEMID,
e) TCPIP address, e.g. 192.168.1.xxx, and f) system root [SYSxxx]. (Yes,
I know that c) and e) are "octal" (and f) is hexadecimal), so 
xxx < 255---I don't care about the actual value, just the string to
remember.)