[Info-vax] Container files are set to grow in importance on the IT road ahead

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-02-04 20:04:05 +0000, John Reagan said:

> On Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 9:40:06 AM UTC-5, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> 
>> It's possible that the POSIX root business and related mount points are 
>> what you tripped over.  If you figure out how those things work, please 
>> explain them to me :-).  I don't know if "SET NOROOT" or "SET ROOT NL:" 
>>  might've prevented the disaster, but they'd be worth a try.  Or umnt 
>> on  whatever mount points were aimed at your system disk, if any.
> 
> It is/was the automatic mount points created by PSX$UP_STARTUP.COM that 
> is invoked by the GNV$STARTUP.COM procedure.  Recent GNVs no longer do 
> that.

So the SET and SHOW ROOT is now superfluous, and can safely be ignored 
at least in the context of GNV?

But do we have to be concerned that the C RTL might suddenly decide to 
start using that POSIX data as a source of configuration data for its 
own path processing?

BTW, the SET ROOT stuff doesn't seem to handle NMX correctly in FIDs, 
from what I've observed.  Not that such matters, if it's really only 
more accumulated DCL navel lint.

> And there are lots of SET FILE /ENTERs in the GNV installation.  That 
> is how it has both "ls.;" and "gnv$ls.exe".  (but they are never cross 
> disk)

Yeah.  That doesn't always work.  I have a disk with bunch of dangling 
aliases.   Or had.   Haven't yet located where those aliases are 
officially entered, either — still digging around for that.   Now have 
a mix of un-prefixed and GNV$-prefixed executables in the /bin 
directory, too.   This is all secondary to a recently-acquired shell 
script that looks for tools with those no-extension filenames (as it 
should), and that tips over in the mis-aliased GNV environment, and 
having had GNV installed on the box for a while, and likely involving 
the not-really-using-PCSI GNV kit design.   That GNV kit really needs 
to be nuked and paved and rewritten as a PCSI platform kit.   (Yes, 
I've offered.)   At least until VMS gets a dependency-aware and 
network-capable software installation tool.


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