[Info-vax] How do I make zip, unzip etc. available to all users?

[John E. Malmberg]

On 1/7/2016 7:22 AM, John Reagan wrote:
>
> My "suggestion" for SYS$COMMON:[SYSEXE] was sorta tongue-in-cheek.
> In general, I wouldn't put local stuff there as patch kits, upgrades,
> etc. will either get confused or wipe them out.
>
> And while I'm here, I'll offer another "no, no, no".  Don't think
> about screwing around with the definitions of SYS$COMMON or
> SYS$SYSROOT to splice in another directory.  I've seen people try
> that and it can cause subtle behavior changes.

If anyone, especially people with privileges are running Reflections 
terminal emulator, then the following definitions are needed, where 
XFER_TOOLS: is a locally defined directory.

In sylogin.com:
$!      VAXLINK
$                       if f$search("XFER_TOOLS:VAXLINK.EXE") .nes. ""
$                           VAXLINK     :== $XFER_TOOLS:VAXLINK
$                       if f$search("XFER_TOOLS:VAXLINK2.EXE") .nes. ""
$                           VAXLINK2    :== $XFER_TOOLS:VAXLINK2

In sylogicals.com

$ DEFINE VAXLINK XFER_TOOLS:VAXLINK.EXE
$ DEFINE VAXLINK2 XFER_TOOLS:VAXLINK2.EXE

Failure to do so would typically result in having dozens of copies of 
VAXLINK*.EXE scattered all through your system.

The Reflections terminal emulator (order may depend on version) would 
try VAXLINK, RUN VAXLINK, and run sys$disk:[]vaxlink, and if all of them 
failed, would then upload the source to vaxlink and build it in the 
current directory.  The source would also be left behind.

Putting in those definitions forces Reflection to use the only copy that 
should be installed once by the system manager.

One of the first cleanup operations when taking over management of an 
older VMS system is to get rid of all the extra vaxlink*.* and wrq* 
files.  I do not remember the exact name of the source file, but that 
should not be too hard to find, if you find VAXLINK* binaries scattered 
through your system.

Since most systems are TCP/IP networked now, use of VAXLINK type 
products have been reduced, so it is not such a problem on newer installs.

Regards,
-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network