[Info-vax] SPM 3.4 installation issue on VMS 6.1

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Thursday, 14 January 2016 01:58:27 UTC, Christopher Myers  wrote:
> I've been playing around with an old VMS 6.1 consolidated distortion from January 1995.  Decided to try and install VAX Software Performance Manager 3.4 on it and it failed with all this:
> 
> %VMSINSTAL-I-RESTORE, Restoring product save set B ...
> %SPM-I-CONTINUE, Restore of saveset B complete, now linking the SPM components
> %LINK-W-NUDFSYMS, 3 undefined symbols:
> %LINK-I-UDFSYM,         BOO$GL_SRPSPLIT
> %LINK-I-UDFSYM,         SGN$GL_SRPCNTV
> %LINK-I-UDFSYM,         SGN$GL_SRPSIZE
> %LINK-W-USEUNDEF, undefined symbol SGN$GL_SRPSIZE referenced
>         in psect CODE offset %X0000073F
>         in module COLLECT_SYSTEM_PC file MYERS1$DKA300:[SYS0.SYSUPD.SPM034]SYSTE
> MPC.OLB;3
> %LINK-W-USEUNDEF, undefined symbol SGN$GL_SRPCNTV referenced
>         in psect CODE offset %X00000744
>         in module COLLECT_SYSTEM_PC file MYERS1$DKA300:[SYS0.SYSUPD.SPM034]SYSTE
> MPC.OLB;3
> %LINK-W-USEUNDEF, undefined symbol BOO$GL_SRPSPLIT referenced
>         in psect CODE offset %X00000757
>         in module COLLECT_SYSTEM_PC file MYERS1$DKA300:[SYS0.SYSUPD.SPM034]SYSTE
> MPC.OLB;3
> %VMSINSTAL-E-INSFAIL, The installation of SPM V3.4 has failed.
> 
> I've tried setting the symbols myself, using BOO$GL_SRPSPLIT == 0 for example, but that didn't change anything.  Also tried setting the time in to something before Y2K, but nope.
> 
> SYSGEN values are above what the installation guide says SPM requires.
> 
> So I'd thought I'd ask here and see what the folks on here think.  If someone happens to have SPM 3.3 easily available I could try that.

[sorry no TLDR. Not everything fits in a Twit.]

At some stage it might be worth you understanding some underlying
philosophy of the architecture, design, and documentation of VMS. Note
that VMS dates back to an era when wise people thought that a decent architecure was considered A Good Thing, and that documentation was an
important part of a deliverable product.

Back to your query, and bearing in mind that you already know that
the underlying cause is a version mismatch between SPM and VMS:

There is some logic to the system messages on VMS, and they are in
general documented, in a way not generally seen with a "modern" OS.
Here's a quick and dirty from-memory overview of some relevant bits.
If you want the definitive official version, there are manuals to look
at.

When you see %VMSINSTAL or %LINK or whatever, it says that the following
message comes from VMSINSTAL, or LINK, or whatever. VMS people may call
this the "facility" name.

-W- and -I- mean that the following message has a status of warning or
informational, respectively. Warning: something unexpected happened but
it may (often) or may not (sometimes) be possible to complete the task
at hand. -I- is just for information. There's also -E- and -F-. Go look
them up. VMS people call this the severity code.

The USEUNDEF and other things in that position are a (hopefully unique)
oneword description of the status/error, often condensed from the
text which follows. You can look up things like USEUNDEF in the System
Messages and Error Recovery Procedures (if they come from VMS or a VMS
component such as the Linker), or maybe in the appropriate layered
product manual if there is one.


In the System Messages manual there will be facility-specific
descriptions of what the particular status code means, and often
there is a suggested approach to fix whatever caused it.

USEUNDEF from LINK means that an undefined symbol was used.
INSFAIL from VMSINSTAL means the product installation has failed.
Etc. Need more ? RTFM :)

So to informally summarise the messages you posted (btw, thank you for
posting them in full, rather than just posting your interpretation of
what you thought they meant):
You were installing a product using VMSINSTAL. It had successfully
restored the first two major components of the installation kit, and
was proceeding to link the provided application to generate a usable
library or executable or both. (I assume you know what a linker is -
is that a safe assumption?)

The linker couldn't resolve all the unresolved symbols; there were
three unresolved ones, and it tells you what the symbols were and where
they were referenced.

These symbola are global definitions and references within a set of
object modules, unrelated to symbols as used within a DCL command.

What does it all mean in this particular example?

In your case, as has been noted already, you have a version mismatch
between the VMS OS and the layered product version. Normally VMS is
pretty good with stuff like that, especially in applications which 
have no explicit reliance on hidden OS internals. SPM needs specific
knowledge of certain OS-internal datatypes. Your SPM version and your
VMS version don't match, SPM won't link. Find the version of SPM that
is supported with your chosen version of VMS, and all will be well. 
In later versions of VMS, some of this OS-internals-dependent stuff
is cleaned up somewhat.


Back to system messages and recovery procedures: The "modern" world of
syslog and so on has no real equivalents of these message-related
concepts, neither as part of the logging scheme nor in most cases as
part of the design of applications and subsystems. Similarly, nor does
the Event Logger or the typical application on a Window box. And 
although there's often errno.h and its Windows equivalent, there's no
equivalent of the System Messages and Recovery Procedures book. 

VMS is VMS, it is not UNIX and it is not Windows, and vice versa.
Depending on what you're trying to achieve, it may be helpful for
you to understand more about what VMS is and does. If you haven't
already got the online documentation, get hold of a copy from
somewhere. Find the System Messages and Recovery Procedures book.
Use it. See what else is available and might be relevant to what
you're trying to achieve. 

If there's no particular reason for V6.1, there are other VMS
versions which might well be preferable. And if there's no
particular reason to use SPM, don't use it - most people managed
without, but some found it helpful.

All that said, welcome to VMS, and Have a lot of fun. 

ps
"consolidated distortion" ... mmmm :)