[Info-vax] Alpha V8.4-2 distribution

[David Froble]

It's Saturday night, or I'd ask VSI.  So it's your lucky day to consider my 
question.

Got the Alpha 8.4-2 evaluation kit.  Unzipped it on my Alpha, got an iso image, 
which I was able to mount using LD.  The kit will work as an upgrade to V8.3, or 
later, but will not (according to the release notes) install on an empty disk. 
No problem, made an image copy of my 8.3 system disk.

Now, it's been a LONGGGG time since I did any installations / upgrades, and I'm 
not sure what can be done.  What I remember is you boot off the distribution 
media and use the menu to install or upgrade.  Can't boot off an LD container, 
since it needs VMS up before LD works.  Chicken and egg issues ....

What I think I need to do is backup /image the LD container onto a spare disk. 
Can't use the optical drive.  The local crumudgen got a good laugh when I told 
him I was trying to read a DVD and finally realized the Alpha had a CD drive. 
Gonna attempt to fix that next week.  Don't think the distribution will fit on a CD.

Anyway, yeah, I'll get around to it, my question.  Can I upgrade VMS while 
running on a system disk, or do I need to have distribution media I can boot from?