[Info-vax] Transferring file to VMS emulated in SIMH

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-28 10:45:31 +0000, zibree at gmail.com said:

> I have a "crazy" problem:
> ...
> How can I extract this correctly?
> 
> I remind you that VMS 5.5-2 does not have the SET FILE/ATTR command... :/
> 
> Thanks to whoever takes the time to answer this.

You've already gotten your answer in another reply.  Use that tool or 
one of the other user-written repair tools.

BACKUP is a mess.  Always has been.   While BACKUP still does what it 
says on the tin, needs and expectations have shifted.  Thankfully 
there's little room to improve the current and fundamental design of 
BACKUP, so—when VSI gets the schedule and cycles to look at this—the 
whole utility will likely get replaced.  Just can't make the current 
design faster, but there are ways to capture just the updated blocks.

Some folks will tell you that experts are necessary for servers, which 
is true as far as there are server systems whose designers built those 
server systems to expect those experts.  Though I'm not certain that an 
assumption of required expertise for dealing with a network file 
transfer of the core archival and recovery tool would be expected by 
most folks working with a client or a server system.  That's seemingly 
a solved problem for most platforms.

Some others will tell you that you should be that expert, which means 
you write small Macro32 assembler program to patch the saveset 
yourself.  That's simple for an expert of course, and as the expert 
will tell you.

Though this particular misfeature has been causing support calls and 
confounding users since shortly after the first saveset was transferred 
over a network.   There was another thread quite recently, though they 
were on a newer release.

OpenVMS officially lacks FAT and exFAT support, even on the current releases.

You've also chosen a fossil version of the oldest OpenVMS architecture. 
 Why not V1.0?  That's even more effort, if that's your goal.  Or why 
not V7.3?  That's less effort.

You've also chosen not to install TCP/IP Services from whatever distro 
you located, nor from the HPE OpenVMS VAX V7.3 hobbyist distro, which 
would allow access to some networking tools and repair tools, and would 
have made installing the replacement network stack easier.   Installing 
TCP/IP Services will certainly also give you more experience with 
pre-millennial user interface designs, too.

To protect files being transferred, use zip "-V" on the originating 
OpenVMS system, and you can fetch a pre-build unzip.exe from Process 
software OpenVMS resource center to bootstrap that whole process.  
OpenVMS itself still doesn't contain zip and unzip.

There's also no reason to ponder what might happen if those pre-built 
tools and those savesets and zip kits from any of the well-known sites 
are switched for versions with malware.  Nope.  No reason at all to 
ponder that.

Related:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.vms/QtSw-H8mfyg/1GyDbQ7lEBsJ

ps: Welcome to OpenVMS.  Please use OpenVMS VAX V7.3.  The HPE Hobbyist 
Distro has those bits and kits, as well as the TCP/IP Services kit, and 
other layered products.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC