[Info-vax] VMS First-Boot on x86 Contest

[Bob Gezelter]

On Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 6:33:03 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <14f431aa-8ecc-42e8-805d-238b89a11852 at googlegroups.com>, Neil
> Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes: 
> 
> > p.s. a full copy of CentOS-7.x can be burned to a single DVD.
> 
> VMS with all layered products as well?  CD?  No.  DVD?  Blu-Ray?  
> 
> Whatever.  Some of the complexity of a VMS installation involves 
> choosing what to install, whether to de-compress stuff, and so on.  
> About 20 years ago, I bought a 4-GB disk for f. 500 or whatever.  These 
> days, a disk 100 times as large can be had for about a tenth of the 
> price---a factor of 1000.  (And 50 GB costs 99 cents a month in the 
> iCloud.)  Hopefully VSI will change things so that a new VMS 
> installation installs EVERYTHING.  Disks are cheap.  Really cheap.  If 
> necessary, some functionality could be restricted via licensing.

Phillip,

With all due respect, I disagree. 

It would be nice to have a complete DVD distribution of all the kits that could be loaded onto available mass storage.

However, it should not load to the system disk. That just increases the volume of &*^%%% which must be backed up and restored (setting that directory tree NOBACKUP is not an option, it leads to too many operational errors).

Installation by default is also a definite non-starter. I do not want any products installed on a system that I do not intend to be installed on that system. Configuration control is a major audit issue.

Having kits online so that intervention is not needed for an install is a different matter.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com