[Info-vax] Burning cd for use in OpenVMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-04-08 10:36:56 +0000, Marco Beishuizen said:

> I forgot to timely renew my hobbyist license, and now I'm unable to 
> access the machine by network (tcpip doesn't work anymore). OpenVMS 
> doesn't seem to able to access FAT formatted diskettes, so now I want 
> to burn a cd with the new license on FreeBSD. But how do I do that? I 
> burned the license file to a cd-rw but OpenVMS can't mount it (keeps 
> asking for "Please mount device _OVMS1$DKA500:". What kind of format is 
> needed for OpenVMS in order to mount and read a cdrom?

If you want to try this path, you will need to generate ISO-9660:1988, 
with or without High Sierra.  Only.  No Rock Ridge, no UDF, no newer 
ISO-9660.

Pragmatically, using these new-fangled license-transfer techniques—CD 
or USB or floppy—is more effort than it's worth.

Use cut-and-paste on the serial line as discussed elsewhere.

Or as is often the easiest approach, enter the three core license—the 
OS BASE license, the OS USER license, and the UCX license.  That 
license entry either using the LICENSE REGISTER and LICENSE LOAD 
commands entered directly on the console, or using 
@SYS$UPDATE:VMSLICENSE to enter the data.

That'll be enough to start OpenVMS and get IP going and FTP or sftp the 
rest of the licenses.  If your cut-and-paste works well, the entire 
license set will work.

Oh, and please remember to set your calendar a month or so ahead of the 
licenses.

LMF is unfortunately one of various user-hostile hunks of OpenVMS 
software around, and this current case is one of the various failure 
modes for LMF.  Getting to the console on a workstation is doubly 
nasty, as y'all have to reboot to the console using a conversational 
bootstrap and SET/STARTUP=OPA0:.  The whole of LMF is really not a very 
good design. It's a classic OpenVMS design, in many ways.  LMF provides 
great flexibility for HPE and VSI and for the ISVs using LMF, though at 
the cost of end-user usability.

Specific fixes?  One checksum. Get rid of the rest of the chunder in a 
license PAK.  And code LOGINOUT to prompt for the checksum at login.  
And don't disable IP networking.

VSI has a different licensing implementation setup on Alpha, typically 
with two PAKs required rather than the blizzard of PAKs used by HPE and 
also by VSI on Itanium, and hopefully that VSI simplification can now 
migrate to Itanium with the HPE exit from new-product-sales that's 
being reported.


-- 
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