[Info-vax] STARTREK.BCK Restore - How?

[Tom Wade]

On 2019-05-11 19:32, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

> Packaging the files directly into the zip archive removes an unnecessary 
> nested unpacking operation of the BACKUP saveset,
> ...and also allows search engines to index the zip archive contents,
> ...and allows folks on other platforms a way to access the zip archive 
> contents without having to figure out how to unpack a saveset.
> 
On the other hand, packing the individual files into a ZIP archive means 
you now have to worry about the preservation of file attributes of all 
the files, rather than a single one. If the ZIP archive hasn't been 
created correctly, it could result in a particular file (indexed 
sequential?) being hosed.  At least with a saveset, you know pretty 
quickly if it's bad, and if it is OK, I trust Backup to have the files 
stored correctly. Backup itself can also recover if the archive has been 
poorly created, whereas finding and fixing individual files is a lot 
trickier.

Also, if you're shipping VMSINSTAL kits (please, lets not get into PCSI 
vs VMSINSTAL) you need Backup savesets.

Agreed that either way the archive should be created correctly.

> So too is the 
> incorporation of zip and unzip onto the base OpenVMS distro.

Agreed.

> I've occasionally wondered whether making "-V" the default on OpenVMS 
> would be worth the hassles that'd cause, too.

Yes, I agree, but it should be /VMS not "-V".  I find it constantly 
irritating that programs are 'ported' onto VMS without providing decent 
DCL parsing, and forcing us to use Unix style 
single-character-hieroglyphics for arguments.

Tom Wade
tom dot wade at tomwade dot eu