[Info-vax] scp or sftp: file is "raw", needs to be parsed - possible to work around that?

[Richard Whalen]

On Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 8:25:19 AM UTC-4, Richard Whalen wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 7:29:16 AM UTC-4, gregor... at gmail.com wrote: 
> > Hi all, 
> > 
> > Trying to scp a very large file off an Alpha VMS 8.3 system. Larger the file, longer it takes to start the transfer. This scp message in verbose mode gives a clue: 
> > SCP Source file is "raw", and it needs to be parsed 
> > 
> > Parsing a 20GB file takes longer than a standard scp timeout. and I need to scp files 10 times larger. 
> > Perhaps there is a way to skip the parsing? 
> > 
> > Thanks in advance! 
> > Greg
> You don't state what SFTP/SCP you are using (TCP/IP Services, MultiNet, TCPware or SSH for OpenVMS). 
> The message is misleading. In the software available from Process Software this message is issued when the file attributes have not been fetched and need to be fetched. 
> The SFTP/SCP file transfer implementation needs the file size before transferring the file. If the file is a VMS text file the file may need to be read to determine the actual length. 
> Options to reduce this: 
> - convert the file to stream-lf, which is a native format for SFTP/SCP and will not require counting. 
> - store the file on an ods-5 disk and have the file length hint set.

Now that I see that the file is a backup save set. I agree with the idea of ZIP "-V" to preserve the file.