roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (05/02/85)
> First, if the person has a "release tape" in CPIO format, I'd think that > they have a System V release tape, and just don't know how to extract > cpio from the boot block. Imagine the following scenario (which was indeed the case at my site). You have both 4.2 BSD and Sys 5 source licenses and distributions. You are running 4.2 on your single RA-81 drive system. You want to get some of the utilities off the Sys 5 tape. What do you do? Well, you could do a from-scratch installation of Sys 5 and copy the cpio source to a tape, but wait! This means having to dump your whole 4.2 system and then re-install it, but that won't work anyway because Sys 5 (at least the distribution I got) doesn't know about uda-50 drives (fie on Western Electric). So, again, what do you do? You sit down with the Sys 5 hardcopy manual and write a bare-bones cpio tape lister. Hey, it works, and only took a couple of hours. You're feeling good about the universe in general at this point, but it's a real drag waiting for the tape to spin every time you try a new version. No problem, you 'dd' the entire /usr file system from the tape to disk (you have a fairly new system so you still have gobs of free disk space, lucky you). You hack up the lister a bit to turn it into a bare-bones extractor, and use that to get off the cpio sources. This works too, still feeling good. Compile the real cpio, no errors. Try it out, it works just like it's supposed to. Hey, this is real cool, life is wonderful, cries of joy and exultation! Then suddenly, MASSIVE DOWNER! Shock, disbelief, dismay, emotional pain and suffering, BUMMER! The graphics stuff is missing! You read the manual over and over again and finally realize that the Administrative guide and the System Release Description differ on how many cpio files are on the tape. You decide the SRD is right and it turns out to be so. You decide that the universe is wonderful again and your karma is back in alignment. The bottom line is that I have a program which reads cpio tapes which I wrote myself working only from the documentation (that makes it public domain, yes?). If anybody wants it, it's yours for the asking. Given sufficient interest, I'll post it to the net. I'll hold off a couple of days on answering requests for it to give anybody who is knowledgeable about licensing (Mark Horton?) to tell me I'm not allowed to do this. -- allegra!phri!roy (Roy Smith) System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
wcs@ho95b.UUCP (Bill Stewart) (05/04/85)
DEC sells device driver software to use RA-81s and RA-60s on UNIX
systems running either either System V or System V Release 2.
(But NOT SYstem V Release 2 Version 2 <the paging version>. The paging
version made some changes to the compiler and/or loader, including a
new magic number, and there were a few files that DEC and the paging
group both messed with. Some people here have gotten the two to work
together, but it was not painless.)
We've used their drivers, and they're not bad - the 750 version has a
few mistakes that are fixed in the SVR2 version, but we're running
System V on it so our boot procedure is a bit messy.
The technical contact at DEC is Dave Leonard, at the Holmdel NJ
office (1-201-946-9403).
Bill Stewart
Disclaimer - this of course does not represent policy of AT&T Bell
Labs, DEC, or anybody. UNIX, DEC, VAX, RA***, and V are trademarks of
AT&T, DEC, and various space invaders.
--
Bill Stewart 1-201-949-0705
AT&T Bell Labs, Room 4K-435, Holmdel NJ
{ihnp4,allegra,cbosgd,vax135}!ho95c!wcs