JCOV@UORDB2.BITNET (12/23/86)
I have a couple of questions about ansi labelled tapes on vms.
I was trying to copy a tape which is supposed to be ansi
labelled, but which was not created on a vax. For one thing,
when I did a directory of the tape, some of the names were in quotes
and to copy them I had to put the names in quotes also.
When I simply tried to copy the tape *.* I got
an error opening one of the files for output (on what looked like
a quite ordinary name -- not even in quotes) and this
caused the system to get into a state where I couldn't
open any files for output till I logged off and back on.
My questions are: Can anyone clarify the situation with respect
to the quotes and can anyone tell me is there a way tocopy
the whole tape.
Also, I was looking at using etape to copy some of the files,
but etape does not handle variable length records which
these all are. Is there any program to handle such
records on a tape which I will pretend is non labelled?
Thanks in advance.
JOhn CoviciMHJohnson@HI-MULTICS.ARPA.UUCP (12/24/86)
Please take a look at the little guide to disk and tape that comes in the VMS documentation set. It goes into the details more than I will. (1) VMS quotes the filenames on tape for names that do not follow the VMS standard file naming convention. Most often quoted are names w/o a period or with more than one period in them. ANSI names can have spaces as well and will be quoted (2) When you use COPY MFA0:*.* [your-dir-here], the COPY program blindly tries to use the filename on tape (the one that was quoted) to create the file on disk. RMS naturally gets mad. I recommend doing something like DIR MFA0:*.*/OUT=XXX.COM, and editing XXX.COM until each line looks something like COPY MFA0:"tape name" VMS_NAME. and then executing the command file. (3) About getting the tape drive confused, I have no idea what caused that. The DISMOUNT command should always work to rewind the tape. Use DISM/NOUNLOAD to rewind w/o the unload and MOUNT to try again. I've been mad at DEC for a long time with SET MAGTAPE/REWIND's restriction of working with foreign mounted tapes only. There was a DECUS program a while back that talked to the ACP to do a rewind too. --Mark <MHJohnson @ HI-MULTICS.ARPA>
JCOV@UORDB2.BITNET (12/26/86)
>Please take a look at the little guide to disk and tape that comes in >the VMS documentation set. It goes into the details more than I will. > > (1) VMS quotes the filenames on tape for names that do not follow the >VMS standard file naming convention. Most often quoted are names w/o a >period or with more than one period in them. ANSI names can have spaces >as well and will be quoted > > (2) When you use COPY MFA0:*.* [your-dir-here], the COPY program >blindly tries to use the filename on tape (the one that was quoted) to >create the file on disk. RMS naturally gets mad. I recommend doing >something like DIR MFA0:*.*/OUT=XXX.COM, and editing XXX.COM until each >line looks something like COPY MFA0:"tape name" VMS_NAME. and then >executing the command file. > > (3) About getting the tape drive confused, I have no idea what caused >that. The DISMOUNT command should always work to rewind the tape. Use >DISM/NOUNLOAD to rewind w/o the unload and MOUNT to try again. I've >been mad at DEC for a long time with SET MAGTAPE/REWIND's restriction of >working with foreign mounted tapes only. There was a DECUS program a >while back that talked to the ACP to do a rewind too. > > --Mark <MHJohnson @ HI-MULTICS.ARPA> Well, I think there is something else going on because some of the quoted names looked perfectly normal to me -- imparticular the one that crapped out. Also, it wasn't the tape drive I couldn't use after the error on output it was the directory where I wanted to put the output files. Any bright ideas would be appreciated? John
JCOV@UORDB2.BITNET (12/27/86)
> Hi John, > > Regarding your ANSI tape problem, I have ran into similar > situations before. I was trying to read an ANSI tape written > by a PDP-15 running RT-11 on a VAX running VMS. The directory > of the tape looks exactly what you described: file names with > quotes around them. This is because the names written by the > "foreign" machine is right-justified (does your file names > look like "FILE .DAT" ?) and VMS don't like that. > > Now working from memory, I did the following to copy the whole > tape: > > $mount/foreign ... > $copy tape_drive: header.file > $copy tape_drive: eof1 > $copy tape_drive: eof2 > $copy tape_drive: file1.dat > $copy tape_drive: eof1 > $copy tape_drive: eof2 > $copy tape_drive: file2.dat > . > . > . > > > The header.file contains the ANSI tape label, followed by two > end-of-file marks, then comes the first file, followed by two > more eof marks, then the next file, two eof marks, etc. .... > > The number of EOF marks between files may be only one, depending > on the source machine (one Honeywell system I used allowed me an > option of one or two EOF marks!). I actually had the copy commands > all in a command procedure, generated using a quick-and-dirty > FORTRAN program. Don't have a loop in the procedure to do the > copying as I am not sure how copy or VMS would handle the > end-of-tape! Its better just to put in as many copy commands as > you need and no more. > > The trick here is to fool VMS into not grabbing the tape label then > using the fact that each copy command stops at an eof mark. I tried > this under VMS v3 and have not tried it under v4. > > Let me know if this works for you or not. If not, I'll think of > something else. If it works, please post it to Netland. Again, I'm > writing this from memory, so if it doesn't work, let me know and > I'll dig up my notes/log files. > > Good luck! > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Peter Kuo Bitnet (VMS address) : KUO@SASK >Accelerator Laboratory (UUCP address) : "skatter!kuo@sask.uucp" >(a.k.a. The Beam Warehouse) >Univ. of Saskatchewan uucp (unix address) : !ihnp4!sask!skatter!kuo >Saskatoon, Saskatchewan >CANADA S7N 0W0 >Tel. (306) 966-6059 > >[Disclaimer: all the standard stuff.] > > >p.s. Just as a matter of interest, what machine wrote your tape and what did > your file names look like? No, my file names were not right justified. Also, your letter implies that you can mount a tape as foreign and then issue copy commands from the tape. What names do you use for the copy commands from the tape? The copy doc says nothing about doing any such thing and I wonder how its done. The name that crapped out my system did not have any quotes at all by the way. Thanks much. John Covici