McGuire_Ed@GRINNELL.MAILNET.UUCP (07/31/86)
(We just got some old mail distributed to us. Haven't seen any replies to this one though. Quick comment and then a serious question.) >Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 02:18 UT >From: CUNNINGHAMR%HAW.SDSCNET@LLL-MFE.ARPA >Subject: notes on the K&S TeX distribution V.2.0.1 > >In the installation guide... > >The example installation keeps referring to SYS$SYSDISK. That may be a >quasi-standard name for the system disk at some installations, but it's not a >VMS standard, and many sites don't so define their system disk. Using >SYS$SYSDEVICE instead should work nearly everywhere. SYS$SYSDISK is defined by VMS on my cluster but not documented in DCL Concepts table 4-3. It translates to to SYS$SYSROOT:. My guess is that VMS used to use SYS$SYSDISK the way it now uses SYS$SYSROOT, prior to V3 when system roots were added, as the logical name for the structure containing the system directories. (The story you have just seen is true... :-) Using SYS$SYSDEVICE instead of SYS$SYSDISK may work for TeX, but they're not equivalent. For example, there is guaranteed to be a SYS$SYSDISK:[SYSLIB] on every VMS system, but not a SYS$SYSDEVICE:[SYSLIB]. >In ``Step 7.'', adding TEX.HLP to the system help library, there should be a >caution that this should be done when there are no users on the system. If >someone is accessing the system help library while the update occurs, it is >possible that the system file can be scrambled (most VMS system administrators >know this, but mentioning it never hurts). I didn't know this. I have been warned that LIBRARIAN can't add a .HLP file to the library if someone has the library open, but I thought that was the only bugaboo. I'd hate to corrupt my help library... has anybody else ever lost a help library in this way?