A105@UWOCC1.BITNET (Brent Sterner) (01/08/86)
I saw some of the show, but not all. My notes tell me that someone
has an 8600 and no longer does stand-alone backups of their system disk.
Apparently, a really trimmed down VMS can fit on the RL02 along with
BACKUP, allowing the system disk to be backed up with a COM file.
Who is this person? Anyone know? Does this make sense? We have
operators that could REALLY use an assist like this. Especially since
it is frequently a part-timer (student!) doing this stuff on a weekend.
If anyone remembers who this was, or if "who" reads this, please send
me some preliminary details. Thanks.
Brent Sterner
Computing & Communications Services
Natural Sciences Building
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
N6A 5B7
Telephone (519)679-2151 (secretary)
2167 (direct)info-vax@ucbvax.UUCP (01/10/86)
> I saw some of the show, but not all. My notes tell me that someone > has an 8600 and no longer does stand-alone backups of their system disk. > Apparently, a really trimmed down VMS can fit on the RL02 along with > BACKUP, allowing the system disk to be backed up with a COM file. > Who is this person? Anyone know? Does this make sense? We have > operators that could REALLY use an assist like this. Especially since > it is frequently a part-timer (student!) doing this stuff on a weekend. > If anyone remembers who this was, or if "who" reads this, please send > me some preliminary details. Thanks. > > Brent Sterner I'm the one who told that story, though things seem to have gotten a little confused in the translation! We don't use this for backups. In fact, I don't do standalone backups of my system disk. We had some trouble getting the system up and running and we have no DEC disk drives. I figured that since the RL02 can boot standalone VMS, it'll boot real VMS, just as long as I can get VMS into 10 Mb. It's pretty easy, but I apoligize if there are any errors in my description. It was some time ago that I did this. The pack has proven VERY handy, though. Especially for someone with foreign disk drives. It makes SI very happy when you can boot the system and run EXOR for 'em, even though every drive has gone to lunch! Just take the VMS 4.2 distribution tape and restore the REQUIRED. save set onto the RL02. If you boot that, it'll attempt to restore the rest of VMS from a tape drive, since I think SYSGEN has set the startup command file to be STARTUP.INS. Just run SYSGEN and reset the startup command file to be STARTUP.COM (or just make STARTUP.INS whatever you want). You'll then have a bootable VMS, though there isn't much on it. It does have BACKUP. You can always just copy over anything you want to SYS$SYSTEM: and keep adding tools until you run out of disk space. I put all of DECNET, ANALYZE/MEDIA, AUTHORIZE, and several other things and I still have 5000 free blocks, so you should not have any trouble putting what you need for stand-alone backup command files out there. There are some things to watch out for: You will find that the drive is incredibly slow. It takes quite some time to page images into memory when you run something, so you should trim down the STARTUP procedure to just the absolute bare minimum you need. Also keep your own command procedures that your operators are going to run simple. Once the image is in memory, it really zips. I found that DECnet was unable to run in this environment, the net kept timing out before it could read everything it needed out of the permanent database on disk. Someone else may have more luck with this, I didn't really need DECnet. (By the way, it takes a lot of trial and error to find all the pieces of DECnet!) The standard system attempts to INSTALL a lot of things that you probably won't have, so expect a bunch of error messages from INSTALL. If you are going to use this regularly, find these and get rid of them, they slow down booting. It takes mine about 5 to 10 minutes to boot, but I didn't put much effort into trimming the boot DCL code down. You may also try tuning the system a bit for that disk. Wonder if AUTOGEN would consider it a "slow" disk... To boot the thing, just do a BOOT CS1 and when it asks for the stand-alone media, stick in your VMS pack. /Kevin Carosso engvax!kvc @ CIT-VAX.ARPA Hughes Aircraft Co.