awpsys@ultb.UUCP (Andrew W. Potter) (11/18/89)
Does ANYONE know how to simply extract files from those STUPID dec setld format files? I need to get some kernal files, and I refuse to do the stupid DEC ultrix installation all over from scratch! - Andy -- Andrew W. Potter Bitnet: awpsys@ritvax.BITNET Systems Programmer Internet: awpsys%ritvax.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu Information Systems and Computing Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY, 14623 (716) 475-6994
avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (11/18/89)
In article <1629@ultb.UUCP> awpsys@ultb.UUCP (Andrew W. Potter) writes: > >Does ANYONE know how to simply extract files from those STUPID dec >setld format files? I do. In the documentation although somewhat buried. See below. > I need to get some kernal files, and I refuse >to do the stupid DEC ultrix installation all over from scratch! And that's your right, Andy, as an American. :-) The stupid format of the stupid setld tape is documented in the stupid oops... sorry, got caught up in it all :-). is documented in the system managers doc set... I am at home so I don't have it in front of me, but it is in a section called something like creating software subset distributions or something like that. By the way, I think the setld process and the ability to load and remove subsets is great (especially when linked to the ability to do this over a network w/o a tape device) so it'd be great if you would submit an spr explaining how you'd do it differently. I suspect you want two big tar files with everything. NOw... roughly the format of the tape (and this is documented and there are schell scripts on the system that'd give you this info so I'm not giving away any secrets) BOOT (or empty file) bs=512 SPACE (empty file) bs=512 ROOT (or empty) bs=10k INSTCTRL (tar file -- see note below) all the rest are bs=10k SUBSET1 SUBSET2 . . . Pull out the INSTCTRL file and untar it into a subdirectory instctrl. The file ending in .image in that directory tells you what subsets are on the rest of the tape in what order. The SUBSET.inv file tells you what files are on each subset (inv for inventory). All of the subset files are tar files. Hope this helps. Fred
avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (11/18/89)
Addendum... The subset files are compressed tar files. Fred
alan@shodha.dec.com ( Alan's Home for Wayward Notes File.) (11/18/89)
In article <1629@ultb.UUCP>, awpsys@ultb.UUCP (Andrew W. Potter) writes: > > Does ANYONE know how to simply extract files from those STUPID dec > setld format files? This reply assumes your installation media is tape. A setld tape consists of at least four tapes files having a 10KB block size. For simplicity the first four of these files will be called SPACE.1, SPACE.2 SPACE.3 and INSTCTRL. For what you want the first three are rather boring so skip over them. The fourth file is a tar(1) archive of the control files for that tape. The ###.image file contains the list of subsets on the tape and their checksums. This will let you figure out how many files to skip over to get the one you want ({ULT,UDT}BIN###). After the INSTCTRL file the subset files are tar(1) archives, usually compressed. Once you have positioned to the right tape file, you can copy it off, uncompress it and extract the files you want. NOTE: The {UDT,ULT}.image file lists a file called ROOT at the beginning. This is in the place I called SPACE.3 earlier. So, that tape will look like (assume VAX dist- ribution and V3.0): +---------------+ | SPACE or BOOT | (Primary boot file) +---------------+ | SPACE or BOOT | (Secondary boot file) +---------------+ | ROOT | +---------------+ | INSTCTRL | +---------------+ | ULTBASE030 | +---------------+ | ULTBIN030 | +---------------+ ~ and so on... ~ +---------------+ > I need to get some kernal files, and I refuse > to do the stupid DEC ultrix installation all over from scratch! If you dislike the installation procedure, please send your comments to the address listed on the "Reader's Comments" page of the manual. Over the years and many versions, the engineering group has genuine interest in making the installation as easy as possible. You're welcome. > > -- > Andrew W. Potter Bitnet: awpsys@ritvax.BITNET -- Alan Rollow alan@nabeth.enet.dec.com
avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (11/18/89)
In article <1629@ultb.UUCP> awpsys@ultb.UUCP (Andrew W. Potter) writes: > >Does ANYONE know how to simply extract files from those STUPID dec >setld format files? I do. In the documentation although somewhat buried for the more esoteric stuff. See below. > I need to get some kernal files, and I refuse >to do the stupid DEC ultrix installation all over from scratch! And that's your right, Andy, as an American. :-) The stupid format of the stupid setld tape is documented in the stupid oops... sorry, got caught up in it all :-). is documented in the system managers doc set... I am at home so I don't have it in front of me, but it is in a section called something like creating software subset distributions or something like that. By the way, I think the setld process and the ability to load and remove subsets is great (especially when linked to the ability to do this over a network w/o a tape device) so it'd be great if you would submit an spr explaining how you'd do it differently. I suspect you want two big tar files with everything. So before I go into the format of the setld tape, perhaps you don't know that you can pull off individual SUBSETS (not files from the SUBSETS though) with the setld command. It is well documented in the manual pages so I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say, that if you just need to get a certain subset (or to remove a whole subset -- let's say you want more disk space and you don't need SCCS or Fortran right now, you can safely remove all the files and restore them easily later) the setld command is what you're looking for. But in case you really need to pull out individual files from a tape you need to know the format of the setld tape you have. (The installation tape.) Here's roughly the format of the tape (and this is documented and there are shell scripts on the system that'd give you this info so I'm not giving away any secrets): BOOT (or empty file) bs=512 SPACE (empty file) bs=512 ROOT (or empty) bs=10k INSTCTRL (tar file -- see note below) this and all the rest are bs=10k SUBSET1 SUBSET2 . . . Pull out the INSTCTRL file and untar it into a subdirectory instctrl. The file ending in .image in that directory tells you what subsets are on the rest of the tape in what order. The SUBSET.inv file tells you what files are on each subset (inv for inventory). All of the subset files are compressed tar files. Hope this helps. Fred
hurf@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Hurf Sheldon) (11/22/89)
Setld is supposed to be stupid so you don't need a PhD to
install your system - maybe it should have a '-PhD' option
so we can do all the little tricks everyone ends up needing
after they have figured out they don't have 70meg of free
disk space required to remote load 300k to a host. A plain
vanilla install of Ultrix is painless if a bit long (using
a tk50) - setld is a helluva shell script and fun to read,
if you like shell scripts. I would like
to see remote tapes supported officially [ fairly trivial
to put it in yourself] and have the '-x' option support
a subset_by_name request (making this discussion not needed)
anyway - add this to what Fred has already said:
You can use setld -x to unload a
complete tape in image format or you can read the image
file to find out how far in to 'mt fsf' to get the image
you want then you can
'dd if=/dev/nrmt0h ibs=10k |uncompress | tar xvbfp 20 -'
or(if you have loaded the SUBSET_NAME to disk with setld -x):
'cat SUBSET_NAME |uncompress | tar xvbfp 20 -'
As the tar file is compressed and then put on the tape
at 10k blocks, the uncompressed format is 20b (the default
for tar so you probably can leave the 'b 20' out)
hurf
--
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