YATES@C.CHEM.UPENN.EDU ("Yates, John H.") (10/04/90)
The continuing (but last from me) vmsbackup saga: As posted, I can now get vmsbackup to work, even extracting single files on our sgi (however, see warning in P.S. note below). So, today I went to try multiple reel backup sets (the goal, of course) to see what would happen and... you guessed it! Dead in the water! It must be the attributes of the Backup because this was all tested between the same two machines. vmsbackup fails with: Volume: DUA2 Saveset name: DUA2.BCK number: 1 Snark: invalid record type record type = 2 on the first volume of a backup/image whose header backup/list is: Save set: DUA2.BCK Written by: SYSTEM UIC: [000001,000004] Date: 13-AUG-1990 09:55:03.28 Command: BACK/IMAGE/REW/INIT/IGNORE=INTERLOCK DUA2: MSA0:DUA2.BCK/SAVE Operating system: VAX/VMS version V4.5 BACKUP version: V4.5 ... Written on: _MSA0: Block size: 8192 Group size: 10 Buffer count: 3 Image save of volume set Number of volumes: 1 Volume attributes Structure level: 2 Label: SYS$USER2 Owner: SYSTEM Owner UIC: [000001,000004] Creation date: 21-NOV-1988 14:21:49.69 Total blocks: 1216665 Access count: 3 Cluster size: 3 Data check: No Read, No Write Extension size: 5 File protection: System:RWED, Owner:RWED, Group:RE, World: Maximum files: 152083 Volume protection: System:RWCD, Owner:RWCD, Group:RWCD, World:RWCD Windows: 7 [000000]A3V01B.DIR;1 1 3-FEB-1989 15:10 [A3V01B]ATOG_CONV.DIR;1 1 3-FEB-1989 15:43 ... vmsbackup works just fine on my test case, which for comparison I include the backup/list heading here: Save set: TEX.BCK Written by: YATES UIC: [000011,000001] Date: 7-SEP-1990 13:16:01.73 Command: BACK/REW/INIT/LOG [JY.TEX]* MSA0:TEX.BCK/SAVE Operating system: VAX/VMS version V4.5 BACKUP version: V4.5 ... Written on: _MSA0: Block size: 8192 Group size: 10 Buffer count: 3 [JY.TEX]ARTICLE.DIR;1 2 26-FEB-1988 09:48 ... I guess I am more just reporting this than anything. It now really belongs on a unix programming bb, but I have to abandon it now for other larger issues as I have spent far too much time fooling with it already. I had hoped vmsbackup on the sgi would allow us to be totally independent of VAX tape drives. (i.e. be able to restore a file reliably from old VMS image backup tapes lying on the shelf). It is now clear that is not the case. It may work only without the /image switch, but that defeats 99% of my need. So this is the last from me on this subject. John yates@c.chem.upenn.edu P.S. Even if this does get sorted out, I think VMS Backup save sets will always be unexpectedly subject to failure, perhaps only on a file by file basis (worst case: whole saveset). VMS Backup is clever enough to skip over bad portions of tape, and to recover from it. (the CRC check I guess) I discovered this by coping DECUS tapes in the Files-11 mode (every VMS backup save set is a Files-11 file). Once in a while I could not successfully copy the file off and back onto another tape, however, using VMS Backup to dump it to disk worked fine, then Backup to the fresh tape worked as expected.