[fa.info-vax] VMS upgrades

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/05/84)

From: Richard Garland <OC.GARLAND%CU20B@COLUMBIA>

Mostly through laziness I am running VMS V3.4 on my VAXes.  Does anyone
know a reason not to forget about upgrades untill V4.0 comes around?
As far as I know from reading the release notes there were no earth
shaking changes in 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7.

Thanks in advance.

					Rg
-------

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/06/84)

From: politik!paul@BERKELEY (Paul Vixie)


Well, let's see...  VMS 3.5 was useless and completely unnoticable.  In 3.6
they fixed TSDRIVER.EXE to return SS$_ENDOFFILE when reading backward into
the beginning of tape, which in turn broke $BACKUP on new tapes since $BACKUP
writes and verifies the tape label when the tape is empty of save sets.  In
3.7 they fixed this.  Other than the excitement, these releases are useful
only if you have new hardware which needs them (the DMZ32 needs VMS 3.7, for
example).  Also it will be lots of time all at once to get it all done before
you install 4.0, and I'm sure that DEC will make things *nasty* for you if you
are missing file xxx:[sys0.sysexe.foo.bar.retch]trash.exe during the 4.0 update.

Anyway, you've got to love it.  Otherwise suicide is the only answer.

	Paul Vixie

	uucp: {sun!texsun, ucbvax!mtxinu, dual!ptsfa} !politik!paul

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/07/84)

From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!ucsbcsl!forrest@BERKELEY

I believe that the fix to the UDA driver in V3.5 was worth it.
I was in the same situation as you and I decided to go ahead and
make the updates. Perhaps my upgrade was less painless than yours;
I've learned how to copy update floppies to mag tape, resulting
in much faster upgrades when using VMSINSTAL.

Jon Forrest
ucbvax!ucsbcsl!forrest

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/08/84)

From: matthews%super.DEC@decwrl.ARPA  (Val Matthews)

The upgrade to VMS V4.0 can be applied to any system running V3.4 or later.

						Val

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/11/84)

From: Les_Hewitt__ICI_Mond_Division_%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA

My VAX guru seemed surprised that anyone would copy the floppies to
magtape. He uses VMSINSTAL with floppies as the source device, and it
takes about 5 to 10 mins per floppy to read. Does anyone know of a good
reason to copy the update floppies to magtape first??

Les

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/12/84)

From: Tony Li <Tli@Usc-Eclb>


Yes, there is a good reason to copy the updates.  We have @15 750's
up, and our distribution medium is the TU58 (Digital Dog Drive).  I
can either read the tape once, rebuild the save set and distribute it
to all nodes via DECNET, or I can read the tape(s) 15 times.  Guess
which one I use?

;-)