topic Re: CIFS on VMS in Operating System - OpenVMS

CIFS on VMS

bizgaz — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:59:19 GMT

Hi,
I am using CIFS/Samba v 3.0.10 on VMS 8.2 and all seems to be working well except......

transferring of files of any find.
I can drop and drag from the Windows XP professional but the files are totally corrupt.

Does anyone know what could be wrong?
A simple show dev/output=temp.txt comes out with a single control character in the left hand corner - that's all.

Thanks for any help on the matter.
Gary

Re: CIFS on VMS

Kris Clippeleyr — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:27:28 GMT

Hi,

Welcome to the OpenVMS forum.

It's all a matter of record format and record attributes of the files.
SAMBA doesn't know how to present e.g. "variable length, carriage return carriage control" files to a Windows client such as Notepad.
Likewise, if you create (with Notepad) a file directly on a SAMBA share, you get a Stream_LF file at the VMS side, but with CR-characters (13 decimal, 0D hex) stuck at the end of each logical record.

I'm still trying to figure out how to amend these annoying things.

Regards,
Kris (aka Qkcl)

Re: CIFS on VMS

bizgaz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:41:33 GMT

Yes - I have been trawling through the internet seeing this problem on older versions, I had assumed by now it had been fixed.

textfiles i.e. postscript, .txt, XML, CSVs are 100% of what we would be using it for.

Looks like I'm stuck.

Re: CIFS on VMS

Hein van den Heuvel — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 14:16:15 GMT

Gary>> I can drop and drag from the Windows XP professional but the files are totally corrupt.

The CIFS file server is on VMS right?
And you are using a windoze client to copy files around.
When and where do you see corruption?

VMS text file, copied to VMS, still fine on VMS?
VMS text file, opened with notepad.. corrupt?

Does it matter whether the file was 'standard OpenVMS: variable length', or Unixy (STREAM_LF) or Windoze/RSTS (STREAM)

PC text file, copied to VMS drive. Useable on PC? Useable on VMS?

Nothing works?

Gary> Does anyone know what could be wrong?

Your expectations !?
[ Perhaps shaped / spoiled through Pathworks? ]

Gary> A simple show dev/output=temp.txt comes out with a single control character in the left hand corner - that's all.

You are just using that VMS command on VMS to create a sample file right? which is than opened on Windoze and it shows a single funny char right?

Kris > Likewise, if you create (with Notepad) a file directly on a SAMBA share, you get a Stream_LF file at the VMS side, but with CR-characters (13 decimal, 0D hex) stuck at the end of each logical record.

So that means you really got a STREAM file, not STREAM_LF, but it was erroneously labeled STREAM_LF

Kris> I'm still trying to figure out how to amend these annoying things.

SET FILE/ATTRI=RFM=STM should bring them to life!

Gary>> textfiles i.e. postscript, .txt, XML, CSVs are 100% of what we would be using it for.
Gary>>Looks like I'm stuck.

Have you tried CONVERT/FDL=STREAM vms.TXT pc.txt ??
STREAM.FDL should be a file just containing:
RECORD; FORMAT STREAM

On OpenVMS 8.3 you can do:
$CONVERT/FDL=RECORD; FORMAT STREAM" x y

Anyway... on the windoze side you might not be stuck, as all it takes it a simple program which can read OpenVMS RMS Variable length record file, and convert to local format as needed.

I posted a PERL script to do just that years ago in:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=607254

Try it? (to make sure we at least understand the problem, even though it will probably not be an acceptable solution.)

Hope this helps some,
Hein van den Heuvel
HvdH Performance Consulting.

Re: CIFS on VMS

Gary Buczma — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:01:14 GMT

That's a bit dissapointing.
Why buy a car only to push it uphill yourself.

Surely HP must be looking at rectifying that situation at some point?