Interpreting Multinet SCP2 commands to HP TCP/IP

[Chris Martin_12]

I recently upgraded our VMSCluster to OpenVMS 8.2. It was decided prior to the upgrade to use HP TCP/IP instead of Multinet. How would I use the following Multinet command in HP TCP/IP? The SCP2 command is transferring a file from VMS to a Windows 2000 Server.

Thanks.

$ mu scp2/ascii=vms *.dat "user@remotenode"::

[Steven Schweda]

You might start with:

scp2 -h

Not knowing exactly what "/ascii=vms" does,
it's hard to say much more.

If your files are text and not Stream_LF, you
may not like the results.

I have no idea if wildcard file names are
allowed.

[Chris Martin_12]

That's helpful, but the help does not seem to offer any real world examples. Do you have anything SCP2 examples?

[Richard Whalen]

On MultiNet /ASCII=VMS is telling it to use a "on the wire" text format of stream-lf.

If you would like to use MultiNet's SCP and SFTP with TCP/IP Services, then they are available separately in the SSH for OpenVMS product available from Process Software. This provides the ability to transfer text files that are not stored in stream-lf mode.

[Steven Schweda]

Well, the wildcard file spec seems to be
doomed, and non-UNIX-like file formats may
be, too, but otherwise, syntax like your
original seems to work for me:

scp2 -a b.c_slf "sms@alp.antinode.org:test5/"

put it into [.test5]. And:

scp2 -a b.c_slf "sms@alp.antinode.org:"

put it into the "sms" home directory.


Or at least it did for a while. After a few
tests, I started to get zero-length files at
the destination. No error message, of
course. One might begin to suspect that this
stuff is junk, but that might not be
charitable.

alp $ tcpip show version

HP TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Alpha Version V5.4 - ECO 5
on a COMPAQ Professional Workstation XP1000 running OpenVMS V7.3-2

alp $ scp2 "-V"
tcpip$ssh_scp2.exe: SSH Secure Shell OpenVMS (V5.5) 3.2.0 on COMPAQ Professional
Workstation - VMS V7.3-2

Newer/better stuff could exist, of course.

(And you don't need to quote upper-case
command-line parameters in _my_ code,
either.)

[Chris Martin_12]

Thanks so much for the SCP2 commands. That really helps ... I'm getting closer. I was able to transfer the ASCII file, but it shows up as an empty file on the Windows system. Do you (or anyone else) know how to convert a VMS ASCII file to Stream_LF? Also, does the file need to be converted back to ASCII on the Windows system following the file transfer?

[Steven Schweda]

> I was able to transfer the ASCII file, but
> it shows up as an empty file on the Windows
> system.

My latest experiments suggest that this a bug
involving "-a". I'm just copying from a VMS
system to itself, and it seems to work as
expected without "-a", but I get only
zero-length files at the destination if I use
"-a". (Great stuff, eh?)

> Do you (or anyone else) know how to convert
> a VMS ASCII file to Stream_LF?

I use this procedure:

alp $ type utility:cnvstmlf.com
$! 12 December 1999. SMS.
$!
$! CONVERT a file to StreamLF record format.
$!
$ convert 'p1' 'p2' /fdl = sys$input:
RECORD
FORMAT stream_lf
$!

For example:

@ utility:cnvstmlf.com B.C B.C_SLF

> Also, does the file need to be converted
> back to ASCII on the Windows system
> following the file transfer?

Presumably, if "-a" worked right, no. In
real life as it seems to be, I don't know.
(It'll still be ASCII, but the line endings
may be wrong -- LF instead of CR+LF, or
whatever.) You may need to run the
experiment and see what comes out on the
other end. As a Windows-avoider, I don't
know if there's a convenient tool at that end
which can convert the (likely) LF line
endings to CR+LF. (Perhaps something hidden
under "UNIX services"?)

On the bright side, a non-"-a" transfer of a
non-Stream_LF file ("Record format: Variable
length") seemed to work ok, too. (The
resulting destination file _was_ Stream_LF,
which is not very amazing, but the text
itself looked ok to me.)

If you have a support contract, you might
send a complaint up the chain about "-a"
being worthless junk. (Whether that would
actually buy you anything is open to doubt.)

[Chris Martin_12]

Excellent information! ... and Thanks for the handy convert procedure. The ascii file copied over to the windows 2000 server and was readable. The only exception is that when opening the file in Notepad, there is either a or at the end of the line.
I know that you mentioned that in the last reply to this post. I will have to figure out how to strip that out.

[Steven Schweda]

Google, searching for "windows unix lf", found:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/tofrodos/

Might be useful.