PCA problem after upgrade to VMS 8.3 Alpha

[EdgarZamora]

I'm finding that I'm starting to spend a lot of cycles on this problem so I figured I'd post just in case someone has encountered the same problem.

PCA stopped working after I upgraded a system from VMS 7.3-2 to 8.3. I haven't reinstalled PCA and I couldn't find anything in the release notes.

The error message is:

CLCC1> run pca$primes
%DEBUG-F-CANTGETMAINFID, cannot get file-id for the main image file opened on ch
annel 144
-SYSTEM-F-NOPRIV, insufficient privilege or object protection violation
CLCC1> Exit

Please see the attached text file for detailed information.

I did some test runs with SET WATCH and SET AUDIT turned on (see log) and it seems when I define LIB$DEBUG PCA$COLLECTOR a bunch of DECwindows accesses are added. The problem might be in DECWindows but that may be a red herring.

TIA for any assistance.

[Ian Miller. · Accepted solution]

I would be inclined to re-install PCA as it is the sort of product that has version specific dependencies.

[Jan van den Ende]

Edgar,

Sorry, no knowledge of PCA.
But I _DID_ notice
>>>
$1$DGA20:[VMS$COMMON.CRON.][000000]MYCRON.EXE_ALPHA;2
<<<

which implies that (probably during the installation of CRON) somehow a 000000.DIR was created in SYS$SYSDEVICE:[VMS$COMMON.CRON]

most common cause:
$ SET DEF
and then some incarnation fo
$ CREA/DIR [.xxx]
instead of
$ CREA/DIR [xxx]

it may or may not have to do with your problems, but I have come across some strange effects of the construct (and especially after restored BACKUPs!).

Whether or not it is your current issue, I advise you to repair it at the earliest convenient opportunity.

fwiw

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Martin Vorlaender]

Jan,

>>>
But I _DID_ notice
$1$DGA20:[VMS$COMMON.CRON.][000000]MYCRON.EXE_ALPHA;2
which implies that (probably during the installation of CRON) somehow a 000000.DIR was created in SYS$SYSDEVICE:[VMS$COMMON.CRON]
<<<

Couldn't it just be accessing CRON_ROOT:[000000]MYCRON.EXE_ALPHA with a rooted logical name CRON_ROOT?

cu,
Martin

[EdgarZamora]

>I would be inclined to re-install PCA as it >is the sort of product that has version >specific dependencies.

The PCA version is old (4.7) and I'm also inclined not to re-install the installed version, but to upgrade to the latest versions of DECset. I need to get approvals to do that though (in progress).

I'm also not entirely convinced this is a PCA problem. There are a bunch of inter-dependencies here (Debug, PCA, DECwindows, etc.) The AUDIT alarms seem to indicate a whole bunch of DECwindows files were being accessed right before the error happened. I will do the same run (with the SET WATCH and AUDIT alarms turned on) on a working VMS 7.3-2 system so I can get a comparison on the files being accessed. I'm waiting for nighttime when the developers are gone so I get a lot less extraneous alarms.

[EdgarZamora]

I peeked into the latest PCA release notes and found this:

o ID:227 - PCA failed to operate on OpenVMS Alpha Version
8.2.

This problem has been corrected.


So, it would be reasonable to assume that the same problem would exist on 8.3. I’ll have to upgrade to the latest version.