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Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

 
Gordon  Morrison
Trusted Contributor

VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

I've been administrating various flavours of Unix for 10 years, and I have just taken over a few VMS boxes. My VMS experience is very limited and very rusty.
I've bought a VMS Administration guide recommended by a VMS guru friend, but it's huge and it will take me a while to plow through it.
Is there an online resource similar to the "Rosetta stone for Unix" that gives translations/examples of how to do basic tasks?
Simple things like resetting passwords, redirecting output, creating/deleting users, basic network checking, looking at disks, simple loops in scripts, that sort of thing?
Thanks
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13 REPLIES 13
Duncan Morris
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

Gordon,

welcome the OpenVMS forum!

You will find lots of good links and advice here:-

http://www.openvms.org/pages.php?page=Beginner

and there are lots of good scripting examples in the DCL site

http://dcl.openvms.org/


Duncan
Duncan Morris
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

You might also like to review these free online courses:

http://plato.ccsscorp.com/courses.html
Robert Gezelter
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

Gordon,

There is a book on the reverse.

The user manuals for OpenVMS are generally much better. You may want to look at the documentation set, including the User Manual.

The documentation set is available via the OpenVMS www site at http://www.hp.com/go/openvms

One can also check out some of my columns on OpenVMS.org.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com
marsh_1
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

hi,

depending on your versions of vms if you send @sys$manager:tcpip$define_commands at a command prompt it will give you some of the unix network commands such as ifconfig etc.
there is also a bash shell available for vms, there is a basic writeup on equivalents here :-

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/741

hth


Ian Miller.
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

The command to get help on VMS is HELP (not case sensitive).

This is an important clue to the differences between the systems.

See www.hp.com/go/openvms/doc - partucularly the VMS manuals whose titles start with Guide

____________________
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Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

OpenVMS and Unix are significantly different in many ways, and (unfortunately) trying a direct command or conceptual translation can often lead to frustration.

Some information on creating a user on OpenVMS:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/856

The OpenVMS FAQ is here:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1

vim is available for OpenVMS at:
www.polarhome.com/vim/

There's a microemacs port for OpenVMS around, and various folks have been working on an emacs port but I don't know the status of that.

There's a functional bash shell for OpenVMS (gnv) that can be downloaded from HP. The gnv pieces are a subset of a full bash shell, but provide a reasonable environment.

I'm not aware of a cookbook for OpenVMS for folks familiar with Unix or Linux, though there was once a "dummies" book around for OpenVMS, and there are various Unix for OpenVMS users (as was mentioned). These books are comparatively hard to find, AFAIK.
comarow
Trusted Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

Terry Shannon wrote a book, Introduction to VMS which you can easily get for pennies on Amazon. It's beginner stuff but will give you an easy understanding of the syntax (grammar)
and style of the commands.

It was written many versions ago, but everything is still relevant. It will make reading real documentation much easier.

As someone pointed out, to get HELP you type help. The idea is VMS is controlled with
human, English like words. It's not a closed club where they name a command after the dog that barked when the mailman comes.

You want to search for something, the command is strangely enough Search versus
Grep. Most of your commands are also available in VMS, but it would help to get a feeling for the OS and the philosophy that
keeps an operating system around when the people that own it have been trying to kill it for years.

Terry Shannon's book, with your background will take you at most a few days.

Have fun. We can help.



Gordon  Morrison
Trusted Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

Thanks guys.
Mark: That page is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. (Hoff, is that your page? It's great, but incomplete. Please finish it ;o)

Bash for VMS looks cosmic, but we're running VMS 7.1-2, so it looks like it may not work as it's for 8.3.
When they do a ksh version, VMS will be perfect!
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Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: VMS Rosetta stone for Unix admins?

What I have recommended to some long-time bash users is "forget what you know", and "forget how you do it." That way lies pain. (bash with a reasonably compatible Unix underneath is a very capable platform.)

Moving from bash to the DOS Shell or moving to DCL or to other command languages will be quite frustrating for some bash users. Particularly if the user tries to migrate and use bash-style solutions in these other environments.

Within the HP manuals, start with the User's Guide and work your way (depending on your goal) to the Programming Concepts manual or to the System Management manuals.

Yes, that's my bash DCL comparison page.

Incomplete? Yes. It'll always be incomplete. That's inherent in the comparison.

When I think of it, I do add command translations to the web page, and this when and as there are translations. DCL and bash are very different environments, particularly around some of the key constructs of Unix command shells. I use both with regularity.

As for suggestions for inclusion on the web page, have at. Either here or (probably better) over at that site. Comments are enabled on that web page for registered users on that site, and I do receive and do post the occasional random question (and answer) on that web site.