Would you please advice me where to get vmsbackup4.2 (source or compiled) for solaris 9?

[maxeem]

Would you please advice me where to get vmsbackup4.2 (source or compiled) for solaris 9?

[Duncan Morris]

Maxeem,

as Hoff indicated, 4.2 does not seem to be widely available, so you may be better off asking this question on a unix site.

However, as you indicated in another thread that you were currently using 3.0, you may find that 4.1.1 is sufficient for your needs.

Here is a link to various 4.1.1 packages

http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/vmsbackup.html

The link below is from the vms-freeware site

ftp://ftp.process.com/vms-freeware/free-vms/

Read the vmsbackup-handy.txt file for further information.

Duncan

[Hoff]

This thread is a continuation of

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1216306

What goal or what sort of task are you performing here (on Sun Solaris) that is involving using the contents of an OpenVMS BACKUP saveset, and particularly what sort of files are on the tape? (This is critical information.)

Should this be porting open source or such and not part of working on a commercial project, you might want to comment on what you're doing related to that.

As for vmsbackup 4.2, here's how to find the source code:

google

vmsbackup

feeling lucky button

follow the link to the contributed patch.

decode with the openssl base64 file decoding tool that's available on Mac OS X and other boxes, or with whatever Solaris uses here.

The code of the patch was then ported to Mac OS X locally, and tweaked it to clean up some build errors and then to remove a source file and its tendrils; a file that should not have been included in the kit.

(Then off to have a look at the code -- if I have the cycles and get far enough along with the code, I expect to release the source bits out, but I'm not there yet. The code itself needs rather more work, as it has a fairly dated knowledge of BACKUP itself; there have been changes to BACKUP and its saveset format since the tool was created.)

Once you have the tool building and pulling the files out of the BACKUP saveset, the vast majority of OpenVMS files inside the BACKUP saveset will use low-level file formats that not transfer to Unix without some sort of file conversion.

OpenVMS files are not raw byte streams; the file contents are akin to a database. Think "directly interpreting the innards of random database files" in Unix terms, to get the general idea. (The internal formats are also not particularly documented.)

Some OpenVMS files (including various common formats such as the indexed files) would require (re)implementing a substantial chunk of RMS itself on Solaris, after working out the file format's internal structures.

I would not encourage one of my commercial clients to perform this file transfer using the vmsbackup tool, save for very specific and unlikely circumstances. I would encourage or offer my client the use of OpenVMS, and to unpack the files using the native OpenVMS tools, and to then re-package the source, text and related files for easier and more direct use on Solaris. This will be the least-cost approach.

Given what I am reading in the threads and given what can be inferred here and assuming this is a commercial enterprise, I'd suggest having a service bureau or IT provider or one of the various OpenVMS consultants here to convert the files within the BACKUP saveset into a format acceptable for use on Solaris. Alternatively -- and should you have the time and budget and the interest to learn low-level file formats of OpenVMS, of BACKUP, and related file transfers -- this project would be a most excellent learning opportunity.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC

[Jim_McCarthy]

> feeling lucky button

In case others like me got lost at this step in the above process, the following excellent web page might get you back on track:

http://64.223.189.234/node/817

(note 64.223.189.234 is the new and future "HoffmanLabs" site :-)