installing layered products from BCK

[Stefan Miganowicz]

I admit I know next to nothing about VMS but I'm starting to learn with what my company provided me (an AlphaServer DS10 and OVMS8.4 download kit). I installed 8.4 off a CD image I burned and I also want to install the layered products that come with the distribution (C compiler, tools, etc). The LP pack came as .BCK files. They are ALPHA084LP1.BCK and ALPHA084LP2.BCK. I have a secondary hard drive installed and formatted as DKA100 and I'm guessing I have to expand these backup files to the secondary drive and then initiate an installation from there. Could someone give me a step by step walkthrough on how to do this? I searched around on the web but couldn't find any instructions on how to do this. Thanks.

[Andy Bustamante]

The layered products are probably a VMS backup. You can confirm this by using the backup utility.

$ backup /list ALPHA084LP1.BCK /save_set

This will generate a list of files and display the command used to create the backup, if this is a backup save set. Use

$ backup ALPHA084LP1.BCK /save_set dka100:[dir_name...]

to restore save sets.

[Hoff]

Those are likely BACKUP disk images of the distribution media, and a construction which is entirely unfriendly to a user that is unfamiliar with OpenVMS, and equally unfriendly to somebody that doesn't have a working VMS system immediately handy.

You will either need to pull individual kits out of that saveset using BACKUP /SELECT commands (and knowing what files to fetch requires some listing and a little experience and some digging and a whole lot of patience), or you will have to use LD to restore those disks.

The basic sequence to use those (as restored disks) is something close to the following sequence (not tested):

$ LD CREATE /SIZE=1200000 ALPHA084LP1.IMG
$ LD CONNECT ALPHA084LP1.IMG LDA600:
$ MOUNT/FOREIGN LDA600:
$ BACKUP /IMAGE ALPHA084LP1.BCK/SAVE LDA600:
$ MOUNT LDA600:/OVER=ID

$ LD CREATE /SIZE=1200000 ALPHA084LP2.IMG
$ LD CONNECT ALPHA084LP2.IMG LDA601:
$ BACKUP /IMAGE ALPHA084LP2.BCK/SAVE LDA601:
$ MOUNT LDA601:/OVER=ID

This assumes you have OpenVMS Alpha V8.4 booted, and also have somewhere around three gigabytes of disk free (for the image backing storage for LD, and storage for the BACKUP savesets).

The usual use of those is (same as you did with your base distro) to restore the disk to a master (via LD) and then burn a CD, and use that.

Whoever gave that pointer to you didn't do you any favors. It's usually nicer to post disk images, as most anything can burn those. Dealing with a BACKUP saveset? Not so much...

[Hoff]

I used LD as the various VMS distribution disk images have tended to have aliases, and because I could use that to burn the disk images. (Either directly on OpenVMS via COPY /RECORD, or with cdrecord, or by moving the image to a box with a burner and tools.)

Andy's approach will also work, and (if you're not interested in subsequently burning the disks to CD media) will also be entirely serviceable.