vms disk help

[comarow]

I'd really like to point out that about the worst thing to do with a filled disk is reboot,
as rebooting is very difficult. Unless the
accounting file is the culprit you can
do some emergency stuff on your system disk
to get it working.

Purge/keep=3/log sysdisk:[*...]
will let you see what's writing a lot of files to the system.

new operator log, errorlog.sys, and accountng.dat files will help. As long as they are backed up you can always go back to them or save them on another disk.

A note, if you do a
set account/new it will start a new file
BUT IT WILL INCLUDE all Image activation,
so immediately do a set account/noimage

Since these files are created a bit at a time,
they may take up 100s of retrival pointers,
and the lack of free headers could stop you in your tracks. If you want to keep the existing files, such as accountng.dat
do a copy/contiguous filename Then purge the
original. So you have some options.
You can use the convert and recreate the file
with extra space.

All the log files have this problem. I liked
to use the RMS utilities to convert them to pre-sized files with extra space. Remember that keeping all your fragmenting log, or dat
files will have all these pointers. This also means if you use the files, such as use accounting.dat or your system backs it up it requires many extra I/Os. So this has performance issues.

Then, do the dir/sel= look for big files
and get huge files that may be sitting wasting space.

My rule of thumb is keep no applications on the system disk.

Finally, over the years, even sysuaf.dat
can, like any other ISAM files get it terrible shape with internal bucket splits,
records marked deleted. Since this file is hit in every login, including batch, it's worth optimizing it.

For example

Anal/rms/fdl sysuaf.dat
The edit/fdl syauaf.fdl
and choose optimize. It will create
an FDL file for your sysuaf.dat.
Make sure you choose the option to
add additional records, and the fill factor low and it will help performance for
a much longer time.

After you optimize the fdl, then
anal/rms/fdl=sysuaf.fdl sysuaf.dat sysuaf.dat

Make sure it stays in common and you don't put a separate copy in a root directory.

I'm always willing to follow up on the phone or email on any advise I give.

Have fun

Bob Comarow
VMS Consultant.
You can do a Purge/keep=2 to get out of the emergency.



If the security journal is huge, close it,
and start a new one.