Booting from CD

[Andrij CAde]

It was going good until:


5. $$$ SHOW DEVICE D

dka0 online

6. Mount the disk to examine (the one found in (2) or the next in search according the list in (5):
$$$ MOUNT/OVER=ID

Mount-I-Mounted, ALPHASYS mounted on _dka0
mount-I-Rebuild, Volume was improperly dismounted; rebuild in progress

7. To see if this is the system disk, examine it the Q & D way (not failsafe, but usually correct):
$$$ DIR :[000000]VMS$COMMON.DIR

RMS-E-DNF, Directory not found
System-W-Nosuchfile, No Such File

7. Check the disk for free space:
$$$ SHOW DEVICE : /FULL

I did this and came back with 0 free blocks.

8. Purge the whole disk:
$$$ PURGE [/LOG] :[000000...]

I then tried to purge using
$$$PURGE/LOG dka0:*.log

respose:

Purge-w-serachfail, error searching for dka0:[sysexe]*.log
RMS-E-DNF, Directory not found
System-W-NoSuchFile, No Such File
Purge-I-NoFilepurg, no files purged

I don't know what is going. It seems very straight forward and probably very simple solution. Any help is great appreciated.

Andrij

[Jan van den Ende]

Andrij,

this is looking really suspicious.

Can you post the output of

$ dir dka0:[000000]

and of

$ dir dka0:[*]

we wilt take it (if we can!) from there.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Volker Halle]

Andrij,

> I then tried to purge using
> $$$PURGE/LOG dka0:*.log

Your command was wrong. You need to enter

$$$PURGE/LOG dka0:[*...]*.LOG

Volker.

[Jan van den Ende]

Ah, Volker, your eyes are better than mine!

Andrij,

it is not so bleak yet as I feared.

To explain what Volker indicated:

You specified to purge the .LOG files. But which?
You specified DKA0:*.LOG

Do, device DKA0:
Directory? NONE specified, so, supply from DEFAULT. And obiously your defauly deirectory was [SYSEXE] (probably because it was taken from the authorisation file, or you changed it with SET DEFAULT.
The example specified [000000]
Next the example specified just a little more: [...] in the dir-spec. Which means: this directory, and all subdirectories.

So, all in all, the system was right: there is no toplevel SYSEXE.DIR.


However
>>>
$$$ DIR :[000000]VMS$COMMON.DIR

RMS-E-DNF, Directory not found
System-W-Nosuchfile, No Such File
<<<

You specified DKA0 for , right?

If that _IS_ the case, then you will face another problem: the infamous VMS$COMMON alias issue.

Let us first see that we get you back in the air, but then please come back to address this issue. It is rather easy to repair, but could potentially cause serious future problems.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Steven Schweda]

> You specified DKA0 for , right?

I assume that this is pointless, but why are
you trying to hide what could be useful
details, instead of following a simple
suggestion?

> [...] showing the actual commands you
> use, and their actual output, would help more
> than your vague descriptions of what you did
> and what happened.

How hard do you want to make things for the
people who are trying to help you?

[Willem Grooters]

My mistake.

$$$ PURGE/LOG :[000000...]*.*

But given your description, I suspect trouble.

If this system has only DKA0: available, and no [VMS$COMMON] directory exists, that means:
-- It's NOT a system disk
-- The disk is (totally) broken

Check, just to be sure:

$$$ DIR :[000000]*.DIR

This will show all level-1 directories.

$$$ DUMP/BLOCKS=(START:0,COUNT:1)

This will show block zero of the disk.

AND POST THE OUTPUT AS-IS, PLEASE!

(You cannot use /OUTPUT since that would require a disk write and as stated, there seems to be no room... Second: for the sake of the investigation, I prefer NOT to touch the disk)

[Willem Grooters]

Another thing to do, even BEFORE boot.

On the console prompt, enter:

>>> SHOW DEVICE

All devices should show up; the ones starting with "D" would normally be the disks...

>>> SHOW *BOOT*

should show all variables containging BOOT - I'm not confident in my memory what is exactly the one used for a simple BOOT command, I'm booting tmy boxes far too seldom to remember it :)