Newby: images

[vladimir Sanchez_2]

Guys, I was named "security expert" on VMS and I have some questions as I am checking the security cheklist. I know Unix, but some concepts on VMs are a little fuzzy for me at this time: what is an image? Is it like a filesystem on Unix?
Where can i find technical documentation?

Regards,

Vladimir

[Allan Bowman]

Welcome to the forums Vladimir!

To put it simply, in OpenVMS an IMAGE is the executable program file. Portions of the file are loaded in memory as needed.

One online source for OpenVMS documentation is here:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/

You missed the most recent OpenVMS Bootcamp, but next month is the HP Technology Forum in Houston. There will be a number of presentations covering OpenVMS that would be helpful to a "newby".

Allan in Atlanta

[Phil.Howell]

If you are familiar with the unix sys_check tool then you can get an overview of a vms system using
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/v7/vms_check_tool.html
On vms, an executable (.exe) built by the linker is an "image file", after it is loaded it is an "image". Privileges can be assigned to images using the install utility
Phil

[Robert Gezelter]

Vladimir,

As has been mentioned, in OpenVMS, an image is an executable program that is in a form (compiled and linked) that can be processed by the image activator (the OpenVMS component that loads images into virtual memory for execution).

There are also shareable images, which are library images invoked by other programs.

A word of caution about security checklists written for other systems. The security paradigms are dramatically different between *IX and OpenVMS. This means that many checklists compiled for *IX are inappropriate for OpenVMS, and that many precautions available on OpenVMS are not even mentioned by the checklist.

I strongly recommend a thorough read of the OpenVMS Guide to System Security (part of the documentation set, available through http://www.hp.com/go/openvms ). You might also find my chapter on "OpenVMS Security" in the Handbook of Information Security (Bidgoli, Ed., published by Wiley, 2005) relevant.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com