Reading OpenVMS documentation CD via Linux!?

[Geert Van Pamel]

I have a stupid, but interesting interoperability problem.

I want to read the OpenVMS 7.3 documentation CD on Linux (via an Apache Web server).

The OpenVMS documentation is in ISO9660 format, but it appears that this format is case sensitive on Linux.

http://192.168.31.31/mnt/cd1/v73/4515/4515PRO.HTML
Object not found!

The following works:

http://192.168.31.31/mnt/cd1/V73/

cd /mnt/cd1

ls
AUTORUN.INF Bin Exe Extra Images INDEX_FILES INDEX.HTML OVMS_ARCHIVED V73 VAX_INDEX.HTML

ls /mnt/cd1/v73
ls: /mnt/cd1/v73: No such file or directory

Remark that the directory V73 is in uppercase on the CD, but is refered as "v73" from the INDEX.HTML file.

Seems that Engineering mixed upper and lowercases?

Question: is there any option in Linux to ignore case with ISO9660 CDs?

I have tried mount option check=relaxed, but this seems not to work!?

Note: Windows is never sensitive. I know; but I do not have a Windows web server available...

[John Gillings]

Geert,

Unfortunately DCL is case insensitive, so OpenVMS engineers don't always think in terms of case sensitivity when generating filenames, or HTML references (guilty m'lud! ;-).

A few things to try... get a more recent set of doc CDs. V7.3 is nearly a decade old, and later releases may be a bit more disciplined in use of case in filenames and references.

I'd also look into the Apache configuration. I seem to remember there's a way to request case insensitivity for a particular virtual directory, but Apache usually makes my head hurt, so I could be wrong ;-)

If that still doesn't work, the disk doesn't hold too much data by today's standards, so copy the whole CD onto a hard disk. If you're lucky check=relaxed will work from there, but otherwise you can probably do some creative renames and/or links. For example, a first cut might be to create a link to each file with the filename converted to lower case (if different from the original filename). Should be fairly simple to script.

If they've been really bad and generated mixed case references and/or filenames, you may need to do some searching and sorting to work out exactly what filenames are referenced and create the links as required.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Yeah, just copy down the whole CD, and then either create lower-case softlinks for all objects, or rename all to lowercase.

That following, only partially tested, perl script might just be able to do that:


------------------ munge_file_names.pl -----
use warnings;
use strict;
use File::Find;

my @files = @ARGV or die "Please provide a top directory as argument";
find(\&wanted, @files);

sub wanted {
my $old = $_;
$_ = 'l_' . lc;
my $type = (-d)? 'd' : (-f)? 'f' : (-l)? 'l' : (-e)? '?' : '!';
link $old, $_ unless -e;
# rename $old, $_ unless -e;
printf qq(%20s %s %10s\n), $File::Find::dir, $type, $old;
}
--------------------
legend:

d = directory
f = regular file
l = link
e = exist
? = dunno
! = will create link

Groetjes,
Hein.

[John H. Reinhardt]

Things haven't gotten any better with the V8.3-1 documentation CDs for either the operating system or the layered products. I have copies of both and there are many, many places where the case is wrong. Makes for tough viewing on an OS/X system. Works okay for OpenVMS and Windows but anything with a case sensitive file system is SOL.

[John H. Reinhardt]

Hein:

Unfortunately that won't work as not only are they inconsistent in the case of the filenames, but also in the HTML files. so you may have the case where the file name/path is upper case in HTML but lower case in the file structure or vice versa. It's an inconsistent mess actually. What we need is a way to change both the HTML and the actual file names/paths.

[Bojan Nemec]

Geert,

Try the apache mod_speling module. This module try to find misspelled or miscapitalized documents. The directive is "CheckSpelling On|Off" which can be in server config, virtual host, directory or .htaccess definitions.

see:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_speling.html

So you can add a "CheckSpelling On" to the Directory directive for the CD.

Bojan

[Hein van den Heuvel]

John,

Yes, my sassumption was the OpenVMS file names were all uppercase as suggested by Geert with the V73, but I don't know that.
Of course a little shell or perl script along the lines I suggested could easily test to make sure an upper case and lower case variant are both accessible and create a softlink for the missing variant.
This would still fail when mixed-case (Camel-case) within the HTML would be in use.

I don't have access to the CD version of the documentation, but a simple 'VIEW SOURCE' for online OpenVMS doc shows strictly lowercase 'HREF' references. In that case, I would suggest a first attempt with a RENAME to lower, instead of the LINK or add an altternative.


fwiw,
Hein

[x2084]

If the apache configuration change didn't help, you may want to try the check=r option:

# mount /media/sr0
# ls /media/sr0
AUTORUN.INF Exe INDEX.HTML Images V73
Bin Extra INDEX_FILES OVMS_ARCHIVED VAX_INDEX.HTML
# ls /media/sr0/v73
ls: cannot access /media/sr0/v73: No such file or directory
# umount /media/sr0
# mount -o check=r /media/sr0
# ls /media/sr0/v73
4454 4584 5642 6017 6200 6470 6512 6536 6553 6605 6621 6646
4477 4735 5643 6018 6243 6489 6523 6537 6554 6606 6622 6647
...

The umount is essential, here. If you already mounted the CD-ROM, you can't use the remount option.

[Hoff]

More than one way to deal with this, too. You could load simh. Load images of OpenVMS VAX and of the CD disk. Configure IP and Apache. Boot. Done.

This particular problem has been discussed and (hopefully) reported before.

And then there is the Great Googles Gizmo, which found:

http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/ciopfs/

There are probably other choices.

Mac OS X also has a case-insensitive file structure available, and the pieces needed to keep Apache and such happy.

[Geert Van Pamel]

Thanks to all for your ideas.

I have tried once again the check=r mount flag on Fedora 10, but this seems *not* to work (not for the ISO file; neither for CDROM).

I have made a copy of the VMS DOC CD to a USB stick; this way I can read the documentation on Windows (Windows is not case sensitive!); and I do not need to take the CDROM with me all the time :-)

Still it is a pitty that OpenVMS engineering does not care that much about interoperability?