SDA Installation

[Jefferson Humber]

I have a colleague who is having issues with a few processes on their Alpha (7.3-2). The processes keep going into an RWAST state in their application ;-(

I thought I would try and determine what was causing this through the SDA utility, but it would seem that it is not installed on the system in question.

I assume this must be one of the options when installing OpenVMS (an optional component ?). Is there a way to add this functionality to the system from installing it off the O/S CD ?

Ideally I'm looking for a way of doing this with the system online and running, is this possible ? An easy 10 points for the first person to tell me how this can be done.

Can this be done with VMSTAILOR ? It's been a while since I've got my hands dirty with this stuff, and I think I've forgotten more than I ever knew.

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

[Robert Gezelter]

Jeff,

Try ANALYZE/SYSTEM at the command prompt. It is installed by default.

While it is possible that the image was removed from the system (in which case, you can extract it from the distribution kit).

More likely, you were trying typing SDA at the command prompt, which would have been incorrect.

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

[Jefferson Humber]

Bob,

I know I said that I'd fogotten more than I knew, but I wasn't deadly serious I promise. ;-)

When I invoke the SDA through ($ANAL/SYS) it complains of not find the SDA.EXE, both the live & development system have the same issue, hence why I assume it was not opted for during installation.

I've done a little more digging into my hunch about VMSTAILOR, and would seem it included under the 'System Programming Support' category.

I've never used this tool though to install/remove features, so any pointers would be most welcome.

Jeff

[John Gillings]

Jeff,
Try

$ PRODUCT RECONFIGURE VMS/SOURCE=distr-CD

You may get away without a reboot, but I'm not certain.

I'd also strongly recommend AGAINST installing OpenVMS without all options. The disk space saved is trivial, and just not worth the agro of finding things missing.

[John Gillings]

Jeff,

Oh, and if you're into hackery... SDA is just an image, and the distribution CD looks like a system disk, so you could just copy SDA and SDA$SHARE from the distribution CD to the appropriate places on your system disk (hint, SYS$COMMON!) Check SYS$SHARE on the distribution for any other SDA plugins (*$SDA.EXE)

Attempt to start the image, and note any "file not found" type errors. COPY missing files from the distribution until the utility starts cleanly.

If you want to try something really cute, you might get away with appending the SYS$SYSROOT logical name with a concealed device pointing to [SYS0.SYSCOMMON.] on your mounted distribution CD. (If you can't figure out how to do that, you probably shouldn't! ;-)

[Robert Gezelter]

Jeff,

As John mentioned, the space saved by tailoring is so small compared to the size of today's disks that it is generally not worth the bother.

I would follow the product reconfiguration suggestion. It is a better habit to get into for the rare situations where it is needed.

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

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

FWIW, I've confirmed that for the case of SDA you should be able to get away with just mounting the distribution disk and tacking it on the end of the SYS$SYSROOT logical name search list. No need to reconfigure anything, no need to copy files, and definitely no need to reboot.

HOWEVER, you'd better make sure you get your DEFINE commands correct, or your system is toast! SYS$SYSROOT is the centre of the OpenVMS Universe so, if it's wrong, nothing works!

Remember you also need to remove the search list entry when you've finished.

NO LIABILITY ACCEPTED FOR BREAKING ANYTHING!!!

Here's what I did (and remember the device names here are specific to my system)

$ MOUNT/CLUSTER $1$DQA0 ALPHA0732
$ DEFINE/SYSTEM/EXEC SYS$DISTRIB -
$1$DQA0:[VMS$COMMON.]/TRANS=(CONC,TERM)
$ DEFINE/SYSTEM/EXEC SYS$SYSROOT -
$1$DKA0:[SYS0.]/TRANS=(CONC,TERM), -
SYS$COMMON:,-
SYS$DISRIB:

$ ANALYZE/SYSTEM
SDA> exit

and now to revert

$ DEFINE/SYSTEM/EXEC SYS$SYSROOT -
$1$DKA0:[SYS0.]/TRANS=(CONC,TERM), -
SYS$COMMON:

Totally unsupported, of course. Be very careful and make certain you understand exactly what this does and why it works before attempting it.

[Ian Miller.]

Either PRODUCT RECONFIG or copying
SYS$COMMON:[SYSEXE]SDA.EXE
SYS$COMMON:[SYSLIB]SDA$SHARE.EXE and various *$SDA.EXE files.


When you get SDA you may also wish to look at
http://eisner.encompasserve.org/~miller/pwait_sda00d.zip

to help debug the original problem.


or ask here.