VMS / L&T SIGs Spring 2001 Tapes Initial Documentation ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** Due to publicity about Trojan horse programs, computer viruses, and similar hazards, there may be increased risk that such code may have been submitted for the symposium tapes. Neither your librarians, DECUS, nor DEC has detailed knowledge of the programs herein. The risk of using code here is YOURS and you should consider yourself WARNED that you should test programs yourself to determine what risks they may pose. The cataloging process consists of assembling documentation and files into usable formats, but does NOT involve testing the programs. Your librarians make use of many programs from symposium tapes, however, and none of this code contains any known problems. We ask that if you notice something suspicious about any DECUS program you attempt to help by reporting the problem to the DECUS office immediately and by diagnosing it as well as you can. In using this code, please be aware that privileged code may contain operating system version dependencies whose effects should be assessed before running it. The system crashes you avoid may be your own. The DECUS library may be contacted at 1-800-332-8755. Please ask that Ann Foley and Glenn Everhart (your librarian) be informed of the problems. (If possible, leave a phone number.) (The phone number may be easier to remember as 1-800-DECUS55.) You can reach your librarian (Glenn Everhart) on Internet at the network address Everhart@GCE.Com if you wish faster contact or have questions. Thank you. Our greatest security against this kind of nonsense is watching out for each other. ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** NOTICE ** This directory contains general documentation for this and previous tapes and an index. It is intended to replace previous distributions of [VAX000...] but there may be some older files you want to keep. The tapes this time are combined VMS SIG and L&T SIG tapes, to reduce duplications between the two collections. The 96BVMSLT directory is the master index directory for the entire set. The top level description summary to the Spring '01 VMS/LT SIG tapes is contained in ABSTRACT.DOC and VMSLT01ATPE.DOC in this directory. For a longer description see AAAREADME.*, the concatenated AAAREADME.TXT files from the respective submissions. AAAREADME.TXT's back through the Spring 1979 tape are in a sub-directory [.OLD_AAAREADME]. The tapes are in VMS Backup format in three save-sets: one each for [99BVMSLT...], [VMSLT01A...], and [DECUSLIB...]. The first is the index saveset (01AVMSLT), comprising around 20000 blocks. The others are the DECUS library catalog in machine readable format (DECUSLIB) and the VAX/L&T collection for Spring 2001 (VMSLT01A) Some files have been compressed this time where space use needed to be reduced. Tools for decompressing the files are found in [01avmslt.tools...]; the AAAREADME files in that area will tell how to use them. Compression was done using Gnu COMPRESS, ZOO, ZIP, LHARC, and GZIP, all of which will function also on other machines than VAXen (including Unix boxes, PCs, and Amigas). Where VMS Backup savesets were compressed, the filenames encode the block sizes so that a file mumble.bck_8192_Z needs to be decompressed via $ compress -d mumble.bck_8192 and subsequently be turned into fixed record length 8192 bytes per record with a command to FILE like: $ file/type=fixed/record=8192/attr=noimpliedcc mumble.bck_8192 At this point, mumble.bck_8192 is a normal VMS Backup saveset. See file Compressions.Txt and Decompress_all.com for further information on unpacking compressed files here. Most files that are compressed are compressed with Zip so that VMS file attributes return automatically. To uncompress, define unzip as a command, e.g. $unzip:==$disk:[01Avmslt.tools]unzip and unzip with the command $ unzip filename.zip (The unzip -v filename.zip command lists the contents of the zip file and unzip -h will print some help.) Some files are given extensions like .TAR_LZW or .TAR_Z or .TAZ. These are generally images of compressed TAR savesets from Unix systems. (That is, WE don't make these; they are made on unix systems.) The same goes for the GZIP compressed files from FSF. Files of type .tgz or names of something_tar.gz are gzipped tar files. Use the COMPRESS utility to convert to tar files, then use TARREAD23A to pull the tar files apart. The commands are something like $compress -d file.tar !where filename must originally be file.tar_z; ! rename it to this if necessary. $assign file.tar tape: $tarread23a xv to extract everything into the CURRENT directory. Define the tarread23a verb to run that image as a foreign command (e.g. tarread23a:==$tarread23a with tarread23a.exe in sys$system.) You will run accross .ARC or .ZOO or .LZH files on some directories. For those of you not familiar with these, they are excellent file compression and archiving programs that are widely used in the microcomputer world for distributing programs via floppy and bulletin boards. You can use [.TOOLS]VMSSWEEP (or ARC in the same directory) to read ARC files on a VAX, or ZOO to read ZOO files on a VAX. ZOO files MUST be in STREAM_LF format to be read by VMS ZOO, but should be converted to fixed 512 bytes, no carriage control to transfer to a PC. Your librarians leave the ZOO files in format suitable for extraction on VMS. The .LZH files are produced and decoded by the LHARC utility, which is similar to ZOO but does a better job of compression. LHARC files produced on VMS are left in suitable form for decompression on VMS; like ZOO files, they need to be in STREAM_LF format for this to be done. In the Spring 1991 time, a "high performance" compression was added to ZOO, so that it again has better compression than LHARC. The Spring 2001 tapes contain executables for this new Zoo. All areas have ONE AAAREADME.TXT (and possibly many something.DOC or something.1ST or something .MEM or something_else.TXT or *READ*.something). This is so the AAAREADME.TXT's will be short enough to help you find a program without being cluttered up with how to install or how to use the software. If you are making up a submission for the next tape you can make it easier for us to put the tape together if you will follow this convention. Be sure and look through the tapes for all backup sets present. Glenn C. Everhart O'VMS SIG librarian Everhart@GCE.Com (Preferred mailing address: Glenn Everhart 156 Clark Farm Road Smyrna, Del. 19977 302 659 0460 with the able assistance of various volunteers.