[Simh] Getting a true Vax disk over to SIMH?

[A.Bucher at alcatel.de]

Hi, 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com
> [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com]On Behalf Of Stanley F. Quayle
> Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 6:52 AM
> To: simh at trailing-edge.com
> Subject: Re: [Simh] Getting a true Vax disk over to SIMH?
> 
> 
> On 9 Jan 2006 at 6:41, Norman Lastovica wrote:
> > What I like to do is install LDDRIVER and then create
> > container files and use BACKUP/IMAGE to transfer the
> > 'real' disk to the container file.  Finally dismount
> > the disk and then FTP it (binary mode) to my target
> > system.
> 
> That assumes the existing system has enough free disk space to hold 
> what you're transferring.  That's a problem, especially if you're 
> trying to migrate the whole system...
> 
> --Stan Quayle
> Quayle Consulting Inc.
> 

Well yah - sure - if you don't have enough space on the system
to back up one if its disks, then you're in trouble still.

-----

Well, that's where my satellite boot idea comes handy:
The (emulated) system is net-booting from the sysdisk of the source (real) 
VAX, 
so it uses all the disks like the source system (the satellite is 
diskless), _and_ additionally it 
can mount any local disk(s) which would provide enough space for the 
backup.

Then, the satellite (emulation) can copy from source (local, but in fact 
via the network from the host) do destination (local disk from the 
emulation point of view). you clone everything, including the OS, and you 
get a identical copy of the source. or, you just mount a local (empty) 
data disk on your emulation and put the copy there. 

After that, you either boot the emu locally from the cloned OS disk and 
enjoy the copy ouf the source (after some sysgen) or from any other local 
pre-installed OS disk and just use the copy of the data disk.

The only disadvantage could be that you need to have clustering active on 
the source and must register the emulated VAX as satellite node. I think 
this is preferrable to having disk space problems (because usually, on a 
real VAX, disk space is rare and valuable ...)

If it comes to just cloning a data disk (w/o open files), it should be 
sufficient to pre-install the emulator with VMS, configure DECNet or 
TCP/IP on both systems and use remote disk acceess and the BACKUP command 
to clone the disk.

regards,
Andreas

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