[Simh] Transferring the licence file to the VAX emulator

[Johnny Billquist]

Actually, VMS don't natively have any record terminators for text files.
So lines terminated by CR, LF, CR+LF or whatever, are all wrong.

The natural format is variable length records with implied CRLF. Which 
means that on the disk, the records are prefixed by a length, and no CR 
or LF are actually present at all.

But of course, such a format is not something a 9660 file system can 
have, so you'll instead have to tell VMS that the files on that CD 
should be interpreted as stream-lf, if they are in fact Unix text files.

Exactly how you get VMS to actually interpret the files on the CD that 
way though, I can't remember. Maybe there is some mount option?
Otherwise copy the files over to a normal disk, and then change the file 
attributes to be stream-lf.

   Johnny

On 2018-12-17 16:15, Dave L wrote:
> Likely the issue is that the *nix system presents the text file as 
> stream-LF format which VMS won't understand as a standard text file 
> which it would expect to be CR-LF terminated records. VMS convert 
> utility would be able to fix that as already mentioned, tho you may need 
> to tell it what record format you want on the output file, can't recall 
> now (or use an FDL to define the output file format).
> 
> Alternatively you can just cut and paste from your host into the 
> terminal session to get the initial licenses set up and go from there, 
> either direct to the VMS prompt to action the commands or capture into a 
> command file ("$ copy TT: license.com" might work, then ctrl/Z when 
> finished).
> 
> HTH
> Dave
> 
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2018 14:02:24 -0000, Brian <b_lists at patandbrian.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/17/18 8:44 AM, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
>>> Brian schreef op 17-12-2018 om 14:28
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>> I really don't want to have to enter all the licence data
>>>> interactively, or fix a couple of thousand line endings in the editor!
>>>> There must be SOME way of getting the file onto a new setup?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any assistance,
>>>>
>>>> Brian.
>>>
>>> What usually works for me:
>>>
>>>  * open the license command file  file in your mail program / in a
>>>    notepad on your Linux host.
>>>  * Open a TPU editor session on your OPA0 simh console terminal
>>>  * Copy/Paste the License file text into the TPU editor window.
>>>
>>> If you get buffer overflows on VMS, try it with just the TCP/IP
>>> license (called UCX for hysterical reasons), then setup IP networking
>>> and ftp on VMS.
>>>
>>
>> OK, thanks, I'll give it a try later today and report back. If anybody
>> can tell me in simple terms, though, I would like to understand why
>> the route of going via an ISO didn't work. Is it not possible to
>> transfer text files to the VAX other than via cut-and-paste without
>> the line endings getting mangled?
>>
>> Brian.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Simh mailing list
>> Simh at trailing-edge.com
>> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
> 
> 
> -- 
> _______________________________________________
> Simh mailing list
> Simh at trailing-edge.com
> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh


-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol