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How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
R Price
Member
Posts: 36
Location: Canada
Joined: 09.12.10 |
| Posted on December 09 2010 10:27 |
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Yes I'm a newbie to VMS. I've got lots of experience with Macs, Windows, DOS, assorted flavours of UNIX/Linux/*BSD and even CP/M and the Commodore PET but VMS is a new world for me. I've read the relevant help pages on HP's web site and it looks simple enough. I looked through all the threads about registering/loading licenses and the gist seems to be the email is a DCL script I just execute and the PAKs/licenses are registered. Then I load the licenses and things should work from this point. I even found a YouTube video which shows the process and it appears to match what I have read, allowing for the fact the video example is for registering/loading renewed licenses on a system where they are about to expire.
I've been working on this project for three days now and I have achieved zero. I'm sure there is a reason why this doesn't work for me but I don't know what it is.
I've tried cutting and pasting the text of the emails into documents in Notepad (Windows), burning the .com files to a CD and executing them but this just gives an error message about "unrecognized command verb - check validity and spelling".
I've tried cutting and pasting just the part after the copyright info into a .com file but that gives an error about too many parameters.
I get much the same problem with the PAK file for the layered products, just with more error messages.
I'm completely stumped at this point. My best guess is maybe Windows borks the files somehow? Would it work better if I tried it with the Mac?
I can successfully register and load the VMS PAK/license if I use the "license register. . . " command and the "license load. . . " command. That is fine for one license but to do it for all the layered products is obviously not feasible.
So what is the gimmick to make this work or is this PAK/license deal some sort of VMS hazing ritual everyone has to go through to join the club?
Edited by R Price on December 09 2010 10:31 |
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| Author |
RE: How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
martinv2
Member
Posts: 107
Location: Goslar, Germany
Joined: 02.10.07 |
| Posted on December 09 2010 19:22 |
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As you don't show what exactly you entered that lead to the "unrecognized command verb" error, I can only guess. My best guess is this: to execute a DCL command procedure, you have to prepend its file name with a "@" (which is a kind of an input redirection).
The files should only contain LICENSE REGISTER commands (spread over multiple lines; the separator to make that happen is "-").
What I normally do is register the VMS base license and the TCP/IP license (called "UCX") by cut'n'paste into a terminal window session, load them, set up TCP/IP, and transfer all the other licenses by FTP (ASCII mode).
HTH
Martin
http://de.openvms.org/martinv/
Edited by martinv2 on December 09 2010 19:24 |
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| Author |
RE: How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
R Price
Member
Posts: 36
Location: Canada
Joined: 09.12.10 |
| Posted on December 10 2010 04:30 |
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I named the VMS PAK file VMSLIC.COM. The command I typed was "@VMSLIC.COM". I have other files, with the complete emails I received and with just the LICENSE REGISTER commands. None of them work. As I say, the documentation from HP and the info I have found here and other places on the net make it all look simple enough. Sure, VMS is different from other OSes I've used but mounting volumes, copying files, executing scripts etc are all pretty basic operations. If I just enter the LICENSE REGISTER command contained in the file manually it works and I can load the VMS license using LICENSE LOAD so at least I know the actual PAK info is correct.
I'm fairly sure it is a case that I am not yet familiar enough with DCL to know if I've entered a command incorrectly - it took a few minutes of experimentation to master the syntax of MOUNT, SET DEF and COPY to get the PAK files copied from the CD to the hard drive. I expect once I get it working the error in what I am doing now will be obvious. That is fine as the whole point of this exercise is to learn something new; I prefer to learn from other peoples' mistakes but if I have to learn from my own I'll take what I can get.
I'm nowhere near the point where I can cut and paste anything into a terminal window as I have no GUI, just the basic command line interface. As near as I can tell it is more or less the VMS analog to single user mode on a *NIX type system or safe mode on Windows. It seems like nothing is running, though I gather this is normal with no licenses.
For what it is worth, I have an Alphaserver DS10. To verify the hardware I first installed OpenBSD as I am familiar with that OS. At the moment I am running OpenVMS 8.3, installed from a CD burned from an ISO I downloaded via BitTorrent. The OS installed fine and boots with no problems so I choose to assume I have a "good" install. Still, once my Hobbyist media arrives I plan to nuke and pave with that just to be sure. Maybe that will make things work better.
If worst comes to worst I will just print out the emails with the PAKs and type them all in manually, as I did with the VMS PAK. I'm sure it would take less time than I have already spent trying to do it the "easy" way. At least I would get the system up and running this way. Whatever, I don't plan to give up on this.
Thanks,
Ronald |
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RE: How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
martinv2
Member
Posts: 107
Location: Goslar, Germany
Joined: 02.10.07 |
| Posted on December 11 2010 06:20 |
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Ronald,
@VMSLIC.COM sure is the correct command. Unfortunately, there's no DCL debugger. The way to see exactly what went wrong is to $ SET VERiFY before executing @VMSLIC. This turns on a trace of all lines executed with the error message directly following the output of the traced line, which allows you to see exactly which command DCL puked on. If there's too much output (there are a lot of licenses to register), you can redirect the output by passing /OUTPUT=<filename> directly after @VMSLIC, and look at the trace in an editor or by $ TYPE/PAGE <filename>.
As for cutting and pasting: the "terminal window" I was refering to is not a GUI window, but a terminal emulator window on an MS Windows or Unix system (where you can cut'n'paste a few lines into DCL), connected to the VMS system's 1st serial port with a null modem cable. If the Alpha's SRM variable CONSOLE is set to SERIAL (as opposed to GRAPHICS), this is the system's operator console, i.e. the one which allows logins even without any license.
HTH,
Martin
http://de.openvms.org/martinv/ |
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| Author |
RE: How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
R Price
Member
Posts: 36
Location: Canada
Joined: 09.12.10 |
| Posted on December 11 2010 11:55 |
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The problem was what I suspected - whatever Windows does re CR/LF was offensive to DCL. I manually registered/loaded the minimum set of PAKs needed to get the GUI up and running then copied the files with the PAKs onto the hard drive on the DS10 so I could edit them. It only took a few minutes to figure out there was an invisible character (LF, I assume) appended to the end of each line. Once I stripped those everything went smoothly.
I wondered later if you were referring to a remote terminal/emulator rather than a local terminal window. Unfortunately none of my other computers have serial ports so the null modem cable wouldn't have helped me. Good idea, just not possible for me.
I still think there are some things not quite right with the system. I can find no evidence of a web browser and some stuff just doesn't work, like DEC Write. But I have no idea if the VMS ISO I used is complete. At least now when the Hobbyist media arrives I have the cleaned up PAK files stored on an VMS formatted SSD so I can reinstall and then just mount that and get things running easily.
For now the system is up and running and I can start poking around and have some fun learning new stuff. |
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RE: How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
martinv2
Member
Posts: 107
Location: Goslar, Germany
Joined: 02.10.07 |
| Posted on December 11 2010 19:04 |
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The problem was what I suspected - whatever Windows does re CR/LF was offensive to DCL. I manually registered/loaded the minimum set of PAKs needed to get the GUI up and running then copied the files with the PAKs onto the hard drive on the DS10 so I could edit them. It only took a few minutes to figure out there was an invisible character (LF, I assume) appended to the end of each line. Once I stripped those everything went smoothly.
Good to hear you got it sorted out. Clashes between VMS' numerous file formats and the "outside world" tend to be nasty.
I wondered later if you were referring to a remote terminal/emulator rather than a local terminal window. Unfortunately none of my other computers have serial ports so the null modem cable wouldn't have helped me. Good idea, just not possible for me.
Sorry, I tend to forget that serial connectors get out of style.
I still think there are some things not quite right with the system. I can find no evidence of a web browser and some stuff just doesn't work, like DEC Write. But I have no idea if the VMS ISO I used is complete. At least now when the Hobbyist media arrives I have the cleaned up PAK files stored on an VMS formatted SSD so I can reinstall and then just mount that and get things running easily.
No idea where you got your OS CD from, but a regular VMS OS CD doesn't contain many of what is called "layered products". Apart from the OS itself, it only contains a few System Integrated Products (SIP, e.g. Kerberos, Host-Based Volume Shadowing; normally things tightly bound to the OS), networking stuff (DECnet, LAT, TCP/IP), and DECwindows (VMS' version of the X Windows system).
Beyond that, as you can see on the "OpenVMS media" page (linked to from the Navigation panel on the left), the Hobbyist CD contains a few compilers and a browser. You can also download a SeaMonkey port from HP at http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ips/cswbs/cswbs.html.
DECwrite got sold by DEC quite some time ago. The kit disappeared from the "Consolidated Distribution" (a CD collection containing kits for VMS software published quarterly by DEC/Compaq/HP) in 2005. Good luck hunting it down...
cu,
Martin
http://de.openvms.org/martinv/ |
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| Author |
RE: How do I register PAKs/licenses? |
R Price
Member
Posts: 36
Location: Canada
Joined: 09.12.10 |
| Posted on December 12 2010 05:40 |
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It sounds like the ISO I got is definitely not the Hobbyist media, rather just a basic OS installer. I suspected as much but it isn't a big deal as it gives me enough functionality to explore the basics of VMS.
I tried to download the browser from HP's site but got an error after the registration page. Could be their server is being finicky or maybe it didn't like "N/A" as a company name. Again, not a problem given the Hobbyist media includes a browser.
The formatting problem with the PAK file was a minor nuisance but ended being a learning experience so it served my purposes. |
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