Issues with burning latest Hobbyist VAX/VMS ISO to CD?

[BillPedersen]

I am following up on some queries I have been getting about issues with burning the latest Hobbyist VAX/VMS ISO to CD.

I have a report from a hobbyist which suggests he gets a "the selected disk file isn't valid" error from just about any method he has tried to burn the CD with. He has suggested the "ISO format is old". He has apparently tried with Windows 7, ISO Buster, and CDBurnerXP without luck.

So, I fully expect there are folks out there that have done this successfully, what did you use? We would like to get this documented so we can help future Hobbyists.

Thanks,

Bill.

[vmsma...@earthlink.net]

I ftp'd the ISO files from HP for the Alpha VMS V8.4 kit to my Apple
iMac G5 in binary mode and then burned the 3 ISO images to 3 separate
CDs with no problem.
Of course this was on a Macintosh with a Superdrive. The first image
CD (ALPHA084) boots just great on my Alphaserver DS20. The other 2 CDs
also mounted easily.
All 3 of course are ODS-2 format.

Bill LaCounte

[se...@obanion.us]

On Mac OS X 10.6.8, I downloaded the VAX/VMS ISO via the HTTP link using Safari 5.1.4 and burned the ISO via the OS X Disk Utility. Mounting the CD via SIMH VAX/VMS 7.3:

$ sho dev/ful SEANSM$DUA0:

Disk SEANSM$DUA0:, device type RRD40, is online, allocated, deallocate on
dismount, mounted, software write-locked, file-oriented device, shareable,
served to cluster via MSCP Server, error logging is enabled.

Error count 0 Operations completed 13
Owner process "SYSTEM" Owner UIC [SYSTEM]
Owner process ID 20200116 Dev Prot S:RWPL,O:RWPL,G:R,W
Reference count 2 Default buffer size 512
Total blocks 1331200 Sectors per track 128
Total cylinders 10400 Tracks per cylinder 1

Volume label "VAXVMS073" Relative volume number 0
Cluster size 9 Transaction count 1
Free blocks 5265 Maximum files allowed 106789
Extend quantity 5 Mount count 1
Mount status Process Cache name "_SEANSM$DUA1:XQPCACHE"
Extent cache size 64 Maximum blocks in extent cache 526
File ID cache size 64 Blocks currently in extent cache 0
Quota cache size 0 Maximum buffers in FCP cache 1281
Volume owner UIC [SYSTEM] Vol Prot S:RWCD,O:RWCD,G:RWCD,W:RWCD

Volume Status: ODS-2, subject to mount verification, file high-water marking,
write-back caching enabled.

$ anal/disk SEANSM$DUA0:
Analyze/Disk_Structure for _SEANSM$DUA0: started on 5-APR-2012 09:47:25.13

%ANALDISK-I-SHORTBITMAP, storage bitmap on RVN 1 does not cover the entire device
%ANALDISK-I-OPENQUOTA, error opening QUOTA.SYS
-SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHFILE, no such file
$



When I boot SIMH VAX from the CD:

>>>b dua0
(BOOT/R5:0 DUA0



2..
-DUA0
1..0..


%SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT Mapping the SYSDUMP.DMP on the System Disk
%SYSBOOT-W-SYSBOOT Can not map SYSDUMP.DMP on the System Disk
%SYSBOOT-W-SYSBOOT Can not map PAGEFILE.SYS on the System Disk
OpenVMS (TM) VAX Version X7G7 Major version id = 1 Minor version id = 0
%WBM-I-WBMINFO Write Bitmap has successfully completed initialization.
PLEASE ENTER DATE AND TIME (DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM) 05-APR-2012 09:55

Configuring devices . . .
Now configuring HSC, RF, and MSCP-served devices . . .

Please check the names of the devices which have been configured,
to make sure that ALL remote devices which you intend to use have
been configured.

If any device does not show up, please take action now to make it
available.


Available device DUA0: device type RRD40
Available device DUA1: device type RA90
Available device DUA2: device type RA90
Available device DUA3: device type RX50
Available device DYA0: device type RX02
Available device DYA1: device type RX02

Enter "YES" when all needed devices are available: yes
%BACKUP-I-IDENT, Stand-alone BACKUP T7.2; the date is 5-APR-2012 09:57:15.67
$


I have not tried an install from this yet...



Sean

[Bob Koehler]

In article <12738663.1409.1333639268089.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynbq18>, BillPedersen <pede...@ccsscorp.com> writes:
>
> I have a report from a hobbyist which suggests he gets a "the selected disk=
> file isn't valid" error from just about any method he has tried to burn th=
> e CD with. He has suggested the "ISO format is old". He has apparently tr=

> ied with Windows 7, ISO Buster, and CDBurnerXP without luck.

Yeah, ISO has been around a long time now. It is still a perfectly
valid format supported on most systems.

But the VAX/VMS "ISO" is a misnomer. It is not in ISO format, it is
in Files-11 ODS-2 format. That happens to be even older, and still
completely supported by VMS. The host that makes it doesn't need to
know jack about it, it just needs to copy the blocks to the CD.

Copying the misnamed ISO file to CD is a synch using the Disk Utility
on a Mac. There should be some tool for Windows, which, like Mac
Disk Utility, does not care what is inside the file but just copies
the blocks to the CD.

Alternatively, dd on Linux or UNIX will accomplish the same thing.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] so we can help future Hobbyists.

If you really want to help future Hobbyists, then you
might stop referring to an optical disc image file as an
"ISO". I claim that ISO is a standards organization:
http://www.iso.org/iso/home.htm
not an optical disc file system format, let alone a generic
optical disc image file format.

A VMS installation disc tends to contain an ODS2 file
system, not an ISO-9660 file system, so software which
expects to deal exclusively with an ISO-9660 file system may
not be satisfied with a disc image of a VMS installation
disc. Of course from a description as vague as the one you
provided, it's hard to tell which program, exactly, was used
how, exactly, or what, exactly, happened when it was.

> [...] what did you use?

I typically make my discs on a VMS system using
cdrtools/cdrecord, or on a Mac, using Disk Utility, but those
methods may not be readily available to a typical Windows
user. My experience with optical disk creation on Windows is
approximately nil, but in any program there, I'd look for a
not-too-smart-for-its-own-good mode, which can write an image
file to a disc without caring what's in it (and, especially,
without fiddling with the bits on their way to the disc).

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

vmsma...@earthlink.net <vmsma...@earthlink.net> wrote:

(snip)

>> I have a report from a hobbyist which suggests he gets a
> "the selected disk file isn't valid" error from just about
> any method he has tried to burn the CD with.

(snip)

> I ftp'd the ISO files from HP for the Alpha VMS V8.4 kit to my Apple
> iMac G5 in binary mode and then burned the 3 ISO images to 3 separate
> CDs with no problem.

(snip)

> All 3 of course are ODS-2 format.

Note that ISO9660 is a specific file system format, and not a
generic term for a file to be burned to CD. Many, but not all,
programs that burn CDs from an image won't check to see if it is
actually an ISO9660 file system. If it is ODS-2 then it is not
ISO9660 format!


-- glen

[Joe Bloggs]

I'll try to reproduce/document later what steps I used, but my normal approach had
been to use any of the gui wrappers around cd-record on the Fedora distros.
(Gnome-baker, brasero, AcetoneISO2, Kb3, etc).

When I've run into problems, half the time, it had turned out to be the media.
(there's much to be found via Google on which companies *currently* make the
better/best CD/DVD media)

Equally as devilish, the other half of the time, it's been the burner itself.
or worst case: both.


And I shouldn't quite say half, as a certain amount of failures are due to
trying an (ambitious) burning speed, or being careless wrt. using only a unloaded system.

If for example, the media is rated for 16x, you might best try only up to 12x.


I'm not suggesting that hardware/media problems while burning cd/dvd's are typical,
but it happens commonly enough, that one should consider the hdw/media,
especially when at wit's end.

Also checksums can be valuable for ruling out false negatives.
I find that on MS-Windows, the burning s/w (Nero, and such) often falsely reports errors.


# isoinfo -d -i /dev/sr0 # look for block size (usu 2048), and volume size # cd/dvd checksum
# dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 count=141035 conv=notrunc,noerror | sha256sum # cd/dvd checksum

[Hans Vlems]

This is the way I make copies of cd media for VMS and Tru64.
The cd is copied to a disk image on a Tru64 system with the dd
command.
Example:
dd if=/dev/cdrom0c of=vaxvms073.dd

When such a file is copied to a VMS system it may be mounted as a
logical disk:
$ LD CONNECT VAXVMS073.DD
%LD-I-UNIT, Allocated device is LDA1:
$ MOU/OVER=ID LDA1:

The dd command preserves all information on the original cd in the
output file. I'm fairly sure that
dd is cluless about FILES-11, ODS-2 or what have you, it just copies
the data. The internal filesystem
information is of course used by the mount command. Not sure whether
LD looks inside though.

To burn a fresh copy the dd output file is copied to a Windows XP
system that runs Nero V6.
Now to burn an image to cd Nero only recognizes files that have either
the .iso or the .nrg filetype.
This is probably where the confusions starts regarding the "ISO
format".
Anyway, it is sufficient to rename VAXVMS073.DD to VAXVMS07.ISO and
burn that file.
The resulting copy is bootable on the intended platform, provided the
original was bootable.
Works for me!
Hans

[Bob Koehler]

In article <fb349ac4-fde5-423d...@f37g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, Hans Vlems <hvl...@freenet.de> writes:
> The internal filesystem
> information is of course used by the mount command. Not sure whether
> LD looks inside though.

I beleive LD just serves the file as a disk. I've used LD with
Files-11 ODS-1 and Files-11 ODS-2 and I think lots of other folks
have used it with Files-11 ODS-5.

I would be suprized if no-one ever used LD with a PCDISK type utility
to serve up MS-DOS FAT format.

[Paul Sture]

For Windows platforms, ImgBurn. It supports a large number of drives and
it's free.

http://www.imgburn.com/

I've just discovered they have a support forum as well.

http://forum.imgburn.com/

For Mac, I use Disk Utility.

For SimH or any of the Alpha emulators available I don't bother creating
physical CDs or DVDs any more, I just use an image on disk.

If I have a physical CD or DVD, I'll copy that to a disk image using
either Imgburn on Windows or Disk Utility on OS X first. You will find
that installations are normally much faster done from an image on disk
rather than from a physical CD or DVD.

That applies not only to VMS hardware emulation hosts, but to the various
virtual machines for other operating systems I run.

Another thought occurs to me, provided you have either a real Alpha or
Itanium running a recent version of VMS (or other hardware capable of
running Alpha/VMS under an emulator). You can use the InfoServer
capabilities of recent versions of VMS (Alpha V8.3, I64 V8.2-1 or later),
to can serve bootable images up.

VAXman has an excellent write up about using an InfoServer to upgrade the
firmware on a DS10L which had no floppy or CD drives, which includes
incantations necessary for both the server and client sides.

http://tmesis.org/?e=40

Also see Hoff's site for InfoServer information.

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/521

--
Paul Sture

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Paul Sture wrote 2012-04-07 11:17:
> On Thu, 05 Apr 2012 08:21:08 -0700, BillPedersen wrote:
>
>> I am following up on some queries I have been getting about issues with
>> burning the latest Hobbyist VAX/VMS ISO to CD.
>>
>> I have a report from a hobbyist which suggests he gets a "the selected
>> disk file isn't valid" error from just about any method he has tried to
>> burn the CD with. He has suggested the "ISO format is old". He has
>> apparently tried with Windows 7, ISO Buster, and CDBurnerXP without
>> luck.
>>
>> So, I fully expect there are folks out there that have done this
>> successfully, what did you use? We would like to get this documented so
>> we can help future Hobbyists.
>>
>
> For Windows platforms, ImgBurn. It supports a large number of drives and
> it's free.
>
> http://www.imgburn.com/
>
> I've just discovered they have a support forum as well.
>
> http://forum.imgburn.com/
>
> For Mac, I use Disk Utility.
>
> For SimH or any of the Alpha emulators available I don't bother creating
> physical CDs or DVDs any more, I just use an image on disk.

On my DS25, I simply copied the "ISO" as supplied by HP to a spare
SCSI disk (in the 6-disk cage in the DS25) and booted from that.

I was a simple :

$ mount/for <device>
$ copy ALPHA084.ISO <device>

and then shutdown and >>> boot <device>
and from that run the upgrade as usual.

Note also that the two LP ISO's can simply be CONNECT'ed
by LD and then mounted. No need for any CD's at all.

And since the ISO's was FTPed directly to the DS25, this was
a VMS-only solution with no other platform involved. :-)

Jan-Erik.

[BillPedersen]

Found that ImgBurn has a similar problem with this CD image from 2001...

Some have suggested doing it on VMS. The issue is less of doing it on VMS as it is in preparing the media for a “newbie” to use with new hardware or a new emulator.

It appears that the image which is the distribution of VAX/VMS is actually an ODS-2 image which had been laid down on a CD and was bootable in that sense.

I have just taken a REAL CD distribution of VAX/VMS 7.3 and created an image. It is exactly the same size as the distribution which is being sent out – so I expect it is the same image.

It does appear that the ISO file type is causing the issue to the Windows based applications.

Of course, given that it is just a disk image it can be booted as a disk image rather than burn it onto a CD for booting. This is especially easy for emulators. Only is you have a physical system with a CD do you then need to burn to media.

I have found that by playing some games you can get a burner to write the image to the CD. The trick I took here was to duplicate the data files for the restoration of an image which was the same size as the image I wanted to put there. The file describing the image was all text so this could be recreated as necessary. The linkages are all through the file names. This as using Cyberlink DVD Suite Deluxe…

So it can be done. It is just that you have to tell the burner that it is NOT an ISO image. I suspect this can be done with most of the burners if you look carefully. But it seems like some of the burners have taken it upon themselves to use ISO file type as the key to forcing the format.

Thanks to all for your comments and suggestions.

Bill.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

As written in other posts, that is not always needed.
I upgraded my DS25 using the ISO file without using the CD drive.
This doesn't work for a new/clean install, of course.

I *did* burned a copy on CD (using something called "CDBurnerXP" on my'Win7
laptop), but never tried to boot it. I can check at office
if that CD boots at all. There was no errors while burning, as far
as I remember.

I guess "it depends", as usualy. :-)

Regrads,
Jan-Erik.

[Paul Sture]

On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:16:42 -0700, BillPedersen wrote:

> It does appear that the ISO file type is causing the issue to the
> Windows based applications.

Try renaming it to something else?

.BIN is suggested as a file association for a binary file for ImgBurn
(off by default in the ImgBurn settings):

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=6232&#entry125887

and there are tons more settings available on that page.

All this could of course be down to hardware. I have come across
discussions where older disc drives can't read certain brands of burned
CDs, if any at all.



--
Paul Sture

[hb]

For VMS the only difference between an ODS2 disk and an ODS2 CD is the
"readonly" attribute of the CD. And if you have an image of a bootable
CD, you also have an image of a bootable (readonly) disk. It doesn't
matter whether you copy the image to a CD or a disk. But it does
matter that the VBNs of the image file are copied one-by-one to the
LBNs of the CD and that they are not embedded, as a file, in another
files system, the ISO 9660. For VMS the copy results in an ODS2
formatted medium which is still bootable. As said before, the image is
not a so called ISO image. If someone named the image file .ISO, she/
he didn't care or simply didn't understand. A .IMG or .DSK would have
been a better file type.

A bootable VMS distribution CD is not bootable as specified by El
Torito. A VMS disk and CD are bootable if there is a boot block, for
VAX and Alpha LBN 0, on the disk. 512 byte blocks, as we know, which
the CD reader has to support.

[BillPedersen]

Thanks, yes, this looks like it has some of the necessary features which we need to make sure people are aware of to get the job done.

Also a possible name change on the VAX/VMS 7.3 distribution on the Hobbyist down load environment to help differentiate it from the ISO 9660 format.

Thanks, everyone, for your contributions and discussion.

Bill.

[BillPedersen]

Paul, tried .BIN (after having to down load a "optional" driver) and no luck on this specific image. It seems that ImgBurn does not like this specific CD image and thinks .BIN has some specific format. So unless there is something to bypass this for this particular image it does not seem like it is happy with it. I do not know if UDI (Univeral Disk Image) will do the trick - have not yet checked)...

Some of these programs try to be too smart for their own good.

Bill.

[Paul Sture]

True. I've used ImgBurn for a variety of formats, but at the end of the
day, they have fallen into the "usual suspects" category of stuff you
might want to boot on a PC.

I'd be intrigued to find out what happens if you try using ImgBurn to
create an image copy on disk from the original CD. I'm afraid I don't
have a real VAX here to help testing.


--
Paul Sture

[Paul Sture]

On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 12:13:20 +0200, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

> On my DS25, I simply copied the "ISO" as supplied by HP to a spare SCSI
> disk (in the 6-disk cage in the DS25) and booted from that.
>
> I was a simple :
>
> $ mount/for <device>
> $ copy ALPHA084.ISO <device>
>
> and then shutdown and >>> boot <device> and from that run the upgrade as
> usual.
>
> Note also that the two LP ISO's can simply be CONNECT'ed by LD and then
> mounted. No need for any CD's at all.
>
> And since the ISO's was FTPed directly to the DS25, this was a VMS-only
> solution with no other platform involved.
>

That unfortunately depends on you having the network already running on
your DS25 so that you can download the files directly onto a VMS system.

With a physical box starting from scratch you have no networking, so need
a means of reading the CD images from elsewhere.
--
Paul Sture

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

As a wrote in another post more or less at the same time:

> This doesn't work for a new/clean install, of course.

Yes, I should have put that disclaimer in the post you quoted also,
of course... :-)

Anyway, I have not *booted* the CD I burned on my Win7 laptop,
but it mounts cleanly and I can see/list/dir everything on it.

$ moun/ove=ide dqa0
%MOUNT-I-WRITELOCK, volume is write locked
%MOUNT-I-MOUNTED, ALPHA084 mounted on _$1$DQA0: (myhost)
$


Jan-Erik.

[Robert Jones]

Revisiting a golden oldie here. Was just able to do this on a Mac running Mojave using the command line burner. Command is 'hdiutil burn <image name>'.

It was able to burn and verify the OpenVMS VAX 7.3 image from the Hobbyist program. Confirmed the quality by using it to bootstrap a system using simh.