On Fri, 20 Oct 2017, Brian Schenkenberger via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
william degnan via vcf-midatlantic writes:
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I am trying to "take over" from where they guy that set this machine up left off and learn how this particular server was set up and why. I want to fix, but I also know System administration tends to reflect the personality of the admin, people have reasons for things. I am making the assumption that given this was a production system there must be some reasons for things. Eventually I can try to improve.
Never make assumptions!!! I have seen more systems in production in my career that look like they were managed and or configured by brain-dead chimps. I see people that when told "don't do this" will "do this" and then, contact me and want their error corrected. I tell them "you did what I told you not to do" and "don't do it again!" Guess what? They do it again and again and again.
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Personally, if you really are hell bent on keeping the system as it was delivered, I'd suggest you backup all the volumes and then, init and start from stratch. Then, once you know how it all works, you can go back and see what a mess the prior system's owner(s) left you.
When I got my DEC 3000 I was determined to keep it intact as well. The best thing that ever happened was that the system disk crashed and I was forced to build the system up from scratch. That taught me more about how to deal with VMS than the years I spent dinking around with the existing config. I wish I had done what Brian suggests here initially. Drop a different system disk in there, install and configure the system, then install and configure any interesting piece of software you can get your hands on. Then once you have a good handle on some of the arcane VMS paradigms, go back and investigate the current setup. I think I would have gotten more out of it personally had I taken that approach. (I really need to get my VMS box off the shelf and fired up) -- Jason