Re: Record format

David J Dachtera wrote:
> RMS Sequential Variable files produced on VMS cannot be read as expected by
> Windows programs. They expect <CR><LF> pairs to be embedded in the data, and
> they aren't there. The "Record Attributes" are meaningless here (no
> extraneous data is retieved from/written to the file).
> 
> In order to be readable by Windows programs, files on VMS must have RMS
> attributes showing a record format of Stream or Stream_LF.

In addition to having record attributes showing a format of Stream,
it must actually be in stream format, i.e. it must actually contain
the <CR><LF> between each line.  So it doesn't do any good to just
   $ set file/attributes=rfm=STM,
you need to convert the file to stream (or create it that way in the
first place.)  The easiest way to do that is to use convert/fdl with
a .fdl file specifying (from TCPWARE:STREAMCRLF.FDL):

IDENT   "28-OCT-1991 13:22:18   VAX-11 FDL Editor"

SYSTEM
         SOURCE                  VAX/VMS

FILE
         BEST_TRY_CONTIGUOUS     no
         CONTIGUOUS              no
         NAME                    ""
         ORGANIZATION            sequential

RECORD
         BLOCK_SPAN              yes
         CARRIAGE_CONTROL        carriage_return
         FORMAT                  stream
         SIZE                    0

(Example .FDL file courtesy TCPware.  There's no copyright in it, so
I assume I can post it here.)

On the other hand, it *might* be possible to get coerce the Samba
server into converting Seq Var files to Stream on the fly, much as
the POP, IMAP, FTP, NFS and Apache 2.1 servers do.  I've messed
around a little with Samba, but am certainly not an expert...
Does anyone else know for sure if this is possible.



> 
> David J Dachtera
> DJE Systems 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> [email protected]
> Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 2:38 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Record format
> 
> We have recently installed Samba on VMS (Itanium).
> 
> We have problems in reading text-files produced on VMS. The CR/LF does not 
> work. The data stream appears in a long line.
> 
> The file attributes on VMS are:
> 
> Record format: Variable length, maximum 0 bytes, longest 75 bytes 
> Record attributes: Carriage return carriage control
> 
> Do I have to change these attributes or is there anything to do in the 
> SMB.CONF file?
> 
> RG Rolf


PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT ETIQUETTE MESSAGE BEFORE POSTING:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html