[Info-vax] Ods2 reader utility mount

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Hi,
Am trying to recover some files from a couple of cdc 94171-330 scsi
drives which were originally fitted to a Microvax II around 1990-1992.
It was the main lab machine here at the time, before deserting to Sun3 a
while later.
I no longer have enough Qbus parts locally to build a working Microvax,
so downloaded the ODS2 utility to catalog and read the drives. Tried it
first on XP, but the xp disk man. utility won't let you assign a drive
letter (which ods2 needs to mount the drive) until the drive is
initialised, which is not really what I had in mind :-). Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.
Drives are 20+ years old, but CDC made em good in those days and spin up
fine, (After replacing one shorted tant cap on one and lubing the ground
spring on the spindles) They are seen and recognised by windoze and
sol10 format utility, so it looks like it will all fly, just can't get
the drives mounted. Any ideas re correct syntax ?...
Regards,
Chris

They aren't going to mount under VMS unless there is a ODS-2 file system
present and in good repair!

Mounting on a Unix box also requires that a file system be present; one
that will be recognized by whatever flavor of Unix you are using.

If the drive is working at all, either O/S should allow you to dump the
raw blocks.

$ MOUNT /FOREIGN DKAnnn:
$ DUMP DKAnnn:

If there is a corrupted ODS-2 file system present you should still be
able to MOUNT /FOREIGN and do an:
$ ANALYZE /DISK_STRUCTURE /REPAIR /CONFIRM DKAnnn:

If it won't MOUNT /FOREIGN I'd drop it in the trash and get on with my life!

[ChrisQ]

Hi,

Am trying to recover some files from a couple of cdc 94171-330 scsi
drives which were originally fitted to a Microvax II around 1990-1992.
It was the main lab machine here at the time, before deserting to Sun3 a
while later.

I no longer have enough Qbus parts locally to build a working Microvax,
so downloaded the ODS2 utility to catalog and read the drives. Tried it
first on XP, but the xp disk man. utility won't let you assign a drive
letter (which ods2 needs to mount the drive) until the drive is
initialised, which is not really what I had in mind :-). Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.

Drives are 20+ years old, but CDC made em good in those days and spin up
fine, (After replacing one shorted tant cap on one and lubing the ground
spring on the spindles) They are seen and recognised by windoze and
sol10 format utility, so it looks like it will all fly, just can't get
the drives mounted. Any ideas re correct syntax ?...

Regards,

Chris

[g***@no.spam.mail.com]

to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.

You may want to try vmscd which is able to read any ODS-2 formatted volume,
either on CD-ROM or disk, despite its name. You do not need to mount anything
with that, just call it specifying the device containing the ODS-2 volume:

$ vmscd -d /dev/dsk/c6t0d0

Switches and commands are explained into the man page. The package can be
found on http://www.suse.de/~kkaempf/vmscd/ or many other sites. It's in
source form, so it may be built even on Unixes other than Linux.

HTH :)
G.

[Bob Gezelter]

Hi,
Am trying to recover some files from a couple of cdc 94171-330 scsi
drives which were originally fitted to a Microvax II around 1990-1992.
It was the main lab machine here at the time, before deserting to Sun3 a
while later.
I no longer have enough Qbus parts locally to build a working Microvax,
so downloaded the ODS2 utility to catalog and read the drives. Tried it
first on XP, but the xp disk man. utility won't let you assign a drive
letter (which ods2 needs to mount the drive) until the drive is
initialised, which is not really what I had in mind :-). Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have  tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.
Drives are 20+ years old, but CDC made em good in those days and spin up
fine, (After replacing one shorted tant cap on one and lubing the ground
spring on the spindles) They are seen and recognised by windoze and
sol10 format utility, so it looks like it will all fly, just can't get
the drives mounted. Any ideas re correct syntax ?...
Regards,
Chris

Chris,

Before going too far, two recommendations:

- Make sure that the drive is write locked
- Do a Hexadecimal dump of the first couple of blocks and make sure
that it is a home and boot blocks.

Personally, I would also be tempted to hook it up to a hardware
forensic write blocker and and also make a forensic copy of the drive
just in case.

I would also want to know which controller they were connected to.
Some controllers did "interesting" things with hardware volumes, which
could yield unexpected results when looked at as a simple single disk.

Caution is recommended. Write blockers are not expensive, and a single
"oops" could make the process much more challenging.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[ChrisQ]

Post by Bob Gezelter
Chris,
- Make sure that the drive is write locked
- Do a Hexadecimal dump of the first couple of blocks and make sure
that it is a home and boot blocks.
Personally, I would also be tempted to hook it up to a hardware
forensic write blocker and and also make a forensic copy of the drive
just in case.
I would also want to know which controller they were connected to.
Some controllers did "interesting" things with hardware volumes, which
could yield unexpected results when looked at as a simple single disk.
Caution is recommended. Write blockers are not expensive, and a single
"oops" could make the process much more challenging.
- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

Bob,

Thanks for the tips. The drive was made in 1988 according to the
datecode and is a cdc 94171-307, ~300Mbytes capacity. It needed some
work in any case, as one of the tant decoupling caps on the 12v rail
went short (pulled the 12v psu rail down) and needed to be replaced.
Also, the external carbon brush on the spindle needed cleaning as there
was too much friction and the drive spun down straight after spinning
up. Having done that, it runs fine with no funny noises and is a credit
to its makers. The drive was originally on a Viking QDT scsi controller,
which I still have, originally on the basis that I may rebuild the
system at some stage.

Anyway, took the advice from gerry77's post and gave up with ODS2,
downloading the vmscd utility sources onto a spare Linux box. After
building and adding a couple of missing libraries, the first iteration
of "vmscd -d /dev/sdb ls" produced the top level directory and now have
all my old [USER} tree files on the server.

There was quite a lot of stuff that I really needed to recover - family
stuff, client RT11 / macro11 library sources dating back to 1987 or so,
VaxC code and more, so well worth the effort.

Fun stuff indeed :-)...

Regards,

Chris

[Charles Sandmann]

Am trying to recover some files from a couple of cdc 94171-330 scsi
drives which were originally fitted to a Microvax II around 1990-1992.

My suggestion is to copy the drive contents to a file (block for block),
then burn this image to a CD. First, this will back up the contents in
minimum time and risk that the drive may fail.

Second, burning it to a CD can be mounted on a VMS system if ever
needed, or can be accessed with the various available utilities. If
needed you can probably even boot VMS from the CD.

Unix and like systems have the tools to directly copy the low
level drive to a file. A simple C program (around 50 lines) can do the
same on Windows if you have administrator rights.

[P. Sture]

Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.

The last time I looked at the ODS2 utility it was little-endian only.
Aren't Sparc boxes big-endian?

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by P. Sture

Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.

The last time I looked at the ODS2 utility it was little-endian only.
Aren't Sparc boxes big-endian?

Yep.

Arne

[ChrisQ]

Post by P. Sture
The last time I looked at the ODS2 utility it was little-endian only.
Aren't Sparc boxes big-endian?

Yep.
Arne

Being in a hurry (lazy ?) and looking for the line of least resistance
first, the ODS2 distribution had a Sparc binary that ran, so assumed
that the writer knew what he was doing :-).

Apart from lack of docs, the problem was not primarily with ODS2, but my
lack of knowledge re the Solaris device numbering. The device directory
(/dev/dsk) contains device special files for individual partitions, ie:
c6t1d0s2, where the s2 denotes partiton number, However, there is no
device special file for the whole unpartitioned drive, ie: c6t1d0. On
Tru64, there was a procedure that involved adding up the sum of various
bitfields to define a oddball device special file, but Tru64 is offline
here and makedev is gone from solaris. Gave up trying to find the method
after an hour or so. Of course, the whole raw drive is needed for ODS2
and vmscd.

In the end, it was easier to use a linux box, where the drive is probed
for on boot and provides a dev special file for just the whole drive id
where it can't figure out the filesystem type. For example /dev/sdb,
without partition qualifier.

Linux is very good for this sort of data recovery / diagnostic work...

Regards,

Chris

[Steven Schweda]

[...] my
lack of knowledge re the Solaris device numbering. The
device directory (/dev/dsk) contains device special files
for individual partitions, ie: c6t1d0s2, where the s2
denotes partiton number, However, there is no device special
file for the whole unpartitioned drive, ie: c6t1d0. [...]

"format" can be suggestive, if not downright educational.
For example:

[...]
partition> print
Current partition table (original):
Total disk cylinders available: 14078 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 root wm 0 - 12416 14.96GB (12417/0/0)
31365342
1 swap wu 12417 - 14077 2.00GB (1661/0/0)
4195686
2 backup wm 0 - 14077 16.96GB (14078/0/0)
35561028
3 unassigned wm 0 0
(0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wm 0 0
(0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wm 0 0
(0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 0
(0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 0 0
(0/0/0) 0

Slice ("Part") 0 is a normal file system:

ra# mount | grep /dev/dsk
/ on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0
read/write/setuid/devices/intr/largefiles/logging/xattr
/onerror=panic/dev=800000 on Tue Sep 8 08:41:19 2009

Slice ("Part") 1 is swap:

ra# swap -l
swapfile dev swaplo blocks free
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 32,1 16 4195664 4195664

Slice ("Part") 2 looks suspiciously like the whole thing,
just like the "c" partition in SunOS 4.x (and, I assume,
before that, too).

If your complaint is that you added a disk but have no
device files at all for it, then a reconfiguration boot ("boot
-r") could be helpful, or else "man disks".

In the end, it was easier to use a linux box, [...]

Depends on what you know, of course.

[ChrisQ]

Post by Steven Schweda
If your complaint is that you added a disk but have no
device files at all for it, then a reconfiguration boot ("boot
-r") could be helpful, or else "man disks".

In the end, it was easier to use a linux box, [...]

Depends on what you know, of course.

The device special files were there, but only those for the partitions
and not for the whole drive. format could see the drive as c6t1d0 but
it must be able to access the raw device to get drive info and to to
format, bad block and label.

As for what you know, will be looking further. Falling back to linux
seems like cheating somehow...

Regards,

Chris

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Post by ChrisQ

Post by P. Sture
The last time I looked at the ODS2 utility it was little-endian only.
Aren't Sparc boxes big-endian?

Yep.
Arne

Being in a hurry (lazy ?) and looking for the line of least resistance
first, the ODS2 distribution had a Sparc binary that ran, so assumed
that the writer knew what he was doing :-).
Apart from lack of docs, the problem was not primarily with ODS2, but my
lack of knowledge re the Solaris device numbering. The device directory
c6t1d0s2, where the s2 denotes partiton number, However, there is no
device special file for the whole unpartitioned drive, ie: c6t1d0.

c6t1d0s2 IS the whole disk. AFAIK no one uses it for anything but it's
there!

<snip>

[ChrisQ]

Post by Richard B. Gilbert
c6t1d0s2 IS the whole disk. AFAIK no one uses it for anything but it's
there!

Correct, but it's still looking through the partition table, where
what's wanted for a 'foreign' disk is the raw device starting at block 0.

...and s2 is used, if you have mirror or raid metadevices defined. In
that case, you typically use the whole drive, with all the other
partitions unused :-)...

Regards,

Chris

[Bob Koehler]

Post by P. Sture

Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.

The last time I looked at the ODS2 utility it was little-endian only.
Aren't Sparc boxes big-endian?

SPARC are definitely big-endian.

[Bob Koehler]

Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.

You'll have to mount the "raw" device, otherwise UNIX will assume
that there is a file system on the drive that the kernel recognises.

Look for /dev/dsk/rc6t0d0.

[ChrisQ]

Post by Richard B. Gilbert

Hi,
Am trying to recover some files from a couple of cdc 94171-330 scsi
drives which were originally fitted to a Microvax II around 1990-1992.
It was the main lab machine here at the time, before deserting to Sun3 a
while later.
I no longer have enough Qbus parts locally to build a working Microvax,
so downloaded the ODS2 utility to catalog and read the drives. Tried it
first on XP, but the xp disk man. utility won't let you assign a drive
letter (which ods2 needs to mount the drive) until the drive is
initialised, which is not really what I had in mind :-). Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.
Drives are 20+ years old, but CDC made em good in those days and spin up
fine, (After replacing one shorted tant cap on one and lubing the ground
spring on the spindles) They are seen and recognised by windoze and
sol10 format utility, so it looks like it will all fly, just can't get
the drives mounted. Any ideas re correct syntax ?...
Regards,
Chris

They aren't going to mount under VMS unless there is a ODS-2 file system
present and in good repair!
Mounting on a Unix box also requires that a file system be present; one
that will be recognized by whatever flavor of Unix you are using.
If the drive is working at all, either O/S should allow you to dump the
raw blocks.
If there is a corrupted ODS-2 file system present you should still be
If it won't MOUNT /FOREIGN I'd drop it in the trash and get on with my life!

Richard,

Thanks for that but have already explained that I no longer have a
working vax system, so am looking for a way to read the scsi drives via
unix or windows. The drive can be seen by both and am pretty sure the
drive will be readable. "tossing it in the trash" is not an option :-).
Could probably find 9 track backups and still have a working scsi tape
drive, but that would be even more complicated. Not even sure if there
is a vms backup reader for unix ?.

The problem is that the windows version of Ods2 can't mount the drive
without a drive letter, but the disk must be initialised (ie: write to
the drive and trash the data) under windows to assign a drive letter.
Chicken or egg and thus no luck with the windoze version.

The unix version compiles fine under Solaris 10, but returns error
messages when the using the ods2 mount command. While there are examples
of usage for the windoze version, nothing for the unix version.

The Ods2 version is v1.3 from the vms freeware cd, originally by Paul
Nankervis at ibm, then v1.3 from Hunter Goatley...


Regards,

Chris




The Ods2 utility looks good, but how it can possibly be used under
windows when a drive letter can't be assigned beats me, or am I missing
something here ?. That is, Ods2 Chicken or egg or what ?...

Regards,

Chris

[P. Sture]

Post by ChrisQ
The Ods2 utility looks good, but how it can possibly be used under
windows when a drive letter can't be assigned beats me, or am I missing
something here ?. That is, Ods2 Chicken or egg or what ?...

I had a similar problem trying to run ODS2 on OS X.

[Bob Koehler]

Post by ChrisQ
Thanks for that but have already explained that I no longer have a
working vax system, so am looking for a way to read the scsi drives via
unix or windows. The drive can be seen by both and am pretty sure the
drive will be readable. "tossing it in the trash" is not an option :-).
Could probably find 9 track backups and still have a working scsi tape
drive, but that would be even more complicated. Not even sure if there
is a vms backup reader for unix ?.

There have been a couple of VMS BACKUP readers out there, some are
commercial, but I think there's one that's free. The free one might
now be up to BACKUP's latest tricks, but I don't think you'll need
tham.

Post by ChrisQ
The problem is that the windows version of Ods2 can't mount the drive
without a drive letter, but the disk must be initialised (ie: write to
the drive and trash the data) under windows to assign a drive letter.
Chicken or egg and thus no luck with the windoze version.

If you dig deeply enough, you can find the "raw" hardware name that
Windows knows the device by. I do that when I'm setting up a NIC
for SIMH. Your ODS-2 tool might be able to do that with the disk.

[Stanley F. Quayle]

Drives are 20+ years old, but CDC made em good in those days and spin up
fine, (After replacing one shorted tant cap on one and lubing the ground
spring on the spindles) They are seen and recognised by windoze and
sol10 format utility, so it looks like it will all fly, just can't get
the drives mounted. Any ideas re correct syntax ?...

CHARON-VAX [Shameless Plug Alert (tm) -- I am a CHARON reseller]
includes a utility, MTD, which can read a tape on a physical drive into
a tape image file.

Once in an image file, you could then use CHARON-VAX or CHARON-AXP to
use BACKUP and stick the files into a disk image file. And you know how
to read the resulting ODS-2 disk structure This will require a minimal
VMS installation, but can be found easily (ask your local reseller).

You could also use SIMH to read the tape image file, but the format
produced by MTD are byte-swapped relative to SIMH's tape image format.
There's a CHARON utility to go from SIMH to MTD format. I guess (having
never tried it) that running the MTD image through it might swap them to
SIMH's format.

If this data is not classified or highly sensitive, I'd be glad to help
you. [SPA(tm) -- I do data migration, too]

[John Welsh]

-----Original Message-----
From: info-vax-***@rbnsn.com [mailto:info-vax-***@rbnsn.com]On
Behalf Of Richard B. Gilbert
Sent: Sunday, 6 September 2009 11:27
To: info-***@rbnsn.com
Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Ods2 reader utility mount

Hi,
Am trying to recover some files from a couple of cdc 94171-330 scsi
drives which were originally fitted to a Microvax II around 1990-1992.
It was the main lab machine here at the time, before deserting to Sun3 a
while later.
I no longer have enough Qbus parts locally to build a working Microvax,
so downloaded the ODS2 utility to catalog and read the drives. Tried it
first on XP, but the xp disk man. utility won't let you assign a drive
letter (which ods2 needs to mount the drive) until the drive is
initialised, which is not really what I had in mind :-). Ok, move drive
to Solaris 10 sparc box, but there's not much info with the utility, no
examples of how to mount drive under unix. Have tried various runes to
get the drive mounted without success. ie: mount c6t1d0 /mnt, mount
/dev/dsk/c6t0d0 /mnt, mount c6t1d0 etc etc.
Drives are 20+ years old, but CDC made em good in those days and spin up
fine, (After replacing one shorted tant cap on one and lubing the ground
spring on the spindles) They are seen and recognised by windoze and
sol10 format utility, so it looks like it will all fly, just can't get
the drives mounted. Any ideas re correct syntax ?...
Regards,
Chris

Hi Chris,

The SCSI drives can be ODS-2 mounted using Charon Personal Alpha.

I have done this and it works fine. You need to download Personal Alpha
from the Stromasys web site and install on a suitable PC with a SCSI
controller.

You will then need to install OpenVMS Alpha on one of the supplied virtual
disks (.vdisk) and use either the CD or the Floppy links in the Personal
Alpha Control Panel to point to the disk physically connected to the SCSI
controller by using the windows naming convention.

eg: ="\\.\PhysicalDrivex"

Hope I've been of some help.

Best Regards,
John Welsh.
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