15 Apr
2006
15 Apr
'06
1:19 p.m.
Dave Dunfield wrote:
Ok - so this particular system wasn't all that
secure!
Armed with the info that Jim told me regarding 'END' being "return
to the command prompt" (I had previously thought it ment "end
debugger and continue where you left off") ... I did this:
- Logged into the BACKUP account - got to the menu of
backup commands.
- Hit BREAK - Got me to the '!' debugger prompt.
- Entered 'END' - Got me to the '>' TCL prompt
- Tried LISTVERBS ... This list was much larger than
the one I got from GAMES ... Nearly 300 commands.
Many of them look "systemish" - I'm guessing at this
point that BACKUP may be a privileged account -
makes sense since it would need to access "everything"
in order to back it up)
- Noticed that one of the commands listed is: PASSWORD
- Typed: PASSWORD
System responded with 'Account name?'
- Typed: SYSPROG
System responded with 'New password?' :-)
- Typed 'DAVE'
And returned to the TCL prompt.
.. Sure enough, I can now logon to SYSPROG with
the password 'DAVE'.
Yee - Haw!
Next step is to see if I can backup the system...
Some Q's:
(Keep in mind that I have very little actual info on
Pick system administration and commands - please
be verbose):
- What is the best way to backup the entire system
so that it can be restored?
you will need a sysgen. there was a way on microdata systems to make
one from a running system. on other pick system derivatives, because they
were "proprietary" and wanted to stay that way, they never implemented
that. Jay or a Mentor person may know more. In fairness to this forum,
which has been patient with this, you should probably attempt to get a
response from the usenet forum, comp.databases.pick. there are still
original developers who may have been at adds still there from time to
time, or lurking. If you wish to take this offline, I'll continue to help.
What is here now is a good thing to have in the record for Adds, NCR,
ADP, altos, alpha micro, and several more pick minis that people may
pick up from scrap outs from small business. Not all ran some version
of SCO, or cpm, much as people wished they did.
- From what I have determined, this system can boot
from tape ... Is there a way to make a backup that
is "bootable" (ie: I can boot from the tape and restore
the system). If not, how can I make a bootable tape
that can be used to restore another backup.
[As you might guess, what I am trying to accomplish
is to insure that the system can restored in the event
of a catastrophic failure (either hard-drive or me
screwing something up beyond a functional state).
above answer answers this.
- Do I need to "format" tapes before using
them?
no, the tape usage was derived from 1/2 inch functionality, and treated
the tape as a stream of records and file marks with two file marks being
end of volume (or in the qic case the end of tape)
- Is there a way to write to and verify (ie: test) the
tape system?
there should be a FILE-SAVE proc on sysprog. now that you have
sysprog open be much more careful. pick can eat your lunch with
verbs like CLEAR-FILE and such, so dont play with them on sysprog,
try to create a DAVE account and play there at SYS0.
if the FILE-SAVE does not have a verify function or feature, I can supply a
method to
scan the tape for errors logically, with a few questions answered by
you. basically you want to tell the system to do a selective restore
from the tapes, and give it something it won't
find. once this request
to restore "fails" after scanning all the backup
volumes, you will have
read all the data and verified the save.
- Other suggestions/advice welcomed.
maybe offline now?
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
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