uVAX 3900 out to lunch after inactivity - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

5 May 2013

...

  VMS has a process called ERRFMT which logs errors
in a binary file called
 sys$errorlog:errlog.sys - the way to get a detailed human readable report of
 the contents of that file used to be ANALYZE /ERROR but I don't think that
 works any more.  Maybe someone else can chime in and suggest what the current
 way is. 
 Nope, that DEFINITELY still works.  Many, many screens full of error
 log printing. :-)  I'll pore over those, then.

Good stuff.  It must be only Alpha (and maybe Itanium?) it's messed up on then.

You can rename sys$errorlog:errlog.sys to .old for example if you want to
get rid of the accumulated errors and start afresh.  ERRMFT will create a new
errlog.sys the next time it has something to log.  Alternatively,

$ ANALYZE /ERROR /SINCE=time

will only report on errors after the specified time (or date), or just plain:

$ ANALYZE /ERROR /SINCE

will report on errors logged today.

...

  Keep an eye out also for operator messages
relating to the PU and DU devices
 after doing a REPLY /ENABLE, SET TERMINAL, SET BROADCAST etc. 
 Should those not be enabled on the main console at boot?  That's
 what I'm conversing with.  Just for fun, I'll make double sure.

In principle, yes.  However, exactly what happens varies depending on the VMS
version and the type of hardware it is running on (workstation type machine
versus server type machine) so it's best to confirm that something has not
disabled operator messages when booting completed.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.