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From: McGuire_Ed@GRINNELL.MAILNET.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: RE: notes on the K&S TeX distribution V.
Message-ID: <8608010139.AA07576@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 30-Jul-86 19:21:00 EDT
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Posted: Wed Jul 30 19:21:00 1986
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(We just got some old mail distributed to us.  Haven't seen any replies
to this one though.  Quick comment and then a serious question.)

>Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 02:18 UT
>From: CUNNINGHAMR%HAW.SDSCNET@LLL-MFE.ARPA
>Subject: notes on the K&S TeX distribution V.2.0.1
>
>In the installation guide...
>
>The example installation keeps referring to SYS$SYSDISK.  That may be a
>quasi-standard name for the system disk at some installations, but it's not a
>VMS standard, and many sites don't so define their system disk. Using
>SYS$SYSDEVICE instead should work nearly everywhere.

SYS$SYSDISK is defined by VMS on my cluster but not documented in DCL Concepts
table 4-3.  It translates to to SYS$SYSROOT:.  My guess is that VMS used to
use SYS$SYSDISK the way it now uses SYS$SYSROOT, prior to V3 when system roots
were added, as the logical name for the structure containing the system
directories.  (The story you have just seen is true... :-)

Using SYS$SYSDEVICE instead of SYS$SYSDISK may work for TeX, but they're not
equivalent.  For example, there is guaranteed to be a SYS$SYSDISK:[SYSLIB] on
every VMS system, but not a SYS$SYSDEVICE:[SYSLIB].

>In ``Step 7.'', adding TEX.HLP to the system help library, there should be a
>caution that this should be done when there are no users on the system. If
>someone is accessing the system help library while the update occurs, it is
>possible that the system file can be scrambled (most VMS system administrators
>know this, but mentioning it never hurts).

I didn't know this.  I have been warned that LIBRARIAN can't add a .HLP file to
the library if someone has the library open, but I thought that was the only
bugaboo.  I'd hate to corrupt my help library... has anybody else ever lost a
help library in this way?