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From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: Corrupt VMS Accounting file
Message-ID: <870113183323.00a@CitHex.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Tue, 13-Jan-87 21:33:23 EST
Article-I.D.: CitHex.870113183323.00a
Posted: Tue Jan 13 21:33:23 1987
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  >  If you're not familiar with modifying files via PATCH or CONVERT there
  >  is an excellent article in the June 1986 VAX PROFSSIONAL, Vol. 8, No. 3.
  >  This is about recovering RMS Indexed files but will make for good
  >  reading assuming you will be using one or more of the tools discussed in
  >  it. 

Of course, for those of us who don't want to learn how to use PATCH
or CONVERT to do such things, there's always the option of diddling
the record format to make RMS believe that the file has fixed-length,
512-byte records, then using DCL to make the repairs. I know it sounds
crude, but I've successfully repaired "corrupted" directories (someone
needed to mount a disk that had been used for awhile under VMS v4.x
on a VAX running v3.6), as well as the index file (the home block, in
particular) on one disk that had problems.  Since VMS v4.x allows
long symbols symbols  (up to 1006 characters last I checked), and
the WRITE/SYMBOL command allows you to write records at least 512
bytes long, I've found DCL quite sufficient for such repairs (if
you don't have a utility to change the record format of a file, it's
not difficult to write one in DCL, given that you have write access
to the index file on the disk).