CHRISTIAN LHEUREUX@MOULINEX
24/06/98 12:56

John wrote :



One of my clients (who lurks on this list) has a major problem with their
backup on an old MPE/V machine.  The backup fails with "OUT FO DISC SPACE".
 The system disc is horribly fragmented with the largest chunk being around
1300 sectors.  Since SL.PUB.SYS is a whole lot bigger than this, I'm
presuming this is the problem.  Running VINIT CONDENSE three times hasn't
made a dent in the fragmentation.  Anybody got any suggestions on how to
clean up the disc and recover from this - apart from doing a "store @[log in to unmask]@"
and a reload?  The other possibility I have in mind is to change the backup
to a simple store, but this doesn't solve the long-term problem as it makes
reconfiguring impossible.


John D. Alleyn-Day
Alleyn-Day International
408-286-6421   408-286-6474 (Fax)
[log in to unmask]       http://www.Alleyn-Day.com
"The man that never made a mistake never made anything"

OK, John, before you attempt anything time-consuming like VINIT; CONDENSE
or radical like RELOAD, I would suggest you
attempt a COOLSTART with option RECOVER LOST DISC SPACE. THis option is
actually the last wuestion asked by
COOLSTART when you answer Y to question 'Any Changes ?'.

What RECOVER LOST DISC SPACE does is simply return as free space chunks
previously occupied by files not recovered
by the next COOLSTART, mainly spoolfiles. I think most people in this
brilliant community remember that spoolfiles do not
survive COOLSTARTs on MPE V/E boxes but, by default, the space they occupy
is NOT returned. That's all RECOVER LOST
does.

File chunks that were note returned as free space are, if my memory does
not betray me (can anyone confirm this point,
please ?), unmovable and, as such, are NOT defragged (sic) by VINIT;
CONDENSE. I would suspect that's why your first
VINIT; CONDENSE did not defrag anything.

Be ready, however, to spend a significant amount of time performing the
RECOVER LOST DISC SPACE. Last time I did it,
something like 10 years ago, it took about 45 minutes to RECOVER a 7933
(404 Mbyte) disk.

Once the RECOVER is complete and the system has restarted, you are ready to
 VINIT;CONDENSE. It should be much better
this time.

Of course, feel free to e-mail me privately or thru the list for more
information.

Christian "trying to bring forward very old memories" Lheureux
Append your favorite disclaimer here, like "my opinions, not necessarily my
 employer's. Like we did not already know
that !!!"