VDV - Virtual Device Utility VDV is used to connect to and disconnect from devices on other systems (DECnet nodes) and manage a "virtual device" on the local system through which I/O requests can be directed to the remote device. VDV supports operations to disks, printers, and tapes on remote systems which have the VDH host server task (object type 50.) installed. In addition, the user may connect to a file located on the remote system, and perform disk I/O operation to that file. The virtual device allocated appears to be as large as the number of blocks in the file. Once a connection is established, the user can perform all I/O operations on the virtual device which are supported on the physical device (disks can be initialized, mounted, etc.). When the virtual device is disconnected, it appears as offline to the operating system. Commands are: CONNECT DISCONNECT For additional information type: >HELP VDV command This software is unsupported, although problems and suggestions can be reported to: Jeffrey Schriesheim (ELROND::SCHRIESHEIM) TW/E07, 247-2259 2 CONNECT To CONNECT to a remote device or file -- >VDV CONNECT nodespec::target [NAME lognam] [GLOBAL] Where: nodespec:: = The node specifier as in NFT (node/user-id/password/account::) target = The target device or file to which the connection is requested. lognam = A optional logical device name to be assigned to the virtual device allocated if the connection is successful. This name is of the standard RSX format (dduu:) GLOBAL = This keyword declares that the device is to be allocated for all users, and it will not be disconnected on user log-off. The target name is passed to the remote system, where it is parsed. If only a device name is specifed, the target device is attached. For RSX-11M-Plus systems, the target device must be set public and mounted as foreign before it can be used. If a file name is specified, the target file will be opened. There can be optional switches on the file name which affect the file opening. For information on the switches type: >HELP VDV CONNECT SWITCHES 3 SWITCHES The following switches may be applied to filenames when using the CONNECT command: Switch Effect ------ ------ /RO Applied to an existing file only, means open read-only (software write locked). Default = /-RO /CR Create a new file. /BL:n Used in conjunction with /CR to specify the number of blocks to be allocated when creating the file. Default = 4800 blocks. /CO Used in conjunction with /CR to specify that the created file is to be contiguous. Default = /-CO /TM Used in conjunction with /CR to specify that the file being created is a temporary file which will be deleted when the virtual device is disconnected. Default = /-TM 2 DISCONNECT To DISCONNECT from a remote device or file -- >VDV DISCONNECT virtual-device: Where: virtual-device = The name of the virtual device which has been allocated.