GNV

This document describes the features and functionality provided with the OpenVMS GNV software. It explains how to install, setup, and use the software on your OpenVMS system.

Revision/Update Information: This is an updated document.

Operating System: OpenVMS Alpha Version 8.3 or later
OpenVMS Integrity servers Version 8.3-1H1 or later

Software Version: OpenVMS Alpha GNV Version 3.0-1,
OpenVMS Integrity servers GNV Version 3.0-1

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Palo Alto, California

© Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

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© Copyright 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

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Contents

This document includes information about the GNU's Not VMS (GNV) software, including:

• Features and functionality
• Utilities provided with the software
• Installation and setup instructions
• Differences between the OpenVMS GNV utilities and their counterparts on UNIX systems
• GNV Version 3.0-1 packages upgrade and version difference
• Reporting problems
• Documentation provided with the GNV software
• Sources of information on the Internet

Conventions Used in This Document

OpenVMS utilities, commands, file names, and directory names are shown in uppercase text, while UNIX utilities, commands, file names, and directory names are shown in lowercase text. If you are reading this documentation in an output format other than text (.TXT) --- such as in PostScript or HTML output --- UNIX utilities, commands, file names, and directory names are shown in monospace text.

The following additional conventions are used in this document.

Convention	Meaning
Italic 1	Italic typeface indicates a place holder for information or parameters that you must provide. For example, if the procedure asks you to type file name, you must type the actual name of a file. Italic type also indicates titles of other documentation referenced.
monospace 1	Monospace typeface indicates code examples, command examples, and interactive or system screen displays. In text, this type face indicates UNIX commands that you enter.
Ctrl/ x	While you hold down the Ctrl key, press another key or a pointing device button.

Reader's Comments

HP welcomes your comments on this manual. Please send comments to:

openvmsdoc@hp.com

1 GNV Version 3.0-1 Requirements

The software requirements for GNV are:

• OpenVMS Alpha Version 8.3 or later
• OpenVMS Integrity servers Version 8.3-1H1 or later

GNV must be installed only on ODS-5 disks. It requires approximately 400 MB disk space for installation on both OpenVMS Alpha and OpenVMS Integrity servers.

2 New Features in GNV Version 3.0-1

• GNV Version 3.0-1 packages --- In GNV Version 3.0-1, 16 packages are upgraded to the latest GNU level out of 24 total packages. The remaining eight packages are not upgraded from GNV version 2.1-3.
• GNU tar ( gnutar ) --- tar invokes the gnutar not the VMSTAR, as the most common usage is for OpenSource tarballs. To invoke VMSTAR, use VMSTAR keyword instead of tar .

  Note This release retains gnutar binary compbatibility with any scripts that currently uses gnutar .

• Build --- Complete GNV build areas are packaged into the PCSI kit as backup saveset ( GNV_SOURCE.BCK ).

No new features have been added to GNV for Version 2.1-3.

4 New Features in GNV Version 2.1-2

The main change in Version 2.1-2 is removal of several installation problems.

• Installation --- Changed default to omitting automatic creation of mount points for all disks.
• Installation --- Configuration files created at installation time include the architecture name in the file name to avoid conflicts in heterogeneous clusters.

The main change in Version 2.1 is support of the symlink capability that has been added to RMS in OpenVMS. Other minor bugs have been fixed as well.

• Installation --- Improved stability in setting up the default mount points for existing disk devices.
• ln -s --- Now makes an actual symbolic link in the RMS file creates.
  This is enabled by new features in RMS on OpenVMS Version 8.3.
• mnt --- Has improved record-keeping for reporting the mount points.
• bash --- Command recall now generally works, at least if the terminal width is 80.
• cc --- Improvements in the cc wrapper.

Several new UNIX utilities have been added in GNV Version 1.6.

• du --- Displays disk usage, including the size of directories in the current or specified directory. The utility recursively displays the sizes of all subdirectories. The size listed for a directory denotes the total size of all files within that directory.

  Note On an OpenVMS system, the size displayed by du represents only the highest generation of each of the files in the directory.

  
  By showing all directories in a directory tree, du allows a user to easily assess how disk space is being used.
  For more information, type:

  bash$ du --help

  
  or

  bash$ man du

• printenv --- Displays an environment variable. If no argument is present, displays all environment variables.
  For more information, type:

  bash$ printenv --help

  
  or

  bash$ man printenv

• env --- Runs a program in a modified environment.
  As with the printenv command, specifying the env command with no argument will display the set of environment variables. More importantly, you may specify one or more environment variables, and run a program with those variables set. The values of those variables stay in effect only for the duration of that program.
  For more information, type:

  bash$ env --help

  
  or

  bash$ man env

• which --- Displays the location (path) of the specified utility. When you type a command to bash that is not a bash "internal" command, BASH searches for the executable for the command in the default path (environmment variable PATH). The which utility indicates where in the path the executable for that command is found.
  For more information, type:

  bash$ which --help

  
  or

  bash$ man which

• GNU tar ( gnutar ) --- Most UNIX systems include a tar utility. Many Linux® systems ship GNU tar . Traditionally, GNV has included VMSTAR, which is a tar look-alike written for OpenVMS. Because GNU tar has more capabilities than VMSTAR, it has been ported to OpenVMS for use with GNV.
  GNU tar is especially useful for reading OpenSoure tarballs, which are often shipped compressed as GZIP files. Using VMSTAR, the tarball must be decompressed prior to reading with tar . For very large tarballs, this process can be time-consuming. GNU tar allows you to read tarballs compressed with either gzip or bzip2 in-line. That is, you need not decompress them in a separate command.
  For example:

  bash$ gnutar -xzf gnutar.tar.gz

  
  The current GNV kit includes both the new GNU tar image and the older VMSTAR. In this kit, the tar command still invokes VMSTAR. To run the new GNU tar , type gnutar as shown in the preceding example.

  Caveats HP recommends using tar (either tar (VMSTAR) or gnutar (GNU tar )) for reading OpenSource tarballs. You can also use tar to save files on your OpenVMS system to a tarball. However, this works well only for UNIX-style files. The tar utility works especially well for stream_LF files, either copied from UNIX or GNU systems, or created by UNIX programs with C Run-Time Library functions. The tar utility does not work well on some other OpenVMS file types. It can successfully copy variable-length text files; however, it corrupts other types of variable-length files. tar corrupts object files generated by compilers. When a variable-length text file is written to a tarball and then restored to a directory on OpenVMS, the result is a stream_LF file with the same text contents as the original. This might not be suitable for some applications. Be very careful when using tar to back up non-stream_LF files. This warning applies especially to GNU tar , but can also apply to VMSTAR.

  Note about Image Names In this release of GNV, the new GNU tar utility is invoked by typing gnutar in the command line. Typing tar in the command line invokes VMSTAR. For more information, type: bash$ gnutar --help or bash$ man gnutar

• g++ added to GNV wrapper
  The wrapper utility processes UNIX-style compile and link (and related) commands. It reads commands such as the UNIX cc command and invokes the appropriate OpenVMS DCL command.
  For this release, g++ has been added as a synonym for cxx . This matches the gcc command to invoke the C++ compiler.

The GNV software provides an open source, GNU-based, UNIX environment for OpenVMS. It provides UNIX application developers, system managers, and users a UNIX-style environment so that they can easily develop and port UNIX software to OpenVMS. (GNU is a UNIX-like operating system that is free software. Linux is basically a GNU system: the system is GNU, while the kernel is Linux.)

GNV provides a UNIX-like shell (command-line interpreter) environment and a C Run-Time Library (CRTL) supplemental library to provide utilities typically found on UNIX systems. The shell used by GNV is bash (Bourne-Again SHell, from GNU, using the POSIX.2 specification).

It has come to our attention that some users like to run GNV utilities from the DCL prompt rather than from within bash . While this may work in many cases, HP does not support this method and does not guarantee that the utilities will work as expected. Most noticeably effected will be use of wildcards, which must be processed by bash . They will not work when a GNV utility is run from DCL. The following example illustrates the inconsistency of results obtained when running ls from the DCL prompt:

$ ls A PRINT_ENV.C T.C TEST.H TEST_FWRITE.C test HELLO.C SLEEP.C TEST.C TEST.H-GZ t.t.t.t.t $ ls *.c /VMS$COMMON/GNV/bin/LS.EXE: *.c: no such file or directory $ ls *.C /VMS$COMMON/GNV/bin/LS.EXE: *.c: no such file or directory $

7.2 ODS-5 Requirement

ODS-5 disks allow use of files with extended file names, including most UNIX style filenames. Such file names are common in Open Source software. GNV includes mostly ported Open Source (or free software) code, and as such contains numerous files with UNIX style file names.

While it may be possible to install GNV (or at least portions of GNV) on ODS-2 disks, HP recommends that you install GNV on an ODS-5 disk. Installing GNV on an ODS-2 disk is likely to result in numerous installation warning and error messages. GNV has been tested primarily on an ODS-5 disk. HP does not guarantee the functionality of GNV on an ODS-2 disk.

Likewise, you can operate GNV on an ODS-2 disk, but some file naming features will not be usable on such a disk. You will not be able to make use of case-senstive file names or file names with special characters, such as multiple dots, which are so common in UNIX environments.

8 Utilities Provided with GNV

This section lists the UNIX utilities provided with GNV and describes any differences observed between the utilities as used on OpenVMS systems and the counterparts as used on UNIX systems.

8.1 UNIX Utilities Provided for OpenVMS

Table 1 lists the utilities provided with GNV on OpenVMS. Included for some of the listed utilities are OpenVMS command equivalents as well as behaviors that vary from expected behavior on a UNIX system. HP does not guarantee that all variances have been observed and documented.

Table 1 GNV Utilities

Utility	Description	Comments/Exceptions
General Purpose Utilities
basename	Returns actual base file name when given a path.
bash	Invokes bash shell.
bind	Equates a key sequence to a function.
cd	Changes the current working directory.	OpenVMS DCL SET DEFAULT
date	Displays current date and time.	OpenVMS DCL SHOW TIME
dirs	Displays a list of currently remembered directories.
env	Run program with modified environment.
exit	Terminates the shell.
help	Provides explanatory text about bash internal commands and features.
history	Displays the list of previously executed commands.	OpenVMS DCL RECALL
hostname	Sets or displays name of current host system.
id	Displays the current user and group IDs and names.
logout	Logs out of the shell.
popd	Modifies the current directory stack.
printenv	Displays environment variables	OpenVMS DCL SHOW SYMBOL or SHOW LOGICAL
ps	Displays status of system processes.	OpenVMS DCL SHOW SYSTEM or SHOW PROCESS/SUBPROCESS
pushd	Modifies the current directory stack.
pwd	Displays the current working directory.	OpenVMS DCL SHOW DEFAULT
sh	Invokes a shell.
sleep	Pauses for a specified time.	OpenVMS WAIT
tee	Sends output to multiple destinations.
times	Displays user and system times.
uname	Displays the name of the system.
wait	Waits for background processes to complete.
which	Displays path of a command executable or utility.
Command Manipulation
alias	Provides command name translation.	Similar to the OpenVMS DCL line: $ symbol =[=] "string" see unalias
break	Terminates a loop in the shell.
builtin	Runs a shell built-in.
case	Executes commands selectively.
command	Executes a simple command.
continue	Resumes execution at the top of a loop.
declare	Declares variables and their attributes.
echo	Echoes input to standard output.	Similar to OpenVMS DCL line: $ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT
enable	Enables or disables built-in shell commands.
eval	Constructs a command.
exec	Executes commands outside of the current shell.
export	Sets the export attributes.
expr	Reads an expression, evaluates it, and writes the result to standard output.
false	Returns a nonzero exit value.	See true
for	Executes a command in a loop.
function	Creates a simple command.
getopts	Gets input options.
hash	Provides direct access to utilities.
if	Executes commands selectively.
let	Evaluates arithmetic expressions.
local	Creates a local variable.
read	Reads a line from standard input.	OpenVMS DCL READ
readonly	Sets the readonly attribute on shell variables or functions.
return	Returns from the current shell function.
select	Processes commands selectively.
set	Sets shell flags and positional parameters.
shift	Shifts positional parameters.
source	Executes commands from a file.
test	Evaluates an expression.
trap	Intercepts exception conditions.
true	Returns a zero exit value.
type	Displays command information.
typeset	Assigns attributes and values to variable.
unalias	Removes command name translation.	OpenVMS DCL DELETE/SYMBOL; see alias
unset	Unsets values and attributes of variables and functions.
until	Executes commands in a loop until a condition is reached.
while	Executes commands in a loop until a condition is reached.
Program Creation
cc	Compile links; invokes C compiler.	DECC must be installed
cxx	Compiles links; invokes C++ compiler.	CXX must be installed
gcc	Compiles links; invokes C/C++ compiler.	DECC must be installed
g++	Compiles links; invokes C++ compiler.	CXX must be installed
as	Assembler.
ld	Invokes the linker.
make	Builds programs. Maintains up-to-date versions of target files and performs shell commands.	Similar to MMS (Module Management System).
User-Level Administration
chmod	Changes file permissions.	OpenVMS DCL SET SECURITY or SET PROTECTION
chown	Changes owner of a file.	OpenVMS DCL SET FILE/OWNER
df	Displays amount of free disk space in a system.	OpenVMS DCL SHOW DEVICE/FULL
share	Displays list of NFS shares.
touch	Updates the access and modification dates of a file.
ulimit	Displays and sets file size limit.
umask	Displays and sets the file creation mask.
System-Level Administration
chgrp	Changes group ownership.	OpenVMS DCL SET ACL
File Manipulation
ar	Archives files.	OpenVMS LIBRARY
bzip2	Compress/Decompress a file.
cat	Concatenates files; displays or prints files.	OpenVMS DCL TYPE; see head , more
cksum	Displays checksum and byte count of a file.	See sum
cmp	Compares two files, showing first difference only (for a quick check).	OpenVMS DCL DIFFERENCE; see comm , diff
comm	Compares two sorted text files; output is three columns showing (1) lines in file1 only, (2) lines in file2 only, (3) lines common to both files.	See cmp , diff
cp	Copies files to a new destination.	OpenVMS DCL COPY
csplit	Splits a file into new files containing segments of the original file.
diff	Compares two files, showing all differences.	OpenVMS DCL DIFFERENCE; see cmp , comm
du	Displays disk space usage.
egrep	Searches for text in a file.	OpenVMS DCL SEARCH; UNIX: grep -e
fgrep	Searches for text in a file.	OpenVMS DCL SEARCH; UNIX: grep -f
find	Searches down directory trees for a file (no need to know device!).	OpenVMS DIR [...] filename; see ls
grep	Searches for text in a file.	OpenVMS DCL SEARCH; see egrep and fgrep
gnutar	GNU tar utility to archive files. Reads OpenSource software distribution tarballs and archives and restores UNIX-style files.
gunzip	Decompress a file.	See gzip
gzip	Compress/Decompress a file.	See gunzip
head	Displays the beginning of files.	See cat , lpr
join	Joins lines of two files (fields) in output.	See paste
less	Displays a file one screen at a time.	OpenVMS DCL TYPE/PAGE; see more
ln	Link (creates an alias filename).	OpenVMS DCL SET FILE/ENTRY
ls	Displays contents of a directory.	OpenVMS DCL DIRECTORY; see find
mkdir	Creates a directory.	OpenVMS DCL CREATE/DIRECTORY
mkfile	Creates a file.	OpenVMS DCL CREATE
more	Displays a file one screen at a time	OpenVMS DCL TYPE/PAGE; see less
mv	Moves files to a new location or renames files.	OpenVMS DCL RENAME
paste	Joins corresponding lines of several files, or subsequent lines in one file.	See join
rm	Deletes files.	OpenVMS DCL DELETE
rmdir	Deletes a directory.
split	Splits a file into multiple files.
sum	Displays a checksum for a file.
tar	Archives files.	This runs VMSTAR, a tool similar to tar . It is not a genuine UNIX tar utility. Similar to OpenVMS BACKUP. For more information, see Section 8.2. See gnutar .
unzip	Retrieves archived files.
zcat	Expands compressed files.
zip	Archives files.
Text Processing
cut	Locates specified fields of each line of a file and writes the characters in those fields to standard output. Displays columns of a file.
expand	Replaces tab characters with spaces in the named files or in the standard input, and writes the result to the standard output.	See unexpand
fmt	Formats text of a file to a specified width.	See fold
fold	Formats file by wrapping lines at the specified width.	See fmt
gawk ( awk )	Text processing language.
nl	Numbers lines in a file.
od	Writes the contents of a file to standard output, in a specified format.
sed	Invokes a stream editor.
sort	Sorts the lines of a file.
tr	Finds and replaces characters in a file.
unexpand	Replaces spaces with tab characters in the data from the standard input, or in the named files, and writes the result to the standard output.	See expand
uniq	Removes duplicate lines from a file.
vi	Invokes a text editor similating the standard UNIX vi text editor.	OpenVMS EDIT; for more information, see Section 8.2
wc	Displays the number of lines, words, and characters in a text file.
Printing
lp	Prints a file.