Technical data

Installing, Upgrading, and Updating Software

3.3 Preparing Your System to Run VMSINSTAL.COM

This section provides guidelines for preparing your system for using

VMSINSTAL.COM. Note that each software product that you install might

not require you to follow all of the guidelines listed in this section.

3.3.1 Performing Preliminary Operations

Before you use VMSINSTAL.COM, perform the following operations (not

necessarily in the order listed):

• Back up your system disk, as described in Section 11.17. Use the backup copy

as a working copy for the installation.

VMSINSTAL.COM might delete the older version of the product before

it installs the newer version. If the system fails during installation, you

might have to make a new working copy of the system disk and restart the

installation.

• Log in to the SYSTEM account at the console terminal.

• Be sure all users have logged out and all batch jobs have completed by using,

respectively, the SHOW USERS and SHOW SYSTEM/BATCH commands.

Keep users off the system until VMSINSTAL.COM completes by using the

following command:

$ SET LOGINS/INTERACTIVE=0

Note

If you cannot log off all users during the installation of a layered product

that updates the DCL help library, note that the help ﬁles for that layered

product will not be installed if a user on the system is accessing DCL

help. The installation procedure generates warning messages and stores

the help ﬁles in a working directory.

• Shut down network software.

• Check system parameters. (GBLPAGES, GBLSECTIONS and NPAGEDYN

often need to be adjusted.) Read the documentation supplied with each

layered product to be installed, and ﬁnd out if the product has any speciﬁc

resource requirements.

If you must change parameter values, increase the values by adding ADD_

parameter-name symbols to MODPARAMS.DAT. (See Section 15.5.1.1.)

Use AUTOGEN with feedback to size the system resources properly. (See

Section 15.4.1.)

• Make sure the limits in the SYSTEM account authorization record are equal

to or greater than the recommended limits.

To check these limits, run the Authorize utility (AUTHORIZE) to display the

current limits of the SYSTEM account’s user authorization ﬁle.

To run AUTHORIZE, enter the following commands:

$ SET DEFAULT SYS$SYSTEM

$ RUN AUTHORIZE

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