Re: Genera 8.1 CD-ROM Problem

[Dodds@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Douglas Dodds)]

    Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1991 08:54 EDT
    From: delaney@xn.ll.mit.edu (John R. Delaney)

    Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there still some sort of problem with
    the CD-ROM-related software that prevents one from using a CD-ROM on a SUN
    for system source storage? 

The short answer is "yes".  But let me specify this carefully.  There
are two separate operations involving CD-ROM in Genera 8.1 (and later).

The primary thing is software installation from a CD-ROM distribution.
This is what the recent question and my answer were all about.  All the
steps of installation, including restoring worlds and restoring source
distributions, can be done on any of the supported CD-ROM
configurations; this includes having a Sun CD-ROM mounted on a Sun Unix
on the local network.

The secondary thing that can be done with the Genera CD-ROM is to use it
as the SYS: host.  This is a new, added feature that can allow a site to
access its Genera sources from the >SYS> directory hierarchy on the
CD-ROM, rather than restoring the sources to a local hard disk.  This
comes, of course, at the cost of tying up the CD-ROM drive most of the
time for this purpose.

It is the latter thing that can be done if the CD-ROM drive is connected
to an XL or a MacIvory, but unfortunately can't be done if the CD-ROM
drive is on a Sun.  This is due to the two-level translation of
pathnames that would be necessary for Genera to get at an ISO9660
pathname in the guise of a Unix pathname.  But note that this limitation
affects only the CD-ROM-as-SYS-host amenity, and not basic Genera
installation.

It's not impossible to fix this deficiency, but we haven't been able to
give it enough priority yet.  I hope we can correct it for a future
release.