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ACLSEARCH X01-05

For some time, my ACLSEARCH utility has been in limbo while I was busy with other things. I knew it didn't work correctly on IA64 drives, but I thought the problem was only limited to ODS-5 disks. Well, I've just had cause to use the utility, and the problem was on any disk that had been initialized or mounted on an IA64 system. Time for a look at what's failing in the code...

It turns out that during the port of the OpenVMS operating system to the IA64 platform, the home block of a disk (which was always located at VBN 2 of INDEXF.SYS) got moved to make way for potential IA64 things (like MBRs and the GPT). I also found out that there is no primary verses alternate home block for a disk any more. They are all regarded as "alternate".

So, this explained why the code was working on my home alpha (that's never even heard of Itanium) and failing at work, even on the Alpha (which is now part of a mixed architecture cluster).

After a lot of messing around, an alternative way to access a home block was arrived at. Unfortunately, this requires a visit to kernel land, so the utility now must be linked against the base image.

With a few other minor tweaks (including moving the section mapping INDEXF.SYS from P1 space to P0 space (those IA64 things are picky)) I have working code again.

You can download ACLSEARCH X01-05 on the downloads page.