OpenVMS Management Station

Managing printer queues (but not batch or LPR/LPD queues) from Windows on a PC is done with the OpenVMS Management Station utility. The management tasks include:

Monitoring a printer
Examining and changing both printer and queue attributes
Examining and changing job attributes

This utility is particularly convenient on a system with a large number of printer queues, because of the compact visual presentation. The Management Station can also be used to manage disks and accounts.

Summary

The queue manager (QUEMAN) is required for execution (batch) or print queues, except for the UNIX-like LPR/LPD print queues. It is started with START/QUEUE/MANAGER.
The queue manager database is located with the logical QMAN$MASTER.
Print and batch queues are created with the INITIALIZE/QUEUE command.
Queues may be autostarted (in case of node failure) or started explicitly.
Print queues normally need additional information to characterize the printer. This is defined with SET TERMINAL, SET PRINTER, and SET DEVICE commands.
Printer farms are headed with generic queues.
Printer forms can be created to define specific paper characteristics (e.g., width, length) and to help the operator manage which physical forms are mounted in a specific printer.
Printer control libraries can be created to automatically send text and escape sequences before and/or after each job is printed. This ensures that the printer is properly configured to print the specific file.
Queues for PostScript printers are treated differently, and files can be automatically converted to PostScript format for printing.
UNIX-like LPR/LPD is also supported by OpenVMS.

Related Publications

The OpenVMS System Manager's Manual , Chapter 13, discusses the queue manager, and Chapter 14 discusses queues.
The specific queuing commands are defined in the OpenVMS DCL Dictionary .
TCP/IP network printers are discussed in Compaq TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Management , Part 6, for TCP/IP printers. See LATCP OpenVMS System Management Utilities Reference Manual , Chapter 13, if the printer uses LAT protocol.
The OpenVMS Management Station Overview and Release Notes is only a brief description. Full documentation is available once the program is installed on the PC under the HELP feature.
The Compaq DECprint Supervisor (DCPS) for OpenVMS is not currently available online. This product is licensed with the OpenVMS license.
The OpenVMS Command Definition, Librarian, and Message Utilities Manual details the use of the LIBRARY command.

Chapter 6: Backup

Overview

OpenVMS has the capability to:

Back up and restore individual files, directory structures, and whole disks, including the system disk (complete with boot records).
Back up and then immediately verify the results against the original files.
Incrementally back up files that changed or are new since the last full backup.
List file names in the backup container (called a save set ).
Support disk-to-disk, disk-to-tape, and tape-to-disk backup and restore operations.
Support disk-to-disk copy operations.
Perform all of these operations on shadowed disks.
Use the Save Set Manager (SSMgr) to keep track of backup save sets.

Unlike UNIX, one disk backup program, BACKUP, is available in OpenVMS. The BACKUP program will perform disk copy, disk backup, and disk restore functions. The backup destination can be either another disk or tape. BACKUP will support other media as well, but only tape and disks are practical because of their capacity. For instance, a CD or DVD could be used as backup media. An entire disk can be copied , a subdirectory tree and files, or only those files that changed since the last backup can be saved. This latter operation is called incremental backup. The backed -up data is not compressed, but, depending on the device and BACKUP options, a BACKUP-generated checksum in the form of a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) accompanies the data files to aid in media error recovery. Active CRC is the default, but it can be turned off with the /NOCRC qualifier. Most modern tape drives operate in compression mode and / or CRC mode by default. Permitting BACKUP to compute the CRC as well is like having both suspenders and a belt to hold up your pants.