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From: walton%Deimos@CIT-HAMLET.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: VMS Binary File Transfer using Kermit
Message-ID: <851003101956.006@Deimos>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 13:20:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: Deimos.851003101956.006
Posted: Thu Oct  3 13:20:20 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 06:19:42 EDT
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If one has two VMS Vaxes connected together with RS-232 ports, binary files
will transfer OK, using 8-bit data.  The catch is that Kermit cannot possibly
be taught about all of the wild and wonderful RMS file formats (how many
are there?  1.0e10?), so making a BACKUP set (which contains the RMS formats)
and transferring it via Kermit will work fine.   Except that the BACKUP set
won't arrive at the other end with the correct format either.

Hence, the solution we have used at Caltech:  Make a BACKUP set with some large
block-size on disk.  Transfer it via KERMIT after doing a SET FILE TYPE BINARY
at both ends.  This will result in the file being received as a 512-byte
fixed-length-record file.  Then, use any RMS file attribute changing program to
change the file format back to n-byte records with no record attributes (where
n is the size used to create the backup set on the first machine), and extract
the contents via BACKUP on the new machine.  The advantage of this method is
that the file transfer goes twice as fast, because you don't have to translate
each 8-bit byte into two 8-bit ASCII characters.  (If ASCI2BIN is smarter than
this, please tell me.) 

					Steve Walton
					Caltech Solar Astronomy
					walton@citdeimo.bitnet
					walton%deimos@cit-hamlet.arpa
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