HOW TO INSTALL VMS KERMIT-32

VAX/VMS Kermit-32 was written by Nick Bush and Bob McQueen of Stevens Institute
of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.  As of April 1987, development of the program is
more or less frozen.  Bug reports will be accepted with no guarantee that they
will be acted upon.  See the file VMSMIT.BWR for a list of known bugs,
limitations, or for bug reports that have not been responded to.  Meanwhile,
the C version of Kermit (C-Kermit) will probably evolve to become the preferred
version of Kermit for VMS.

VMS Kermit-32 comes in 3 forms: hex, Macro source, and Bliss source.  Each can
be used as the basis for installation.

Before beginning, make a special directory for VMS Kermit and read the files
VMS*.* from the Kermit distribution tape into this directory.  Columbia's
Kermit tapes are written with blocksize 8192, which is 4 times larger than the
default tape blocksize for VMS.  You should mount these tapes on the VMS system
with the following command:

MOUNT/BLOCK=8192/DENSITY=1600 MTA0: KERMIT

(or substitute some other tape drive name for MTA0:)  Do NOT use the /FOREIGN
switch.  Once the tape is mounted, you can use normal VMS COPY commands to
copy the files from the tape.  For instance, if you have defined your Kermit
directory to have logical name KER:, you can use the following command to
copy the VMS Kermit files into this directory:

$ copy mta0:vms*.* ker:


METHOD 1: DECODE THE HEX FILE

WARNING -- If you are running a pre-4.0 release of VMS, see Method 1.5 below!

The easiest way to install VMS Kermit is to "dehexify" the hexadecimal
encoded task image.  Follow these steps:

1. There should be a file VMSDEH.MAR on your disk.  This is a Macro-32 program
   that decodes the hex file of the VMS Kermit task image.  Compile and load
   this program:

   $ macro vmsdeh
   $ link vmsdeh

2. Run the VMSDEH program:

   $ run vmsdeh
   Please type the file name: vmsmit.hex

   The VMSDEH program automatically creates KERMIT.EXE.

3. Now you can type "run kermit".  Make sure it works.  If not, try method 2.

4. Install KERMIT.EXE in the appropriate system area.

5. Install the help files, for instance:

   $ LIBRARY/HELP/DELETE=KERMIT SYS$HELP:HELPLIB.HLB
   $ LIBRARY/INSERT/HELP SYS$HELP:HELPLIB.HLB VMSSYS.HLP
   $ LIBRARY/CREATE/HELP SYS$HELP:KERMIT.HLB VMSUSR.HLP

   See the file VMSINS.HLP for further hints about the help files.

Note, the companion program to VMSDEH.MAR is VMSHEX.MAR.  It creates hex
files from binary files.  You can use this program to encode any VMS binary
file into printable form, and VMSDEH to decode it back into its original
form, with all of its directory information intact.


METHOD 1.5: DEHEXIFY THE OLD KERMIT-32 HEX FILE

If you are running a version of VMS before 4.0, then the current release of
Kermit-32 will not work on your system.  If you tried Method 1, and the
resulting Kermit program gave an error message like "invalid image header" when
you tried to run it, this is probably the cause.  In that case, you must use
version 3.1 of VMS Kermit until you upgrade your VMS version.  To use version
3.1 of VMS Kermit, follow the directions for Method 1, but use VMSDEH to
dehexify the file VMSV31.HEX rather than VMSMIT.HEX.  The result will be called
VMSMIT.EXE rather than KERMIT.EXE.  You can rename this file to KERMIT.EXE and
install it and the help files normally, but note that the help files apply to
the newer releases.


METHOD 2: ASSEMBLE THE MACRO FILES

Only use this method if method 1 fails for some reason.  This method assembles
all the Macro-32 source programs into object files, and then links them
together into KERMIT.EXE, and then installs KERMIT.EXE and the help files in
the system.  NOTE: Kermit-32 is NOT written in Macro-32; it is written in
Bliss-32, and these Macro files are output by the Bliss compiler.  It is not
recommended that changes be made to the Macro source.  To build from Macro,
follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have all the VMS*.MAR files on your current disk.

2. There is a DCL procedure to assemble and link all of these files,
   but unfortunately it assumes the files are called KER*.* instead of
   VMS*.*.  There is another DCL procedure, VMSREN.COM, to rename them:

   $ @vmsren

3. Now that the files are renamed to KER*.*, you can run the DCL procedure
   VMSINS.COM to assemble and link them into KERMIT.EXE.

   $ @vmsins

   Kermit-32 Installation Procedure

   Rebuild from sources? (YES or NO) yes

   Which version? (BLISS or MACRO) macro

   Install Kermit-32 on the system? yes
   (note, you have to have write access to the system directories to do this)

   This may take some time
   (time passes)

   Kermit-32 installation is complete.


METHOD 3: COMPILE THE BLISS SOURCES

You can use this method only if you have a Bliss-32 compiler.  Even then,
there's no reason to do this unless you want to change the sources in some
way.  Follow the steps in Method 2, except reply "bliss" instead of "macro"
to the "Which version?" question.
