VAX-11 Utilities Reference Manual

This document is the VAX-11 Utilities Reference Manual, published in March 1980 by Digital Equipment Corporation, for use with the VAX/VMS V02 operating system.

It serves as a comprehensive guide to various utility programs available on VAX-11 processors, detailing their functions, commands, qualifiers, and messages. The manual is structured into chapters, each focusing on a specific utility or set of related utilities, and generally indicates the intended user audience (ranging from all system users to specialized system managers, operators, and programmers).

The key utilities described are:

• Personal Mail Utility (MAIL): Allows users to send, receive, file, forward, delete, print, and reply to messages, including inter-system communication via DECnet-VAX.
• File Transfer Utility (FLX): Enables file transfers and format conversions between DOS-11, RT-11, and Files-11 formatted volumes, as well as managing directories (initializing, listing, deleting) on these volumes.
• SLP and SUMSLP (Editing Utilities): Batch-oriented text editors used for source file maintenance, allowing updates, deletions, replacements, and additions to files with audit trail capabilities.
• Disk Save and Compress Utilities (DSC1, DSC2, DSC-2): Tools for backing up, restoring, compressing, comparing, and transporting Files-11 disk volumes. They also facilitate the regulation of disk bad block information.
• Bad Block Locator Utility (BAD): Designed to determine and record faulty blocks on block-structured volumes to prevent data corruption.
• File Structure Verification Utilities (VFY1, VFY2): Checks the readability and validity of Files-11 volumes and provides functions for file error recovery, such as restoring deleted files and managing allocated and free blocks.
• Librarian Utility: A utility for managing libraries of code or text (object, macro, help, and text libraries), supporting operations like creating, modifying, inserting, deleting, extracting, and listing modules and symbols.
• Message Utility: Allows programmers to control and customize informational, warning, and error messages generated by VAX/VMS and their own applications, including defining message formats and integrating them into programs.

Appendix A provides a technical list of Files-11 structured magnetic tape and disk devices supported by VAX/VMS.