UNIX coresident with VMS

[Mike I'll be mellow when I'm dead Meyer]

In article <522 at phri.UUCP> roy at phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>> >Is it possible to have UNIX and VMS coresident on the same physical disks?
>>
>> It should be possible to do this, provided [...] UNIX does not tamper with
>> the VMS partitions of the disk, and that VMS does not tamper with the UNIX
>> partitions of the disk.
>
>	Any dual Unix/VMS wizard (do such creatures exist?) 

I've known a few people who were just sub-wizard on both, so i expect that
they do.

>want to try
>building a disk which has both a valid Unix and a valid VMS file system *on
>the same partition*?  To be fair, both file systems can be read only.

Sorry, no can do. VMS doesn't grok "partitions." A disk is a disk is a disk,
and you have to deal with the whole thing at once.

As has been pointed out here, you *can* allocate a large chunk of the disk
as a contigous file on VMS. You then make your Unix partitions all live in
that file.

The only problem left is what to install as the boot block on the disk.
I'm not familiar with the VMS boot sequence, so I'd be tempted to put the
Unix boot sequence in, with a file (/vms) that you boot to bring up VMS. Of
course, since VMS can easily get to the Unix half of the disk, it might be
easier to do things the other way around.

	<mike