[Info-vax] New guide for hobbyists, OpenVMS 8.4 installation with networking on AXPbox (modern fork of es40)

[Remy]

Op maandag 9 november 2020 om 14:24:22 UTC+1 schreef johnwa... at yahoo.co.uk:
> On Monday, 9 November 2020 11:16:51 UTC, Remy van Elst wrote: 
> > Op maandag 9 november 2020 om 12:08:24 UTC+1 schreef Jan-Erik Söderholm: 
> > > Den 2020-11-09 kl. 12:02, skrev Remy van Elst: 
> > > > Op maandag 9 november 2020 om 12:00:36 UTC+1 schreef Jan-Erik Söderholm: 
> > > >> Den 2020-11-09 kl. 11:33, skrev Joukj: 
> > > >>> Remy wrote: 
> > > >>>> Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that 
> > > >>>> was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox 
> > > >>>> and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a 
> > > >>>> bit on axpbox here: 
> > > >>>> 
> > > >>>> https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html 
> > > >>>> 
> > > >>>> 
> > > >>>> I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating 
> > > >>>> around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki 
> > > >>>> pages on network setup. 
> > > >>>> For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that 
> > > >>>> VSI has a hobbyist program, here's my guide how to do that: 
> > > >>>> 
> > > >>>> https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html 
> > > >>>> 
> > > >>> 
> > > >>> Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull. 
> > > >>> BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also 
> > > >>> located in the Netherlansds?) 
> > > >>> 
> > > >>>> 
> > > >>>> One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas 
> > > >>>> in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster 
> > > >>>> should technically be possible. 
> > > >>> 
> > > >>> And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos. 
> > > >> So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper... 
> > > > 
> > > > It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC) 
> > > OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system? 
> > 
> > Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea. 
> > 
> > Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it. 
> > Same on linux, install development packages, checkout repository, run cmake to build.
> This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this 
> picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...). 
> 
> And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or 
> succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard, 
> either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux? 
> 
> $70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM 
> processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g. 
> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review 
> Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70... 
> 
> I had been wondering about trying SIMH/VAX on one of these, iirc it's 
> already known to run on ARM given the right incantations, but AXPbox 
> sounds much more interesting, at least as a filler-in till the real 
> native OpenVMS-on-ARM comes along. Or doesn't, as the case may be. 
> 
> I'd offer, but just at the moment I might struggle to find the free 
> time.


I know of no reason why it wouldn't compile on ARM, I have a small ARM dedicated server over at scaleway and there it compiles without problems:

uname -a

	Linux d1 4.10.8-std-1 #1 SMP Wed Apr 5 16:01:12 UTC 2017 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

apt install libpcap-dev build-essential unzip libx11-dev libsdl-dev cmake libpoco-dev libxt-dev git

git clone https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/

cd axpbox

mkdir build

cd build

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" && make -j4


I'm unsure how the performance is, I have no openvms installation ready, but at least it compiles. Raspberry pi should not be much different if you can get Debian or Ubuntu (Raspbian) running.