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

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 11/4/2020 7:51 AM, 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
> 
> 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.
> 
> But now that x86 OpenVMS is around the corner, this guide and emulator have a shorter lifetime, since I hope to just install OpenVMS 9 inside regular old virtualbox.
> 
> Why am I posting this on the mailing list? My previous article complaining on the sad state of Alpha emulators sparked quite a fine discussion, but more importantly, I'm looking for feedback on the later parts of the guide. Specificly:
> 
> - license issues (required a reboot)

I saw this on your guide web page.  It's because VSI did their PAK script differently than HPE did.  HPE's script repeats a series of steps for each PAK which disables/unloads any current PAK, registers the new one and then loads and enables it.  VSI's script just registers the new one leaving it for you to disable/unload any old PAKS and load/enable the new one. I wish VSI would have copied HPE's script, it was much nicer.  I suppose to be fair, the VSI Alpha script only has two PAK entries as compared to HPE's 112 individual products.  The VSI Integrity has a few more as they didn't do the blanket products of ALPHA-SYSTEM and ALPHA-LP

Here is the code which is repeated for each PAK issued (112 in the HPE set):

$! This PAK issued on 04-Mar-2020 11:46
$ Call CheckLicense "ACMS" "1-JAN-2022"
$ IF ($STATUS .EQS. "%X107880D3") .OR. ($STATUS .EQS. "%X107880CB")
$ THEN
$   LICENSE REGISTER ACMS -
	/ISSUER=DEC -
	/AUTHORIZATION=<redacted> -
	/PRODUCER=DEC -
	/UNITS=0 -
	/TERMINATION_DATE=1-JAN-2022 -
	/ACTIVITY=CONSTANT=100 -
	/CHECKSUM=<redacted>
$!
$   LICENSE DISABLE ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC/ALL
$   LICENSE UNLOAD  ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC
$   LICENSE ENABLE  ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC/AUTH=<redacted>
$   LICENSE LOAD    ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC
$ ENDIF

Formatting added by me for clarity. HPE's is all left justified.

> - add a user and privileges
> - installation of unzip
> - srm information
> 
> Most of what I wrote was after much trial and error (this article cost me about 6 days to figure out and write), and I'm not sure if it's correct. I noticed that there was an interactive procedure for user management next to UAF. Also, in the FTP part there was lots of rummaging around with line endings and corrupt files, (binary mode). So I'm not sure if what I documented are the "correct" ways (lots of info online is sparse or outdated), and would like to improve the guide a bit.
> 


-- 
John H. Reinhardt