[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2024 13:39:03 -0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley wrote:

> You may wish to make it clear that RMS is a part of VMS in that it is
> within VMS itself and not just some user-mode library linked in to each
> user program.

The symbols have to come from some file that is input to the linker 
(.OLB, .OBJ, .STB). All the system entry points (RMS and the kernel 
proper) reside at absolute locations; this used to be at 80000168 hex 
(note: system space), then later (in either VMS V3 or V4) that was moved 
to 7FFEDF68 (note: P1 space). Not sure why: to allow per-process 
interception of system calls? Of course the old location continued to be 
valid forever for existing services, but all new services added thereafter 
were only available at the new place.

RMS was one of those things that was quite difficult to explain to new 
users. I was the micro support guy, whom people came to if they had 
trouble moving files between these newfangled PC things and the VAX 
machines. And of course VMS software would typically refuse to work 
properly with files unless they had the right record format attributes 
etc. And files transferred from other systems tended to end up as “fixed-
length 512-byte records”, which was just about the least useful format 
imaginable. So fixing the RMS attributes was a very common need. Assuming 
the users could understand the right settings to use.

Linus “Mr Linux” Torvalds did apparently use VMS for a while, and he hated 
it. The reason had to do with RMS.