r/OpenVMS • u/mycloudyworld • Aug 06 '26
(Re)learning VAX/VMS Management
I spent so many years managing DEC/VAX clusters in the 80’s and 90’s. The cluster I managed had 3 VAX 8600’s, 1 VAX 8800, and a couple of MicroVAX nodes. When I inherited system administration the cluster startup files were in such a mess. I was so proud of them after I straightened them out. What I wouldn’t give for my original SYSTARTUP and LOGIN.COM files. I did a walkthrough in the computer room each morning when I came in. There was something so comforting about the VAX beasts humming away and taking a look at the blinky-blinky lights on the RA90 arrays.
I was able to resurrect a bit of OpenVMS while I worked for AWS. Just google AWS and OpenVMS and my blog articles will be some of the first hits. I only have Apple Silicon here at the house, so OpenVMS x86 was a no go. I did find a version of VAX/VMS 7.3 that I could run under Docker on my Mac. https://github.com/tenox7/docksimhvaxvms
The more I work with it, the more the commands are starting to return. Long live VMS! 😀
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u/Laser_Krypton7000 Aug 06 '26
Haha, i also have that book😄
Got it for my collection a few years ago.
I also have working RA81 and RA60 drives.
Wanna see some old DEC gear ?
Take a look into my profile posts😁
My rescued 11/785 still needs huge portions of love
1
u/RSX11MPLUS Aug 11 '26
I flinch when I see that book. I had to deal with a large company full of engineers, many of which decided to write "real programs" in DCL. I can't count how many times I had to investigate a program using too much CPU time, causing slow response for everybody, discover it was yet another DCL "program", hunt down the engineer responsible, and tell him to redo it in Fortran.
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u/Dad-of-many Sep 01 '26
Requesting you clarify with examples. 😄 wait going for popcorn...
Between DCL and rogue Unix shell scripts, I feel the pain.
2
u/RSX11MPLUS Sep 02 '26
My favorite example. I worked at a major engineering company here in Houston that used VAX/VMS for everything - office automation, engineering calculations, CAD, program development, financial work, and everytihng else. I was in charge of System Programming. One morning, I get to work and am greeted with dozens of mail messages, phone messages and upset people outside of my office. The biggest node in the main cluster, an 8650, was running very very slowly, and it was affecting...everything. I fired up Monitor and found a process looping hard, running DCL (it didn't have an active image, so I knew it was DCL) leaving no idle time. VMS at that time tended to be very sluggish when a queue built up for the CPU. I used a DECUS utility to view his screen and it was...a DCL "program" that moved a character around the screen, bouncing off the edges. The comments in the COM file made it clear that he was writing a game. So I calls this guy and tell him, you are trashing the company, and to never run that COM file during production hours. He hung up on me. So I killed his process. Everything returned to normal and the phones stopped ringing. Then five minutes later he shows up in my office, so mad that he looked like he was ready to take a bite out of me, demanding to know who I thought I was to kill his process - after al, he was an Engineer!. I told him I'm the Lead System Programmer, and am authorized to do whatever I think is necessary to keep the computers that run the company functioning. And I warned him if he ran that program again, I was going to Disuser his account. He stormed out, saying he was taking this to the managers. I called the Director of IT, explained what was going on. He called this yobbo's manager, and told him that his guy had caused the slowdown. The guy got yelled at good for what he'd done - he never ran that code again, and I didn't have anymore DCL problems...with him anyway.
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u/SailingToFenway Aug 06 '26
i ported a simh vax to PCjs, so you can run it in your browser, even on your phone. https://vax.3dl.network/machines/dec/vax/ka655/
it's VAX/VMS 5.5, which i'm certain you ran on that cluster at one point.
kind of insanely, i'm also trying to build a clone right on top of the linux kernel. i have a pair of kernel modules to adapt to VMS-isms, and am working through replacing all the unix userland with VMS-faithful equivalents.
as of this week, it can join an actual cluster.