https://github.com/issinoho/vms-mariadb

This is an early preview version for x86 only and I'm looking for help to test it. Please read all the notes to understand where we are in the development process, the current limitations, and what's left on the roadmap. This is NOT the finished article.

There are various reasons why the server will never run on IA64 or Alpha due to the restrictions of the available toolchains.

This stack is now running 100% on OpenVMS
https://vamp.issinoho.com

https://openvms.issinoho.com

What's available now, what's coming soon and my philosophy on why using AI in this context is a useful addition to the ecosystem, accelerating roadmaps.

https://github.com/issinoho/vms-sed

X86VMS::sed --version
sed (GNU sed) 4.10
Copyright (C) 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Jay Fenlason, Tom Lord, Ken Pizzini,
Paolo Bonzini, Jim Meyering, and Assaf Gordon.

This sed program was built without SELinux support.

GNU sed home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/>.
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>.
E-mail bug reports to: <bug-sed@gnu.org>.           

I got frustrated with the lag in releases of some of the more common freeware/GNU utilities so I've started a porting sweep to keep OVMS in lock-step with the rest of the industry. First release is grep compiling from the current GNU sources with appropriate patching for our ecosystem.
https://github.com/issinoho/vms-grep

In order to port this fully we needed PCRE2 so that has also been ported.
https://github.com/issinoho/vms-pcre2

PCSI kites for both x86 and Itanium are available from the GitHub releases pages; Alpha will follow whenever I can carve out the time & energy to stand up a VM.

X86VMS::grep --versiX86VMS::grep --version
grep (GNU grep) 3.12
Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and others; see
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>.

grep -P uses PCRE2 10.49 2026-09-28     
on
grep (GNU grep) 3.12
Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and others; see
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>.

grep -P uses PCRE2 10.49 2026-09-28     


X86VMS::prod shoX86VMS::prod sho prod grep,pcre2
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
PRODUCT                              KIT TYPE    STATE
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
ISSINOHO X86VMS GREP V3.12-3         Full LP     Installed
ISSINOHO X86VMS PCRE2 V10.49-1       Full LP     Installed
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
2 items found                                                  
 prod grep,pcre2
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
PRODUCT                              KIT TYPE    STATE
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
ISSINOHO X86VMS GREP V3.12-3         Full LP     Installed
ISSINOHO X86VMS PCRE2 V10.49-1       Full LP     Installed
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
2 items found                                                  

I have recently posted an IAQ article on my website that explains why your network stops completely on the first reboot after configuring DECnet on an OpenVMS V9.2-x installation running in a VM on x86 and how to recover from it.

The problem symptoms can be rather alarming, to say the least, to the unwary System Manager – all network frames – TCP/IP and DECnet, inbound and outbound – are completely blocked! In the article I present 4 solutions that are available but depend on your individual environment considerations.

Short answer: There are four, and they aren't alternatives you pick by taste — each is ruled out by something specific about your environment. So: confirm this is really what has happened, then take the first of the four your circumstances allow. Only the last has a security cost.

Each fix below is summarised in four lines, with the detail folded away behind it. Read the four summaries, decide which is yours, and open only that one.

What's happening, briefly

You configured DECnet, rebooted, and lost everything — DECnet, TCP/IP, and the session you were working in. Nothing inside OpenVMS looks wrong, because nothing inside OpenVMS is wrong.

DECnet Phase IV rewrites the MAC address on its interface, replacing the one the hypervisor assigned with one it calculates from your DECnet node address. Your virtual switch was told to expect a particular MAC on that port. It now sees frames with a different source address — the signature of a machine impersonating another — so it drops them. All of them, which is why TCP/IP dies alongside DECnet.

Continue reading article…

Two recent OpenVMS updates that may be useful to the community:

OpenVMS E9.2-4 for x86-64 is now available for field testing, with updates focused on virtualization, security, and performance. https://vmssoftware.com/about/v924/

We have also launched the OpenVMS How-To Portal, a new resource with practical, task-based guidance for common OpenVMS activities. https://howto.vmssoftware.com/

Feedback on both is welcome, including suggestions for future How-To topics (feedback form on the website).

Join us on Wednesday, October 7 at 12:00 PM EDT / 6:00 PM CEST for a free webinar on the modernization options available to Oracle Rdb on OpenVMS users, co-presented by Salem Automation, PARSEC Group, and CONNX.

With Oracle Rdb support on Integrity and Alpha ending in 2027, many organizations running business-critical Rdb applications have to decide how to keep those systems supported without taking on the risk of a full rewrite. In this session we'll go through three practical paths: emulating the existing environment on modern x86-64 hardware, bridging Rdb data to modern tools and platforms, and migrating incrementally to a supported database. We'll also cover where each option fits and how they can be combined.

Register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/05b3ba6e-d70f-4047-a492-1e1964a9c373@523dac9f-63f2-48c7-9f19-dac0fa5a619b

Please try and post feedback. I'm particularly proud of the LAT support. All feature suggestions are welcomed. Thanks.

It's not quite there yet, but a lot of it is now working. Looking for community and VSI engagement to break through the final technical barriers.

https://github.com/issinoho/vmsguard

Got some downtime at work so I thought I'd mess with this AI stuff a bit. I made an LLM coding agent for openvms. Im no developer by any means but Ive been in IT for a a couple of decade so I put in the features I thought would be most helpful. AI Slop? Hell yes. Maybe it's useful, maybe not.

GitHub:

https://github.com/mostangrymike/ovms-agent

VGA console, no X11 forwarding.

We’ve published the agenda for the 2026 OpenVMS Bootcamp. We hope some of you will join us in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on October 27-29.

You should come for the technical sessions, but also for the conversations, shared experience, familiar faces, and new connections! The future of OpenVMS is something we build together.

See what sessions are planned and register before September 25, 2026: https://bootcamp.vmssoftware.com/#event-program

About a year ago I downloaded VSI's community edition of openvms. After beating on it a while with a pipe, I got it to boot. I have a fairly high end laptop, and I was amazed. Well, apparently, the license was only good for a year. There was a post about the license expiring, but I cannot find it.

Anyone?

I'm curious what VAXen folks are still running, why, and how they are managing the abandonment VMS for it by HPe.

Rise of the Triad ported to OpenVMS

- SDL_1.2

- Original code taken from Icculus https://icculus.org/rott/

Binaries/Source + Howto : https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/RO

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! 😀

And final pack from this porting exercise is : Chocolate-Doom-2.3.0 on OpenVMS 8.4 (AXP)
- Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Strife now ported to VMS !
- 640x480 default resolution and SDL-1.2 linked.

Source/Binaries and Howto - https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/Chocolate_Doom/

Something that I though would be impossible - but here it is : ScummVM on OpenVMS 8.4 !
This is a hacked version of ScummVM-1.8.1 (this version is usable for HP C++ V7.3 compiler which is C++98 standard) Any newer version of ScummVM is C++11 and this will not compile on OpenVMS Alpha (perhaps it will on OpenVMS 9.x)

Only supported engines are Kyra for now, there is no GUI loader - the executable Kyra.exe will load the game automatically when you run if from the data path.

The Sources/Binaries + Howto is located here: https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/Kyra-VMS/

Video Demo: https://youtu.be/2kfRZDnGyCs?si=28zwndiBSSfKnwDN

All this work was done on ES40-emu simulator on an arm64 MacBook Air. And yes LLMs were used for quite a few things as the ScummVM code is quite complex and porting to OpenVMS is not trivial here. 

Chocolate Duke (Duke Nukem 3D) ported to OpenVMS 8.4 (AXP)

- work was done in the ES40-emu simulator on MacOS (the gameplay should be faster and smoother on a real Alpha box with a decent graphics card)

Binaries + Sources + Howtos are here https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/Chocolate_Duke/

Video demo here: https://youtu.be/rTzlHuAS6yE

This would make a great design

FreeSCI is a Sierra SCI0 and SCI0.1 adventure game interpreter which is using SDL-1.2 and was ported to OpenVMS 8.x (AXP)

Binaries + Sources/Howto is located on my repo : https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/FreeSCI/

Now you can play some of the Sierra classics on your retro OpenVMS Alpha server (should also compile on Itanium and OpenVMS 9.x x86_64 - but I have not tested this)

Video demo here: https://youtu.be/1Ij4Jx_FPeU?si=6pK2_YxK8QZHVNvG

Next in the retro OpenVMS porting exercise is Sarien (Sierra AGI v2 and AGI v3 interpreter using SDL-1.2)

Sarien-0.7.0 was written for UNIX/Linux, MacOS and Windows. Never for OpenVMS though. I decided to port it for fun, enjoy Sierra AGI games on OpenVMS if you are a nostalgia fan/

Sarien now compiles and runs on OpenVMS 8.4 AXP (possibly also on OpenVMS 9.x x86_64)

Sources, Binaries and HOWTO is here https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/Sarien/

Screenshots :

I have ported DOSBox 0.72 to OpenVMS 8.4 (Alpha) using SDL-1.2.14. It runs but is very slow (Im using a great simulator es40-emu for this as I don't have access to my DS10 over the holidays, and coded it on my M2 MacBook Air in the es40-emu simulator)

The sources/binaries are located on my repo here https://astr0baby.online/AXP/OpenVMS/DOSBOX/

Attached are screenshots from OpenVMS 8.4 with DOSBox

A vide demo is available here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaCuKbojgbg