[HECnet] DECnet for Linux

[Rob Jarratt]

I run SIMH on a couple of Raspberry Pis without issue, one running VMS 5.4
the other VMS 7.3. They each run as cluster members so I have a cluster for
5.4 and 7.3 running at all times. It is very straightforward. I have even
set it up to automatically boot SIMH when the machine is powered on using a
tool called "screen", so I can run it completely headless. I have found that
the Raspberry Pi networking starts to get a bit unreliable after running
these machines 24 hours a day for a few years.

 

Regards

 

Rob

 

From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf
Of Mark J. Blair
Sent: 27 January 2018 18:50
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] DECnet for Linux

 

Please forgive me for letting this thread age in my inbox for a while, but
I'll speak up, too. I appreciate this work!

 

I had previously set up a VM with an old enough Debian distribution to
support DECnet in order to get some filesystem images off of my VAX-11/730,
with partial success. I was able to copy off images of a few RL-02 packs,
but wasn't able to copy a block-level image of its R80 drive. The copy
aborted when it hit the first bad block, and I didn't (and still don't) know
enough VMS to work around that.

 

I have since changed my approach to setting up a SIMH emulation of a VAX
running recent enough OpenVMS to speak both DECnet and TCP/IP fluently in
order to serve as a bridge between my modern systems and the older
DECnet-speaking hardware. But being able to have a recent Linux kernel
speaking DECnet would also be very helpful!

 

I'd like to run the SIMH emulation on a small embedded computer that I can
leave on all the time without burning lots of power, such as a BeagleBoard
or Raspberry Pi. It would be very nice if that emulation host could also
natively speak DECnet. I tried building the DECnet drivers that are still
present in the Linux distro, and using the userland stuff that's
(surprisingly?) still present in the debian distro that the BeagleBoards
use, and it didn't work. I hope I'll be able to find time soon to try out
the patches, and I hope that they will make it into the mainline Linux
distributions.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net <mailto:nf6x at nf6x.net> >
http://www.nf6x.net/

 

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