Newbie to VMS !!! Help me

[Alexander_84]

hello all,
i was trying to find a good forum for OpenVMS. i am new to this OS. could anyone tell me why this os has been named as Virtual Memory System? Is it Open source OS?

any help gr8ly appreciated.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert · Accepted solution]

VMS uses virtual memory,t.i. you can address more memory than your physical memory. Now all computers have that but 25 years ago it was relatively new.
No open source, HP keeps them closed for most people.

[Alexander_84]

Ok. Thanks. Then, why do we include Open before VMS? What does it mean?

Thnks in advance.

[Uwe Zessin]

About 1991/1992. VMS was enhanced to support a POSIX environment that was modelled after Unix. Unix-like systems were often called 'Open Systems'. The illusion was that the end-user could throw out his original hardware-vendor and choose a new one because "Unix is portable". Bla, Bla, Bla - and so on.

Of course he usually had traded this pseudo-independence from the platfrom provider to another one, e.g. a database vendor.

[Jan van den Ende]

To complete Uwe's story:
... and some marketing "guru's" decided that it would be great to confuse everybody, and give the competition some fine weapons against VMS, by officially renaming it to OpenVMS. There were horrible stories about the tremendously complicated upgrade from VMS to OpenVMS, while in practise, after some small patch, suddenly the system announcement read OpenVMS instead of VMS..
But the damage was done! Great marketing!.

Jan

[Uwe Zessin]

OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2 did announce itself as VAX/VMS V5.5-2 during boot. The 'small' patch is called "OpenVMS VAX V6.0" ;-)

[Alexander_84]

Thanks all for your kind help. Now, is there any command to find out the version on VMS? (though i know that the version installed in my host is VMS V7.2-1).

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Mac Lilley]

Alexander

you can do
$ show system/noprocess
or
$ write sys$output f$getsyi("version")
Regards
ML

[Uwe Zessin]

$ show system/noprocess
OpenVMS V7.3-1 on node ATHENA 5-AUG-2004 15:26:18.52 Uptime 53 06:21:02
$ write sys$output f$getsyi("version")
V7.3-1
$

[Bojan Nemec]

Hi,

The simpliest way is:

$ SHOW SYSTEM

And in the first line you get the version.

Another way is:

$ write sys$output F$GETSYI("VERSION")


Bojan

[Alexander_84]

Thank you for all your support guys.

[Antoniov.]

Alexander
if you know unix command read follow links I used to teach DCL to my collegues.

From unix to vms
http://www.think-forward.com/tips/Ivmsunix.htm
http://www.ctstateu.edu/help/unix/vms2unix.html
http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vmsdoc/UNIX_VMS_CMD_XREF.HTML

From vms to unix
http://www.bc.edu/offices/ats/rits/research/hardware/howto/usingunix/vmstounix/
http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/www_computing/buns/vms_to_unix.html

Cheers
Antonio Vigliotti

[Antoniov.]

Alexader
I've forgotten give you
"Welcome to vms forum" :-)

Here you can try all information you need.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Doug Phillips]

Welcome aboard, Alexander!

You might like to check out the OpenVMS home page at:

http://www.hp.com/go/openvms

and look near the bottom at the Refence Library links. The OpenVMS FAQ should answer most of your questions, and you can look though the documentation from there, too.

Doug

[Keith Parris]

To answer your question about Open Source:

VMS today would not meet the common definition of Open Source. While it is possible to obtain source listings for a price (and while I was an independent consultant, I did have a subscription to get those listings on CD) so that you can examine the source code, learn how VMS works, and examine its security, for example, it is not really practical to modify pieces of VMS based on those listings.

Licenses for VMS as well as compilers and other layered software are available free to hobbyists: see http://openvmshobbist.org/ This makes VMS a "free" operating system to the enthusiast in terms of price.

Also, most of the software popular in the open source world runs on VMS, including the TCP/IP stack, NFS, Apache web server, Perl, Python, PHP, Mozilla web browser, MySQL, Samba, X-Windows / Motif, CDE, Kerberos, SSL, Stunnel, GnuPG, Java, C, C++, etc. And OpenOffice is being ported to VMS.

There is a project called GNV which provides a UNIX environment for VMS, including a BASH shell, Posix support, etc.

And OpenVMS Engineering has a project underway called the Linux/UNIX Portability Initiative which has as its goal the ability to drop any open systems package onto VMS, unmodified, and have it compile and run, making VMS as compatible as any given flavor of Linux or UNIX.

There is a project underway called FreeVMS which aims to produce an open-source clone of VMS; see http://freevms.free.fr/indexGB.html

[Jan van den Ende]

Uwe:


OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2 did announce itself as VAX/VMS V5.5-2 during boot. The 'small' patch is called "OpenVMS VAX V6.0" ;-)


Sorry to disagree, but I am pretty sure that the upgrade from Vax VMS 5.4-2 produced Vax OpenVMS 5.4-3

I'll try to dive in some archives, mayby I can even document it (if it didn't get lost in a removal, that is).

Jan

[Uwe Zessin]

Hello Jan,
of course you can disagree, but I hope I can convince you:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=597784

[Robert Atkinson]

Alexander - there are quite a few VMS forums in existance. One of the better ones is the Yahoo email group :-

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenVMS_Friends/

Rob.

[Jan van den Ende]

Uwe,

that certainly looks convincing!
The only way that I can get that in agreement with my own memory would be that the renaming did NOT happen as a single 'big bang' operation.
The occurrence _I_ anm refering to is the system announcement at login.
I especially remember that specific one, because it really looked like a hasty, untested thing: the VMS announcent string fitted nicely into one line (on an 80-column VT), but for OpenVMS, combined with a dash-version like V5.4-3, the announcement just wrapped!
However, I would assume that the various locations where the version string is used would all use one and the same source string, and then all the above is pure nonsense.
Just for academic curiosity I now would really like to be proved right or wrong on this..

Jan

[Uwe Zessin]

Jan,
I was talking about the boot banner, not the login. You have even quoted that ;-)

Are you sure this wasn't a home-grown SYS$ANNOUNCE/ SYS$WELCOME setup?

The (marketing) name change was with V5.5, when POSIX support appeared - see:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/os/openvms-release-history.html

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Alex,

Note that most "open things" are not that "green grass" like. E.g. the webbrowser mozilla is very slow and eats resources like a pig.

Some fast ports are not mature at all (ssh).

Of course, I never used them on Unix, may be it's the same over there.

Wim

[Jan van den Ende]

Uwe,

YES, I was sure.

And I have found my counter-example, although NOT in a system announce, but in the header of a backup listing.

Notice the Operating System string.

Jan

[Uwe Zessin]

Ah, that is interesting. Was the output really created on a V5.4 system? Can you dump the saveset to ensure it really contains 'OpenVMS'?

[Jan van den Ende]

Uwe,

yes. This is not the only safeset from around that time.
It appeard to be that sub-version number were not mentioned yet; I also have a saveset that states:
"OpenVMS VAX version V5.5" & Backup version: "V5.5-2"


Jan

[Jan van den Ende]

Oeps.

Uwe, seems I jumped too early.
A V4.7 saveset also reports "OpenVMS V4.7", which I am not ready to believe.
And DUMPing the saveset-file DOES display the "Vx.y-z" string, but NOT the VMS or OpenVMS, which is obviously supplied by BACKUP during unpacking.

Now you've done it. Now I definitely won't be content until proved eigther right or wrong... :-(

Jan