back to article Windows NT grandaddy OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard

Digital Compaq HP has announced the end of support for various flavours of OpenVMS, the ancient but trustworthy server operating system whose creator went on to build Windows NT. OpenVMS started out as VAX/VMS on Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX minicomputers, then later was ported to DEC's fast Alpha RISC chips – before …

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  1. Alan Bourke

    Used it on VAXEN

    ... in college in the late 80's. It was a bit of an eye-opener after Commodore BASIC.

    RIP

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Used it on VAXEN

      The technical college in my home town kept their Vax for programming classes despite its age, as it provided a perfect environment for teaching C programming - text editor, compiler, debugger and profiler all accessed via VT320 terminals. They were even able to reboot it into Unix (2.11BSD I think) when the need arose.

    2. Allison Park
      Paris Hilton

      ouch

      And who said Itanium was end of life? Looks healthy to me.... NOT

  2. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    So OpenVMS is now shut :)

    I had to write a driver for our recovery software for VMS. You could see how much NTFS was based off Files-11. Having to deal with VMS attributes was no fun but we came up with a scripted solution eventually so we could do VMS recoveries under Windows but I also had to generate the VMS script and it doesn't even use 'standard' path syntax from what I remember.

    Bloody worked though :)

    1. xperroni
      Coat

      Yeah, I remember working on an OpenVMS machine (running a DEC RDB server no less) in the early 2000's and thinking its path syntax was really awkward. I was also taken aback by the inbuilt file versioning, though time and again I've come to think modern OS'es could do worse than implementing something of the sort – as indeed they do.

  3. btrower

    Sad day

    It is sad to see a venerable operating system like this go. I expect it will be kept alive somehow, though.

    I remember when you could run an operating system *plus* programs in just a couple thousand bytes. People coming to this from later years should know that the monstrously bloated systems we have now are not like that because of some law of nature or mathematics. They are like that because we honored people like Steve Jobs instead of people like Dennis Ritchie.

    The forces driving early development are not what drive it now. However, there are, most certainly, software developers who honor the legacy of the generation before. They do their best under the current monstrous systems to produce things with small footprints and elegant design.

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Sad day

      R.I.P PURGE

      1. Charles Manning
        Unhappy

        Re: Sad day

        PURGE/KEEP=0 sniff

    2. Tom 38

      Re: Sad day

      I remember when your programs came on listings you typed in from the magazine. I think the new way is better.

      Users want features. We give them features. This makes the programs bigger.

      The easiest way to make features is to build re-usable layers of components. This makes all the programs much bigger.

      The way to make the programs smaller with all the features that the users still want is to remove all the encapsulation from all layers of the program. This makes the program buggier.

    3. Jim 59

      Re: Sad day

      Dennis Ritchie (RIP) and Steve Jobs (RIP) are still slogging it out:

      Jobs -> Apple -> ipod -> iphone

      Ritchie -> Unix -> Linux -> Android -> clobbering time

    4. Ru

      Re: Sad day

      The forces driving early development are not what drive it now.

      And this is why VMS systems had uptimes longer than Microsoft operating system product lifespans. That's a feature that definitely doesn't get copied enough.

    5. ecofeco Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Sad day

      "...the monstrously bloated systems we have now are not like that because of some law of nature or mathematics. They are like that because we honored people like Steve Jobs instead of people like Dennis Ritchie."

      Got THAT right. And others like him and the corporate whore-ti-culture that went with it.

  4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Nearly made it

    I started programming on a PDP 11/40 in 1974. Now I'm nearing retirement age it is really sad to see such a wonderful O/S pensioned off.

    Add to that the fantastic 20 years I spent at DEC in Reading then you can see that VMS was a big part of my working life.

    Pretty well everything else since then has been downhill.

    VMS Clustering still takes a lot to be beaten if you ask me.... Introduced in 1983, dies in 2013 RIP

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Nearly made it

      "......OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard" We've been winding up our VMS dinosaurs that they didn't need a bullet - the old stuff justed needed a loud "boo!" to drop dead! It will be missed, a bit like that old Mini that was fun and just kept going you had "back in the day". Of course, take off the rose-tinted specs and you probably wouldn't be swapping your modern motor for that old British Leyland product!

      But VMS does live on, it is now OpenVMS (www.openvms.org), where you can read the hp letter (http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=13/06/06/2422149) that Mr Poven seems to have missed whilst rushing to write VMS's obituary:

      ".....We are committed to providing you updates and support for the V8.4 OpenVMS operating environment through at least December 31, 2020......"

      So not quite dead just yet.

      1. Liam Proven Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Nearly made it

        The letter that is the *first link in the story,* you mean?

        BTW, another small thing given your immense attention to detail: it's "Proven", with an R.

        HTH. HAND.

        1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: Nearly made it

          "The letter that is the *first link in the story,* you mean?...." Most sorry, I though that had been added by the editor, seeing as I couldn't grasp how anyone could have read the letter but still insisted the "killing" was immediate. Apologies for assuming that you had merely been ill-informed rather than deliberately misleading.

          ".....another small thing given your immense attention to detail....." You want to quibble over a typo after deliberately ignoring the seven plus years until VMS is really dead? Surely passing on that quite key bit of information was more important to the majority of the readers rather than the spelling of your name. Are we maybe a little egocentric? Forget the pot, that's like the chimney calling the kettle "slightly dark"!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nearly made it

        You need to learn when to stop digging and keep a discreet silence, Mr Bryant.

        But since you didn't do that here...

        "We are committed to providing you updates and support for the V8.4 OpenVMS operating environment through at least December 31, 2020..."

        A year or so ago, HP were saying in public that they were "committed" to delivering VMS on Poulson (that's the next generation Itanium, for those who have understandably been ignoring the world of IA64).

        HP have reneged on that announced commitment. They're now saying that the "port" to Poulson is too expensive (?!).

        In that context, and given that VMS engineering and support was offshored from New England a few years back, what sensible VMS customer is going to believe the 2020 commitment?

        Sensible customers will see 2020 and realise it's a high risk gamble. I expect IBM will be getting a little unexpected new business in the next few years.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: AC Re: Nearly made it

          ".....digging....." More like taking a dig at Mr Poven - oh, sorry, that's Proven, wouldn't want to upset him again. ;)

          ".....They're now saying that the "port" to Poulson is too expensive (?!)....." Agreed, I suspect it is more a case of a little less will than any actual great difficulty. The Poulson cores aren't different enough from Tukwila to require a port, but spending the lab time and money on verifying OpenVMS with the new i4 servers seems to be a task hp can't be bothered with (they have to verify the new servers before they can offer support on them). With hp not offering support for the new i4 servers that leaves current OpenVMS customers with the Tukwila kit at best until December 2020. Maybe hp just weren't seeing enough new OpenVMS licences going out the door to make it commercially viable.

          ".....I expect IBM will be getting a little unexpected new business in the next few years." LOL, now that's just wishful thinking! Customers porting off OpenVMS will probably be going to x64Linux rather than opting for the equally unsure route of AIX-Power, and IBM is trying to sell off their x64 server biz. If they're miffed enough with hp they might call Dell, but probably not IBM. Nice attempted troll though.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nearly made it

        But no new versions, just like Tru64. So yes, basically dead.

        HP killed the wrong CPU (Alpha instead of Itanium) and also killed the wrong OSs (Tru64 & OpenVMS instead of that horrible HP-UX).

        They're dead set on becoming non-existent.

        1. Ramazan

          Re: HP killed the wrong OS (Tru64 instead of that horrible HP-UX).

          IMNSHO both Tru64 and HP-UX are awful, but still better than AIX. Modern Unices are all about Linux and Solaris though.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nearly made it

      @Steve Davies 3: "Pretty well everything else since then has been downhill".

      Very true indeed. I still marvel at the spectacle of Microsoft and others struggling to solve problems that DEC had dealt with in 1985. VMS reminds me strongly of Professor Hoare's remark about ALGOL 60:

      'The more I ponder the principles of language design, and the techniques that put them into practice, the more is my amazement at and admiration of ALGOL 60. Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors'.

      - C.A.R. Hoare, "Hints on Programming Language Design", 1973

    3. JohnG

      Re: Nearly made it

      About VMS Clustering - I haven't seen anything quite as flexible since. Clustering via disk or network interfaces. You could share any resource that could be given a name.

      There were many other nice features, such as automatic file versioning and a very comprehensive and easy to use help system.

      Pathworks had versions for both MS-DOS and MAC - to my knowledge, the first to allow DOS and MAC systems to share the same folders and printers.

  5. Andy Roid McUser
    Joke

    Hazards of scan reading.

    "The architect of RSX-11M and VMS was Dave Cutler, who planned a portable, object-oriented successor, PRISM"

    It's a testament to the longevity of VMS that the NSA managed to integrate PRISM into Google/Microsoft/Facebook. Why isn't Dave Cutler answering privacy questions.

  6. Ralph B
    IT Angle

    That GUI

    That GUI is better than Unity

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That GUI

      The you'll be glad to know that CDE was open sourced a little while ago :)

      http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

      Latest release was just over a week ago, with many improvements for running it on modern Linux and BSD systems.

      1. keithpeter Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: That GUI

        Google CDEbian for a live iso/VM image of Debian Squeeze with CDE 2.2.0 as the desktop (desktop manager appears to be Slim). Boots in 55Mb of Ram on my thinkpad off a USB stick made using unetbootin.

        I've added that iso to my User Interface Museum... but I'll stick with xfce for normal use!

      2. Liam Proven Silver badge

        Re: That GUI

        Yes it was. Yours truly wrote the article that covered the release for the Reg.

        Said article was of course behind the "CDE Desktop" link in the story... but thanks for the update.

      3. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Re: That GUI

        > The you'll be glad to know that CDE was open sourced a little while ago :)

        The fact that CDE was closed source was one of the things that led to the creation of KDE and GNOME.

        CDE only was liberated when it became painfully obvious that everyone had moved on (including the likes of Sun).

    2. karakalWitchOfTheWest

      Re: That GUI

      No. It isn't...

      It is a horrible very unproductive mess.

      I am sorry too to see VMS go, but nope, modern User Interfaces are better and more beautiful...

  7. BoldMan

    RIP indeed - spent many years working on VAX/VMS systems of all flavours in many jobs from the early 80s onwards. Anyone else remember VaxNotes - a bulletin board system that ran on the VAX? Any ex-BPers out there? :)

    1. A J Stiles
      Happy

      Vax Notes

      I remember Vax Notes fondly. And Vax Phone. Wasted many a happy afternoon during my university days, thanks to those two .....

      And VAX/VMS had proper file versioning! A full filename was something like "LOGIN.COM;43" but this could be shortened to "LOGIN.COM" which would use the most recent version. If you created a new LOGIN.COM then it would become version 44 -- version 43 would not be deleted, until you had accumulated too many versions of the same file.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Vax Notes

        "version 43 would not be deleted, until you had accumulated too many versions of the same file."

        That rather depended on your sysadmin. A friend of mind found she was working with a BOFH who had PURGE as a scripted nightly (*) task, just to keep the disc lean you understand.

        (* OK, I don't think it actually survived to run a second night, but that was the original intention.)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Vax Notes

          >A friend of mind found she was working with a BOFH who had PURGE as a scripted nightly

          Can't have been a very good BOFH. All you'd need to do was after the first purge change the version limit property of the directory to 1. This would ensure that no matter when a file was edited there'd only be the latest version.

          1. Stoneshop
            Pint

            Re: Vax Notes

            All you'd need to do was after the first purge change the version limit property of the directory to 1.

            That would need a rather crafty setup, as any directory from your home directory down would be owned by you, so you'd be able to change the file limit back, and he'd need to have a batchjob running that sets the file limit on any directory you've created that day, plus purge the files in it anyway. Having directories not owned by you but writable by you (so you can't change the file limit) requires more acl-fu than I'd care to think up after working hours.

  8. Munchausen's proxy
    Pint

    Shit. Not just the end of VMS (the Open is silent), but in a way, the final nail in a great company, laid low by beancounters in the executive suite destroying the good efforts of engineers at the working face.

    For what it's worth, OpenVMS runs very well on the remarkable SIMH emulator. No telling how long HP will make available the disk images, but a search for 'OpenVMS Hobbyist' should prove useful to anyone who wants to see the OS running on their own PC.

    1. Down not across

      SIMH is great. Although I do prefer to run mine on KA49 in my VAXstation 4000, much to the delight of the beancounters of the electricity supplier. Especially when running cluster of them.

      >>> show config

      KA49-A V1.2-09D-V4.3 83 MHZ

      08-00-2B-C0-FF-EE

      128MB

      DEVNBR DEVNAM INFO

      ------ -------- --------------------------

      1 NVR OK

      2 LCSPX OK

      Highres 72Hz - 8 Plane 4Mpixel FB - V1.1

      3 DZ OK

      4 CACHE OK

      5 MEM OK

      128MB 0A,0B,0C,0D=16MB, 1E,1F,1G,1H=16MB

      6 FPU OK

      7 IT OK

      8 SYS OK

      9 NI OK

      10 SCSI OK

      6-INITR 7-L0-RZ26B

      11 AUD OK

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "... much to the delight of the beancounters of the electricity supplier".

        Only until they start getting paid more for NOT selling you electricity.

  9. JimC

    Yeah its funny how many facilities we had on the Vax at college

    would be very welcome right here and right now... Still, I suppose over the years I've earned a fair few quids for coping with DOS/NTs inadequacies and Netware's eccentricities so I shouldn't complain...

  10. Christine Hedley Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Bummer

    How terribly sad. I have fond memories of VMS, both as a DECcie and before: it was my first "real" computer system back when I was at college in the '80s. Unix was more fun to hack around on, but VMS had a nice reassuring solidity to it.

    Sounds like DEC's classic old marketing strategy is still living on at HP, at least: "we don't know how to sell this thing, so we'll get rid of it."

  11. JLH
    Unhappy

    Sad

    That's sad news.

    VMS was really good - as the article says they clustered together easily.

    When I was a graduate student at CERN my experiment used VAX clusters - we got to the bigegst size you could run (somewhere near 120 machines if I'm not wrong) and then started on the next!

    In the later days we were using Alphas in the clusters also.

    Wrote my thesis on a Vaxstation 3000. Sniff. I still have it on a TK50 tape somewhere!

    1. Philip Lewis
      Holmes

      Re: Sad

      96 IIRC

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sad

        96 members in the cluster was what had been formally tested, and thus was in DEC's legally binding Software Product Description, and therefore what was formally supported.

        It was often the case that things that were technically possible in principle but weren't formally supported would likely work anyway, either immediately or after a bit of tinkering .Over 96 nodes in a cluster was a "works right away" case, if I remember rightly.

        There was nothing magic about 96. You could have more than 96 nodes. People did. But if it didn't work, it hadn't been tested, wasn't supported, and it wasn't necessarily going to be fixed. Properly testing a 96node cluster needed a certain amount of kit, and time, and skill.

        A cluster of that size wasn't necessarily a bright idea anyway unless you knew what you were doing. But in the right hands they could, and did, work.

        Happy days.

        1. Stoneshop

          Re: Sad

          In the cluster internals the node number is a single byte, which can't be 0 or 255 (and 254, I think), so theoretically you could go up to 253, but that includes cluster storage controllers.

          You'll need a serious amount of kit, and need to spend some time on storage and interconnect layout, but after that it'll Just Work.

          Whether a sane setup needs a cluster that big is another matter entirely, but the IT definition of 'sane' is anything but, anyway.

  12. rob_leady
    Stop

    Are you sure...?

    If you read through the linked articles, there's no such mention of a 2015 "death" date.

    OK, so they're not going to port to the latest Itanium processor, but it reads to me as though OpenVMS is going to be around and supported for many years yet...

  13. John Riddoch

    Er, not quite accurate

    "Support will finally end in 2015" - for old versions and anything on Alpha. From the link on openvms.org, "We will also extend Integrity i2 server hardware support through at least December 31, 2020."

  14. ForthIsNotDead

    Bullet proof

    Bullet proof operating system. Used it for running mission critical SCADA applications. Totally dependant. A bit terse and pedantic, but you grew to respect it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bullet proof

      A previous employer wrote warehouse management systems in a mixture of C and FORTRAN, originally for the PDP-11 and later for VMS on the Vax. Despite the company having moved onto coding C and C++ for Tru64 on Alpha hardware, one client insisted on continuing with their Vax system because of the reliability. As a result my employer had to keep an experienced FORTRAN programmer on the payroll just for that one client.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: Bullet proof

      Why is "pedantic" bad ? Because it forces you to do things properly ? Not the "C" style of fudging your way to a "working system". Which can then be downed by "ping of death" ??

  15. John Gamble

    It Used to be the Unix/VMS Divide

    My first "real" job was on VMS for a well-regarded engineering firm. One thing I learned is that fighting the philosophy of the design is a waste of time -- the OS wasn't Unix? Fine, use what the OS provides, stop trying to make it behave in a way it wasn't designed for. As I shifted between jobs using VMS and jobs using Unix, I came to appreciate and embrace the differences. This became particularly important as VMS started adding security features that Unix hadn't figured out yet.

    Eventually Unix won, of course (and got more secure). I think that's a deserved win, but every once in a while I do think "What would VMS do?" and it helps in the design process.

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