Modern BSD Computing for Fun on a VAX!

Trying to use a VAX in today's world

Jeffrey Armstrong

NetBSD 8 on a VAX

Limitations

VAX 4000/200

  • Introduced January 1991
  • Codenamed Spitfire
  • Fastest pure Qbus computer ever
  • Entry-level server

VAXstation 3100 m38

  • Introduced ~1993
  • Codenamed PVAX rev 7
  • Desktop Workstation

Setting Up a VAX

Setting Up a VAX

Installing NetBSD 8

Installing NetBSD 8

Test execution summary:
    total time:                          19134.0100s
    total number of events:              10000
    total time taken by event execution: 19130.3700
    per-request statistics:
         min:                               1830.00ms
         avg:                               1913.04ms
         max:                               8840.00ms
         approx.  95 percentile:            2209.19ms

Bootstrap pkgsrc




vax# time tar -xzf pkgsrc-2018Q4.tar.gz -C /usr
    50109.89 real      2287.96 user     17527.31 sys

Bootstrap pkgsrc

===> bootstrap started: Tue Mar  5 11:25:56 UTC 2019
===> bootstrap ended:   Thu Mar  7 13:17:40 UTC 2019
   179510.09 real    109170.55 user     16631.73 sys

VAX as a Client

Client Necessities

Client Necessities

  • No Framebuffers
  • Fixed-frequency Monitors
  • Toolkits...

Web Browser

Text Editor

  • vim is compiled twice
  • vim-share
  • vim
  • 2.5 days each?

Languages - Scripting

  • Python
  • PHP
  • Perl
  • Ruby
  • Lua
  • Bash
  • Python: floating point
  • PHP: some extensions require ~1GB to build
  • Perl: required 1 week to build
  • Ruby: disable RDOC - 50K seconds for GEM doc build
  • Databases: stick with SQLite
  • Bash: required 30hrs to build

Languages - Compiled

  • Architecture-Limited: GCC 5.5
  • Go
  • Rust

Source Control

  • git
  • Docs in XML - xslt won't work
  • Solution: install git docs from amd64

VAX as a Server

Server Necessities

  • File Server
  • Web Server
  • Remote Shell

File

  • NFS
  • Samba
  • FTP
  • Disk speed, network speed...
  • Samba requires Python

Web Server

  • bozohttpd
  • nginx

Web Server

  • bozohttpd
  • nginx