Linux on VAX - Dead ?

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Sun, 15 Jan 2023, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:

> >  In principle I haven't abandoned the VAX/Linux effort, but reality may 
> > disagree.  We shall see.  My biggest obstacle has been the distraction 
> > coming from PSU failures (electrolytic capacitor leaks caused by improper 
> > chemistry) forcing me to focus on hardware repairs rather than software 
> > work.
> 
> While the Linux port is a sad story as it somewhat came to an end, at
> least the system availability may get better. You know, I was long
> searching for a room to setup my old system to be 100% operated
> remotely. I'm actually negotiating something right now. :) So hope is
> there that this may actually become a reality!

 Good news indeed! :)

>   The VAX port, as is, is pretty dead. I wouldn't try pulling in newer
> Linux patches into our former tree, but use our arch stuff to add it
> to current Linux. And glibc? What were the most "interesting" issues?
> ISTR that it was threading and possibly a TLS ABI?

 I meant to come up with TLS ABI (with LinuxThreads used in the interim), 
but the main obstacle at the time was the lack of reliable userland.  In 
particular I was unable to use GDB to debug programs whether natively or 
remotely via `gdbserver'.  I suspect there was something wrong with debug 
information and I never got to the bottom of it.  Then other matters took 
over and I never got back to it.

  Maciej