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Digital UNIX/Tru64 Notes

A few notes and external links related to Digital UNIX/Tru64 that may eventually get organised to somewhere else.

Quick Notes

• v4.0D introduces y2k compatibility. Earlier releases are not fully y2k compatible but there is an updated date command for them to allow setting dates past 1999 which should be in the latest aggregate patch kit
• According to this page, support for DEC 2000/3000/4000/7000/10000 systems was dropped after v5.1
• Notes about setting up 5.1B-4:
  • It has a font server but its not running by default. This section of the manual describes how to set it up but for quick testing you can just run /usr/bin/X11/xfs.
    • To use it with xming, add -fp tcp/10.0.1.68:7100 (with the correct IP of course) to the command line arguments.
      • This gets you fonts but only at one size which is far from ideal and makes the CDE file manager hard to use. Need to figure out why other font sizes dont work.
  • The 5.1B-4 associated products CDs are missing a few things that were present in previous releases. To install them you had to fetch them from the website which required filling out a form so unfortunately the wayback machine doesn't have them. If you've got older 5.1B media kits you can also just install older versions of these from there. The products moved to web download only (most of which are available here) were:
    • Insight Management Agents
    • Java
    • Mozilla
    • Secure Web Server
    • WEBES
    • Advanced Server for UNIX (ASU)
    • DECevent
    • DataDirect SequeLink
    • Tru64 UNIX to HP-UX ST
    • binaryscan
    • hpuxman
  • The 5.1B-4 Media Kit doesn't include the Open Source Software Collection (formerly freeware) or Linux and Tru64 UNIX Portability Tools CDs. While the software on these CDs is pretty out of date it may still be useful. The CDs from the 5.1B media kit are:
    • AG-RHAYF-BS HP Tru64 UNIX v5.1B, Open Source Software Collection: RPM Install
    • AG-RPQ6C-BS HP Tru64 UNIX v5.1B, Open Source Software Collection: sources
    • AG-RQ08C-BS Linux and Tru64 UNIX Portability Tools: RPM Install, v5.4
    • AG-RQBRC-BS Linux and Tru64 UNIX Portability Tools: Sources, v5.3
  • User groups:
    • The sysadmin group is enough for most admin tasks - when running SysMan you'll get asked if you want to run it as root or yourself, choosing the root option prompts for the root password
    • If you want to be able to su as root you'll need the system group. Giving yourself this group won't take effect immediately - you probably need to log out/log in again.
  • The documentation CD should be mounted at /usr/share/doclib/online (eg, mount /dev/disk/cdrom0a /usr/share/doclib/online). If you want to have it always available without the CD in the drive you can just overwrite /usr/share/doclib/online/DOCS with the same directory from the CD.
  • The confusingly labeled "HP Tru64 UNIX V5.1B-3 Version 5.1B-4 December 2006" CD-ROM is the 5.1B-4 update CD. To install the 5.1B-4 update in multi-user mode (something you probably shouldn't do if the machine is at all important/in production), put the CD in the drive then:
    1. mount -r /dev/disk/cdrom0a /mnt
    2. cd /mnt/patch_kit
    3. Read the release notes and patch install instructions, or if you don't care if something breaks then just continue on
    4. as the root user, ./dupatch and give /mnt/patch_kit as the path when prompted. You'll get a message about a new version of the patch tools being installed.
    5. a the menu, choose option 1 - patch installation
    6. at the next menu, choose option 3 - check & install in Multi-User mode
    7. You'll get a warning about installing patches in multi-user mode and to insure no other users are logged in and nothing important is running. Answer y
    8. View the license: choose q to quit viewing, then agree with y
    9. It will then check the patch kits integrity, then gathers information - this all takes a few minutes
    10. View the special patch instructions
    11. Answer y to make the patch reversible if you like
    12. Answer y to proceed with installation
    13. Enter your name
    14. Enter any notes, enter a '.' on a line by itself to finish
    15. Installation of 62 patches then happens - this takes a while
    16. Configuration of the patches happens - lots of merging config files
    17. Then its kernel build time - if you have a pre-existing config file, answer y otherwise n. It turns out I did have an existing config file which had the same name as the hostname
    18. Once the kernel build has completed you're shown the special instructions again
    19. Choose to reboot now (option 1)

Links

• Tru64 packages from parsec
• GCC
  • Tru64 < v5.1 was obsoleted in GCC 4.5 and removed in 4.6
  • Tru64 was obsoleted entirely in GCC 4.7 and removed in 4.8
  • Compiling GCC 4.4.7 on Tru64 5.1B
  • Compiling GCC 4.7.4 on Tru64 5.1B - this is the final release compatible with Tru64
• Installing OpenSSH on Tru64 UNIX 4.0F
• The old Digital UNIX/Tru64 website from the Internat Archive on a variety of dates:
  • Digital UNIX, 1996
  • Digital UNIX, 1998
  • Compaq Tru64 UNIX, 2001
  • HP Tru64 UNIX, 2004
  • HP Tru64 UNIX, 2011
  • HP Tru64 UNIX, 2015
  • HPE Tru64 UNIX, 2016
  • The website was removed starting July 2017
• DEC/Compaq/HP once offered non-commercial licenses for hobbyists
  • Slashdot article
  • Archived compaq website
  • HP version of the noncommercial page
  • Included licenses were: OSF-BASE (Base OS), OSF-SVR (Server Extensions), OSF-USR (User), and OSF-DEV (Developers Toolkit). The C++ compiler requires CXXOSF so no DEC C++ with the hobbyist license
  • This was discontinued sometime prior to October 2007 based on emails to HP, but they were willing to send out licenses and media kits for free on request as recently as that date. I imagine any handing out of free hobbyist licenses ended long before Tru64 became unsupported in 2012 making them unobtainable today