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ULTRIX FREEWARE CD-ROMS - Version 2.0 September 2002

(Revision 1.02 - 01.09.02)

ULTRIX FREEWARE CD-ROMS - Version 2.0 September 2002
RISC / VAX
Revision 1.02 – 01.09.02

Joachim Buss
e-mail: joachimbuss@gmx.net

These CD-ROMs are the results of my voluntary effort to gather and build “a few” packages
for the almost archaeological platform DEC ULTRIX. The current version of ULTRIX is from
1995, and today we expect to find a new version of our favourite OS every or maybe every
second year, so ULTRIX is a little behind (for those who might not know: the official ULTRIX
project has been long dead, by now). I hope these CD-ROMs will be a little fix to the
situation. I’m sure you’ll find at least some of these packages useful! – Joachim Buss.

Number of packages for ULTRIX/RISC:

164

Number of packages for ULTRIX/VAX:

Number of packages for OSF/MIPS:

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ULTRIX FREEWARE CD-ROMS - Version 2.0 September 2002

1.1

ULTRIX FREEWARE CD-ROMS

1.2

Contents of the binary CD-ROMs, Disc 1 and 2

(Revision 1.02 - 01.09.02)

/bin-<arch>-<os>

Here are my binaries, modified source code and

some older prebuilt binaries, from various places.

|---./console

Console applications.

|---./daemon

Daemon (server) applications.

|---./library

Development libraries.

|---./X11_clients

X11 client applications.

|---./X11R5

MIT X11R5 full distribution.

|---./X11R6.1

MIT X11R6.1 full distribution (ULTRIX/RISC only).

|---./X11R6.3

MIT X11R6.3 full distribution (ULTRIX/RISC only).

/bzip2-binaries

Binaries you may need to uncompress with.

/screenshots

Some screenshots from my DECstation running
freeware programs (ULTRIX/RISC).

/readme.pdf

This file.

/readme.ps

Same as above but in ps (level 1) format (viewable with
DECwindows CDA Viewer in ULTRIX, OSF/1 or VMS).

1.3

/index-<arch>-<os>.pdf

List and details about the packages.

/index-<arch>-<os>.ps

Same as above but in ps (level 1) format.

/building-software.pdf

Read this if you're going to build new packages.

/building-software.ps

Same as above but in ps (level 1) format.

/os-overview.pdf

My comparison between DECstation OS’s.

/os-overview.ps

Same as above but in ps (level 1) format.

Contents of the source CD-ROM, Disc 3:
/distfiles

Here is all the unmodified source code. The content of
this CD-ROM is not in the ftp-archive, because these
files are freely available at many other ftp-sites such as
ftp://ftp.gnu.org and ftp://ftp.netbsd.org.

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Acquiring the software
The newest versions of my CD-ROMs can be obtained directly from me, Joachim Buss
(please have a look at the section “Contacts”, below), or downloaded (please have a look
at the section “Links”, below). There might be other mirrors for this project soon.

System requirements

3.1

RISC Platform
Most of my software packages will work on all DEC RISC platforms (DECstations and
DECsystems with MIPS CPUs) with ULTRIX/RISC V4.x installed. These packages were
compiled and tested (not very thoroughly, though) on a DECstation 5000/260 128MB
RAM with ULTRIX/RISC V4.5, so other versions of ULTRIX have not been tested. I
suspect some packages may require the Y2K Patch Kit from DEC, so please install it
first (if you don’t have the Y2K Patch Kit, please see building-software.pdf). The RISC
binaries can also be executed on other DECstation operating systems that provide
support for ULTRIX binaries, such as NetBSD/pmax and DEC OSF/1 for MIPS.

3.2

VAX Platform
I think you can use almost any package on any VAX architecture machine that is
running ULTRIX/RISC V4.x. I've compiled all my VAX packages on a VAXstation 3100
M30, the only VAX computer I have. I havn't tested any of my VAX packages on any
other computer, so I can't be sure whether or not my binaries will work on other
models of VAXen. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

3.3

Requirements for reading / mounting the CD-ROM
The CD-ROMs were created on a PC, so I chose to use a genuine ISO 9660 (Level 2) file
system, which allows long filenames. You should be able to mount the CD-ROM with
the following command "mount

-r

-t

cdfs

/dev/rz4c

/cdrom" from ULTRIX

(assuming you have included support for the ISO 9660 file system in your running
kernel, and assuming that your CD-ROM drive's SCSI ID is 4).
If you have trouble with this you might have an incompatible SCSI CD-ROM drive.
Generally speaking, a DECstation running ULTRIX will only work with DEC original
CD-ROM drives, while a VAXstation can support various other drives, such as older
Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic drives

(you can check out Dennis’ site at

http://sites.inka.de/pcde/dec-cdrom-list.txt). If this is your problem, I suggest that
you copy the CD-ROM contents to your DECstation/VAX from another computer that
can read my CD-ROMs.

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ULTRIX FREEWARE CD-ROMS - Version 2.0 September 2002

3.4

(Revision 1.02 - 01.09.02)

Disk space requirements
Since all my compiled packages include source code as well as the binaries, the
temporary disk space requirement for a "make install" is that of the uncompressed
fully built package source tree. More extensive packages like the MIT X-window system
will need hundreds of megabytes as temporary disk space. If you have a small hard
disk drive (e.g. an RZ23 or maybe an RZ55) in your DECstation/VAX you can choose
to extract only the binaries and install them in a directory of your choice, by hand.
Another alternative would be to extract the directory trees on another UNIX/Linux
machine that can act as an NFS server for your DEC computer.
The size requirement of an installed package is roughly double the size of the
compressed packages or maybe a bit more, especially if the package contains a lot of
small files (i.e. gcc-2.95.2 or the MIT X-window system). I haven’t really had time to
check this, but one thing is clear: all ULTRIX binaries are large because they're
statically linked. RISC binaries are also much larger than VAX binaries because VAX is
a CISC platform which uses shorter, more complicated instuction sets, and RISC
(MIPS) runs faster with fewer instuctions but needs larger amounts of binary code to
do the same as VAX.

Installing the packages

4.1

Uncompressing the archives
You

can

uncompress

any

package

archive

with

the

command

"bzip2

-d

archive.tar.bz2; tar xf archive.tar". bzip2 is quite slow, especially on VAX, so I’d

recommend uncompressing on another faster computer, if that is at all possible. You
might want to install the GNU tar (and of course bzip2) first so you can use the
command "tar jxf archive.tar.bz2" directly. This is supported with GNU tar version
1.13.25 and newer. For your convenience I have included bzip2 binaries for as many
computer platforms as possible.
When the package directory tree has been extracted, you can enter it, and run the
command "make install". This will copy the package files into their right places in
your file structure. Many Makefiles require GNU make utility, so it's a good idea to
install it first. Please have a look at the README (or INSTALL) files that comes with the
packages separately, also.
4.2

Where will all the files go?
I've used the default prefix for almost all packages, in other words "/usr/local" and
most binaries will go in “/usr/local/bin”. You can add this to your PATH variable.

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(Revision 1.02 - 01.09.02)

You can always extract and install any binary, by hand, anywhere you like. This will
always work in ULTRIX, because the binaries don’t require any shared libraries (i.e. the
libraries have been linked into each and every binary file).
4.3

Dependencies
As mentioned above, there are no shared libraries in ULTRIX, so the only way these
software components depend upon each other is if a program actually needs to run
other programs. You will probably get some error messages complaining about this, in
case something is missing.
I haven't had the time to test every single package much, so I can't guarantee that
every package work in every configuration. The dependencies I've filled in the table
index.pdf, are merely my guesses!

4.4

Troubleshooting
First of all, make sure you have set you system clock to current date. If you don’t have
the Y2K Patch Kit, please see building-software.pdf.
If the "make install" procedure fails you might have to set up some soft links so the
build directory will think it is on one of my computers. Please look at the column "Build
in" in the table index.pdf, to figure out what soft links to make. You should set up the
links so that your current build directory (extracted from one of my packages) will exist
also in the same place as it did on my DECstation/VAXstation. Many packages won’t
install with ULTRIX make so I recommend that you always use GNU make.

Binaries from starfish.osfn.org
These are binaries built by Bert DeKnuydt in Belgium. Please see his documentation
for more information, in the file “<cdrom>/starfish.osfn.org/ultrix/index.html”.

Binaries for DEC OSF/1 on MIPS
Since all versions of DEC OSF/1 on MIPS are develoment releases, i.e. can be
considered unstable beta releases, I include these are binaries for testing purposes
only. Nevertheless, if you like OSF/1 better than ULTRIX or NetBSD, I see no reason
why you could not use my OSF/1 on MIPS binaries (or this platform, for that matter).
Please note that you can run most ULTRIX/RISC binaries directly on OSF/1 on MIPS,
too.

Disclaimer – Use my binaries at your own risk!
These binary packages have been built under different configurations and under
different circumstances. Many packages needed source code or Makefile modification
to build. I can not guarantee that all the packages work flawlessly. Install only if you
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(Revision 1.02 - 01.09.02)

have complete backup of your system! If you use these packages, it will be at your own
risk!

Contribution
If you have managed to compile some nice software for ULTRIX/RISC or ULTRIX/VAX
that you want to share with others and me, you can contact me. I would gladly se to it,
that your contributing packages will be available for download!
If you've got a working cross-compiler environment available for Intel x86 or DEC
Alpha that will build binaries for ULTRIX/RISC or ULTRIX/VAX I'm very interested in
trying it out.

Contacts
Joachim Buss

Author of this document

joachimbuss@gmx.net

David Airlie

Contact at Skynet

airlied@csn.ul.ie

Mattias Nordlund

Contact at Eagle Computing

mathew@eagle.y.se

Dennis Grevenstein

Computer enthusiast

dennis@pcde.inka.de

Bert DeKnuydt

Freeware “guru”

“Lord Isildur”

DEC enthusiast

isildur@vaxpower.org

10 Links
My ULTRIX (RISC and VAX) Freeware Archive hosted by Skynet, The University of
Limerick Computer Society, Ireland
ftp://ftp.skynet.ie/ultrix_freeware
http://ftp.skynet.ie/pub/ultrix_freeware
mirrors at Eagle Computing, Sweden:
ftp://ftp.eagle.y.se/pub/ultrix/freeware
ftp://ftp.xanthosmicrosystems.com/pub/ultrix/freeware
http://ftp.xanthosmicrosystems.com/pub/ultrix/freeware
ULTRIX (RISC and VAX) Freeware Archive at The Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island
Inc, U.S.A.
http://starfish.osfn.org/ultrix/index.html
ULTRIX (RISC and VAX) Freeware Archive at Gesellschaft zur Foerderung kommunikativer
Medien, Germany
ftp://ftp.mayn.de/pub/dec/ultrix

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