VLF: VLF Notes: VMware ESXi for VSI/VMS hobbyists @ 2024.12.03

From [email protected] Tue Dec 03 11:16:09 2024
From: Subcommandante XDelta <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: VLF Notes: VMware ESXi for VSI/VMS hobbyists
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2024 11:16:09 +1100
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Dear comp.os.vms collegiates,

The purpose of this VLF (VMS Liberation Front) note is to provide a
resource - VMware ESXi - for VSI/VMS hobbyists who want to get closer
to the bare metal than what VirtualBox can provide.

VMware.ESXi.v8.0.2-BTCRiSO

It can be downloaded from the Usenet Binaries Newgroups:

https://www.nzbking.com/?q=VMware.ESXi.v8.0.2-BTCRiSO

And unpacked with your favourite archiving utility.

It's straight from Scene Source, pure as the driven snow, clean as a
whistle, and you can bet your nuclear reactor on it.

It is kindly provided by our esteemed colleagues elsewhere in the
general RCE (Reverse Code Engineering) Scene.

BTB, the VLF Project is mostly retired - it was founded and forged in
the dim, dark, dismal, days of 2011-2012, when VMS was at its
near-death nadir, near its 35th anniversary, and the catastrophic
collapse of VMS mindshare looked imminent - so two ex-digits gave HP
the finger, and decided we were going to put up a hell of a fight - we
were old as the hills, mad as hell, and quite possibly mad, and we
weren't going to take it anymore - and we vowed to continue until our
system clocks ran down.

We were quite productive in those early years with the release of the
LMFgen and a serendipitous mother-lode treasure-trove of Stromasys
CHARON VAX/AXP/PDP hardware virtualisers, courtesy of a rather
casually protected FTP server, back in the day.

We delivered the best for the benighted and beleaguered VAX/VMS and
AXP/VMS hobbyists, and indeed, there is no VAX/VMS or AXP/VMS
hobbyist, or, indeed, shop, that cannot continue to run, with the
consequent preservation of VMS mindshare - and any VAX/VMS or AXP/VMS
shop that continues to run, is one that can migrate to VSI/VMS, rather
than migrate away from VMS.

We terminated the risk of an extinction level event (ELE) of VMS
mindshare - and we make no apologies for that.

About a decade ago, one of our old-hand digit, Aussie, sympathisers,
apprised, and briefed, that pioneering elder statesman of DEC
Australia, Mr Max Burnet, whom, sadly, passed away in 2023, of the
existence and the works of the VLF, and he reported back that Mr
Burnet had a tear in his eye as he said "That such VMS fanatics
exist." - that is the only validation we have needed, really, that our
methods were sound (per Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now) and that our
path was true.

https://www.acsfoundation.com.au/post/max-burnet-oam-a-technology-legend

Back in the day on comp.os.vms we copped a lot of brickbats, when we
made out entrance out of left field, particularly from IP fetishists
that would rather have seen VMS die from the violating IP owners (HP),
than see IP violated - but as we patiently and persistently reminded
comp.os.vms collegiates - that because the VLF exists, none of them,
with their backs against the wall, would have their hand forced to do
exactly what we had done.

We fondly recall one of our most energetic critics, at that time -
Herr "Gott im Himmel" Helbig - we did discuss, to wind him up,
pretending to be "KremVax" Russian hackers, giving the VMS anglosphere
a grandparental master class in egg husbandry about how to sort
matters out - however, we thought the better of it, and didn't want to
raise his Teutonic blood pressure - I'm sure that, IRL, we could have
buried the hatchet, sorted out our differences, and enjoyed a few
beer-steins of quality German lagered products, together.

With the welcome advent of both VSI (VMS Software International) and
the VMS Generations group, roughly around the same time, IIRC, we
decided that there may well be a brighter future for VMS, and the VMS
ecosystem, and consequently we dialed back the exigent urgency of our
VLF Project bucket-list action-items.

What with doting on grand-children, attending to portfolios of medical
woes, and the relativistic time contraction with advancing age, the
years have rolled by.

We do regret not getting around to releasing Oracle/RBD for the VMS
hobbyists.

We do regret not releasing the LMFgen in the proper, and fitting,
manner which was originally intended, back in 2012 - as BLISS, and
VAXC, full source code - also compiled for VAX and AXP, and designed
for integration as DCL Verbs. We also intended to write the LMFgen as
a DCL Command Script, so that it was comprehensible to any VMS person
- DCL is capable of great elegance - the joys of lexical discourse!

A technical note to VSI - there is absolutely nothing wrong with the
License Management Facility (LMF) - it's elegantly fit for purpose -
VMS people are rules players, the LMF allows them to know where they
stand. Allow license types that give confidence to VMS shops that it's
safe and secure to continue with VMS, and not have to plan to migrate
away, should VSI ever go belly up - the VMS Generations group have
very sage advice on that, as always, providing reliable North Star
navigation, from the VMS ecosystem.

Another technical note to VSI - please do not think to complicate your
code-bases with byzantine, and diabolical, protection systems -
excellence sells - maintain focus on that. There is no protection
system that cannot be bypassed.

Case in point, the terminated targets from these Stellar underground
RCE Scene groups: MAGNiTUDE, XFORCE, and CORE, to name but a few:

https://predb.net/group/MAGNiTUDE?page=1&q=apps&type=section

https://predb.net/group/XFORCE?page=1&q=MAGNiTUDE&type=group

https://predb.net/group/CORE?page=1&q=XFORCE&type=group

In the audio underground RCE Scene, Team R2R (Reverse to
Revolutionise) rule supreme as comprehensive protection demolition
experts - indeed their releases tend to start faster, operate faster,
with substantial less audio latency:

https://audioz.download/?do=search&story=R2R

A reassurance to VSI - the VLF never, ever, intended, or intend, to
reverse engineer the VSI licensing systems - we want both VSI, and the
VMS Ecosystem, to thrive, and to thrive vigorously, and to continue to
do so.

A history of VLF releases and comp.os.vms communiques can be found
here:

https://pastebin.com/u/VLF

Please note carefully that there are no direct links for the
downloading of our releases, it is purely informational (NFO) only.

The VLF releases, however, can be found and downloaded on
alt.binaries.warez, and also downloaded from this underground RCE
Scene Distro repository:

https://webscene.ir/distro/VLF

Archive Password: webscene.ir

All the VLF releases have been uploaded to the IPFS (Inter-Planetary
File System) resilient, persistent, file system, in preparation for
when my system clock runs down:

A reliable, simple, IPFS downloader:

https://github.com/ipfs/ipget

https://ipfs.io/

Note: IPFS downloads (at least on Windows) can lose file extensions -
simply tack ".rar" to the end of the downloaded file.

LiBREVMS.LMFGEN.OpenVMS.Tru64.OSF1.ULTRIX.v1.2.WinALL.x86.x64.KEYGEN-VLF
ipfs://QmPSnMKkJNf6QPwHerC8duma7xcvnoKFUZQUQZRJzEzwRi

Stromasys.CHARON-11.v2.5.Build.117.Retail.WinALL.x86.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmdmhhY3X6XPte47ayLt2PVFrRPucM4YX7j1YFeVg7eX1q

Stromasys.CHARON-AXP.v4.2.Build.142-01.68704122.Retail.GNU.Linux.x64.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmbtiLpeJHaiYBKS2hRiMskbj9WsQTBppqWvdT7Y9v1p6A

Stromasys.CHARON-AXP_4100_DS_ES_GS.v4.1.Build.129-04.Retail.WinALL.x64.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmT5Qw8LSSmJiv4dSBnXieGttCspqwDbp3odSFnHiz2vcU

Stromasys.CHARON-VAX_Xx_66x0.v4.0.Build.122-04.Retail.WinALL.x86.x64.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmZ3Mfpgi9hKoLtRpJMd7FfFVkhBpbUr5yEnmVKtDPdGqb

Stromasys.CHARON-VAX_Xx_66x0.v4.1.Build.134-02.Retail.Win7.W2K8.x86.x64.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmP7GuQCWatJiUu57GmXjSbhf9JVVNpvxcSbQLGyWa23Zb

Advanced.Systems.Concepts.XLNT.Professional.v4.0.WinALL.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmTRk3GUUbVPSA9h7e9sZr3UXpWiwLkjaY9A7fu13DqPbL

Advanced.Systems.Concepts.XLNT.Professional.v5.0.WinALL.Cracked-VLF
ipfs://QmaNL3rE7Szd6K7X9Ld1crhx16Q4egnLMaudS3ALWGPC14

Corel.WordPerfect.v5.3.OpenVMS.VAX.AXP.Cracked.Repack-VLF
ipfs://QmYzEEWhJu5M5ss9H15eibAB2BGwb9XT9pxHss6N7drzGm

And some bonus extras:

digital.To-Do.List.Pad.Page.Form.9513.A5-DEC
ipfs://QmPTSLpMTVaZs53vnT11tNrJkajwCnh7ZVMJben6uCUqpr

digital.VAX.VMS.20.Years.1977.To.1997.eBook-DEC
ipfs://QmbRCo3RqpKasJpiFFUUrVKu3GGPYiZqjF6pJC6YhdPuzg

Edgar.H.Schein.DEC.Is.Dead.Long.Live.DEC.2004.eBook-iND
ipfs://QmS91VvBjvDgRaFUZoqjo6prNEhgb8EUNmCEFLBJQJbCPj

If you need a Windows substrate to run the Stromasys CHARON hardware
virtualisers on, then we refer you to the excellent MAS Project:

https://massgrave.dev/

Back to matter of the VLF Project being semi-retired, I regret to
impart that my esteemed colleague, and good friend, Subcommandante
BYPASS, has, in all likelihood, kicked the big bit bucket, and is
abiding in Silicon Heaven with Big Ken. In the "mad genius" that was
the VLF, Subcommandante BYPASS was the RCE genius half, and I was (and
am) the mad half.

We loved our super secret squirrel cyphertext communications - I tend
to be a cypherpunk hard-arse, and BYPASS was a hundred times worse -
compiling his own cypher systems, from early, walked-through, PGP
code, and always, annoyingly, exasperatingly, setting expiries on his
PGP keys - which, of course, he'd, inevitably, forget to renew... -
consequently - oh, the humanity, irony, and the comedy! - I'd have to
paper mail him a post-card to prompt his memory, so that we could
continue our cyphertext email conversations via our super secret
squirrel, brown paper bag, identities.

With apparent paradox, we did cleartext paper mail each other (never
mentioning secret VLF business), sent family photographs, and
Christmas cards, and parcels of DEC memorabilia, to each other.

I haven't had any contact from him since August 2022, either by
e-mail, or by paper post, and there has been no response to my
Christmas cards for the last two years, and I expect, but do not
anticipate, that there will be no response this year either, alas.

I regret that I never quite got around to shipping him one of my VAX
11/780 circuit boards, to hang on his wall, to complement his
extensive collection of things DEC.

I regret that we never got around to setting up a VLF FTP so that we
could share and mirror all our R&D data, and sundry files, easily -
and act as disaster recovery, and ongoing backup - alas, much has been
lost with his departure.

I regret that our well-intention plans to cross oceans and continents
- to quaff quality lagered products together - never got beyond
arm-waving, blue-sky, kite-flying, affable affirmations, and
declarations of strong intent (DECronym: DSI).

I dearly miss our conversations on matters VMS, and the plotting of
the next stage of the revolution, and conversations about his
beer-craft, and his beloved bee-hives, and his beloved VMS cluster.

I salute his love and dedication to the VMS Operating System - that
intellectual jewel, glory, and heritage, of the Digital Equipment
Corporation - and whilst I continue to draw breath, I will hold him
dearly in both my heart and my memory.

Subcommandante BYPASS - resquiat in pace, requiem in potestate, dear
comrade.

System Clocks run down - it can't be helped - so it goes, so it goes.

And what is a take-away message from the myriad regrets essayed? -
tick action-items off your to-do lists, pro-actively, sooner than
later - 'twas ever thus, 'twas ever thus...

In regards to our VLF releases, standard protocol applies - as always
- neither brickbats, nor bouquets, are desired - do not get
distracted, rather, keep focused on sharing your erudition,
experience, and expertise, on matters VMS, on comp.os.vms - as per
usual.

One final thought, as much as the venerable Vernon is the beloved
mascot of VMS, and exigently relevant given that the clade
Selachimorpha are under the extinction pump, there is a strong case to
be made that the totem animal, or spirit animal, of VMS is Balthazar
the Donkey, from the classic film from the French Director, Robert
Bresson: "Au hasard Balthazar" (1966).

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/370-au-hasard-balthazar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_hasard_Balthazar

It is a profound film, one of the greatest of all time, and I heartily
recommend all comp.os.vms collegiates to view it - track down the
Criterion DVD. With reference to the movie, our Balthazar, VMS, is
once again in good hands, with VSI, in complementary concert with the
charitable animal inspectors at the VMS Generations group.

I don't usually, interact with the comp.os.vms colloquy, but I do
monitor it, to see what the old gang is up to - the ranks have been
thinning out over the years, but it admirably carries on - there may
come a time when its down to "Four Yorkshiremen" (per Monty Python),
but it will carry on regardless!.

I only stick my beak in, when something warrants prodding and poking,
and then have a short excursion from the MCR mausoleum - like as with
my recent post on bare-metal VMS - that ever present elephant in the
VMS loungeroom.

This was intended to be a short, sweet, VLF note, but has discursively
wandered into reminiscing and eulogy - it was delivered, ex cathedra,
from my La-Z-Boy recliner, from my ThinkPad perched on a dinner tray,
with a lagered product by my side. What's that dear? - stop playing
VMS underground superheroes and ready for bed? (my SO is 99 to my 86)
- Oh well, time for my hot malted milk, with a nip of something extra.

That's it from the near-emeritus Team VLF for this year - have a very
merry Christmas and a happy new year! - toodle-pip!

Thank you for your attention, comp.os.vms collegiates.

As always - Semper VMS.

With the very best regards,

Subcommandante XDelta
p.p. Subcommandante BYPASS (RIP)
The VMS Liberation Front: In VMS We Trust

PS: When I get around to it, I will release DECDocument for VAX/VMS
and AXP/VMS, from the bucket list, to complement our WordPerfect
release from 2016.

Touch.Technologies.DECdocument.v3.3H.OpenVMS.VAX.AXP.Incl.License-VLF

$!-------------------------- damn straight -----------------------!$
$ opprobrium/level=kittens/mode=conniptions/input=VLF:/output=NL: !$
$!--------------------------- enough said ------------------------!$