On Sat, 12 May 2001, John wrote:

> I just bought my first VAX (VAXStation 4000/60), and I'm very excited
> about setting it up.
>
> However, it is just the box itself - no accessories. So will I be able to
> do the netboot and the installation with a serial terminal, or do I need
> to get a keyboard and monitor adapter?

Yup.  I'd say that most people here run their VAXen solely with the serial
console since that's the one which is best supported.

> Furthermore, is the disklabel compatible with any other NetBSD systems?
> It'd be easy for me to set up a NetBSD install using an already running
> system. Or would it?

I don't know on this one.  It's a good question though.  The VAX is a
little-endian architecture so you'd probably want to go for a similiarly
endianed arch to test the disklabel stuff.  NetBSD does support
endian-independent filesystem access, but I believe there's some overhead
in this.

> Finally, regarding performance: I am currently running NetBSD on a 60 MHz
> 68060 with about 100 users (about 5-20 are logged in at any one time). ssh
> is fast enough to not give any noticeable lag on this system, but on a
> 68040 that I use for testing, I do notice that with three or more people
> logged in at a time, things sometimes get pretty slow.
>
> Could anyone tell me if this VAX is going to be fast enough to handle a
> fair number of users (perhaps up to 10) connecting via ssh? It'll probably
> only be running email, but I'd like to know if my users are going to be
> happy with the machine the way it is, or if I need to have them ssh to
> another machine and connect via the local (secure) segment to the VAX...

With just ten users connected simultaneously?  By default the GENERIC
kernel for VAX is setup to allow 8 users, so you'll want to bump up that
number and recompile it.  The VS4000/60 is fairly zippy in VAX terms at 12
VUPs, so I think you'll be okay as long as you have enough RAM.  I'd think
that you'd want 32MB as a bare minimum.  Given the computational overhead
of the SSH connections you may end up being getting a little compute
bound.

-brian.