GnuPG for VMS - A Public-Key Encryption/Decryption Utility

Excerpt from the GnuPG Web Page:

GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC2440. GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communcation, features a versatile key managment system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries are available.

GnuPG Web Site

• http://gnupg.org/ - The GNU Privacy Guard - GnuPG.org

• http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/index.en.html - Documentation Sources - GnuPG.org

HP's GnuPG (1.4.7, 1.2.3) Web page

• http://h71000.www7.hp.com/opensource/gnupg.html - HP OpenVMS Open Source Tools / GnuPG for OpenVMS

GnuPG 1.4.9 VMS-Ready Kits

• VMS port notes (as included in the complete and source-only kits, below). This document describes the changes required to build GnuPG version 1.4.9 on VMS.

  /ftp/gnupg/gnupg-1_4_9b_vms/vms_notes.txt

• Source-only kit (about 5MB) including:
  • Source (original and modified).

  /ftp/gnupg/gnupg-1_4_9b_vms/gnupg-1_4_9b_src.zip

  Note: The source kit offered before 2008-04-16 included a defective [.vmslib]vms.c. This defect has been corrected in the kit which is available now. The complete kit (below) did not have this defect.

• Complete kit (about 18MB), including:
  • Source (original and modified).
  • Alpha objects and executables (built on VMS V7.3-2 with HP C V7.3-009).
  • IA64 objects and executables (built on VMS V8.3-1H1 with HP C V7.3-018).
  • VAX objects and executables (built on VMS V7.3 with Compaq C V6.4-005).

  /ftp/gnupg/gnupg-1_4_9b_vms/gnupg-1_4_9b_vms.zip

Note that support for extended file names on ODS5 file systems depends on fairly recent C RTL features, as found in VMS V7.3-2 or VMS V7.3-1 with VMS731_ACRTL V3.0.

The Zip archives for these kits were created using the Zip "-V" option to preserve the VMS file attributes, but the source files in these Zip archives should be usable on a non-VMS system. The VMS port notes mentioned above (and included in the kits) describe how to restore the original mixed-case and/or multi-dot file names in the kits which have been altered to accomodate the more limited VMS ODS2 file system where this work was done.

Patches for Version 1.4.9b

Changes like these are expected to be included in the next version of GnuPG for VMS, which is expected to be version 1.4.9c.

• 2008-04-16    Replacement [.vms]config.h_vms file with a corrected system identification macro ("__ia64", instead of "__IA64"), to provide more descriptive system type text on IA64 systems ("VMS IA64" instead of plain "VMS"), as originally intended.

  /ftp/gnupg/gnupg-1_4_9b_vms/vms/config.h_vms

The following file may be used to replace the defective file which was included in the source kit offered before 2008-04-16. Only the old source kit had the defect. The complete kit did not, and the current source kit also does not.

• 2008-04-16    Replacement [.vmslib]vms.c file with properly delimited comments. This file is not needed with currently available source or complete kits.

  /ftp/gnupg/gnupg-1_4_9b_vms/vmslib/vms.c

Additional Notes for the GnuPG 1.4.9 Kits Above

• This is an early attempt at this project, and the product has not been well tested. Some caution would be prudent. (On the other hand, no one has complained, but this fact can be interpreted in more than one way.)

• Except for the mlock() code and some file size determination code, this work is generally independent of the previous HP-supplied GnuPG 1.2.4/1.2.3 kits. Among other things, this means that the VMS-specific "entropy gathering" code here is different, and may be better or worse than the older, HP-supplied code. (The code here, [.CIPHER]RNDVMS.C, spawns DCL commands, and processes the output, roughly like the non-/dev/random UNIX code in [.CIPHER]RNDUNIX.C. This should make it easier to modify, if more suitable DCL commands can be found.) If the quality of the entropy gathered by this code is suspected of being insufficient, it should be possible to generate keys on a different host system type where this would not be a problem, and to import those keys into the keyrings on the VMS system.

GnuPG for VMS Archive

All versions of GnuPG for VMS, including older and experimental ones, may be found at the archive: /ftp/gnupg/

FTP access is also available at: ftp://ftp.antinode.info/gnupg/