All you should need to do to build the executable is type @make To run xlock a symbol needs to be defined, for example: XLOCK:==$H268SYSEXE:XLOCK where H268SYSEXE is a logical name pointing to the directory where XLOCK.EXE resides. The '$' after == means this is a foreign command and VMS makes the command line available to the program. worm may look a bit strange, since the scaling is wrong. -allowroot only works if you have SYSPRV enabled which is a bit limiting. The XLock file normally in /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults needs to be in the directory DECW$SYSTEM_DEFAULTS on VMS systems and be called 'DECW$XLOCK.DAT'.