TUHS October 2021

tuhs@tuhs.org

36 participants
25 discussions

by Lars Brinkhoff

Hello, I'm working on setting up an emulated ARPANET using the original IMP software recovered some years ago. It turns out, the greatest challenge is finding the NCP software on the host side that implements the ARPANET protocols. I have searched the TUHS archive and elsewhere, but all I find for Unix is a copy of the PDP-11 Unix V6 NCP from Illinois. Has any other NCP implementation for Unix survived? From old host tables I think there may have been some VAXen online before the switch to TCP/IP. Best regards, Lars Brinkhoff

2 years, 6 months

having issues with simh and setting up dci for unixV7

by joseph turco

hello all, i am a new unix user, so please excuse my ignorance. I am trying to setup using unixV7 with simh pdp11 emulator. The guide i am following is by Will Senn (in PDF form). I have been able to successfully get the machine to boot with unix, and login as root. what i am having problems with, is trying to get telnet access via dci to work. when i follow the guide and do the following: # cd /usr/sys/conf # rm l.o c.o # cp hptmconf myconfnf # echo 4dc >> myconf # mkconf < myconf # make as - -o l.o l.s cc -c c.c ld -o unix -X -i l.o mch.o c.o ../sys/LIB1 ../dev/LIB2 # sum unix 10314 106 # ls -l unix -rwxrwxr-x 1 root 54122 Dec 31 19:09 unix etc... when i issue the mkconf < myconf command, i get a bunch of text printed out, but with a 'root device not found'. the sum unix value is different, as well as the size of the ls -l unix file size.. now when i try booting it with the newly created mboot.ini file (as per the guide), i go to start up the system with 'hp(0,0)munix' and it starts but hangs with the text 'fault devtab' what am I doing wrong? regards, Joseph Turco

2 years, 6 months

Minix 1.5 updates/patches?

by Chris Hanson

I’ve gotten Minix 1.5 up and running on Hatari, the Atari ST emulator, and I’d like to update it to the latest in the 1.5 series (1.5.10.7). The patch sets used to be quite readily available, but the only patch sets I’ve been able to find have been the 1.5.10.3 to 1.5.10.4 patches posted to Usenet (via minnie, thanks!) which won’t apply cleanly to my sources because I’m only running 1.5. (I know about the 1.6.25-on-Atari efforts, I’m trying to do something different and also fill in some git history…) — Chris

2 years, 6 months

mmap origin (was Systematic approach to command-line interfaces)

by Paul Ruizendaal

On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 09:40:23AM -0700, Greg A. Woods wrote: > I think perhaps the problem was that mmap() came too soon in a narrow > sub-set of the Unix implementations that were around at the time, when > many couldn't support it well (especially on 32-bit systems -- it really > only becomes universally useful with either segments or 64-bit and > larger address spaces). The fracturing of "unix" standards at the time > didn't help either. > > Perhaps these "add-on hack" problems are the reason so many people think > fondly of the good old Unix versions where everything was still coming > from a few good minds that could work together to build a cohesive > design. The add-ons were poorly done, not widely implemented, and > usually incompatible with each other when they were adopted by > additional implementations. mmap() did come from those days and minds. The first appearance of mmap() was in 32V R3, done by John Reiser in 1981. This is the version of 32V with full demand paging; it implemented a unified buffer cache. According to John, that version of mmap() already had the modern 6 argument API. John added mmap() because he worked with Tenex a lot during his PhD days and missed PMAP. He needed some 6 months to design, implement and debug this version of 32V as a skunkworks project. I am trying to revert early VAX SVr1/r2 code to get a better view of what 32V R3 looked like, but unfortunately I did not have much time for this effort in last couple of months. It would seem that 32V R3 assumed that disk blocks and memory pages were the same size (true on a 1980 VAX) and with that assumption a unified buffer cache comes natural in this code base. For 4.2BSD initially Joy cs. had a different approach to memory mapped files in mind (see the 1981 tech report #4 from CSRG). By the time of 4.2BSD’s release the manual defined a mmap() system call, but it was not implemented and it appears to have been largely forgotten until SunOS 4 and dynamic libraries six years later. In the SysV lineage it is less clear. For sure mmap() is not there, but the first implementation of the shmem IPC feature might derive from the 32V R3 code. On the inside, SVr2 virtual memory appears to implement the segments (now called regions) that Joy envisaged for 4.2BSD but did not implement. CB Unix had a precursor to shmem as well, where a portion of system core was reserved for shared memory purposes and could be accessed either via the /dev/mem device or could be mapped into the PDP-11 address space (using 1 of the 8 segment registers for each map). Here too the device and the map were unified. So far, I have not come across any shared library implementations or precursors in early Unix prior to SunOS 4. Paul

2 years, 6 months

IEEE Annals on the History of Computing seeks Editor in Chief

by Diomidis Spinellis

Dear TUHS members, The IEEE Annals on the History of Computing magazine, the primary publication for recording, analyzing, and debating the history of computing, is seeking a new Editor in Chief [2]. The EiC term begins on January 1st 2022 and is for three years, renewable for two years. The application deadline is October 31st 2021. It would be valuable for us interested in our discipline's history to to serve in the publication's leadership. You can contact Carrie Clark at c.clark(a)computer.org to submit an application. Alternatively, if you have connections in the community and some time to spare to head the EiC selection committee, please drop me a note. [1] https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an [2] https://www.computer.org/press-room/2021-news/ieee-cs-publications-seek-app… Kind regards, Diomidis Spinellis

2 years, 6 months

RIP Jörg Schilling

by Robert Clausecker

I have received message from his family that Jörg Schilling has passed away from complications related to kidney cancer this sunday around noon (CEST). He will be remembered for his open source projects including - cdrtools, the first portable CD burning program - star, a powerful and fast tar implementation, the first to use two processes with a shared ring buffer for better performance. - smake, a make implementation with autoconf features - sformat, a versatile SCSI disk formatting program - SING, an autoconf fork with a comprehensive set of libc shims, providing a uniform API across operating systems - ved, an early visual editor for the UNOS operating system (I believe) - bosh, a carefully maintained fork of the Bourne shell - sccs, a carefully maintained fork of SCCS. His attempts to teach it projects and networking will remain unfinished. - libfind, an implementation of find(1) as a library for integration into other software. - libxtermcap, an extended termcap library - libscg, an early portable SCSI driver and library He is also remembered for his commitment to open source, portability, and his work on POSIX. He was working on adapting his software to Z/OS and introducing message catalogues just weeks before his death. Jörg worked for the Bethold typesetting company, one of the first European customers of SUN microsystems. It is there that his love for UNIX and SUN OS in particular was kindled. [1] His interest in SUN OS culminated in Schillix, one of the first open source Solaris distributions. We will of course also remember him for his flames. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20061201103910/http://www.opensolaris.org/os/ar… May his software immortalise him. Robert Clausecker -- () ascii ribbon campaign - for an 8-bit clean world /\ - against html email - against proprietary attachments

2 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] [Haskell-cafe] Terminator syntax style (Was: Nested (=>) (Was: On finding the right exposition...))

by Norman Wilson

John Cowan: "Between each" has been part of Standard English for a thousand years, and still is today. ==== As in between each pair of elements, or between each element? The latter strikes me rather like the currently-in-vogue phrase `one of the only': it may have a defined meaning, but it sure sounds distractingly stupid. (If it's one of the group at all, it's by definition one of the only members; if what is meant is one of the few, then say so, dammit.) It's rather like obfuscated C, or nearly any use of Perl: sure, you can write it to require extra mental effort to make sense of it, but there are simpler ways to be rude. Norman Wilson Toronto ON Please, sir, I'd like to join The Few. I'm sorry, there are far too many.

2 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] [Haskell-cafe] Terminator syntax style (Was: Nested (=>) (Was: On finding the right exposition...))

by Douglas McIlroy

Apropos of "finding the right exposition"!, consider the cited wiki article: Separator: There is a symbol between each element. The more carefully you read this the more it becomes nonsense. 1, "Each element" is an individual. You can't put something between an individual. 2 The defining sentence states a property of a representation of a sequence. It fails to indicate that "separator" is the symbol's role. In fact what's being defined is "separator notation", not the bare word "separator". This usage appears only later in the article. It should be employed throughout--most importantly in the title and the definition. The same goes for "terminator". Doug

2 years, 6 months

retraction

by Douglas McIlroy

> Doug, if you insist on applying your superb editing skills on wiki material, we will never hear from you again! Thanks, Bill, for the wise advice. If I'm putting out stuff like this you shouldn't hear from me again. Apologies for again(!) posting to the wrong mailing list. Doug

2 years, 6 months

4.3BSD-Tahoe Restoration

by Henry Bent

Hello All, I am attempting to restore 4.3BSD-Tahoe to a usable state on the VAX. It appears, based on the work that I have done already, that this is possible. Starting with stock 4.3BSD I got a source tree into /usr/tahoe and using it I replaced all of /usr/include and /sys, recompiled and replaced /bin, /lib, and /etc, recompiled a GENERIC kernel, and from there I was able to successfully reboot using the new kernel. As far as I can tell (fingers crossed!) the hardest part is over and I'm in the process of working on /usr. My question is: how was this sort of thing done in the real world? If I was a site running stock 4.3BSD, would I have received (or been able to request) updated tapes at regular intervals? The replacement process that I have been using is fairly labor intensive and on a real VAX would have been very time intensive too. Fortunately two to three years' worth of changes were not so drastic that I ever found myself in a position where the existing tools were not able to compile pieces of Tahoe that I needed to proceed, but I could easily imagine finding myself in such a place. (This was, by the way, what I ran into when attempting to upgrade from 2.9BSD to 2.10BSD, despite a fully documented contemporary upgrade procedure). -Henry

2 years, 6 months

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TUHS October 2021