TUHS June 2021

tuhs@tuhs.org

34 participants
28 discussions

by Warner Losh

Greetings, What's the canonical source for patches to 2.9BSD and 2.11BSD? I see we have 2.11BSD patch 469 dated last month in the archive. Where does it come from? Has anybody climbed the hill to import all the patches into a git repo? I've found some mirrors, but moe.2bsd.org has been down for me for ages... How does Warren keep things up to date? I also have a (maybe faulty) memory of a similar series of patches to 2.9BSD because it was the last BSD to support non-split I&D space machines. yet a quick google search turns up nothing other than a set of patches dated August 1985 (also in our archive) and some changes for variants of hardware (pro, mscp). Is that it? Warner

2 months

Old UNIX file system formats

by norman＠nose.cita.utoronto.ca

I've assembled some notes from old manuals and other sources on the formats used for on-disk file systems through the Seventh Edition: http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~norman/old-unix/old-fs.html Additional notes, comments on style, and whatnot are welcome. (It may be sensible to send anything in the last two categories directly to me, rather than to the whole list.)

1 year

ksh88 source code?

by Warren Toomey

Hi all, I received an e-mail looking for the ksh-88 source code. A quick search for it on-line doesn't reveal it. Does anybody have a copy? Cheers, Warren Original e-mail: I recently built a PiDP11 and have been enjoying going back in time to 2.11BSD.. I was at UC Davis in the the early 1980's and we had a few PDP-11/70's running 2.8/2.9 BSD. Back then we reached out to David Korn and he sent us the source for KSH -- this would have been in 1985ish if I remember, and we compiled it for 2.9 & 4.1BSD, Xenix, and some other variants that used K&R C. It may have been what was later called ksh88. I wish I still had the files from then.. I was wondering if you might know if there's an older version like this or one that's been ported for 2.11BSD? Many thanks, Joe

1 year, 5 months

[tuhs] Dennis Ritchie's couch

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

The last article of the latest issue of the Communications of the ACM that appeared electronically earlier today is a brief interview with this year's ACM Turing Award winners, Al Aho and Jeff Ullman. The article is Last byte: Shaping the foundations of programming languages https://doi.org/10.1145/3460442 Comm. ACM 64(6), 120, 119, June 2021. and it includes a picture of the two winners sitting on Dennis Ritchie's couch. I liked this snippet from Jeff Ullman, praising fellow list member Steve Johnson's landmark program, yacc: >> ... >> At the time of the first Fortran compiler, it took several >> person-years to write a parser. By the time yacc came around, >> you could do it in an afternoon. >> ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 year, 11 months

Disassemblers

by Henry Bent

>From what I can gather the only way to reasonably examine the disassembly of a program in the early days of Unix was adb. Is this true? Was there a way to easily produce a full disassembly? I'll confess to being fairly ignorant of adb use since I always had dbx or the equivalent available. The first tool I'm aware of to purposefully/primarily produce a full listing is MIPS dis (ca. 1986?) but there must have been something before that for other systems, no? -Henry

1 year, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] Using printf from Assembly Language in V6, and db.

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Riley <paul(a)rileyriot.com> >> (I wrote a note, BITD, explaining how all this worked; I'll upload it >> to the CHWiki when I get a chance.) Now here: https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11_C_stack_operation along with simple examples of args and auto variables, which are both referenced via the FP. > As a non-C consumer of printf, should I point R5 at some space for a > stack and call printf in the same manner as the C example I cited? Not necessary to do anything with R5 (you can leave it blank); the only things a PDP-11 C routine needs are: - a good stack - the arguments, and return point, on the top of the stack csv will set up the frame pointer, making no assumptions about the old contents of R5 - see the source: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/lib/csv.s although it does save the old R5 contents, and restore them on exit. Noel

1 year, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] Using printf from Assembly Language in V6, and db.

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Riley > I want to use printf from an assembly language program, in V6. ... the > substitutional arguments for printf are pushed onto the stack in reverse > order, then the address of the string, and then printf is called. After > this, 6 is added to the stack pointer. This is all down to the standard C environment / calling sequence on the PDP-11 (at least, in V6 C; other compilers may do it differently). Calls to printf() are in no way special. Very briefly, there's a 'frame pointer' (R5) which points to the current stack frame; all arguments and automatics are relative to that. A pair of special routines, csv and cret (I couldn't find the source on TUHS, but it happens to be here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/lib/csv.s if you want to see it), set up and tear down the frame on entry/exit to that routine. The SP (R6) points to a blank location on the top (i.e. lower address; PDP-11 stacks grow down) of the stack. To call a subroutine, the arguments are pushed, the routine is called (which pushes the return PC), and on return (which pops the return PC), the arguments are discarded by the caller. (I wrote a note, BITD, explaining how all this worked; I'll upload it to the CHWiki when I get a chance.) > I assume that the printf routine pops the address of the string off the > stack, but leaves the other values on the stack No, all C routines (including printf()) leave the stack more or less alone, except for CSV/CRET hackery, allocating space for automatic variables on routine entry (that would be at L1; try looking at the .s for a routine with automatic variables), and popping the return PC on exit. The exception to this is the stuff around calling _enother_ routine (sketched above). Another exception is alloca() (source here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/lib/alloca.s again, couldn't find it in TUHS), which allocated a block of memory on the stack (automatically discarded when the routine which called alloca() returns). Note that since all automatic variables and incoming arguments are relative to the FP, alloca is _really_ simple; justs adjusts the SP, and it's done. > What troubles me is that the stack pointer is not decremented before the > first mov, in the example below. Is this some C convention? I would > assume that the first push in my example would overwrite the top of the > stack. That's right; that's because in the C runtime environment, the top location on the stack is a trash word (set up by csv). > I understand db only works on files like a.out or core dumps. If I > wanted to break the assembly language program to examine values, how can > I force a termination and core dump elegantly, so I can examine some > register values? Use 'cdb': https://minnie.tuhs.org//cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V6/usr/man/man1/cdb.1 which can do interactive debugging. Noel

1 year, 11 months

Using printf from Assembly Language in V6, and db.

by Paul Riley

Hi, I want to use printf from an assembly language program, in V6. It seems that the Unix Programmer's Manual doesn't show how to use it from assembly, so I wrote a short C program and captured the assembler output, for some clues. Listings below. In my example, the substitutional arguments for printf are pushed onto the stack in reverse order, then the address of the string, and then printf is called. After this, 6 is added to the stack pointer. I assume that the printf routine pops the address of the string off the stack, but leaves the other values on the stack, hence the need to add 2x3=6 to the stack after calling printf in my example. What troubles me is that the stack pointer is not decremented before the first mov, in the example below. Is this some C convention? I would assume that the first push in my example would overwrite the top of the stack. Perhaps I'm not used to PDP-11 stack conventions. I understand db only works on files like a.out or core dumps. If I wanted to break the assembly language program to examine values, how can I force a termination and core dump elegantly, so I can examine some register values? Paul *Paul Riley* Email: paul(a)rileyriot.com int a, b, c; int main(){ printf("printf: start\n"); a = 1; b = 2; c = 3; printf("A = %d, B = %d, C = %d", a, b, c); printf("printf: end\n"); } .comm _a,2 .comm _b,2 .comm _c,2 .globl _main .text _main: ~~main: jsr r5,csv jbr L1 L2:mov $L4,(sp) jsr pc,*$_printf mov $1,_a mov $2,_b mov $3,_c mov _c,(sp) mov _b,-(sp) mov _a,-(sp) mov $L5,-(sp) jsr pc,*$_printf add $6,sp mov $L6,(sp) jsr pc,*$_printf L3:jmp cret L1:jbr L2 .globl .data L4:.byte 160,162,151,156,164,146,72,40,163,164,141,162,164,12,0 L5:.byte 101,40,75,40,45,144,54,40,102,40,75,40,45,144,54,40,103,40,75,40,45,144,0 L6:.byte 160,162,151,156,164,146,72,40,145,156,144,12,0 #

1 year, 11 months

demand paged 32V / Contacting Tom Raleigh

by Paul Ruizendaal

> The demand paging code for SysVR2 was written by Keith A. Kelleman and Steven J. Buroff, and in contemporary conference talks they were saying that they wanted to combine the best parts of demand-paged 32V and BSD. They may have some additional memories that could help with getting a better understanding of the final version of 32V. > > Does anybody have contact details for these two gentlemen? I’ve managed to contact Keith Kelleman and he had some interesting remarks. The paging code in SVR2 was all new code, with a focus the 3B dual processor. It does not derive at the code level from 32V and in fact he does not recall working with the 32V paging code. This kills the hope that the SVR2 code had clues about the 32V code. Keith did suggest that I tried to contact Tom Raleigh, who might have worked with the later 32V code base. Anybody with suggestions for locating him? === Besides functionality, the people that remember paged 32V all recall it being very fast. I wonder what made it fast. First to consider is “faster than what?”. Maybe Rob P. has a specific memory, but I would assume faster than 4BSD: if the comparison was with the "scatter loading, partial swapping” version of 32V people would have expected the better performance and not remember it as impressive 40 years later. Possibly the comparison is with 8th Edition which would have used the 4BSD paging code by then. If the comparison is with 4BSD, then the CoW feature in paging 32V would have been mostly matched by the vfork mechanism in 4BSD: it covers 80% of the use and it leaves the code paths simpler. If the comparison is with 8th edition, this may be the difference that people remember. The next possibility is that paging 32V had a better page-out algorithm. Joy/Babaoglu mention that the cost of the clock process is noticable. Maybe paged 32V used a VMS-like FIFO/second chance algorithm that did not need a separate kernel process/thread. Arguably this is not enough for a convincing speed difference. It is also possible that JFR found a more clever way to do LRU approximation. He remembers that his code used ‘strict LRU’, but not the algorithm. On Tenex - his conceptual reference - that was natural to do, because the MMU hardware maintains a table with 4 words of 36 bits for each frame with statistical data. With the VAX hardware it is a challenge. Considering his mathematical prowess it is maybe plausible that JFR found an efficient way. A slightly better page hit rate gives a significant speed improvement. All speculation of course: only finding the source will truly tell.

1 year, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] "The programmer must have been carried away ...

by Paul Ruizendaal

> So there you have it. Just a line of B code that wasn't updated to C. > > Cheers, > aap I love posts like this, thank you! “Sherlock Holmes and the mysterious case of the excessive parameter list"

1 year, 11 months

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TUHS June 2021