TUHS January 2022

tuhs@tuhs.org

79 participants
47 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

1 year

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, 11 months

ratfor vibe

by Will Senn

All, I have been doing some language exploration in v7/4.3bsd and came across Software Tools (not the pascal version). It's written using ratfor, which I had seen in the v7 UPM. I fired up v7 and tried my hand at the first example: # copy - copy input characters to output integer getc integer c while(getc(c) != EOF) call putc(c) stop end The first thing I noticed was that it read more like C than Fortran (I know C quite well, Fortran just a smidge)... awesome, right? So I ran the preprocessor on it and got the following f77 code: c copy - copy input characters to output integer getc integer c c while 23000 if(.not.(getc(c) .ne. eof))goto 23001 call putc(c) goto 23000 c endwhile 23001 continue stop end Cool. The way it translated the EOF test is weird, but ok. Trying to compile it results in complaints about missing getc and putc: $ f77 copy.f copy.f: MAIN: Undefined: _getc_ _putc_ _end Ah well, no worries. I know that they're in the c lib, but don't about fortran libs... Meanwhile, over on 4.3BSD, it compiles without issue. But running it is no joy: $ ./a.out This is a test $ I remembered that the authors mentioned something about EOF, so I tweaked the code (changed EOF to -1) and rebuilt/reran: $ ./a.out This is a test This is a test $ Fascinating. Dunno why no complaints from F77 about the undefined EOF (or maybe mis-defined), but hey, it works and it's fun. I'm curious how much ratfor was used in bell labs and other locations running v6, v7, and the BSD's. When I first came across it, I was under the impression that it was a wrapper to make f66 bearable, but the manpage says it's best used with f77, so that's not quite right. As someone coming from c, I totally appreciate what it does to make the control structures I know and love available, but that wasn't the case back then, was it? C was pretty new... Was it just a temporary fix to a problem that just went away, or is there tons of ratfor out there in the wild that I just haven't seen? I found ratfor77 and it runs just fine on my mac with a few tweaks, so it's not dead: ratfor77 -C copy.r | tee copy.f C Output from Public domain Ratfor, version 1.0 C copy - copy input characters to output integer getc integer c 23000 if(getc(c) .ne. eof)then call putc(c) goto 23000 endif 23001 continue stop end What's the story? Oh, and in v6 it looks like it was rc - ratfor compiler, which is not present in v7 or 4.3BSD - is there a backstory there, too? Will

2 years, 2 months

Looking back to 1981 - what pascal was popular on what unix?

by Will Senn

I'm reading in, Kernighan & Plauger's 1981 edition of Software Tools in Pascal and in the book, the author's mention Bill Joy's Pascal and Andy Tanenbaum's as being rock solid. So, a few related questions: 1. What edition of UNIX were they likely to be using? 2. What versions of "Standard Pascal" were in vogue on UNIX at the time (1981)? 3. What combinations of UNIX/Pascal were popular? Thanks, Will

2 years, 2 months

FYI: Internet Old Farts Club

by Rich Morin

Some of the folks here might like this FB group... Internet Old Farts Club https://www.facebook.com/groups/internetoldfarts/ > This group is for self-declared Internet Old Farts, who want to discuss any aspect of the the Internet or its history. People in this group had their bits walk up hill both ways. > Welcome to the Internet Old Farts group. The purpose of this group is both social and technical. Feel free to revisit the past, explore the future, grouse about technical problems that you or others created. Feel free to self-aggrandize, complain about your least favorite standards organization or its politics, and how those young whippersnappers are running the show today. By participating in this group you are admitting or proclaiming that you are indeed an Internet Old Fart. Perhaps we should give a prize for the youngest and oldest Old Fart. -r

2 years, 2 months

Ratfor s

by Will Senn

Has anyone seen Fraser's original ratfor source for the s editor for unix on the PDP-11. It was a screen editor front-end built on top of Software Tools's edit. I've seen a c version, but I'm interested in the 375 line version :). Will Sent from my iPhone

2 years, 2 months

Compilation "vs" byte-code interpretation, was Re: Looking back to 1981 - what pascal was popular on what unix?

by silas poulson

Resending this as realised accidentally replied off list Silas On 30 Jan 2022, at 18:39, silas poulson <silas8642(a)hotmail.co.uk<mailto:silas8642@hotmail.co.uk>> wrote: On 30 Jan 2022, at 18:07, Dan Stromberg <drsalists(a)gmail.com<mailto:drsalists@gmail.com>> wrote: And is Java? They both have a byte code interpreter. My understanding is Java is both a compiled and interpreted language - with javac compiling java code to byte code and then JVM interpreting and executing the byte code. And then there's the CPython implementation of Python. <snip> Granted, it has an implicit, cached compilation step, but is it less compiled for that? I would so no - in my mind compiling analyses the entire source and then translates it whilst interpreters only explore a single line or expression. Simply because the compilation happens only Just In Time, doesn’t make it any less of a compilation step. Hope that helps, Silas

2 years, 2 months

One more arch 4.4BSD binary set, luna68k on nono OMRON LUNA emulator

by MOCHIDA Shuji

One of architechture supported by 4.4BSD, luna68k's compiled binary is now available. http://www.netside.co.jp/~mochid/comp/bsd44-build/ luna68k is OMRON LUNA, m68k cpu workstation. This binary set works on "nono" emulator software. http://www.pastel-flower.jp/~isaki/nono/ It's author, Isaki-san have done some minor modification for 4.4BSD, binary set for luna68k run rather well. OMRON, already dropped thier workstation products. LUNA-I, LUNA-II equipped with m68k, same CPU as CSRG's main target arch hp300. So userland programs may binary compatible. -mochid

2 years, 2 months

4.3 BSD network name resolution

by Will Senn

I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this: "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the libraries." Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a functional system? Will Sent from my iPhone

2 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] FYI: Internet Old Farts Club

by norman＠oclsc.org

I'm too much of an old fart to use FaceBook. a Norman Wilson Toronto ON @oclsc on twitter

2 years, 3 months

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TUHS January 2022