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6495 discussions

Census of Early (Pre-C Kernel) UNIX Documents

by segaloco

Hello everyone, I'm currently laying the groundwork for a restart of my mandiff project, expanding it to encompass not just the manual-proper, but also the documents leading to the "Documents for UNIX" collections as well. Thus far I'm about halfway done on a ROFF restoration of the earliest surviving draft of Dennis Ritchie's The UNIX Time-Sharing System paper[1], reconstructed from existing, later NROFF text and ROFF conventions from the Third Edition manual[2]. Thus far, the additional documents I've found explicitly referenced in the earlier days are: User's Reference Manual to B - K. Thompson[3] C Reference Manual - D. M. Ritchie[4 - see note] M6 Manual - A. D. Hall[5] ROFF Manual - J. F. Ossanna[6 - see note] A Manual for the TMG Compiler-writing Language - M. D. McIlroy[7] UNIX Assembler Manual - D. M. Ritchie[8 - see note] NROFF Users' Manual - J. F. Ossanna[9 - see note] YACC Manual - S. C. Johnson[10 - see note] Aside from these references, there are two other B papers, one a tutorial[11] by B. W. Kernighan and the other a MH-TSS reference by S. C. Johnson[12]. I don't think I saw either referenced in the manual-proper. The latter then makes further reference to a "Bell Laboratories BCPL" by R. H. Canaday and D. M. Ritchie, although I suspect this is lost, I can't find it. Anywho, my plan is to take any known ROFF/NROFF sources for the above documents and reconstruct the earliest versions possible and then add them to my revamped repository in the timeframes that they first start showing up as references in the manual to derive a more holistic view of the creation of manuals and guides in the early days. A few matters prompted me to start over: 1. Noticing that there is direct lineage between some of the text in the UnixEditionZero paper and later manual pages like as(I), I want to capture the base text as far back as possible, which in this case would mean ensuring a commit in the chain captures the transfer of the text from the UnixEditionZero paper to as(I) to give a more complete history. 2. Al Kossow has now scanned and preserved a UNIX Program Generic II manual, meaning I no longer have to make as many assumptions about what changed and what didn't in the USG/Research split. Thus far, assumptions about the Program Generic line have been based on the extant MERT manual (which in turn is described as deriving from the Program Generic III manual.) 3. The picture of PWB/2.0 is becoming a bit clearer as time goes on, but is still murky, and that has implications for the changes between the Sixth Edition (where my current mandiff repo[13] ends) and the Seventh Edition. Rather than having to go back and redo a bunch of work, I think the first pass can stand on its own as a source of guidance on redoing this. 4. The cleanliness of the repository history is not to my liking, there are several instances of multiple commits across pages related to some larger, holistic change that would really be easier to study if they were in one. Starting over, I now have a much clearer picture of V1->V6 that I can use to produce a tighter history. Anywho, to summarize what I'm looking for feedback on, first, are there any major documents I'm omitting from this investigation? Any particular technical memoranda that are crucial to the big picture? Additionally, is anyone aware whether USG Program Generic I (or earlier?) had a formal edition of the Programmer's Manual or if they would've just referred folks to the research manual prior to PG II? With the latter question I'm trying to determine if USG manual history starts with the PG II manual Al Kossow has scanned or if I should be considering a hole in the record where a PG I manual goes. Thanks for following along, hopefully getting this groundwork in place will ensure the next go at this project is even more fruitful than the last! - Matt G. --- References --- 1 - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/McIlroy_v0/UnixEditionZ… 2 - https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V3/man 3 - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/kbman.html 4 - I may have a copy of the earliest version of this I can identify. The earliest version I can find online is dated January 15th, 1974 (https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cman74.pdf) and contains the text "C is also available on the HIS 6070 computer at Murray Hill and on the IBM System/370 at Holmdel" whereas this particular copy of the paper states "C is also available on the HIS 6070 computer at Murray Hill, using a compiler written by A. Snyder and currently maintained by S. C. Johnson. A compiler for the IBM System/360/370 series is under construction." The manual is TROFF printout and isn't formatted as a memorandum like the link included here. References to the C Reference Manual begin to show up as early as the Second Edition manual, although these imply the C manual is still being written. Does anyone know if the C Reference Manual started in ROFF and then moved to NROFF some time before the earliest copies we're aware of? In any case, I intend to scan this copy, it just hasn't bubbled up in my project list yet. 5 - https://tuhs.pdp-11.org.ru/Documentation/TechReports/Bell_Labs/CSTRs/2.pdf 6 - I have a copy that defers from the one I could find here: https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/roff71/roff71.pdf It is not in technical memorandum format and also may be missing a few pages (in mine, the tutorial ends with the "Translation" section but the linked document contains a couple more paragraphs on page offset (.po), merge patterns, and an envoi (conclusion). The most striking difference is that the linked paper is Doug's version for TSS, but the paper I've got lists the invocation in the UNIX style (roff +N -M name1 name2 ...) and is likely representative of the UNIX version with Joe Ossanna's work. Doug if you catch this and believe the attribution on this page (https://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=systems:2nd_edition) should have your by-line or both you and jfo, happy to make the edit. The text of the UNIX version I have does seem to descend from your original paper. By the way, an even earlier version of this paper for runoff is available here (https://manpages.bsd.lv/history/runoff69.low.pdf) 7 - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/1972_stuff/tmg.pdf 8 - This is first referenced in the Third Edition manual. Some of the text may derive from the second Appendix of the "UnixEditionZero" paper linked above, the manpage certainly has influence from that document. Not sure if any of that implies the manual may have started in ROFF, but in any case, constitutes an early reference. 9 - This reference first appears, verifiably, in the Third Edition. However, the Second Edition manual does list nroff(I) in the TOC, but this page is not actually included in the extant PDF in the archive. In any case, the earliest version of the NROFF Users' Manual I'm aware of is the Second Edition, dated 9/11/74. Is any such First Edition extant on the public record? 10 - The earliest reference to this manual I can find is in the Third Edition. Not sure if there are any earlier specimens than the text in the Sixth Edition sources. 11 - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/btut.html 12 - https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bref.html 13 - https://gitlab.com/segaloco/mandiff

1 year, 2 months

Role of Unix in Australian Accounting research: Ball & Brown, founding AGSM

by steve jenkin

Accidentally ran into this today. I’ve never seen this put together and thought it worth adding to the TUHS archives. Hadn’t realised that both the authors of “Ball & Brown” (1968) were Aussies and UNSW alumni. Studying a little accounting, this paper was mentioned as ’the most cited’ paper in the field. The Big New Idea in 1968 was to use computers to analyse stock market data & show correlations. I hadn’t known either had come back to Australia (QLD or WA then UNSW/AGSM), then founded AGSM, with a focus on digital analysis of data. Ian Johnstone, from CSE, went to AGSM to run their computers. He recommended DEC + Unix and was backed by Brown, the director. [ Andy Hume was recruited by Ian J, before leaving for a job at Bell Labs in the Computing Research Centre. ] The AGSM license caused conniptions with the AT&T lawyers. While AGSM fell into the near free “University & Education” license, they weren’t using Unix just for ‘education’. AGSM became the first commercial licensee of Unix, or so I was told at the time. Ian Johnstone was AUUGN editor while at AGSM, before scooting off to the USA and rising to heights there. While Ball & Brown studied in Faculty of Commerce, they obviously had enough of a grounding in ‘computing’ and data collection / handling / analysis to set the stage for their 1968 paper. In 1971, Fortran IV was taught to first year students in Science, using John M Blatt’s (of UNSW) textbook. It’s not unreasonable that Finance & Accounting had courses or training in Computing 5 years before that. Within 10 years, they were both back at UNSW, running AGSM, teaching & using Digital research methods, based solidly on Unix… cheers steve =============== <https://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/editorials/0206edit.html> Looking back, I realise it must have been a fortuitous convergence for me: thanks to Philip Brown and Ian Johnstone, the AGSM had been running Unix machines since 1976; thanks to Bob Wood, I read of Bob Axelrod's work with GAs in examining the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma before it was published (and Axelrod was also at Michigan); thanks to my innate curiosity, I had been reading and contributing to the Usenet news groups on the Internet since 1986. Sydney was not so far from Ann Arbor, finally. =============== Phillip Brown <https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/accounting/caip/aahof/ceremonies/philip_brown> Philip Brown holds an important and unique place within the annals of Australian accounting. As co-author of the research paper that redefined the course of academic accounting research in the last forty years he inadvertently set the research agendas and directions for a legion of academics that followed. Philip started school at Riverstone in western Sydney with a short stint at Summer Hill in his final two years of primary education proceeding to Canterbury Boys High School where he scored an average pass in his Leaving Certificate. He then worked as a junior clerk in the accounting department of British Motor Corporation at Zetland. Advised to seek tertiary qualifications he thought he should enrol for a commerce degree at the University of NSW. Despite this advice, Philip enrolled as a part-time student in the Faculty of Commerce at University of New South Wales gaining the highest pass in the course. This level of achievement was maintained throughout his degree leading inevitably to an honours year, graduating with First Class Honours and taking a University Medal. After graduation Philip tutored at University of New South Wales, received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the USA heading to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He completed his MBA in 1963 finishing top of the class During this period [2 years after MBS] he met Ray Ball with whom he wrote a seminal paper that defined the course of accounting research for the next forty years. Rather than pursue a career in the United States, Philip returned to Australia as a Reader in Accounting at the University of Western Australia (July, 1968 – June, 1970). In 1974, Philip moved to Sydney to help establish the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM). As inaugural Foundation Director he introduced world-class MBA and MPA (public administration) programs to develop the skills of Australia's future leaders. During his AGSM days Philip championed the development of Australian data in financial accounting research. He saw the need for Australian share price data to be systematically collected and made available to researchers spending a great deal of time personally collecting data and providing programming support for these databases. The existence of these databases as a high quality resource for researchers is often taken for granted today but it was the foresight scholars with foresight like Philip who saw the need and acted accordingly. =============== Ray Ball <https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/accounting/caip/aahof/ceremonies/ray-ball> Raymond John Ball is one of the most influential contemporary accounting scholars, having held professorial positions in Australia at UNSW and Queensland, and in the United States at Rochester and Chicago. With a first-class honours degree and the University Medal from UNSW, Ray moved to the University of Chicago where he earned an MBA and PhD. In 1968 Ray Ball co-authored the seminal paper ‘An Empirical Evaluation of Accounting Income Numbers’ that revolutionised financial accounting research. Drawing on the developing financial economics literature and linking accounting information and share prices in a novel manner, the paper provided the foundation for modern capital markets-based research. As the inaugural recipient of the American Accounting Association’s Seminal Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award in 1986 it was observed that ‘no other paper … has played so important a role in the development of accounting research during the past thirty years’. It remains the most highly cited accounting research paper. Ray Ball has also had a major influence on accounting education in Australia, h aving been Professor of Accounting at the University of Queensland (1972-1976), and foundation professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management (UNSW) (1976-1986), where he was instrumental in the development of the first US-style PhD program in Accounting and Finance in Australia. During his time at Queensland and UNSW he was instrumental in developing rigorous empirical research in Australian capital markets, addressing issues such as the risk/return trade-off, dividend policy and taxation mechanisms. =============== -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

1 year, 3 months

Original print of V7 manual?

by Mychaela Falconia

Hello fellow lovers of old UNIX, Would anyone happen to have a raster scan (not OCR) of the original printing of UNIX Programmer's Manual, 7th edition? Does such a thing exist? Given that Brian S. Walden produced and published a PDF reprint of this manual (presumably done with some "modern" version of troff) back in 1998, I reason that there probably wasn't much interest in preserving the original print by painstaking scanning (and the files from such a scan would have been ginormous by 1998 standards), hence I am not certain if such a scanned version exists - but I thought I would ask nonetheless. I was however very pleased to discover that some very kind soul named Erica Fischer did scan and upload the complete set of Usenix printed books for 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD - here is the 4.2BSD version: https://archive.org/details/uum-ref-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-ref-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-supplement-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd and here is 4.3BSD: https://archive.org/details/uum-ref-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-ref-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-sup1-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-sup2-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/smm-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-index-4.3bsd It is my understanding that all supplementary docs (the papers that were originally in volumes 2a and 2b in the V7 manual) were retroffed by UCB/Usenix for 4.3BSD edition, but the earlier 4.2BSD Usenix print seems to be different - it looks like for 4.2BSD they only did a new troff run for all man pages and for new (Berkeley-added) supplementary docs, but in the case of docs which originally appeared in V7 vol 2, it appears that Usenix did some kind of analogue mass reproduction from a historical V7 master, *without* doing a new troff run on those docs. *If* this hypothesis is correct, then Erica's uploaded scan of 4.2BSD manuals can serve as a practical substitute for the presumably- missing scan of the original printing of V7 manual - but I would like to double-check my hypothesis with others who are presumably more knowledgeable about this ancient history (some of you actually lived through that history, unlike me!), hence the reason for this post. I would appreciate either confirmation or correction of the guesses and conjectures I expressed above. M~

1 year, 3 months

32V filesystem images to verify code against.

by Jacob Moody

Hello TUHS, I recently have been working on the Plan 9 fs/v6fs and fs/v32fs programs, another member of the community had noticed bugs within them and I wanted to verify that the new code is working as expected. I haven't had an issue verifying v6fs using files from the TUHS archive but v32fs has proved to be a bit more tricky. After a little bit of work we were able to get the 'file2' located at https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/32V/ to mount and read files. But given that all the files here are binaries it was a bit hard to make sure we're getting the correct information. I attempted to cross reference the files I get against the file2.tar also located within that spot in the archive but I am getting tar errors when extracting this file, so its not exactly obvious if what I am checking against is correct. So I would like to ask if someone here knows exactly what the sha1sums of these files are supposed to be and/or has another image with known contents I could test against. I will preface this with the fact that I am not very well versed in old UNIX filesystems so please let me know if I've missed anything. Thank you, Jacob Moody

1 year, 3 months

Unix System V on the Public Domain 32000 (NS32016 chip set) reproduction

by Andrew Lynch

Hi I am interested in reconstructing the Public Domain 32000 (PD32) which appeared in 1986 edition of MicroCornicopia. It claimed to run Unix System V on a PC 8-bit ISA board using the NS32016 chip set. Does anyone remember this system and/or have any interest in it? Here is a link from Hackaday more fully describing the effort: ISA bus slave NS32016 processor board | Hackaday.io Thanks, Andrew Lynch

1 year, 3 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal >> the ambiguous phrase "had the first implementation of FTP", which >> has been flagged as needing clarification > From RFC 354 ... and from RFC 414 Those are NCP FTP, a slightly different protocol, and implementation, from TCP FTP. (The code from the NCP one was sometimes recycled into the TCP one; see e.g.: https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysnet/ftpu.161 which has both in one program.) These RFC's you listed are obviously pre-TCP; the first TCP RFC is RFC-675. (The first RFC that even mentions TCP seems to be RFC-661.) RFC's are all NCP-related until around #700 or so, when the mix starts to change. Maybe the "needing clarification" refers to these two different FTP's? Without an explicit classifier, does that text refer to NCP FTP or TCP FTP? Noel

1 year, 3 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Bakul Shah > He was part of NSFNet, so could have got first FTP on NSFnet or a > later version of FTP. You all are talking about _two separate FTP's_ (as I pointed out previously). If you all would stop confusing yourselves, you'd be able to sort out the bogons. In this particular case, the NSFnet appeared at a _much_ later stage of the growth of the Internet (yes, it is spelled with a capital 'I'; the morons at the AP were not aware that 'internet' was a pre-existing word with a _different meaning_) than when Dave was working with the Fuzzball, and by that point there were _many_ TCP FTP's (e.g. the ITS one I previously sent the URL to the source for), so the 'first FTP on NSFnet' is a non-concept. The best bet for accurate data is to look at the TCP meeting minutes from the IEN series: https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien-index.html Looking quickly, the first one that Dave appears in might be IEN-160, "Internet Meeting Notes -- 7-8-9 October 1980". (He wasn't in the "Attendees" lists of any of the earlier ones I looked at.) Look in the "Status Reports" sections to see if he says anything about where he's at. The one for this one says: "Dave described the configuration of equipment at COMSAT which consists of a number of small hosts, mainly LSI-11s. ... COMSAT has also used NIFTP to transmit files between their hosts and ISIE. The NIFTP software was provided by UCL. ... COMSAT plans to .. arrange a permanent connection to the ARPANET." I have no idea what a "NIFTP" might be. Also, there is a reason that serious historians prefer contemporary written records, not people's memories. Noel

1 year, 3 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by Paul Ruizendaal

> I see that the wording on his Wikipedia page has the ambiguous phrase "had > the first implementation of FTP", which has been flagged as needing > clarification, so I intend to provide it. > > In both this interview: > > https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/113899/oh403dlm.pdf > > ... and this video recording of Mills himself giving a lecture at UDel: > > https://youtu.be/08jBmCvxkv4?t=428 > > ... it's quite clear that it's literally true - he authored, compiled, > installed, implemented, and tested the very first (and apparently second) > FTP server. It may be impossible to provide hard evidence. From RFC 354 it seems to me that the protocol took on a recognisable shape around July 1972 and from RFC 414 it seems to me that there were a number of implementations by November 1972, and unfortunately Dave Mills is not mentioned. His recollection may well be correct, but finding proof he was the first in a 4 months time slot 50+ years ago may be too ambitious. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc354.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc414.txt Maybe the internet history list can shed some more light on the matter: https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

1 year, 3 months

(Off topic) Dave Mills

by George Michaelson

Dave Mills, of fuzzball and ntp fame, one time U Delaware died on the 17th of January. He was an interesting, entertaining, prolific and rather idosyncratic emailer. Witty and informative. G

1 year, 3 months

Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by Royce Williams

What is the best public, unambiguous, non-YouTube reference I can cite for the late David Mills' initial FTP work? I see that the wording on his Wikipedia page has the ambiguous phrase "had the first implementation of FTP", which has been flagged as needing clarification, so I intend to provide it. In both this interview: https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/113899/oh403dlm.pdf ... and this video recording of Mills himself giving a lecture at UDel: https://youtu.be/08jBmCvxkv4?t=428 ... it's quite clear that it's literally true - he authored, compiled, installed, implemented, and tested the very first (and apparently second) FTP server. But Wikipedia's guidelines discourage YouTube-only citations, and the text in the interview seems insufficiently detailed to have citation value. What is the best reference I can cite? Thanks! -- Royce

1 year, 3 months

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