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6531 discussions

Re: Make(1) Historical Behavior (was Cool talk on Unix and Sendmail history, by Eric Allman)

by segaloco

> And I think even V7 make supported what you described, as well as implicit rules for compiling .c into a .o or into a binary. > > Warner Losh You're right, I just tried it out. Been avoiding that pattern for years because I swear some make implementation I used at one point was very unhappy with that, but if V7 does it, then whatever implementation that was is probably not what I want to be using anyway. Also shows how little I've used specifics of BSD, I've never made a Makefile using bsd.prog.mk, although I have this desire for a write-once-build-everywhere Makefile that the preponderance of build systems that generate them imply is an exercise in futility... On that note, one quirk I've found with the implicit .c.o rule on older UNIX, just tested on V7 and System III, is that they render: cc -c $< rather than cc -c -o $@ $< If you have an object list with objects in several different directories, it spits them all out in the CWD, causing problems if you have similarly named files in multiple directories, and then outright failing on the final compilation if it's something like $(CC) -o $(BIN) $(OBJS) because $(OBJS) is a string of object pathnames with the full nested path, not just the resulting *.o files. Granted, I could be anti-patterning here for all I know, I haven't worked closely with a whole lot of Make-based projects that aren't my own. Maybe I just haven't read these darn papers I'm always hunting down enough. - Matt G.

1 year, 11 months

Re: Cool talk on Unix and Sendmail history, by Eric Allman

by Douglas McIlroy

"Lessons learned" overlooked the Morris worm, which exploited not only the unpardonable gets interface, but also the unpardonable back door that Allman built into sendmail. This reminds me of how I agonized over Mike Lesk's refusal to remove remote execution from uucp. (Like Eric, Mike created the feature to help fix the myriad trouble reports these communication facilities stimulated.) It seemed irresponsible to distribute v7 with the feature present, yet the rest of uucp provided an almost indispensable service. The fig leaf for allowing uucp in the distribution was that remote execution was described in the manual. If you didn't like it you could delete or fix uucp. (Sendmail's Trojan horse was undocumented, though visible in the code.) Doug

1 year, 11 months

Posted a video on installing and running v7

by Will Senn

Hi All, I got some questions recently about getting v7 working, so I fired up OBS to create a video walkthrough of the install process and first steps (it's basically following my v7 note, but hey some folks dig video). The video is totally amateur hour, but it was fun. I never get tired of logging in as dmr, writing hello.c, running cc, running hello and watch the magic of hello, world appear on "screen". As a reminder - the note (and thus, the video) walks the user through installing OpenSIMH (including pdp11), building a tape image, installing to disk from tape, booting off the disk, building and using a DZ-11 as a telnet listener on 16 lines, adding a user, running learn, and piddly stuff like setting baud, delays, and such. Not a lot of hand-holding, but some. When I get around to it, I'll probably update the note to add additional test environments (I'm pretty sure it works anywhere OpenSIMH does, but some folks like to see there system or one kinda like it in the list of tested systems). I'm running LMDE5 and Debian 12 Bookworm these days, so I know they work there in addition to pretty much any Linux Mint, MX Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS, etc. I'm still in awe of Hayle and Ritchie's Setting Up Unix - Seventh Edition as the basis of my note - 44 y.o. and counting... for holding up so well. The blog: https://decuser.github.io The blog post: https://decuser.github.io/unix/research-unix/v7/videos/2023/07/14/installin… The note blog post: https://decuser.github.io/unix/research-unix/v7/2022/10/28/installing-and-u… Later, Will

1 year, 11 months

Cool talk on Unix and Sendmail history, by Eric Allman

by Rich Morin

Lessons Learned from Sendmail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re1MAO6jOLE -r

1 year, 11 months

Offering Free Unbound System V Document Processing Guide (1983)

by segaloco

Good day all, I'm emailing to offer a duplicate UNIX document I picked up free of charge to whoever speaks for it first, I'll even cover the shipping. What I've got is a second copy of the Document Processing Guide shipped with the initial System V version, code 341-920, from 1983. Now for the caveat: I ordered this second copy as it was in much rougher shape than the one I currently have. I intend to chop the spine off so I can get quality scans of the pages rather than having to deal with creasing the hell out of the binding on my other copy (unlike the manuals and some of the other guides, this one is a typical paperback glue binding.) Once I'm done with the scans I'm just going to put all of the pages in a binder (as they're already Bell-style 7-hole punched.) That to say, I'm not ready to ship it right now, just got it today, still need to do the scans. As for contents, this contains the System V-era versions of the following papers (titles paraphrased): - Advanced Editing on UNIX - Sed - NROFF/TROFF User's Manual - TROFF Tutorial - Tbl - Eqn - MM Macros Manual - View Graphs and Slide Macros Anywho, figured I'd see if anyone was interested in this after I'm done with it. Otherwise I'll just see if a library around here is interested. - Matt G.

1 year, 11 months

AT&T UNIX Support Activities Post-1983

by segaloco

Hello, I received in the mail today a USOC listing from the NY Bell division listing various standardized service codes in 1982. I wasn't particularly expecting to see anything relevant to UNIX in there, but flipping through the pages, it did have me curious on one point. Prior to divestiture, one of the conditions placed on Bell was that they could not support UNIX. Sure, tapes could find their way to individuals for service costs or under particular agreements, but this provision of "service" seemed to be right out and not allowed under their then-terms. This is presumably why there is nothing resembling UNIX in this manual, nor can I find anything implying 3B20(D/S) services. So after 1983 when the cat is out of the bag and AT&T begins aggressive marketing, what sorts of "services" were they then providing to UNIX customers that they couldn't before? One item I've got that further complicates my understanding, a class listing from Western Electric Corporate Education from July, 1983[1]. Did offering classes like this not constitute "support", or was there a little window between 1982 and 1984 where AT&T could start their true marketing and support in earnest while still not being absolutely complete with the divestiture of the Western Electric business? In any case, if WECo was out the door as part of the legal settlement, it does strike me as a bit odd they'd put any work into spinning up the WECo Corporate Education machine on this for the space of just part of a year in 1983, only to then rebrand it all for ATTIS when Jan 1st passes. An additional time-frame indicator is while this foldout does list WECo, it is devoid of Bell system logos, consistent with the date as that was one of the conditions that started to take effect that summer. Anywho, I'm sure some of the general information what services they provided in addition to licensing and distributing for UNIX license holders lives in documentation out there, so I'll be reading up too, but figured it'd be good to ask if nothing else to figure out what was going on in the early 80s, because that WECo training document certainly has me a bit curious on the timeframe vs what they could and couldn't do throughout the Bell System breakup years. - Matt G. [1] -https://imgur.com/a/xbEOGZn Note, I intend to do a proper scan on glass with this after I get through some IBM stuff I'm working on, so don't worry, I don't intend these photos to be historical record.

1 year, 11 months

"UNIX/370: A Feasibility Study" by W.A. Felton (Bell TM)

by Tom Lyon

A friend found this doc which as far as I can tell is not online anywhere yet. Preliminary sketch for the UNIX/370 effort at Bell based on TSS/370. Apparently started at Holmdel, I had always thought Indian Hill. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zrnKJ7fT1yrt_9r8QJHtZm7cI9EQEw76/view?usp=… Please archive!

1 year, 11 months

(Amdahl UNIX) "Notes on Au Performance - or How to get the Pb out of Au"

by Tom Lyon

This is perhaps the first significant document I wrote at Amdahl. Although undated, I believe this was written in August 1979, after I had attended a 2 week class at IBM Chicago about VM//370(CP) internals and performance. The paper makes reference to V7 UNIX being "on order", so this is when the V6 UNIX system was in use. IIRC, V7 UNIX was released in Nov. of 1979. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cB2eqTwmicj1AQOiULDZjED5Rq-_V4N4/view?usp=… Huge thanks to my friend Karl D. for hanging on to this for 44 years.

1 year, 11 months

Re: Research UNIX PDP 11/45

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Henry Bent > there will be a lengthy addendum shortly. The most useful thing is probably this: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/ken/low.s which lists exactly what was there; not only the types, but how many of each there are. This is from 'nsys', which is slightly before the actual V4, so it's quite early. 'low.s' is inherently machine-specific; i.e. different machines would share most kernel files identically, but _not_ this one - unless they had _absolutely identical_ device sets. So this one is _probably_ the one from the /45 in picture. It shows: RK11 RF11 PC11 TC11 TM11 1xKL11 12xDC11 1xDP11 (synchronous serial) 1xDN11 (dial-out asynch control) 1xDR11C (parallel port to -11/20) 2xDC11 (Screw Works voice synthesizer) 1xDR11A (voice response unit) 1xDR11C (C/A/T typesetter) (Line printer, card reader and RP11 are commented out; more about the RP11 in a later message. There's also this: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/ken/11-45 which is a bit hard to interpret, but I think might list what's in each rack: the TC11, RK11 (early ones), RF11 and TM11 (early ones) were large custom wire-wrapped backplanes which bolted into the front or back of a 19 inch rack; this: https://gunkies.org/wiki/RK11-C_disk_controller has an image of such an RK11. The "MOS 16-24" is probably a reference to an MS11: https://gunkies.org/wiki/MS11_Semiconductor_Memory_System which had to mount in the CPU backplane. The "MM" entries are likely core memory units; probably MM11-K's: https://gunkies.org/wiki/MM11-K_core_memory since they seem to be 4KW each. (Maybe MM11-E's or 'F's, though; those are also 4KW each.) I'm not sure what they "PL"s are - probably Plessey core? Anyway,it looks like the machine had 104KB total. This file: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/ken/conf.c lists all the types of devices on the machine. One oddity is that it lists two RK11's; but if you look at the RK11 driver: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/dmr/rk.c it's only set up to handle one physical controller. But there is this: #define JRK 1 /* temp */ if (bp->b_dev.d_major==JRK) d = bp->b_dev.d_minor; else d = bp->b_blkno%3; so the two different major device entries appear to handle the same disks in different ways ("d = bp->b_blkno%3" will spread a virtual drive across three physical drives). Memory, it would have been hard to say (UNIX even then sized memory at start up) but then I found that '11-45' file. I also found a copy of the CACM version of the UNIX paper: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/unix.pdf which says the machine had 144KB (so they had added 40KB more at that point). (I seem to recall someone had scanned the SOSP version; I didn't save the pointer, but if someone knows where it is, it would be interesting to look, and see what it says - they seemed to update this paper on a regular basis - the copy included with V6 talks about the -11/70.) The system at that point had "a 1M byte fixed-head disk .. four moving-head disk drives which each provide 2.5M bytes on removable disk cartridges, and a single moving-head disk drive which uses removable 40M byte disk packs" The RS11 disks for the RF11 were 512KB, so either they'd added a second one, or switched to an RS04 (but that's a MASSBUS device). The big disk was an RP03 so they had added an RP11, which wasn't present earlier. Noel

1 year, 11 months

Research UNIX PDP 11/45

by Henry Bent

Hello all, I asked this question in a different thread but it may have been bogged down in other discussion so I figured it was worth asking again. What was the hardware configuration of the 11/45 that Research used to implement early UNIX? This would be circa late 1972/earlty 1973. I have found numerous references to it being an early production 11/45, and I assume that it had an RK05, but I cannot find any details about things like memory size and other peripherals. Since the only extant sources are for V1, which was as I understand only run on a singular 11/20, and V5 by which time UNIX had spread it doesn't seem possible to infer a hardware configuration from existing code. -Henry

1 year, 11 months

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