TUHS

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6496 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal > Note that LSX only holds one process in core and swaps other processes > (NPROC = 3) out to floppy. It reportedly took several hours for the > Terak to self-compile LSX from source. If one is working in a simulator, and not a real hardware PDP-11, there's a 'trick' one can use to make life a lot easier - for MINI-UNIX, at least; I'll comment on LSX below. As I report in the MINI-UNIX Computer History Wiki article: "MINI-UNIX uses the same file system as V6; this allows MINI-UNIX packs to be 'mounted' on V6 systems (either real, or simulated), which is very convenient for working on them." So just spin up a V6 in the simulator, mount the LSX/MINI-UNIX pack, and away you go. The V6 toolchain can be used to compile/link kernels; to link user commands one will need to import the LSX/MINI-UNIX loader (which, since V6 is source compatible with LSX/MINI-UNIX, is trivial). LSX is potentially more complex, as it supports _two different_ file system formats: the standard V6 one, and a 'contiguous' one which is very similar to the V6 one (rdwri.c has no conditionals on CONTIG; not so alloc.c, though), but is not fully compatible. So non-contiguous LSX file systems can be mounted under V6, but not contiguous ones. Noel

2 years, 9 months

RUNCOM and Multics: the origin of "rc" file

by Michelangelo De Simone

Hi, long time lurker here. Today I ended up on an article by Christian Lee Seibold about the origin of shells [1]. Coincidentally the article explained how the “rc” files came to be and why they’re called “rc”: everything started with RUNCOM and Multics. An excerpt from the article: ==== Unix Shells have had a very long history, and it all starts with a program written by Louis Pouzin for the MIT CTSS Operating System, called RUNCOM (which stood for “run commands”). It executed commands from a file, called “a runcom”. According to Kernighan and Ritchie[1], “rc” configuration files from Unix descended from this. Tom Van Vleck also gives origins of Unix’s use of “rc” to RUNCOM [2], and notes that the first time he read the term “shell” was from Multics documentation created by Doug Eastwood. According to Louis Pouzin, he coined the word “shell”. ==== Well, now I know… [1] https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/auragem.space/~krixano/ShellHistory-Unix.pdf — Michelangelo

2 years, 9 months

Mailing list archives

by Warner Losh

So where are the mailing list archives? I found one with google on minnie, but it stops a few weeks ago... Warner

2 years, 9 months

Line Numbers Before SysIII nl? BSD num?

by Douglas McIlroy

I've not seen an earlier post of mine on this topic; apologies if this is a duplicate. Roff was probably the earliest way to get a line-numbered file listing. Of course it took a bit of chicanery to apply it to a roff input file, but even that was not a big shell script. As has often been told, Joe Ossanna used to promise of line numbers (required by USPTO) to attract the Bell Labs patent department as the first Unix "customer". Doug

2 years, 9 months

Re: ed: multiple addresses (with semicolons)

by Douglas McIlroy

> More was I curious about the documentation of address chains in books. It was even discussed in Lomutu and Lomuto, "A Unix Primer", a pleasant book whose level is accurately described in the title. Doug

2 years, 9 months

Re: Unix V8 Chaosnet, any takers?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ron Natalie > We had NCP running on the JHU kernel Which NCP implementation was that, the one from UIUC, or something else? (I'm curious about the one that someone here - I forget who - mentioned, where IIRC they thought it was a new one, not the UIUC one. I'm a little boggled that with so little use for one - there weren't many NCP sites - someone would have gone to all the work to do another one. But it's possible...) If you all used the UIUC one, what did you call it? I looked through the email about releases from NOSC (who seemed to be the focal point for maintaining it at one point): https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SRI-NOSC/new/dist.log but it doesn't give a name for it. The documentation: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SRI-NOSC/doc/IllinoisNCP.nr doesn't either (other than 'Illinois NCP'). It does seem that they were semi-using V7; see e.g.: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SRI-NOSC/green/c.c but the code looks very V6-ish; see e.g.: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SRI-NOSC/ken/text.c Noel

2 years, 10 months

Re: Unix V8 Chaosnet, any takers?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warner Losh >> What's "net unix" anyway? > I'm referring to the University of Illinois distribution Ah, OK. > I have seen references to it in the ARPAnet census documents running on > both V6 and V7 (though mostly they were silent about which version). Well, V7 came out in January, 1979, and NCP wasn't turned off until January, 1983, so people had a lot of time to get it running under V7. > I thought this was the normal nomenclature of the time, but I may be > mistaken. I'm not sure what it was usually called; we didn't have much contact with it at MIT (although I had the source; I'm the one that provided it to TUHS). The problem was that although MIT had two IMPs, all the ports on them were spoken for, for big time-sharing mainframes (4 PDP-10's running ITS; 1 running TWENEX; a Multics), so there were no ports available to plug in a lowly PDP-11. (We were unable to get an IP gateway (router) onto the ARPANET until MIT got some of the first C/30 IMPs.) So we had no use for the NCP Unix (which I vaguely recall was described as 'the ARPANET Unix from UIll'). Noel

2 years, 10 months

Re: Unix V8 Chaosnet, any takers?

by Paul Ruizendaal

Apologies for being off-topic > What did people with PDP-11 V7 who wanted TCP/IP do, anyway? Taking it slightly broader (PDP-11 instead of V7), there is a lot of discussion about that on Mike Meuss’ TCP-digest mailing list: https://ftp.ripe.net/rfc/museum/tcp-ip-digest/ There is a 1985 index of available implementations as well ( https://ftp.ripe.net/rfc/museum/tcp-ip-implementations.txt.1 ). It includes the following options for PDP-11 systems: 1.7.5. UNIX 2.9BSD DESCRIPTION: 2.9BSD TCP/IP is an adaptation of Berkeley's original VAX TCP/IP (running under BSD 4.1B UNIX) which in turn is an offshoot of BBN's VAX TCP/IP. 2.9BSD TCP/IP runs on PDP-11/44s and PDP-11/70s. The 2.8 version from SRI was adapted by Bill Croft (formerly at SRI), then Tektronix adapted it for 2.9. Berkeley took over modification of the software and brought it back to SRI where Dan Chernikoff and Greg Satz adapted it for a later release of 2.9. In addition to TCP/IP, UDP, ARP and the raw packet interface is available. ICMP redirects are not supported. User software implementations include Telnet and FTP, plus Berkeley-developed local net protocols, RWHO, RSH, RLOGIN, and RCP. 2.9BSD with TCP/IP support could probably be made to run on smaller PDP-11s although the address space would be very tight and might present problems. 1.7.6. Venix/11 TCP/IP DESCRIPTION: This is based on the "PDP-11/45" implementation available from the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. It has been ported to a V7 UNIX system, in particular VenturCom's Venix/11 V2.0. As little of the processing as possible takes place in the kernel, to minimize the code space required. It fits comfortably on I&D machines, but is almost hopeless on the smaller machines. The kernel includes a proNET device driver, IP fragment reassembly, IP header processing, local-net header processing, and simple routing. The rest of the IP processing, and all of the UDP and TCP functions, are in user libraries. The psuedo-teletype driver is also in the kernel, and is used by Server TELNET. User programs handle ICMP processing; User and Server TELNET, SMTP, TFTP, Finger, and Discard. There are User programs for Nicname and Hostname. IEN-116 nameservers are used by all programs, and an IEN-116 nameserver is also provided. The TCP used is very simple, not very fast, and lies about windows. No FTP is available, nor is one currently planned. 1.7.8. BBN-V6-UNIX DESCRIPTION: This TCP/IP/ICMP implementation runs as a user process in version 6 UNIX, with modifications obtained from BBN for network access. IP reassembles fragments into datagrams, but has no separate IP user interface. TCP supports user and server Telnet, echo, discard, internet SMTP mail, and FTP. ICMP generates replies to Echo Requests, and sends Source-Quench when reassembly buffers are full. 1. Hardware - PDP-11/70 and PDP-11/45 running UNIX version 6, with BBN IPC additions. 2. Software - written in C, requiring 25K instruction space, 20K data space. Supports 10 connections (including "listeners"). 3. Unimplemented protocol features: - TCP - Discards out-of-order segments. - IP - Does not handle some options and ICMP messages. 1.7.9. v 3COM-UNET DESCRIPTION: UNET is a communication software package which enables UNIX systems to communicate using TCP/IP protocols. UNET will utilize any physical communications media, from low speed links such as twisted pair RS-232C to high speed coaxial links such as Ethernet. All layers of the UNET package are directly available to the user. The highest layer provides user programs implementing ARPA standard File Transfer Protocol (UFTP), Virtual Terminal Protocol (UVTP), and Mail Transfer Protocols (UMTP). These programs in turn utilize the virtual circuit services of the TCP. The TCP protocol is implemented on top of the IP. Finally, IP can simultaneously interface to multiple local networks. UNET implements 5 of the 7 layers of the International Standards Organization Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model, layers 2 through 6: Link, Network, Transport, Session, and Presentation. Features of TCP 6 not yet implemented are Precedence and Security, End-of-Letter, and Urgent. Feature of IP 4 not yet implemented is Options. Of these, we have 2.9BSD and (a forerunner of) BBN-V6-Unix available on the TUHS Unix Tree. The Venix/11 source and the 3COM source appear lost. These (unfortunately) are the ones that were implemented on top of V7. Also, BBN back-ported the TCP/IP code of BBN VAX-TCP to V7 for their C/70 Unix.

2 years, 10 months

Re: V8 4BSD or 32V Based? (was: Unix V8 Chaosnet, any takers?)

by Paul Ruizendaal

> Regarding select, I recall that Dennis implemented it and passed it to > Berkeley*, but maybe not. He certainly had a hand in its design; I > distinctly remember talking to him about it after one of his trips out > west. That is an interesting comment. DMR was on the steering committee for what would become 4.2BSD. I once spoke with Kirk McKusick about the origins of the sockets API and I think he told me that there was a lot of debate in the committee whether descriptor readiness API should be stateful (like Haverty’s await() https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken/awaitr.c ) or stateless (like select). According to Sam Leffler (who I think added select() to 4.1c BSD) the select system call was somewhat modelled after the ADA select statement. I am speculating now, but I would not be surprised if dmr favoured the stateless design and contributed to its design. Paul

2 years, 10 months

Re: Unix V8 Chaosnet, any takers?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warner Losh > V7 could mean a modification of net unix What's "net unix" anyway? I know of the Net releases from CSRG, but this much precedes that. What did people with PDP-11 V7 who wanted TCP/IP do, anyway? Noel

2 years, 10 months

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