21 Feb
2016
21 Feb
'16
6:27 p.m.
From: Will Senn
Thanks for the link.
Sure. It's worth reading the entire V6 manual if you're going to be doing a
lot with it - lots of goodies hidden in places like that. Also the two BSTJ
Unix issues. (I think they are available online, now.)
Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of
a V6 filesystem
on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in simh as an RK05 and
mount and access its files and directories from a V6 instance?
That's really a SIMH question, and I don't use SIMH; I use Ersatz11. That is
certainly how Ersatz11 works; I just FTP'd the RK05 distro images over, set
them up as the files that 'implemented' various RK05 drives, and (modulo a
few teething Ersatz11 configuration issues) away it went.
Noel
21 Feb
21 Feb
6:59 p.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
Will Senn asked
Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of
a V6 filesystem
on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in
simh as an RK05 and
Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
Ersatz11)
work.
You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools to
push/pull V6 "files" from the image. This is the same as the "DOS
Tools"
trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT file
system images. You would need to do the same thing. If you poke around
the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there.
What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of using
a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image. Then use tar/cpio or
whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits.
Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago. The UNIX ar(1) format is
sometimes used also, since it was common. cpio -c also works, but that
was not on the research systems. My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote a
really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX. That should back port to
v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler for
V6 which supported enough of the V7 C. The advantage of the ANSI tape
format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
That said, you can be smarter and more automatic. As Noel says Ersatz11
supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do.
Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many
different emulators. Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with such a
shared FS. At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work.
The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would be
Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff that
Google released. If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could mount
the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools.
I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time. If I ever
became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more
like this.
Clem
mount and access its files and directories from a
V6 instance?
7:31 p.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
Already been done: see http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/
Arnold
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Will Senn asked
Supposing I created a byte faithful
representation of a V6 filesystem
on my mac, would I then be able to load the file
in simh as an RK05 and
Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
Ersatz11)
work.
You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools to
push/pull V6 "files" from the image. This is the same as the "DOS
Tools"
trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT file
system images. You would need to do the same thing. If you poke around
the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there.
What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of using
a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image. Then use tar/cpio or
whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits.
Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago. The UNIX ar(1) format is
sometimes used also, since it was common. cpio -c also works, but that
was not on the research systems. My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote a
really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX. That should back port to
v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler for
V6 which supported enough of the V7 C. The advantage of the ANSI tape
format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
That said, you can be smarter and more automatic. As Noel says Ersatz11
supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do.
Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many
different emulators. Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with such a
shared FS. At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work.
The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would be
Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff that
Google released. If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could mount
the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools.
I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time. If I ever
became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more
like this.
Clem mount and access its files and directories from a
V6 instance?
8:45 p.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
I've tried to use ancientfs, but couldn't get it to work. Other fuse
FSes, yes, ancientfs, no.
On 2/21/16 1:31 PM, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Already been done: see
http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/
Arnold
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
> Will Senn asked
>
>> Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of a V6 filesystem
> > on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in simh as an RK05 and
>> > mount and access its files and directories from a V6 instance?
>>
> Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
> Ersatz11)
>
> work.
> You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
> system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
> But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
> since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools to
> push/pull V6 "files" from the image. This is the same as the "DOS
Tools"
> trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT
file
> system images. You would need to do the same thing. If you poke around
> the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there.
>
> What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of using
> a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image. Then use tar/cpio or
> whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits.
> Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago. The UNIX ar(1) format is
> sometimes used also, since it was common. cpio -c also works, but that
> was not on the research systems. My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote a
> really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX. That should back port to
> v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler for
> V6 which supported enough of the V7 C. The advantage of the ANSI tape
> format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
>
>
> That said, you can be smarter and more automatic. As Noel says Ersatz11
> supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do.
> Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many
> different emulators. Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with such a
> shared FS. At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work.
>
> The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would be
> Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff that
> Google released. If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could mount
> the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools.
> I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time. If I ever
> became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more
> like this.
>
> Clem
9:06 p.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
It has not been updated since about 10.5 so I'm not surprised.
On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 3:45 PM, Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I've tried to use ancientfs, but couldn't
get it to work. Other fuse FSes,
yes, ancientfs, no.
On 2/21/16 1:31 PM, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Already been done: see
http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/
Arnold
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Will Senn asked
Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of a V6 filesystem
on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in simh as an RK05
and
> mount and access its files and directories
from a V6 instance?
Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
Ersatz11)
work.
You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools
to
push/pull V6 "files" from the image. This is the same as the "DOS
Tools"
trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT
file
system images. You would need to do the same thing. If you poke around
the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there.
What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of
using
a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image. Then use tar/cpio or
whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits.
Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago. The UNIX ar(1) format
is
sometimes used also, since it was common. cpio -c also works, but that
was not on the research systems. My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote
a
really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX. That should back port
to
v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler
for
V6 which supported enough of the V7 C. The advantage of the ANSI tape
format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
That said, you can be smarter and more automatic. As Noel says Ersatz11
supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do.
Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many
different emulators. Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with
such a
shared FS. At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work.
The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would
be
Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff
that
Google released. If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could
mount
the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools.
I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time. If I ever
became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more
like this.
Clem
9:05 p.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
On 2/21/16 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
Will Senn asked
Thanks Clem. I know that in theory, this should be super
straightforward, but it seems that theory and reality are uncomfortable
with each other around me and this question. I've tried maybe 7 dozen
different approaches to getting 1bsd.tar.gz files to be accessible to v6
with more than a handful of files at a time. The vast majority of these
methods were flawed in their conception, but some "should have worked"
by all accounts, and yet, no joy (pun intended). I can use the paper
tape punch method or others to copy one file at a time, but that's
tedious. All of the other methods folks have suggested, I've tried, but
frustratingly, it just doesn't seem possible to perform the "back in the
day" install of 1bsd on v6:
Berkeley UNIX Software Tape
Jan 16, 1978 TP 800BPI
To extract contents do:
tp xm ./setup; sh setup; tp xm
See accompanying document
Second label on the tape:
The contents of this tape are
distributed to UNIX licensees
only, subject to the software
agreement you have with Western
Electric and an agreement with
the University of California.
For example, it seems like using tar2mt on the gunzipped tarball and
attaching to tm0 should work, but when running tp xm on it, it fails
(something about directory checksum). I know the tarball is good, not so
sure about the mt image (tried it with default blocksize and 512 as well).
In the absence of positive confirmation of someone else's successful
experience installing 1bsd, I backburner this problem every so often and
carry on with my other investigations. When someone suggests something
new, or I think of some new angle, I fire up the sim and try installing
again. Hence, my occasional queries that seem to be retreads.
Now that I have more experience with the SimH simulator, PDP-11
architecture/programming, and success at moving files around DEC OS'es,
I feel oh so close to a breakthrough on this one sticky problem :).
Hence my latest interest in the file system. I figure if I can
understand the format I may be able to check the conversion of the
tarball to a v6 consumable filesystem and determine why it's not working.
Why, oh why, didn't someone save a tape image, rather than a tarball,
given that tar on v6 was so hokey?!
Thanks,
Will
Supposing I created a byte faithful
representation of a V6 filesystem
on my mac, would I then be able to load the file
in simh as an
RK05 and
mount and access its files and directories from a
V6 instance?
Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
Ersatz11)
work.
You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write
tools to push/pull V6 "files" from the image. This is the same as the
"DOS Tools" trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to
"grok" DOS/FAT file system images. You would need to do the same
thing. If you poke around the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find
some of this already there.
What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of
using a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image. Then use
tar/cpio or whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can
interpret the bits. Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago.
The UNIX ar(1) format is sometimes used also, since it was common.
cpio -c also works, but that was not on the research systems. My
old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote a really good ANSI tape
reader/writer for BSD UNIX. That should back port to v6 with a little
work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler for V6 which
supported enough of the V7 C. The advantage of the ANSI tape format
is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
That said, you can be smarter and more automatic. As Noel says
Ersatz11 supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and
Parallels) do. Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in
fact useful for many different emulators. Warning there are a lot of
dragons hidden with such a shared FS. At is definitely doable, but
is going to take some work.
The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but
would be Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation
that stuff that Google released. If hacked up support for the old
Unix FS, you could mount the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see
the bits with normal tools. I've thought about doing this but I have
never had the time. If I ever became a serious user of the simh, I
would probably want something more like this.
Clem
9:21 p.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:05 PM, Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Why, oh why, didn't someone save a tape image,
rather than a tarball,
given that tar on v6 was so hokey?!
hmm - no idea. I don't remember having had such problems to be honest.
Maybe we can find the a tp image. I'm sure they reason they used a tar
image was, that tp was more problematic.
That said, I still think the tar image should work. Maybe the solution is
try to compiler stp with a modern C compiler. It will take some work to
move it I suspect because the code would be 100% assuming PDP-11 in every
way, and is binary. Plus things like stat.h are a bit different than in
the old days. Let's take this off-line and let see what's possible.
22 Feb
22 Feb
2:20 a.m.
New subject: Unix v6 File System information
On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 03:05:39PM -0600, Will Senn wrote:
Why, oh why, didn't someone save a tape image,
rather than a tarball,
given that tar on v6 was so hokey?!
Thanks,
Will
In http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Tools/Tapes/
there are tools that I and other wrote to create
tape images: tp etc.
So you could do:
tar vxf 1bsd.tar
tp tool to build a tp image
mktap to build a SimH tap image
attach to SimH
PROFIT!!
So sorry, I couldn't stop myself.
Cheers, Warren
2989
days inactive
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7 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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arnold＠skeeve.com -
Clem Cole -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
Warren Toomey -
Will Senn