18 Jun
2022
18 Jun
'22
12:35 a.m.
I can think of at least 4 things, some big, some
small, where post-V7
Research Unix was influential
Besides streams, file system switch, /proc, and /dev/fd. v8 had the
Blit. Though Rob's relevant patent evoked disgruntled rumblings from
MIT that window systems were old hat, the Blit pioneered multiple
windows as we know them today. On the contemporary Lisp Machine, for
example, active computation happened in only one window at a time.
V8 also had Peter Weinberger's Remote File System. Unlike NFS, RFS
mapped UIDS, thus allowing files to be shared among computers in
different jurisdictions with different UID lists. Unfortunately, RFS
went the way of Reiser paging.
And then there was Norman Wilson, who polished the kernel and
administrative tools. All kinds of things became smaller and
cleaner--an inimitable accomplishment
No clue what was new in V10
This suggests I should put on my to-do list an update of the Research
Unix Reader's combined table of man-page contents, which covers only
v1-v9. I think it's fair to say, though, that nothing introduced in
v10 was as influential as the features mentioned above.
Doug
18 Jun
18 Jun
5 a.m.
New subject: forgotten versions
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 5:35 PM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
I believe RFS shipped in SVR3, at least as a package for the 3b2.
I can think of
at least 4 things, some big, some small, where post-V7
Research Unix was influential
Besides streams, file system switch, /proc, and /dev/fd. v8 had the
Blit. Though Rob's relevant patent evoked disgruntled rumblings from
MIT that window systems were old hat, the Blit pioneered multiple
windows as we know them today. On the contemporary Lisp Machine, for
example, active computation happened in only one window at a time.
V8 also had Peter Weinberger's Remote File System. Unlike NFS, RFS
mapped UIDS, thus allowing files to be shared among computers in
different jurisdictions with different UID lists. Unfortunately, RFS
went the way of Reiser paging.
And then there was Norman Wilson, who polished the
kernel and
administrative tools. All kinds of things became smaller and
cleaner--an inimitable accomplishment
No clue what was new in V10
This suggests I should put on my to-do list an update of the Research
Unix Reader's combined table of man-page contents, which covers only
v1-v9. I think it's fair to say, though, that nothing introduced in
v10 was as influential as the features mentioned above.
Doug
5:13 a.m.
New subject: forgotten versions
Could users outside Bell Labs actually get their hands on post-v7 Research Unixes?
It was always my impression that The Thing You Could Get From The Phone Company, after v7,
was System III or System V. Obviously it's not surprising that Research Unix
features from later versions ended up in SysV, but did anyone actually learn about them
from v8-v10, or just by way of SysV ?
Was there some (legal) mechanism for the post-v7 Unixes to get out into people's
hands?
Adam
4:58 p.m.
New subject: forgotten versions
TUHS Source Archive BTL Research Distributions
<https://streaklinks.com/BF0jaowo6HdJanOkuwoN8MED/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tuhs.org%2FArchive%2FDistributions%2FResearch%2F>
you should find them all.
ᐧ
On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 1:13 AM Adam Thornton <athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Could users outside Bell Labs actually get their hands
on post-v7 Research
Unixes?
It was always my impression that The Thing You Could Get From The Phone
Company, after v7, was System III or System V. Obviously it's not
surprising that Research Unix features from later versions ended up in
SysV, but did anyone actually learn about them from v8-v10, or just by way
of SysV ?
Was there some (legal) mechanism for the post-v7 Unixes to get out into
people's hands?
Adam
5:18 p.m.
New subject: forgotten versions
Are these systems bootable? I see all the source, but recall previous
discussions
about how bootstrapping them was tricky, or at least involved a large
number of
steps, each of which wasn't bad, but the whole path wasn't well mapped out.
For V[67] we at least have boot tapes from back in the day, and V5 has a
bootable
disk image...
Warner
On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 10:58 AM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
TUHS Source Archive BTL Research Distributions
<https://streaklinks.com/BF0jaowo6HdJanOkuwoN8MED/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tuhs.org%2FArchive%2FDistributions%2FResearch%2F>
you should find them all.
ᐧ
On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 1:13 AM Adam Thornton <athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Could users outside Bell Labs actually get their
hands on post-v7
Research Unixes?
It was always my impression that The Thing You Could Get From The Phone
Company, after v7, was System III or System V. Obviously it's not
surprising that Research Unix features from later versions ended up in
SysV, but did anyone actually learn about them from v8-v10, or just by way
of SysV ?
Was there some (legal) mechanism for the post-v7 Unixes to get out into
people's hands?
Adam
5:57 p.m.
New subject: forgotten versions
On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 1:19 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
Are these systems bootable?
It has been so reported - in this same space IIRC
I see all the source, but recall previous discussions
about how bootstrapping them was tricky, or at least involved a large
number of
steps, each of which wasn't bad, but the whole path wasn't well mapped out.
I believe that is also correct. Been a ToDo item of mine to try to get
them running. Supposedly people used V8 to get V9 running.
For V[67] we at least have boot tapes from back in the
day, and V5 has a
bootable disk image...
Yep and it helps, some of us did it back in the day.
The problem has been expressed, that V{8,9,10} like Plan9, were locked away
for whatever reasons. They were all created post-Judge Green when the
behavior of AT&T formally WRT to the rest of the world changed. I don't
think the people in 1127's attitude changed (certainly not of my friends
that I interacted with) but what they could do was more constrained.
Before the 1956 consent decree, AT&T corporate was not allowed to be in the
computer business, post-Judge Green they were actively trying to be and
their SW was formally System III and the later System V versions. BTW:
AT&T was unique in this behavior. IBM and DEC did it too. One of my
favorite stories (that I personally lived) is that of Motorola, which
became the 68000. When I first got it (at Teklabs) it did not have a
number - which much, much later beget the 4404, it was explicitly told to
us that it was a toy and it was not committed. We managed to get approx
$100 of them to make the first Magnolia machine
<https://streaklinks.com/BF0w99hsbHL5eGZttg1NqgOi/https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdownload%2Fbitsavers_tektronixmliaplan_4739361%2F1980-9-16-magnolia-plan.pdf>
But the original developers had given a couple of them to the research
teams of a few of their friends - the 6809 was the official product.
Famously, when IBM asked Moto to bid on a processor for what was to later
become the PC, they had been playing with the future 68000 in NY and Conn,
already. When the folks came to Austin, IBM was pressured to use the 6809
by Motorola marketing, and officially told that the other chip had no
future and was an experiment.
I always looked at V{8,9,10} and Plan9 in the same way. BTW: I also think
that's part of why BSD got such a lead. AT&T Marketing kept the 'consider
it standard' stuff in people's faces with System III and later Sys V. Many
users (like me) and our firms wanted no part of it. If AT&T had been
offered V{8,9,10} or Plan9 under the same basic terms that V7 had
been, I suspect
that the story might have had a different ending.
Clem
ᐧ
19 Jun
19 Jun
8:46 p.m.
New subject: RFS (was Re: Re: forgotten versions)
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 10:00:19PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 5:35 PM Douglas McIlroy
douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Apparently. I've a book (ISBN 0-672-48440-4) with a short chapter on it within,
authored by Douglas Harris.
It happens to state:
AT&T's approach towards UNIX System V, Release 3.0 and beyond is to provide a
/Remote File System/ (RFS) that is an extension of the ordinary file system arrangement.
[…]
[…]
Remote File System Release 1.0 was first introduced in 1986 with Release 3.0 of UNIX
System V for AT&T 3B2 machines with Starlan network connections. It makes heavy use of
STREAMS, which were also introduced at that time. The next release RFS 1.1, accompanying
System V Release 3.1, was greatly enhanced. At this time releases for other machines
became available. In particular, with the release of a standard UNIX for Intel 80386-based
machines that incorporated STREAMS, vendors of networking products could arrange for RFS
to operate with those products, and RFS could run over Ethernet or any other network that
could support a solid transport connection such as TCP/IP or NetBIOS. […]
So that may be somewhere to search, possibly someone can find a '386 image with it
included?
DF
V8 also had Peter Weinberger's Remote File System. Unlike NFS, RFS
mapped UIDS, thus allowing files to be shared among computers in
different jurisdictions with different UID lists. Unfortunately, RFS
went the way of Reiser paging.
I believe RFS shipped in SVR3, at least as a package for the 3b2.
11:07 p.m.
New subject: RFS (was Re: Re: forgotten versions)
On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 09:46:31PM +0100, Derek Fawcus wrote:
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 10:00:19PM -0700, Kevin
Bowling wrote:
SunOS 4.x shipped RFS, Howard Chartok (my office mate at the time) did
the port I believe. Thankless work since Sun ran their entire campus
on NFS; RFS never got any attention. It's too bad because it did solve
some problems that NFS just punted on. NFS is Clem's law in action,
it was good enough, not great, but still won.
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 5:35 PM Douglas McIlroy
douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Apparently. I've a book (ISBN 0-672-48440-4) with a short chapter on it within,
authored by Douglas Harris.
It happens to state:
AT&T's approach towards UNIX System V, Release 3.0 and beyond is to provide a
/Remote File System/ (RFS) that is an extension of the ordinary file system arrangement.
[???]
V8 also had Peter Weinberger's Remote File System. Unlike NFS, RFS
mapped UIDS, thus allowing files to be shared among computers in
different jurisdictions with different UID lists. Unfortunately, RFS
went the way of Reiser paging.
I believe RFS shipped in SVR3, at least as a package for the 3b2. 
11:19 p.m.
New subject: RFS (was Re: Re: forgotten versions)
Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> writes:
On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 09:46:31PM +0100, Derek Fawcus
wrote:
I remember SunOS 4.x having RFS.. I never used it but I vaguely recall
(probably misremembering) that there was a warning in the man page about
it that it might not interoperate with /dev devices correct if the byte
order of the machines was different. I seem to recall that with RFS if
/dev was remoted you actually accessed the remote devices and not just
the device nodes from the system that /dev was mounted to. At the AT&T
site I was at we used NFS exclusively too.
--
Brad Spencer - brad(a)anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 10:00:19PM -0700, Kevin
Bowling wrote:
SunOS 4.x shipped RFS, Howard Chartok (my office mate at the time) did
the port I believe. Thankless work since Sun ran their entire campus
on NFS; RFS never got any attention. It's too bad because it did solve
some problems that NFS just punted on. NFS is Clem's law in action,
it was good enough, not great, but still won. On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 5:35 PM Douglas McIlroy
douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Apparently. I've a book (ISBN 0-672-48440-4) with a short chapter on it within,
authored by Douglas Harris.
It happens to state:
AT&T's approach towards UNIX System V, Release 3.0 and beyond is to provide a
/Remote File System/ (RFS) that is an extension of the ordinary file system arrangement.
[???]
V8 also had Peter Weinberger's Remote File System. Unlike NFS, RFS
mapped UIDS, thus allowing files to be shared among computers in
different jurisdictions with different UID lists. Unfortunately, RFS
went the way of Reiser paging.
I believe RFS shipped in SVR3, at least as a package for the 3b2. 
20 Jun
20 Jun
5:03 a.m.
New subject: RFS (was Re: Re: forgotten versions)
On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 07:19:31PM -0400, Brad Spencer wrote:
order of the machines was different. I seem to recall
that with RFS if
/dev was remoted you actually accessed the remote devices and not just
the device nodes from the system that /dev was mounted to. At the AT&T
site I was at we used NFS exclusively too.
Yup..
I used RFS on variuous SVR3 and SVR4 platforms back in the days, usually
for this purpose. Eg. to provide a simple way of giving 'workstation'
users access to modem-banks attached to central servers.
It worked fine as long as the platforms were pretty similar (eg. all
i386 based), but could indeed get 'interesting' once you added bits
in the mix that were based on other CPUs.
For me RFS came along 'before its time' as by design it could not handle
things like creating diskless or dataless workstations easily, exactly
because of the more fine-grained, file oriented, setup and that's where
NFS did it's thing.
The features RFS brought did, unfortunately, not seem as useful at the time
for general applications as things like broadly sharing boot and/or home/staff
environments was 'the thing' needed for a long time and NFS did that
very (too ;) ) easily.
However.. I do see it more like the UNIX 'grandad' for things we now
have like SMB and cloud sync/share 'filesystem' tools which operate
much more on a style of access and granularity like RFS did.
I always wondered if the Mircrosoft engineers that worked on the initial
SMB implementations looked at RFS for ideas.
Bye, Arno.
6:53 a.m.
New subject: RFS (was Re: Re: forgotten versions)
I'll note there was another RFS that was posted to net.sources and
net.unix-wizards by Todd Brunhoff in January 1986. This was
completely different from the AT&T System V's; Todd's RFS was done as
part of his Master's Degree at the University of Denver, and it was
heavily dependant on BSD 4.2/4.3's sockets interface.
For more information, see:
https://groups.google.com/g/net.unix-wizards/c/QwRVsZS9jEM/m/V4ZI64CKopsJ?p…
We used this version of RFS at MIT Project Athena for a while before
switching to AFS, and it's mentioned in Professor Saltzer's Athena
Technical Plan, in the section entitled, "The Athena File Storage
Model":
https://web.mit.edu/saltzer/www/publications/athenaplan/c.6.pdf
Project Athena integrated MIT Kerberos (Version 4) into both NFS and
RFS, and of course AFS used Kerberos for its authentication tokens.
- Ted
676
days inactive
678
days old
10 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
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Adam Thornton -
Arno Griffioen -
Brad Spencer -
Clem Cole -
Derek Fawcus -
Douglas McIlroy -
Kevin Bowling -
Larry McVoy -
Theodore Ts'o -
Warner Losh