On 1/31/2013 7:06 PM, Jeremy C. Reed wrote: Well, keeping in mind the stuff in /sbin used to be in /etc, in e.g. v7 - it's possible the real reason is simply they wanted binaries out of /etc and didn't want to put them in /bin where normal users might wonder "what is this?".

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 06:06:15PM -0600, Jeremy C. Reed wrote: A few inaccuracies: When the operating system grew too big to fit on the first RK05 disk pack (their root filesystem) they let it leak into the second one, which is where all the user home directories lived (which is why the mount was called /usr). They replicated all the OS directories under there (/bin, /sbin, /lib, /tmp...) and wrote files to those new directories because their original disk was out of space. When they got a third disk, they mounted it on /home and relocated all the user directories to there so the OS could consume all the space on both disks and grow to THREE WHOLE MEGABYTES (ooooh!). Research Unix never had /sbin nor /home, and the tale of the third disk doesn't ring any bells to me. 7th Edition has /usr/dmr and /usr/ken, not /home/dmr nor /usr/home/dmr :) Cheers, Warren _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

From: "ramble1035 @dslextreme.com" <ramble1035(a)dslextreme.com> Subject: Re: [TUHS] history of sbin? Date: January 31, 2013 8:53:16 PM EST To: tuhs(a)tuhs.org Based on some vague recollections of early days at Sun... I seem to recall that one of the main differences between /bin and /sbin was that the /sbin binaries were all built with static libraries rather than shared. I heard /sbin described as "single-user bin"... I don't know when /sbin first appeared, though. -- Chris On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote: On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 06:06:15PM -0600, Jeremy C. Reed wrote: A few inaccuracies: When the operating system grew too big to fit on the first RK05 disk pack (their root filesystem) they let it leak into the second one, which is where all the user home directories lived (which is why the mount was called /usr). They replicated all the OS directories under there (/bin, /sbin, /lib, /tmp...) and wrote files to those new directories because their original disk was out of space. When they got a third disk, they mounted it on /home and relocated all the user directories to there so the OS could consume all the space on both disks and grow to THREE WHOLE MEGABYTES (ooooh!). Research Unix never had /sbin nor /home, and the tale of the third disk doesn't ring any bells to me. 7th Edition has /usr/dmr and /usr/ken, not /home/dmr nor /usr/home/dmr :) Cheers, Warren _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

From: Armando Stettner <aps(a)ieee.org> Subject: Re: [TUHS] history of sbin? Date: January 31, 2013 9:02:06 PM EST To: "ramble1035 @dslextreme.com" <ramble1035(a)dslextreme.com> Cc: tuhs(a)tuhs.org This all reminds me of UNIX-gurus on Usenet.... :) decvax!aps Begin forwarded message: _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

The 6th Edition update to the CACM paper says: Our PDP-11 has a 1M byte fixed-head disk, used for file system storage and swapping, 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 7th Edition update says: Our own PDP-11 has two 200-Mb moving-head disks for file system storage and swapping.