Unix History Diagram --- AOS quirks

Michael Sokolov msokolov at harrier.Uznet.NET
Wed Dec 16 06:04:56 AEST 1998


   "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" <rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> wrote:
> What specifically would one look for to exactly differentiate
> a vanilla 4.3, from a Tahoe, from a Reno, from a 4.4, from a 4.4Lite,
> on non-standard hardware?
   
   Telling between pre-Reno and post-Reno is trivial. If you see
directories like /usr/ucb, /usr/doc, /usr/man, binaries in /etc and in
/usr/lib, and so on, it's pre-Reno. If you see all docs, manpages, etc.
moved into /usr/share, /usr/ucb gone, no binaries in /etc or in /usr/lib,
strange critters appearing like /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/libexec, and
/usr/libdata, it's post-Reno.
   
   Distinguishing between plain-4.3-based and Tahoe-based non-UCB systems
can be tough, and, frankly, pointless. Aside from hardware issues, the
noticeable differences between 4.3 and 4.3-Tahoe are the location of
source-form manpages (/usr/man/man[1-8] on 4.3, /usr/src/man/man[1-8] on
Tahoe), MX record support in Sendmail (present in Tahoe but not in 4.3),
and the Olson timezone implementation, i.e., that big pile of zoneinfo
files (again present in Tahoe but not in 4.3).
   
   The reason exercises like this are pointless is because when some brave
vendor takes BSD sources and tries to make a vendor release from them, they
usually have their own mind about what the system should look like,
different from CSRG's. Vendors often take different pieces from different
systems on a subjective basis. A vendor release can have the feature set of
one system and the look and feel of another. For example, Ultrix V4.0 has
the classical pre-Reno look and feel, but yet is POSIXized to about the
same extent as Reno. Thus the blurb above about telling between pre-Reno
and post-Reno systems refers to the look and feel of a system, not to its
feature set. The plain 4.3 vs. Tahoe distinction doesn't really hold in
vendor systems either. Ultrix V4.0 has MX record support in Sendmail, but
its man mechanism is plain 4.3 vintage. Don't remember if there were
zoneinfo files there or not.
   
   /var also has an interesting story. In the BSD line it appears in Reno,
but it originates in SunOS and Ultrix, systems with pre-Reno look and feel
on which a number of directories were moved from /usr to the newly-created
/var. Thus on 4.3 or 4.3-Tahoe you have /usr/spool/mail, on SunOS and
Ultrix you have /var/spool/mail, and on Reno and later you have /var/mail.
   
   Oh, I forgot to mention that the filesystem format changed slightly and
disk label support was added between 4.3 and 4.3-Tahoe. Again this is
certainly meaningless for vendor systems because they always tweak the
filesystem format themselves and have their own disk label implementations
that are not compatible with the one in Tahoe and later BSD releases.
   
> The dating seems to be 1987 or 1988.  Was Tahoe around then?
   
   The Tahoe tape shipped in the summer of 1988, but of course the work at
CSRG was going all the time.
   
> Salus suggests straight 4.3 was June of 1986, and Tahoe was June
> of 1988 (Salus, p. 165).
   
   Correct.
   
> but, a VAXStation 3500 just appeared
> in surplus.... maybe the bidding force will be with me.
   
   Good luck. 4.3BSD-Quasijarus1 will run like a charm on it. If the force
is really with you, you may even be able to run it with the graphical
console, but if not, it's trivial to pull the QDSS boards out and run the
machine as a standard VAX.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Cellular phone: 216-217-2579
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at harrier.Uznet.NET


Received: (from major at localhost)
	by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id HAA20397
	for pups-liszt; Wed, 16 Dec 1998 07:11:43 +1100 (EST)


More information about the TUHS mailing list