[TUHS] Installing a large set of files into v6 from a modern host

[Will Senn]

All,

I am trying to figure out how to get parts of 1BSD added into a pristine 
v6 install, but the question I have relates to moving more than a 
handful of files from a host system into v6, which lacks several 
capabilities that are taken for granted from v7 onward (tar, unzip, and 
so on).

For background, in looking at the 1bsd tarball, exploded out, I saw that 
ex was available on the tape in a binary form that is suitable for a 
PDP-11/40 and I thought it would make life easier in v6 to have ex. So, 
I used dd to move the a.outNOID  file onto a file, which can be used as 
a raw RK image and then off the RK image loaded in the PDP-11 into the 
v6 system as the executable file ex, and that worked. I was able to run 
ex (well, sort of, I get the colon prompt anyway... I haven't figured 
out how it actually works yet). Yeeha! Having had success of a sort with 
a single executable from the 1BSD tape, I would like to see if other 
parts of 1BSD will work in the environment and if I can properly install 
those parts.

Individually moving files using dd is tedious in the extreme (there are 
many files in the tarball). I know there has to be a better way. Since 
v6 doesn't have tar, or unzip,  it doesn't seem likely that using dd to 
move the tarball into v6 will be help matters. But, if there was a way 
to dd a subdirectory and its contents onto an RK image and get them off 
again into a useable v6 file system, that would work.

My question for the group is based on the preceding discussion and the 
following assumption:

1. given a tarball such as 1bsd.tar.gz from the TUHS archive located at:
/PDP-11/Distributions/ucb

2. with a running SimH PDP-11/40 instance
with a virtual TU10 magtape
with a virtual TU56 dectape
with a virtual RK05 hard drive

3. running v6 as the operating system

What is an efficient method of moving the files of the 1bsd 
distribution, or any other set of files and directories, into the v6 
operating environment?

Here are some approaches that seem reasonable, but that I haven't been 
able to figure out, if you know better, please do tell:
1. a utility on the host that is capable of copying a directory and its 
contents, recursively, onto a blank magtape/dectape/rk image that is 
then readable in the v6 environment
2. a tar and unzip binary for v6 that is capable of dealing with the 
tarball (but isn't the tarball going to exceed the max file size anyway, 
if so this won't work)
3. an alternative archiver that runs on FreeBSD or Mac OS X, that can 
create a single file archive from a subdirectory's contents on the host 
(the resultant file would need to be extractable on v6, and if file size 
is too limited, won't work either).
4. some kind of directory transfer utility that works over telnet that 
can be executed from a FreeBSD or Mac OS X host and that can be executed 
on the v6 system as well.
5. a utility capable of creating an empty magtape/dectape/rk image and 
another capable of making a filesystem on the image and another of 
populating the image (analogous to fdisk rkimage; mkfs rkimage; rkcopy 
dir rkimage)

If I am asking the wrong questions, or thinking badly, I would 
appreciate a steer in the right direction.

Regards,

Will