[TUHS] Questions regarding early Unix contributors

Jeremy C. Reed reed at reedmedia.net
Fri Sep 25 05:04:03 AEST 2015


On Thu, 24 Sep 2015, Clem Cole wrote:

>    I believe he gave a copy of the sources very early to wnj -- which is how
> it ended up in 4.1BSD.  I don't think it was in the original 3.0 or 4.0
> packages as it was not in V5, V6 or V7 either.  I believe it was released in
> PWB 2.0 - not sure and Minnie does not seem to have them.

Yes, it is in 4.0BSD (the copy I have has it documented in the setup.t 
from Nov. 15, 1980, fsck.mm from Oct. 15, 1980). It appears to be the 
same code as in 4.1 also.

(But I cannot find 4.0 in Diomidis's git repo. I also don't have the 
original SCCS data from the early fsck, probably because it got moved 
and extended in different location.)

By the way, I see the .8 manual for it got a Regents copyright placed on 
it between 4.2 and 4.3 (even though contained lots of original text as 
in 4.0BSD). The extensive rewrite to the fsck code happening between 4.1 
and 4.3. fsck.c split up into main.c and others in August 1981, even 
though 4.2 a later year still shipped fsck.c and not the new code.

(Reminds me I need to listen to video from McKusick about history of 
ffs again.)

"the calm before the storm ... the storm ... the Coast Guard to the 
rescue" (from the fsck document)


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