[TUHS] Unix v6 File System information

[Will Senn]

I've tried to use ancientfs, but couldn't get it to work. Other fuse 
FSes, yes, ancientfs, no.

On 2/21/16 1:31 PM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> Already been done: see http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/
>
> Arnold
>
> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> ​Will Senn asked
>>
>>> Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of a V6 filesystem
>>   > on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in simh as an RK05 and
>>>   > mount and access its files and directories from a V6 instance?
>>>
>> ​Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
>> Ersatz11)​
>>
>> ​ work.
>> You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
>> system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
>> ​But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
>> since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools to
>> push/pull V6 "files" from the image.  This is the same as the "DOS Tools"
>> trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT file
>> system images.   You would need to do the same thing.  If you poke around
>> the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there.
>>
>> ​What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of using
>> a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image.   Then use tar/cpio or
>> whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits.
>> Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago.   The UNIX ar(1) format is
>> sometimes used also, since it was common.   cpio -c also works, but that
>> was not on the research systems.​   My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote a
>> really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX.  That should back port to
>> v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler for
>> V6 which supported enough of the V7 C.   The advantage of the ANSI tape
>> format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
>>
>>
>> That said, you can be smarter and more automatic.   As Noel says Ersatz11
>> supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do.
>> Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many
>> different emulators.  Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with such a
>> shared FS.   At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work.
>>
>> The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would be
>> Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff that
>> Google released.  If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could mount
>> the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools.
>> I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time.  If I ever
>> became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more
>> like this.
>>
>> Clem