[TUHS] Unix v6 File System information

Will Senn will.senn at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 07:05:39 AEST 2016



On 2/21/16 12:59 PM, Clem Cole 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
>

Thanks Clem. I know that in theory, this should be super 
straightforward, but it seems that theory and reality are uncomfortable 
with each other around me and this question. I've tried maybe 7 dozen 
different approaches to getting 1bsd.tar.gz files to be accessible to v6 
with more than a handful of files at a time. The vast majority of these 
methods were flawed in their conception, but some "should have worked" 
by all accounts, and yet, no joy (pun intended). I can use the paper 
tape punch method or others to copy one file at a time, but that's 
tedious. All of the other methods folks have suggested, I've tried, but 
frustratingly, it just doesn't seem possible to perform the "back in the 
day" install of 1bsd on v6:

Berkeley UNIX Software Tape
     Jan 16, 1978    TP 800BPI

     To extract contents do:
       tp xm ./setup; sh setup; tp xm

     See accompanying document
Second label on the tape:

     The contents of this tape are
     distributed to UNIX licensees
     only, subject to the software
     agreement you have with Western
     Electric and an agreement with
     the University of California.


For example, it seems like using tar2mt on the gunzipped tarball and 
attaching to tm0 should work, but when running tp xm on it, it fails 
(something about directory checksum). I know the tarball is good, not so 
sure about the mt image (tried it with default blocksize and 512 as well).

In the absence of positive confirmation of someone else's successful 
experience installing 1bsd, I backburner this problem every so often and 
carry on with my other investigations. When someone suggests something 
new, or I think of some new angle, I fire up the sim and try installing 
again. Hence, my occasional queries that seem to be retreads.

Now that I have more experience with the SimH simulator, PDP-11 
architecture/programming, and success at moving files around DEC OS'es, 
I feel oh so close to a breakthrough on this one sticky problem :). 
Hence my latest interest in the file system. I figure if I can 
understand the format I may be able to check the conversion of the 
tarball to a v6 consumable filesystem and determine why it's not working.

Why, oh why, didn't someone save a tape image, rather than a tarball, 
given that tar on v6 was so hokey?!

Thanks,

Will





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