[TUHS] C-news is built

[Nick Downing]

In the dark mists of time I did have libpcap going and a 2.11BSD
system networked, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to
make that happen again. For my current experiments networking is
overkill, I just want a simple way to copy a file between host and
target. Indeed a lot of simulators provide just such a program,
although I guess that's harder in SIMH because of its large scope.

The block device method might be better though. I was unfamiliar with
how disklabels and how geometry worked in BSD, so I wasn't too sure if
this would work. It would be great if someone could try it. In the
meantime my method is tested and known to work, for bidirectional
transfer. I'm at my PC now so I'm attaching both the blocking script
(file2mt.py) and the deblocking script (mt2file.py). I have some simh
scripts for bringing up a 4.3BSD system but unfortunately they use
mkdisttap.pl (similar to file2mt.py) so I don't have a working example
of file2mt.py that I can just paste in, but I am happy to provide more
specific instructions if what I've posted already hasn't been enough.

cheers, Nick

On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 8:30 AM, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:
> This method seems unnecessarily complex.  If you have libpcap networking,
> attach xu (4.3bsd de0) to your ethernet interface and you can bring it up
> (ifconfig de0) and talk to any machine on the local network except the one
> hosting the SIMH instance. If you set up SIMH tap networking you can talk to
> the hosting machine
> (https://github.com/simh/simh/blob/master/0readme_ethernet.txt).  If you set
> up your router (route add default x.x.x.x 1) you can talk to any host on the
> internet numerically.  Now you can get files via ftp, rcp, etc.
>
> You could also attach a tar file as any block device - RQ, RL, whatever -
> and have tar read directly from the block device, which does not require any
> sort of padding or modification of the original file.
>
> I believe that 4.3's tar will understand most tar files, but if you have
> problems you can always create (or recreate) a tar file using the "o" option
> to output as an old style archive.
>
> -Henry
>
> On 10 March 2017 at 16:14, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> To get files into a 4.3BSD SIMH system the easiest way is with a Python
>> script that blockifies the file by outputting a 32 bits length (say 0x400),
>> then that many bytes, then the length again, and repeat for next block until
>> done. There is also a Perl version floating around which is popular for
>> canned SIMH scripts/packages. Then you mount this file on tm0 (if I recall)
>> in SIMH and then in the emulated system it appears at /dev/mt0. I normally
>> use tar in conjunction but it's not necessary (note star is a highly
>> compatible tar implementation, I think it is by Joerg from this list,
>> although I use actual 4.3BSD tar compiled for Linux and I think gnu tar also
>> works mostly). I can send the details later, I am using phone atm.
>> Nick
>>
>> On Mar 11, 2017 4:52 AM, "John Floren" <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks Warren and Geoff,
>>>
>>> Two problems:
>>>
>>> 1. 403 forbidden on that tarball
>>>
>>> 2. What's the best way to get these files into a running 4.3 system?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 2:49 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>> > OK, Geoff Collyer has built the C-News binaries for the 4.2 emulated
>>> > systems. They are temporarily at http://minnie.tuhs.org/Y5/Cnews/
>>> >
>>> > Does someone want to try and get them up and running on an emulated
>>> > system?
>>> >
>>> > Also, I've build a 4.3BSD version of the emulated uucp systems. It's a
>>> > separate branch at https://github.com/DoctorWkt/4bsd-uucp. You can get
>>> > it
>>> > by doing:
>>> >
>>> > git clone https://github.com/DoctorWkt/4bsd-uucp.git \
>>> >         --branch 4.3BSD --single-branch
>>> >
>>> > Once it's solid enough I will make this the default branch, but I'll
>>> > leave the 4.2BSD branch there as well.
>>> >
>>> > Thanks Geoff!
>>> >         Warren
>
>
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