[TUHS] Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

Phil Budne phil at ultimate.com
Sat Oct 15 02:08:18 AEST 2022


Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
> sys4.c: I think this is available in BBN V6:
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken>
> In this file the only real network addition is Jack Haverty’s user timer variable, I think. What else is missing?

Side question: What/when is the origin of the pty driver?

https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/dmr/pty.c

Has a revision history, but no date/author for its origin.

And
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SRI-NOSC/dmr/pty.c

is simpler, and lacks the changes and history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoterminal#History
claims:
	"Unix pseudoterminals originated in 1983 during the
	development of Eighth Edition Unix and were based on a similar
	feature in TENEX."

But the above pty.c clearly predates that.

Wikipedia continues with further bogosity:

	They were part of the 4.2 release of BSD, with a rather
	cumbersome openpty() interface defined for use.

with a link to https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=openpty&sektion=3
which says
"The openpty() and forkpty() functions first appeared in 4.3BSD Reno."

ISTR in 4.2 days there wasn't any library code to open a ptyXX/ttyXX pair,
which was CERTAINLY cumbersome.  forkpty is downright handy, and portable.

phil


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