[TUHS] 2.8 bsd frustrations

[Will Senn via TUHS]

I downloaded TUHS 2.8bsd.tar.gz, unpacked it and found FILE.1-FILE.8, 
but no FILE.9, however there was a /usr exploded. So I tar'd it up and 
made a FILE.9 from it, rebuilt an almost-bsd28.tap (there are like 6 
extra blocks, prolly tar --v7 related stuff) any how, I can boot it, cat 
the instructions and contents (file 1 is cat, file 2 is instructions, 
file 3 is contents) and restore the boot disk and the /usr stuff (file 
9). What it lacks is a v7 /usr dump or a v7 distribution tape to restore.

I have the v7 dist tape and lots of v7 instances. I figured I would 
start with the dist tape since the instructions say:

  2.   Gather the following ingredients:

      A.   An idle PDP-11 available for at least eight hours.

      B.   A free formatted pack.

      C.   A full dump of your /usr file system or a Bell  V7
           Distribution Tape.

but, when I mount the tape as mt0 and try to extract it with restore, it 
doesn't work (why should it 28bsd expects 1k blocks), so I tried 
512restore on it and it doesn't work much better:

...
Missing address (header) block Missing address (header) block Missing 
address (header) block Missing address (header) block Missing address 
(header) block Mount volume 2

Now, admittedly, I don't have a clue how this worked back in the day and 
the docs are shall we say thin...

The 2.8 tape is bootable and after installing the miniroot and going 
multiuser, it says:

|EECS 11/70 Version 7 UNIX |

The file.9 stuff gets mounted but the miniroot and extracted FILE.9 
aren't a complete OS, it definitely depends on /usr from V7. So, the 
question is, did folks boot the tape and bring v7/usr over and do the 
install from that system (this would allow all of the 28bsd binaries to 
operate correctly) or boot v7, mount the 28bsd tape, do the install from 
v7 (i don't see how it would run 28bsd stuff). If they did the former, 
how did they get the files from the v7 dist tape onto the fs? Or if they 
dumped v7 /usr, how, cuz the v7 dump doesn't seem compatible with the 
512restore (or plain restore)?

Will

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