From arnold at skeeve.com Fri Nov 1 00:10:39 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 08:10:39 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> Tom, Thanks. AIX/370 existed and I *think* would boot on bare metal instead of running on top of VM. I don't know what, if any, relationship it had to the Locus work. (In the late '80s I worked at a university computing center with VMS, Suns, and IBM gear; so I'm recalling what I heard. I never actually saw AIX/370 running.) > The Bell Labs 370 port was different, it was based on running inside of > TSS/370, which was an IBM OS which hardly anyone besides Bells's ESS group > used. That's what I thought. That clarifies the README for the TUHS archives (Warren, ...). > Much later, Sun ported Solaris to the Hitachi HDS 370 clones (for Hitachi), > and then to Amdahl clones for Amdahl/Fujitsu. Any chance on getting those? ISTR that it was SunOS 4.0 that was ported. Larry -- any firsthand knowledge on that? Arnold From lm at mcvoy.com Fri Nov 1 00:22:09 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 07:22:09 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <20191031142209.GB8468@mcvoy.com> On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 08:10:39AM -0600, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > Much later, Sun ported Solaris to the Hitachi HDS 370 clones (for Hitachi), > > and then to Amdahl clones for Amdahl/Fujitsu. > > Any chance on getting those? ISTR that it was SunOS 4.0 that was > ported. Larry -- any firsthand knowledge on that? As surprised as I am to admit this, I knew nothing about this. Never even heard about it. From spedraja at gmail.com Fri Nov 1 00:24:53 2019 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 15:24:53 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> Message-ID: El jue., 31 oct. 2019 a las 15:11, escribió: > Tom, > > > The Bell Labs 370 port was different, it was based on running inside of > > TSS/370, which was an IBM OS which hardly anyone besides Bells's ESS > group > > used. > > That's what I thought. That clarifies the README for the TUHS archives > (Warren, ...). > Just in case someone would like to put an eye on it, there is one copy of TSS available to run under Hercules. Regards Sergio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From heinz at osta.com Fri Nov 1 01:10:22 2019 From: heinz at osta.com (Heinz Lycklama) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 08:10:22 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <0a6ceaeb-29d0-8bae-ec17-51c0d4a73bc6@osta.com> We (INTERACTIVE Systems Corp.) also did a port of UNIX to IBM's VM/370 for IBM in the mid 1980's. Also ported UNIX to Hitachi's mainframe in the late 1980's, although it's not mentioned here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporation Heinz On 10/31/2019 6:51 AM, Tom Lyon wrote: > The Bell Labs 370 port was different, it was based on running inside > of TSS/370, which was an IBM OS which hardly anyone besides Bells's > ESS group used. > > Clem can tell us all about the IBM/Locus port to the 370.  And maybe > there was another IBM port?? > > Much later, Sun ported Solaris to the Hitachi HDS 370 clones (for > Hitachi), and then to Amdahl clones for Amdahl/Fujitsu. > > On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 12:51 AM > wrote: > > Hi Tom, > > Kudos for making these things available. The links are great reading > as well. > > I have the strong impression that this is different from the port > at Bell Labs described in the 1984 BSTJ article; can you confirm? > > Warren, can you add the links into the README or whatever that's > in the archive? > > Thanks, > > Arnold > > Tom Lyon > wrote: > > > Hi, folks. Tom Lyon here - this UNIX 370 stuff was recovered by > Stephen at > > LCM+L from DECtapes that I've had sitting around for 40+ years. > > You can read all about the Princeton/Amdahl project here: > > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart1/ > > > > If anyone wants to get serious with the code, you'll need > Hercules with a > > VM/370 image as well as a PDP-11 emulator running V6. There's > not a lot > > beyond the kernel, I got the shell working enough to prove that fork > > worked, and then ran out of steam because of the awful communication > > problems between the PDP and the IBM.  [ But that was my start as a > > networking guy ]. I personally haven't had time to do anything > with the > > recovered bits. > > > > I've been lurking on TUHS for a while - a special Hi to Ken > Thompson and > > Steve Johnson. I owe a lot to each of them. Read about my summer > at Bell > > with the Interdata 8/32 here: > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/16/belllabspart1/ > > > > On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 9:04 PM Warren Toomey > wrote: > > > > > All, the second Unix artifact that I've been waiting to > announce has > > > arrived. This time the LCM+L is announcing it. It's not the > booting PDP-7. > > > > > > So, cast your eyes on > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/IBM/370/ > > > > > > Cheers, Warren > > > > > > P.S Thanks to Stephen Jones for this as well. > > > > > > > > > -- > > - Tom > > > > -- > - Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Fri Nov 1 01:12:57 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 09:12:57 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 9:57 PM Tom Lyon wrote: > Hi, folks. Tom Lyon here - this UNIX 370 stuff was recovered by Stephen at > LCM+L from DECtapes that I've had sitting around for 40+ years. > You can read all about the Princeton/Amdahl project here: > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart1/ > > If anyone wants to get serious with the code, you'll need Hercules with a > VM/370 image as well as a PDP-11 emulator running V6. There's not a lot > beyond the kernel, I got the shell working enough to prove that fork > worked, and then ran out of steam because of the awful communication > problems between the PDP and the IBM. [ But that was my start as a > networking guy ]. I personally haven't had time to do anything with the > recovered bits. > > I've been lurking on TUHS for a while - a special Hi to Ken Thompson and > Steve Johnson. I owe a lot to each of them. Read about my summer at Bell > with the Interdata 8/32 here: > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/16/belllabspart1/ > These are interesting bits that add to the flavor of what we know already. Thank you for taking the time to write this up... One interesting thing from this. Your UNIX 370 port was started before the Wollongong Interdata port. Your work on Unix 370 started in August of '75, but the Wollongong port started in November '76 and was put into production in July '77. And we have the TSS/370 port described in the BSTJ, and the Bell Lab's Intersil 8/32 port. It makes me wonder what other porting efforts had started in the 75-78 time frame.... Warner > On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 9:04 PM Warren Toomey wrote: > >> All, the second Unix artifact that I've been waiting to announce has >> arrived. This time the LCM+L is announcing it. It's not the booting PDP-7. >> >> So, cast your eyes on https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/IBM/370/ >> >> Cheers, Warren >> >> P.S Thanks to Stephen Jones for this as well. >> > > > -- > - Tom > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sauer at technologists.com Fri Nov 1 01:31:16 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 10:31:16 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <230cba3b-4362-fc32-e4c4-b4cdd2fe28cb@technologists.com> AIX/370 was done by LCC, primarily in Santa Monica. AIX PS/2 was also part of that effort. Clem probably remembers more. Charlie On 10/31/2019 9:10 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > AIX/370 existed and I *think* would boot on bare metal instead of running > on top of VM. I don't know what, if any, relationship it had to the > Locus work. (In the late '80s I worked at a university computing center > with VMS, Suns, and IBM gear; so I'm recalling what I heard. I never > actually saw AIX/370 running.) -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 2 02:40:58 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 09:40:58 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 6:52 AM Tom Lyon wrote: > The Bell Labs 370 port was different, it was based on running inside of > TSS/370, which was an IBM OS which hardly anyone besides Bells's ESS group > used. > It's funny, I did not learn of it until after CMU discommomission that IBM/TSS system which I broke in on. > > Clem can tell us all about the IBM/Locus port to the 370. > Yeah it was called and would be a product Locus did for IBM (AIX/370) primarily for the University market. It's what the Locus (TCF) book describes. > And maybe there was another IBM port?? > I'm not sure what Amdahl had originally. I had always thought it was based on your original from Princeton. > > Much later, Sun ported Solaris to the Hitachi HDS 370 clones (for > Hitachi), and then to Amdahl clones for Amdahl/Fujitsu. > I heard that had been done, but never knew how well it worked. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 2 02:52:03 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 09:52:03 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 7:11 AM wrote: > Tom, > > Thanks. > > AIX/370 existed and I *think* would boot on bare metal instead of running > on top of VM. I don't know what, if any, relationship it had to the > Locus work. (In the late '80s I worked at a university computing center > with VMS, Suns, and IBM gear; so I'm recalling what I heard. I never > actually saw AIX/370 running.) > AIX/370 and AIX/386 were done for IBM under contract by Locus Computing Corporation (a.k.a. LCC) . And yes, most customers that I knew ran it bare metal. Because of TCF (Transparent Computing Facility), PS/2 based PC were clustered with the 370s, under a single system image (i.e. up to 32 processors of any time, looked to the world like a single processor). The OS looked at the binary and found a properly provisioned system in the cluster to execute it. So you could have require option hardware that only one node might have, and the process would be migrated to that node. It also meant nodes could and be added and removed dynamically. The ideas were recreated as 14 different technologies called Transparent Network Computing (TNC) that would end up in the FOSS community and added to Linux 2x kernel as: OpenSSI -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sat Nov 2 06:36:39 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 07:36:39 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! Message-ID: The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. -- Dave From jack.adams at ieee.org Sat Nov 2 07:06:36 2019 From: jack.adams at ieee.org (John Adams) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 17:06:36 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Dick Haight's one page essay on "You can't fool an honest programmer" Message-ID: Perhaps someone can help me locate a very humorous short essay from Dick Haight of PWB (I believe Dick was John Mashey's boss at the time) work in Piscataway. I had a paper copy that Dick gave me that has long since disappeared in many office moves over almost 50 years. *John "Jack" Lossin Adams* *LinkedIn CV * and on *Facebook * *If God is your Co-Pilot, you're sitting in the wrong seat!* Veritas per Scientiam - NJIT motto *We live at a time when emotions and feelings **count more than **truth, and there * *is a vast ignorance of science. - James Lovelock* *Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what * *they **do not manage, and those who manage what they do not * *understand. - Archibald Putt* *We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly * *anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan* *Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, * *and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 07:12:23 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 17:12:23 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known > vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a > metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was > accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). > A > temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". > > Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. > This comes up every year, but could I ask that you please stop referring to Robert T. Morris as an idiot? He acted foolishly and destructively, yes, but he was quite young at the time and he paid for his mistake. He's gone on to do very good work in systems and have a productive career; there really is no need to continue to castigate him in this manner for a mistake he made 31 years ago. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 07:49:05 2019 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 17:49:05 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known > vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a > metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was > accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). > A > temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". > > Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. > > -- Dave > One of my comp sci professors was a grad student at Cornell when this happened. He shared a small office with Morris and some other students. He said that he had to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with it on quite a few occasions. Morris was caught partly because he used the Unix crypt command to encrypt his source code. The command was a computer model of the Enigma machine, and its output could be and indeed was cracked, after retrieving the encrypted code from a backup tape. It's interesting that the worm was quickly detected. The reason was that it kept infecting the same machines, and as you referred to, it contained a password cracker, which slowed those machines to a crawl because of the multiple instances running. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 2 07:55:19 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 14:55:19 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] [COFF] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: +1. Well said Dan. We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error and we all learned from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back on it. On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:13 PM Dan Cross wrote: > On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > >> The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known >> vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out >> a >> metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was >> accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). >> A >> temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". >> >> Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. >> > > This comes up every year, but could I ask that you please stop referring > to Robert T. Morris as an idiot? He acted foolishly and destructively, yes, > but he was quite young at the time and he paid for his mistake. He's gone > on to do very good work in systems and have a productive career; there > really is no need to continue to castigate him in this manner for a mistake > he made 31 years ago. > > - Dan C. > > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cmhanson at eschatologist.net Sat Nov 2 08:24:23 2019 From: cmhanson at eschatologist.net (Chris Hanson) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 15:24:23 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Brian W. Kernighan is now out In-Reply-To: <201910232328.x9NNSmia001653@freefriends.org> References: <1571611430.28265.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201910232328.x9NNSmia001653@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <2BAEF50E-3F2F-49A8-B40B-C004EB2F9541@eschatologist.net> On Oct 23, 2019, at 4:28 PM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > BWK used Create Space, which is Amazon, to self publish. So, I suspect > that it won't be in brick-and-mortar shops. They may can order for > you but in that case it'd probably be more expensive than just ordering > it yourself. Amazon does have a small number of physical storefronts (for example, there’s one at Santana Row in San Jose, CA) and they’ll actually put print-on-demand books on the shelves there too. Shelf placement appears to be algorithmic by popularity so it wouldn’t surprise me to see Kernighan’s book the next time I pop in. -- Chris -- who always has to resist the urge to say “Alexa, play Despacito” when walking past the helper-cylinder display From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 08:25:15 2019 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 18:25:15 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] [COFF] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 5:56 PM Clem Cole wrote: > +1. Well said Dan. > > We all have made and will make mistakes in the future. It was an error > and we all learned from it. It’s not helpful to continue to hark back on > it. > > On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:13 PM Dan Cross wrote: > >> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: >> >>> The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known >>> vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out >>> a >>> metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was >>> accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network >>> first). A >>> temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". >>> >>> Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. >>> >> >> This comes up every year, but could I ask that you please stop referring >> to Robert T. Morris as an idiot? He acted foolishly and destructively, yes, >> but he was quite young at the time and he paid for his mistake. He's gone >> on to do very good work in systems and have a productive career; there >> really is no need to continue to castigate him in this manner for a mistake >> he made 31 years ago. >> >> - Dan C. >> > The father of the person who wrote the worm was a Unix pioneer, Bob Morris. He coauthored a paper on Unix password security with Ken Thompson. He was working for the NSA when the worm was unleashed. As told in The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff Stoll was an early suspect, and it caused Bob Morris no small amount of embarrassment and angst to discover that the culprit was his own son. I'm sure that Bob was proud of his son's accomplishments -- but not that one. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wlc at jctaylor.com Sat Nov 2 16:35:02 2019 From: wlc at jctaylor.com (William Corcoran) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 06:35:02 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> Whoa! Let’s rethink the defamatory ad hominem remarks here. We were all kids once. Moreover, my examination of this subject showed that some of our greatest computer scientists, at the time, went to bat for young Morris. Moreover, calling RTM a nasty name like that is a shoe that simply doesn’t fit. My goodness RTM is a professor at MIT. It’s inarguable that the Morris Worm helped his career far more than it hurt it. Plus, indeed, there was a genuine re-Morris from RTM. Bill Corcoran On Nov 1, 2019, at 5:49 PM, A. P. Garcia > wrote: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall > wrote: The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. -- Dave One of my comp sci professors was a grad student at Cornell when this happened. He shared a small office with Morris and some other students. He said that he had to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with it on quite a few occasions. Morris was caught partly because he used the Unix crypt command to encrypt his source code. The command was a computer model of the Enigma machine, and its output could be and indeed was cracked, after retrieving the encrypted code from a backup tape. It's interesting that the worm was quickly detected. The reason was that it kept infecting the same machines, and as you referred to, it contained a password cracker, which slowed those machines to a crawl because of the multiple instances running. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wlc at jctaylor.com Sat Nov 2 16:44:51 2019 From: wlc at jctaylor.com (William Corcoran) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 06:44:51 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> References: , , <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> Message-ID: <51A8CAF2-A105-460B-B1A0-02FE1A276B47@jctaylor.com> My comments were not directed to A. P. Garcia. I regret my error. Bill Corcoran On Nov 2, 2019, at 2:36 AM, William Corcoran > wrote: Whoa! Let’s rethink the defamatory ad hominem remarks here. We were all kids once. Moreover, my examination of this subject showed that some of our greatest computer scientists, at the time, went to bat for young Morris. Moreover, calling RTM a nasty name like that is a shoe that simply doesn’t fit. My goodness RTM is a professor at MIT. It’s inarguable that the Morris Worm helped his career far more than it hurt it. Plus, indeed, there was a genuine re-Morris from RTM. Bill Corcoran On Nov 1, 2019, at 5:49 PM, A. P. Garcia > wrote: On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 4:37 PM Dave Horsfall > wrote: The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh". Another fix was to move the C compiler elsewhere. -- Dave One of my comp sci professors was a grad student at Cornell when this happened. He shared a small office with Morris and some other students. He said that he had to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with it on quite a few occasions. Morris was caught partly because he used the Unix crypt command to encrypt his source code. The command was a computer model of the Enigma machine, and its output could be and indeed was cracked, after retrieving the encrypted code from a backup tape. It's interesting that the worm was quickly detected. The reason was that it kept infecting the same machines, and as you referred to, it contained a password cracker, which slowed those machines to a crawl because of the multiple instances running. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com Sat Nov 2 17:31:36 2019 From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 03:31:36 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: <51A8CAF2-A105-460B-B1A0-02FE1A276B47@jctaylor.com> References: <9F243C18-0173-417A-9097-E2662AFE7950@jctaylor.com> <51A8CAF2-A105-460B-B1A0-02FE1A276B47@jctaylor.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, 2:44 AM William Corcoran wrote: > My comments were not directed to A. P. Garcia. > > I regret my error. > > Bill Corcoran > > > > On Nov 2, 2019, at 2:36 AM, William Corcoran wrote: > > Whoa! Let’s rethink the defamatory ad hominem remarks here. We were all > kids once. Moreover, my examination of this subject showed that some of > our greatest computer scientists, at the time, went to bat for young > Morris. Moreover, calling RTM a nasty name like that is a shoe that simply > doesn’t fit. My goodness RTM is a professor at MIT. It’s inarguable that > the Morris Worm helped his career far more than it hurt it. Plus, indeed, > there was a genuine re-Morris from RTM. > > Bill Corcoran > > No worries. It's worth mentioning on a Unix mailing list that RTM coauthored xv6, an x86 reimplementation of the v6 kernel. It sort of carries the torch of the Lions book by teaching future generations about the internals of operating systems and the Unix way. And that is a beautiful thing. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu Sun Nov 3 00:12:14 2019 From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2019 10:12:14 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm Message-ID: <201911021412.xA2ECEMr137264@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Full disclosure: I served as a character witness at Robert Morris's trial. Before the trial, the judge was quite incredulous that the prosecutor was pursuing a felony charge and refused to let the trial go forward without confirmation from the prosecutor's superiors in Washington. > I'm sure that Bob was proud of his son's accomplishments -- but not that one. As Bob ut it, "It {being the father] is not a great career move." Robert confessed to Bob as soon as he realized the folly of loosing an exponential, even with a tiny growth rate per generation. I believe that what brought computers to their knees was the overwhelming number of attacks, not the cost of cecryption. The worm did assure that only one copy would be allowed to proceed at a time. During high school, Robert worked as a summer employee for Fred Grampp. He got high marks for finding and correcting an exploit. > making use of known vulnerabilities Buffer overflows were known to cause misbehavior, but few people at the time were conscious that the misbehavior could be controlled. I do not know whether Berkeley agonized before distributing the "debug" feature that allowed remote super-user access via sendmail. But they certainly messed up by not documenting it. Doug From imp at bsdimp.com Sun Nov 3 06:12:47 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 14:12:47 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <201911021412.xA2ECEMr137264@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> References: <201911021412.xA2ECEMr137264@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 8:13 AM Doug McIlroy wrote: > Full disclosure: I served as a character witness at Robert Morris's trial. > Before the trial, the judge was quite incredulous that the prosecutor > was pursuing a felony charge and refused to let the trial go forward > without confirmation from the prosecutor's superiors in Washington. > > > I'm sure that Bob was proud of his son's accomplishments -- but not > that one. > > As Bob ut it, "It {being the father] is not a great career move." > Robert confessed to Bob as soon as he realized the folly of loosing > an exponential, even with a tiny growth rate per generation. I > believe that what brought computers to their knees was the > overwhelming number of attacks, not the cost of cecryption. The > worm did assure that only one copy would be allowed to proceed > at a time. > > During high school, Robert worked as a summer employee for Fred > Grampp. He got high marks for finding and correcting an exploit. > > > making use of known vulnerabilities > > Buffer overflows were known to cause misbehavior, but few people > at the time were conscious that the misbehavior could be controlled. > I do not know whether Berkeley agonized before distributing the > "debug" feature that allowed remote super-user access via sendmail. > But they certainly messed up by not documenting it. > Yes. The reason people freaked out when the worm came out was because it was the first one to hit the scene. The exploints that allowed it to propagate were known to a few, but the notion of a self propagating thing was quite novel (even if it had been theoretically discussed in many places prior to the worm, and even though others had proven it via slower moving vectors of BBS). It caught a lot of people off guard with their pants down, and it took a bunch of time to rectify (because it would reinfect if you weren't careful). That's why people wanted to prosecute on felony charges. But there was no intent to cause harm, and there was, at the time, no applicable law that could be used to charge as a felony anyway (apart from vague denial of property statues, which were at best a stretch). In hindsight people like to point at it and what a terrible thing it was, but Robert just got there first. Any number of people could have written it given the extremely lax security profiles of the time (things are better today, but we are not immune to buffer overflows or privilege escalation attacks). Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wkt at tuhs.org Sun Nov 3 07:11:20 2019 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2019 07:11:20 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: Re: UNIX-7 boots on sn 129 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2C781FE8-01E1-4A92-911B-465A8E5611A2@tuhs.org> -------- Original Message -------- From: Stephen Jones Sent: 3 November 2019 3:05:31 am AEST Subject: Re: UNIX-7 boots on sn 129 A couple of videos of the action this week: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaPaWyiuLA&t=18s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L5MKwp2uj2k&t=119s The JK09 turns out not to be an emulator but the newest storage device and driver for the pdp-7 and unix v0! -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Sun Nov 3 08:13:05 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 18:13:05 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Dick Haight's one page essay on "You can't fool an honest programmer" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I contacted Dick. No luck. *Sorry. Don’t have it myself. Lost a lot of stuff when I left BTL in 1989. I’d like a dump of my home directory from that time.* On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 5:08 PM John Adams wrote: > Perhaps someone can help me locate a very humorous short > essay from Dick Haight of PWB (I believe Dick was John Mashey's > boss at the time) work in Piscataway. I had a paper copy that Dick > gave me that has long since disappeared in many office moves over > almost 50 years. > > *John "Jack" Lossin Adams* > *LinkedIn CV * and on *Facebook > * > > *If God is your Co-Pilot, you're sitting in the wrong seat!* > > Veritas per Scientiam - NJIT motto > > *We live at a time when emotions and feelings **count more than **truth, > and there * > > *is a vast ignorance of science. - James Lovelock* > > *Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand > what * > > *they **do not manage, and those who manage what they do not * > *understand. - Archibald Putt* > > > *We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in > which hardly * > > *anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan* > > > *Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, * > *and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein* > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Sun Nov 3 11:02:44 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 18:02:44 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: Tom, In case you ever pass through Pittsburgh, Dave has 370s of various flavor and some pdp-11s. I’d be pretty entertained trying to get this running in some capacity on real iron in the future when I visit Dave. I may put out another form to see if people would be interested in doing an event there. In the meantime thanks for recovering and posting this. Regards, Kevin On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 8:57 PM Tom Lyon wrote: > Hi, folks. Tom Lyon here - this UNIX 370 stuff was recovered by Stephen at > LCM+L from DECtapes that I've had sitting around for 40+ years. > You can read all about the Princeton/Amdahl project here: > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart1/ > > If anyone wants to get serious with the code, you'll need Hercules with a > VM/370 image as well as a PDP-11 emulator running V6. There's not a lot > beyond the kernel, I got the shell working enough to prove that fork > worked, and then ran out of steam because of the awful communication > problems between the PDP and the IBM. [ But that was my start as a > networking guy ]. I personally haven't had time to do anything with the > recovered bits. > > I've been lurking on TUHS for a while - a special Hi to Ken Thompson and > Steve Johnson. I owe a lot to each of them. Read about my summer at Bell > with the Interdata 8/32 here: > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/16/belllabspart1/ > > On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 9:04 PM Warren Toomey wrote: > >> All, the second Unix artifact that I've been waiting to announce has >> arrived. This time the LCM+L is announcing it. It's not the booting PDP-7. >> >> So, cast your eyes on https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/IBM/370/ >> >> Cheers, Warren >> >> P.S Thanks to Stephen Jones for this as well. >> > > > -- > - Tom > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lm at mcvoy.com Sun Nov 3 13:52:20 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 20:52:20 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bourne Message-ID: <20191103035220.GG26910@mcvoy.com> Hey I'm at the hackers conference (having a blast, I thought I was too retired and burned out and I'm apparently still somewhat OK with that crowd, much to my surprise. Super fun bunch of nerds). Steve Bourne is here and I mentioned this list and he didn't know about it. His interest perked up a bit when I said Doug and Rob and Ken are here, I think his comment was something like "if Ken is there it must be something, Ken likes to do stuff more than talk about stuff". Probably have that not quite right but it was something like that. I'd love to have all of the Bell Labs alumni here, hearing history from them is awesome. So Warren, it's your list, Steve is srb at acm.org, you want to do an invite? I can do it if you prefer that but I thought I'd ask first. Cheers, --lm From arnold at skeeve.com Sun Nov 3 17:05:55 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2019 01:05:55 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <201911030705.xA375twJ013107@freefriends.org> Thaks Clem. Clem Cole wrote: > On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 7:11 AM wrote: > > > Tom, > > > > Thanks. > > > > AIX/370 existed and I *think* would boot on bare metal instead of running > > on top of VM. I don't know what, if any, relationship it had to the > > Locus work. (In the late '80s I worked at a university computing center > > with VMS, Suns, and IBM gear; so I'm recalling what I heard. I never > > actually saw AIX/370 running.) > > > AIX/370 and AIX/386 were done for IBM under contract by Locus Computing > Corporation (a.k.a. LCC) > . And yes, > most customers that I knew ran it bare metal. Glad to know that I remembered correctly. In the early 90s I worked teaching multi-vendor Unix courses. One frustration was that AIX on the 370 and AIX on the PS/2 were essentially the same as each other but very different from AIX on the RS/6000 machines. A co-worker and I wrote a short essay about if IBM made cooking equipment: The IBM Industrial Furnace and the IBM camping stove would be almost, but not quite entirely, totally different from the IBM Home Oven. Or something like that. I can't find the original. > Because of TCF (Transparent Computing Facility), PS/2 based PC were > clustered with the 370s, under a single system image (i.e. up to 32 > processors of any time, looked to the world like a single processor). The > OS looked at the binary and found a properly provisioned system in the > cluster to execute it. So you could have require option hardware that only > one node might have, and the process would be migrated to that node. It > also meant nodes could and be added and removed dynamically. Very cool. > The ideas were recreated as 14 different technologies called Transparent > Network Computing (TNC) that would end up in the FOSS community and added > to Linux 2x kernel as: OpenSSI Am I wrong, or does nobody actually use this today? The opessi.org home page link from Wikipedia just seems to hang. And the files on the SourceForge page are 5 years old. Thanks, Arnold From paul.winalski at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 03:12:20 2019 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 12:12:20 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <201911021412.xA2ECEMr137264@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: On 11/2/19, Warner Losh wrote: > > the notion of a self propagating thing > was quite novel (even if it had been theoretically discussed in many places > prior to the worm, and even though others had proven it via slower moving > vectors of BBS). Novel to the Internet community, perhaps, but an idea that dates back to the 1960s in IBM mainframe circles. Self-submitting OS/360 JCL jobs, which eventually caused a crash by filling the queue files with jobs, were well-known in the raised-floor world. > In hindsight people like to point at it and what a terrible thing it was, > but Robert just got there first. Again, first on the Internet. Back in 1980 I accidentally took down DEC's internal engineering network (about 100 nodes, mostly VAX/VMS, at the time) with a worm. The network used DECnet Phase 2, which didn't have built-in packet routing. If you wanted to talk to a machine that wasn't physically connected to yours, you had to explicitly specify the packet route. Network topology maps were thus very valuable. All of the VAXen on the network were configured with an unprivileged default DECnet account that was used for any connection that didn't explicitly specify a username/password. One could copy arbitrary DCL command procedures (VMS's equivalent of shell scripts) to a machine and execute them there. I wrote a script to collect the raw information for making a network topology map. The script did this: [1] Display the local DECnet connections and send this information back over the network link. [2] For each adjacent network node: [2a] Copy the script to that node. [2b] Execute the remote copy, sending its info back over the network link. The problem, of course, is I had forgotten that network adjacency is commutative. I ran the script on node A, which told me that A is connected to B and C. It then told me that B was connected to A, D, and E. Then that A is connected to B and C.... I realized what had happened immediately, but it was already too late. The network had to be taken down, the nodes cleared of the scripts, and then reconnected. We learned the hard way that although the non-privileged default DECnet accounts couldn't damage the system, they could be exploited for what we now call DDoS attacks. Robert Morris worked as an intern one summer in DEC's compiler group. The Fortran project leader told Morris about my 1980 worm incident. So he certainly had heard of the concept before he fashioned his UNIX/Internet-based worm a few years later. -Paul W. From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Mon Nov 4 07:05:01 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 14:05:01 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Message-ID: This stuff is extremely poorly preserved. No time like the present to fix that. I was reading Tom's blog https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while. I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM 3490. Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card. Tell me where to go. Regards, Kevin From clemc at ccc.com Mon Nov 4 07:16:04 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 13:16:04 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: <201911030705.xA375twJ013107@freefriends.org> References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> <201911030705.xA375twJ013107@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 12:06 AM wrote: > > > The ideas were recreated as 14 different technologies called Transparent > > Network Computing (TNC) that would end up in the FOSS community and added > > to Linux 2x kernel as: OpenSSI > > Am I wrong, or does nobody actually use this today? The opessi.org > home page link from Wikipedia just seems to hang. And the files on the > SourceForge page are 5 years old. > I suspect not - it was done to 2.6 kernel and none of the changes were taken by Linus for 3x Folks got discouraged and gave up -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From drb at msu.edu Mon Nov 4 09:29:28 2019 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2019 18:29:28 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sun, 03 Nov 2019 14:05:01 -0700.) References: Message-ID: <20191103232928.A36F92950D6@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM > 3490. Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card. > Tell me where to go. Don't forget to air cargo your tape drying mechanism too. De From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Mon Nov 4 10:06:06 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 17:06:06 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <20191103232928.A36F92950D6@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> References: <20191103232928.A36F92950D6@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:39 PM Dennis Boone wrote: > > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM > > 3490. Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card. > > Tell me where to go. > > Don't forget to air cargo your tape drying mechanism too. > > De > There’s a chance some media needs a small amount of heat over time applied “tape baking” but a facility to do that is readily available almost anywhere. I haven’t had any issues with properly stored 9 track from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. http://www.heeltoe.com/retro/tapes/ has links to the authoritative sources but gives a good enough overview for water cooler talk. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From drb at msu.edu Mon Nov 4 11:29:53 2019 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2019 20:29:53 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sun, 03 Nov 2019 17:06:06 -0700.) References: <20191103232928.A36F92950D6@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: <20191104012953.D155029511A@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> > There’s a chance some media needs a small amount of heat over time > applied “tape baking” but a facility to do that is readily available > almost anywhere. Problem is that you can't necessarily tell _which_ by inspection. And if you just try reading it, the one that needed help will take damage in the drive. De From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Mon Nov 4 11:58:52 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 18:58:52 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <20191104012953.D155029511A@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> References: <20191103232928.A36F92950D6@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> <20191104012953.D155029511A@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: We live in an imperfect world. All we can do is try; it will certainly cease with inaction. It's painfully ironic we have effectively limitless perfect preservation systems [1] now, but are losing worthwhile information at an astonishing rate. I suspect most estate sales, and even professional archivists[2] trash manuals, tape and things like microfiche without really thinking much about it because they don't really understand how to bring it to permanent storage systems or that nobody else has done so either. [1] Stack your favorite local filesystem, a public cloud, and/or archive.org [2] I accidentally came across this pulling up the tape baking link showing almost this https://ricehistorycorner.com/2015/05/13/obsolete-technology-reel-to-reel/ Regards, Kevin On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 6:30 PM Dennis Boone wrote: > > > There’s a chance some media needs a small amount of heat over time > > applied “tape baking” but a facility to do that is readily available > > almost anywhere. > > Problem is that you can't necessarily tell _which_ by inspection. And > if you just try reading it, the one that needed help will take damage in > the drive. > > De From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Mon Nov 4 13:39:25 2019 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 22:39:25 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello! Holy Socks! Kevin I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One of the people in the community indicated that it was a product which had only one customer, someplace in Norway he said. If you do get a good copy then I'm interested. The same group has been trying to track down UTS as well. Adam any comments? ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:06 PM Kevin Bowling wrote: > > This stuff is extremely poorly preserved. No time like the present to > fix that. I was reading Tom's blog > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of > Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while. > > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM > 3490. Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card. > Tell me where to go. > > Regards, > Kevin From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Mon Nov 4 14:49:14 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2019 21:49:14 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I have anecdotal evidence UTS and at least one of the AIX VM ports were used within the Bell telephone companies. I can pour through my telecom stuff and try to find it. On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 8:40 PM Gregg Levine wrote: > Hello! > Holy Socks! Kevin I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for > that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One > of the people in the community indicated that it was a product which > had only one customer, someplace in Norway he said. > > If you do get a good copy then I'm interested. > > The same group has been trying to track down UTS as well. > > Adam any comments? > ----- > Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com > "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." > > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:06 PM Kevin Bowling > wrote: > > > > This stuff is extremely poorly preserved. No time like the present to > > fix that. I was reading Tom's blog > > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of > > Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while. > > > > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM > > 3490. Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card. > > Tell me where to go. > > > > Regards, > > Kevin > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arnold at skeeve.com Tue Nov 5 00:43:12 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 07:43:12 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> <201911030705.xA375twJ013107@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <201911041443.xA4EhCqn023852@freefriends.org> Clem Cole wrote: > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 12:06 AM wrote: > > > > > > The ideas were recreated as 14 different technologies called Transparent > > > Network Computing (TNC) that would end up in the FOSS community and added > > > to Linux 2x kernel as: OpenSSI > > > > Am I wrong, or does nobody actually use this today? The opessi.org > > home page link from Wikipedia just seems to hang. And the files on the > > SourceForge page are 5 years old. > > > I suspect not - it was done to 2.6 kernel and none of the changes were > taken by Linus for 3x Folks got discouraged and gave up Ah, OK. Thanks for the info. On the one hand, two bad. On the other hand, it looks like a real patchwork quilt of technologies... Thanks, Arnold From athornton at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 01:32:51 2019 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 09:32:51 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I would love to give it a shot. I was thinking about trying to get Hercules going on a laptop this weekend while I was in Houston but I didn’t get around to it so I will probably set up a Pi when I get back. The v6-1/2 port seems neat. When and if I have something running I will add the systems to mvsevm.fsf.net. On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 9:40 PM Gregg Levine wrote: > Hello! > Holy Socks! Kevin I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for > that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One > of the people in the community indicated that it was a product which > had only one customer, someplace in Norway he said. > > If you do get a good copy then I'm interested. > > The same group has been trying to track down UTS as well. > > Adam any comments? > ----- > Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com > "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." > > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 4:06 PM Kevin Bowling > wrote: > > > > This stuff is extremely poorly preserved. No time like the present to > > fix that. I was reading Tom's blog > > https://akapugs.blog/2018/05/12/370unixpart3/ and have been aware of > > Amdahl UTS a couple of the other ports for a while. > > > > I've got an HP 88780 quad density 9-track and access to a SCSI IBM > > 3490. Can fit them in air cargo and bring a laptop with a SCSI card. > > Tell me where to go. > > > > Regards, > > Kevin > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul at mcjones.org Tue Nov 5 04:10:26 2019 From: paul at mcjones.org (Paul McJones) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 10:10:26 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Another possible source of inspiration — including the name “worm” — were the publications by John Shoch and Jon Hupp on programs they wrote at Xerox PARC around 1979-1980 and published in 1980 and 1982: John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. Xerox SSL-80-3 and IEN 159. May 1980, revised September 1980 http://www.postel.org/ien/pdf/ien159.pdf John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. CACM V25 N3 (March 1982) http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~margo/cs261/background/shoch.pdf > On Nov 3, 2019, Paul Winalski wrote: > > On 11/2/19, Warner Losh > wrote: >> >> the notion of a self propagating thing >> was quite novel (even if it had been theoretically discussed in many places >> prior to the worm, and even though others had proven it via slower moving >> vectors of BBS). > > Novel to the Internet community, perhaps, but an idea that dates back > to the 1960s in IBM mainframe circles. Self-submitting OS/360 JCL > jobs, which eventually caused a crash by filling the queue files with > jobs, were well-known in the raised-floor world. > >> In hindsight people like to point at it and what a terrible thing it was, >> but Robert just got there first. > > Again, first on the Internet. Back in 1980 I accidentally took down > DEC's internal engineering network (about 100 nodes, mostly VAX/VMS, > at the time) with a worm. ... > > Robert Morris worked as an intern one summer in DEC's compiler group. > The Fortran project leader told Morris about my 1980 worm incident. > So he certainly had heard of the concept before he fashioned his > UNIX/Internet-based worm a few years later. > > -Paul W. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bakul at bitblocks.com Tue Nov 5 04:57:24 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 10:57:24 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: I am surprised no one mentioned The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, published in 1975. Excerpt: Then the answer dawned on him, and he almost laughed. Fluckner had resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the store and turned loose in the continental net a selfperpetuating tapeworm, probably headed by a denunciation group "borrowed" from a major corporation, which would shunt itself from one nexus to another every time his credit-code was punched into a keyboard. It could take days to kill a worm like that, and sometimes weeks. I read it in late 70s/early 80s and don't remember much of it but this bit had burrowed its way in my subconscious. I have been meaning to re-read it along with Stand on Zanzibar but they would be too depressing in the present era! > On Nov 4, 2019, at 10:10 AM, Paul McJones wrote: > > Another possible source of inspiration — including the name “worm” — were the publications by John Shoch and Jon Hupp on programs they wrote at Xerox PARC around 1979-1980 and published in 1980 and 1982: > > John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: > The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. > Xerox SSL-80-3 and IEN 159. May 1980, revised September 1980 > http://www.postel.org/ien/pdf/ien159.pdf > > John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: > The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. > CACM V25 N3 (March 1982) > http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~margo/cs261/background/shoch.pdf > >> On Nov 3, 2019, Paul Winalski > wrote: >> >> On 11/2/19, Warner Losh > wrote: >>> >>> the notion of a self propagating thing >>> was quite novel (even if it had been theoretically discussed in many places >>> prior to the worm, and even though others had proven it via slower moving >>> vectors of BBS). >> >> Novel to the Internet community, perhaps, but an idea that dates back >> to the 1960s in IBM mainframe circles. Self-submitting OS/360 JCL >> jobs, which eventually caused a crash by filling the queue files with >> jobs, were well-known in the raised-floor world. >> >>> In hindsight people like to point at it and what a terrible thing it was, >>> but Robert just got there first. >> >> Again, first on the Internet. Back in 1980 I accidentally took down >> DEC's internal engineering network (about 100 nodes, mostly VAX/VMS, >> at the time) with a worm. ... >> >> Robert Morris worked as an intern one summer in DEC's compiler group. >> The Fortran project leader told Morris about my 1980 worm incident. >> So he certainly had heard of the concept before he fashioned his >> UNIX/Internet-based worm a few years later. >> >> -Paul W. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rich.salz at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 05:24:23 2019 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 14:24:23 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: The John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp paper extensively credits Brunner, and uses quotes from the book as section intro's. On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 1:58 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > I am surprised no one mentioned *The Shockwave Rider *by John Brunner, > published in 1975. Excerpt: > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spedraja at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 05:25:49 2019 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 20:25:49 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: El lun., 4 nov. 2019 19:58, Bakul Shah escribió: > I am surprised no one mentioned *The Shockwave Rider *by John Brunner, > published in 1975. > What a *great* novel, as the previous of Brunner in the 60s. "Stand on Zanzibar" and Salmanesser are guilty of my computing career. Visionary in many ways. You've made my day :-) Excerpt: > > Then the answer dawned on him, and he almost laughed. Fluckner had > resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the store and turned loose in the > continental net a selfperpetuating tapeworm, probably headed by a > denunciation group "borrowed" from a major corporation, which would shunt > itself from one nexus to another every time his credit-code was punched > into a keyboard. It could take days to kill a worm like that, and sometimes > weeks. > > > I read it in late 70s/early 80s and don't remember much of it but this bit > had burrowed its way in my subconscious. I have been meaning to re-read it > along with Stand on Zanzibar but they would be too depressing in the > present era! > > On Nov 4, 2019, at 10:10 AM, Paul McJones wrote: > > Another possible source of inspiration — including the name “worm” — were > the publications by John Shoch and Jon Hupp on programs they wrote at Xerox > PARC around 1979-1980 and published in 1980 and 1982: > > John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: > The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. > Xerox SSL-80-3 and IEN 159. May 1980, revised September 1980 > http://www.postel.org/ien/pdf/ien159.pdf > > John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: > The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. > CACM V25 N3 (March 1982) > http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~margo/cs261/background/shoch.pdf > > On Nov 3, 2019, Paul Winalski wrote: > > > On 11/2/19, Warner Losh wrote: > > > the notion of a self propagating thing > was quite novel (even if it had been theoretically discussed in many places > prior to the worm, and even though others had proven it via slower moving > vectors of BBS). > > > Novel to the Internet community, perhaps, but an idea that dates back > to the 1960s in IBM mainframe circles. Self-submitting OS/360 JCL > jobs, which eventually caused a crash by filling the queue files with > jobs, were well-known in the raised-floor world. > > In hindsight people like to point at it and what a terrible thing it was, > but Robert just got there first. > > > Again, first on the Internet. Back in 1980 I accidentally took down > DEC's internal engineering network (about 100 nodes, mostly VAX/VMS, > at the time) with a worm. ... > > Robert Morris worked as an intern one summer in DEC's compiler group. > The Fortran project leader told Morris about my 1980 worm incident. > So he certainly had heard of the concept before he fashioned his > UNIX/Internet-based worm a few years later. > > -Paul W. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 06:27:08 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 15:27:08 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 1:58 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > I am surprised no one mentioned *The Shockwave Rider *by John Brunner, > published in 1975. Excerpt: > > Then the answer dawned on him, and he almost laughed. Fluckner had > resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the store and turned loose in the > continental net a selfperpetuating tapeworm, probably headed by a > denunciation group "borrowed" from a major corporation, which would shunt > itself from one nexus to another every time his credit-code was punched > into a keyboard. It could take days to kill a worm like that, and sometimes > weeks. > > In the 1983 movie "Wargames", at the very end as the staff at NORAD desperately try and disable the rogue artificial intelligence hell-bent on starting World War III, at one point they make a suggestion to send a "tapeworm" into the system", but it's judged too risky. They ultimately defeat the computer by getting it to play tic-tac-toe against itself and learn that nuclear war is unwinnable. - Dan C. I read it in late 70s/early 80s and don't remember much of it but this bit > had burrowed its way in my subconscious. I have been meaning to re-read it > along with Stand on Zanzibar but they would be too depressing in the > present era! > > On Nov 4, 2019, at 10:10 AM, Paul McJones wrote: > > Another possible source of inspiration — including the name “worm” — were > the publications by John Shoch and Jon Hupp on programs they wrote at Xerox > PARC around 1979-1980 and published in 1980 and 1982: > > John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: > The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. > Xerox SSL-80-3 and IEN 159. May 1980, revised September 1980 > http://www.postel.org/ien/pdf/ien159.pdf > > John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp: > The “Worm" Programs — Early Experience with a Distributed Computation. > CACM V25 N3 (March 1982) > http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~margo/cs261/background/shoch.pdf > > On Nov 3, 2019, Paul Winalski wrote: > > > On 11/2/19, Warner Losh wrote: > > > the notion of a self propagating thing > was quite novel (even if it had been theoretically discussed in many places > prior to the worm, and even though others had proven it via slower moving > vectors of BBS). > > > Novel to the Internet community, perhaps, but an idea that dates back > to the 1960s in IBM mainframe circles. Self-submitting OS/360 JCL > jobs, which eventually caused a crash by filling the queue files with > jobs, were well-known in the raised-floor world. > > In hindsight people like to point at it and what a terrible thing it was, > but Robert just got there first. > > > Again, first on the Internet. Back in 1980 I accidentally took down > DEC's internal engineering network (about 100 nodes, mostly VAX/VMS, > at the time) with a worm. ... > > Robert Morris worked as an intern one summer in DEC's compiler group. > The Fortran project leader told Morris about my 1980 worm incident. > So he certainly had heard of the concept before he fashioned his > UNIX/Internet-based worm a few years later. > > -Paul W. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 5 07:08:03 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 08:08:03 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Unix half-billion years old 1985 Message-ID: UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). -- Andy Tannenbaum -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 5 07:10:59 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 08:10:59 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Unix half-billion years old 1985 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 5 Nov 2019, Dave Horsfall wrote: > UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 > 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). Aarrgghh! The subject should read "seconds", of course (too much blood in my coffee stream). -- Dave From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Tue Nov 5 07:59:22 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 16:59:22 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Unix half-billion years old 1985 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I wrote a near-trivial "timestamp" command to make it easier to do time arithmetic (handy for scheduling a doctor's appointment a 90-day medicine supply from now). TZ=udt timestamp 119 11 04 21 50 06 18204 1572904206 Mon Nov 4 21:50:06 2019 TZ=udt timestamp 0 70 01 01 00 00 00 0 0 Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 TZ=udt timestamp 500000000 85 11 05 00 53 20 5787 500000000 Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 TZ=udt timestamp 1000000000 101 09 09 01 46 40 11574 1000000000 Sun Sep 9 01:46:40 2001 TZ=udt timestamp 1500000000 117 07 14 02 40 00 17361 1500000000 Fri Jul 14 02:40:00 2017 TZ=udt timestamp 2000000000 133 05 18 03 33 20 23148 2000000000 Wed May 18 03:33:20 2033 TZ=udt timestamp 2500000000 149 03 22 04 26 40 28935 2500000000 Mon Mar 22 04:26:40 2049 Not likely I'll live to see 2500000000. I surely won't live to see a half-billion years. On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 4:11 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Tue, 5 Nov 2019, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > > UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 > > 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). > > Aarrgghh! The subject should read "seconds", of course (too much blood in > my coffee stream). > > -- Dave > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michael at kjorling.se Tue Nov 5 08:10:13 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 22:10:13 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: On 4 Nov 2019 15:27 -0500, from crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross): > On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 1:58 PM Bakul Shah wrote: >> I am surprised no one mentioned *The Shockwave Rider *by John Brunner, >> published in 1975. Excerpt: > > In the 1983 movie "Wargames", at the very end as the staff at NORAD > desperately try and disable the rogue artificial intelligence hell-bent on > starting World War III, at one point they make a suggestion to send a > "tapeworm" into the system", but it's judged too risky. In the 1984 movie _2010_, it seems using a tapeworm was more of a standard, if unusual, procedure for solving a very different problem. Copying from > Dr. Chandra: I've erased all of HAL's memory from the moment the > trouble started. > > Dr. Vasili Orlov: The 9000 series uses holographic memories, so > chronological erasures would not work. > > Dr. Chandra: I made a tapeworm. > > Dr. Walter Curnow: You made a what? > > Dr. Chandra: It's a program that's fed into a system that will hunt > down and destroy any desired memories. > > Dr. Floyd: Wait... do you know why HAL did what he did? > > Dr. Chandra: Yes. It wasn't his fault. I also suggest to migrate this part of the discussion to COFF as it has very little to do with UNIX history per se. -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor) From ality at pbrane.org Tue Nov 5 10:25:52 2019 From: ality at pbrane.org (Anthony Martin) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 16:25:52 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: <20191105002528.GA5164@alice> Bakul Shah once said: > I have been meaning to re-read [...] Stand on Zanzibar > but [it] would be too depressing in the present era! I read it shortly before my first vicennial. Even though I'm closer now to my second, I still think about it from time to time. "Christ, what an imagination I've got." Cheers, Anthony From ality at pbrane.org Tue Nov 5 11:04:01 2019 From: ality at pbrane.org (Anthony Martin) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 17:04:01 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Unix half-billion years old 1985 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20191105010401.GB5164@alice> "John P. Linderman" once said: > Not likely I'll live to see 2500000000. I surely won't live > to see a half-billion years. I'm patiently waiting for another Gilded Age: % date -u `{hoc -e 'int(PHI * 1e9)'} Sat Apr 10 05:53:08 GMT 2021 Though I wish I was around for the Belle [Labs] Époque. Cheers, Anthony From stewart at serissa.com Tue Nov 5 13:48:48 2019 From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 22:48:48 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: I might have been the fan who called John Shoch and Jon Hupp’s attention to John Brunner. At some point, Brunner came to visit PARC and we had a nice discussion about how Brunner had been able to anticipate this aspect of networking. -Larry > On 2019, Nov 4, at 2:24 PM, Richard Salz wrote: > > The John F. Shoch and Jon Hupp paper extensively credits Brunner, and uses quotes from the book as section intro's. > > On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 1:58 PM Bakul Shah > wrote: > I am surprised no one mentioned The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, published in 1975. Excerpt: > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Tue Nov 5 14:12:31 2019 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 21:12:31 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On 10/28/19 11:19 PM, Adam Thornton wrote: > Too bad the LCM+L has my P/390 and I had to give my Integrated Server > back to IBM. I recently acquired a P/390-E and I'd be happy to try running something on it. It was a learning experience getting it up and operational. (That's a story for a different day.) I'd love to get my hands on AIX/370. I figured it was gone for good after I read that IBM tried to actively destroy it and wipe it from history. -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4008 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 6 00:15:35 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 09:15:35 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Unix, IBM, 370 In-Reply-To: <201911041443.xA4EhCqn023852@freefriends.org> References: <20191029040434.GA29996@minnie.tuhs.org> <201910310751.x9V7pJ26030054@freefriends.org> <201910311410.x9VEAdor010114@freefriends.org> <201911030705.xA375twJ013107@freefriends.org> <201911041443.xA4EhCqn023852@freefriends.org> Message-ID: IBM owned TCF and it was 100% screwed down into AIX. The clean room team which did TNC used many of the ideas but tried to make it layered into 14 separate technologies so customer could pick and choose. HP originally picked up the process technology but not the FS work. DEC was the reverse. Novell/Tandem took all it. HP ended up with all the IP and in the end released it as FOSS. Hence the OpenSSI project On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 9:43 AM wrote: > Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 12:06 AM wrote: > > > > > > > > > The ideas were recreated as 14 different technologies called > Transparent > > > > Network Computing (TNC) that would end up in the FOSS community and > added > > > > to Linux 2x kernel as: OpenSSI < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSI> > > > > > > Am I wrong, or does nobody actually use this today? The opessi.org > > > home page link from Wikipedia just seems to hang. And the files on the > > > SourceForge page are 5 years old. > > > > > I suspect not - it was done to 2.6 kernel and none of the changes were > > taken by Linus for 3x Folks got discouraged and gave up > > Ah, OK. Thanks for the info. On the one hand, two bad. On the other hand, > it looks like a real patchwork quilt of technologies... > > Thanks, > > Arnold > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron at ronnatalie.com Wed Nov 6 02:04:49 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 11:04:49 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> Message-ID: <13E1AAB3-A21E-4364-934C-D5AA00059419@ronnatalie.com> We got hit at Rutgers on some of our ancillary machines early in the day (the 750 that belonged really to the the JVN computing center mostly) and I collected the evidence and learned through the internet grapevine where the vulnerabilities were and plugged them (also wrote some scripts to look for the holes and evidence of the worm on other machines at RU). Got everything cleaned up by noon time or so and I figured that was the end. The next day I was scheduled to be in DC on other business so I felt confident on leaving. Apparently however, the biggest impact on us of the worm had yet to hit. The news caught wind of it that evening and started calling the computer center early the next morning. I wasn’t there so it pretty much chewed up all of Chuck Hedrick’s day answering press inquiries. From ron at ronnatalie.com Wed Nov 6 02:21:10 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 11:21:10 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8C50B42C-CDF9-47FE-B2D7-AB980C059099@ronnatalie.com> One of my first jobs I did for the company that I ended up working for decades was a job for IBM FSD to put a second ethernet interface in to “secure XENIX” (a MLS system) to allow the system to be used for downgrading classified material. This gave us an in with IBM FSD and this led to us doing work with an IBM on a pair of microchannel i860 coprocessor cards called the Wizard and the W4. We ported AIX to both of them. The cards ran inside of another AIX PS/2 system so the TCF was really handy in allowing apps that only had 386 versions to run, the ability to maintain a common file system, and to share peripherals. Indeed, I think the major reason IBM used the TCF concept is it gave the 370 version of the thing an easy way to interoperate with user’s on the PS/2’s. 3270’s and other terminals designed for the mainframe really weren’t suited for UNIX. The initial Wizard card had no I/O other than the host PS/2. It was really more or less an academic experiment (the cards were also buggy). Two amusing things however came out of that port. The AIX for the PS/2 had this thing to multiplex the normal VGA display (outside of X) called the “High Function Terminal.” Our i860 version was less capable so it was denoted the “Low Function Terminal.” The other was that I hacked the -mm macro package to mimic the style of the IBM manuals so we could write “IBM-ish” documentation. The W4 card was interesting. It had 4 i860 processors along with it’s own framebuffer. One of my employees spent a lot of time of in Owego fixing the memory system (the whole thing was set up with these Xilinx PGAs that were easy to update in the field). Amusingly, the machine-specific parts of the W4 version of the AIX kernel had more in common with the 370 version than the i386 version. I spent weeks out at the IBM Palo Alto Science Center doing work on this project. I had managed to inadvertantly shutdown the main AIX/370 in the cluster (such is a problem when things get too transparent). Of course, while I had experience using VM/CMS before (both at the University of Maryalnd and at Rutgers), I’d never really much dealt with the operations side of the 370. But I found my way to a 3270 and typed “ipl aix” with at the command line with extreme optimism, but that was indeed all it took. From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 6 03:30:01 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 12:30:01 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine wrote: > I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for > that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One > of the people in the community indicated that it was a product > I can verify for a fact that Locus received bug reports from all over the world. There was a team in LA set up to handled them. True, the customers were reported to be more academic than commercial, but there were commercial customers.. For instance, I was told that my current employer ran the simulation for then proposed/in-development 80386 on a 370-PS/2 cluster under iTCF FWIW: I was under the impression they used TCF to migrate the very long running simulations from two different processors (I don't know that for sure, but I have been told that by two different people, so I'm comfortable repeating it). I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite difficult. IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and you had to know about it and know you to ask to get it. Charlie may know more, but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed out was a separate code base. As for finding an old copy of AIX/370 or AIX/386 (which are the same except for specific code that cared), I wish you good luck. IBM kept the IP locked up. We were firewalled at Locus and the code was only on a couple of very special systems and access was tightly controlled. I was not on that team, so I never saw their raw IP ( so I would not be contaminated as I was one of the TNC architects). But I was allowed to talk with Bruce and Greg who were the TCF architects. We did all talk about common issues; but Greg and Bruce stayed out the TNC IP (until after the IBM contract ended) and myself and Roman stayed out of TCF. Clem -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Wed Nov 6 04:04:09 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 11:04:09 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <8C50B42C-CDF9-47FE-B2D7-AB980C059099@ronnatalie.com> References: <8C50B42C-CDF9-47FE-B2D7-AB980C059099@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: Veering off topic but I'm familiar with the Wizard http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/CPU/wizard.html What was the framebuffer used for/under? The HFT and LFT terms were carried forth into POWER AIX. AIX 3.x had a home grown HFT with virtual terminals and some other semi-graphical features. AIX 4.X ported a STREAMs based console I/O stack from OSF and they called it the LFT because it lost all those features; users were directed to X11 for advanced terminal handling. Regards, Kevin On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 9:21 AM Ronald Natalie wrote: > > One of my first jobs I did for the company that I ended up working for decades was a job for IBM FSD to put a second ethernet interface in to “secure XENIX” (a MLS system) to allow the system to be used for downgrading classified material. This gave us an in with IBM FSD and this led to us doing work with an IBM on a pair of microchannel i860 coprocessor cards called the Wizard and the W4. We ported AIX to both of them. The cards ran inside of another AIX PS/2 system so the TCF was really handy in allowing apps that only had 386 versions to run, the ability to maintain a common file system, and to share peripherals. Indeed, I think the major reason IBM used the TCF concept is it gave the 370 version of the thing an easy way to interoperate with user’s on the PS/2’s. 3270’s and other terminals designed for the mainframe really weren’t suited for UNIX. > > The initial Wizard card had no I/O other than the host PS/2. It was really more or less an academic experiment (the cards were also buggy). Two amusing things however came out of that port. The AIX for the PS/2 had this thing to multiplex the normal VGA display (outside of X) called the “High Function Terminal.” Our i860 version was less capable so it was denoted the “Low Function Terminal.” The other was that I hacked the -mm macro package to mimic the style of the IBM manuals so we could write “IBM-ish” documentation. > > The W4 card was interesting. It had 4 i860 processors along with it’s own framebuffer. One of my employees spent a lot of time of in Owego fixing the memory system (the whole thing was set up with these Xilinx PGAs that were easy to update in the field). Amusingly, the machine-specific parts of the W4 version of the AIX kernel had more in common with the 370 version than the i386 version. I spent weeks out at the IBM Palo Alto Science Center doing work on this project. I had managed to inadvertantly shutdown the main AIX/370 in the cluster (such is a problem when things get too transparent). Of course, while I had experience using VM/CMS before (both at the University of Maryalnd and at Rutgers), I’d never really much dealt with the operations side of the 370. But I found my way to a 3270 and typed “ipl aix” with at the command line with extreme optimism, but that was indeed all it took. > > From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Wed Nov 6 04:07:51 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 11:07:51 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Clem, The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/ and can run in virtualbox https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/ Regards, Kevin On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 10:30 AM Clem Cole wrote: > > > > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine wrote: >> >> I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for >> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One >> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product > > > I can verify for a fact that Locus received bug reports from all over the world. There was a team in LA set up to handled them. True, the customers were reported to be more academic than commercial, but there were commercial customers.. For instance, I was told that my current employer ran the simulation for then proposed/in-development 80386 on a 370-PS/2 cluster under iTCF FWIW: I was under the impression they used TCF to migrate the very long running simulations from two different processors (I don't know that for sure, but I have been told that by two different people, so I'm comfortable repeating it). > > I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite difficult. IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and you had to know about it and know you to ask to get it. Charlie may know more, but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed out was a separate code base. > > As for finding an old copy of AIX/370 or AIX/386 (which are the same except for specific code that cared), I wish you good luck. IBM kept the IP locked up. We were firewalled at Locus and the code was only on a couple of very special systems and access was tightly controlled. I was not on that team, so I never saw their raw IP ( so I would not be contaminated as I was one of the TNC architects). But I was allowed to talk with Bruce and Greg who were the TCF architects. We did all talk about common issues; but Greg and Bruce stayed out the TNC IP (until after the IBM contract ended) and myself and Roman stayed out of TCF. > > > Clem > > From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 6 04:15:26 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 13:15:26 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Oh boy another time sync ;-) Thanks Kevin. Clem On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:08 PM Kevin Bowling wrote: > Clem, > > The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/ > and can run in virtualbox > > https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/ > > Regards, > Kevin > > On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 10:30 AM Clem Cole wrote: > > > > > > > > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine > wrote: > >> > >> I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for > >> that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One > >> of the people in the community indicated that it was a product > > > > > > I can verify for a fact that Locus received bug reports from all over > the world. There was a team in LA set up to handled them. True, the > customers were reported to be more academic than commercial, but there were > commercial customers.. For instance, I was told that my current employer > ran the simulation for then proposed/in-development 80386 on a 370-PS/2 > cluster under iTCF FWIW: I was under the impression they used TCF to > migrate the very long running simulations from two different processors (I > don't know that for sure, but I have been told that by two different > people, so I'm comfortable repeating it). > > > > I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite > difficult. IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and you > had to know about it and know you to ask to get it. Charlie may know more, > but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed out was a > separate code base. > > > > As for finding an old copy of AIX/370 or AIX/386 (which are the same > except for specific code that cared), I wish you good luck. IBM kept the > IP locked up. We were firewalled at Locus and the code was only on a > couple of very special systems and access was tightly controlled. I was > not on that team, so I never saw their raw IP ( so I would not be > contaminated as I was one of the TNC architects). But I was allowed to > talk with Bruce and Greg who were the TCF architects. We did all talk > about common issues; but Greg and Bruce stayed out the TNC IP (until after > the IBM contract ended) and myself and Roman stayed out of TCF. > > > > > > Clem > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbbrowne at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 05:03:42 2019 From: cbbrowne at gmail.com (Christopher Browne) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 14:03:42 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 5 Nov 2019 at 13:08, Kevin Bowling wrote: > Clem, > > The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/ > and can run in virtualbox > > https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/ > Wow, so the "x86" version of AIX truly existed! I had long heard rumour of this, and had heard of it from sources I was inclined to trust not to be making it up. The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992 and withdrawal in March 1995 left but a brief period of time when anyone would have been willing to acknowledge it as a product. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Wed Nov 6 05:12:00 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 12:12:00 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot. I have seen the media kits in person recently. They comically come with an “action” key cap for your Model M. I have a picture of interested. I don’t think the lack of popularity was any conspiracy. SCO had much better ISV and hardware support for PS/2. And if you had a nickel for a real computer there’s a reason the RS/6000 platform and AIX are still around today, it’s not bad stuff despite being a bit different and foreign. On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 12:03 PM Christopher Browne wrote: > On Tue, 5 Nov 2019 at 13:08, Kevin Bowling > wrote: > >> Clem, >> >> The AIX/386 stuff is readily available http://ps-2.kev009.com/aixps2/ >> and can run in virtualbox >> >> https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/running-aix-1-3-inside-virtual-box-5-2-16/ >> > > Wow, so the "x86" version of AIX truly existed! > > I had long heard rumour of this, and had heard of it from sources I was > inclined to trust not to be making it up. The dates seem to decently > explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992 and withdrawal in March 1995 > left but a brief period of time when anyone would have been willing to > acknowledge it as a product. > > -- > When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the > question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron at ronnatalie.com Wed Nov 6 05:22:17 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (ron at ronnatalie.com) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 14:22:17 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <8C50B42C-CDF9-47FE-B2D7-AB980C059099@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <063601d5940e$56d091a0$0471b4e0$@ronnatalie.com> > Veering off topic but I'm familiar with the Wizard http://ps- > 2.kev009.com/ohlandl/CPU/wizard.html Yep, we started with it and HOSTLINK (Intel's software) but we switched it to a two-node AIX cluster (one with the i386 and one with the Wizard). > > What was the framebuffer used for/under? It ran X and was used in our application to run our proprietary image processing software. From spedraja at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 05:26:24 2019 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 20:26:24 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:12, Kevin Bowling escribió: > It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in > some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running > PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot. > It's available as diskette images on Internet from veras algo. But it can be installed and run mostly for cause of the advance in the virtualization applications, together with some specific efforts of investigation and testing. And yes, we used SCO for our PS/2 servers running Unix or Unix-like. No discussion, at least until some years after when I installed one RS/6000 server with AIX 3.2 Regards Sergio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spedraja at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 05:28:00 2019 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 20:28:00 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Uh... "veras algo" means "years ago". My apologies. El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:26, SPC escribió: > > > El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:12, Kevin Bowling > escribió: > >> It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in >> some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running >> PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot. >> > > It's available as diskette images on Internet from veras algo. But it can > be installed and run mostly for cause of the advance in the virtualization > applications, together with some specific efforts of investigation and > testing. > > And yes, we used SCO for our PS/2 servers running Unix or Unix-like. No > discussion, at least until some years after when I installed one RS/6000 > server with AIX 3.2 > > Regards > Sergio > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 6 06:10:00 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 15:10:00 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 2:03 PM Christopher Browne wrote: > The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992 > The formal introduction of the PS/2 was April 87 (by the crew of Mash for the TV ads IIRC). Again, if my memory serves LCC started working on UNIX for the 370 in the mid'86s, actually before the PS/2 was announced, which would be announced as AIX/370. ISC had done the original 386 port for Intel, IBM, and AT&T - but that was for an ISA based systems originally [Phil Shevrin pulled one of the best sales jobs I ever knew -- he got paid three times for the same basic work]. At some point (and I would have to ask someone like Bruce Walker or Greg Thiel for the better info), the contract got widen AIX to include the PS/2 - a.k.a. create AIX/386. How much of the original ISC work was that build upon, I never knew. LCC worked for a number of years and the two AIX's were available for customers, probably under a special University license. The formal introduction was later (and '92 sounds right). But there were sites that had one or both before that time. I want to say, LCC worked with IBM for about 8-10 years starting in the mid-80s. BTW: They also did a UNIX port to AS/400 (on top of the native OS - similar to Eunice for the VAX or today's MingWin and Dave Korn's UWIN stuff). I've forgotten the dates on that, I want to say 93/94 time frame. Enough time has gone by, I think I can safely tell another story, WRT the AS/400. When that happened, IBM and LCC had a number oif years under their bridge and the LCC management team thought we knew how to work with IBM. Since we had a base IBM contract, we all figured that could be added/amended to as needed. When the folks from Rochester called asking about a quote for the AS/400 work, our sales folks trotted out the existing contract for AIX and figured - ok write a new SOW and we are done. Nope -- different division/different set of lawyers. Something was said to us in the form of 'Rochester Won the Baldridge Award.' I remember our CEO groaning - and saying something like 'Here we go again.' It was then I realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other. Clem ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Wed Nov 6 06:26:56 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 13:26:56 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yup I was involved in the salvage and was the first purveyor of these floppies to the modern internet. Saying this as it is germane to my original post in the thread, I have a lot of experience doing this kind of thing and I need willing connections to the source materials in question. Regards, Kevin On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 12:28 PM SPC wrote: > Uh... "veras algo" means "years ago". My apologies. > > El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:26, SPC escribió: > >> >> >> El mar., 5 nov. 2019 20:12, Kevin Bowling >> escribió: >> >>> It was used in academia although it did appear elsewhere for instance in >>> some PLC applications, for a long while some supertankers were running >>> PS/2s with Optio22 I/O boards to control pumps and whatnot. >>> >> >> It's available as diskette images on Internet from veras algo. But it can >> be installed and run mostly for cause of the advance in the virtualization >> applications, together with some specific efforts of investigation and >> testing. >> >> And yes, we used SCO for our PS/2 servers running Unix or Unix-like. No >> discussion, at least until some years after when I installed one RS/6000 >> server with AIX 3.2 >> >> Regards >> Sergio >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Wed Nov 6 06:42:37 2019 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 13:42:37 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Clem, I am very curious about this UNIX for OS/400 work it sounds either different or much earlier than what I am familiar with. I am familiar with the PASE environment that shipped around OS/400 V4R4 (1999?). After AS/400s started running PowerPCish CPUs (there is a bit of history there I won't dive into) PASE was like WINE for Linux.. same CPU arch, do some library and linker/loader tricks to hoist a different (AIX 4.3 first) environment within OS/400s understanding of the universe. A year or so later, some very bright group figured to use the OS/400's Single Level Store as the device model/device virtualization for the CPU virtualization (LPAR) in later POWER CPUs. You could run Linux or OS/400 or AIX this way. That work was then somewhat inverted, and pHyp was born from the OS/400's SILC idea of machine dependent code as a light weight firmware hypervisor in the converging iSeries and pSeries POWER systems.. they switched the device model/device virtualization to AIX called APV or PowerVM. It was nicknamed "Fortress Rochester" for a reason. They did some very nice work. But yeah IBM was running 4 large and extremely different computing businesses in the 1990s and probably some smaller ones too. They were very different but the systems did interoperate pretty well given the stakes. Regards, Kevin On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:10 PM Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 2:03 PM Christopher Browne > wrote: > >> The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in 1992 >> > The formal introduction of the PS/2 was April 87 (by the crew of Mash for > the TV ads IIRC). Again, if my memory serves LCC started working on UNIX > for the 370 in the mid'86s, actually before the PS/2 was announced, which > would be announced as AIX/370. ISC had done the original 386 port for > Intel, IBM, and AT&T - but that was for an ISA based systems originally > [Phil Shevrin pulled one of the best sales jobs I ever knew -- he got paid > three times for the same basic work]. > > At some point (and I would have to ask someone like Bruce Walker or Greg > Thiel for the better info), the contract got widen AIX to include the PS/2 > - a.k.a. create AIX/386. How much of the original ISC work was that build > upon, I never knew. > > LCC worked for a number of years and the two AIX's were available for > customers, probably under a special University license. The formal > introduction was later (and '92 sounds right). But there were sites that > had one or both before that time. I want to say, LCC worked with IBM for > about 8-10 years starting in the mid-80s. BTW: They also did a UNIX port to > AS/400 (on top of the native OS - similar to Eunice for the VAX or > today's MingWin and Dave Korn's UWIN stuff). I've forgotten the dates on > that, I want to say 93/94 time frame. > > Enough time has gone by, I think I can safely tell another story, WRT the > AS/400. When that happened, IBM and LCC had a number oif years under their > bridge and the LCC management team thought we knew how to work with IBM. > Since we had a base IBM contract, we all figured that could be > added/amended to as needed. When the folks from Rochester called asking > about a quote for the AS/400 work, our sales folks trotted out the existing > contract for AIX and figured - ok write a new SOW and we are done. Nope > -- different division/different set of lawyers. Something was said to us > in the form of 'Rochester Won the Baldridge Award.' I remember our CEO > groaning - and saying something like 'Here we go again.' It was then I > realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other. > > Clem > ᐧ > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 6 07:11:15 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 16:11:15 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I've long forgotten the name of the work. I worked on the proposal and part of the design study, but not the project itself. I had my hands full with leading the HP and DEC TNC stuff. IIRC Joe Hopfield was the lead on it. It was not really in the key of WINE. It was sort of cross between UWIN and Interix POSIX subsystem that now ships as WSL. I've forgotten a lot of the details now, to be honest. I seem to remember they used the SLS as part of the scheme, but I think there was a 'process' that was booted under OS/400 that took serviced UNIX/POSIX processes system functions. I'll send a note a couple of LCC alumni and see if I can find someone that knew more about it. Clem ᐧ On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 3:42 PM Kevin Bowling wrote: > Clem, > > I am very curious about this UNIX for OS/400 work it sounds either > different or much earlier than what I am familiar with. I am familiar with > the PASE environment that shipped around OS/400 V4R4 (1999?). After > AS/400s started running PowerPCish CPUs (there is a bit of history there I > won't dive into) PASE was like WINE for Linux.. same CPU arch, do some > library and linker/loader tricks to hoist a different (AIX 4.3 first) > environment within OS/400s understanding of the universe. A year or so > later, some very bright group figured to use the OS/400's Single Level > Store as the device model/device virtualization for the CPU virtualization > (LPAR) in later POWER CPUs. You could run Linux or OS/400 or AIX this > way. That work was then somewhat inverted, and pHyp was born from the > OS/400's SILC idea of machine dependent code as a light weight firmware > hypervisor in the converging iSeries and pSeries POWER systems.. they > switched the device model/device virtualization to AIX called APV or > PowerVM. > > It was nicknamed "Fortress Rochester" for a reason. They did some very > nice work. But yeah IBM was running 4 large and extremely different > computing businesses in the 1990s and probably some smaller ones too. They > were very different but the systems did interoperate pretty well given the > stakes. > > Regards, > Kevin > > On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:10 PM Clem Cole wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 2:03 PM Christopher Browne >> wrote: >> >>> The dates seem to decently explain the invisibility; introduction in >>> 1992 >>> >> The formal introduction of the PS/2 was April 87 (by the crew of Mash for >> the TV ads IIRC). Again, if my memory serves LCC started working on UNIX >> for the 370 in the mid'86s, actually before the PS/2 was announced, which >> would be announced as AIX/370. ISC had done the original 386 port for >> Intel, IBM, and AT&T - but that was for an ISA based systems originally >> [Phil Shevrin pulled one of the best sales jobs I ever knew -- he got paid >> three times for the same basic work]. >> >> At some point (and I would have to ask someone like Bruce Walker or Greg >> Thiel for the better info), the contract got widen AIX to include the PS/2 >> - a.k.a. create AIX/386. How much of the original ISC work was that build >> upon, I never knew. >> >> LCC worked for a number of years and the two AIX's were available for >> customers, probably under a special University license. The formal >> introduction was later (and '92 sounds right). But there were sites that >> had one or both before that time. I want to say, LCC worked with IBM for >> about 8-10 years starting in the mid-80s. BTW: They also did a UNIX port to >> AS/400 (on top of the native OS - similar to Eunice for the VAX or >> today's MingWin and Dave Korn's UWIN stuff). I've forgotten the dates on >> that, I want to say 93/94 time frame. >> >> Enough time has gone by, I think I can safely tell another story, WRT the >> AS/400. When that happened, IBM and LCC had a number oif years under their >> bridge and the LCC management team thought we knew how to work with IBM. >> Since we had a base IBM contract, we all figured that could be >> added/amended to as needed. When the folks from Rochester called asking >> about a quote for the AS/400 work, our sales folks trotted out the existing >> contract for AIX and figured - ok write a new SOW and we are done. Nope >> -- different division/different set of lawyers. Something was said to us >> in the form of 'Rochester Won the Baldridge Award.' I remember our CEO >> groaning - and saying something like 'Here we go again.' It was then I >> realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other. >> >> Clem >> ᐧ >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sauer at technologists.com Wed Nov 6 08:11:11 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 16:11:11 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> Clem says today "It was then I realized IBM was N different companies, each competing with each other." He's said that to me before and I then responded "Actually, it was more like M competing factions within N competing companies." It has been illuminating, surprising, but not shocking, the last week of so, to learn from from posts here, that AIX/370 was hard to get and mostly a university offering. What we (AIX people associated with RT/PC and then RS/6000) were told was that "everybody", especially Federal customers, wanted what became known as TCF (the original Locus work) for 370 and PS/2. I remember one Federal Systems Division person who seemed especially effective as a Locus advocate. I'd always assumed AIX/370 and AIX PS/2 became more available than reported here, but I left IBM before they were released. Enumerating factions/companies, just regarding AIX & Unix, there were the Federal Systems faction/company, the academic factions/company (primarily two factions, BSD & TCF, in Palo Alto), the PS/2 faction/company, the Rochester System/38->AS/400 faction/company, the Austin development lab, several Research locations (primarily Yorktown), ... And in LCC there were the firewalled TCF/TNC entities. It would be interesting to know more from the TCF folks at LCC. With Jerry's passing, if there is to be further clarity on what happened with AIX/370, it would probably have to come from Bruce Walker or Greg Thiel. I don't think I've had contact with either since I left IBM in 1989. CHS On 11/5/2019 11:30 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Sun, Nov 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM Gregg Levine > wrote: > > I've been trying to track down a copy of AIX/370 for > that emulator, especially since I do run VM/370 Release 6 on it. One > of the people in the community indicated that it was a product > I was also told, for an IBM customer to try to get the product was quite > difficult.  IBM sales basically tried really hard to not provide it and > you had to know about it and know you to ask to get it.  Charlie may > know more, but he was working on AIX/RS-6000 which as has been pointed > out was a separate code base. -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From tytso at mit.edu Wed Nov 6 10:06:00 2019 From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 19:06:00 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> Message-ID: <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 04:11:11PM -0600, Charles H Sauer wrote: > It has been illuminating, surprising, but not shocking, the last week of so, > to learn from from posts here, that AIX/370 was hard to get and mostly a > university offering. What we (AIX people associated with RT/PC and then > RS/6000) were told was that "everybody", especially Federal customers, > wanted what became known as TCF (the original Locus work) for 370 and PS/2. > I remember one Federal Systems Division person who seemed especially > effective as a Locus advocate. I'd always assumed AIX/370 and AIX PS/2 > became more available than reported here, but I left IBM before they were > released. > > Enumerating factions/companies, just regarding AIX & Unix, there were the > Federal Systems faction/company, the academic factions/company (primarily > two factions, BSD & TCF, in Palo Alto), the PS/2 faction/company, the > Rochester System/38->AS/400 faction/company, the Austin development lab, > several Research locations (primarily Yorktown), ... > There was also AOS (Academic Operating System) which was basically repackaged BSD 4.x ported to the IBM/RT PC[1]. At MIT's Project Athena, most people massively preferred it to AIX, but we were force marched to AIX by 1987 or 1988. :-/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC#Software - Ted From sauer at technologists.com Wed Nov 6 13:36:14 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H. Sauer) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 21:36:14 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] one element of one of M factions of N companies [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> Message-ID: <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> Yes, but maybe the forced march at Athena was a year or so later, ’88 or ’89?? There was a preceding IBM internal “forced march” involving Bruce Walker from LCC, people from Palo Alto responsible for AOS (two co-authors of https://technologists.com/sauer/Convergence_of_AIX_and_4.3BSD.pdf plus a couple of others) and AIX people. The work in that 1989 Uniforum paper was done in 1988, targeting AIX 3, as discussed a little more in https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ . When I left IBM at the beginning of May 1989, I was running AOS on my home RT and AIX 2.2 on my office machine. > On Nov 5, 2019, at 6:06 PM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 04:11:11PM -0600, Charles H Sauer wrote: >> It has been illuminating, surprising, but not shocking, the last week of so, >> to learn from from posts here, that AIX/370 was hard to get and mostly a >> university offering. What we (AIX people associated with RT/PC and then >> RS/6000) were told was that "everybody", especially Federal customers, >> wanted what became known as TCF (the original Locus work) for 370 and PS/2. >> I remember one Federal Systems Division person who seemed especially >> effective as a Locus advocate. I'd always assumed AIX/370 and AIX PS/2 >> became more available than reported here, but I left IBM before they were >> released. >> >> Enumerating factions/companies, just regarding AIX & Unix, there were the >> Federal Systems faction/company, the academic factions/company (primarily >> two factions, BSD & TCF, in Palo Alto), the PS/2 faction/company, the >> Rochester System/38->AS/400 faction/company, the Austin development lab, >> several Research locations (primarily Yorktown), ... >> > > There was also AOS (Academic Operating System) which was basically > repackaged BSD 4.x ported to the IBM/RT PC[1]. At MIT's Project > Athena, most people massively preferred it to AIX, but we were force > marched to AIX by 1987 or 1988. :-/ > > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC#Software > > - Ted -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spedraja at gmail.com Wed Nov 6 17:59:12 2019 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 08:59:12 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> Message-ID: El mié., 6 nov. 2019 4:37, Charles H. Sauer escribió: > > When I left IBM at the beginning of May 1989, I was running AOS on my home > RT and AIX 2.2 on my office machine > With permisión, I have one question fron years about this... Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code) un some place on the Internet? I would ask too about some kind of emulator of the IBM/RT, but I never find one. Regards Sergio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Nov 6 20:37:22 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2019 03:37:22 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <13E1AAB3-A21E-4364-934C-D5AA00059419@ronnatalie.com> References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> <13E1AAB3-A21E-4364-934C-D5AA00059419@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <201911061037.xA6AbMlk014673@freefriends.org> Ronald Natalie wrote: > We got hit at Rutgers on some of our ancillary machines early in the day ... Our Unix systems (Emory U. Computer Center and Math/CS systems) were running a custom sendmail config that I wrote, so the worm bypassed us. We were lucky. :-) Arnold From ron at ronnatalie.com Wed Nov 6 23:35:54 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 08:35:54 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <201911061037.xA6AbMlk014673@freefriends.org> References: <116B676F-5917-481A-9634-0E6C5F702B9B@mcjones.org> <13E1AAB3-A21E-4364-934C-D5AA00059419@ronnatalie.com> <201911061037.xA6AbMlk014673@freefriends.org> Message-ID: The WIZ hack was well known by the time the worm exploited it. I’d recompiled sendmail to get rid of it even being an option on all the machines directly under my control. The 750 in question was operated ostensibly by the JVNCNet people, but I had the root pasword (I guess I really didn’t need it with that security hole in it anyhow). > On Nov 6, 2019, at 5:37 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > Ronald Natalie wrote: > >> We got hit at Rutgers on some of our ancillary machines early in the day ... > > Our Unix systems (Emory U. Computer Center and Math/CS systems) were running > a custom sendmail config that I wrote, so the worm bypassed us. We were lucky. :-) > > Arnold From sauer at technologists.com Thu Nov 7 01:51:20 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 09:51:20 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> Message-ID: <2c0802ee-cd63-73b2-953f-a1d47901bd63@technologists.com> I'm not aware of AOS source anywhere, but plausibly someone from Athena or CMU might still have it. If I recall correctly, it came on large tape cartridges. There was some AOS stuff at www.dementia.org/~shadow/ibmrt.html, some still present at http://web.archive.org/web/20110725231604/http://www.dementia.org/~shadow/ibmrt.html, but the ftp stuff seems to be gone. Also some AOS stuff at https://amaus.net/static/S100/IBM/RTPC/AOS/. I'm not aware of RT or 6K emulators available. I think there is more recent AIX on SIMH (https://astr0baby.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/running-aix-7-2-tl3sp1-on-x86_64-via-qemu-system-ppc64/), but I've not looked at it. CHS On 11/6/2019 1:59 AM, SPC wrote: > > > El mié., 6 nov. 2019 4:37, Charles H. Sauer > escribió: > > > When I left IBM at the beginning of May 1989, I was running AOS on > my home RT and AIX 2.2 on my office machine > > > With permisión, I have one question fron years about this... Is it AOS > stuff saved and available (including source code) un some place on the > Internet? > > I would ask too about some kind of emulator of the IBM/RT, but I never > find one. > > Regards > Sergio > -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From patbarron at acm.org Thu Nov 7 06:28:22 2019 From: patbarron at acm.org (Pat Barron) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 15:28:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Message-ID: I may still have AOS 4.3 tape images still around somewhere. I will have to search around and see if I still have them. Though even if I do, I'm not sure if the license would permit me to make them available - if I recall correctly, this wasn't an actual LPP, but there may be some IBM license on this over and above the Berkeley license. Yes, it did come on tape cartridges. --Pat. From patbarron at acm.org Thu Nov 7 06:31:31 2019 From: patbarron at acm.org (Pat Barron) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 15:31:31 -0500 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Message-ID: Also, I'm still in touch with shadow, I can ask if there's a mirror of that IBM RT page still around. --Pat. From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Fri Nov 8 08:40:03 2019 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 15:40:03 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <2c0802ee-cd63-73b2-953f-a1d47901bd63@technologists.com> References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> <2c0802ee-cd63-73b2-953f-a1d47901bd63@technologists.com> Message-ID: <0a418324-5311-816d-7e60-1a619c1c0dfd@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> On 11/6/19 8:51 AM, Charles H Sauer wrote: > I think there is more recent AIX on SIMH I know someone who has booted and run AIX 7. under SimH. I don't know how different the emulation SimH is doing to allow that to run vs an RS/6000. -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4008 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Fri Nov 8 14:39:57 2019 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2019 04:39:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <0a418324-5311-816d-7e60-1a619c1c0dfd@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> References: <0a418324-5311-816d-7e60-1a619c1c0dfd@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: Aix is kind of running on Qemu...  I've run 4.12 although the networking wasn't running, but enough to uuencode stuff through the console. Get Outlook for Android On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 7:41 AM +0900, "Grant Taylor via TUHS" wrote: On 11/6/19 8:51 AM, Charles H Sauer wrote: > I think there is more recent AIX on SIMH I know someone who has booted and run AIX 7. under SimH. I don't know how different the emulation SimH is doing to allow that to run vs an RS/6000. -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cym224 at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 03:20:05 2019 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 12:20:05 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix Message-ID: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/). As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from seemingly knowledgeable people. One comment (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977), from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS. Anyone care to comment on this? N. From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sun Nov 10 05:39:32 2019 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 14:39:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix Message-ID: <20191109193932.2448E18C0B8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Nemo Nusquam > One comment .. stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it > "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS. Anyone care to > comment on this? All the original Multics hardcopy documentation I have (both from GE and MIT, as well as later material from Honeywell) spells it 'Multics'. Conversely, an original V6 UPM spells it 'UNIX'; I think it switched to 'Unix' around the time of V7. (I don't know about _really_ early, like on the PDP-7.) The bit about case to differentiate _might_ be right. Noel From pc.lpz.snchz at gmail.com Sun Nov 10 05:43:59 2019 From: pc.lpz.snchz at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Paco_L=C3=B3pez?=) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 19:43:59 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> References: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> Message-ID: An excerpt from The Jargon File: Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately ‘UNIX’ or ‘Unix’; both forms are common, and used interchangeably. Dennis Ritchie says that the ‘UNIX’ spelling originally happened in CACM's 1974 paper The UNIX Time-Sharing System because “we had a new typesetter and troff had just been invented and we were intoxicated by being able to produce small caps.” Later, dmr tried to get the spelling changed to ‘Unix’ in a couple of Bell Labs papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed, and eventually (his words) “wimped out” on the issue. So, while the trademark today is ‘UNIX’, both capitalizations are grounded in ancient usage; the Jargon File uses ‘Unix’ in deference to dmr's wishes. at: http://catb.org/jargon/html/U/Unix.html El sáb., 9 nov. 2019 a las 17:28, Nemo Nusquam () escribió: > I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 > (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/). > As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from > seemingly knowledgeable people. > > One comment > ( > https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977), > > from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it > "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS. Anyone care to > comment on this? > > N. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dwalker at doomd.net Sun Nov 10 06:36:06 2019 From: dwalker at doomd.net (Derrik Walker v2.0) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 15:36:06 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> References: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/9/19 12:20 PM, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 > (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/). > As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from > seemingly knowledgeable people. > > One comment > (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977), > from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it > "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS.  Anyone care to > comment on this? > > N. It was always my understanding, based totally on hearsay from engineers from both Sun and SGI back in my early days with it, UNIX is the OS, while unix, or vmunix is the kernel. Unix was deprecated by the time it became a real commercial product. So, right or wrong, I've always used UNIX for the OS, and unix, or vmunix as appropriate, to refer to the kernel. - Derrik -- Derrik Walker v2.0 dwalker at doomd.net https://www.doomd.net "Those UNIX guys, they think weird!" -- John C. Dvorak From mah at mhorton.net Sun Nov 10 07:05:39 2019 From: mah at mhorton.net (Mary Ann Horton) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 13:05:39 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: References: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> Message-ID: <972b4dbb-e62f-f369-153b-e1892506b72d@mhorton.net> I just finished Brian Kernighan's book (excellent!) and he addresses this in section 7.6. (Yes, he wrote the book in troff.) He prefers "Unix" and wrote it that way except for this section. He says "Bell Labs' legal guardians decided that the name Unix was a valuable trademark that had to be protected..." Legal mostly required it to be used as an adjective "The UNIX TM operating system", and how the ms macros produced a small caps "UNIX" (and a footnote on the first reference). He's clear that the 1127 folks hated the requirements from legal. It is true that the file which contains the kernel was /unix, or /vmunix for Berkeley Unix, but that's the name of the file, not the proper name of the operating system for English prose.  By convention, virtually all Unix files were in lower case.     Mary Ann On 11/9/19 12:36 PM, Derrik Walker v2.0 wrote: > On 11/9/19 12:20 PM, Nemo Nusquam wrote: >> I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 >> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/). >> As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from >> seemingly knowledgeable people. >> >> One comment >> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977), >> from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it >> "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS.  Anyone care to >> comment on this? >> >> N. > > It was always my understanding, based totally on hearsay from > engineers from both Sun and SGI back in my early days with it, UNIX is > the OS, while unix, or vmunix is the kernel. Unix was deprecated by > the time it became a real commercial product. > > So, right or wrong, I've always used UNIX for the OS, and unix, or > vmunix as appropriate, to refer to the kernel. > > - Derrik > From clemc at ccc.com Sun Nov 10 07:23:04 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 16:23:04 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: <972b4dbb-e62f-f369-153b-e1892506b72d@mhorton.net> References: <2ce9495a-b877-91be-ff5b-5516b8269562@gmail.com> <972b4dbb-e62f-f369-153b-e1892506b72d@mhorton.net> Message-ID: In fact ATT legal had a document they sent to all commercial licensees around 1980 on proper use of the name. I wonder if I still have/can find a copy. But the lawyers were pretty clear. It was UNIX with ™ and later the R with a circle around beside the all caps letters after they registered it. It was that letter that started all the names like Xenix, Ultrix, HP-UX, SunOS, RTU etc. On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 4:06 PM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > I just finished Brian Kernighan's book (excellent!) and he addresses > this in section 7.6. (Yes, he wrote the book in troff.) > > He prefers "Unix" and wrote it that way except for this section. He says > "Bell Labs' legal guardians decided that the name Unix was a valuable > trademark that had to be protected..." Legal mostly required it to be > used as an adjective "The UNIX TM operating system", and how the ms > macros produced a small caps "UNIX" (and a footnote on the first > reference). He's clear that the 1127 folks hated the requirements from > legal. > > It is true that the file which contains the kernel was /unix, or /vmunix > for Berkeley Unix, but that's the name of the file, not the proper name > of the operating system for English prose. By convention, virtually all > Unix files were in lower case. > > Mary Ann > > On 11/9/19 12:36 PM, Derrik Walker v2.0 wrote: > > On 11/9/19 12:20 PM, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > >> I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 > >> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/). > >> As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from > >> seemingly knowledgeable people. > >> > >> One comment > >> ( > https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977), > > >> from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it > >> "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS. Anyone care to > >> comment on this? > >> > >> N. > > > > It was always my understanding, based totally on hearsay from > > engineers from both Sun and SGI back in my early days with it, UNIX is > > the OS, while unix, or vmunix is the kernel. Unix was deprecated by > > the time it became a real commercial product. > > > > So, right or wrong, I've always used UNIX for the OS, and unix, or > > vmunix as appropriate, to refer to the kernel. > > > > - Derrik > > > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scj at yaccman.com Sun Nov 10 10:07:05 2019 From: scj at yaccman.com (Steve Johnson) Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2019 16:07:05 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I remember a story I heard second hand.   The Bell System had so many acronyms that they published  yearly a small book with all the acronyms in the Bell System.   Somebody (Ken?, Doug?) got a call one year that they wanted to include UNIX in the book, so would we please tell them what UNIX stood for.   The reply was that UNIX was not an acronym.  So the caller said: "OK.  We won't put it in the book..." Steve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clem Cole" To:"Mary Ann Horton" Cc: Sent:Sat, 9 Nov 2019 16:23:04 -0500 Subject:Re: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In fact ATT legal had a document they sent to all commercial licensees around 1980 on proper use of the name.  I wonder if I still have/can find a copy.  But the lawyers were pretty clear. It was UNIX with ™ and later the R with a circle around beside the all caps letters after they registered it.   It was that letter that started all the names like Xenix, Ultrix, HP-UX, SunOS, RTU etc.    On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 4:06 PM Mary Ann Horton wrote: I just finished Brian Kernighan's book (excellent!) and he addresses this in section 7.6. (Yes, he wrote the book in troff.) He prefers "Unix" and wrote it that way except for this section. He says "Bell Labs' legal guardians decided that the name Unix was a valuable trademark that had to be protected..." Legal mostly required it to be used as an adjective "The UNIX TM operating system", and how the ms macros produced a small caps "UNIX" (and a footnote on the first reference). He's clear that the 1127 folks hated the requirements from legal. It is true that the file which contains the kernel was /unix, or /vmunix for Berkeley Unix, but that's the name of the file, not the proper name of the operating system for English prose.  By convention, virtually all Unix files were in lower case.      Mary Ann On 11/9/19 12:36 PM, Derrik Walker v2.0 wrote: > On 11/9/19 12:20 PM, Nemo Nusquam wrote: >> I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 >> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/ [2]). >> As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from >> seemingly knowledgeable people. >> >> One comment >> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977 [3]), >> from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it >> "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS.  Anyone care to >> comment on this? >> >> N. > > It was always my understanding, based totally on hearsay from > engineers from both Sun and SGI back in my early days with it, UNIX is > the OS, while unix, or vmunix is the kernel. Unix was deprecated by > the time it became a real commercial product. > > So, right or wrong, I've always used UNIX for the OS, and unix, or > vmunix as appropriate, to refer to the kernel. > > - Derrik > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual Links: ------ [1] mailto:mah at mhorton.net [2] https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/ [3] https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 11 07:24:10 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 08:24:10 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Unix Programmer's Manual, 3rd edition (1973) (fwd) Message-ID: Sent to me by someone not on this list; I have no idea whether it's been mentioned here before. -- Dave ---------- Forwarded message ---------- To: Dave Horsfall Subject: Unix Programmer's Manual, 3rd edition (1973) Hi Dave, Some nostalgic soul has shared a PDF on the interwebz: > MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) tweeted at 3:12 am on Mon, Nov 04, 2019: > #otd in 1971 Bell Labs released the first Unix Programmers Manual. > > Download the free PDF here: https://t.co/BYh3dAhaJU I wonder what became of the first and second editions? From michael at kjorling.se Mon Nov 11 17:15:28 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 07:15:28 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Unix Programmer's Manual, 3rd edition (1973) (fwd) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47vjsxs4fpgjwggtbkfh99pc@localhost> On 11 Nov 2019 08:24 +1100, from dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall): > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > To: Dave Horsfall > Subject: Unix Programmer's Manual, 3rd edition (1973) > >> Download the free PDF here: https://t.co/BYh3dAhaJU For posterity, that eventually redirects to https://dspinellis.github.io/unix-v3man/v3man.pdf -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor) From iain at csp-partnership.co.uk Mon Nov 11 18:07:11 2019 From: iain at csp-partnership.co.uk (Dr Iain Maoileoin) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 08:07:11 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9893DFE0-5D7A-4733-846D-23C0106B2DBA@csp-partnership.co.uk> > On 10 Nov 2019, at 00:07, Steve Johnson wrote: > > I remember a story I heard second hand. The Bell System had so many acronyms that they published yearly a small book with all the acronyms in the Bell System. Somebody (Ken?, Doug?) got a call one year that they wanted to include UNIX in the book, so would we please tell them what UNIX stood for. The reply was that UNIX was not an acronym. So the caller said: "OK. We won't put it in the book..." > > Steve > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Clem Cole" > To:"Mary Ann Horton" > Cc: > Sent:Sat, 9 Nov 2019 16:23:04 -0500 > Subject:Re: [TUHS] UNIX or unix > > > In fact ATT legal had a document they sent to all commercial licensees around 1980 on proper use of the name. I wonder if I still have/can find a copy. But the lawyers were pretty clear. It was UNIX with ™ and later the R with a circle around beside the all caps letters after they registered it. I was not just commercial licensees. I remember seeing a copy of that letter. We were a Scottish University who had a legit tape sent from AT&T/Bell Labs for academic use. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 05:54:25 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 06:54:25 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Unix Programmer's Manual, 3rd edition (1973) (fwd) In-Reply-To: <47vjsxs4fpgjwggtbkfh99pc@localhost> References: <47vjsxs4fpgjwggtbkfh99pc@localhost> Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Michael Kjörling wrote: >>> Download the free PDF here: https://t.co/BYh3dAhaJU > > For posterity, that eventually redirects to > https://dspinellis.github.io/unix-v3man/v3man.pdf Thanks; I should've noted that. -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 05:58:11 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 06:58:11 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] UNIX or unix In-Reply-To: <9893DFE0-5D7A-4733-846D-23C0106B2DBA@csp-partnership.co.uk> References: <9893DFE0-5D7A-4733-846D-23C0106B2DBA@csp-partnership.co.uk> Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Dr Iain Maoileoin wrote: [ UNIX (tm) (R) ] > I was not just commercial licensees.  I remember seeing a copy of that > letter.  We were a Scottish University who had a legit tape sent from > AT&T/Bell Labs for academic use. I saw the same thing at the University of New South Wales back when [Uu][Nn][Ii][Xx] was first released. -- Dave From arnold at skeeve.com Tue Nov 12 07:10:26 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (Arnold Robbins) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 23:10:26 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? Message-ID: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Hi. Doug McIlroy is probably the best person to answer this. Looking at the V3 and V4 manuals, there is a reference to the m6 macro processor. The man page thereof refers to A. D. Hall, The M6 Macroprocessor, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1969 1. Is this memo available, even in hardcopy that could be scanned? 2. What's the history of m6, was it written in assembler? C? 3. When and why was it replaced with m4 (written by DMR IIRC)? More generally, what's the history of m6 prior to Unix? IIRC, the macro processor in Software Tools was inspired by m4, and in particular its immediate evaluation of its arguments during definition. I guess I'll also ask, how widespread was the use of macro processors in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages that had them. Were the general purpose macro processors used a lot? E.g. with Fortran or Cobol or ... I'm just curious. :-) Thanks, Arnold From drb at msu.edu Tue Nov 12 08:18:38 2019 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:18:38 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 11 Nov 2019 23:10:26 +0200.) <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Message-ID: <20191111221838.E763B29760E@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> > Looking at the V3 and V4 manuals, there is a reference to the m6 > macro processor. The man page thereof refers to > A. D. Hall, The M6 Macroprocessor, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1969 > 1. Is this memo available, even in hardcopy that could be scanned? Amen - the cited document, CSTR #2 seems to be hard to find. De From tytso at mit.edu Tue Nov 12 08:31:29 2019 From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:31:29 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Message-ID: <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 11:10:26PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote: > I guess I'll also ask, how widespread was the use of macro processors > in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had > a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages > that had them. Were the general purpose macro processors used a lot? > E.g. with Fortran or Cobol or ... Well, there's Ratfor (Rational Fortran), which was implemented as a preprocessor in front of Fortran. I don't think it was used a lot, though.... - Ted From michael at kjorling.se Tue Nov 12 08:37:42 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 22:37:42 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Message-ID: On 11 Nov 2019 23:10 +0200, from arnold at skeeve.com (Arnold Robbins): > Looking at the V3 and V4 manuals, there is a reference to the m6 macro > processor. The man page thereof refers to > > A. D. Hall, The M6 Macroprocessor, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1969 > > 2. What's the history of m6, was it written in assembler? C? If it was from 1969, it can't realistically have been written in C, which at that time wouldn't be around in any form for another few years. -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 08:58:58 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 09:58:58 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 11:10:26PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote: >> I guess I'll also ask, how widespread was the use of macro processors >> in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had >> a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages >> that had them. Were the general purpose macro processors used a lot? >> E.g. with Fortran or Cobol or ... Late trivia: it's PL/I, not PL/1; rumour has it that IBM trademarked them all up to PL/C i.e. PL/100... > Well, there's Ratfor (Rational Fortran), which was implemented as a > preprocessor in front of Fortran. I don't think it was used a lot, > though.... I think I used it once, on the principle that I'll try anything once; ugh... -- Dave From cym224 at gmail.com Tue Nov 12 10:07:21 2019 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 19:07:21 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: On 11/11/19 17:58, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > >> On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 11:10:26PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote: >>> I guess I'll also ask, how widespread was the use of macro processors >>> in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had >>> a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages >>> that had them. Were the general purpose macro processors used a lot? >>> E.g. with Fortran or Cobol or ... > > Late trivia: it's PL/I, not PL/1; rumour has it that IBM trademarked > them all up to PL/C i.e. PL/100... Found nothing on TESS. Maybe copyright but I am not familiar with copyright. > >> Well, there's Ratfor (Rational Fortran), which was implemented as a >> preprocessor in front of Fortran. I don't think it was used a lot, >> though.... > > I think I used it once, on the principle that I'll try anything once; > ugh... I worked for a company that wrote everything on ratfor. #6-) > > -- Dave From clemc at ccc.com Tue Nov 12 10:30:47 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 19:30:47 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: Not so fast there my friend. Ratfor was used a great deal. For instance The PGI compiler folks wrote a parallel optimizing compiler for the FPS-164 in it. And FPS used it for there OS. Plus Apollo wrote all their original utilities in it. Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. > On Nov 11, 2019, at 5:31 PM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > >> On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 11:10:26PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote: >> I guess I'll also ask, how widespread was the use of macro processors >> in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had >> a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages >> that had them. Were the general purpose macro processors used a lot? >> E.g. with Fortran or Cobol or ... > > Well, there's Ratfor (Rational Fortran), which was implemented as a > preprocessor in front of Fortran. I don't think it was used a lot, > though.... > > - Ted From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 12 10:39:45 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 11:39:45 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Nov 2019, Nemo Nusquam wrote: >> Late trivia: it's PL/I, not PL/1; rumour has it that IBM trademarked >> them all up to PL/C i.e. PL/100... > > Found nothing on TESS. Maybe copyright but I am not familiar with > copyright. Could be copyright; I was told this in the early 70s when I was doing Computer Science. Of course, it could also be apocryphal :-( > I worked for a company that wrote everything on ratfor. #6-) Urk... -- Dave From drb at msu.edu Tue Nov 12 10:42:25 2019 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 19:42:25 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 11 Nov 2019 19:30:47 -0500.) References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: <20191112004225.CA53E297745@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> > Not so fast there my friend. Ratfor was used a great deal. For > instance The PGI compiler folks wrote a parallel optimizing compiler > for the FPS-164 in it. And FPS used it for there OS. Plus Apollo > wrote all their original utilities in it. The Software Tools stuff too, including the STVOS stuff Berkeley managed. If you pick an old platform and count RATFOR implementations, all of them seem to have enough of them you can't swing a dead cat. RATFOR may not be enjoyable in modern terms, but compared to building in native F66... De From scj at yaccman.com Tue Nov 12 11:09:16 2019 From: scj at yaccman.com (Steve Johnson) Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:09:16 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Message-ID: Doug can certainly give you more information, but very early in my career at Bell Labs I saw an internal memo, by (I think) Doug and Bob Morris, that had a taxonomy of macro systems based on a set of decisions (things like can you define a macro inside a macro, rescan expanded macros looking for macro definitions and uses, etc.)   I seem to recall there were close to a thousand different macro systems possible.  It was a brilliant paper, but I don't think it was ever published.  The Assembler for the IBM 7094 had an amazing macro facility -- I recall that someone wrote a Lisp compiler entirely in macros, and it would regularly recurse several hundred levels deep while generating code.  Someone told me once that Bob Morris invented macros -- I can't vouch for this.   Doug? Steve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Arnold Robbins" To: Cc: Sent:Mon, 11 Nov 2019 23:10:26 +0200 Subject:[TUHS] History of m6? Hi. Doug McIlroy is probably the best person to answer this. Looking at the V3 and V4 manuals, there is a reference to the m6 macro processor. The man page thereof refers to A. D. Hall, The M6 Macroprocessor, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1969 1. Is this memo available, even in hardcopy that could be scanned? 2. What's the history of m6, was it written in assembler? C? 3. When and why was it replaced with m4 (written by DMR IIRC)? More generally, what's the history of m6 prior to Unix? IIRC, the macro processor in Software Tools was inspired by m4, and in particular its immediate evaluation of its arguments during definition. I guess I'll also ask, how widespread was the use of macro processors in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages that had them. Were the general purpose macro processors used a lot? E.g. with Fortran or Cobol or ... I'm just curious. :-) Thanks, Arnold -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed Nov 13 01:07:19 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:07:19 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 8:27 PM Steve Johnson wrote: > I recall that someone wrote a Lisp compiler entirely in macros, and it > would regularly recurse several hundred levels deep while generating code. > T'was before my time, but the legend has it that the original BLISS-10 bootstrap compiler was a set of TECO macros that Chuck Geschke (Adobe's founder) wrote. ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu Wed Nov 13 01:15:41 2019 From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:15:41 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? Message-ID: <201911121515.xACFFf0V095921@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> M6 originated as a porting tool for the Fortran source code for Stan Brown's Altran language for algebraic computation. M6 itself was originally written in highly portable Fortran. Arnold asked, "How widespread was the use of macro processors in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and PL/1 had a macro language, but I don't know of any other contemporary languages that had them." Understanding "contemporary" to mean pre-C, I agree. Cpp, a particularly trivial macroprocessor, has been heavily used ever since--even for other languages, e.g. Haskell. The rumor that Bob Morris invented macros is off the mark. Macros were in regular use by the time he joined Bell Labs. He did conceive an interesting "form-letter generator", called "form", and an accompanying editor "fed". A sort of cross between macros and Vannevar Bush's hypothetical memex repository, these were among the earliest Unix programs and appeared in the manual from v1 through v6. Off-topic warning: pre-Unix stories follow. Contrary to an assertion on cat-v.org, I did not invent macros either. In 1959 Doug Eastwood and I, at the suggestion of George Mealy, created the macro facility for SAP (SHARE assmbly program) for the IBM 704. However, the idea was in the air at the time. In particular, we knew that GE already had macros, though we knew no details about their syntax or semantics. There were various attempts in the 1960s to build languages by macro extension. The approach turned out to entail considerable social cost: communication barriers arise when everyone can easily create his own dialect. A case in point: I once had a bright young mathematician summer employee who wrote wonderfully concise code by heaping up macro definitions. The result was inscrutable. Macros caught on in a big way in the ESS labs at Indian Hill. With a macro-defined switching language, code builds were slow. One manager there boasted that his lab made more thoroughgoing use of computers than other departments and cited enormous consumption of machine time as evidence. Steve Johnson recalls corrrectly that there was a set of macros that turned the assembler into a Lisp compiler. I wrote it and used it for a theorem-proving project spurred by Martin Davis. (The project was blown away when Robinson published the resolution princple.) The compiler did some cute local optimization, taking account of facts such as Bob Morris's astute observation that the 704 instruction TNZ (transfer on nonzero) sets the accumulator to zero. Doug From leah at vuxu.org Wed Nov 13 02:01:51 2019 From: leah at vuxu.org (Leah Neukirchen) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:01:51 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <20191111221838.E763B29760E@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> (Dennis Boone's message of "Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:18:38 -0500") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111221838.E763B29760E@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: <87woc513tc.fsf@vuxu.org> Dennis Boone writes: > > Looking at the V3 and V4 manuals, there is a reference to the m6 > > macro processor. The man page thereof refers to > > > A. D. Hall, The M6 Macroprocessor, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1969 > > > 1. Is this memo available, even in hardcopy that could be scanned? > > Amen - the cited document, CSTR #2 seems to be hard to find. Indeed, it took a bit to find: https://plan9.io/cm/cs/cstr/2.pdf (Also it's not on archive.org for the original bell-labs.com domain; it would be nice to have it officially archived.) Best, -- Leah Neukirchen https://leahneukirchen.org/ From norman at oclsc.org Wed Nov 13 06:56:15 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm Message-ID: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> I think I recall an explicit statement somewhere from an interview with Robert that the worm was inspired partly by Shockwave Rider. I confess my immediate reaction to the worm was uncontrollable laughter. I was out of town when it happened, so I first heard it from a newspaper article (and wasn't caught up in fighting it or I'd have laughed a lot less, of course); and it seemed to me hilarious when I read that Robert was behind it. He had interned with 1127 for a few summers while I was there, so I knew him as very bright but often a bit careless about details; that seemed an exact match for the worm. My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy old habit (common in those days not just in my code but in that of many others) of ignoring possible buffer overflows. I find it mind-boggling that people still make that mistake; it has been literal decades since the lesson was rubbed in our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed that programming education seems not to care enough about this sort of thing, even today. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 13 08:00:26 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 09:00:26 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, Norman Wilson wrote: > I think I recall an explicit statement somewhere from an interview with > Robert that the worm was inspired partly by Shockwave Rider. Yes, I noticed the similarity too. > I confess my immediate reaction to the worm was uncontrollable laughter. > I was out of town when it happened, so I first heard it from a newspaper > article (and wasn't caught up in fighting it or I'd have laughed a lot > less, of course); and it seemed to me hilarious when I read that Robert > was behind it. He had interned with 1127 for a few summers while I was > there, so I knew him as very bright but often a bit careless about > details; that seemed an exact match for the worm. That was the trouble; had he bothered to test it on a private network (as if a true professional would even consider carrying out such an act)[*] he would've noticed that his probability calculations were arse-backwards, and so spread much faster than it "should" have. > My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy old habit > (common in those days not just in my code but in that of many others) of > ignoring possible buffer overflows. I find it mind-boggling that people > still make that mistake; it has been literal decades since the lesson > was rubbed in our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed > that programming education seems not to care enough about this sort of > thing, even today. Yep. Don't use fixed-length buffers unless you *know* that it will not overflow (i.e. the data is under your control), and don't trust user input (especially if the reader is an interpreter with the possibility of spawning a shell); there are of course others. This is what you get when people call themselves programmers because they once took a course in programming or read a book; that's like calling oneself a doctor because you took a first-aid course... One of my favourite examples is "Barbie the Computer Engineer" (grep the net for it, but warning: the title contains a naughty word). Oh, OK; here's a sanitised URL: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/11/barbie-fks-it-up-again/ Yes, that really is the URL; I've just tested it (but contents may offend some viewers; you have been warned). [*] And for those who slagged me off for calling him an idiot, try this quick quiz: on a scale from utter moron to sheer genius, what do you call someone who deliberately releases untested software designed to compromise machines that are not under his administrative control in order to make some sort of a point? I don't know about other countries, but try that in Australia and you'd be seriously out of pocket and/or doing porridge. -- Dave (BSc, majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics) From bakul at bitblocks.com Wed Nov 13 08:10:46 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 14:10:46 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500." <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500 Norman Wilson wrote: > > My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy > old habit (common in those days not just in my code but in > that of many others) of ignoring possible buffer overflows. > I find it mind-boggling that people still make that mistake; > it has been literal decades since the lesson was rubbed in > our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed > that programming education seems not to care enough about > this sort of thing, even today. Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Nov 13 08:14:18 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 14:14:18 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:10:46PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: > On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500 Norman Wilson wrote: > > > > My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy > > old habit (common in those days not just in my code but in > > that of many others) of ignoring possible buffer overflows. > > I find it mind-boggling that people still make that mistake; > > it has been literal decades since the lesson was rubbed in > > our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed > > that programming education seems not to care enough about > > this sort of thing, even today. > > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly > functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at > n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? Someone needs to do Strcpy() etc that have the length in the first bytes[s] of the string. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From norman at oclsc.org Wed Nov 13 08:24:10 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:24:10 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm Message-ID: <1573597454.7239.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Dave Horsfall: And for those who slagged me off for calling him an idiot, try this quick quiz: on a scale from utter moron to sheer genius, what do you call someone who deliberately releases untested software designed to compromise machines that are not under his administrative control in order to make some sort of a point? ===== I'd call that careless and irresponsible. Calling it stupid or idiotic is, well, a stupid, idiotic simplification that succeeds in being nasty without showing any understanding of the real problem. Carelessness and irresponsibility are characteristic of people in their late teens and early 20s, i.e. Robert's age at the time. Many of us are overly impressed with our own brilliance at that age, and even when we take some care (as I think Robert did) we don't always take enough (as he certainly didn't). Anyone who claims not to have been at least a bit irresponsible and careless when young is, in my opinion, not being honest. Some of my former colleagues at Bell Labs weren't always as careful and responsible as they should be, even to the point of causing harm to others. But to their credit, when they screwed up that way they owned up to having done so, tried to make amends, and tried to do better in future, just as Robert did. It was just Robert's bad luck that he screwed up in such a public way and did harm to so many people. I save my scorn for those who are long past that age and still behave irresponsibly and harmfully, like certain high politicians and certain high-tech executives. Probably future discussion of this should move to COFF unless it relates directly to the culture and doings in 1127 or other historic UNIX places. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From norman at oclsc.org Wed Nov 13 08:39:15 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:39:15 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm Message-ID: <1573598358.7551.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Bakul Shah: Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? ==== If you mean `can C be made proof against careless programmers,' no. You could try but the result wouldn't be C. And Flon's Dictum applies anyway, as always. It's perfectly possible to program in C without overflowing fixed buffers, just as it's perfectly possible to program in C without dereferencing a NULL or garbage pointer. I don't claim to be perfect, but before the rtm worm rubbed my nose in such problems, I was often sloppy about them, and afterward I was very much aware of them and paid attention. That's all I ask: we need to pay attention. It's not about tools, it's about brains and craftmanship and caring more about quality than about feature count or shiny surfaces or pushing the product out the door. Which is a good bit of what was attractive about UNIX in the first place--that both its ideas and its implementation were straightforward and comprehensible and made with some care. (Never mind that it wasn't perfect either.) Too bad software in general and UNIX descendants in particular seem to have left all that behind. Norman Wilson Toronto ON PS: if you find this depressing, cheer yourself up by watching the LCM video showing off UNICS on the PDP-7. I just did, and it did. From fuz at fuz.su Wed Nov 13 08:41:51 2019 From: fuz at fuz.su (Robert Clausecker) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:41:51 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> Oh please no. One of the things we've hopefully all learned from Pascal is that length-prefixed strings suck because you can't perform anything useful without copying the entire string. Rob Pike and friends showed how to get strings and vectors right in the Go language where you have a builtin slice type which is essentially a structure struct slice(type) { type *data; size_t len, cap; }; where data points to a buffer, len is the length of meaningful data in that buffer and cap is the total buffer size. This allows the language to take subslices and to append to existing slices without requiring copies in most cases. If a copy is necessary, the runtime can allocate a slightly larger buffer in advance to allow for appending in amortised linear time. Overall, much more versatile than Pascal strings. But let's get back to the topic, after all I promised not to flame as much as Jörg did. Yours, Robert Clausecker On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:14:18PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:10:46PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: > > On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500 Norman Wilson wrote: > > > > > > My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy > > > old habit (common in those days not just in my code but in > > > that of many others) of ignoring possible buffer overflows. > > > I find it mind-boggling that people still make that mistake; > > > it has been literal decades since the lesson was rubbed in > > > our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed > > > that programming education seems not to care enough about > > > this sort of thing, even today. > > > > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly > > functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at > > n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? > > Someone needs to do Strcpy() etc that have the length in the > first bytes[s] of the string. > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm -- () ascii ribbon campaign - for an 8-bit clean world /\ - against html email - against proprietary attachments From krewat at kilonet.net Wed Nov 13 08:49:46 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:49:46 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> Message-ID: <5d8d9933-1213-3f07-02e0-f3ad5c293de4@kilonet.net> On 11/12/2019 5:41 PM, Robert Clausecker wrote: > Oh please no. One of the things we've hopefully all learned from Pascal > is that length-prefixed strings suck because you can't perform anything > useful without copying the entire string. Rob Pike and friends showed > how to get strings and vectors right in the Go language where you have a > builtin slice type which is essentially a structure > > struct slice(type) { > type *data; > size_t len, cap; > }; And none of that stops some programmer from doing slice.cap=255 - or is it read-only? ;) From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 13 08:54:35 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 09:54:35 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, Bakul Shah wrote: > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly functions are > still present in the C standard (I am looking at n2434.pdf, draft of > Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? No; POSIX requires all sorts of broken functions be present, otherwise it is not compliant; heck, last I looked it even requires gets(). And let's not even mention pointers... We are our own worst enemy.[*] All is not lost, though; use strncpy() instead of strcpy() etc. These days my first choice is Perl, despite it being bloated (I only use C if it's trivial or I need the speed). I must look at Ruby, though... [*] Of if you were a Pogo fan, "We have met the enemy, and he is us". -- Dave From imp at bsdimp.com Wed Nov 13 09:22:44 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 16:22:44 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 3:54 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, Bakul Shah wrote: > > > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly functions are > > still present in the C standard (I am looking at n2434.pdf, draft of > > Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? > > No; POSIX requires all sorts of broken functions be present, otherwise it > is not compliant; heck, last I looked it even requires gets(). And let's > not even mention pointers... We are our own worst enemy.[*] > POSIX can't even recognize that leap seconds exist :( > All is not lost, though; use strncpy() instead of strcpy() etc. These > days my first choice is Perl, despite it being bloated (I only use C if > it's trivial or I need the speed). I must look at Ruby, though... > strncpy has two issues. First, it doesn't guarantee NUL termination. Second, it always writes N bytes. It's for a fixed width data field, not a variable length string whose buffer size is known. strlcpy is much better, but still has some issues... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From krewat at kilonet.net Wed Nov 13 09:27:02 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:27:02 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <924b516f-6c52-fcce-f004-5f4faaf445c7@kilonet.net> On 11/12/2019 6:22 PM, Warner Losh wrote: > strncpy has two issues. First, it doesn't guarantee NUL termination. > Second, it always writes N bytes. It's for a fixed width data field, > not a variable length string whose buffer size is known. strlcpy is > much better, but still has some issues... Maybe he meant strcpy_s() From jon at fourwinds.com Wed Nov 13 09:45:23 2019 From: jon at fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:45:23 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> Message-ID: <201911122345.xACNjOhg571685@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Robert Clausecker writes: > Oh please no. One of the things we've hopefully all learned from Pascal > is that length-prefixed strings suck because you can't perform anything > useful without copying the entire string. Rob Pike and friends showed > how to get strings and vectors right in the Go language where you have a > builtin slice type which is essentially a structure > > struct slice(type) { > type *data; > size_t len, cap; > }; > > where data points to a buffer, len is the length of meaningful data in > that buffer and cap is the total buffer size. This allows the language > to take subslices and to append to existing slices without requiring > copies in most cases. If a copy is necessary, the runtime can allocate > a slightly larger buffer in advance to allow for appending in amortised > linear time. > > Overall, much more versatile than Pascal strings. > > But let's get back to the topic, after all I promised not to flame as > much as J�rg did. > > Yours, > Robert Clausecker > > On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:14:18PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 02:10:46PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: > > > On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 15:56:15 -0500 Norman Wilson wrote: > > > > > > > > My longer-term reaction was to completely drop my sloppy > > > > old habit (common in those days not just in my code but in > > > > that of many others) of ignoring possible buffer overflows. > > > > I find it mind-boggling that people still make that mistake; > > > > it has been literal decades since the lesson was rubbed in > > > > our community's collective noses. I am very disappointed > > > > that programming education seems not to care enough about > > > > this sort of thing, even today. > > > > > > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly > > > functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at > > > n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? > > > > Someone needs to do Strcpy() etc that have the length in the > > first bytes[s] of the string. > > -- > > --- > > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm OK, been biting my tongue here. I, for one, appreciate the fact that it's still legal to purchase and use power tools. I like being able to use my chainsaw to cut up a tree without having to measure it first. And I don't have a variety of tree here that contains its length at the base. Sure, things can go wrong; I have a scar on one leg to prove it. But that just shows that I need to be more careful, not that I need to try logging with a safety razor. C strings were great at the time, and are still great, especially in very small systems. Go may be nicer in larger systems but I probably wouldn't want the overhead in a small embedded system. The length at the start of a string has its issues too; do you want to consume 8 bytes at the start of each string on a 64-bit machine, or have strings that can support different lengths and have to deal with converting between them? Programming isn't a good place for careless people. I recognize that what passes for "software technology" these days is coming up with mechanisms that minimize the damage that can be done by unskilled people. But it's never gonna work. Sure, you can replace pointer problems with reference problems and so on, but that doesn't really solve anything. So let's not rehash our favorite arguments about strings until Warren shuts down the discussion. Use that energy to get out there and teach people to be better and more careful programmers. Jon From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Nov 13 10:24:35 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 16:24:35 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> Message-ID: <20191113002435.GK16268@mcvoy.com> On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 11:41:51PM +0100, Robert Clausecker wrote: > Oh please no. One of the things we've hopefully all learned from Pascal > is that length-prefixed strings suck because you can't perform anything > useful without copying the entire string. Rob Pike and friends showed > how to get strings and vectors right in the Go language where you have a > builtin slice type which is essentially a structure > > struct slice(type) { > type *data; > size_t len, cap; > }; > > where data points to a buffer, len is the length of meaningful data in > that buffer and cap is the total buffer size. We did something similar in BitKeeper but we added a spicy little twist. We encoded len and cap in one word by making cap increase in powers of 2 only (which means you need log(n) bits for cap). So it was a data structure that scaled both up and down. We used it everywhere in BitKeeper, it was super handy. http://repos.bkbits.net/bk/dev/src/libc/utils/lines.c?PAGE=anno&REV=56cf7e34BTkDFx47E54DPNG51B2uCA From wkt at tuhs.org Wed Nov 13 10:38:00 2019 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:38:00 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <201911122345.xACNjOhg571685@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> <201911122345.xACNjOhg571685@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: <20191113003800.GA10747@minnie.tuhs.org> On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 03:45:23PM -0800, Jon Steinhart wrote: > So let's not rehash our favorite arguments about strings until Warren > shuts down the discussion. Use that energy to get out there and teach > people to be better and more careful programmers. I agree on both points, and it's a good time to ask for discussion on strings and worms to be moved over to the COFF list! Thanks, Warren From krewat at kilonet.net Wed Nov 13 11:09:51 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:09:51 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <201911122345.xACNjOhg571685@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191112221418.GJ16268@mcvoy.com> <20191112224151.GA36336@fuz.su> <201911122345.xACNjOhg571685@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: <51f003be-16b9-fa02-75d4-cb156b52128c@kilonet.net> On 11/12/2019 6:45 PM, Jon Steinhart wrote: > Use that energy to get out there and teach > people to be better and more careful programmers. If I was religious, you'd get an "Amen, brother!". But since I'm not, a simple "exactly" will suffice ;) ak From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 11:43:30 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:43:30 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <1573598358.7551.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1573598358.7551.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: Lorinda Cherry told me that that RTM (senior) used to test people's programs by feeding them to themselves as input, a.out < a.out. It helped cure people of the assumption that a program would only see "reasonable" inputs. On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 5:40 PM Norman Wilson wrote: > Bakul Shah: > > Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly > functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at > n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable? > > ==== > > If you mean `can C be made proof against careless programmers,' > no. You could try but the result wouldn't be C. And Flon's > Dictum applies anyway, as always. > > It's perfectly possible to program in C without overflowing > fixed buffers, just as it's perfectly possible to program in > C without dereferencing a NULL or garbage pointer. I don't > claim to be perfect, but before the rtm worm rubbed my nose > in such problems, I was often sloppy about them, and afterward > I was very much aware of them and paid attention. > > That's all I ask: we need to pay attention. It's not about > tools, it's about brains and craftmanship and caring more > about quality than about feature count or shiny surfaces > or pushing the product out the door. > > Which is a good bit of what was attractive about UNIX in > the first place--that both its ideas and its implementation > were straightforward and comprehensible and made with some > care. (Never mind that it wasn't perfect either.) > > Too bad software in general and UNIX descendants in particular > seem to have left all that behind. > > Norman Wilson > Toronto ON > > PS: if you find this depressing, cheer yourself up by watching > the LCM video showing off UNICS on the PDP-7. I just did, and > it did. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Nov 13 17:35:26 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:35:26 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> Norman Wilson wrote: > I am very disappointed that programming education seems not to care > enough about this sort of thing, even today. I think this is the key. Universities focus (too much?) on the theory and not enough on the practice, and "learn how to program" courses and books focus on the mechanics (syntax, semantics) and not enough (or at all) on the practicum of writing code well. We continue to rely on the school of hard knocks, and we continue to pay for this reliance. I also think there's a sliding scale. The fancier or higher-end the university, the more the focus on theory, and vice versa. Sigh. Arnold From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Nov 13 17:38:40 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:38:40 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <201911121515.xACFFf0V095921@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> References: <201911121515.xACFFf0V095921@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: <201911130738.xAD7ceUS014587@freefriends.org> Thanks Doug! So Unix m6 was a port of the Fortran version, it sounds like. Q1. When and why was it dropped from Unix? When and why did m4 enter the picture? Q2. What's the history of Fortran on Unix? Clearly there was a lot of Fortran going on in 1127 (cf. BWK's book, ratfor, software tools ...) Who wrote the first Unix fortran compiler? Much thanks, Arnold Doug McIlroy wrote: > > M6 originated as a porting tool for the Fortran source code > for Stan Brown's Altran language for algebraic computation. M6 > itself was originally written in highly portable Fortran. > > Arnold asked, "How widespread was the use of macro processors > in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and > PL/1 had a macro language, but I don't know of any other > contemporary languages that had them." > > Understanding "contemporary" to mean pre-C, I agree. Cpp, > a particularly trivial macroprocessor, has been heavily used > ever since--even for other languages, e.g. Haskell. > > The rumor that Bob Morris invented macros is off the > mark. Macros were in regular use by the time he joined Bell > Labs. He did conceive an interesting "form-letter generator", > called "form", and an accompanying editor "fed". A sort of > cross between macros and Vannevar Bush's hypothetical memex > repository, these were among the earliest Unix programs and > appeared in the manual from v1 through v6. > > Off-topic warning: pre-Unix stories follow. > > Contrary to an assertion on cat-v.org, I did not invent macros > either. In 1959 Doug Eastwood and I, at the suggestion of > George Mealy, created the macro facility for SAP (SHARE assmbly > program) for the IBM 704. However, the idea was in the air at > the time. In particular, we knew that GE already had macros, > though we knew no details about their syntax or semantics. > > There were various attempts in the 1960s to build languages by > macro extension. The approach turned out to entail considerable > social cost: communication barriers arise when everyone > can easily create his own dialect. A case in point: I once > had a bright young mathematician summer employee who wrote > wonderfully concise code by heaping up macro definitions. The > result was inscrutable. > > Macros caught on in a big way in the ESS labs at Indian Hill. > With a macro-defined switching language, code builds were > slow. One manager there boasted that his lab made more > thoroughgoing use of computers than other departments and > cited enormous consumption of machine time as evidence. > > Steve Johnson recalls corrrectly that there was a set of macros > that turned the assembler into a Lisp compiler. I wrote it > and used it for a theorem-proving project spurred by Martin > Davis. (The project was blown away when Robinson published > the resolution princple.) The compiler did some cute local > optimization, taking account of facts such as Bob Morris's > astute observation that the 704 instruction TNZ (transfer on > nonzero) sets the accumulator to zero. > > Doug From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Wed Nov 13 19:16:16 2019 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:16:16 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> Message-ID: <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> 'T'was before my time, but the legend has it that the original BLISS-10 bootstrap compiler was a set of TECO macros that Chuck Geschke (Adobe's founder) wrote.' Really? TECO = Tape Editor and Corrector From davida at pobox.com Wed Nov 13 20:55:06 2019 From: davida at pobox.com (David Arnold) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 21:55:06 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <201911130738.xAD7ceUS014587@freefriends.org> References: <201911121515.xACFFf0V095921@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <201911130738.xAD7ceUS014587@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <906345E8-A336-4E32-92FE-289FC3087998@pobox.com> I found some related notes in the history of (GNU) M4: https://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/m4-1.4.17/html_node/History.html I’ve no idea how accurate they are. d > On 13 Nov 2019, at 18:38, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > Thanks Doug! > > So Unix m6 was a port of the Fortran version, it sounds like. > > Q1. When and why was it dropped from Unix? When and why did m4 > enter the picture? > > Q2. What's the history of Fortran on Unix? Clearly there was a > lot of Fortran going on in 1127 (cf. BWK's book, ratfor, > software tools ...) Who wrote the first Unix fortran compiler? > > Much thanks, > > Arnold > > Doug McIlroy wrote: > >> >> M6 originated as a porting tool for the Fortran source code >> for Stan Brown's Altran language for algebraic computation. M6 >> itself was originally written in highly portable Fortran. >> >> Arnold asked, "How widespread was the use of macro processors >> in high level languages? They were big for assembler, and >> PL/1 had a macro language, but I don't know of any other >> contemporary languages that had them." >> >> Understanding "contemporary" to mean pre-C, I agree. Cpp, >> a particularly trivial macroprocessor, has been heavily used >> ever since--even for other languages, e.g. Haskell. >> >> The rumor that Bob Morris invented macros is off the >> mark. Macros were in regular use by the time he joined Bell >> Labs. He did conceive an interesting "form-letter generator", >> called "form", and an accompanying editor "fed". A sort of >> cross between macros and Vannevar Bush's hypothetical memex >> repository, these were among the earliest Unix programs and >> appeared in the manual from v1 through v6. >> >> Off-topic warning: pre-Unix stories follow. >> >> Contrary to an assertion on cat-v.org, I did not invent macros >> either. In 1959 Doug Eastwood and I, at the suggestion of >> George Mealy, created the macro facility for SAP (SHARE assmbly >> program) for the IBM 704. However, the idea was in the air at >> the time. In particular, we knew that GE already had macros, >> though we knew no details about their syntax or semantics. >> >> There were various attempts in the 1960s to build languages by >> macro extension. The approach turned out to entail considerable >> social cost: communication barriers arise when everyone >> can easily create his own dialect. A case in point: I once >> had a bright young mathematician summer employee who wrote >> wonderfully concise code by heaping up macro definitions. The >> result was inscrutable. >> >> Macros caught on in a big way in the ESS labs at Indian Hill. >> With a macro-defined switching language, code builds were >> slow. One manager there boasted that his lab made more >> thoroughgoing use of computers than other departments and >> cited enormous consumption of machine time as evidence. >> >> Steve Johnson recalls corrrectly that there was a set of macros >> that turned the assembler into a Lisp compiler. I wrote it >> and used it for a theorem-proving project spurred by Martin >> Davis. (The project was blown away when Robinson published >> the resolution princple.) The compiler did some cute local >> optimization, taking account of facts such as Bob Morris's >> astute observation that the 704 instruction TNZ (transfer on >> nonzero) sets the accumulator to zero. >> >> Doug -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lars at nocrew.org Wed Nov 13 22:20:38 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:20:38 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> (Thomas Paulsen's message of "Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:16:16 +0100") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> Message-ID: <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Thomas Paulsen wrote: > 'T'was before my time, but the legend has it that the original BLISS-10 > bootstrap compiler was a set of TECO macros that Chuck Geschke (Adobe's > founder) wrote.' > > Really? TECO = Tape Editor and Corrector Why not? TECO is both an editor and a programming language. The first Emacs was written in TECO. From mike.ab3ap at gmail.com Wed Nov 13 22:50:05 2019 From: mike.ab3ap at gmail.com (Mike Markowski) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 07:50:05 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 7:21 AM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > Thomas Paulsen wrote: > > 'T'was before my time, but the legend has it that the original BLISS-10 > > bootstrap compiler was a set of TECO macros that Chuck Geschke (Adobe's > > founder) wrote.' > > > > Really? TECO = Tape Editor and Corrector > > Why not? TECO is both an editor and a programming language. The first > Emacs was written in TECO. > Pi calculated with teco: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/HaPi_TECO_macro.html This impresses me, partly because it looks like someone fell asleep on a keyboard. Running it just now: qsb$ tecoc mung pi.tec,30 314159265358979323846264338327 Mike Markowski -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lars at nocrew.org Wed Nov 13 23:02:40 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 13:02:40 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Mike Markowski's message of "Wed, 13 Nov 2019 07:50:05 -0500") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <7w4kz8kjyn.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Mike Markowski wrote: > Pi calculated with teco: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/HaPi_TECO_macro.html > This impresses me, partly because it looks like someone fell asleep on a > keyboard. As does this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13519471 Perhaps COFF is more appropriate for TECO discussions. From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu Wed Nov 13 23:47:54 2019 From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 08:47:54 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm Message-ID: <201911131347.xADDlsDE051995@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Most of this post is off topic; the conclusion is not. On the afternoon of Martin Luther King Day, 1990, AT&T's backbone network slowed to a crawl. The cause: a patch intended to save time when a switch that had taken itself off line (a rare, but routine and almost imperceptible event) rejoined the network. The patch was flawed; a lock should have been taken one instruction sooner. Bell Labs had tested the daylights out of the patch by subjecting a real switch in the lab to tortuously heavy, but necessarily artificial loads. It may also have been tested on a switch in the wild before the patch was deployed throughout the network, but that would not have helped. The trouble was that a certain sequence of events happening within milliseconds on calls both ways between two heavily loaded switches could evoke a ping-pong of the switches leaving and rejoining the network. The phenomenon was contagious because of the enhanced odds of a third switch experiencing the bad sequence with a switch that was repeatedly taking itself off line. The basic problem (and a fortiori the contagion) had not been seen in the lab because the lab had only one of the multimillion-dollar switches to play with. The meltdown was embarrassing, to say the least. Yet nobody ever accused AT&T of idiocy for not first testing on a private network this feature that was inadvertently "designed to compromise" switches. Doug From paul.winalski at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 02:56:05 2019 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 11:56:05 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On 11/13/19, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > Why not? TECO is both an editor and a programming language. The first > Emacs was written in TECO. > Which is how it got its name, of course. Emacs = "Editor MACroS". -Paul W. From jon at fourwinds.com Thu Nov 14 04:02:36 2019 From: jon at fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:02:36 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm [ really programming education ] In-Reply-To: <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> arnold at skeeve.com writes: > Norman Wilson wrote: > > > I am very disappointed that programming education seems not to care > > enough about this sort of thing, even today. > > I think this is the key. Universities focus (too much?) on the theory > and not enough on the practice, and "learn how to program" courses > and books focus on the mechanics (syntax, semantics) and not enough > (or at all) on the practicum of writing code well. > > We continue to rely on the school of hard knocks, and we continue > to pay for this reliance. > > I also think there's a sliding scale. The fancier or higher-end > the university, the more the focus on theory, and vice versa. Sigh. > > Arnold OK, this is a bit of a tangential topic for this list. But, what's the point of obsessing on UNIX history unless it's coupled with some effort to communicate the philosophy to a new generation of programmers? This has been a real concern of mine for a while. As a friend of mine put it, processors are getting so cheap that pretty soon we won't be able to purchase pencils that don't contain them. This puts us all at the mercy of not-great programmers. And of course, it's not just pencils, it's stuff like airplanes too. In my opinion, the root of the problem is that programming today is being taught in the abstract - as if programs don't run on computers. Programming today is taught as if it consists of importing libraries and gluing function calls together. I recently visited my daughter's college and attended a number of CS related presentations. Was surprised that CS is taught in Java with some advanced work in Python. One can almost get a CS degree there without ever using a compiler much less learning how computers function. Too be fair, other schools such as Dartmouth where Doug hangs out have a better curriculum. At the K-12 level, the stage is set by combination of the "everybody must learn to code" curriculum with "no child left behind". School administrators dispense with any critical thinking about the value of the curriculum in order to chase grant dollars. I used to be able to get into my local schools to volunteer-teach programming. But, the learn to code curriculum has eclipsed that; schools are led to believe that they're teaching the right stuff (because Bill Gates says so) and aren't interested in anything else. I recently turned my course notes into a book as an attempt to make some small difference. Too soon to tell if it will. Anyway, my question for you all is, how do we as seasoned practitioners leverage our experience to contribute to the state of the art? Any of you found a way to pass on your knowledge? BTW, I'm doing my first messing around with the Linux kernel these days; if anyone knows the guts of the generic filesystem code I could use a bit of help. Here's something that I came across on the way in : enum { MS_RDONLY = 1, /* Mount read-only. */ #define MS_RDONLY MS_RDONLY MS_NOSUID = 2, /* Ignore suid and sgid bits. */ #define MS_NOSUID MS_NOSUID MS_NODEV = 4, /* Disallow access to device special files. */ #define MS_NODEV MS_NODEV ... }; Can anyone explain the value of this programming style? Is this just an example of the result of how programming is taught today? Be happy discuss this off-list. Jon From coppero1237 at gmail.com Thu Nov 14 04:49:23 2019 From: coppero1237 at gmail.com (Tyler Adams) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 20:49:23 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm [ really programming education ] In-Reply-To: <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: > > OK, this is a bit of a tangential topic for this list. But, what's the > point of obsessing on UNIX history unless it's coupled with some effort > to communicate the philosophy to a new generation of programmers? > 100 times this. A few hypotheses for why colleges teaching "theoretical programming" (i.e. Computer Science). - Universities, especially at the undergraduate level, have a mission to teach students how to think, not how to do. This leads to more theory and less practice. - Universities are top down institutions with lecturers. Theory is easier to teach in a top down institution than practical advice. - Software engineering is evolving so quickly, it would be hard to put together a software engineering program which had economic value. CMU has a MS in Software Engineering, but their cirriculum is vague so it's hard to tell what they do. If anybody here has taken it I'd love to hear what you thought of it. - A lot of good work needs to be done that doesn't require breaking the JVM, python, or JS abstraction layer. Cycles are cheap. Memory is cheap. And not all programs have latency or uptime requirements. UNIX culture of course was lightyears ahead of knowing this and economized for the most expensive resource of all: developer time. To bring this back to TUHS, how did (and do) UNIX developers teach the UNIX way? As someone younger than Linux, I was only lucky enough to read The Art Of Unix Programming by ESR and read Kernighan's books. Tyler On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 8:03 PM Jon Steinhart wrote: > arnold at skeeve.com writes: > > Norman Wilson wrote: > > > > > I am very disappointed that programming education seems not to care > > > enough about this sort of thing, even today. > > > > I think this is the key. Universities focus (too much?) on the theory > > and not enough on the practice, and "learn how to program" courses > > and books focus on the mechanics (syntax, semantics) and not enough > > (or at all) on the practicum of writing code well. > > > > We continue to rely on the school of hard knocks, and we continue > > to pay for this reliance. > > > > I also think there's a sliding scale. The fancier or higher-end > > the university, the more the focus on theory, and vice versa. Sigh. > > > > Arnold > > OK, this is a bit of a tangential topic for this list. But, what's the > point of obsessing on UNIX history unless it's coupled with some effort > to communicate the philosophy to a new generation of programmers? > > This has been a real concern of mine for a while. As a friend of mine > put it, processors are getting so cheap that pretty soon we won't be > able to purchase pencils that don't contain them. This puts us all > at the mercy of not-great programmers. And of course, it's not just > pencils, it's stuff like airplanes too. > > In my opinion, the root of the problem is that programming today is > being taught in the abstract - as if programs don't run on computers. > Programming today is taught as if it consists of importing libraries > and gluing function calls together. > > I recently visited my daughter's college and attended a number of CS > related presentations. Was surprised that CS is taught in Java with > some advanced work in Python. One can almost get a CS degree there > without ever using a compiler much less learning how computers function. > Too be fair, other schools such as Dartmouth where Doug hangs out have > a better curriculum. > > At the K-12 level, the stage is set by combination of the "everybody > must learn to code" curriculum with "no child left behind". School > administrators dispense with any critical thinking about the value of > the curriculum in order to chase grant dollars. > > I used to be able to get into my local schools to volunteer-teach > programming. But, the learn to code curriculum has eclipsed that; > schools are led to believe that they're teaching the right stuff > (because Bill Gates says so) and aren't interested in anything else. > > I recently turned my course notes into a book as an attempt to make > some small difference. Too soon to tell if it will. > > Anyway, my question for you all is, how do we as seasoned practitioners > leverage our experience to contribute to the state of the art? Any of > you found a way to pass on your knowledge? > > BTW, I'm doing my first messing around with the Linux kernel these days; > if anyone knows the guts of the generic filesystem code I could use a bit > of help. Here's something that I came across on the way in : > > enum > { > MS_RDONLY = 1, /* Mount read-only. */ > #define MS_RDONLY MS_RDONLY > MS_NOSUID = 2, /* Ignore suid and sgid bits. */ > #define MS_NOSUID MS_NOSUID > MS_NODEV = 4, /* Disallow access to device special > files. */ > #define MS_NODEV MS_NODEV > ... > }; > > Can anyone explain the value of this programming style? Is this just an > example of the result of how programming is taught today? > > Be happy discuss this off-list. > > Jon > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron at ronnatalie.com Thu Nov 14 05:15:14 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (ron at ronnatalie.com) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 14:15:14 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] #defines and enums In-Reply-To: <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: <055e389cb6a223888c86228963327efc.squirrel@squirrelmail.tuffmail.net> > > BTW, I'm doing my first messing around with the Linux kernel these days; > if anyone knows the guts of the generic filesystem code I could use a bit > of help. Here's something that I came across on the way in : > > enum > { > MS_RDONLY = 1, /* Mount read-only. */ > #define MS_RDONLY MS_RDONLY > MS_NOSUID = 2, /* Ignore suid and sgid bits. */ > #define MS_NOSUID MS_NOSUID > MS_NODEV = 4, /* Disallow access to device special files. */ > #define MS_NODEV MS_NODEV > ... > }; > > Can anyone explain the value of this programming style? Is this just an > example of the result of how programming is taught today? > > This really is more a C question than a UNIX one. The problem is that the preprocessor macros are really kind of a kludge. Making things either enums (or in later C/C++ const int definitions) is a lot cleaner. The #define is just probably backwards a compatibility kludge (for people using things like MS_RDONLY or whatever in other macros). From lars at nocrew.org Thu Nov 14 05:19:50 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 19:19:50 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Paul Winalski's message of "Wed, 13 Nov 2019 11:56:05 -0500") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <7w4kz7k2i1.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Paul Winalski wrote: >> The first Emacs was written in TECO. > Which is how it got its name, of course. Emacs = "Editor MACroS". So the story goes. But I'm not sure sure. In November 1976, the name went from ? and ?MACS to E and EMACS. Maybe "editor" was implied, but it doesn't come up in the email conversation. From jon at fourwinds.com Thu Nov 14 05:21:44 2019 From: jon at fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 11:21:44 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <7w4kz7k2i1.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <7w4kz7k2i1.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <201911131921.xADJLirZ765029@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Lars Brinkhoff writes: > Paul Winalski wrote: > >> The first Emacs was written in TECO. > > Which is how it got its name, of course. Emacs = "Editor MACroS". > > So the story goes. But I'm not sure sure. In November 1976, the name > went from ? and ?MACS to E and EMACS. Maybe "editor" was implied, but > it doesn't come up in the email conversation. For what it's worth, I have some vague memory of attending a lunchtime presentation at BTL in maybe the summer of 72 or 73 on EMACS as TECO editor macros. Jon From imp at bsdimp.com Thu Nov 14 07:11:19 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 14:11:19 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] #defines and enums In-Reply-To: <055e389cb6a223888c86228963327efc.squirrel@squirrelmail.tuffmail.net> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <055e389cb6a223888c86228963327efc.squirrel@squirrelmail.tuffmail.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 12:15 PM wrote: > > > > > BTW, I'm doing my first messing around with the Linux kernel these days; > > if anyone knows the guts of the generic filesystem code I could use a bit > > of help. Here's something that I came across on the way in > : > > > > enum > > { > > MS_RDONLY = 1, /* Mount read-only. */ > > #define MS_RDONLY MS_RDONLY > > MS_NOSUID = 2, /* Ignore suid and sgid bits. */ > > #define MS_NOSUID MS_NOSUID > > MS_NODEV = 4, /* Disallow access to device > special files. */ > > #define MS_NODEV MS_NODEV > > ... > > }; > > > > Can anyone explain the value of this programming style? Is this just an > > example of the result of how programming is taught today? > > > > > > This really is more a C question than a UNIX one. The problem is that > the preprocessor macros are really kind of a kludge. Making things > either enums (or in later C/C++ const int definitions) is a lot cleaner. > The #define is just probably backwards a compatibility kludge (for people > using things like MS_RDONLY or whatever in other macros). > It lets the users of these interfaces conditionally use them as ifdef. A pure enum interface doesn't let you do that. This makes it harder to write portable code that is driven directly by what is defined. While it seems purer to use enum, it is problematic. C++ doesn't let you use it for bit fields due to special rules around enums that aren't there to get in the way in C. Conditional code is important, as are providing enough compat scaffolding when sharing code between many systems, or when different compilers are used. Macro processing accomplishes this rather well, though not without other issues. In an ideal world, you could put other constructs into the language to accomplish these goals... But none that have been good enough to gain any traction at all.... Warner > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Thu Nov 14 07:26:14 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 08:26:14 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> Message-ID: On Wed, 13 Nov 2019, Thomas Paulsen wrote: > Really? TECO = Tape Editor and Corrector Text Editor and Corrector, back when I had to learn it for a contract assignment. -- Dave From chet.ramey at case.edu Thu Nov 14 07:22:04 2019 From: chet.ramey at case.edu (Chet Ramey) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 16:22:04 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm [ really programming education ] In-Reply-To: <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: On 11/13/19 1:02 PM, Jon Steinhart wrote: > At the K-12 level, the stage is set by combination of the "everybody > must learn to code" curriculum with "no child left behind". School > administrators dispense with any critical thinking about the value of > the curriculum in order to chase grant dollars. In my experience as a school board member, it's not grant dollars so much as the amount of control the state exerts over the curriculum. The state dictates the material and content that is taught. For AP classes, like AP computer science, the College Board creates the courses and decides what material is included. And in most cases, especially AP classes and core classes where there are end-of-course proficiency requirements, the material on those standardized tests dictates how the course is taught. This is off-topic at this point. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet at case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/ From jaapna at xs4all.nl Thu Nov 14 08:53:02 2019 From: jaapna at xs4all.nl (Jaap Akkerhuis) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 23:53:02 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> Message-ID: > On Nov 13, 2019, at 10:16, Thomas Paulsen wrote: > > 'T'was before my time, but the legend has it that the original BLISS-10 > bootstrap compiler was a set of TECO macros that Chuck Geschke (Adobe's > founder) wrote.' > Really? TECO = Tape Editor and Corrector Yes, and the TAPE in the mnemonic is paper tape. In an former live we once had a text formatter running on OS/8 (pdp-8) written in TECO. jaap From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 14 11:35:21 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 17:35:21 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] #defines and enums Message-ID: <20191114013521.GB10732@mcvoy.com> FYI. ----- Forwarded message from Linus Torvalds ----- Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:37:50 -0800 From: Linus Torvalds To: Larry McVoy Subject: Re: enum style? On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 10:28 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > > and asked what was the point of the #defines. I couldn't answer, the only > thing I can think of is so you can say > > int flags = MS_RDONLY; > > Which is cool, but why bother with the enum? For the kernel we actually have this special "type-safe enum" checker thing, which warns about assigning one enum type to another. It's not really C, but it's close. It's the same tool we use for some other kernel-specific type checking (user pointers vs kernel pointers etc): 'sparse'. http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/sparse.1.html and in particular the "-Wenum-mismatch" flag to enable that warning when you assign an enum to another enum. It's quite useful for verifying that you pass the right kind of enum to functions etc - which is a really easy mistake to make in C, since they all just devolve into 'int' when they are used. However, we don't use it for the MS_xyz flag: those are just plain #define's in the kernel. But maybe somebody at some point wanted to do something similar for the ones you point at? The only other reason I can think of is that somebody really wanted to use an enum for namespace reasons, and then noticed that other people had used a #define and used "#ifdef XYZ" to check whether it was available, and then instead of changing the enums to #defines, they just added the self-defines. In the kernel we do that "use #define for discoberability" quite a lot particularly with architecture-specific helper functions. So you migth have static inline some_arch_fn(..) ... #define some_arch_fn some_arch_fn in an architecture file, and then in generic code we have #ifndef some_arch_fn static inline some_arch_fn(.,,) /* generic implemenbtation goes here */ #endif as a way to avoid extra configuration variables for the "do I have a special version X?" There's no way to ask "is the C symbol X available in this scope", so using the pre-processor for that is as close as you can get. Linus ----- End forwarded message ----- -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Thu Nov 14 19:26:39 2019 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 10:26:39 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: 'Why not? TECO is both an editor and a programming language. The first Emacs was written in TECO.' Hic Rhodos - Hic Salta! I have a account on a remote twenex PDP10. There is a editor named emacs. This is a very archaic piece of software. It doesn't know any teco commands no matter how I tried. I'm pretty sure that this is teco-emacs. I draw my own conclusions from these observations which are far away from all these myths. From lars at nocrew.org Thu Nov 14 20:53:21 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 10:53:21 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: (Thomas Paulsen's message of "Thu, 14 Nov 2019 10:26:39 +0100") References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <08b6c7ce02adabe45f54621c3cbe9863@firemail.de> <7w8sokklwp.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <7wblteiva6.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> I suggest continuing this on COFF. Thomas Paulsen wrote: > I have a account on a remote twenex PDP10. There is a editor named > emacs. This is a very archaic piece of software. It doesn't know any > teco commands no matter how I tried. I'm pretty sure that this is > teco-emacs. Yes, it should be TECO Emacs. Normal use of Emacs rarely needs TECO commands. To get a TECO minibuffer type Meta-Altmode (Esc Esc). You should get a small window at the top of the terminal in which you can enter TECO commands. Execute them with double altmode as you would in any TECO. > I draw my own conclusions from these observations which are far away > from all these myths. I try to stay with the facts. I actually use TECO Emacs almost daily, and I have built it from sources. Some other information is based on email conversations among those who wrote Emacs. From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu Sat Nov 16 00:31:19 2019 From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 09:31:19 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris worm Message-ID: <201911151431.xAFEVKCO029897@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> > That was the trouble; had he bothered to test it on a private network (as > if a true professional would even consider carrying out such an act)[*] he > would've noticed that his probability calculations were arse-backwards Morris's failure to foresee the results of even slow exponential growth is matched by the failure of the critique above to realize that Morris wouldn't have seen the trouble in a small network test. The worm assured that no more than one copy (and occasionally one clone) would run on a machine at a time. This limits the number of attacks that any one machine experiences at a time to roughly the number of machines in the network. For a small network, this will not be a major load. The worm became a denial-of-service attack only because a huge number of machines were involved. I do not remember whether the worm left tracks to prevent its being run more than once on a machine, though I rather think it did. This would mean that a small network test would not only behave innocuously; it would terminate almost instantly. Doug From imp at bsdimp.com Sat Nov 16 00:39:57 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 07:39:57 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris worm In-Reply-To: <201911151431.xAFEVKCO029897@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> References: <201911151431.xAFEVKCO029897@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:32 AM Doug McIlroy wrote: > > That was the trouble; had he bothered to test it on a private network (as > > if a true professional would even consider carrying out such an act)[*] > he > > would've noticed that his probability calculations were arse-backwards > > Morris's failure to foresee the results of even slow exponential > growth is matched by the failure of the critique above to realize > that Morris wouldn't have seen the trouble in a small network test. > > The worm assured that no more than one copy (and occasionally one clone) > would run on a machine at a time. This limits the number of attacks > that any one machine experiences at a time to roughly the > number of machines in the network. For a small network, this will > not be a major load. > > > The worm became a denial-of-service attack only because a huge > number of machines were involved. > > I do not remember whether the worm left tracks to prevent its > being run more than once on a machine, though I rather think > it did. This would mean that a small network test would not > only behave innocuously; it would terminate almost instantly. > it had code to do that, but IIRC, there were bugs in that code that prevented it being completely effective in some cases... the sorts of cases, though, that a small scale test wouldn't likely catch. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From athornton at gmail.com Sat Nov 16 08:49:29 2019 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 17:49:29 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm [ really programming education ] In-Reply-To: <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 1:03 PM Jon Steinhart wrote: > arnold at skeeve.com writes: > Programming today is taught as if it consists of importing libraries > and gluing function calls together. > To be fair, this is basically what modern software development in enterprise settings is. Thing is, you don’t need a CS degree for that; it’s a completely artificial barrier to entry. You need an apprenticeship. That’s even kind of acknowledged, in that by your third job, no one cares where or if you went to school or what for. Anyway, my question for you all is, how do we as seasoned practitioners > leverage our experience to contribute to the state of the art? Any of > you found a way to pass on your knowledge? > Find someone who’s interested and talk to them? I mean, that’s kinda what this list is, right? The other part: it’s historically been a crap shoot whether the CS department at any given place came out of EE, in which case it was the bottom-up here’s a transistor, and here’s a flip-flop, and, look, logic gates! Adders! Et cetera, or it came out of the math department and is a theory-heavy specialization of some very particular parts of discrete mathematics and combinatorics. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tytso at mit.edu Sat Nov 16 09:59:02 2019 From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:59:02 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday Morris worm [ really programming education ] In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <201911130735.xAD7ZQD6014497@freefriends.org> <201911131802.xADI2fxE752068@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: <20191115235902.GA18146@mit.edu> On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 05:49:29PM -0500, Adam Thornton wrote: > > The other part: it’s historically been a crap shoot whether the CS > department at any given place came out of EE, in which case it was the > bottom-up here’s a transistor, and here’s a flip-flop, and, look, logic > gates! Adders! Et cetera, or it came out of the math department and is a > theory-heavy specialization of some very particular parts of discrete > mathematics and combinatorics. And neither of these necessarily means that a person with CS undergraduate degree will necessarily have a strong OS / Systems background. I remember running out of undergraduate CS classes at MIT, so I started taking the graduate level classes --- and was astounded when a first year graduate student raised their hand and asked, "What's Virtual Memory"? Turns out she came from a highly math-centric program, and it was simply never covered --- which is why the first level intro CS class, even at the graduate level, couldn't make any assumptions about what admitted graduate students might have as their background. On the flip side, I remember talking to someone who had their CS undergraduate program from the UK, and he was astounded that we didn't cover type functions and type theory as part of MIT's undergraduate CS program. (It's covered in a graduate level class, and most undergrads wouldn't have taken it.) So the fundamental issue is there is no real consensus about what must be in a CS undergraduate degree program. It used to be one of my favorite interview questions required that as part of answer, to implement the moral equivalent of itoa(). What floored me was how many interviewees with a 4 year CS degree program under their belt foundered on what was supposed to be the warmup, "just checking to make sure you know how to program" part of the problem. - Ted From woods at robohack.ca Sat Nov 16 12:51:37 2019 From: woods at robohack.ca (Greg A. Woods) Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 18:51:37 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] another conversion of the CSRG BSD SCCS archives to Git Message-ID: I've been fixing and enhancing James Youngman's git-sccsimport to use with some of my SCCS archives, and I thought it might be the ultimate stress test of it to convert the CSRG BSD SCCS archives. The conversion takes about an hour to run on my old-ish Dell server. This conversion is unlike others -- there is some mechanical compression of related deltas into a single Git commit. https://github.com/robohack/ucb-csrg-bsd https://github.com/robohack/git-sccsimport -- Greg A. Woods Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack Planix, Inc. Avoncote Farms -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 195 bytes Desc: OpenPGP Digital Signature URL: From spedraja at gmail.com Sun Nov 17 02:27:47 2019 From: spedraja at gmail.com (SPC) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 17:27:47 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: El mar., 12 nov. 2019 1:31, Clem cole escribió: > Not so fast there my friend. Ratfor was used a great deal. For instance > The PGI compiler folks wrote a parallel optimizing compiler for the FPS-164 > in it. And FPS used it for there OS. Plus Apollo wrote all their original > utilities in it. My first FORTRAN textbook was titled "FORTRAN with WATFOR and WATFIV". It had a long print run as well. Cordiales saludos / Best Regards / Salutations / Freundliche Grüße ----- Sergio Pedraja -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sun Nov 17 15:30:15 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:30:15 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, SPC wrote: > My first FORTRAN textbook was titled "FORTRAN with WATFOR and WATFIV". > It had a long print run as well. Now *that* brings back memories (not necessarily pleasant). WATFOR was as ugly as sin, but WATFIV was much better i.e. it actually knew about stuff such as labelled common etc (I could be wrong here). And I still feel like taking a shower after discussing FORTRAN :-) Then we got ALGOLW, and it was heavenly. PL/360 had a good run too. -- Dave From lm at mcvoy.com Sun Nov 17 15:50:58 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 21:50:58 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> Message-ID: <20191117055058.GB23794@mcvoy.com> On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 04:30:15PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, SPC wrote: > > >My first FORTRAN textbook was titled "FORTRAN with WATFOR and WATFIV". It > >had a long print run as well. > > Now *that* brings back memories (not necessarily pleasant). WATFOR was as > ugly as sin I'm pretty sure that was the Fortran I learned. Yeah, it was not C. But it was math. I spent a bunch of time learning accumulated errors and more time on floating point numbers. My dad was a theoretical physics guy so I did some coding for him. I respected Fortran for what it could do but I developed a hate for floating point. In my mind, floating point numbers meant you couldn't handle the world you were working in. It just felt like you could shift the domain you were working in so integers could work. If you couldn't do that, you were admitting that you were not accurate. From bakul at bitblocks.com Mon Nov 18 04:12:28 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 10:12:28 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 16 Nov 2019 21:50:58 -0800." <20191117055058.GB23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> <20191117055058.GB23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191117181235.AE91A156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 21:50:58 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: Larry McVoy writes: > On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 04:30:15PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, SPC wrote: > > > > >My first FORTRAN textbook was titled "FORTRAN with WATFOR and WATFIV". It > > >had a long print run as well. > > > > Now *that* brings back memories (not necessarily pleasant). WATFOR was as > > ugly as sin > > I'm pretty sure that was the Fortran I learned. Yeah, it was not C. But > it was math. I spent a bunch of time learning accumulated errors and > more time on floating point numbers. My dad was a theoretical physics > guy so I did some coding for him. I respected Fortran for what it could > do but I developed a hate for floating point. In my mind, floating > point numbers meant you couldn't handle the world you were working in. > It just felt like you could shift the domain you were working in so > integers could work. If you couldn't do that, you were admitting that > you were not accurate. Many numbers can't be represented perfectly using integers or rationals (a pair of integers) but can be computed using a series expansion to arbitrary precision. I thought FP numbers were a clever & practical compromise that worked quite well. David Goldberg's "What every computer scientist should know about floating-point" is worth reading. https://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf Earlier I remember reading the "Numerical Recipes" books by Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling & Flannery. IIRC, the original version used Fortran. They also had versions using Pascal and C (I finally bought the C version in '80s though never used it). Note that Scheme & CL have a full complement of numeric types: big nums, rationals, reals and complex numbers. At least some versions of CL have arbitrary precision FP numbers. What I really want is a programming language with support for symbolic manipulation of formulas! From michael at kjorling.se Mon Nov 18 04:23:05 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:23:05 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <20191117181235.AE91A156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> <20191117055058.GB23794@mcvoy.com> <20191117181235.AE91A156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On 17 Nov 2019 10:12 -0800, from bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah): > What I really want is a programming language with support for > symbolic manipulation of formulas! Do you mean something like HAL/S? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL/S#Syntax Though quite frankly, at a glance that multi-line syntax looks somewhat awkward for little benefit over a single-line format, especially if the code is already annotated (as certainly I would expect for in-flight avionics software, never mind aboard a spacecraft). -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” From bakul at bitblocks.com Mon Nov 18 04:56:36 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 10:56:36 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:23:05 +0000." References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> <20191117055058.GB23794@mcvoy.com> <20191117181235.AE91A156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <20191117185643.411FE156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> On Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:23:05 +0000 Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?= wrote: Michael Kjörling writes: > On 17 Nov 2019 10:12 -0800, from bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah): > > What I really want is a programming language with support for > > symbolic manipulation of formulas! > > Do you mean something like HAL/S? > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL/S#Syntax > > Though quite frankly, at a glance that multi-line syntax looks > somewhat awkward for little benefit over a single-line format, > especially if the code is already annotated (as certainly I would > expect for in-flight avionics software, never mind aboard a > spacecraft). Syntax is a separate issue. Something like what Macsyma (or Maxima now) or even LaTeX would be fine. Many word processors and browsers can render the latter properly. Syntax is the easy part (though it can be controversial). The hard part is having to build in a tremendous amount of math knowledge. Even if the compiler/interpreter were to outsource the symbolic algebra manipulation part to maxima, mathematica or some such, smooth integration with other language features would not be easy. From bstanly42 at gmail.com Mon Nov 18 08:46:32 2019 From: bstanly42 at gmail.com (Barry Stanly) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 14:46:32 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] History of m6? In-Reply-To: <20191117181235.AE91A156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <201911112110.xABLAQfW004396@skeeve.com> <20191111223129.GB23273@mit.edu> <20191117055058.GB23794@mcvoy.com> <20191117181235.AE91A156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <624204f4-e484-85c8-f6d6-c29cdfc90a19@gmail.com> Just a note: (I am new to this list and find the history revealed fascinating, so thank you all for insights.) There is an interesting paper on symbolic formula manipulation: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0367/25f0abfd88879dd88d77e3a5e51915db5f1b.pdf There is also a symbolic Python library: https://www.sympy.org/en/index.html On 11/17/2019 10:12 AM, Bakul Shah wrote: > On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 21:50:58 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: > Larry McVoy writes: >> On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 04:30:15PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: >>> On Sat, 16 Nov 2019, SPC wrote: >>> >>>> My first FORTRAN textbook was titled "FORTRAN with WATFOR and WATFIV". It >>>> had a long print run as well. >>> Now *that* brings back memories (not necessarily pleasant). WATFOR was as >>> ugly as sin >> I'm pretty sure that was the Fortran I learned. Yeah, it was not C. But >> it was math. I spent a bunch of time learning accumulated errors and >> more time on floating point numbers. My dad was a theoretical physics >> guy so I did some coding for him. I respected Fortran for what it could >> do but I developed a hate for floating point. In my mind, floating >> point numbers meant you couldn't handle the world you were working in. >> It just felt like you could shift the domain you were working in so >> integers could work. If you couldn't do that, you were admitting that >> you were not accurate. > Many numbers can't be represented perfectly using integers or > rationals (a pair of integers) but can be computed using a > series expansion to arbitrary precision. I thought FP numbers > were a clever & practical compromise that worked quite well. > David Goldberg's "What every computer scientist should know > about floating-point" is worth reading. > > https://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/bachelor/IEEE754_article.pdf > > Earlier I remember reading the "Numerical Recipes" books by > Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling & Flannery. IIRC, the original > version used Fortran. They also had versions using Pascal and > C (I finally bought the C version in '80s though never used it). > > Note that Scheme & CL have a full complement of numeric types: > big nums, rationals, reals and complex numbers. At least some > versions of CL have arbitrary precision FP numbers. > > What I really want is a programming language with support for > symbolic manipulation of formulas! > From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Nov 20 05:01:39 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (Arnold Robbins) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2019 21:01:39 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET Message-ID: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological Setting: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-14a.html The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-17.html Fun reading. Bellovin is another person we should try to get to join this list. Enjoy, Arnold From royce at techsolvency.com Wed Nov 20 07:08:15 2019 From: royce at techsolvency.com (Royce Williams) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2019 12:08:15 -0900 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX v0 on a PDP7 - behind the scenes (Living Computers) Message-ID: I hadn't seen this yet - apologies if it's not news: https://livingcomputers.org/Blog/Restoring-UNIX-v0-on-a-PDP-7-A-look-behind-the-sce.aspx Quoting: "I recently sat down with Fred Yearian, a former Boeing engineer, and Jeff Kaylin, an engineer at Living Computers, to talk about their restoration work on Yerian’s PDP-7 at Living Computers: Museum + Labs." [...] Up until the discovery of Yearian’s machine, LCM+L’s PDP-7 was believed to be the only operational PDP-7 left in the world. Chuckling to himself, Yearian recalls hearing this history presented during his first visit to LCM+L. “I walked in the computer museum, and someone said ‘Oh, this is the only [PDP-7] that’s still working’. And I said, ‘Well actually, I got one in my basement!’” [end quote] Fun story - and worthy work. Nicely done. -- Royce From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 21 13:14:23 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> Message-ID: <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading those, wished he had gone into more detail. On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, so far as I know, the searchable part went away. If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on comp.unix-wizards, etc. On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 09:01:39PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote: > The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological Setting: > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-14a.html > > The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics: > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html > > The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format: > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-17.html > > Fun reading. Bellovin is another person we should try to get > to join this list. > > Enjoy, > > Arnold -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From ggm at algebras.org Thu Nov 21 13:18:10 2019 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:18:10 +0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: there is a big US bias in the archives of USENET. All I could find preserved (before Google deleted it) was my updates to the maps for York.ac.uk. In collecting history, the US erased most of Europe and Asia basically. Our timelines are artificially compressed into the modern era. UCL gatewayed a lot of stuff into other news/forum spaces. So, our view of the world was a disjoint set of UK news, USENET news, European news, VMS news, BITNET lists. The world was an amazing place. Kuwait camel breeders association operating online in teaching hospital email lists in 1985 On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:14 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > comp.unix-wizards, etc. > > On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 09:01:39PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote: > > The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological Setting: > > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-14a.html > > > > The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics: > > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html > > > > The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format: > > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-17.html > > > > Fun reading. Bellovin is another person we should try to get > > to join this list. > > > > Enjoy, > > > > Arnold > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 21 13:28:32 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:28:32 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191121032832.GD23794@mcvoy.com> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:18:10AM +0800, George Michaelson wrote: > there is a big US bias in the archives of USENET. All I could find > preserved (before Google deleted it) was my updates to the maps for > York.ac.uk. In collecting history, the US erased most of Europe and > Asia basically. Our timelines are artificially compressed into the > modern era. Can you explain this a bit? When I was on Usenet, 1980-1990 or so, it was very small, my guess is maybe 10,000 people that posted, maybe less. My memory is I could post a question to comp.arch or where ever, and I'd wake up in the morning and someone from Australia or some other place over the pond had an answer. It was usually a grad student or a prof or someone really smart. So is this an archive thing? Because in my memory, it was not a Usenet thing, smart people from all over the world posted. As an aside, I remember being on a canoe with my dad, a physics researcher and prof, and trying to explain Usenet to him. I said something like "it is so cool Dad, so many cool people, everyone should be on it". And then AOL happened and it went to shit. If my thoughts helped that along I am _so_ sorry. It was awesome when it was small. This list is sort of like early Usenet, smart people, people who know the history. Lets keep it small but Steve should be here. --lm From chet.ramey at case.edu Thu Nov 21 13:40:48 2019 From: chet.ramey at case.edu (Chet Ramey) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 22:40:48 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <7395199a-f0c8-220a-c9ff-30ebb5dcde32@case.edu> On 11/20/19 10:14 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > comp.unix-wizards, etc. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.arch Then a combination of date-based filters and searching for messages should get you closer. I've used it before, it's a huge pain in the ass, but it's better than zero. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet at case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/ From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 21 13:39:59 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:39:59 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191121033959.GG23794@mcvoy.com> I'm finding source that I posted in 1986. And I'm finding that I was a cocky jerk back in the day :) Thanks for this Reed! On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 09:34:54PM -0600, reed at reedmedia.net wrote: > On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > See > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/net.sources/84CTdvAdlb0/gTkGJnbSXxEJ > > Click the drop-down arrow in the search field. > > You can also use keywords in the search form. > Here is another example > > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix/dmr$20AND$20before$3A1985$2F01$2F01%7Csort:date/net.unix/9VegaP_SIyI/3GHz6bPEDgsJ -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 21 13:42:56 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:42:56 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <7395199a-f0c8-220a-c9ff-30ebb5dcde32@case.edu> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <7395199a-f0c8-220a-c9ff-30ebb5dcde32@case.edu> Message-ID: <20191121034256.GH23794@mcvoy.com> On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 10:40:48PM -0500, Chet Ramey wrote: > On 11/20/19 10:14 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > > comp.unix-wizards, etc. > > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.arch > > Then a combination of date-based filters and searching for messages > should get you closer. I've used it before, it's a huge pain in the > ass, but it's better than zero. Yeah on the pain in the ass, is there a way to search all of Usenet or is it per group only? From chet.ramey at case.edu Thu Nov 21 13:50:06 2019 From: chet.ramey at case.edu (Chet Ramey) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 22:50:06 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121034256.GH23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <7395199a-f0c8-220a-c9ff-30ebb5dcde32@case.edu> <20191121034256.GH23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <2d1ae7fd-f0c5-5949-c730-a783b5d4bdc3@case.edu> On 11/20/19 10:42 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: >>> If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, >>> my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids >>> that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on >>> comp.unix-wizards, etc. >> >> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.arch >> >> Then a combination of date-based filters and searching for messages >> should get you closer. I've used it before, it's a huge pain in the >> ass, but it's better than zero. > > Yeah on the pain in the ass, is there a way to search all of Usenet or > is it per group only? >From the groups interface, it seems to be group-at-a-time. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet at case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/ From bakul at bitblocks.com Thu Nov 21 13:50:53 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:50:53 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800." <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191121035101.211D9156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > comp.unix-wizards, etc. I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from https://archive.org/details/usenet But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable, searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries groups) can be stored locally (or using some global namespace. From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 21 13:51:42 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:51:42 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <2d1ae7fd-f0c5-5949-c730-a783b5d4bdc3@case.edu> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <7395199a-f0c8-220a-c9ff-30ebb5dcde32@case.edu> <20191121034256.GH23794@mcvoy.com> <2d1ae7fd-f0c5-5949-c730-a783b5d4bdc3@case.edu> Message-ID: <20191121035142.GI23794@mcvoy.com> In reading my old posts, I found this as my .signature in 1986, I know people will argue with it but I still agree, I get that there is Rust and Go and whatever. The programmers that I hang with still like C. "If you are undertaking anything substantial, C is the only reasonable choice of programming language" -- Brian W. Kerninghan From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 21 13:52:46 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:52:46 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121035101.211D9156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121035101.211D9156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <20191121035246.GJ23794@mcvoy.com> On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 07:50:53PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: > On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: > > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > > comp.unix-wizards, etc. > > I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from > https://archive.org/details/usenet > But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there > was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable, > searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries > groups) can be stored locally (or using some global > namespace. So is that all of Usenet? -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From reed at reedmedia.net Thu Nov 21 13:34:54 2019 From: reed at reedmedia.net (reed at reedmedia.net) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 21:34:54 -0600 (CST) Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/net.sources/84CTdvAdlb0/gTkGJnbSXxEJ Click the drop-down arrow in the search field. You can also use keywords in the search form. Here is another example https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix/dmr$20AND$20before$3A1985$2F01$2F01%7Csort:date/net.unix/9VegaP_SIyI/3GHz6bPEDgsJ From bakul at bitblocks.com Thu Nov 21 13:58:50 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:58:50 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:52:46 -0800." <20191121035246.GJ23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121035101.211D9156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> <20191121035246.GJ23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191121035858.125CA156E9F9@mail.bitblocks.com> On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:52:46 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: Larry McVoy writes: > On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 07:50:53PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: > > On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: > > > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > > > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > > > > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > > > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > > > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > > > > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > > > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > > > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > > > comp.unix-wizards, etc. > > > > I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from > > https://archive.org/details/usenet > > But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there > > was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable, > > searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries > > groups) can be stored locally (or using some global > > namespace. > > So is that all of Usenet? Probably not. Too many files to check but I think most or all of dejanews stuf is there. From usotsuki at buric.co Thu Nov 21 13:58:39 2019 From: usotsuki at buric.co (Steve Nickolas) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 22:58:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121035142.GI23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <7395199a-f0c8-220a-c9ff-30ebb5dcde32@case.edu> <20191121034256.GH23794@mcvoy.com> <2d1ae7fd-f0c5-5949-c730-a783b5d4bdc3@case.edu> <20191121035142.GI23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > In reading my old posts, I found this as my .signature in 1986, I know > people will argue with it but I still agree, I get that there is Rust > and Go and whatever. The programmers that I hang with still like C. > > "If you are undertaking anything substantial, C is the only reasonable > choice of programming language" -- Brian W. Kerninghan It still is! XD -uso. From aek at bitsavers.org Thu Nov 21 16:26:48 2019 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2019 22:26:48 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> Message-ID: <03867014-5806-aa15-f4e4-db5fe1c376a5@bitsavers.org> On 11/5/19 11:59 PM, SPC wrote: > > > Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code) > un some place on the Internet? It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel and didn't go down to bare metal. From ggm at algebras.org Thu Nov 21 18:56:13 2019 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:56:13 +0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121032832.GD23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121032832.GD23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: uk.* and eu.* seem to be unfindable. Stuff from before the great USENET re-org is mostly unfindable. cross posting to lists, only partially visible. I've tried to find my own rants, its like I was born into the world in 1996. What happened to 1982-onward? It just .. evaporated. If things have improved, I'd be happy to wish it true, but what I recall is the archives were bootstrapped from tapes held by people who felt it was the best they could do, in a time where people didn't really keep ephemera, and alas, the stuff wasn't all, it was the view of all. which some people saw. I think uk.* never left the island. Maybe this is one of those definitions things: we used the A and B news protocol, we used UUCP, we were on USENET, but if we weren't in the backbone cabal, its like we didn't exist. People love to talk about shebang addressing (me too, and VMS a::b::c) but Honey-Danber, was the shizzle. They made the world so much simpler, by doing the obvious flattening of the pathspace into namespace, with path dealt with elsewhere. moving to a at somewhere was god-given help to morons. Shebang paths sucked. (It would not surprise me for a hk.* and jp.* and su.* and the like to say: "brother, you have no idea") On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:28 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:18:10AM +0800, George Michaelson wrote: > > there is a big US bias in the archives of USENET. All I could find > > preserved (before Google deleted it) was my updates to the maps for > > York.ac.uk. In collecting history, the US erased most of Europe and > > Asia basically. Our timelines are artificially compressed into the > > modern era. > > Can you explain this a bit? When I was on Usenet, 1980-1990 or so, it > was very small, my guess is maybe 10,000 people that posted, maybe less. > My memory is I could post a question to comp.arch or where ever, and I'd > wake up in the morning and someone from Australia or some other place > over the pond had an answer. It was usually a grad student or a prof > or someone really smart. > > So is this an archive thing? Because in my memory, it was not a Usenet > thing, smart people from all over the world posted. > > As an aside, I remember being on a canoe with my dad, a physics researcher > and prof, and trying to explain Usenet to him. I said something like > "it is so cool Dad, so many cool people, everyone should be on it". And > then AOL happened and it went to shit. If my thoughts helped that along > I am _so_ sorry. It was awesome when it was small. > > This list is sort of like early Usenet, smart people, people who know the > history. Lets keep it small but Steve should be here. > > --lm From bakul at bitblocks.com Thu Nov 21 19:40:54 2019 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 01:40:54 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:56:13 +0800." References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121032832.GD23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191121094102.19A37156E9F9@mail.bitblocks.com> On Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:56:13 +0800 George Michaelson wrote: > uk.* and eu.* seem to be unfindable. Stuff from before the great > USENET re-org is mostly unfindable. cross posting to lists, only > partially visible. I've tried to find my own rants, its like I was > born into the world in 1996. What happened to 1982-onward? It just .. > evaporated. Check out the archive,org link I provided earlier. I found a couple of posts from you in net.lang.c some time in 1984. From ggm at algebras.org Thu Nov 21 19:51:17 2019 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 17:51:17 +0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121094102.19A37156E9F9@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121032832.GD23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121094102.19A37156E9F9@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: I shudder to think how naive, arrogant or both they are. But, thank you for your detective work. I exist, I am not a number is a glorious feeling. What this says, is that where our posts into the world crossed outside closed (national) namespaces in UUCP backed services, they did get archived as much as any other did. But I think my other strand remains true. The body of posts I and others made into uk.* is probably now lost forever. Ephemeral data preservation is chancey. A future digital archeologist will be looking at these bits, inferring stuff which in some sense is true (the US was the centre of much discussion in this space) and not true (the absence of data states about other places is not strongly indicative of their richness and intensity, because they were not preserved) -G On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 5:41 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > > On Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:56:13 +0800 George Michaelson wrote: > > uk.* and eu.* seem to be unfindable. Stuff from before the great > > USENET re-org is mostly unfindable. cross posting to lists, only > > partially visible. I've tried to find my own rants, its like I was > > born into the world in 1996. What happened to 1982-onward? It just .. > > evaporated. > > Check out the archive,org link I provided earlier. I found a > couple of posts from you in net.lang.c some time in 1984. From crossd at gmail.com Thu Nov 21 21:58:38 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 06:58:38 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <03867014-5806-aa15-f4e4-db5fe1c376a5@bitsavers.org> References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> <03867014-5806-aa15-f4e4-db5fe1c376a5@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:33 AM Al Kossow wrote: > > > On 11/5/19 11:59 PM, SPC wrote: > > > > > > Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code) > > un some place on the Internet? > > It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy > I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is > I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel > and didn't go down to bare metal. > No, that's not true. AOS was basically 4.3BSD Tahoe plus NFS and it ran on bare RT hardware. There was source code available to universities, though as I recall some bits related to memory management were missing and distributed as object files. I gathered, at the time, this was due to some obscure intellectual property reasons. People later tried to Port e.g. 4.4BSD to aging RT hardware and found it challenging because the memory subsystem was so different. But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arrigo at alchemistowl.org Thu Nov 21 21:16:09 2019 From: arrigo at alchemistowl.org (Arrigo Triulzi) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 12:16:09 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> <20191121032832.GD23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <6D671173-7EC0-47A0-9466-B332E0DA3ED6@alchemistowl.org> On 21 Nov 2019, at 09:56, George Michaelson wrote: > (It would not surprise me for a hk.* and jp.* and su.* and the like to > say: "brother, you have no idea”) And it.* and many other “local” groups from unis but also companies, ;) What about clari.net? Anyone remember them? They had groups for “real news”, financial info, etc. on a subscription basis. Arrigo From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Thu Nov 21 22:46:49 2019 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 12:46:49 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET Message-ID: I keep a copy of the utzoo files.  And then I hacked the altavista desktop search the files using Apache to filter content inline.  https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/altavista I know I'd love to feed it more data, the utzoo stuff is massive for 1991, but it's really trivial for 2019.  It's around 10GB decompressed.   From: TUHS on behalf of Larry McVoy Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2019, 11:53 AM To: Bakul Shah Cc: tuhs at tuhs.org Subject: Re: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 07:50:53PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote: > On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy wrote: > > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. > > > > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > > comp.unix-wizards, etc. > > I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from > https://archive.org/details/usenet > But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there > was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable, > searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries > groups) can be stored locally (or using some global > namespace. So is that all of Usenet? -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ches at cheswick.com Thu Nov 21 23:10:00 2019 From: ches at cheswick.com (William Cheswick) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 08:10:00 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573598358.7551.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <977155D5-559B-4850-8D65-F0D6FA043A25@cheswick.com> BTW, Bob Morris was not a Senior, and had no middle name. It is my understanding that he inserted an “h” when a middle initial was demanded at the Labs, hence “rhm”. His son is Robert Tappan Morris, Labs login and general tag “rtm," is not a junior. (I had to fight spelling correction on this Mac so much for this post that I have turned it off.) > On Nov 12, 2019, at 8:43 PM, John P. Linderman wrote: > > Lorinda Cherry told me that that RTM (senior) used to test people's programs by feeding them to themselves as input, a.out < a.out. It helped cure people of the assumption that a program would only see "reasonable" inputs. From arnold at skeeve.com Thu Nov 21 23:23:25 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 06:23:25 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> Jason Stevens wrote: > I keep a copy of the utzoo files.  Any chance of getting them to Warren for storage? Or are they generally available somewhere? Thanks, Arnold From brad at anduin.eldar.org Thu Nov 21 23:07:00 2019 From: brad at anduin.eldar.org (Brad Spencer) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 08:07:00 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: (message from Dan Cross on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 06:58:38 -0500) Message-ID: Dan Cross writes: > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:33 AM Al Kossow wrote: > >> >> >> On 11/5/19 11:59 PM, SPC wrote: >> > >> > >> > Is it AOS stuff saved and available (including source code) >> > un some place on the Internet? >> >> It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy >> I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is >> I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel >> and didn't go down to bare metal. >> > > No, that's not true. AOS was basically 4.3BSD Tahoe plus NFS and it ran on > bare RT hardware. There was source code available to universities, though > as I recall some bits related to memory management were missing and > distributed as object files. I gathered, at the time, this was due to some > obscure intellectual property reasons. People later tried to Port e.g. > 4.4BSD to aging RT hardware and found it challenging because the memory > subsystem was so different. > > But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved. > > - Dan C. For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS. Ran well enough, but was disk and memory constrained. We had source to much of the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall that compiling it was a big pain. Something like you had to use a specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C?? hc command perhaps) to compile some of the source. gcc had a backend for the ROMP processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries. I think that some variation of pcc was the usual compiler. I remember it being pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. We used them mostly as X terminal workstations. -- Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Thu Nov 21 23:31:24 2019 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:31:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> Message-ID: Oh sure I forgot to add them to my reply https://utzoo.superglobalmegacorp.com I keep a backup of them there.  The original site is gone. I think archive.org should have it too as utzoo. They are a must have for any amateur historian. It was so awesome pulling out the 4.2bsd nic driver for simh.  And an incredible resource for seeing how the ancients dealt with things. Get Outlook for Android On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 9:23 PM +0800, wrote: Jason Stevens wrote: > I keep a copy of the utzoo files.  Any chance of getting them to Warren for storage? Or are they generally available somewhere? Thanks, Arnold -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 00:19:07 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 09:19:07 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer wrote: > For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH > microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS. Ran well > enough, but was disk and memory constrained. We had source to much of > the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall > that compiling it was a big pain. Something like you had to use a > specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C?? hc command perhaps) > to compile some of the source. gcc had a backend for the ROMP > processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries. I think that > some variation of pcc was the usual compiler. I remember it being > pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. We used them mostly as X > terminal workstations. > "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`. I don't recall a pcc-derived compiler, but apparently such a thing did exist and some documentation says that High C was installed as `hc`, so my memory may be off. This old post describes RT compilers: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt/u7DUwY5U9kQ/uVqLP9FhqMEJ Hi-C was sort of an odd compiler. I gather IBM outsourced the development of it to some third party (MetaWare) which was founded by very religious people, and I have a vague memory of some of the documentation or perhaps even error messages making biblical references. The kernel had to be built with High C, if I recall correctly, though GCC worked OK for producing userspace binaries. I don't recall what the bug was, but it was eventually found and fixed. Perhaps it had to do with incomplete register saves on function entry interacting poorly with interrupts or something. Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime. Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk constrained. They were also very slow. Anyway, I have some vague recollection that at some point the bug in the compiler was fixed so that GCC could produce a working kernel; nascent NetBSD and OpenBSD ports were planned, but I don't think they ever went anywhere. https://www.openbsd.org/romp.html exists, though I don't know that the NetBSD people ever got beyond the talking stage. The OpenBSD-romp mailing list had some interesting information, but I can't find archives anymore. Oh well. The RT was an interesting footnote in the history of computing, but it seems that, as a workstation, it was too little too late by the time it actually hit the market. Had they released it a few years earlier? Perhaps they could have cornered the market. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leah at vuxu.org Fri Nov 22 01:58:01 2019 From: leah at vuxu.org (Leah Neukirchen) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:58:01 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> (arnold@skeeve.com's message of "Thu, 21 Nov 2019 06:23:25 -0700") References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> arnold at skeeve.com writes: > Jason Stevens wrote: > >> I keep a copy of the utzoo files.  > > Any chance of getting them to Warren for storage? Or are they > generally available somewhere? They are also on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive -- Leah Neukirchen https://leahneukirchen.org/ From chet.ramey at case.edu Fri Nov 22 02:16:54 2019 From: chet.ramey at case.edu (Chet Ramey) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:16:54 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <397f861b-8684-0938-250c-b929e7710000@case.edu> On 11/21/19 9:19 AM, Dan Cross wrote: > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer > wrote: > > For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH > microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS.  Ran well > enough, but was disk and memory constrained.  We had source to much of > the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall > that compiling it was a big pain.  Something like you had to use a > specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C??  hc command perhaps) > to compile some of the source.  gcc had a backend for the ROMP > processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries.  I think that > some variation of pcc was the usual compiler.  I remember it being > pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS.  We used them mostly as X > terminal workstations. > > > "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the > system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`. "High C", and it was installed as cc and hc. > Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime. > Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk > constrained. They were also very slow. I had one running in my basement into the late 90s, with my own self- maintained kernel. I did a considerable portion of the bash-2.0 development on that box, and my wife wrote all of her doctoral thesis on it (using a troff macro package I wrote to do APA style formatting). It didn't make the cut when I moved from that house. Why did I have it? Because it was free, and it did what I needed. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet at case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/ From greg.m.travis at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 02:43:37 2019 From: greg.m.travis at gmail.com (greg travis) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:43:37 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: You're quite right about the religious error messages. I used MetaWare High C under DOS briefly, comparing it to Turbo C and Watcom. (Watcom won.) It had extensions to C, such as a coroutine-ish 'yield' keyword. On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 9:20 AM Dan Cross wrote: > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer > wrote: > >> For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, MACH >> microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS. Ran well >> enough, but was disk and memory constrained. We had source to much of >> the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to recall >> that compiling it was a big pain. Something like you had to use a >> specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C?? hc command perhaps) >> to compile some of the source. gcc had a backend for the ROMP >> processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries. I think that >> some variation of pcc was the usual compiler. I remember it being >> pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. We used them mostly as X >> terminal workstations. >> > > "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the > system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`. I don't recall > a pcc-derived compiler, but apparently such a thing did exist and some > documentation says that High C was installed as `hc`, so my memory may be > off. This old post describes RT compilers: > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt/u7DUwY5U9kQ/uVqLP9FhqMEJ > > Hi-C was sort of an odd compiler. I gather IBM outsourced the development > of it to some third party (MetaWare) which was founded by very religious > people, and I have a vague memory of some of the documentation or perhaps > even error messages making biblical references. > > The kernel had to be built with High C, if I recall correctly, though GCC > worked OK for producing userspace binaries. I don't recall what the bug > was, but it was eventually found and fixed. Perhaps it had to do with > incomplete register saves on function entry interacting poorly with > interrupts or something. > > Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime. > Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk > constrained. They were also very slow. Anyway, I have some vague > recollection that at some point the bug in the compiler was fixed so that > GCC could produce a working kernel; nascent NetBSD and OpenBSD ports were > planned, but I don't think they ever went anywhere. > https://www.openbsd.org/romp.html exists, though I don't know that the > NetBSD people ever got beyond the talking stage. The OpenBSD-romp mailing > list had some interesting information, but I can't find archives anymore. > > Oh well. The RT was an interesting footnote in the history of computing, > but it seems that, as a workstation, it was too little too late by the time > it actually hit the market. Had they released it a few years earlier? > Perhaps they could have cornered the market. > > - Dan C. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sauer at technologists.com Fri Nov 22 03:29:51 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:29:51 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> <03867014-5806-aa15-f4e4-db5fe1c376a5@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <3dd01785-c43a-7972-34e0-80049f0ec86d@technologists.com> On 11/21/2019 5:58 AM, Dan Cross wrote: > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 1:33 AM Al Kossow > wrote: > It was, and may still be in the afs heirarchy > I'm not going to say where, or how complete what was there is > I also seem to remember it still sat on top of an AIX microkernel > and didn't go down to bare metal. > > > No, that's not true. AOS was basically 4.3BSD Tahoe plus NFS and it ran > on bare RT hardware. There was source code available to universities, > though as I recall some bits related to memory management were missing > and distributed as object files. I gathered, at the time, this was due > to some obscure intellectual property reasons. People later tried to > Port e.g. 4.4BSD to aging RT hardware and found it challenging because > the memory subsystem was so different. > > But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved. There may well have been AFS for AIX and thus the confusion about hypervisor (AIX VRM). -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From rtomek at ceti.pl Fri Nov 22 03:22:05 2019 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 18:22:05 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20191121172205.GA12489@tau1.ceti.pl> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 12:46:49PM +0000, Jason Stevens wrote: > I keep a copy of the utzoo files.  > And then I hacked the altavista desktop search the files using > Apache to filter content inline.  > https://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/altavista Nice stuff. Works with dillo browser. Not so much with emacs-w3, because it cannot guess what is a type of data delivered from your server - I am asked a question, give it a hint "text/html" in response and then your page loads without any further problem. After initial page is loaded, search went ok, no problem. HTH. I actually used Altavista in 90-ties. Compared to today, it feels so modern. Like Button! -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From sauer at technologists.com Fri Nov 22 03:33:40 2019 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:33:40 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5df147fa-febf-2a7a-f38b-9f67429fca81@technologists.com> On 11/21/2019 7:07 AM, Brad Spencer wrote: > ... I remember it being > pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. I'm puzzled about the "minus YP/NIS". I negotiated the IBM NFS license on behalf of AIX, but was inclusive of the rest of the company, so I think ACIS put NFS into AOS under the auspices of that license. I remember discussing with the Palo Alto ACIS folks at the time. I only had AOS at home, without Ethernet, so wouldn't have tried to use NFS or YP. But I would have thought that ACIS would have included YP. Charlie -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From crossd at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 03:36:43 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 12:36:43 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <5df147fa-febf-2a7a-f38b-9f67429fca81@technologists.com> References: <5df147fa-febf-2a7a-f38b-9f67429fca81@technologists.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 12:34 PM Charles H Sauer wrote: > > > On 11/21/2019 7:07 AM, Brad Spencer wrote: > > > ... I remember it being > > pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. > > I'm puzzled about the "minus YP/NIS". I negotiated the IBM NFS license > on behalf of AIX, but was inclusive of the rest of the company, so I > think ACIS put NFS into AOS under the auspices of that license. I > remember discussing with the Palo Alto ACIS folks at the time. > > I only had AOS at home, without Ethernet, so wouldn't have tried to use > NFS or YP. But I would have thought that ACIS would have included YP. > AOS definitely had NIS/YP. I remember it quite distinctly. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brad at anduin.eldar.org Fri Nov 22 04:11:18 2019 From: brad at anduin.eldar.org (Brad Spencer) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:11:18 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <5df147fa-febf-2a7a-f38b-9f67429fca81@technologists.com> (message from Charles H Sauer on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:33:40 -0600) Message-ID: Charles H Sauer writes: > On 11/21/2019 7:07 AM, Brad Spencer wrote: > >> ... I remember it being >> pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. > > I'm puzzled about the "minus YP/NIS". I negotiated the IBM NFS license > on behalf of AIX, but was inclusive of the rest of the company, so I > think ACIS put NFS into AOS under the auspices of that license. I > remember discussing with the Palo Alto ACIS folks at the time. > > I only had AOS at home, without Ethernet, so wouldn't have tried to use > NFS or YP. But I would have thought that ACIS would have included YP. > > Charlie I was referring to the Mt. Xinu Mach based 4.3BSD OS that replaced AIX on the RTs I was using. Aside from the 4.3BSD part, it didn't have AIX involved... and it didn't have YP/NIS. -- Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org From scj at yaccman.com Fri Nov 22 04:04:29 2019 From: scj at yaccman.com (Steve Johnson) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 10:04:29 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: <977155D5-559B-4850-8D65-F0D6FA043A25@cheswick.com> References: <977155D5-559B-4850-8D65-F0D6FA043A25@cheswick.com> Message-ID: Not everyone at the labs had a three-letter login. Bjarne Stroustrup had the login bs, despite several gentle suggestions from myself and others that he add a middle initial... Steve Sent from my iPhone > On Nov 21, 2019, at 5:18 AM, William Cheswick wrote: > > BTW, Bob Morris was not a Senior, and had no middle name. It is my understanding that he inserted an “h” when a middle initial was demanded at the Labs, hence “rhm”. > > His son is Robert Tappan Morris, Labs login and general tag “rtm," is not a junior. > > (I had to fight spelling correction on this Mac so much for this post that I have turned it off.) > >> On Nov 12, 2019, at 8:43 PM, John P. Linderman wrote: >> >> Lorinda Cherry told me that that RTM (senior) used to test people's programs by feeding them to themselves as input, a.out < a.out. It helped cure people of the assumption that a program would only see "reasonable" inputs. > From arnold at skeeve.com Fri Nov 22 05:41:21 2019 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 12:41:21 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <201911211941.xALJfLxX013801@freefriends.org> greg travis wrote: > You're quite right about the religious error messages. The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. I remember flipping through some of the early manuals and there are a number of references to needing divine help if things go badly wrong, praying for divine guidance, and so on. :-) (Yes, I know that was mainly cultural. Still, it was striking, at least to me.) Arnold From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Nov 22 05:53:27 2019 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 14:53:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA Message-ID: <20191121195327.0C30918C080@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Arnold Robbins > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin, courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site once, whereupon hilarity ensued. Noel From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 22 06:02:03 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 07:02:03 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 19 Nov 2019, Tony Finch wrote: > Amusingly POSIX says the C standard takes precedence wrt the details of > gets() (and other library functions) and C18 abolished gets(). I'm > slightly surprised that the POSIX committee didn't see that coming and > include the change in the 2018 edition... Didn't know that gets() had finally been abolished; it's possibly the most unsafe function (OK, macro) on the planet. I've long been tempted to remove gets() and see what breaks... -- Dave From clemc at ccc.com Fri Nov 22 06:08:28 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 15:08:28 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <20191121195327.0C30918C080@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20191121195327.0C30918C080@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:53 PM Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Arnold Robbins > > > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. > > And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin, > courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site > once, > whereupon hilarity ensued. > One of my favorite stories of the same vein was a masscomp story. We were chasing a rare event (as I recall it was when we first were debugging Multiprocessor stuff and it a lock order problem). But we could not get the customers to tell us about what was happening, since the system recovered quickly, but we might kill a process. We had done a few releases and make a few changes but we could never reproduce it. I never knew who it was but someone ??Jack Burness if I had to guess?? put out a patch with a couple of error messages in Klingon and dumped a bunch of information. Sure enough this was noticed, customer stopped, we got the needed data, as they reported the error. But it was a high visibility customer, so the president (Mr. Potatohead) got a phone call. Fossil (our boss) made us swear it would never happen again, but he defended us to the President. We found the bug ;-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 22 06:36:04 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 07:36:04 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, my > early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids that. > Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > comp.unix-wizards, etc. I think I'd be embarrassed over some of my early posts... And yeah, Guy Harris was brilliant, and always helpful. -- Dave From jon at fourwinds.com Fri Nov 22 06:21:06 2019 From: jon at fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 12:21:06 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <201911211941.xALJfLxX013801@freefriends.org> References: <201911211941.xALJfLxX013801@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <201911212021.xALKL6c81215951@darkstar.fourwinds.com> arnold at skeeve.com writes: > greg travis wrote: > > > You're quite right about the religious error messages. > > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. I remember flipping through some > of the early manuals and there are a number of references to needing > divine help if things go badly wrong, praying for divine guidance, > and so on. :-) (Yes, I know that was mainly cultural. Still, it > was striking, at least to me.) > > Arnold I believe that you're talking about the "gerts" command and if you ever had to use it, you'd know that the divine guidance part was accurate. From imp at bsdimp.com Fri Nov 22 06:38:37 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:38:37 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 1:02 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Tue, 19 Nov 2019, Tony Finch wrote: > > > Amusingly POSIX says the C standard takes precedence wrt the details of > > gets() (and other library functions) and C18 abolished gets(). I'm > > slightly surprised that the POSIX committee didn't see that coming and > > include the change in the 2018 edition... > > Didn't know that gets() had finally been abolished; it's possibly the most > unsafe function (OK, macro) on the planet. I've long been tempted to > remove gets() and see what breaks... > A few things actually broke when FreeBSD removed it. Apart from 'wrappers' that needed it for various reasons, it was only a few programs in our 'ports' package that needed to be corrected. Most people have moved on with the 20 years of warnings when it was used... Sadly only most... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 06:53:00 2019 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 15:53:00 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: <397f861b-8684-0938-250c-b929e7710000@case.edu> References: <397f861b-8684-0938-250c-b929e7710000@case.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:16 AM Chet Ramey wrote: > On 11/21/19 9:19 AM, Dan Cross wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 8:07 AM Brad Spencer > > wrote: > > > > For a brief time a long time ago, I used a 4.3BSD based Mt. Xinu, > MACH > > microkernel, OS on the IBM-RT as an alternative to AOS. Ran well > > enough, but was disk and memory constrained. We had source to much > of > > the system (or perhaps all of it, don't remember), but I seem to > recall > > that compiling it was a big pain. Something like you had to use a > > specific compiler (perhaps referred to as High C?? hc command > perhaps) > > to compile some of the source. gcc had a backend for the ROMP > > processor, but it had a hard time making usable binaries. I think > that > > some variation of pcc was the usual compiler. I remember it being > > pretty stock 4.3BSD with NFS and minus YP/NIS. We used them mostly > as X > > terminal workstations. > > > > > > "High C" (or perhaps "Hi C"? It's been a while...) was the name of the > > system compiler on AOS; I thought it was installed as `cc`. > > "High C", and it was installed as cc and hc. > Yeah, that matches my (vague) recollection as well. > Some RT enthusiasts kept those machines running well beyond their prime. > > Why? I'm not entirely sure; as you say, they were memory and disk > > constrained. They were also very slow. > > I had one running in my basement into the late 90s, with my own self- > maintained kernel. I did a considerable portion of the bash-2.0 > development on that box, and my wife wrote all of her doctoral thesis on > it (using a troff macro package I wrote to do APA style formatting). It > didn't make the cut when I moved from that house. Why did I have it? > Because it was free, and it did what I needed. > We kept a couple of them running through the mid- to late-90s as well. By that time, however, it seemed like Linux and the BSDs on PCs had greatly eclipsed whatever was possible performance or software-wise on the aging RTs, which were also starting to fail in odd ways. But until that point, they were free and ran Unix, and for a long time that was kind of a special thing. We ended up replacing a 6150 with a 486 running FreeBSD and life was pretty good, though. The spiritual descendent of that (those) machine(s) now runs OpenBSD on a VPS somewhere. A while back, I found some old NIS data files (in ndbm format, of course) that we'd preserved from some ancient backup; I was able to get the ndbm library from an old BSD distribution and compile it and extract the data, which was kind of fun. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Fri Nov 22 07:04:03 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:04:03 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 3:39 PM Warner Losh wrote: > A few things actually broke when FreeBSD removed it. Apart from 'wrappers' > that needed it for various reasons, it was only a few programs in our > 'ports' package that needed to be corrected. > > Most people have moved on with the 20 years of warnings when it was > used... Sadly only most... > > Warner > That is encouraging to hear. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rminnich at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 07:11:29 2019 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:11:29 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Irix on MIPS -- was kernel mode paged Message-ID: I'm looking for a reference to any Unix ports where the kernel ran in a non-paged address space and user mode was paged. I could swear this was done at some point, and memory says it was on a soft-TLB system like the MIPS, to avoid TLB pollution and TLB fault overhead. But maybe I'm nuts. I am happy to hear either answer. From steffen at sdaoden.eu Fri Nov 22 07:48:44 2019 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 22:48:44 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: <20191121214844.hQIAt%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Dave Horsfall wrote in : |On Tue, 19 Nov 2019, Tony Finch wrote: |> Amusingly POSIX says the C standard takes precedence wrt the details of |> gets() (and other library functions) and C18 abolished gets(). I'm |> slightly surprised that the POSIX committee didn't see that coming and |> include the change in the 2018 edition... This week (on the 19th, to be exact) Geoff Clare made official the desire to align a forthcoming POSIX Issue 8 with ISO C17. Current POSIX (1003.1(2016)/Issue7+TC2) still aligns with C99. And, compared to C99, the POSIX wording causes sympathy d37021 APPLICATION USAGE 37022 Reading a line that overflows the array pointed to by s results in undefined behavior. The use of 37023 fgets( ) is recommended. 37024 Since the user cannot specify the length of the buffer passed to gets( ), use of this function is 37025 discouraged. The length of the string read is unlimited. It is possible to overflow this buffer in 37026 such a way as to cause applications to fail, or possible system security violations. 37027 Applications should use the fgets( ) function instead of the obsolescent gets( ) function. 37028 RATIONALE 37029 The standard developers decided to mark the gets( ) function as obsolescent even though it is in 37030 the ISO C standard due to the possibility of buffer overflow. 37031 FUTURE DIRECTIONS 37032 The gets( ) function may be removed in a future version. |Didn't know that gets() had finally been abolished; it's possibly the most |unsafe function (OK, macro) on the planet. I've long been tempted to |remove gets() and see what breaks... It seems to have been removed in C 2011, except get_s(), which is still present in the C 2017 draft that i have. (I have never used any of the _s() functions.) --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Fri Nov 22 07:51:56 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:51:56 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <977155D5-559B-4850-8D65-F0D6FA043A25@cheswick.com> Message-ID: Perhaps I should have said "The Big Enchilada", although I have only second-hand information that that uniquely identified Bob Morris. On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 1:13 PM Steve Johnson wrote: > Not everyone at the labs had a three-letter login. Bjarne Stroustrup had > the login bs, despite several gentle suggestions from myself and others > that he add a middle initial... > Steve > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Nov 21, 2019, at 5:18 AM, William Cheswick wrote: > > > > BTW, Bob Morris was not a Senior, and had no middle name. It is my > understanding that he inserted an “h” when a middle initial was demanded at > the Labs, hence “rhm”. > > > > His son is Robert Tappan Morris, Labs login and general tag “rtm," is > not a junior. > > > > (I had to fight spelling correction on this Mac so much for this post > that I have turned it off.) > > > >> On Nov 12, 2019, at 8:43 PM, John P. Linderman > wrote: > >> > >> Lorinda Cherry told me that that RTM (senior) used to test people's > programs by feeding them to themselves as input, a.out < a.out. It helped > cure people of the assumption that a program would only see "reasonable" > inputs. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Fri Nov 22 08:06:42 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 09:06:42 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm In-Reply-To: References: <1573592179.5935.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20191112221053.C2009156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 21 Nov 2019, Warner Losh wrote: > A few things actually broke when FreeBSD removed it. Apart from > 'wrappers' that needed it for various reasons, it was only a few > programs in our 'ports' package that needed to be corrected. FreeBSD prints a stern warning (both at compilation and execution) if you use it; I quickly fixed all my programs when I saw them :-) > Most people have moved on with the 20 years of warnings when it was > used... Sadly only most... Yep :-( -- Dave From imp at bsdimp.com Fri Nov 22 13:24:04 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 20:24:04 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Irix on MIPS -- was kernel mode paged In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:12 PM ron minnich wrote: > I'm looking for a reference to any Unix ports where the kernel ran in > a non-paged address space and user mode was paged. I could swear this > was done at some point, and memory says it was on a soft-TLB system > like the MIPS, to avoid TLB pollution and TLB fault overhead. > > But maybe I'm nuts. I am happy to hear either answer. > Mips had KSEG0 which didn't go through TLB and was mapped to physical memory. Some MIPS kernels ran in this space to avoid TLB issues... Warner > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbrock at computerhistory.org Sat Nov 23 00:29:16 2019 From: dbrock at computerhistory.org (David C. Brock) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:29:16 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Western Electric "Research Unix" License Contacts Message-ID: <4B4A388452D2A7418879B110A352A8F4018878C992@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org> Dear All: I was wondering if anyone had any first-hand information about the early decisions at Western Electric to make an education license for Unix that was both royalty-free and with an extremely modest “service charge”/delivery fee, or if anyone knows the names of key people who made these decisions. Best wishes, David .............. David C. Brock Director and Curator Software History Center Computer History Museum computerhistory.org/softwarehistory Email: dbrock at computerhistory.org Twitter: @dcbrock Skype: dcbrock 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94943 (650) 810-1010 main (650) 810-1886 direct Pronouns: he, him, his From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 23 01:34:04 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 10:34:04 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Western Electric "Research Unix" License Contacts In-Reply-To: <4B4A388452D2A7418879B110A352A8F4018878C992@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org> References: <4B4A388452D2A7418879B110A352A8F4018878C992@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org> Message-ID: I sent you some stuff privately, but the key point is that is was required by the US Gov as part of the 1956 Consent decree. AT&T had to make its IP available to the research community and licensable under 'fair terms' which would be reviewed by the regulators. Al Arms wrote and administer the license BTW. I've lost track of him. I want to say he may have passed, but I don't want to start a rumor. You might check with the Nokia folks, as I did not see him at the 50th and I would have expected him there. Clem On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 9:39 AM David C. Brock wrote: > Dear All: > > I was wondering if anyone had any first-hand information about the early > decisions at Western Electric to make an education license for Unix that > was both royalty-free and with an extremely modest “service > charge”/delivery fee, or if anyone knows the names of key people who made > these decisions. > > Best wishes, > > David > .............. > David C. Brock > Director and Curator > Software History Center > Computer History Museum > computerhistory.org/softwarehistory< > http://computerhistory.org/softwarehistory> > Email: dbrock at computerhistory.org > Twitter: @dcbrock > Skype: dcbrock > 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. > Mountain View, CA 94943 > (650) 810-1010 main > (650) 810-1886 direct > Pronouns: he, him, his > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 23 01:36:08 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 10:36:08 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Western Electric "Research Unix" License Contacts In-Reply-To: References: <4B4A388452D2A7418879B110A352A8F4018878C992@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org> Message-ID: I should have said, 'licensable for commercial use.' The most famous piece of IP that came out of this agreement was not UNIX, but rather the transistor. The rest of the electronics community made way more money than AT&T did on the transistor. On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 10:34 AM Clem Cole wrote: > I sent you some stuff privately, but the key point is that is was required > by the US Gov as part of the 1956 Consent decree. > AT&T had to make its IP available to the research community and licensable > under 'fair terms' which would be reviewed by the regulators. Al Arms > wrote and administer the license BTW. I've lost track of him. I want to > say he may have passed, but I don't want to start a rumor. You might > check with the Nokia folks, as I did not see him at the 50th and I would > have expected him there. > > Clem > > On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 9:39 AM David C. Brock > wrote: > >> Dear All: >> >> I was wondering if anyone had any first-hand information about the early >> decisions at Western Electric to make an education license for Unix that >> was both royalty-free and with an extremely modest “service >> charge”/delivery fee, or if anyone knows the names of key people who made >> these decisions. >> >> Best wishes, >> >> David >> .............. >> David C. Brock >> Director and Curator >> Software History Center >> Computer History Museum >> computerhistory.org/softwarehistory< >> http://computerhistory.org/softwarehistory> >> Email: dbrock at computerhistory.org >> Twitter: @dcbrock >> Skype: dcbrock >> 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. >> Mountain View, CA 94943 >> (650) 810-1010 main >> (650) 810-1886 direct >> Pronouns: he, him, his >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu Sat Nov 23 03:09:22 2019 From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 12:09:22 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] edx prize Message-ID: <201911221709.xAMH9MEK081900@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Tangential, but interesting: https://blog.edx.org/congratulations-edx-prize-2019-winners/ Where would you expect a MOOC about C to originate? Not, it turns out, in a computer-science department. Professor Bonfert-Taylor is a mathematician in the school of engineering at Dartmouth. Doug From jra at andrusk.com Sat Nov 23 06:18:06 2019 From: jra at andrusk.com (Justin R. Andrusk) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 20:18:06 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> Message-ID: <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 04:58:01PM +0100, Leah Neukirchen wrote: > > arnold at skeeve.com writes: > > > Jason Stevens wrote: > > > >> I keep a copy of the utzoo files.  > > > > Any chance of getting them to Warren for storage? Or are they > > generally available somewhere? > > They are also on archive.org: > https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive > > -- > Leah Neukirchen https://leahneukirchen.org/ I'm half tempted to take the archive.org Usenet files and throw them into Elasticsearch and create a web front end for searching. Storage would be expensive, but search would rock! Justin From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Nov 23 06:38:05 2019 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 12:38:05 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <86352c85-1b06-6035-de4a-5b5a64f1cf98@technologists.com> <20191106000600.GD26959@mit.edu> <479EA77E-E0A7-4B27-AEBB-42948309C03E@technologists.com> <03867014-5806-aa15-f4e4-db5fe1c376a5@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <53d38627-c24c-2f74-9eaa-3784b32ace70@bitsavers.org> On 11/21/19 3:58 AM, Dan Cross wrote: > But anyway, there was no hypervisor involved. Sorry, got it mixed up in my mind with aix I had remembered bits of the kernel were missing, but I forgot why. From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 06:49:58 2019 From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:49:58 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> Message-ID: On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 at 15:19, Justin R. Andrusk wrote: > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 04:58:01PM +0100, Leah Neukirchen wrote: > > > > arnold at skeeve.com writes: > > > > > Jason Stevens wrote: > > > > > >> I keep a copy of the utzoo files. > > > > > > Any chance of getting them to Warren for storage? Or are they > > > generally available somewhere? > > > > They are also on archive.org: > > https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive > > > > -- > > Leah Neukirchen https://leahneukirchen.org/ > > I'm half tempted to take the archive.org Usenet files and throw them > into Elasticsearch and create a web front end for searching. Storage > would be expensive, but search would rock! > Has anyone definitely proven that any of the contents of these files are not in the searchable Google Groups interface? I don't really see any need to duplicate their efforts. I am 100% certain that Google got Deja News's entire archive and 99% certain that it was fairly quickly supplemented with the University of Toronto material provided by Henry Spencer. Certainly the headers in a thread like this would seem to indicate that the material all came from utzoo: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/net.unix-wizards/krbEHGQ95_o/QaV2LNSeMlgJ (see "show original" for any message in the dropdown box in the upper right hand corner by the date). While Google has not shown a tremendous deal of interest in Groups over the years - notably, the search was very lacking/incomplete at various points - I would think that there is now enough acknowledgement of the historical importance of these messages that Google would at the very least do their best to preserve what they have. I would also imagine that if someone else had approached them with a substantial enough private archive that they would have accepted it, and not necessarily done a huge press release depending on the time frame, but that's pure supposition on my part. It would be fascinating to look through messages from before 1995 (when Deja News started archiving) to see if any clues can be unearthed about message sources other than utzoo. As somewhat of an aside, my father was the head sysadmin at Deja News at the time of their purchase by Google and I may have recounted this story before but it's worth sharing again. Google's entire purchase of Deja News involved a couple of Google engineers flying to Austin with a large disk array, letting it mirror over a weekend, and then flying back to California. Google did not, as far as I recall, take possession of any physical assets whatsoever. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From norman at oclsc.org Sat Nov 23 07:02:46 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:02:46 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Western Electric "Research Unix" License Contacts Message-ID: <1574456570.20402.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Clem Cole: Al Arms wrote and administer the license BTW. ==== Aside for entertainment purposes: at one point, the root password for the UNIX systems I ran in the Caltech High Energy Physics group was derived from Al's name, but through a level of punning indirection. I believe Mark Bartelt came up with it. Later we decided to change it. I believe I chose the successor, which continued the UNIX-licensing scheme, but in a different direction: *UiaTMoBL The systems that had either of these passwords are long- since turned off. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From khm at sciops.net Sat Nov 23 07:06:45 2019 From: khm at sciops.net (Kurt H Maier) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 13:06:45 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> Message-ID: <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 03:49:58PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote: > > Has anyone definitely proven that any of the contents of these files are > not in the searchable Google Groups interface? I don't really see any need > to duplicate their efforts. That data is essentially unavailable to people without Google accounts. Even back when it was, the search had degraded to the point where you could paste explicit quotes from messages and those messages would not be in the results page. I wholeheartedly see a need to duplicate (and surpass) their efforts. The Deja News service was wonderful; Google's implementation is not. Even if someon were to convince them to improve it, they've demonstrated they're not a good company to rely on for long-term availability of services that are not active surveillance vehicles. khm From lm at mcvoy.com Sat Nov 23 07:32:38 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 13:32:38 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> Message-ID: <20191122213238.GC16255@mcvoy.com> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 01:06:45PM -0800, Kurt H Maier wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 03:49:58PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote: > > > > Has anyone definitely proven that any of the contents of these files are > > not in the searchable Google Groups interface? I don't really see any need > > to duplicate their efforts. > > That data is essentially unavailable to people without Google accounts. > Even back when it was, the search had degraded to the point where you > could paste explicit quotes from messages and those messages would not > be in the results page. > > I wholeheartedly see a need to duplicate (and surpass) their efforts. The > Deja News service was wonderful; Google's implementation is not. Even if > someon were to convince them to improve it, they've demonstrated they're > not a good company to rely on for long-term availability of services > that are not active surveillance vehicles. Amen. From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 08:21:20 2019 From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 17:21:20 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> Message-ID: On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 at 16:06, Kurt H Maier wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 03:49:58PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote: > > > > Has anyone definitely proven that any of the contents of these files are > > not in the searchable Google Groups interface? I don't really see any > need > > to duplicate their efforts. > > That data is essentially unavailable to people without Google accounts. > Why do you say that? I used a browser that was fully logged out of Google and in paranoid/private settings mode and I could browse newsgroups, do basic searching, etc. eg: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix-wizards/iris%7Csort:date > Even back when it was, the search had degraded to the point where you > could paste explicit quotes from messages and those messages would not > be in the results page. > I alluded to this sort of problem in my previous email, but in my recent experience the search results have been satisfactory and I consider the degraded search problem resolved. I have been able to search for very precise text strings with entirely satisfactory results over the last few months. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From krewat at kilonet.net Sat Nov 23 09:21:49 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 18:21:49 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> Message-ID: On 11/22/2019 3:18 PM, Justin R. Andrusk wrote: > I'm half tempted to take the archive.org Usenet files and throw them > into Elasticsearch and create a web front end for searching. Storage > would be expensive, but search would rock! Can we run multiple nodes of Elastic, and replicate between each other? I just recently started playing with it, it's quite impressive. Except for that one logstash file "read" mode that by default deletes the file once it's done with it (a 4-year-long access.log that I wanted to read in). anyway. art k. From khm at sciops.net Sat Nov 23 10:00:34 2019 From: khm at sciops.net (Kurt H Maier) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:00:34 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> Message-ID: <20191123000034.GC37773@wopr> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 05:21:20PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote: > > Why do you say that? I used a browser that was fully logged out of Google > and in paranoid/private settings mode and I could browse newsgroups, do > basic searching, etc. eg: > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix-wizards/iris%7Csort:date Clicking on any entry in those search results prompts me to log in. Suffice it to say it is not satisfactory; TUHS is not the place to debug Google's software for them, so I'll drop the matter. I am willing to help any effort to make this data available in less painful formats or protocols. Feel free to reach out, anyone. khm From tytso at mit.edu Sat Nov 23 11:36:22 2019 From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 20:36:22 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191123000034.GC37773@wopr> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> <20191123000034.GC37773@wopr> Message-ID: <20191123013622.GC8852@mit.edu> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 04:00:34PM -0800, Kurt H Maier wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 05:21:20PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote: > > > > Why do you say that? I used a browser that was fully logged out of Google > > and in paranoid/private settings mode and I could browse newsgroups, do > > basic searching, etc. eg: > > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix-wizards/iris%7Csort:date > > Clicking on any entry in those search results prompts me to log in. > Suffice it to say it is not satisfactory; TUHS is not the place to debug > Google's software for them, so I'll drop the matter. All I can say is that's not my experience. I just dropped the above link into an incognito browser window (so no cookies, logins, etc.), and I was able to click on any of those links and read them. Cheers, - Ted From jra at andrusk.com Sat Nov 23 11:32:16 2019 From: jra at andrusk.com (Justin R. Andrusk) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 01:32:16 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> Message-ID: <20191123013213.GA30784@hal9k> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 06:21:49PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: > > On 11/22/2019 3:18 PM, Justin R. Andrusk wrote: > > I'm half tempted to take the archive.org Usenet files and throw them > > into Elasticsearch and create a web front end for searching. Storage > > would be expensive, but search would rock! > > Can we run multiple nodes of Elastic, and replicate between each other? > > I just recently started playing with it, it's quite impressive. Except > for that one logstash file "read" mode that by default deletes the file > once it's done with it (a 4-year-long access.log that I wanted to read in). > > anyway. > > art k. Yes, that's how the clustering works with Elasticsearch. You setup multiple nodes that are part of a cluster and data is replicated across all of them. If one goes down, you don't lose any data as the others will reconstitute the data. Going to look at adding the Usenet data to a Graylog instance as that uses Elasticsearch as a backend and the front end UI is already there to give you a GUI for searching and doing analytics on what you send to it. Justin From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Sat Nov 23 11:48:07 2019 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 01:48:07 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191122213238.GC16255@mcvoy.com> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> <20191122213238.GC16255@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: I for one believe in duplication, and not relying on a single source.  All the artifacts survive today because they were scattered to the winds and found again.  Plus when building a database having 10gb of human entered data is invaluable.  I should add that the first public listing of hack on Google is missing the last part.  But it's in the utzoo archive.  https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Hack_1.0 So the google stuff is incomplete.  Besides it's fun to re-read the world when the rumours of Spocks iniment death in the next movie circulated, and fans petitioned to save him, or even the fallout of Tienemen square, and how it parallels in reddit.   I should also add now that Intel is purging all their old drivers and documents online, even a company with a vested interest in their own past doesn't care.  Google is sunsetting their cloud printing after being up for a decade. It's only a matter of time before they find past free speech inconvenient and problematic and terminate groups.  TLDR is that data needs to be shared, not made inaccessible by one company, and the Google usenet thing is incomplete.  On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 5:33 AM +0800, "Larry McVoy" wrote: On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 01:06:45PM -0800, Kurt H Maier wrote: > On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 03:49:58PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote: > > > > Has anyone definitely proven that any of the contents of these files are > > not in the searchable Google Groups interface? I don't really see any need > > to duplicate their efforts. > > That data is essentially unavailable to people without Google accounts. > Even back when it was, the search had degraded to the point where you > could paste explicit quotes from messages and those messages would not > be in the results page. > > I wholeheartedly see a need to duplicate (and surpass) their efforts. The > Deja News service was wonderful; Google's implementation is not. Even if > someon were to convince them to improve it, they've demonstrated they're > not a good company to rely on for long-term availability of services > that are not active surveillance vehicles. Amen. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lm at mcvoy.com Sat Nov 23 13:45:28 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 19:45:28 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> <20191122213238.GC16255@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191123034528.GE16255@mcvoy.com> On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 01:48:07AM +0000, Jason Stevens wrote: > Plus when building a database having 10gb of human entered data is invaluable.?? I agree even though it is self serving. I'm the guy that posted something on soc.singles and disappeared off usenet for three months (was installing Unix on a supercomputer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, no UUCP, no Usenet). I came back and people were *still* arguing about what I said. Huh. I don't really care for me at this point, but I'd love for my kids to learn about me through all those posts. soc.singles was a distraction, comp.arch, comp.unix-wizards, there is a pretty big window into who I am in those posts. I've been reading 30-35 year old posts I made, and while I'm ashamed of how cocky I was, there was some substance there. So I'd love an interface like dejanews had. You could limit to a set of groups (I don't remember how you did that but it was a thing) and you could limit it over a date range, and of course you could search by string. I think there was more ways to tailor the search. If I can offer up some help getting this back, let me know. --lm From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Sat Nov 23 14:40:29 2019 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 23:40:29 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <20191121195327.0C30918C080@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: Hello! Clem by chance do you remember what the error message response was? It would be interesting to see what phrases were used. For example, on the IBM side of things, a fellow Adam and I both know, coded an entire application so that everything it said and did would be in Klingonese. No I do not remember which one it was, and what have you, I only remember it surfacing during his talk at the IBM offices here in town, during the early years of running Tux on the IBM S/390 systems. I also find it strange that sometimes even Google is thinking in that language. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 3:09 PM Clem Cole wrote: > > > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:53 PM Noel Chiappa wrote: >> >> > From: Arnold Robbins >> >> > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. >> >> And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin, >> courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site once, >> whereupon hilarity ensued. > > One of my favorite stories of the same vein was a masscomp story. We were chasing a rare event (as I recall it was when we first were debugging Multiprocessor stuff and it a lock order problem). But we could not get the customers to tell us about what was happening, since the system recovered quickly, but we might kill a process. We had done a few releases and make a few changes but we could never reproduce it. > > I never knew who it was but someone ??Jack Burness if I had to guess?? put out a patch with a couple of error messages in Klingon and dumped a bunch of information. Sure enough this was noticed, customer stopped, we got the needed data, as they reported the error. But it was a high visibility customer, so the president (Mr. Potatohead) got a phone call. Fossil (our boss) made us swear it would never happen again, but he defended us to the President. We found the bug ;-) From wkt at tuhs.org Sat Nov 23 14:42:34 2019 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 14:42:34 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191123034528.GE16255@mcvoy.com> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191122210645.GB37773@wopr> <20191122213238.GC16255@mcvoy.com> <20191123034528.GE16255@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191123044234.GA31230@minnie.tuhs.org> All, netnews is a bit off-topic for TUHS so perhaps -> COFF? Thanks, Warren From clemc at ccc.com Sat Nov 23 22:51:33 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 07:51:33 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] AOS and IBM/RT [Re: Amdahl UTS, AIX/370, AIX/ESA In-Reply-To: References: <20191121195327.0C30918C080@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: No I don't remember Many details on this one as I did not do it. As I said I think it was a Burness message in the graphics subsystem, but I cannot swear to it. I just remember the time frame and what happened. Roger Gourd's reaction was priceless when Mr Potatohead called us on it. It was one of the times I really learned to respect Roger. That said, Ill see what I can find by asking around. On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 11:41 PM Gregg Levine wrote: > Hello! > Clem by chance do you remember what the error message response was? It > would be interesting to see what phrases were used. For example, on > the IBM side of things, a fellow Adam and I both know, coded an entire > application so that everything it said and did would be in Klingonese. > No I do not remember which one it was, and what have you, I only > remember it surfacing during his talk at the IBM offices here in town, > during the early years of running Tux on the IBM S/390 systems. > > I also find it strange that sometimes even Google is thinking in that > language. > ----- > Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com > "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 3:09 PM Clem Cole wrote: > > > > > > > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 2:53 PM Noel Chiappa > wrote: > >> > >> > From: Arnold Robbins > >> > >> > The Bell Labs guys in some ways were too. > >> > >> And there's the famous? story about the Multics error messages in Latin, > >> courtesty of Bernie Greenberg. One actually appeared at a customer site > once, > >> whereupon hilarity ensued. > > > > One of my favorite stories of the same vein was a masscomp story. We > were chasing a rare event (as I recall it was when we first were debugging > Multiprocessor stuff and it a lock order problem). But we could not get > the customers to tell us about what was happening, since the system > recovered quickly, but we might kill a process. We had done a few releases > and make a few changes but we could never reproduce it. > > > > I never knew who it was but someone ??Jack Burness if I had to guess?? > put out a patch with a couple of error messages in Klingon and dumped a > bunch of information. Sure enough this was noticed, customer stopped, we > got the needed data, as they reported the error. But it was a high > visibility customer, so the president (Mr. Potatohead) got a phone call. > Fossil (our boss) made us swear it would never happen again, but he > defended us to the President. We found the bug ;-) > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From reed at reedmedia.net Sun Nov 24 01:02:31 2019 From: reed at reedmedia.net (reed at reedmedia.net) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 09:02:31 -0600 (CST) Subject: [TUHS] Western Electric "Research Unix" License Contacts In-Reply-To: References: <4B4A388452D2A7418879B110A352A8F4018878C992@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org> Message-ID: Any more details about this? The Dec. 1973 agreement with Univ. of California is "solely for academic and educational purposes" and included "source program code". (Their initial installs were 4th edition.) The slightly revised Dec. 1974 agreement with Katholieke Universiteit is also solely for academic and educational purposes" with nominal service charge of $150. (This was signed in February 1975 a little before the 6th edition came out.) I read multiple times that the first "source" licensee may have been the Univ. of Illinois. But I also read they were the first "source" licensee for the "5th" edition so not any Unix source license in general. Was Univ. of Illinois the first source licensee regardless of the edition (so prior to Dec. 1973 / Jan. 1974)? Any docs/citations on this? https://web.archive.org/web/20160322042314/http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~gillies/mail/dbgillies_ken_thompson.txt suggests the agreement with Univ. of Illinois happened a few months before July 1975, so maybe it couldn't have been the first (since there are copies of agreements prior years with other schools) even though that says the first. The (Univ. of Illinois) Network UNIX RFC 681 is dated March 18, 1975 and NIC 32157 dated May 14, 1975. It references Fifth Edition and has: BELL'S POLICY IN THE PAST HAS BEEN TO LISCENSE THE SYSTEM TO UNIVERSITIES FOR A NOMINAL FEE, $150.00, AND UNFORTUNATELY FOR A COST OF $20,000.00 TO "NONUNIVERSITY" INSTITUTIONS. Since the NIC has later date that the RFC maybe this was updated later than the RFC date so the commercial cost is really about the 6th edition? Does anyone have a copy of the software agreement for a non-university, or without the "solely for academic" clause, or for $20,000 from early 1975 (or for 5th edition)? This 1983 Byte magazine article https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-10/1983_10_BYTE_08-10_UNIX#page/n133/mode/2up says the 6th edition was first Unix to be sold to commercial firms. A company license was $20,000 and a educational license was $200. Anyone have a copy of any 6th edition license agreement? (The author of https://wiki.tuhs.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=publications:theses:gmp_thesis.pdf says has a copy signed May 12, 1977 but I couldn't get in contact with yet.) I understand the agreement for 7th Edition included a clause saying a course curriculum couldn't discuss or describe the code. (John Lions clause). Does anyone have a 7th edition license? (Educational or otherwise?) (Again the author of above thesis says has copy of a 7th edition education license signed Feb. 20, 1981.) Does anyone have Exhibit F -- the "32V Software Agreement" dated April 1, 1979 -- for the AT&T/USL vs. BSDI/Univ. of California Jun 1992 complaint (or Exhibit B to the DeFazio Affidavit)? (See 920724.complaint.txt and more details in 930107.amicus.txt and 930108.oppose.txt.) Or maybe the 1981 relicense? What does it mean about the often mentioned first commercial version from AT&T wasn't until System III (Unix Release 3.0) in 1982? This is confusing since documented references to commercial versions in early 1975. Is this about AT&T proper instead of Bell Labs? Or maybe about official commercial support? (RFC 681 which mentions the $20,000 non-university license fee also mentions RAND, Lincoln Laboratories, and Inco had Network UNIX source code, but unsure if that means that had the commercial license too. There are other commercial licenses long prior to System III, but maybe it is about professional support.) From clemc at ccc.com Sun Nov 24 07:25:08 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 16:25:08 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Western Electric "Research Unix" License Contacts In-Reply-To: References: <4B4A388452D2A7418879B110A352A8F4018878C992@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org> Message-ID: Jeremy, I have described much of this in previous messages. So to recap.... The first licensee was Columbia University (Lou Katz), 4th Edition and I >>believe<< Harvard was second, but it might have been someone else in NYC. I was always under the impression that Rand Corp was the first commercial license, when a couple of Harvard Students wanted to bring it west. CMU, MIT, UofI were all about 1-3 years later. I believe MIT and CMU started with 5th edition and UofI 6th. Chesson is no longer with us to verify, but I think Steve Holmgren was in on that, and I believe I have seem him on a couple of other mailing lists. CMU was definitely 5th edition to start, and quickly went to 6th. MIT had it early also since, like CMU, they had interns and OYOC students from the Labs, so code went freely both ways in those days. The redistribution license is a little more hazy. It was either Peter Weiner at ISC or the folks at Wollongong. I had always been under the belief it was Peter, but Werner has some data that shows Wollongong was either at the same time or shortly thereafter. These were custom licenses for V6 and its not clear about certain details and Werner seems to think not exactly the same (*i.e.* Wollongong negotiated some special terms no one else had). Al Arms (AT&T legal) is likely to be the only person that really knows for sure, as he was the common thread on all it in the early days. With Seventh Edition, Al wrote the first general commercial redistribution license with sliding fees etc. If you wanted a 7th edition license, any previous licenses we voided. There was great moaning about the fees. After about 6 months, Prof Dennis Allison of Stanford (who was consulting for just about all of us in those days), brokered a meeting at Ricki's Hyatt in Palo Alto, I want to say winter 1980. This was the beginning of the more global negotiation with what would become the System III license (all flavors). Again this license superseded all previous ones. And thus the #1 president for the later OSF creation came into being, so called: '*Stable Licensing Terms*.' When the System V license was released, AT&T changed things again. By the time of SVR3 the commercial folks had had enough and a war ensued. On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 10:03 AM wrote: > Any more details about this? > > The Dec. 1973 agreement with Univ. of California is "solely for > academic and educational purposes" and included "source program code". > (Their initial installs were 4th edition.) > > The slightly revised Dec. 1974 agreement with Katholieke Universiteit > is also solely for academic and educational purposes" with nominal > service charge of $150. (This was signed in February 1975 a little > before the 6th edition came out.) > > I read multiple times that the first "source" licensee may have been the > Univ. of Illinois. But I also read they were the first "source" licensee > for the "5th" edition so not any Unix source license in general. > > Was Univ. of Illinois the first source licensee regardless of the > edition (so prior to Dec. 1973 / Jan. 1974)? Any docs/citations on > this? > > > https://web.archive.org/web/20160322042314/http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~gillies/mail/dbgillies_ken_thompson.txt > suggests the agreement with Univ. of Illinois happened a few months > before July 1975, so maybe it couldn't have been the first (since there > are copies of agreements prior years with other schools) even though > that says the first. > > The (Univ. of Illinois) Network UNIX RFC 681 is dated March 18, 1975 and > NIC 32157 dated May 14, 1975. It references Fifth Edition and has: > > BELL'S POLICY IN THE PAST HAS BEEN TO LISCENSE THE SYSTEM TO > UNIVERSITIES FOR A NOMINAL FEE, $150.00, AND UNFORTUNATELY FOR A COST > OF $20,000.00 TO "NONUNIVERSITY" INSTITUTIONS. > > Since the NIC has later date that the RFC maybe this was updated later > than the RFC date so the commercial cost is really about the 6th > edition? > > Does anyone have a copy of the software agreement for a non-university, > or without the "solely for academic" clause, or for $20,000 from early > 1975 (or for 5th edition)? > > This 1983 Byte magazine article > > https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-10/1983_10_BYTE_08-10_UNIX#page/n133/mode/2up > says the 6th edition was first Unix to be sold to commercial firms. A > company license was $20,000 and a educational license was $200. > > Anyone have a copy of any 6th edition license agreement? > (The author of > > https://wiki.tuhs.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=publications:theses:gmp_thesis.pdf > says has a copy signed May 12, 1977 but I couldn't get in contact with > yet.) > > I understand the agreement for 7th Edition included a clause saying a > course curriculum couldn't discuss or describe the code. (John > Lions clause). > > Does anyone have a 7th edition license? (Educational or otherwise?) > (Again the author of above thesis says has copy of a 7th edition > education license signed Feb. 20, 1981.) > > Does anyone have Exhibit F -- the "32V Software Agreement" dated April > 1, 1979 -- for the AT&T/USL vs. BSDI/Univ. of California Jun 1992 > complaint (or Exhibit B to the DeFazio Affidavit)? (See > 920724.complaint.txt and more details in 930107.amicus.txt and > 930108.oppose.txt.) Or maybe the 1981 relicense? > > What does it mean about the often mentioned first commercial > version from AT&T wasn't until System III (Unix Release 3.0) in 1982? > This is confusing since documented references to commercial versions in > early 1975. Is this about AT&T proper instead of Bell Labs? Or maybe > about official commercial support? > > (RFC 681 which mentions the $20,000 non-university license fee also > mentions RAND, Lincoln Laboratories, and Inco had Network UNIX source > code, but unsure if that means that had the commercial license too. > There are other commercial licenses long prior to System III, but maybe > it is about professional support.) > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From krewat at kilonet.net Sun Nov 24 08:25:45 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 17:25:45 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191123013213.GA30784@hal9k> References: <201911211323.xALDNP0u000778@freefriends.org> <87sgmh43xy.fsf@vuxu.org> <20191122201801.GA5637@hal9k> <20191123013213.GA30784@hal9k> Message-ID: On 11/22/2019 8:32 PM, Justin R. Andrusk wrote: > > Yes, that's how the clustering works with Elasticsearch. You setup > multiple nodes that are part of a cluster and data is replicated across > all of them. If one goes down, you don't lose any data as the others > will reconstitute the data. > Yes, I know, I was legitimately asking ;) art .k From mparson at bl.org Sun Nov 24 12:19:11 2019 From: mparson at bl.org (Michael Parson) Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2019 20:19:11 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Steve Bellovin recounts the history of USENET In-Reply-To: <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> References: <201911191901.xAJJ1d76006989@skeeve.com> <20191121031423.GC23794@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <4cea77334701f2c001f2715c6350534e@bl.org> On 2019-11-20 21:14, Larry McVoy wrote: > Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading > those, wished he had gone into more detail. > > On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable > archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then, > so far as I know, the searchable part went away. Deja News was a customer of the data center I worked at back in '97-'99, smartnap.net. My usenet server fed directly into theirs, which made all of my other customers (and several other people on the net) want to peer with me, since one of the ways some people judged how "good" a usenet feed was was how quickly a post could be viewed on dejanews.com. They took up about 1/4 the space of our ~12k sq ft facility. My current boss was one of the news admins there. As I understood it, they had pretty much everything from when they started, plus had donated tapes of older stuff that they would periodically load up and add to the online bits. By the time Google bought them, they'd dropped the 'News' part of their name and were focusing on being a product search engine under the name "Deja." All Google was really interested in was the usenet archives. > If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet, > my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids > that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on > comp.unix-wizards, etc. Searching for an old username of mine on group.google.com finds posts I made in 1993, when I first started using usenet in college. -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX KF5LGQ From rich.salz at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 08:39:30 2019 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 17:39:30 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte Message-ID: Historically important he says. The guy had creds. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1198706617967095809?s=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lm at mcvoy.com Mon Nov 25 08:52:39 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 14:52:39 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out of building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't read back. On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 05:39:30PM -0500, Richard Salz wrote: > Historically important he says. The guy had creds. > https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1198706617967095809?s=19 -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From jcapp at anteil.com Mon Nov 25 08:50:52 2019 From: jcapp at anteil.com (Jim Capp) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 17:50:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <32111433.6670.1574635852949.JavaMail.root@zimbraanteil> I still have an exabyte scsi drive. You can read it with Linux. You just need a suitable SCSI card. tar/cpio all work as expected. From: "Richard Salz" To: "TUHS main list" Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2019 5:39:30 PM Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte Historically important he says. The guy had creds. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1198706617967095809?s=19 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rp at servium.ch Mon Nov 25 08:58:50 2019 From: rp at servium.ch (Rico Pajarola) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 14:58:50 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 2:53 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out of > building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't read > back. > We called them buffered dev-nulls. TBH, that's what we called most tapes except for DLTs. > On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 05:39:30PM -0500, Richard Salz wrote: > > Historically important he says. The guy had creds. > > https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1198706617967095809?s=19 > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Mon Nov 25 09:45:28 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 18:45:28 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: I have two and they have found them to be spotting years later. I have them in an FreeBSD box with SCSI. On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 5:59 PM Rico Pajarola wrote: > > > On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 2:53 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > >> Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out of >> building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't read >> back. >> > We called them buffered dev-nulls. > > TBH, that's what we called most tapes except for DLTs. > > > >> On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 05:39:30PM -0500, Richard Salz wrote: >> > Historically important he says. The guy had creds. >> > https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1198706617967095809?s=19 >> >> -- >> --- >> Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com >> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm >> > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 25 11:41:02 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 12:41:02 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out > of building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't > read back. I've had all sorts of problems with those drives. Fortunately there was an Exabyte agent not far from us, so they got a lot of our business. -- Dave From ggm at algebras.org Mon Nov 25 11:42:36 2019 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 11:42:36 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. I am going to get a friend to come play with rubber bands and WD40 but I'm not hopeful. Bunch of data going to be rotting on tape. -G On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 11:41 AM Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out > > of building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't > > read back. > > I've had all sorts of problems with those drives. Fortunately there was > an Exabyte agent not far from us, so they got a lot of our business. > > -- Dave From lm at mcvoy.com Mon Nov 25 13:24:04 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 19:24:04 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> So that sounds like a different problem. People correct me if I'm wrong but the exabyte drives seemed to have a head alignment problem. If you bumped the drive, the head moved and it stayed moved. So now it can't read the tape because the head is offset. I have no data to support this but I suspect someone that really understood these drives might be able to move the head back in alignment. On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 11:42:36AM +1000, George Michaelson wrote: > I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. > > I am going to get a friend to come play with rubber bands and WD40 but > I'm not hopeful. > > Bunch of data going to be rotting on tape. > > -G > > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 11:41 AM Dave Horsfall wrote: > > > > On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > > Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out > > > of building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't > > > read back. > > > > I've had all sorts of problems with those drives. Fortunately there was > > an Exabyte agent not far from us, so they got a lot of our business. > > > > -- Dave -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 25 13:29:02 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 14:29:02 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, George Michaelson wrote: > I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) Oh, if you must use one, make sure to use data-quality tapes, not the cheaper media. -- Dave From jon at fourwinds.com Mon Nov 25 13:34:05 2019 From: jon at fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 19:34:05 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Dave Horsfall writes: > On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, George Michaelson wrote: > > > I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > > recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. > > They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) > > Oh, if you must use one, make sure to use data-quality tapes, not the > cheaper media. > > -- Dave I have several generations of these too. I also have several crates of 9-track tapes, QIC-24 tapes, QIC-150 tapes, and various generations of DDS DAT tapes. I don't think that I have anything worth keeping on these as I've transfered worthwhile stuff to newer media over time. Hard to believe that the entire contents of a 9-track tape fit in a negligible amount of memory these days. The thing that's kept me from getting these out of my basement is that I'd prefer to erase them first, just in case. Does anybody have experience with a decent bulk tape eraser? Jon From lm at mcvoy.com Mon Nov 25 13:36:42 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2019 19:36:42 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 02:29:02PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, George Michaelson wrote: > > >I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > >recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. > > They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) Really? Are we talking about those tapes that looked like reel to reel audio tapes but bigger? Like this? https://www.canajunfinances.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/9-Track-Tape.jpg Because those are 1000x more reliable than an exabyte tape, they just worked. Pretty much no matter what, you can spool up that tape and it will read. 30 years later it will read. Exabyte won't read 20 minutes later. From pechter at gmail.com Mon Nov 25 13:59:19 2019 From: pechter at gmail.com (William Pechter) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 03:59:19 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] In-Reply-To: <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> , <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: I was successful with a Radio Shack VHS tape eraser on floppy disks. Should handle 8mm and DDS as well as VHS. No guarantee of the quality of the wipe as far as data recovery on the tapes because I never had a drive working long enough to test at home. Got DDS2 and exabyte jukeboxes but the drives crapped out. Bill William Pechter ________________________________ From: TUHS on behalf of Jon Steinhart Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2019 10:34:05 PM To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Subject: Re: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] Dave Horsfall writes: > On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, George Michaelson wrote: > > > I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > > recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. > > They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) > > Oh, if you must use one, make sure to use data-quality tapes, not the > cheaper media. > > -- Dave I have several generations of these too. I also have several crates of 9-track tapes, QIC-24 tapes, QIC-150 tapes, and various generations of DDS DAT tapes. I don't think that I have anything worth keeping on these as I've transfered worthwhile stuff to newer media over time. Hard to believe that the entire contents of a 9-track tape fit in a negligible amount of memory these days. The thing that's kept me from getting these out of my basement is that I'd prefer to erase them first, just in case. Does anybody have experience with a decent bulk tape eraser? Jon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Mon Nov 25 14:53:20 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 15:53:20 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] In-Reply-To: <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, Jon Steinhart wrote: > The thing that's kept me from getting these out of my basement is that > I'd prefer to erase them first, just in case. Does anybody have > experience with a decent bulk tape eraser? I had a bunch of tapes (some strange type for an early "home computer" belonging to my deceased father) that my brother wanted to bulk-erase, as they contained my father's business details etc. Now, it transpired that one of my clients at the time happened to be a certain department of the police, that specialised in, err, phone-tapping in real time i.e. a known drug-dealer would use the phone, an alarm would go off, and away went the tape recorders (both cassette and mag) along with humans listening in. I'm afraid that I can't say much more than that... Anyway, into their bulk eraser went the tapes, and out came blanks. This was confirmed when said brother decided to read a tape, and found that he couldn't :-) So, if you happen to know someone in that area... -- Dave From clemc at ccc.com Tue Nov 26 01:25:17 2019 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 10:25:17 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: Somewhere in the basement, I have tape eraser that was recommended by one of my brothers (who ran KHOU's Sports department for 30 years and it was a piece of gear they used all the time for professional video tapes). I haven't used it much, but I have used it for 9-tracks and seems to have worked. FWIW: I got it here at a (in)famous local electronics place near MIT (Eli Hefferon and Sons - 'A Nerdi Knight Holy Place') I must have gotten it in the early/mid 1980s for about $75, I remember it was much more expensive than the Radio Shack thing - but my bro said it really worked. At the time I was doing some consulting for a NYC law firm and I had to document to the courts that all the data I had been delivered was properly destroyed. They were satisfied and never heard anything more about it. It seems to have erased everything have had near it when it on. In fact, I was always a little worried that it will erase unintended stuff too when I use it. It hums and vibrates on the table and you are supposed to move the tape horizontal to it and make circular motions over it. I had taken my watch and wedding ring off the first time I ever tried it and it moved my watch from a table about 3 feet away. I was pretty impressed. On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 10:59 PM William Pechter wrote: > I was successful with a Radio Shack VHS tape eraser on floppy disks. > Should handle 8mm and DDS as well as VHS. No guarantee of the quality of > the wipe as far as data recovery on the tapes because I never had a drive > working long enough to test at home. Got DDS2 and exabyte jukeboxes but > the drives crapped out. > > Bill > > William Pechter > > ------------------------------ > *From:* TUHS on behalf of Jon Steinhart < > jon at fourwinds.com> > *Sent:* Sunday, November 24, 2019 10:34:05 PM > *To:* The Eunuchs Hysterical Society > *Subject:* Re: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk > erasing ] > > Dave Horsfall writes: > > On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, George Michaelson wrote: > > > > > I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > > > recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. > > > > They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) > > > > Oh, if you must use one, make sure to use data-quality tapes, not the > > cheaper media. > > > > -- Dave > > I have several generations of these too. I also have several crates of > 9-track tapes, QIC-24 tapes, QIC-150 tapes, and various generations of > DDS DAT tapes. I don't think that I have anything worth keeping on these > as I've transfered worthwhile stuff to newer media over time. Hard to > believe that the entire contents of a 9-track tape fit in a negligible > amount of memory these days. > > The thing that's kept me from getting these out of my basement is that > I'd prefer to erase them first, just in case. Does anybody have experience > with a decent bulk tape eraser? > > Jon > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Nov 26 03:07:00 2019 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:07:00 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> On 11/24/19 7:24 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > So that sounds like a different problem. People correct me if I'm > wrong but the exabyte drives seemed to have a head alignment problem. They are 8mm helical-head drives. they wouldn't go out of alignment by bumping them, the worse would be the tape would lose tension if you smacked the tensioning arms hard enough They do have a lot of rubber parts inside. Rollers crack and belts go soft. I have several dozen dead EX8200s from that. I have a whole box of 8mm backup tapes that just came in, and a small number of working drives. The Linux software I wrote to do 9 track tape recovery from a SCSI 9 track drive works just fine on an Exabyte. And I'm not offering to read Jason's mystery reels. From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Nov 26 03:13:07 2019 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:13:07 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <201911250334.xAP3Y5T0098307@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: <2cd13c37-94d9-c813-dc43-c0cf7ed52640@bitsavers.org> The radio shack 43-232's will take care of things, they just have limited duty-cycles There are lots on eBay Sometimes the pro ones for 1/2" tape show up that are about 12" square with a timer I have one, but I've looked at the analog output of a 1/2" tape drive after a pass with the RS, and there isn't much left. On 11/25/19 7:25 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > Somewhere in the basement, I have tape eraser that was recommended by one of my brothers From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Nov 26 03:40:22 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 12:40:22 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> A few years back, I decided to go through my stack of 8mm Exabyte-written tapes... An early Exabyte 8200 2GB Exabyte drive was useless. A 2/5G drive worked. There were errors on one or two tapes. But each and every one was an analog 8mm video tape, not a real data tape. And I was able to splice the backup set enough so that whatever it was written with would be happy enough to restore the data once pieced back together. A mix of tar, and ufsbackup for the most part. During this process, I bought an Exabyte Mammoth off eBay - didn't use it much, but it read those old tapes just fine. I was able to recover scads of personal stuff that I already had copies of, along with a few dumps of the USENET systems I was using to serve as a 3-modem BBS for USENET. And yes, sometimes, I go back into old backup tapes to recover data I already have on disk. I hate bit-rot, I do whatever I can to mitigate it. art k. PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. Around 50% of them I dealt with all got into a mode within the first year where they would accept a tape, and just kick it back out right away. Because they were under support, they were just replaced, so I never looked into it hardware-wise. On 11/25/2019 12:07 PM, Al Kossow wrote: > > On 11/24/19 7:24 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: >> So that sounds like a different problem. People correct me if I'm >> wrong but the exabyte drives seemed to have a head alignment problem. > They are 8mm helical-head drives. they wouldn't go out of alignment by > bumping them, the worse would be the tape would lose tension if you > smacked the tensioning arms hard enough > > They do have a lot of rubber parts inside. > Rollers crack and belts go soft. I have several dozen dead EX8200s from that. > > I have a whole box of 8mm backup tapes that just came in, and a small > number of working drives. The Linux software I wrote to do 9 track tape recovery > from a SCSI 9 track drive works just fine on an Exabyte. > > And I'm not offering to read Jason's mystery reels. > > > > > > From lm at mcvoy.com Tue Nov 26 03:45:15 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:45:15 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: > PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed like crap. From jon at fourwinds.com Tue Nov 26 03:49:10 2019 From: jon at fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:49:10 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <201911251749.xAPHnAal230353@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Larry McVoy writes: > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: > > PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. > > It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these > drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only > tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel > and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed > like crap. Well, I'd say even from an audio perspective DATs were crap. Just not a good technology. Before DATs I used Beta decks with a PCM-601ES for audio; was better than DAT probably because of the larger geometry. Same reason that 9 track tapes last a long time - larger features. In weird DAT tech, I have (although it's currently loaned out), one of the SGI Archive Python drives that allows the DDS layer to be turned off so that audio can be read and written directly. From norman at oclsc.org Tue Nov 26 04:12:08 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:12:08 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte Message-ID: <1574705532.29583.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Snotty remarks aside, I have a couple of Exabyte drives in my home world. They haven't been used for a long time, but when they were (for some years I used them as a regular backup device) they worked just fine. I've pinged the guy. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From norman at oclsc.org Tue Nov 26 04:18:26 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:18:26 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] Message-ID: <1574705910.29838.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> I had a hand-held degausser, but lent it to someone years ago and never got it back. It was actually Exabyte that made me buy it. I bought a new 8505 through a reseller to supersede the 8200 I was using for home backups. It turned out the 8505's firmware refused to overwrite a tape already written at any but the highest density, so I couldn't reuse any of my existing backup tapes. Exabyte insisted it was a feature, not a bug. So I gave up and bought a degausser so I could turn a used tape into a blank tape so the damn tape drive would write on it. For further vintage-computing amusement: I decided to buy at that time because the reseller had arranged a deal with Exabyte: trade in any old tape drive, working or not, and get a couple of hundred bucks off on a brand-new 8505. So I gave the reseller an old, broken TK05 I had lying around. My sales contact for the reseller was a former service tech at the same company, so I figured (correctly) he'd get the joke. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From imp at bsdimp.com Tue Nov 26 04:29:34 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 11:29:34 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 10:07 AM Al Kossow wrote: > > > On 11/24/19 7:24 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > So that sounds like a different problem. People correct me if I'm > > wrong but the exabyte drives seemed to have a head alignment problem. > > They are 8mm helical-head drives. they wouldn't go out of alignment by > bumping them, the worse would be the tape would lose tension if you > smacked the tensioning arms hard enough > > They do have a lot of rubber parts inside. > Rollers crack and belts go soft. I have several dozen dead EX8200s from > that. > > I have a whole box of 8mm backup tapes that just came in, and a small > number of working drives. The Linux software I wrote to do 9 track tape > recovery > from a SCSI 9 track drive works just fine on an Exabyte. > > And I'm not offering to read Jason's mystery reels. > IIRC, the main issue from back in the day was different densities on the same form-factor tapes. So if you want to the same model 8mm drive, it works, if you go to a different (older?) model, it wouldn't. Eg, going from the 8500 -> 8200 caused problems due to data density issues. IIRC, you could write low density data tapes on the 8500 for interchange with the 8200, but it wasn't the default on some platforms? But it's been a long time and my memory is hazy... so long that Exabyte went bankrupt, several new tenants tried to rent the old space, the developer that bought it at the exabyte firesale wen bankrupt too and the new developers that bought it have torn down the old Exabyte offices in Boulder and replaced it with a set of luxury apartments... I could be misremembering... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Nov 26 04:34:33 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:34:33 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <320e0de3-3bb5-4839-c209-1947efc89fdb@kilonet.net> On 11/25/2019 12:45 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: >> PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. > It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these > drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only > tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel > and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed > like crap. > The Exabyte 5GB and up stuff was pretty good. LTOs, after having worked with them for the past 13 years, I can definitely say, are quit awesome. DLT tapes and especially robots, well, it took HP about 5 years to get the firmware right for a certain robot, the model of which, I don't recall ... art k. From rminnich at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 05:12:42 2019 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 11:12:42 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Irix on MIPS -- was kernel mode paged In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Ah thinks Warner, that was exactly what I was trying to recall. And I am reminded as well how overloaded the term 'paged' is ... but yeah, in this case, I was looking for examples where the kernel ran with essentially no mmu but user programs did. Note that on Alpha there was an identity mapped space with no MMU as well but that was only for PAL mode and firmware that used PAL mode (like LinuxBIOS). On modern systems we have RISC-V with the no MMU M mode, and I just got to thinking that running a kernel in M mode would be "what's old is new again" :-) Thanks On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 7:24 PM Warner Losh wrote: > > > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 2:12 PM ron minnich wrote: >> >> I'm looking for a reference to any Unix ports where the kernel ran in >> a non-paged address space and user mode was paged. I could swear this >> was done at some point, and memory says it was on a soft-TLB system >> like the MIPS, to avoid TLB pollution and TLB fault overhead. >> >> But maybe I'm nuts. I am happy to hear either answer. > > > Mips had KSEG0 which didn't go through TLB and was mapped to physical memory. Some MIPS kernels ran in this space to avoid TLB issues... > > Warner From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 07:08:20 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:08:20 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <320e0de3-3bb5-4839-c209-1947efc89fdb@kilonet.net> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> <320e0de3-3bb5-4839-c209-1947efc89fdb@kilonet.net> Message-ID: I'm not an expert on mag tapes, but it makes sense to me that 9-track tapes, where the tracks "line up" when the tape is wound onto a reel, suffer more "print-through" than helical scan tapes, where tracks are not aligned with those under them on a reel. I recall a suggestion that 9-track tapes should be mounted and rewound once in a while, to reduce print-through. We used Exabytes for disk backups for years, back when tape capacity exceeded disk capacity. I doubt I'll see that again, but, as noted I'm not an expert on mag tapes. On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 1:35 PM Arthur Krewat wrote: > On 11/25/2019 12:45 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: > >> PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. > > It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these > > drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only > > tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel > > and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed > > like crap. > > > > The Exabyte 5GB and up stuff was pretty good. LTOs, after having worked > with them for the past 13 years, I can definitely say, are quit awesome. > > DLT tapes and especially robots, well, it took HP about 5 years to get > the firmware right for a certain robot, the model of which, I don't > recall ... > > art k. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron at ronnatalie.com Tue Nov 26 07:11:34 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (ron at ronnatalie.com) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:11:34 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> <320e0de3-3bb5-4839-c209-1947efc89fdb@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <125201d5a3d4$eb504c00$c1f0e400$@ronnatalie.com> Our problem wasn’t so much that the Exabyte tapes would go bad as the drives themselves would keel over on a regular basis. It’s pretty much what drove us away from them. The intelligence community did a lot of studies on archival storage devices. The fundamental truth was to keep refreshed in the online domain rather than spending ages on static media. From: TUHS On Behalf Of John P. Linderman Sent: Monday, November 25, 2019 4:08 PM To: Arthur Krewat Cc: The Unix Heritage Society Subject: Re: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte I'm not an expert on mag tapes, but it makes sense to me that 9-track tapes, where the tracks "line up" when the tape is wound onto a reel, suffer more "print-through" than helical scan tapes, where tracks are not aligned with those under them on a reel. I recall a suggestion that 9-track tapes should be mounted and rewound once in a while, to reduce print-through. We used Exabytes for disk backups for years, back when tape capacity exceeded disk capacity. I doubt I'll see that again, but, as noted I'm not an expert on mag tapes. On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 1:35 PM Arthur Krewat > wrote: On 11/25/2019 12:45 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: >> PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. > It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these > drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only > tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel > and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed > like crap. > The Exabyte 5GB and up stuff was pretty good. LTOs, after having worked with them for the past 13 years, I can definitely say, are quit awesome. DLT tapes and especially robots, well, it took HP about 5 years to get the firmware right for a certain robot, the model of which, I don't recall ... art k. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 07:30:35 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:30:35 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <125201d5a3d4$eb504c00$c1f0e400$@ronnatalie.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> <320e0de3-3bb5-4839-c209-1947efc89fdb@kilonet.net> <125201d5a3d4$eb504c00$c1f0e400$@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: Fair enough, Ron. I recall that we had to replace Exabyte drives more often than 9-track drives. On the other hand, I don't recall ever having an Exabyte tape go bad, or being unable to restore a lost file (or entire drive). Replacing a drive was chump change compared to losing a drive. Plus, the Exabyte tapes were compact, and could easily have a paper label inserted to indicate what was on them when hundreds were stored side-by-side on a shelf. My labels were roundly mocked by Tom Limoncelli in one of his Sysadmin books, but when a user came in wanting a file restored, being able to identify which tape contained the most recent backup was no laughing matter (to the user). On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 4:12 PM wrote: > Our problem wasn’t so much that the Exabyte tapes would go bad as the > drives themselves would keel over on a regular basis. It’s pretty much > what drove us away from them. The intelligence community did a lot of > studies on archival storage devices. The fundamental truth was to keep > refreshed in the online domain rather than spending ages on static media. > > > > > > *From:* TUHS *On Behalf Of *John P. > Linderman > *Sent:* Monday, November 25, 2019 4:08 PM > *To:* Arthur Krewat > *Cc:* The Unix Heritage Society > *Subject:* Re: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte > > > > I'm not an expert on mag tapes, but it makes sense to me that 9-track > tapes, where the tracks "line up" when the tape is wound onto a reel, > suffer more "print-through" than helical scan tapes, where tracks are not > aligned with those under them on a reel. I recall a suggestion that 9-track > tapes should be mounted and rewound once in a while, to reduce > print-through. We used Exabytes for disk backups for years, back when tape > capacity exceeded disk capacity. I doubt I'll see that again, but, as noted > I'm not an expert on mag tapes. > > > > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 1:35 PM Arthur Krewat wrote: > > On 11/25/2019 12:45 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote: > >> PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun was using, were awful. > > It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these > > drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only > > tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel > > and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed > > like crap. > > > > The Exabyte 5GB and up stuff was pretty good. LTOs, after having worked > with them for the past 13 years, I can definitely say, are quit awesome. > > DLT tapes and especially robots, well, it took HP about 5 years to get > the firmware right for a certain robot, the model of which, I don't > recall ... > > art k. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 26 07:38:07 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 08:38:07 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125032404.GM18200@mcvoy.com> <0a6fb097-fe79-1633-0205-1c45f0a56953@bitsavers.org> <96b55e5e-4b05-f7b7-c2ae-efdae7c18b2f@kilonet.net> <20191125174515.GY18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: > It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these > drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only > tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel and > the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed like > crap. I see you've never enjoyed the thrills of "print through" on the 9-tracks, nor the build-up of gunk (the then Australian Atomic Energy Commission had a "tape cleaner" whereby the tape was basically run over a sharp blade). And as for the QIC-150 drive that would occasionally fall back to what I would call a QIC-75 when presented with media previously written at a lower density... I recall that an EPROM upgrade fixed that. -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Tue Nov 26 08:34:02 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 09:34:02 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote: >> They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) > > Really? Are we talking about those tapes that looked like reel to reel > audio tapes but bigger? Like this? > > https://www.canajunfinances.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/9-Track-Tape.jpg Yes. > Because those are 1000x more reliable than an exabyte tape, they just > worked. Pretty much no matter what, you can spool up that tape and it > will read. 30 years later it will read. Please read my reply about print-through, build-up of gunk, etc. I'd be surprised if a 9-track was 100% readable 30 years on. > Exabyte won't read 20 minutes later. Bit of an exaggeration, but yes in principle. -- Dave From drb at msu.edu Tue Nov 26 08:46:48 2019 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 17:46:48 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: (Your message of Tue, 26 Nov 2019 09:34:02 +1100.) References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191125224649.3D1D125EDE8@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> > I'd be surprised if a 9-track was 100% readable 30 years on. I've read quite a few of them, including some stored in crappy conditions, without errors. The stuff is pretty robust. Sticky shed is an issue, for which there are a number of palliative techniques. De From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Tue Nov 26 08:57:00 2019 From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 17:57:00 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 24 Nov 2019 at 22:37, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 02:29:02PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, George Michaelson wrote: > > > > >I just failed with a Sun DAT drive. Cable and card bought online, > > >recognized by the mt command, but all it does is eject tapes. > > > > They're worse than 9-track tapes, and that's saying something :-) > > Really? Are we talking about those tapes that looked like reel to reel > audio tapes but bigger? Like this? > > https://www.canajunfinances.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/9-Track-Tape.jpg > > Because those are 1000x more reliable than an exabyte tape, they just > worked. Pretty much no matter what, you can spool up that tape and it > will read. 30 years later it will read. > > Exabyte won't read 20 minutes later. > I think that certain amount of the reliability issue, as far as both the tapes and the drives are concerned, has to do with scale. Those 8mm Exabyte tapes (DDS tapes, too) are much thinner and hence more easily damaged than a large 9 track reel. If thin tape in a cartridge gets fouled up past a certain point, forget it, there's no salvaging that cartridge. If open reel tape gets damaged and you really need what's on it you can hope that the mechanism can read past the damaged part (a possibility), or as a last resort you could make a careful splice and then attempt to retrieve the rest of the data. One of the other issues, totally independent of tape, is the rubber chosen by the manufacturers for the drive belts and rollers. Some rubber, stored properly, will still be in usable shape after twenty or thirty years. The rubber on the rollers of my Sun QIC-150 drive? A goopy mess which rendered the drive useless as well as a tape. But yeah, about 15 years ago I was asked to retrieve some data from Exabyte 8200 tapes that had been written 10 years prior. I went through three drives and countless hours of frustration just to read a half-dozen tapes with some really important information on them. "Archive format" indeed. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stewart at serissa.com Tue Nov 26 11:38:20 2019 From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 20:38:20 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191125033642.GP18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <1EFF5E89-CFFC-4D05-8A1C-57ECFF0607A8@serissa.com> I deleted the original message, but I happened to find an Exabyte EX8505 SCSI drive in the basement just now… Centronics style SCSI sconnectors. I might have cables somewhere. Pretty sure I used it in the ‘0’s from a linux system or laptop, since I’ve never had a Sun. Who wanted one? -Larry From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 27 07:10:50 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 08:10:50 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! Message-ID: Seen in the FreeBSD Quarterly Report: gets(3) retirement Contact: Ed Maste gets is an obsolete C library routine for reading a string from standard input. It was removed from the C standard as of C11 because there was no way to use it safely. Prompted by a comment during Paul Vixie's talk at vBSDCon 2017 I started investigating what it would take to remove gets from libc. The patch was posted to Phabricator and refined several times, and the portmgr team performed several exp-runs to identify ports broken by the removal. Symbol versioning is used to preserve binary compatibility for existing software that uses gets. The change was committed in September, and will be in FreeBSD 13.0. This project was sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation. And the world is a slightly safer place... -- Dave From norman at oclsc.org Wed Nov 27 07:59:31 2019 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 16:59:31 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! Message-ID: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> We retired gets from Research UNIX back in 1984 or perhaps earlier, with no serious pain because replacing it wasn't hard and everybody agreed with the reason. I'm glad to hear some part of the rest of the world is catching up. We also decided to retire the old Enigma-derived crypt(1), except we didn't want to throw it out entirely in case someone had an old encrypted file and wanted the contents back. So it was removed from the manual and the binary moved to /usr/games. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From ggm at algebras.org Wed Nov 27 08:31:29 2019 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 08:31:29 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! In-Reply-To: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: I have managed to forget most of my C issues, but "does it gobble the \n or does it leave the \n" sticks, because gets() was bound into it, and because Python perpetuates it in line-mode reading. On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 8:00 AM Norman Wilson wrote: > > We retired gets from Research UNIX back in 1984 or perhaps > earlier, with no serious pain because replacing it wasn't > hard and everybody agreed with the reason. > > I'm glad to hear some part of the rest of the world is > catching up. > > We also decided to retire the old Enigma-derived crypt(1), > except we didn't want to throw it out entirely in case > someone had an old encrypted file and wanted the contents > back. So it was removed from the manual and the binary > moved to /usr/games. > > Norman Wilson > Toronto ON From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 27 08:32:07 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 09:32:07 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! In-Reply-To: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 26 Nov 2019, Norman Wilson wrote: > We retired gets from Research UNIX back in 1984 or perhaps earlier, with > no serious pain because replacing it wasn't hard and everybody agreed > with the reason. Interesting... Then again,. you weren't bound by POSIX :-) > I'm glad to hear some part of the rest of the world is catching up. The wheels grind slowly... > We also decided to retire the old Enigma-derived crypt(1), except we > didn't want to throw it out entirely in case someone had an old > encrypted file and wanted the contents back. So it was removed from the > manual and the binary moved to /usr/games. Back in the Usenet days, somebody posted the Cryptobreakers Workbench (?) which was designed to work with crypt-encrypted files; it's probably still around somewhere... Fairly easy to break as I recall, because it emulated a single-rotor Enigma. -- Dave From barto at kdbarto.org Wed Nov 27 09:06:14 2019 From: barto at kdbarto.org (Katherine Barto) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 15:06:14 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! In-Reply-To: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <300A9E4F-27B8-4A1A-ADB2-A9220CC6CFF3@kdbarto.org> On Nov 26, 2019, at 1:59 PM, Norman Wilson wrote: > > We also decided to retire the old Enigma-derived crypt(1), > except we didn't want to throw it out entirely in case > someone had an old encrypted file and wanted the contents > back. So it was removed from the manual and the binary > moved to /usr/games. I particularly like that the old crypt was reduced to a game. David From rich.salz at gmail.com Wed Nov 27 09:29:36 2019 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 18:29:36 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! In-Reply-To: References: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 5:33 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > Back in the Usenet days, somebody posted the Cryptobreakers Workbench (?) > Bob Baldwin, comp.sources.unix volume 10; now available at https://github.com/AlbertVeli/cbw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Wed Nov 27 10:29:26 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 11:29:26 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] FreeBSD retires gets()! In-Reply-To: References: <1574805575.17040.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 26 Nov 2019, Richard Salz wrote: > > Back in the Usenet days, somebody posted the Cryptobreakers Workbench > > (?) > > Bob Baldwin, comp.sources.unix volume 10; now available at > https://github.com/AlbertVeli/cbw Thanks! -- Dave From jfoust at threedee.com Thu Nov 28 05:31:11 2019 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 13:31:11 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20191127204311.448C393D8C@minnie.tuhs.org> At 04:52 PM 11/24/2019, Larry McVoy wrote: >Good luck with that. I had a 4/470 that had an exabyte, wheeled it out of >building 5 at Sun and into building 9 at SGI and the tapes wouldn't read >back. I jumped in on that Twitter thread when I saw it. Two years ago or so, I attempted to read a couple dozen old backup tapes from the mid 1990s. Half were Archive Python DDS-2 era, written on two different drives that I still had, as 'tar' tapes from SGI workstations. The other half were Exabyte 8500 8mm, some 'tar' from SGI and Linux and Amiga, some Windows NTBACKUP. I set up a fresh Linux box with an Adaptec SCSI card. I couldn't get any of the DDS-2 to read, either on the original hardware that wrote them, or on a newer STD28000N drive I bought on eBay, a pull from an old Apple server. I could write new tapes on the drive, just couldn't read any old ones. My attempts included reading some tapes I know I'd received from other people (that is, written on other drives) that I know I had been able to read on this hardware back in the day. They wouldn't read, either. On the other hand, I could read the majority of the Exabytes, even on the original drive I had retained, as well as another I'd bought used in the early 2000s. Some had bad blocks here and there. The tougher task was trying to find contemporary tools that could process the data stream from an old NTBACKUP, especially a stream with corruption from missing chunks, as I wasn't in the mood to try to rebuild an NT machine with SCSI to let NTBACKUP deal with the drive directly, and I think it would probably fail harder on direct drive errors. The Amiga-made 'tar' archives were readable by 'tar' but the file time stamps weren't right when burst under Linux. I didn't debug that yet. - John From dave at horsfall.org Thu Nov 28 06:53:54 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 07:53:54 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna Message-ID: We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. -- Dave From krewat at kilonet.net Thu Nov 28 06:56:10 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 15:56:10 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: <20191127204311.448C393D8C@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191127204311.448C393D8C@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On 11/27/2019 2:31 PM, John Foust wrote: > I couldn't get any of the DDS-2 to read, either on the original hardware that wrote them, or on a newer STD28000N drive I bought on eBay, a pull from an old Apple server. I could write new tapes on the drive, just couldn't read any old ones. My attempts included reading some tapes I know I'd received from other people (that is, written on other drives) that I know I had been able to read on this hardware back in the day. They wouldn't read, either. That sounds like a block size issue. Usually telling dd to use a larger block than the tape has is fine, but if the default is smaller than what's on the tape, it'll fail. Depending on the drive firmware, the OS support for that particular drive, etc, you may or may not get warnings or errors that actually mean anything. A long time ago, I attempted to read some 9-track TOPS-10 tapes using a Sun and a 6250 BPI capable tape drive. Nothing would read, it looked like there were actually no files on the tape whatsoever. So I gave up, but kept the tapes because they contained a lot of personal stuff I had done in high school and a few years after. Years later, I got my hands on a Sun3/280 with 9-track tape drive, and attempted to read them again. Same thing, looked like there were no files on the tape. Started increasing the block size, and VOILA, got data. Very odd circumstance, but block size has a lot to do with trying to read tapes. QIC-150, 8mm, 9-track, I've run into it a lot. art k. From dave at horsfall.org Thu Nov 28 07:25:20 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 08:25:20 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte In-Reply-To: References: <20191124225239.GG18200@mcvoy.com> <20191127204311.448C393D8C@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On Wed, 27 Nov 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote: [...] > Very odd circumstance, but block size has a lot to do with trying to > read tapes. QIC-150, 8mm, 9-track, I've run into it a lot. Yep; you tended to use the biggest block size you could, in order to cut down on the number of inter-record gaps (and of course, efficiency). -- Dave From imp at bsdimp.com Thu Nov 28 10:06:18 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 17:06:18 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: What do the J and F stand for? Warner On Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 1:54 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing > Unix, and > was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next > time > you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. > > -- Dave > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davida at pobox.com Thu Nov 28 10:46:53 2019 From: davida at pobox.com (David Arnold) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 11:46:53 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > On 28 Nov 2019, at 11:06, Warner Losh wrote: > > What do the J and F stand for? The “J” is Jospeh (and Joe); I don’t know about the “F”. d From finnoleary at inventati.org Thu Nov 28 10:43:31 2019 From: finnoleary at inventati.org (Finn O'Leary) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 00:43:31 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Wikipedia[0] lists his name as Joseph F. Ossanna, so they don't seem to know either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ossanna - finn On 2019-11-28 00:06, Warner Losh wrote: > What do the J and F stand for? > > Warner > > On Wed, Nov 27, 2019, 1:54 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: > >> We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing >> Unix, and >> was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the >> next >> time >> you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. >> >> He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. >> >> -- Dave >> From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Nov 28 13:43:53 2019 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 19:43:53 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20191128034353.GG18200@mcvoy.com> I'll say this every time his name comes up, it's one of the great regrets of my life that I did not get to meet this guy. I think troff is genius, you can ask me why and I'll tell you, don't want to bore the list with a ton of arcane, but useful if you care about it, stuff. Troff was amazing, just look at what was built on it, eqn, pic, tbl, and more. I so wish I could have met this guy and told him how much his work meant to me. I've used troff for everything, I have a perl script that took troff -ms input and produced a web site. I ran a company for 18 years, our logo was done in troff. I ran a conference that did most of the papers in LaTex and I encouraged troff and the people who use troff came to me and said "this was so much easier than LaTex". Yep. So he may not have the fame that Ken and Brian and Dennis and Doug and others have but he's one of my heros. Along with all of them and other Bell Labs folks. RIP Joseph Ossanna, you are missed. I wish I had met you. On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 07:53:54AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, the next > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > > He also accomplished a lot more, too much to summarise here. > > -- Dave -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Thu Nov 28 19:19:34 2019 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 10:19:34 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing Unix, without Joe there wouldn't be any *NIX (Remember the Patent Department), and we all would be bored running Windows.. From ron at ronnatalie.com Fri Nov 29 03:16:05 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (ron at ronnatalie.com) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 12:16:05 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1f8101d5a60f$857d2870$90777950$@ronnatalie.com> I've done some searching through newspaper archives and various Ancestry.com-indexed databases. I haven't found any use of a middle name spelled out, always F. I even have an image of his draft card and it just reads "Joseph F. Ossanna, Jr." However, digging a little deeper finds that his father went by the name "Joseph FRANK Ossanna" so it's quite likely that this was the son's middle name (since he was a "junior"). I suspect he might have avoided spelling out Frank because people would have difficulty undersding it wasn't short for Francis or something. From ron at ronnatalie.com Fri Nov 29 03:18:08 2019 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (ron at ronnatalie.com) Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 12:18:08 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna In-Reply-To: <1f8101d5a60f$857d2870$90777950$@ronnatalie.com> References: <1f8101d5a60f$857d2870$90777950$@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <1f8301d5a60f$ce241890$6a6c49b0$@ronnatalie.com> Just to follow up, I found JF in the 1940 census records. He indeed was Joseph Frank Ossanna, Jr. > -----Original Message----- > From: TUHS On Behalf Of > ron at ronnatalie.com > Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2019 12:16 PM > To: 'Finn O'Leary' ; tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org > Subject: Re: [TUHS] In Memoriam: J.F.Ossanna > > I've done some searching through newspaper archives and various > Ancestry.com-indexed databases. I haven't found any use of a middle > name > spelled out, always F. I even have an image of his draft card and it just > reads "Joseph F. Ossanna, Jr." > > However, digging a little deeper finds that his father went by the name > "Joseph FRANK Ossanna" so it's quite likely that this was the son's middle > name (since he was a "junior"). I suspect he might have avoided spelling > out Frank because people would have difficulty undersding it wasn't short for > Francis or something. > > From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sat Nov 30 07:52:58 2019 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2019 22:52:58 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] another conversion of the CSRG BSD SCCS archives to Git In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20191129215258.Vgu-C%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Greg A. Woods wrote in : |I've been fixing and enhancing James Youngman's git-sccsimport to use |with some of my SCCS archives, and I thought it might be the ultimate |stress test of it to convert the CSRG BSD SCCS archives. | |The conversion takes about an hour to run on my old-ish Dell server. | |This conversion is unlike others -- there is some mechanical compression |of related deltas into a single Git commit. | |https://github.com/robohack/ucb-csrg-bsd Thanks for taking the time to produce a CSRG repo that seems to mimic changesets as they really happened. As i never made it there on my own, i have switched to yours some weeks ago. (Mind you, after doing "gc --aggressive --prune=all" the repository size has more than halved, it was the final reason to prepare new repositories on a vhost with good internet connection before getting this through my flaky wifi here. Storage and internet bandwidth and their cost really do not seem to bother anyone anymore. I have no offense in mind, i only recognized it (the hard way).) |https://github.com/robohack/git-sccsimport | |-- | Greg A. Woods | |Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack |Planix, Inc. Avoncote Farms --End of --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)