From cowan at ccil.org Sun May 1 01:42:23 2022 From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2022 08:42:23 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Aleph Null in Software Practice & Experience. In-Reply-To: <20220430104546.1C13022135@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <20220430104546.1C13022135@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 30, 2022 at 3:53 AM Ralph Corderoy wrote: accompanied by a note that Lang isn't א₀. > Note that on correct Unicode renderers this is being shown as null-aleph instead of aleph-null. The reason for that is that you are using the Hebrew letter, which is right-to-left and makes the neutral subscript zero character rendered right-to-left as well. So instead of א U+05D0 HEBREW LETTER ALEF, you need the identical-looking but left-to-right character ℵ U+2113 ALEF SYMBOL, which will give you ℵ₀. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andreww591 at gmail.com Sun May 1 19:30:28 2022 From: andreww591 at gmail.com (Andrew Warkentin) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 03:30:28 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? Message-ID: What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was actually the first. From ron at ronnatalie.com Sun May 1 21:43:38 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 13:43:38 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin wrote: > > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > actually the first. From robpike at gmail.com Sun May 1 21:56:12 2022 From: robpike at gmail.com (Rob Pike) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 21:56:12 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: The folks at Bell Labs were asked to figure out if Mark Williams had copied Unix directly or via too much knowledge already obtained, or whether it was truly a clean room recreation. I don't remember all the details, but it became clear after a while that it was indeed a reasonably clean rewrite. This was done by looking for corner cases that were an accident of the original implementation and would be unlikely to appear in a version created separately. One detail that did stick with me was the discovery during this process that ppt, the paper tape simulator, mispunched a letter, I think "R", but the Mark Williams version did not. Was that compelling? Not on its own, but it was funny and memorable. -rob On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 9:46 PM Ron Natalie wrote: > Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. > > > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin wrote: > > > > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > > actually the first. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Mon May 2 00:03:25 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 10:03:25 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: One of the reasons that Mark Williams attracted the attention of AT&T lawyers was because they actually engaged former members of the Bell Labs UNIX research group who had prior access to ATT research source code to work on pieces of their system. THE BIG RED FLAG.... However, everyone at MW was painfully aware of the IP lawsuit potential in what they were doing. So they took great pains to avoid that occuring. I believe they could read the MAN page and any supporting documents, But they had to write everything from scratch. This is from a USENIX conference dialog with a mutual friend who passed through MW on his way west to fame and fortune. I believe a version of Coherent resides at Sourceforge in the operating systems archives. On Sun, May 1, 2022, 8:01 AM Rob Pike wrote: > The folks at Bell Labs were asked to figure out if Mark Williams had > copied Unix directly or via too much knowledge already obtained, or whether > it was truly a clean room recreation. I don't remember all the details, but > it became clear after a while that it was indeed a reasonably clean rewrite. > > This was done by looking for corner cases that were an accident of the > original implementation and would be unlikely to appear in a version > created separately. One detail that did stick with me was the discovery > during this process that ppt, the paper tape simulator, mispunched a > letter, I think "R", but the Mark Williams version did not. Was that > compelling? Not on its own, but it was funny and memorable. > > -rob > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 9:46 PM Ron Natalie wrote: > >> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. >> >> > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin >> wrote: >> > >> > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived >> > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris >> > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a >> > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the >> > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence >> > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of >> > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which >> > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was >> > actually the first. >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Mon May 2 00:09:07 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 10:09:07 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity. On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. > > > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin wrote: > > > > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > > actually the first. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rminnich at gmail.com Mon May 2 04:08:29 2022 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 11:08:29 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the code." Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if the full path existed. oops. But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to handle AIX being different from just about everything else. On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > > I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity. > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie wrote: >> >> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. >> >> > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin wrote: >> > >> > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived >> > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris >> > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a >> > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the >> > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence >> > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of >> > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which >> > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was >> > actually the first. >> From sauer at technologists.com Mon May 2 04:22:19 2022 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer (he/him)) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 13:22:19 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <2eafe1f9-bfe5-64b1-b85d-e89e88e897e8@technologists.com> I don't recall that particular case, but AIX was definitely derived from AT&T code. See https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ HOWEVER, when the 1983 transition happened and AIX became a primary site effort (as discussed in the cited reference), there were those new to the effort and new to Unix that thought they could redefine behaviors inappropriately. For example, I recall one person trying to enforce only one root login at a time. Larry made it quite clear to that person that we were not going to violate Unix tradition in that manner. Charlie On 5/1/2022 1:08 PM, ron minnich wrote: > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > code." > > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if > the full path existed. oops. > > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to > handle AIX being different from just about everything else. > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin > wrote: >> >> I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity. >> >> >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie wrote: >>> >>> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. >>> >>>> On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin wrote: >>>> >>>> What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived >>>> from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris >>>> is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a >>>> genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the >>>> first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence >>>> but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of >>>> my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which >>>> predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was >>>> actually the first. >>> -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From drsalists at gmail.com Mon May 2 05:49:12 2022 From: drsalists at gmail.com (Dan Stromberg) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 12:49:12 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <2eafe1f9-bfe5-64b1-b85d-e89e88e897e8@technologists.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <2eafe1f9-bfe5-64b1-b85d-e89e88e897e8@technologists.com> Message-ID: I don't know where the fellow got his information, but I was told that AIX started out as AT&T code, but went through not one but two rewrites. On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 11:55 AM Charles H Sauer (he/him) < sauer at technologists.com> wrote: > I don't recall that particular case, but AIX was definitely derived from > AT&T code. See > > https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ > > HOWEVER, when the 1983 transition happened and AIX became a primary site > effort (as discussed in the cited reference), there were those new to > the effort and new to Unix that thought they could redefine behaviors > inappropriately. > > For example, I recall one person trying to enforce only one root login > at a time. Larry made it quite clear to that person that we were not > going to violate Unix tradition in that manner. > > Charlie > > On 5/1/2022 1:08 PM, ron minnich wrote: > > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > > code." > > > > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. > > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if > > the full path existed. oops. > > > > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to > > handle AIX being different from just about everything else. > > > > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin > > wrote: > >> > >> I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first > released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive > Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the > printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based > print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW > passed into obscurity. > >> > >> > >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > >>> > >>> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. > >>> > >>>> On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > >>>> from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > >>>> is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > >>>> genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > >>>> first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > >>>> but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > >>>> my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > >>>> predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > >>>> actually the first. > >>> > > -- > voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com > fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ > Facebook/Google/Twitter > : CharlesHSauer > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sauer at technologists.com Mon May 2 06:37:11 2022 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer (he/him)) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 15:37:11 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <2eafe1f9-bfe5-64b1-b85d-e89e88e897e8@technologists.com> Message-ID: <66d4f8a7-d803-913d-f969-25b29652b23d@technologists.com> Except to the extent discussed in my cited post, that seems overstated to me, untrue through AIX 3 on 6K and RT hardware, unlikely to be true post AIX 3. On 5/1/2022 2:49 PM, Dan Stromberg wrote: > > I don't know where the fellow got his information, but I was told that > AIX started out as AT&T code, but went through not one but two rewrites. > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 11:55 AM Charles H Sauer (he/him) > > wrote: > > I don't recall that particular case, but AIX was definitely derived > from > AT&T code. See > https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ > > > HOWEVER, when the 1983 transition happened and AIX became a primary > site > effort (as discussed in the cited reference), there were those new to > the effort and new to Unix that thought they could redefine behaviors > inappropriately. > > For example, I recall one person trying to enforce only one root login > at a time. Larry made it quite clear to that person that we were not > going to violate Unix tradition in that manner. > > Charlie > > On 5/1/2022 1:08 PM, ron minnich wrote: > > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > > code." > > > > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. > > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if > > the full path existed. oops. > > > > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to > > handle AIX being different from just about everything else. > > > > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin > > > > wrote: > >> > >> I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was > first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of > inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server > transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone > came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on > which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity. > >> > >> > >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie > wrote: > >>> > >>> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many > years ago. > >>> > >>>> On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin > > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not > derived > >>>> from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic > Unix)? Idris > >>>> is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK > it's not a > >>>> genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which > was the > >>>> first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix > influence > >>>> but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the > top of > >>>> my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > >>>> predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if > it was > >>>> actually the first. > >>> > > -- > voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer at technologists.com > > fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ > Facebook/Google/Twitter > : CharlesHSauer > -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From mphuff at gmail.com Mon May 2 06:55:05 2022 From: mphuff at gmail.com (Michael Huff) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 12:55:05 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I realize this doesn't help but there's an old story about dmr being asked in the early or mid 80's to look at a clone which he checked for specific bugs he was aware of (but apparently no one else was). It turned out to be clean. I don't remember the details but that might be a good starting point? Apologies to Andrew who gets this mail twice (in his in his private mailbox, and on the list). I assumed gmail would send it to the list as I intended but it didn't, so I had to resend. Sorry! On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 1:34 AM Andrew Warkentin wrote: > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > actually the first. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Mon May 2 12:08:51 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Sun, 1 May 2022 22:08:51 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days experience with it on a POS cash register fixing a client issue. The shocker - they changed all the error messages to error codes with a look at the manual requirement. Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite but more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > code." > > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if > the full path existed. oops. > > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to > handle AIX being different from just about everything else. > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin > wrote: > > > > I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first > released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive > Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the > printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based > print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW > passed into obscurity. > > > > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > >> > >> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. > >> > >> > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin > wrote: > >> > > >> > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > >> > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > >> > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > >> > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > >> > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > >> > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > >> > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > >> > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > >> > actually the first. > >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From phil at ultimate.com Mon May 2 12:42:03 2022 From: phil at ultimate.com (Phil Budne) Date: Sun, 01 May 2022 22:42:03 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Ron Minnich wrote: > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > code." My memory, from having a "finger" program that tried to display the foreground/active process for each tty/login/utmp entry, is that there it was possible there were multiple code bases (tho it's possible there was just one, and it mutated wildly across major versions), all called "AIX" (and as my old boss, Barry Shein (BZS) at Boston University said, they all "will remind you of Unix"), there were (at least) versions for: RT PC RS/6000 (POWER, PowerPC) PS/2 I never had access to AIX/370, but BZS got a chance to try it out in a VM on the academic computing S/390, and ISTR he said it finished compiles before you hit return. There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called "ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites. My memory is also that IBM had a very broad license for SVR2 and when the Open Software Foundation came together (with people who weren't AT&T or Sun), IBM was able to offer that up as a code base. gether, From ron at ronnatalie.com Mon May 2 16:46:26 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie) Date: Mon, 02 May 2022 08:46:26 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Back around 1989 our company was provided the AIX 370 and PS/2 source code. This was a distinct code base from either of the RT UNIXes. It was a pretty straight-forward UNIX kernel with what IBM termed the Transparent Computing Facility (derived from the UCLA locus stuff). We were porting it to an IBM-produced four-processor i860 board called the W4. It was fairly neat in that the file system could support hidden versions of the executables for each of the different platforms, and if you invoked one that didn't exist on your local hardware, it automatically ran it on one where it existed. The W4 was a microchannel card that had its own frame buffer (I wrote an X Server for it) but lived inside a PS2, so during the port, it was easy just to use the 386 versions of the bulk of the executables. When working at IBM's Palo Alto facility I could even execute on the 370-variant there as well. The W4 kernel looked more like the 370 than the 386 interestingly. I hacked on the -mm macro package to make it stylistically look like IBM's manuals so we could produce our documentation to look like there's. We had to have our facility inspected to hold IBM's source code (I referred to the room as the toxic waste dump). Our other joke is that IBM had a multiplexed console that they called the HFT (High Function Terminal). When I wrote the simple console for the W4 kernel, I called it the LFT. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Mon May 2 19:55:14 2022 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Mon, 02 May 2022 10:55:14 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Aleph Null in Software Practice & Experience. In-Reply-To: References: <20220430104546.1C13022135@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <20220430125207.4DDE8200B5@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <20220502095514.7C2BC21547@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Rob, > The output of "unicode 5d0-5e7" (robpike.io/cmd/unicode has the > command) is fun. > > 05d0 א 05d1 ב 05d2 ג 05d3 ד > 05d4 ה 05d5 ו 05d6 ז 05d7 ח > 05d8 ט 05d9 י 05da ך 05db כ > 05dc ל 05dd ם 05de מ 05df ן > 05e0 נ 05e1 ס 05e2 ע 05e3 ף > 05e4 פ 05e5 ץ 05e6 צ 05e7 ק > > For comparison, here is "unicode 3d0-3e7". It will be fun to watch how > it's rendered. > > 03d0 ϐ 03d1 ϑ 03d2 ϒ 03d3 ϓ > 03d4 ϔ 03d5 ϕ 03d6 ϖ 03d7 ϗ > 03d8 Ϙ 03d9 ϙ 03da Ϛ 03db ϛ > 03dc Ϝ 03dd ϝ 03de Ϟ 03df ϟ > 03e0 Ϡ 03e1 ϡ 03e2 Ϣ 03e3 ϣ > 03e4 Ϥ 03e5 ϥ 03e6 Ϧ 03e7 ϧ In the terminal where I read and write email, they're all as if ‘0041 A’. But save the email's text/plain to foo.txt and foo.html, add a little HTML to foo.html, and the browser, here Firefox, presents the Hebrew in both as 05d0 05 אd1 05 בd2 05 גd3 ד 05d4 05 הd5 05 וd6 05 זd7 ח 05d8 05 טd9 05 יda 05 ךdb כ 05dc 05 לdd 05 םde 05 מdf ן 05e0 05 נe1 05 סe2 05 עe3 ף 05e4 05 פe5 05 ץe6 05 צe7 ק due to the mix of Unicode's strong, weak, and neutral bi-directional character types. To see what I intend above needs a ‘broken’ renderer, like a terminal. For those with more intelligent renderers, it's as if runes normally drawn as 00c0 À 00c1 Á 00c2 Â 00c3 Ã became 00c0 00 Àc1 00 Ác2 00 Âc3 Ã Wrapping each of the Hebrew characters in the text and HTML files in LRI...PDI, LRI U+2066 Left-to-right isolate PDI U+2069 Pop directional isolate so the first row becomes 0030 0035 0064 0030 0020 2066 05d0 2069 0020 0030 0035 0064 0031 0020 2066 05d1 2069 0020 0030 0035 0064 0032 0020 2066 05d2 2069 0020 0030 0035 0064 0033 0020 2066 05d3 2069 000a has Firefox display the tables as intended. Perhaps the unicode command should do this to ensure correct display, especially if some terminals ever start to improve? I note that vim(1) here doesn't realise LRI and PDI are zero width so the cursor position drifts past the end of the visible line. ed(1) copes without a murmur. -- Cheers, Ralph. From robpike at gmail.com Mon May 2 20:03:08 2022 From: robpike at gmail.com (Rob Pike) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 20:03:08 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Aleph Null in Software Practice & Experience. In-Reply-To: <20220502095514.7C2BC21547@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <20220430104546.1C13022135@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <20220430125207.4DDE8200B5@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <20220502095514.7C2BC21547@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: Under option, maybe. I'm not a fan of putting invisible characters into a program designed to translate numbers into cut-and-pasteable text. Plus, as you said, it just makes other things break, although perhaps they should be encouraged not to. -rob On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 7:56 PM Ralph Corderoy wrote: > > Hi Rob, > > > The output of "unicode 5d0-5e7" (robpike.io/cmd/unicode has the > > command) is fun. > > > > 05d0 א 05d1 ב 05d2 ג 05d3 ד > > 05d4 ה 05d5 ו 05d6 ז 05d7 ח > > 05d8 ט 05d9 י 05da ך 05db כ > > 05dc ל 05dd ם 05de מ 05df ן > > 05e0 נ 05e1 ס 05e2 ע 05e3 ף > > 05e4 פ 05e5 ץ 05e6 צ 05e7 ק > > > > For comparison, here is "unicode 3d0-3e7". It will be fun to watch how > > it's rendered. > > > > 03d0 ϐ 03d1 ϑ 03d2 ϒ 03d3 ϓ > > 03d4 ϔ 03d5 ϕ 03d6 ϖ 03d7 ϗ > > 03d8 Ϙ 03d9 ϙ 03da Ϛ 03db ϛ > > 03dc Ϝ 03dd ϝ 03de Ϟ 03df ϟ > > 03e0 Ϡ 03e1 ϡ 03e2 Ϣ 03e3 ϣ > > 03e4 Ϥ 03e5 ϥ 03e6 Ϧ 03e7 ϧ > > In the terminal where I read and write email, they're all as if ‘0041 A’. > But save the email's text/plain to foo.txt and foo.html, add a little HTML > to foo.html, and the browser, here Firefox, presents the Hebrew in both as > > 05d0 05 אd1 05 בd2 05 גd3 ד > 05d4 05 הd5 05 וd6 05 זd7 ח > 05d8 05 טd9 05 יda 05 ךdb כ > 05dc 05 לdd 05 םde 05 מdf ן > 05e0 05 נe1 05 סe2 05 עe3 ף > 05e4 05 פe5 05 ץe6 05 צe7 ק > > due to the mix of Unicode's strong, weak, and neutral bi-directional > character types. > > To see what I intend above needs a ‘broken’ renderer, like a terminal. > For those with more intelligent renderers, it's as if runes normally > drawn as > > 00c0 À 00c1 Á 00c2 Â 00c3 Ã > > became > > 00c0 00 Àc1 00 Ác2 00 Âc3 Ã > > Wrapping each of the Hebrew characters in the text and HTML files in > LRI...PDI, > > LRI U+2066 Left-to-right isolate > PDI U+2069 Pop directional isolate > > so the first row becomes > > 0030 0035 0064 0030 0020 2066 05d0 2069 0020 > 0030 0035 0064 0031 0020 2066 05d1 2069 0020 > 0030 0035 0064 0032 0020 2066 05d2 2069 0020 > 0030 0035 0064 0033 0020 2066 05d3 2069 000a > > has Firefox display the tables as intended. Perhaps the unicode command > should do this to ensure correct display, especially if some terminals > ever start to improve? > > I note that vim(1) here doesn't realise LRI and PDI are zero width > so the cursor position drifts past the end of the visible line. > ed(1) copes without a murmur. > > -- > Cheers, Ralph. From iain at csp-partnership.co.uk Mon May 2 19:21:46 2022 From: iain at csp-partnership.co.uk (Dr Iain Maoileoin) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 10:21:46 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <9D300EA1-7C61-4866-A60B-55BE87375941@csp-partnership.co.uk> > On 2 May 2022, at 03:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > > My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days experience with it on a POS cash register fixing a client issue. The shocker - they changed all the error messages to error codes with a look at the manual requirement. > > Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. > But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite but more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. > License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. In the UK in the 80s IBM had large bill-board adverts that ran along the lines of “…we took UNIX and added a million lines of code …..”. I always thought (rather unfairly) YES, and every one of them was wrong. However one of my car registration plates is "AIX OK”. I changed my mind later on…. > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich > wrote: > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > code." > > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if > the full path existed. oops. > > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to > handle AIX being different from just about everything else. > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin > > wrote: > > > > I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity. > > > > > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie > wrote: > >> > >> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many years ago. > >> > >> > On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin > wrote: > >> > > >> > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > >> > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > >> > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > >> > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which was the > >> > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > >> > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > >> > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > >> > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > >> > actually the first. > >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Mon May 2 22:59:10 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 08:59:10 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: Compiles before the return key That phrase as i recall it i have associated with the Amdahl mainframe, not IBM. Anyone else recall this event at a USENIX conference??? They released a C Compiler for it and I think also a unix version for it. the phrase that they coined to indicate the shear speed of it at the time went something like this - You can compile the entire UNIX kernel in the debounce time of the return key. It was part of the presentation on their C compiler implementation. Perhaps it was IBM and I need to replace some faulty core and rebuild some database indices...... The phrase has been stuck in my head ever since. On Sun, May 1, 2022, 10:43 PM Phil Budne wrote: > Ron Minnich wrote: > > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > > code." > > My memory, from having a "finger" program that tried to display the > foreground/active process for each tty/login/utmp entry, is that there > it was possible there were multiple code bases (tho it's possible > there was just one, and it mutated wildly across major versions), all > called "AIX" (and as my old boss, Barry Shein (BZS) at Boston > University said, they all "will remind you of Unix"), there were (at > least) versions for: > > RT PC > RS/6000 (POWER, PowerPC) > PS/2 > > I never had access to AIX/370, but BZS got a chance to try it out in a > VM on the academic computing S/390, and ISTR he said it finished > compiles before you hit return. > > There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called > "ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites. > > My memory is also that IBM had a very broad license for SVR2 and when > the Open Software Foundation came together (with people who weren't > AT&T or Sun), IBM was able to offer that up as a code base. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > gether, > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Mon May 2 23:16:58 2022 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 13:16:58 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022, 2:43 AM Phil Budne wrote: > Ron Minnich wrote: > > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > > code." > > My memory, from having a "finger" program that tried to display the > foreground/active process for each tty/login/utmp entry, is that there > it was possible there were multiple code bases (tho it's possible > there was just one, and it mutated wildly across major versions), all > called "AIX" (and as my old boss, Barry Shein (BZS) at Boston > University said, they all "will remind you of Unix"), there were (at > least) versions for: > > RT PC > RS/6000 (POWER, PowerPC) > PS/2 > > I never had access to AIX/370, but BZS got a chance to try it out in a > VM on the academic computing S/390, and ISTR he said it finished > compiles before you hit return. > > There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called > "ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites. > The RT 4.3 port was called AOS (for the, "Academic Operating System"). It was mostly Tahoe with NFS and came with most of the sources, but some bits were distributed only as object code: I believe some of the MM bits? Perhaps the MMU code? I vaguely recall this being one of the things people had a hard time with when trying to port Reno and 4.4 to the RT. ACIS was, I believe a marketing term for the RT running AOS as sold to universities. The port was fairly faithful; the C compiler was a bit strange "High C" or "Hi C", bit GCC was available after a while, but had some bug and could not compile the kernel. Charlie Sauer kindly answered some AOS/RT questions on this list a few years ago, but as I'm typing this on my phone, I can't look them up right now. :-( My memory is also that IBM had a very broad license for SVR2 and when > the Open Software Foundation came together (with people who weren't > AT&T or Sun), IBM was able to offer that up as a code base. My understanding is that AIX on the mainframe was closer to OSF/1 than to AIX on the RS/6000, which was rather different than AIX on the RT. RS/6000 was the successor to the RT, and AIX on the latter stopped after version 2, so I'm guessing RS/6k was more evolved than RT AIX, while (as I heard it many years ago) mainframe AIX was its own thing; the name was mostly marketing. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tytso at mit.edu Mon May 2 23:14:54 2022 From: tytso at mit.edu (tytso) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 06:14:54 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 01, 2022 at 10:42:03PM -0400, Phil Budne wrote: > There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called > "ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites. At least in the 80's, there was a BSD 4.3 port for the IBM PC/RT's that was called "AOS", for "Academic Operating System". For proof that my memory isn't playing tricks on me, here's independent confirmation :-) https://archiveos.org/aos/ At the time, it was pretty popular at MIT's Project Athena, mostly because the RT's were contemporaneous with the MicroVax's, but had three times faster integer operations, which made running TeX and LaTeX a far more pleasant experience for those of us who were typesetting papers and problem sets. :-) When AOS was sunset and Athena was frog-marched to use AIX, RT's suddenly became far less popular. :-/ - Ted From lm at mcvoy.com Mon May 2 23:32:16 2022 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 06:32:16 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: <20220502133216.GH24237@mcvoy.com> On Mon, May 02, 2022 at 06:14:54AM -0700, tytso wrote: > On Sun, May 01, 2022 at 10:42:03PM -0400, Phil Budne wrote: > > There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called > > "ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites. > > At least in the 80's, there was a BSD 4.3 port for the IBM PC/RT's > that was called "AOS", for "Academic Operating System". I'm pretty sure it was UW-Madison that did the NFS port to 4.3, I was a grad student there at the time and remember hearing about it. The RT's were pretty nice machines for the time. From clemc at ccc.com Mon May 2 23:50:28 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 09:50:28 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: in blue On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 2:57 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > Back around 1989 our company was provided the AIX 370 and PS/2 source > code. This was a distinct code base from either of the RT UNIXes. > Correct -- AIX for the 370 ISA and 386 were compiled from the same code base > It was a pretty straight-forward UNIX kernel with what IBM termed the > Transparent Computing Facility (derived from the UCLA locus stuff). > Not quite correct. TCF was based on the ideas from the Locus Distributed OS. But not the same code. The Locus Distributed OS was based on a research (V7) kernel originally on 11/70s; although I believe UCLA added BSDism over time and Vax support (I never saw that personally). But more importantly, AIX and TCF itself were also owned by IBM (*i.e.* it was a work for hire of LCC for IBM). Bruce Walker was the implementation lead for both (and one of Jerry's grad students). Locus TNC (which is what OpenSSI for Linux is based on[1]) - although the website seems to be taken down sadly - it never was ported beyond Linux 2.6 kernel) is a completely new implementation yet. I'm one of the architects of the same. We were 'firewalled' so Bruce and our peers could talk about things, but I was never allowed to actually look at the IBM code base. I could >>use<< it to try things out. After the IBM AIX contract ended, Bruce and the old AIX team at LCC was then given full access to TNC source trees which Locus owned the IP. The big difference between the 3 was the Locus was its own OS, that supported UNIX-like features. Whereas TFC was built into a modified/custom AIX kernel and special FS with ad hoc support for the different issues that allow process migration. One of the cool things as Ron pointed out was the TCF allowed the mixing of binaries from Intel and IBM ISAs and the kernel would use whatever processor it needed. With the 3rd generation TNC, the technology was split into 14 separate 'products' that used structured interfaces in the kernel. For instance, the process support was encapsulated in what we called VPROC (similar to the multiple FS style layers from Research and later Sun -* i.e.* the different VFS) and while it worked better if you used the Locus supplied cluster file system (which supported full Unix semantics), basic process migration within the constraints that NFS placed, also worked (the HP implementation was based on NFS, while DEC, Intel, and SRVR4 implementations used CFS). My personal role was much of CFS and some of the utility functions like the Cluster Management System (CMS). In fact, a small demonstration of TNC was done with OS/2 to show that the OS/2 process semantics and the UNIX process semantics could co-exist, but it was never completed as IBM did not buy it. However, some of the technology landed in the Rochesters AS/400 OS in their Posix emulator which Locus also had a hand in building. One of my favorite demos was at a trade show that had a LAN; our folks would bring a PS/2 with an empty hard disk and load a single floppy. Boot the kernel, and add it to the TCF cluster back at LCC. The system immediately was usable, although since the disk was not populated, all binaries had to come across the LAN/WAN. But the caching would start to take over in the background and slowly populated a local copy of /bin, /lib, and the like. Very cool ... Clem [1] Sadly, when I checked this AM, the OpenSSI website seemed to be taken down. I d not believe OpenSSI was ever beyond Linux 2.6 kernel. IMO: It was a shame that the upstream Linux kernel team had been willing to take the VPROC changes, it would have been a very interesting and exciting system enhancement. As Ron said, anyone that used TCF or TNC was pretty much hooked. I'll have to do some more poking to find out what happened. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rich.salz at gmail.com Tue May 3 00:13:14 2022 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 10:13:14 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: I remember hearing that about Cray. The anecdote was they thought their port of "make" was broken because it kept rebuilding everything. It turned out that the timestamp granularity of one second wasn't good enough. Also that if you wanted your program to stop, you needed three 'halt' instructions to make sure the full pipeline got the message. I'm less sure if that is real. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miod at online.fr Tue May 3 00:14:04 2022 From: miod at online.fr (Miod Vallat) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 14:14:04 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: > The RT 4.3 port was called AOS (for the, "Academic Operating System"). It > was mostly Tahoe with NFS and came with most of the sources, but some bits > were distributed only as object code: I believe some of the MM bits? > Perhaps the MMU code? I vaguely recall this being one of the things people > had a hard time with when trying to port Reno and 4.4 to the RT. What was delivered as binary was the Advanced Floating-Point Accelerator microcode. At the end of the AOS work circa 1996, most of the kernel was 4.4, except for the network stack which was 4.3-Reno, and the VM system which was still 4.3 (hence no mmap). > The port was fairly faithful; the C compiler was a bit strange "High C" or > "Hi C", bit GCC was available after a while, but had some bug and could not > compile the kernel. The compiler was Metaware High C. GCC could not be used to compile the kernel sources unchanged, because one of the locore->trap.c paths was relying upon the stack layout used by the compiler. With that fixed, gcc could be used to build a working kernel. Miod From tytso at mit.edu Tue May 3 00:46:51 2022 From: tytso at mit.edu (tytso) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 07:46:51 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 02, 2022 at 09:50:28AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote: > [1] Sadly, when I checked this AM, the OpenSSI website seemed to be taken > down. I d not believe OpenSSI was ever beyond Linux 2.6 kernel. IMO: It > was a shame that the upstream Linux kernel team had been willing to take > the VPROC changes, it would have been a very interesting and > exciting system enhancement. As Ron said, anyone that used TCF or TNC was > pretty much hooked. I'll have to do some more poking to find out what > happened. It looks like some sources and mailung list archives for OpenSSI are still available sourceforage: https://sourceforge.net/p/ssic-linux >From what I can tell, the OpenSSI folks were focsued on porting OpenSSI to various distributions (Fedora, Debian, RHEL), etc., but they were not focused on getting any of their changes upstream. The only evidence I can find of OpenSSI on the Linux Kernel mailing list was a forwarded announcement of OpenSSI 1.0: https://lore.kernel.org/all/410DDFA2.40107 at hp.com/T/#r2b3cfcce5ccd8127a8493e7987349a1921597537 And apparently OpenSSI had patches to e2fsprogs (since they had a clusterfied version of ext3), but no one ever sent the OpenSSI e2fsprogs patches to me for review. So it appears that it was not a matter of "the upstream Linux kernel team.... [being] willing to take the VPROC changes", it was more like no one asked, or prepared patches that could be considered by usptream. - Ted From rminnich at gmail.com Tue May 3 00:50:41 2022 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 07:50:41 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: Someone mentioned the weird message format on AIX. IBM, in many things, was out there ahead of everyone. One of those areas was in "the message catalog", sample doc here: https://www-40.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3SA380673/$file/ieam600_v2r3.pdf For every message there was a short identifier that was the message catalog id, the one that sticks in my mind from years as an operator is IEA013I, which is not in that doc ... IEA013E is, however. This was useful for internationalization. IOW, IBM got it i8n well ahead of a lot of us, in the 19[67]0s or so? The message catalog did not change; the allegedly human readable message was in the local language, if that applied. Which comes to a prank we pulled on a friend. One evening in 1977, we replaced all shell messages with IBM message catalog style messages, and then set that as their login shell. As you might guess, they were *not* amused ;-) On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 7:16 AM Miod Vallat wrote: > > > The RT 4.3 port was called AOS (for the, "Academic Operating System"). It > > was mostly Tahoe with NFS and came with most of the sources, but some bits > > were distributed only as object code: I believe some of the MM bits? > > Perhaps the MMU code? I vaguely recall this being one of the things people > > had a hard time with when trying to port Reno and 4.4 to the RT. > > What was delivered as binary was the Advanced Floating-Point Accelerator > microcode. > > At the end of the AOS work circa 1996, most of the kernel was 4.4, > except for the network stack which was 4.3-Reno, and the VM system which > was still 4.3 (hence no mmap). > > > The port was fairly faithful; the C compiler was a bit strange "High C" or > > "Hi C", bit GCC was available after a while, but had some bug and could not > > compile the kernel. > > The compiler was Metaware High C. GCC could not be used to compile the > kernel sources unchanged, because one of the locore->trap.c paths was > relying upon the stack layout used by the compiler. With that fixed, gcc > could be used to build a working kernel. > > Miod From clemc at ccc.com Tue May 3 01:38:31 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 11:38:31 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 10:46 AM tytso wrote: > So it appears that it was not a > matter of "the upstream Linux kernel team.... [being] willing to take > the VPROC changes", it was more like no one asked, or prepared patches > that could be considered by usptream. > FWIW: I know that at least 3 people on the OpenSSI team were telling me they were told to go away. I do not know the details of the interchange, but doing some Linux work at the time, I too found the reception to kernel changes to often be a tad cold (it took 10 years to get the core RDMA support up-streamed). It's possible the way the OpenSSI team asked, the prayers offered were not acceptable to those in charge at the time. I don't know, but please be careful here. *They were tried and feel that they were rejected.* *That is history*. I understand that you want to try to say, well there is no evidence of the proper emails/git change, *etc.* But that team ran into blocks. So you can be a lawyer about it, or you can try to accept what actually happened to those of us on the other end with some grace. FWIW: Larry M and I have often disagreed about the 'open-ness' of the traditional UNIX releases from AT&T. I suspect we are both right in our position given the history that we each experienced. Larry's position (which I understand and accept) is that from his standpoint, it just was not *open to him *as the University kept things under lock and key. I always find that strange because I had absolutely the opposite history. I know my friend at MIT had free access, I can only assume you enjoyed that yourself/but I'll not try to speak for you. I believe it was available if you had wanted it, while it was not Larry at UWis. I do not know for sure in the case of the OpenSSI team, I know what they have told me, but my >>guess<< is that something similar is happening here. The issue, which I think was similar to the pushback my teams received with RDMA around the same timeframe --> the core Linux kernel team was still trying to fight to be a desktop war and had not yet started to focus on where it would become a major success (enterprise-class system). RDMA (and I suspect OpenSSI too) was not seen as something that was relevant to the desktop war and the creators were discouraged to continue to pursue it. Taking my own experience here, RDMA only got upstreamed because so many people at Intel started working in the Linux kernel team and people like me at Intel who did care about that support, had to be a tad forceful to get it there. As I said, it took about 10 years before it came out. all clustered Linux systems use it. In my own experience when we started that work in the early/mid-1990s, I personally was quite directly told [IIRC to] 'bugger off' in an email from one of the core Linux kernel folks (not you mind you - but I bet you can guess) - that they were not interested in the feature. The word was something on the order of adding RDMA would only make it hard for the VM system and no one would use it. What is interesting is that it's pretty popular and now a lot of hardware is being designed assuming it is there and the Linux implementation frankly is the most complete. I've also seen a number of distros advertise their support for RDMA HW these days. Back to my core point. Adding support for VPROC was invasive to the kernel itself. There is code to support processes in lots of places (For instance the code to send different signals even makes it into some device drivers). So it means moving all the process code into separate modules (like the file systems) and then making the core kernel call indirectly through that layer. Once that layer and functions are added, it means that different process models (like a distributed one needed for something like TNC) become a loadable module. Kernel's that do need it, just load the traditional process model. The other thing that is cool, IMO, it means you can start to play with other process models. Adding processes that use a different API (*e.g.* my comment about the OS/2 demo we did for IBM). Yes, the changes are invasive to add support, but the power is extraordinary. So .... I also, personally know a number of the folks that worked on the OpenSSI project and I suspect they tried to get the VPROC changes upstreamed too, but were ignored/discouraged, and they finally gave up trying. I know at one point Frank started to put VPROC support into FreeBSD, but I don't think that went anywhere either (although I don't think he finished it). I also know that the *Linux port to 2.6 was complete at one point* (I personally had it running on a cluster here at Intel with RDMA too BTW), but I never tried the FreeBSD codebase. And yes, I do think that is a real shame and that it does not speak well of history. History has probably lost something good because at this point the people involved are just not interested in trying anymore. Clem ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Tue May 3 01:43:02 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 11:43:02 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 5:34 AM Andrew Warkentin wrote: > What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not derived > from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic Unix)? Idris > is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK it's not a > genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? I know of none before this that tried to truly 'clone' all the (v6) kernel functionality and many tools. > Similarly, which was the > first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix influence > but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the top of > my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which > predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if it was > actually the first. > Thoth Thucks.... [Kelly Booth gave me one of these tee's years go]. Mike Malcolm did not try to clone UNIX - for one thing, it was in B [which Steve Johnson has spread the gospel of same on his sabbatical). It was not until the Thoth rewrite that became QNX that they tried to ensure all of the Unix behaviors and APIs. Mike was certainly had an influence by UNIX and IIRC his thesis and the Thoth papers reference/compare it. The first non-C style mostly cone was Holt's Tunis in the early 1980-s (in Euclid IIRC - which is similar to, but different from, Hansen and Wirth's Concurrent-Pascal). ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bakul at iitbombay.org Tue May 3 02:16:40 2022 From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 09:16:40 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> On May 2, 2022, at 8:43 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > > Thoth Thucks.... [Kelly Booth gave me one of these tee's years go]. > > Mike Malcolm did not try to clone UNIX - for one thing, it was in B [which Steve Johnson has spread the gospel of same on his sabbatical). It was not until the Thoth rewrite that became QNX that they tried to ensure all of the Unix behaviors and APIs. Mike was certainly had an influence by UNIX and IIRC his thesis and the Thoth papers reference/compare it. IIRC Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge worked with Thoth as students but QNX is not derived from it. I ran across QNX at a contract job in 1986 or so[1]. Back then it fit in 8KB. IIRC the original few versions were mostly written in assembly language or had substantial portions in assembly while most of Thoth was written in C[2]. The original QNX was basically a message passing microkernel. Unix APIs came in much later. [1] I had to debug some obscure problem where the QNX was running on a text to speech board plugged in a PC and was connected to an IBM 370 system. The TTS system was used to allow a salesperson to place an order or something. It failed randomly. In the end it turned out to be an "undocumented" h/w bug in 286 (Intel knew about it but they denied when we asked!). I caught it in the act using a logic analyzer! Anyway, I had to get pretty familiar with QNX then. [2] In 1981 AMD tried to get into computer business via AMC (American Micro Computers). They used Thoth! I interviewed there but in the end joined Fortune Systems. From bakul at iitbombay.org Tue May 3 02:19:34 2022 From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 09:19:34 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> References: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> Message-ID: <5DD10240-A5B0-45E9-A7D2-B74E9C81BF2B@iitbombay.org> > On May 2, 2022, at 9:16 AM, Bakul Shah wrote: > > On May 2, 2022, at 8:43 AM, Clem Cole wrote: >> >> Thoth Thucks.... [Kelly Booth gave me one of these tee's years go]. >> >> Mike Malcolm did not try to clone UNIX - for one thing, it was in B [which Steve Johnson has spread the gospel of same on his sabbatical). It was not until the Thoth rewrite that became QNX that they tried to ensure all of the Unix behaviors and APIs. Mike was certainly had an influence by UNIX and IIRC his thesis and the Thoth papers reference/compare it. > > IIRC Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge worked with Thoth as students but QNX is not derived from it. I ran across QNX at a contract job in 1986 or so[1]. Back then it fit in 8KB. IIRC the original few versions were mostly written in assembly language or had substantial portions in assembly while most of Thoth was written in C[2]. The original QNX was basically a message passing microkernel. Unix APIs came in much later. > > [1] I had to debug some obscure problem where the QNX was running on a text to speech board plugged in a PC and was connected to an IBM 370 system. The TTS system was used to allow a salesperson to place an order or something. It failed randomly. In the end it turned out to be an "undocumented" h/w bug in 286 (Intel knew about it but they denied when we asked!). I caught it in the act using a logic analyzer! Anyway, I had to get pretty familiar with QNX then. > > [2] In 1981 AMD tried to get into computer business via AMC (American Micro Computers). They used Thoth! I interviewed there but in the end joined Fortune Systems. Correction: Thoth was written in "Zed", similar to C. From lm at mcvoy.com Tue May 3 02:29:05 2022 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 09:29:05 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> References: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> Message-ID: <20220502162905.GJ24237@mcvoy.com> On Mon, May 02, 2022 at 09:16:40AM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote: > On May 2, 2022, at 8:43 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > > > > Thoth Thucks.... [Kelly Booth gave me one of these tee's years go]. > > > > Mike Malcolm did not try to clone UNIX - for one thing, it was in B [which Steve Johnson has spread the gospel of same on his sabbatical). It was not until the Thoth rewrite that became QNX that they tried to ensure all of the Unix behaviors and APIs. Mike was certainly had an influence by UNIX and IIRC his thesis and the Thoth papers reference/compare it. > > IIRC Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge worked with Thoth as students but QNX is not derived from it. I ran across QNX at a contract job in 1986 or so[1]. Back then it fit in 8KB. IIRC the original few versions were mostly written in assembly language or had substantial portions in assembly while most of Thoth was written in C[2]. The original QNX was basically a message passing microkernel. Unix APIs came in much later. I was friends with Dan Hildebrandt, one of the 3 people allowed to commit changes to the microkernel in the 1990's. That history seems pretty accurate though Dan told me the commonly used microkernel code fit in 4K of instruction cache, I don't recall what it needed in the data cache. Dan told me they were very careful to not let that bloat, I remember him saying "the instruction cache needs to have space for user code". A refreshing point of view, especially since I was living in "I measured it, it's only 1% slower" AKA "death by a thousand paper cuts". From aek at bitsavers.org Tue May 3 02:13:48 2022 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 09:13:48 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: <18e50521-c3c0-f990-e9f0-b899d572c259@bitsavers.org> On 5/2/22 7:14 AM, Miod Vallat wrote: > The compiler was Metaware High C. GCC could not be used to compile the > kernel sources unchanged, because one of the locore->trap.c paths was > relying upon the stack layout used by the compiler. With that fixed, gcc > could be used to build a working kernel. does that kernel source tree survive anywhere? From clemc at ccc.com Tue May 3 03:14:17 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 13:14:17 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <5DD10240-A5B0-45E9-A7D2-B74E9C81BF2B@iitbombay.org> References: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> <5DD10240-A5B0-45E9-A7D2-B74E9C81BF2B@iitbombay.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 12:19 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > > > > Correction: Thoth was written in "Zed", similar to C. > Indeed - but aw I understand it, Zed like C came from B. ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Tue May 3 03:42:06 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 13:42:06 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> References: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 12:16 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > Thoth as students but QNX is not derived from it. Interesting. Possible I suppose. Derived is probably the operative word here. Of course, it is also quite possible that I could be miss-remember the conversations, but as IIRC both Mike Malcolm and Dan Hildebrandt have said to me about the influence of one on the other when I have spoken with them socially. Also, Kelly (who got the shirt and was at Waterloo during that time), and was the person that introduced me to Mike in the late 1970s; also said something similar to me. FWIW: In the late 1980s, I too used QNX (in C) in a production setting on a 386. Before that, I had played with Thoth in a grad OS course, but I never ran it significantly. That said, my point was that Thoth was not trying to be a UNIX look/work alike from an API standpoint. Thoth, like V, RIG, Accent, *et al*, were all distinct developments that learned from the UNIX work but were not trying to emulate it. When QNX was birthed, the mK was not trying to be UNIX, but they, like Mach later on (after the failure of Accent), did try to supply an application layer UNIX (and later full POSIX) API. The point that started this thread was when UNIX emulated. BTW: I had Ieft out another important Pascal-based UNIX clone. In 1983, Michael Gien published his work in USENIX on Sol. In the early 1990s, he and his team rewrote that in C++ to create Chorus. When OSF announced its long-term strategy for OSF/1 was to be based on Mach; UI announced that the future SVR6 was to be based on Chorus. While the former was eventually released (and I think the sources can still be found in the wild), I did not believe the latter was ever completed. Clem ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bakul at iitbombay.org Tue May 3 03:59:10 2022 From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 10:59:10 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <9EB92333-42A7-401E-A273-D35A681B02A5@iitbombay.org> Message-ID: > On May 2, 2022, at 10:42 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > > > > On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 12:16 PM Bakul Shah > wrote: > Thoth as students but QNX is not derived from it. > Interesting. Possible I suppose. Derived is probably the operative word here. Of course, it is also quite possible that I could be miss-remember the conversations, but as IIRC both Mike Malcolm and Dan Hildebrandt have said to me about the influence of one on the other when I have spoken with them socially. Also, Kelly (who got the shirt and was at Waterloo during that time), and was the person that introduced me to Mike in the late 1970s; also said something similar to me. [I scramble old memories all the time but I seem to remember random facts that are of no use to me :-)] > > FWIW: In the late 1980s, I too used QNX (in C) in a production setting on a 386. Before that, I had played with Thoth in a grad OS course, but I never ran it significantly. > > That said, my point was that Thoth was not trying to be a UNIX look/work alike from an API standpoint. Thoth, like V, RIG, Accent, et al, were all distinct developments that learned from the UNIX work but were not trying to emulate it. When QNX was birthed, the mK was not trying to be UNIX, but they, like Mach later on (after the failure of Accent), did try to supply an application layer UNIX (and later full POSIX) API. Indeed. These were all research OSes. The thing that distinguished Unix was the collection of tools and composability via pipes and shell that made for a very nice development env. As a grad student I didn't quite appreciate this (not having used Unix) but the moment I used it, I was sold on it! From what I remember, A Thoth "team" was about the same as a Unix "process" and Thoth "process" was a thread in a team. That to me was the most interesting part about it. Unix got threads much later. > The point that started this thread was when UNIX emulated. > > BTW: I had Ieft out another important Pascal-based UNIX clone. In 1983, Michael Gien published his work in USENIX on Sol. In the early 1990s, he and his team rewrote that in C++ to create Chorus. I remember Sol but by then I had moved on from Pascal. > When OSF announced its long-term strategy for OSF/1 was to be based on Mach; UI announced that the future SVR6 was to be based on Chorus. While the former was eventually released (and I think the sources can still be found in the wild), I did not believe the latter was ever completed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miod at online.fr Tue May 3 04:46:27 2022 From: miod at online.fr (Miod Vallat) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 18:46:27 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <18e50521-c3c0-f990-e9f0-b899d572c259@bitsavers.org> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <18e50521-c3c0-f990-e9f0-b899d572c259@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: > > The compiler was Metaware High C. GCC could not be used to compile the > > kernel sources unchanged, because one of the locore->trap.c paths was > > relying upon the stack layout used by the compiler. With that fixed, gcc > > could be used to build a working kernel. > > does that kernel source tree survive anywhere? As the person who did that work, it's only in my own AOS tree, which I really ought to publish somewhere eventually. I also have fixes for gcc 2.95 to make it more reliable on the RT. But ENOTIME at the moment... Miod From chet.ramey at case.edu Tue May 3 05:54:15 2022 From: chet.ramey at case.edu (Chet Ramey) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 15:54:15 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <18e50521-c3c0-f990-e9f0-b899d572c259@bitsavers.org> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <18e50521-c3c0-f990-e9f0-b899d572c259@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <111e9c69-ee41-3300-a526-6890e6b44ec9@case.edu> On 5/2/22 12:13 PM, Al Kossow wrote: > On 5/2/22 7:14 AM, Miod Vallat wrote: > >> The compiler was Metaware High C. GCC could not be used to compile the >> kernel sources unchanged, because one of the locore->trap.c paths was >> relying upon the stack layout used by the compiler. With that fixed, gcc >> could be used to build a working kernel. > > does that kernel source tree survive anywhere? I have a copy of the entire source tree. We used it extensively, and I ran it on a castoff RT in my home office for years. -- ``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 rdm at cfcl.com Tue May 3 06:19:33 2022 From: rdm at cfcl.com (Rich Morin) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 13:19:33 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <9D300EA1-7C61-4866-A60B-55BE87375941@csp-partnership.co.uk> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <9D300EA1-7C61-4866-A60B-55BE87375941@csp-partnership.co.uk> Message-ID: <72BBB8A3-4D21-433D-824E-0B7D1123924B@cfcl.com> > On May 2, 2022, at 02:21, Dr Iain Maoileoin wrote: > > ... In the UK in the 80s IBM had large bill-board adverts that ran along the lines of “…we took UNIX and added a million lines of code …..”. > I always thought (rather unfairly) YES, and every one of them was wrong. > > However one of my car registration plates is "AIX OK”. I changed my mind later on…. I love Barry Shein's snark on AIX (and occasionally paraphrase it for Linux): "AIX - It will remind you of Unix." -r From imp at bsdimp.com Tue May 3 06:31:00 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 14:31:00 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 9:41 AM Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 10:46 AM tytso wrote: > >> So it appears that it was not a >> matter of "the upstream Linux kernel team.... [being] willing to take >> the VPROC changes", it was more like no one asked, or prepared patches >> that could be considered by usptream. >> > FWIW: I know that at least 3 people on the OpenSSI team were telling me > they were told to go away. I do not know the details of the interchange, > but doing some Linux work at the time, I too found the reception to kernel > changes to often be a tad cold (it took 10 years to get the core RDMA > support up-streamed). It's possible the way the OpenSSI team asked, the > prayers offered were not acceptable to those in charge at the time. I > don't know, but please be careful here. *They were tried and feel > that they were rejected.* *That is history*. I understand that you > want to try to say, well there is no evidence of the proper emails/git > change, *etc.* But that team ran into blocks. So you can be a lawyer > about it, or you can try to accept what actually happened to those of us on > the other end with some grace. > I know from wearing my FreeBSD hat that random people on mailing lists often say 'nope' and people go away not realizing they aren't the abitors of what gets into FreeBSD. We lost a lot of good contributions because of delays created by scenarios like this... I also know that getting changes into Linux suffers from this and for a long time (especially pre-git) was almost impossible unless you knew someone and were on good terms with them. Also, people will get frustrated after one or two things don't go up and they don't do the rest. Or they do one big huge thing that's impossible to review (maybe it went to the wrong place) and they give up too unless there's an 'advocate' that works with them to make the changes bite-sized and sorts out the wheat from the chaff that's almost always in huge change sets. The process that was documented was hit or miss. Plus lkm wasn't the nicest of places with the best of interactions, which put off a lot of people from even trying... Much has been done to improve things in the last 20 years, but for a while things were truly awful for someone without a huge reputation to get anything non-trivial into Linux. Even today, projects following the Linux model can be difficult to land changes in, even when you are nominally the maintainer of a part of the tree... VPROC was done for 2.6, which is long enough ago to be in the 'bad old days' of getting things upstreamed. It wouldn't surprise me at all that enough things were done wrong, and/or they listened to the wrong people and/or submitted things in the wrong place they the OpenSSI folks just gave up in frustration early on w/o getting the right people's attention... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Tue May 3 07:17:57 2022 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 21:17:57 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022, 2:16 PM Miod Vallat wrote: > > The RT 4.3 port was called AOS (for the, "Academic Operating System"). It > > was mostly Tahoe with NFS and came with most of the sources, but some > bits > > were distributed only as object code: I believe some of the MM bits? > > Perhaps the MMU code? I vaguely recall this being one of the things > people > > had a hard time with when trying to port Reno and 4.4 to the RT. > > What was delivered as binary was the Advanced Floating-Point Accelerator > microcode. Thanks. My memory of all of this is decaying over time. I'd forgotten about the AFPA; I believe our RTs either had a 68881 or 68882, but it's been so long the details are fuzzy: I definitely remember a Motorola FPU, but no longer remember the model. At the end of the AOS work circa 1996, most of the kernel was 4.4, > except for the network stack which was 4.3-Reno, and the VM system which > was still 4.3 (hence no mmap). This happened outside of IBM, didn't it? What prevented the rest of the VM code being ported? > The port was fairly faithful; the C compiler was a bit strange "High C" or > > "Hi C", bit GCC was available after a while, but had some bug and could > not > > compile the kernel. > > The compiler was Metaware High C. GCC could not be used to compile the > kernel sources unchanged, because one of the locore->trap.c paths was > relying upon the stack layout used by the compiler. With that fixed, gcc > could be used to build a working kernel. > I vaguely remember that happening, but by then we had retired the RTs. I vaguely remember Metaware being somewhat religiously extreme, but again the details are fuzzy now. Was there some kind of ecclesiastical reference in the man page? - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Tue May 3 07:30:44 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 17:30:44 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <72BBB8A3-4D21-433D-824E-0B7D1123924B@cfcl.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <9D300EA1-7C61-4866-A60B-55BE87375941@csp-partnership.co.uk> <72BBB8A3-4D21-433D-824E-0B7D1123924B@cfcl.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 4:22 PM Rich Morin wrote: > I love Barry Shein's snark on AIX (and occasionally paraphrase it for > Linux): > > "AIX - It will remind you of Unix." > Henry Spencer's line a few years earlier was: "4.2 is just like Unix, only different." ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Tue May 3 07:36:08 2022 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 21:36:08 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <72BBB8A3-4D21-433D-824E-0B7D1123924B@cfcl.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <9D300EA1-7C61-4866-A60B-55BE87375941@csp-partnership.co.uk> <72BBB8A3-4D21-433D-824E-0B7D1123924B@cfcl.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2022, 8:22 PM Rich Morin wrote: > > On May 2, 2022, at 02:21, Dr Iain Maoileoin > wrote: > > > > ... In the UK in the 80s IBM had large bill-board adverts that ran along > the lines of “…we took UNIX and added a million lines of code …..”. > > I always thought (rather unfairly) YES, and every one of them was wrong. > > > > However one of my car registration plates is "AIX OK”. I changed my > mind later on…. > > I love Barry Shein's snark on AIX (and occasionally paraphrase it for > Linux): > > "AIX - It will remind you of Unix." > One of my favorites: "SMIT happens." - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wkt at tuhs.org Tue May 3 08:02:53 2022 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 08:02:53 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] 2.9BSD with MSCP Support Message-ID: <20220502220253.GA21349@minnie.tuhs.org> [ This also in from Peter Klapper. The files are at: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.9BSD_MSCP/ ] This is a 2.9BSD kernel with a backported MSCP driver from 2.10BSD I tried to make a clean integration of the driver into the 2.9BSD source tree in order to be able use the standard procedures to configure and build the kernel. To try it, rename the original directories /usr/include/sys and /usr/src/sys and unpack the two tar archives into your /usr directory. Then change into /usr/src/sys/conf and just do a ./config for the kernel you want. I made some configurations for: MSCP23 (MSCP enabled kernel for the PDP11/23) MSCP73 (MSCP enabled kernel for the PDP11/73) FLOP23 (MSCP enabled 11/23 kernel for a boot floppy) FLOP73 (MSCP enabled 11/73 kernel for a boot floppy) MSCPSH (MSCP enabled kernel for an extended SIMH environment) You may need to adapt the kernel configurations for the correct timezone and maybe the line frequency. This is probably the most recent BSD system which runs on the PDP11/23. Read the full story about this here: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/scientific-micro-systems-sms-1000-model-40.1237048/ There is NO root password in this distribution. For installation on real hardware, at least a Maxtor XT-1085 (RD53) or larger is recommended. My SMS1000 system currently has a Maxtor XT-1140 installed. Original was an XT-1085 in the system. The disk layout for these two disks during installation is as follows: Maxtor XT-1085 / DEC RD53 ========================= 1024/8/18 interleave 1,4 --- layout --- root = ra(0,0), size 3200 swap = ra(0,6400), size 1920 usr = ra(0,10240), size 64180 Maxtor XT-1140 ============== 918/15/18 interleave 1,4 --- layout ---- root = ra(0,0), size 3200 swap = ra(0,6400), size 1920 usr = ra(0,10240), size 114880 I've split the data into 4 parts in order to not get too much when downloading: 1.) 29bsd-simh.tgz: A SIMH image including configuration file. "pdp11 sms1123.ini" 2.) 29bsd-smstape.tgz: A Linux dump of the QIC24 installation tape which was generated with my SMS1000 system. You can write this under Linux to a 60MB QIC tape with: "dd if=29bsd-sms-tape.dd of=/dev/st0" The SMS1000 generated format is not compatible with Linux, but the Linux dd'ed tape can be read by the SMS1000 system. 3.) 29bsd-tapefiles.tgz: The files to create a SIMH tape image, or real tape for another system. 4.) 29bsd-vtserver.tgz: The version of the vtserver and the corresponding configuration file with which I performed the successful initial installation. I worked with 19200bps, which is the maximum my SMS1000 supports on the console, under 2.9BSD only 9600bps works anyway. Have fun with it, if you find bugs, they may of course be mine. ;) I wish you and the community also a lot of fun with this version of 2.9BSD. // Peter From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Tue May 3 09:30:26 2022 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 19:30:26 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: Hello! Egads! I remember trying out AIX (On an original RT/PC rig) at a UNIXEXPO years ago. I found that the units were all networked together, and used the telnet command to log into them from the first one. Surprised the heck out of the sales 'droid that was present at their booth. As for AIX/370 I found about it at a different event that same year, And yes I did want a copy to try out under a certain emulator named for a plane and mythological figure. And of course as a guest under VM/370. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 2:57 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > > Back around 1989 our company was provided the AIX 370 and PS/2 source code. This was a distinct code base from either of the RT UNIXes. It was a pretty straight-forward UNIX kernel with what IBM termed the Transparent Computing Facility (derived from the UCLA locus stuff). We were porting it to an IBM-produced four-processor i860 board called the W4. It was fairly neat in that the file system could support hidden versions of the executables for each of the different platforms, and if you invoked one that didn't exist on your local hardware, it automatically ran it on one where it existed. > > The W4 was a microchannel card that had its own frame buffer (I wrote an X Server for it) but lived inside a PS2, so during the port, it was easy just to use the 386 versions of the bulk of the executables. When working at IBM's Palo Alto facility I could even execute on the 370-variant there as well. The W4 kernel looked more like the 370 than the 386 interestingly. > > I hacked on the -mm macro package to make it stylistically look like IBM's manuals so we could produce our documentation to look like there's. We had to have our facility inspected to hold IBM's source code (I referred to the room as the toxic waste dump). Our other joke is that IBM had a multiplexed console that they called the HFT (High Function Terminal). When I wrote the simple console for the W4 kernel, I called it the LFT. > From ggm at algebras.org Tue May 3 09:49:32 2022 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 09:49:32 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: The PC/RT was interesting in hardware design sense, as a "user" I found it well, arguably "over" engineered. Big bold IBM solid feel. Connectors which were 2x chunkier than they needed to be, but then you looked at other systems with bent pins and broken latches and the IBM stuff was grossly over-size, but just didn't break. The screen was good, but somehow small. We had one at the same time as Decstation 2100s and they were greyscale, but deliciously big monitors. The manual set was complete, and covered everything. You had to understand how to walk the IBM structured dewey-decimal model of thing-sub-thing-sub-sub-thing-sub-lettter but if you got to a fictitious FRU-BCP-FRZ-J page, it described everything you needed to know and had paste-overs or insert sheets about the -J variant. It was the heaviest PC chassis I ever had to move. Other people laughed at it, but I enjoyed using it for a year. I felt much the same about the ICL Perq: very very heavy, but Olivetti-good cool design. Just the right shade of Orange and Coffee for its day. getting MBONE working on it was a joy. From wobblygong at gmail.com Tue May 3 10:57:18 2022 From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 12:57:18 +1200 Subject: [TUHS] In case you haven't heard yet Message-ID: <902481c5-b4c2-7542-5fcd-1c5a619535b6@gmail.com> I went googling for "Thoth operating system source code" while reading the discussion on Unix-like OSes and found the following: https://securitronlinux.com/debian-testing/nextstep-operating-system-source-code-has-been-leaked-this-is-pretty-cool-i-think/ which led to https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4690.0 which led to various NeXTStep fragments that might be of interest. Share and Enjoy! Wesley Parish From jim at deitygraveyard.com Tue May 3 14:37:47 2022 From: jim at deitygraveyard.com (Jim Carpenter) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 00:37:47 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 10:06 AM Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > I believe a version of Coherent resides at Sourceforge in the operating systems archives. Coherent, which was open sourced many years ago by MWC founder Bob Swartz (Aaron's dad), is available at http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php . You can get Coherent sources, source for the excellent manual, and XYBASIC. Udo Munk (does the CP/M emulators with the fancy front panels) worked at MWC and has been going crazy (re)creating Coherent build systems, older versions (down to 3.2.1?), VMs you can play with and lots more. I also see he recently made available disk images for Coherent 2.3.43 for the 8086. His stuff is at https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/ . Jim From jim at deitygraveyard.com Tue May 3 14:55:43 2022 From: jim at deitygraveyard.com (Jim Carpenter) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 00:55:43 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 4:59 PM Michael Huff wrote: > > I realize this doesn't help but there's an old story about dmr being asked in the early or mid 80's to look at a clone which he checked for specific bugs he was aware of (but apparently no one else was). It turned out to be clean. I don't remember the details but that might be a good starting point? This is the Mark Williams Coherent story that Rob Pike just posted about. At least I've always read that it was DMR checking out Coherent. Jim From tytso at mit.edu Tue May 3 15:01:03 2022 From: tytso at mit.edu (tytso) Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 22:01:03 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 02, 2022 at 02:31:00PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote: > On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 9:41 AM Clem Cole wrote: > > FWIW: I know that at least 3 people on the OpenSSI team were telling me > > they were told to go away. I don't know where they were told to go away; I can just state that the patches were never sent to LKML, and from a search using lore.kernel.org, I don't see any evidence that they were told to "go away" on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. Could they have been told to "go away" by someone, either with someone "official" or "non-official", on some random mailing list, or at some random bar at some random conference? Sure. It's impossible to say. > I know from wearing my FreeBSD hat that random people on mailing lists > often say 'nope' and people go away not realizing they aren't the abitors > of what gets into FreeBSD. We lost a lot of good contributions because of > delays created by scenarios like this... Yep. And sometimes, even if they are someone official, if they don't necessarily explain the patches well, and/or never send the patches for review on the mailing list, it could be that there was a miscommunication regarding how the patches were described, such that a "no" that happened at a conversation at some random bar at some random Usenix conference might have been a "yes" if there were patches sent to be reviewed on the mailing list. > I also know that getting changes into Linux suffers from this and for a > long time (especially pre-git) was almost impossible unless you knew > someone and were on good terms with them. Something which definitely happens is the fear of "drive by contributions". So for example, Clem tells the story of people being hesitant of accepting RDMA / IB patches. I very much doubt it was because people were chasing the Desktop. There were certainly people in the Linux kernel who were chasing the Desktop, but those tended not to be the "gate keepers" for the kernel. Linux kernel developers might use the desktop, but there really was very few "desktop" kernel features. If I had to guess, the main concern was that some random developer would try to get the code upstream --- perhaps because a system integrator like IBM or HP would have something in the procurement contract requiring that the device driver be "upstream" --- but then once the code made it upstream, the developer would disappear, never to be heard from again, and the Linux Kernel developers would be stuck having to support it forever. (Worse, in the early days of IB, IB was $$$, and most kernel developers didn't even have access to IB in their home systems.) So it's helpful to have a company to have multiple engineers, all contributing changes, hopefully to adjacent parts of the kernel other than the specific subsystem which they are trying to shove into the kernel, to demonstrate that they are going to be there for the long haul, and not just try to "drive by" shoehorn code into the kernel, only to be never heard from again. For example, just recently someone from a particular tried to get an NTFS implementation "upstream" into the Linux kernel. They sold a "feature-full" version of that file system for $$$, and there was some suspicion in some quarters that they were only trying to get a stripped-down version of their file system into the Linux kernel for marketing reasons. There were some, including yours truly, who pointed out that they hadn't open sourced userspace utilities, and that the file system regression test when run on their file system was failing tests right and left, and hence wasn't ready for prime-time. They pushed hard, and ultimately, Linus decided to accept their code contribution, because the alternative in-tree file system was pretty crappy, and the belief was that new one was better. Immediately after the merge window closed, the developer went silent, and stopped responding to e-mails. Which left folks debating whether we should remove the code contribution from the tree before users started depending on it, because something worse than one unmaintained, crappy file system in the tree that some users might be trying to use wouldbe *two* unmaintained, crappy file systems in the tree.... > Much has been done to improve things in the last > 20 years, but for a while things were truly awful for someone without a > huge reputation to get anything non-trivial into Linux. That's true, but again, part of that is because of the "drive by contribution" problem. One of the ways which we've tried to solve this problem for device drivers is to have a "staging" part of the tree where new code which is "on probation" can live, and if it turns out that the developers disappear, code in the "staging tree" is documented to be more easily removed uncerimonously if it looks like the code has become abandonware. This doesn't work as well if there needs to be massive code complexification into the core parts of the kernel, where large parts of the kernel needs to be changed, perhaps to add (for example) VPROC support. It's even worse if such "powerful" changes ends up slightly slowing down code which is in the hotpath. We have in the past tried to put file systems into the staging tree. But for example, there was pain when we ultimately decided that Lustre needed to be removed from the Linux tree, because the people who tried to get Lustre into the upstream kernel wasn't actually *improving* that was in the upstream kernel, but instead was working on shipping product in distro kernels: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/lustre-filesystem-dropped-linux-418-kernel So the "companies / communites" just trying to throw code of varying quality over the wall and not providing a commitment to continuous maintenance and improvement of said code is a real one. And if you wonder why sometimes the Linux kernel community can be a bit "cold" about accepting new code, that very often can be why. Open source is not just about the code, it's about the development community. And if the community hasn't been integrated into the Linux kernel community first, it may be that an important prerequisite step is missing. Cheers, - Ted From ron at ronnatalie.com Tue May 3 17:16:37 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 07:16:37 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] In case you haven't heard yet In-Reply-To: <902481c5-b4c2-7542-5fcd-1c5a619535b6@gmail.com> References: <902481c5-b4c2-7542-5fcd-1c5a619535b6@gmail.com> Message-ID: Ah yes, when I worked for Rutgers we got the spiel on NeXT (which we jokingly called Knee-Zit taking the cue from the KneeWiss product from Sun). It was several years later that one showed up at my office in a private company (we had also subscribed to callilng the company “eventually”). I think I remember after dinking with it a few days, we just stole the memory out of it and stuck it in one of our Suns. From ron at ronnatalie.com Tue May 3 17:22:48 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 07:22:48 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: The screen was a IBM 6091, the IBM rebrand of a Sony tube. We had serial number 2 in our office. Amusingly, the RT we had came all locked up,. but I found that turning the key to the wrehch position and booting it got me a maintenance shell that on one option invoked more that I could shell escape out of to get.a root shell. There haven’t been too many UNIX systems I’ve not been able to get into. The funniest was showing some guy in the Pentagon out to bust out of the SunTools screen lock. IBM made a big thing about telling how the thing had a 24bit framebuffer, but the *&@$&* X Server on it only had eight bit visuals. I did a port of our code base to it because that was what I did back then (we had the premier intelligence image processing system that ran on just about any UNIX system out there: Sun (Spark and 68K), MIPS (both the MIPS workstation and the DEC SPIM), SGI, Ardent, Stellar, MassPar, Various 386 things (of which I was fond of the MultibusII systems), HP, DEC Alpha, etc…. We even ran on Apollo Domain and some of the early NT for both the PC and the iTanic. From ron at ronnatalie.com Tue May 3 17:28:59 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 07:28:59 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: We got in on the W4 from the IBM Federal Systems guy (later dealt out to Loral, Martin Marietta, and then Lockheed-Martin). I started with those guy doing a contract job to craft the second nework interface into Secure Xenix (Jacob Recter I think was responsible for the first) to provide a secure downgrading system for some government entity. Then Intel developed the i860- and IBM came up with the Wizard card. This was only designed to be.a coprocessor card and was done down in Boca Raton. The fun and games with that one is that we were on early steppings of the processor chips and spent a lot of time coding around chip bugs (mostly with regard to interrupts). IBM/Intel had developed this thing called hostlink that was supposed to be useful, but we decided to port AIX to it. When IBM Owego came up with the W4, we were asked to port AIX again to it. We had one non-functional W4 kicking around for demo purposes that had 4 “delidded” i860 chips in it. I swapped one for an early stepping (useless) chip and kept one of the delidded ones which I still have in a box somewhere. From miod at online.fr Tue May 3 17:40:11 2022 From: miod at online.fr (Miod Vallat) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 07:40:11 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: > > At the end of the AOS work circa 1996, most of the kernel was 4.4, > > except for the network stack which was 4.3-Reno, and the VM system which > > was still 4.3 (hence no mmap). > > > This happened outside of IBM, didn't it? What prevented the rest of the VM > code being ported? Most - if not all - the AOS work was done by Roger Florkowski and Mark Dapoz, and Roger was definitely working for IBM at that time. I think time was limiting factor, but also Roger was not really wanting to port the Mach VM to AOS due to the RT MMU limitations - in particular, there is no way for multiple virtual addresses to point to the same page, so you need to keep evicting/switching mappings when you want a page to be available to the kernel and the currently running userland process. That was fixed in the POWER MMU. > I vaguely remember Metaware being somewhat religiously extreme, but again > the details are fuzzy now. Was there some kind of ecclesiastical reference > in the man page? I'm afraid that doesn't ring any bell. Miod From ron at ronnatalie.com Tue May 3 18:03:27 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 10:03:27 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <566F1A30-1F64-4C5D-9CB6-E87020830EB9@ronnatalie.com> All I remember was that the Metaware compilers came with prayer book. > On May 3, 2022, at 09:43, Miod Vallat wrote: > >  >> >>> At the end of the AOS work circa 1996, most of the kernel was 4.4, >>> except for the network stack which was 4.3-Reno, and the VM system which >>> was still 4.3 (hence no mmap). >> >> >> This happened outside of IBM, didn't it? What prevented the rest of the VM >> code being ported? > > Most - if not all - the AOS work was done by Roger Florkowski and Mark > Dapoz, and Roger was definitely working for IBM at that time. > > I think time was limiting factor, but also Roger was not really wanting > to port the Mach VM to AOS due to the RT MMU limitations - in > particular, there is no way for multiple virtual addresses to point to > the same page, so you need to keep evicting/switching mappings when you > want a page to be available to the kernel and the currently running > userland process. That was fixed in the POWER MMU. > >> I vaguely remember Metaware being somewhat religiously extreme, but again >> the details are fuzzy now. Was there some kind of ecclesiastical reference >> in the man page? > > I'm afraid that doesn't ring any bell. > > Miod From rich.salz at gmail.com Tue May 3 21:35:55 2022 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 07:35:55 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> <2815597f-e1f2-498f-b0c3-763952ac734e@www.fastmail.com> Message-ID: You should have just let it die with Clem's gracious explanation of people's other view of history. There is no need to prove, by mail logs or anec data, with the Linux kernel development model is just perfect. He made a point of not criticizing anyone in particular. As the song says, let it go -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jfoust at threedee.com Tue May 3 22:14:11 2022 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 07:14:11 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <202205020242.2422g30m074857@ultimate.com> Message-ID: <20220503124124.8CA649D455@minnie.tuhs.org> At 04:17 PM 5/2/2022, Dan Cross wrote: >I vaguely remember Metaware being somewhat religiously extreme, but again the details are fuzzy now. Was there some kind of ecclesiastical reference in the man page? I have the manuals around somewhere, and that rings a bell. I used Metaware High C and the Pharlap extender in the early 1990s in the odd 32-bit DOS enviroment to make 3D import/export plugins for Autodesk's 3D Studio. - John From wkt at tuhs.org Wed May 4 12:08:24 2022 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Wed, 4 May 2022 12:08:24 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed Message-ID: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Hi all, I've just changed the DNS CNAME record of www.tuhs.org from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) to newmin.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146). Minnie is running Ubuntu 18.04LTS and is getting a bit long in the tooth. Newmin is running 22.04LTS. So far I've got the web service up and running on newmin. Doing the e-mail migration will be fun :-) Let me know if you spot anything wrong with the new web server. I've also set up oldwww.tuhs.org which points at minnie, so you can still get to things on the old server. Cheers, Warren From clemc at ccc.com Wed May 4 23:27:42 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 4 May 2022 09:27:42 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: Thank you, Warren for making the tremendous resource available to us all. Clem ᐧ On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 10:11 PM Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > Hi all, I've just changed the DNS CNAME record of www.tuhs.org from > minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) to newmin.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146). > > Minnie is running Ubuntu 18.04LTS and is getting a bit long in the > tooth. Newmin is running 22.04LTS. So far I've got the web service > up and running on newmin. Doing the e-mail migration will be fun :-) > > Let me know if you spot anything wrong with the new web server. I've > also set up oldwww.tuhs.org which points at minnie, so you can still > get to things on the old server. > > Cheers, Warren > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Thu May 5 03:54:25 2022 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Wed, 4 May 2022 11:54:25 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On 5/3/22 8:08 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > Doing the e-mail migration will be fun :-) I'm curious what your thoughts / plans are on migrating email. I /think/ that TUHS (and presumably COFF) is using Mailman 2.x which I believe is dependent on Python 2.x. Are you going to be migrating to Mailman 3.x / Python 3.x? Or are you going to go a different direction? -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4017 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From mah at mhorton.net Thu May 5 05:37:31 2022 From: mah at mhorton.net (Mary Ann Horton) Date: Wed, 4 May 2022 12:37:31 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <229b3509-2b4a-9dc3-852a-a980ed7530f4@mhorton.net> Amen. A migration is a lot of work. Thank you for all you do!     Mary Ann On 5/4/22 06:27, Clem Cole wrote: > Thank you, Warren for making the tremendous resource available to us all. > > Clem > ᐧ > > On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 10:11 PM Warren Toomey via TUHS > wrote: > > Hi all, I've just changed the DNS CNAME record of www.tuhs.org > from > minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) to > newmin.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146). > > Minnie is running Ubuntu 18.04LTS and is getting a bit long in the > tooth. Newmin is running 22.04LTS. So far I've got the web service > up and running on newmin. Doing the e-mail migration will be fun :-) > > Let me know if you spot anything wrong with the new web server. I've > also set up oldwww.tuhs.org which points > at minnie, so you can still > get to things on the old server. > > Cheers, Warren > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Thu May 5 10:52:04 2022 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 10:52:04 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On Wed, 4 May 2022, Clem Cole wrote: > Thank you, Warren for making the tremendous resource available to us > all. And so say all of us! -- Dave From akosela at andykosela.com Thu May 5 15:43:28 2022 From: akosela at andykosela.com (Andy Kosela) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 07:43:28 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On 5/5/22, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Wed, 4 May 2022, Clem Cole wrote: > >> Thank you, Warren for making the tremendous resource available to us >> all. > > And so say all of us! > And thank you for keeping the website plain and simple with pure HTML so it is readable even with text browsers. These modern trends in web design are horrible. We are in a situation you need to buy a new computer every few years just to read the web! Binary and encryption protocols and standards, js crap that change in an increasing pace. The public information should be accessible by all, even with an old 486dx. --Andy From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Thu May 5 15:57:34 2022 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Wed, 4 May 2022 23:57:34 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <39dfe7a4-85b0-8d75-2d32-5ee433876743@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> On 5/4/22 11:43 PM, Andy Kosela wrote: > Binary and encryption protocols and standards, js crap that change > in an increasing pace. The public information should be accessible > by all, even with an old 486dx. I believe there is a time and a place for some encryption. It's probably more than you think, but definitely less than zealots want. Yes, even the venerable 486 should be able to handle the level of encryption that I'm referencing. -- At least it could do the math if the software would run on it. My main reasons for encryption are privacy and generating more noise for others to hide their signal in that /need/ to do so. Privacy also includes some security in that middle boxes can't inject questionable (read: malicious) content. -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4017 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From janek at sax.de Thu May 5 17:54:59 2022 From: janek at sax.de (Janek =?iso-8859-1?B?R+Fs?=) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 09:54:59 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Bob Widlar Poster Message-ID: <20220505075459.GA2736@sax.de> Hey folks, there is a cool poster by Bob Widlar, which we would like to have as a big poster in the hackspace: https://august.sax.de/widlar.jpg This is already a high resolution scan (2048 × 3048) but we are looking for something better (for A0 paper). Does anyone have something like this maybe still in his collection? greetings, Janek :) -- Janek Gál Dresden, Germany http://www.sax.de From dave at horsfall.org Fri May 6 06:48:33 2022 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 06:48:33 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 5 May 2022, Andy Kosela wrote: > And thank you for keeping the website plain and simple with pure HTML so > it is readable even with text browsers. These modern trends in web > design are horrible. We are in a situation you need to buy a new > computer every few years just to read the web! Binary and encryption > protocols and standards, js crap that change in an increasing pace. The > public information should be accessible by all, even with an old 486dx. My pet peeve too; if the message cannot be spread without CPU-consuming fancy graphics then the message is wrong (and I like to use Lynx). -- Dave From wkt at tuhs.org Fri May 6 07:26:30 2022 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 07:26:30 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> On Wed, May 04, 2022 at 11:54:25AM -0600, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > I'm curious what your thoughts / plans are on migrating email. > I /think/ that TUHS (and presumably COFF) is using Mailman 2.x which I > believe is dependent on Python 2.x. Are you going to be migrating to > Mailman 3.x / Python 3.x? Or are you going to go a different direction? Firstly, thanks to you all for your thanks! I announced minnie as an ftp site on comp.archives back in May 1991, so she must be one of the longest continually operating Internet sites. Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import the raw TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, will break the hyperlinks in the current mail archive at https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ Anyway, first I've got to get SPF, DKIM and friends set up :-) Cheers, Warren From pugs at ieee.org Fri May 6 07:32:56 2022 From: pugs at ieee.org (Tom Lyon) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 14:32:56 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) Message-ID: I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a copy of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie. They suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was the hard way to go. Enjoy: http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf -- - Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From athornton at gmail.com Fri May 6 09:01:19 2022 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 16:01:19 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0173C556-D51E-44E4-A56B-8B738497AB83@gmail.com> > On May 5, 2022, at 2:32 PM, Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote: > > I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a copy of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie. They suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was the hard way to go. > > Enjoy: http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf Oh my. I mean, I know that OS (and descendants--for those of you without this particular trauma, we mostly mean MVS (now z/OS), but of course there's OS/MFT, OS/MVT, and then OS/MVS) was always trying to kill VM, and we went through similar crap with Linux/390 (and zLinux), which contains code to let it run directly on the iron, even though even production shops are not going to *do* that (OpenSolaris-for-z required VM underneath it; hell, it required a couple new DIAGs we requested). That actually makes it easy to run zLinux on Hercules, so I'm not complaining, but...it's not how any shop running it as anything other than a curiosity would do it. I mean, OK, I guess you could have a teeny little LPAR but let's face it the LPAR is basically VM. But TSS was always *also* an also-ran (that is, not OS). It's really weird (to me, anyway) to see it was hostile to VM too. Adam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pugs at ieee.org Fri May 6 09:39:40 2022 From: pugs at ieee.org (Tom Lyon) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 16:39:40 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] tuhs hiccups? Message-ID: For some reason, against my wishes, I'm not getting TUHS messages as they happen, but in batches (not digest) after 5-7 days. Last I've received right now is from May 2. Anyone know why? -- - Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Fri May 6 09:42:10 2022 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 19:42:10 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: Hello! And a definite thank you from this end of things as well Warren. Next question, what about the FTP site? ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 5:31 PM Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > > On Wed, May 04, 2022 at 11:54:25AM -0600, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > > I'm curious what your thoughts / plans are on migrating email. > > I /think/ that TUHS (and presumably COFF) is using Mailman 2.x which I > > believe is dependent on Python 2.x. Are you going to be migrating to > > Mailman 3.x / Python 3.x? Or are you going to go a different direction? > > Firstly, thanks to you all for your thanks! I announced minnie as an ftp > site on comp.archives back in May 1991, so she must be one of the longest > continually operating Internet sites. > > Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import the raw > TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, will break the hyperlinks > in the current mail archive at https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ > > Anyway, first I've got to get SPF, DKIM and friends set up :-) > > Cheers, Warren From wkt at tuhs.org Fri May 6 10:05:31 2022 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 10:05:31 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] tuhs hiccups? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20220506000531.GA10214@minnie.tuhs.org> On Thu, May 05, 2022 at 04:39:40PM -0700, Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote: > For some reason, against my wishes, I'm not getting TUHS messages as > they happen, but in batches (not digest) after 5-7 days. Last I've > received right now is from May 2. Anyone know why? [ replying to the list in case Tom doesn't see it directly ] Looks like an issue your end, Tom, based on the logs: May 2 12:27:41 minnie postfix/smtpd[3385]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 450 4.1.2 : Recipient address rejected: Domain not found; from= to= proto=ESMTP helo= May 2 12:41:12 minnie postfix/pipe[6495]: 62CBB9D435: to=, relay=spamassassin, delay=1.6, delays=0.02/0.06/0/1.5, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered via spamassassin service) ... May 2 20:06:06 minnie postfix/smtp[26947]: 0988F9D456: to=, rela y=mxtls.expurgate.net[194.145.224.122]:25, delay=2.5, delays=0.02/0/0.8/1.7, dsn =2.0.0, status=sent (250 OK id=tlsNG-c12bd7/1651485966-000002B7-14FB85B4/22/str= 0001.0A7880EA.626FAD0E.0003:SCGSTAT2450935,ss=1,re=-4.000,recu=0.000,reip=0.000, cl=1,cld=1,fgs=1024) May 2 23:00:53 minnie postfix/smtpd[32471]: 6CC9D9D431: reject: RCPT from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 450 4.1.2 : Recipient address rejected: Domain not found; from= to= proto=ESMTP helo= Cheers, Warren From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Fri May 6 12:38:39 2022 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 20:38:39 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> On 5/5/22 3:26 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import > the raw TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, > will break the hyperlinks in the current mail archive > athttps://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ Let's chat about this when the time comes. I strongly suspect there is a way to retain functionality for the old links, even if they are simply redirects to the new location. -- I have some ideas. }:-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4017 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Fri May 6 12:52:42 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 20:52:42 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 8:41 PM Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > On 5/5/22 3:26 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > > Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import > > the raw TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, > > will break the hyperlinks in the current mail archive > > athttps://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ > > Let's chat about this when the time comes. > > I strongly suspect there is a way to retain functionality for the old > links, even if they are simply redirects to the new location. -- I have > some ideas. }:-) > FreeBSD's archives were updated recently to not use mailman 3 despite the project using mailman 2 due to the link changing issue. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Fri May 6 14:32:20 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 00:32:20 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: Pardon my ignorance as I am not familiar with mailman and its storage format but I assume that running the mailbox through a Sed filter to change Minnie to newmin would not work??? Minnie and newmin are the same length. Any size data would therefore presumably remain valid. This assumes the mail archive is text based for the most part. Just thinking out loud.... On Thu, May 5, 2022, 10:41 PM Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > On 5/5/22 3:26 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > > Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import > > the raw TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, > > will break the hyperlinks in the current mail archive > > athttps://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ > > Let's chat about this when the time comes. > > I strongly suspect there is a way to retain functionality for the old > links, even if they are simply redirects to the new location. -- I have > some ideas. }:-) > > > > -- > Grant. . . . > unix || die > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arnold at skeeve.com Fri May 6 17:35:07 2022 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Fri, 06 May 2022 01:35:07 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <202205060735.2467Z7Rc032121@freefriends.org> Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote: > I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a copy > of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie. They > suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was the > hard way to go. > > Enjoy: > http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf > > > -- > - Tom So, why, given the letter from these folks, including DMR, did they go ahead and use the TSS solution anyway? Just wondering. Arnold From ron at ronnatalie.com Fri May 6 18:08:09 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 10:08:09 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: <202205060735.2467Z7Rc032121@freefriends.org> References: <202205060735.2467Z7Rc032121@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <6493122A-B704-4039-8F4C-8C6FEAEC5220@ronnatalie.com> They liked kicking a dead whale down the beach. > On May 6, 2022, at 09:39, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote: > >> I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a copy >> of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie. They >> suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was the >> hard way to go. >> >> Enjoy: >> http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf >> >> >> -- >> - Tom > > So, why, given the letter from these folks, including DMR, did they go > ahead and use the TSS solution anyway? > > Just wondering. > > Arnold From pugs at ieee.org Sat May 7 00:21:21 2022 From: pugs at ieee.org (Tom Lyon) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 07:21:21 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: <6493122A-B704-4039-8F4C-8C6FEAEC5220@ronnatalie.com> References: <202205060735.2467Z7Rc032121@freefriends.org> <6493122A-B704-4039-8F4C-8C6FEAEC5220@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: Let's not mix whales and turkeys. TSS was IBM's attempted answer to Multics - built specifically for time-sharing, way too complex, and suffering from second-system syndrome. It never reached product status, but there were a few icustomer nstallations. Bell Labs Indian Hill was one - so that's why TSS was the base of their UNIX port. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSS_(operating_system) TSO was the Time-Sharing Option - by far the most common time-sharing environment for IBM, since it was an add-on to their mainstream OS family - MFT, MVT, MVS, etc. I had the joy(?) of using TSO for my 3 summers with the El Paso Natural Gas company. TSO is the system that earned the 'dead whale down a beach' line from Steve Johnson; it was truly awful. I'm sure there was some TSO somewhere in BTL as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Sharing_Option The most sane time-sharing choice, and also the best for OS development, was VM/CMS. But for most of its life, IBM was trying to kill VM in favor of the others. AFAIK, there was no VM installation in BTL. See Melinda Varian's wonderful history of VM. http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.pdf On Fri, May 6, 2022 at 1:08 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > They liked kicking a dead whale down the beach. > > > On May 6, 2022, at 09:39, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > > > Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote: > > > >> I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a > copy > >> of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie. They > >> suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was > the > >> hard way to go. > >> > >> Enjoy: > >> > http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf > >> > >> > >> -- > >> - Tom > > > > So, why, given the letter from these folks, including DMR, did they go > > ahead and use the TSS solution anyway? > > > > Just wondering. > > > > Arnold > > -- - Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat May 7 01:33:17 2022 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 11:33:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) Message-ID: <20220506153317.D499D18C07A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Tom Lyon > there were a few icustomer nstallations. Bell Labs Indian Hill was one > - so that's why TSS was the base of their UNIX port. "A UNIX System Implementation for System/370" (by W. A. Felton, G. L. Miller, and J. M. Milner): https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherports/ibm.html says "code to support System/370 I/O, paging, error recording and recovery, and multiprocessing already existed in several available operating systems, we investigated the possibility of using an existing operating system, or at least the machine-interface parts of one, as a base to provide these functions for the System/370 implementation ... Of the available systems, TSS/370 came the closest to meeting our needs and was thus chosen as the base for our UNIX system implementation". Alas, it doesn't say which other systems were also considered. >> On May 6, 2022, at 09:39, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: >> So, why, given the letter from these folks, including DMR, did they go >> ahead and use the TSS solution anyway? That paper says: "We initially thought about porting the UNIX operating system directly to System/370 with minimal changes. Unfortunately, there are a number of System/370 characteristics that, in the light of our objectives and resources, made such a direct port unattractive. The Input/Output (I/O) architecture of System/370 is rather complex; in a large configuration, the operating system must deal with a bewildering number of channels, controllers, and devices, many of which may be interconnected through multiple paths. Recovery from hardware errors is both complex and model-dependent. For hardware diagnosis and tracking, customer engineers expect the operating system to provide error logs in a specific format; software to support this logging and reporting would have to be written. ... Finally, several models of System/370 machines provide multiprocessing, with two (or more) processors operating with shared memory; the UNIX system did not support multiprocessing." Presumably these factors outweighed the factors listed in the Haley/London/Maranzaro/Ritchie letter. Noel From tih at hamartun.priv.no Sat May 7 01:51:22 2022 From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) Date: Fri, 06 May 2022 17:51:22 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: (Tom Lyon via TUHS's message of "Fri, 6 May 2022 07:21:21 -0700") References: <202205060735.2467Z7Rc032121@freefriends.org> <6493122A-B704-4039-8F4C-8C6FEAEC5220@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: Tom Lyon via TUHS writes: > The most sane time-sharing choice, and also the best for OS > development, was VM/CMS. CP SMSG RSCS CMD IEEE MSG PUGS Scripting stuff with REXX was fun, too! -tih -- Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Sat May 7 08:54:07 2022 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 15:54:07 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: <0173C556-D51E-44E4-A56B-8B738497AB83@gmail.com> References: <0173C556-D51E-44E4-A56B-8B738497AB83@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 4:03 PM Adam Thornton wrote: > > > On May 5, 2022, at 2:32 PM, Tom Lyon via TUHS > wrote: > > I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a copy > of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie. They > suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was the > hard way to go. > > Enjoy: > http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf > > > Oh my. > > I mean, I know that OS (and descendants--for those of you without this > particular trauma, we mostly mean MVS (now z/OS), but of course there's > OS/MFT, OS/MVT, and then OS/MVS) was always trying to kill VM, and we went > through similar crap with Linux/390 (and zLinux), which contains code to > let it run directly on the iron, even though even production shops are not > going to *do* that (OpenSolaris-for-z required VM underneath it; hell, it > required a couple new DIAGs we requested). > > That actually makes it easy to run zLinux on Hercules, so I'm not > complaining, but...it's not how any shop running it as anything other than > a curiosity would do it. I mean, OK, I guess you could have a teeny little > LPAR but let's face it the LPAR is basically VM. > Possibly metaphorically but this LPAR facility is provided by PR/SM starting with later 3090s and ES/9000. There is good coverage in IBM Systems Journal or IBM R&D journal (I can check my archives for which one if anyone needs a reference). It’s a firmware hypervisor like pHyp or Sun’s ldom. VM is a strange yet delightful strain of operating system where full virtualization was front and center for both time sharing and isolation. There’s really nothing quite like it although lately things like Qubes and MirageOS may share some of the delights. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paudley at blackcat.ca Sun May 8 02:13:44 2022 From: paudley at blackcat.ca (Patrick Audley) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 09:13:44 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On Thu., May 5, 2022, 7:38 p.m. Grant Taylor via TUHS, wrote: > > On 5/5/22 3:26 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > > Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import > > the raw TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, > > will break the hyperlinks in the current mail archive > > athttps://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ > > Let's chat about this when the time comes. > > I strongly suspect there is a way to retain functionality for the old > links, even if they are simply redirects to the new location. -- I have > some ideas. }:-) When I saw this, I started to think, "I bet we can make a regexp for that". Apparently, I do too much text processing. I'm up for helping process the archive if needed with sed, perl or some such. -- "...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." -- Robert Firth -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4595 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From rminnich at gmail.com Sun May 8 02:14:01 2022 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 09:14:01 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 Message-ID: I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always assumed zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am finding out maybe not. I talked to the IP OG, and he tells me that padding was not in any standard. [side note: it's weird and wonderful to still have so many people "present at the creation" of computing as we know it still around, and to find they are so willing to answer naive questions!] Padding is a standard in ip6, possibly because the addresses are so long. :: is your friend. IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret it as 10.0.0.2. The latter interpretation accords with what I learned 40y ago. But, I find myself wondering: where was the first use of the IP4 zero padding convention? From bakul at iitbombay.org Sun May 8 02:38:07 2022 From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 09:38:07 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <727FE2A1-2E57-432B-8A3D-3249FA5AF29A@iitbombay.org> On May 7, 2022, at 9:14 AM, ron minnich wrote: > > I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always > assumed zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am > finding out maybe not. I talked to the IP OG, and he tells me that > padding was not in any standard. [side note: it's weird and wonderful > to still have so many people "present at the creation" of computing as > we know it still around, and to find they are so willing to answer > naive questions!] > > Padding is a standard in ip6, possibly because the addresses are so > long. :: is your friend. > > IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as > 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret > it as 10.0.0.2. The latter interpretation accords with what I learned > 40y ago. > > But, I find myself wondering: where was the first use of the IP4 zero > padding convention? From RFC791: Addresses are fixed length of four octets (32 bits). An address begins with a network number, followed by local address (called the "rest" field). There are three formats or classes of internet addresses: in class a, the high order bit is zero, the next 7 bits are the network, and the last 24 bits are the local address; in class b, the high order two bits are one-zero, the next 14 bits are the network and the last 16 bits are the local address; in class c, the high order three bits are one-one-zero, the next 21 bits are the network and the last 8 bits are the local address. So n.m format == network-number.local-address. The converse question is who came up with the a.b.c.d format where each of a,b,c,d is in 0..255? From fair-tuhs at netbsd.org Sun May 8 02:48:50 2022 From: fair-tuhs at netbsd.org (Erik E. Fair) Date: Sat, 07 May 2022 09:48:50 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <12842.1651942130@cesium.clock.org> See inet_addr(3) - the history section in the NetBSD man pages says 4.2 BSD. https://man.netbsd.org/inet_addr.3 Speculation: it would not surprise me to find that the "a.b" form turning into "a.0.0.b" was a convenience for ARPANET - ucb-arpa (DEC VAX-11/780) address was 10.0.0.78 or 0/78 in the old form: host 0 on IMP 78, as seen below in an ARPANET hosts file from November 1982 that I have saved (that's just before the Jan 1, 1983 NCP-to-IP transition that heralded the operational beginning of the Internet). The file is sorted in IMP number order. Erik : Updated on Mon Nov 15 18:59:52 PST 1982 NET arpanet 10 arpa ; 258 known hosts NET nonet 0 nonet ; anyhost 0/0,nonet nonet ucla-ats 0/1,arpanet ucla-ccn 1/1,arpanet ccn ucla-security 2/1,arpanet ucla-s ucla-net ucla-locus 3/1,arpanet sri-nsc11 0/2,arpanet nsc11 dnsri sri-kl 1/2,arpanet sri kl sri-csl 2/2,arpanet sri-vis11 sri-f2 f2 csl sri-tsc 3/2,arpanet sri-tscb tscb nosc-cc 0/3,arpanet nuc-cc nosc-elf nosc nosc-spel 1/3,arpanet nosc-secure1 logicon 2/3,arpanet nprdc 3/3,arpanet nprdc-unix nprdc-atts utah-tac 2/4,arpanet utah-20 3/4,arpanet bbnf 0/5,arpanet bbn-tenexf bbng 1/5,arpanet bbn-tenexg bbna 3/5,arpanet bbn-tenexa mit-multics 0/6,arpanet multics mit-dms 1/6,arpanet dms mit-ai 2/6,arpanet ai mit-ml 3/6,arpanet ml rand-relay 1/7,arpanet cs-rand rand-cs rand-tac 2/7,arpanet rand-unix 3/7,arpanet rand-ai nrl 0/8,arpanet nswc-wo 2/8,arpanet nrl-tops10 3/8,arpanet nrl-css 7/8,arpanet nrl-csd harv-10 0/9,arpanet acl yale 2/9,arpanet ll 0/10,arpanet ll-tcp 1/10,arpanet ll-xn 2/10,arpanet ll-11 3/10,arpanet su-ai 0/11,arpanet sail su-tac 2/11,arpanet su-score 3/11,arpanet score dti-vms 0/12,arpanet dti 1/12,arpanet gunter-unix 0/13,arpanet gafs gunter-adam 1/13,arpanet gunter-tac 2/13,arpanet gunt cmu-cs-b 0/14,arpanet cmu-10b cmub cmu-cs-a 1/14,arpanet cmu-10a cmua cmu-cs-c 3/14,arpanet cmu-20c cmuc ames-67 0/16,arpanet ames ames-tip 2/16,arpanet ames-11 3/16,arpanet mitre 0/17,arpanet mitre-tac 2/17,arpanet dcn1 3/17,arpanet linkabit radc-multics 0/18,arpanet radc radc-xper 1/18,arpanet xper radc-tac 2/18,arpanet radt radc-tops20 3/18,arpanet radc-20 rochester 4/18,arpanet roch radc-unix 5/18,arpanet nbs-vms 0/19,arpanet nbs-10 nbs nbs-sdc 1/19,arpanet nbs-unix 2/19,arpanet nbs-pl 3/19,arpanet cctc 0/20,arpanet dcec-tac 2/20,arpanet edn-unix 3/20,arpanet lll-unix 0/21,arpanet lll-comp lll-mfe 1/21,arpanet mfe isi-speech11 0/22,arpanet usc-isi 1/22,arpanet usc-isia isia isi usc-isic isic usc-eclb 0/23,arpanet eclb usc-eclc 1/23,arpanet eclc usc-tac 2/23,arpanet usc-ecl 3/23,arpanet ecl usc-ecla ecla nadc 2/24,arpanet wharton-10 3/24,arpanet wharton seismo 0/25,arpanet pentagon-tip 2/26,arpanet pent-unix 3/26,arpanet usc-isid 0/27,arpanet isid isi-png11 1/27,arpanet isi-vaxa 2/27,arpanet vaxa arpa-dms 0/28,arpanet arpa-tac1 1/28,arpanet arpa-tac2 2/28,arpanet arpa-png11 3/28,arpanet arpa-xgp11 brl 0/29,arpanet brl-tac 2/29,arpanet brl-bmd 3/29,arpanet bmd70 cca-unix 0/31,arpanet cca cca-tenex cca-vms 1/31,arpanet cca-tac 2/31,arpanet mit-devmultics 3/31,arpanet devmultics cisl parc-maxc 0/32,arpanet parc parc-maxc1 parc-maxc2 kestrel 3/32,arpanet sci-ics sci kes sct nps 0/33,arpanet fnoc 1/33,arpanet fnwc nps-tac 2/33,arpanet fnoc-secure 3/33,arpanet fnwc-secure lbl 0/34,arpanet lbl-unix 1/34,arpanet nosc-secure2 0/35,arpanet usc-isir1 isir1 nosc-sdl 1/35,arpanet nelc-elf nelc accat-tac 2/35,arpanet nelc-tip nosc-secure3 3/35,arpanet coins-tas 0/36,arpanet cincpacflt-wm 1/36,arpanet cincpac-tac 2/36,arpanet purdue 0/37,arpanet purdue-cs purdue-ncp csnet-purdue 2/37,arpanet purdue-rvax rvax bragg-sta1 1/38,arpanet bragg-tac 2/38,arpanet src-ccp 0/39,arpanet sdac-ccp src-unix 1/39,arpanet sdac-unix src-nep 2/39,arpanet sdac-nep bbn40-tac 0/40,arpanet ncc-tac 2/40,arpanet office-1 0/43,arpanet of1 office-2 1/43,arpanet of2 office off office-3 2/43,arpanet of3 almsa office-7 3/43,arpanet of7 cecom mit-xx 0/44,arpanet xx ll-asg 1/44,arpanet mit-tstgw 2/44,arpanet mit-mc 3/44,arpanet mc collins-pr 0/46,arpanet collins-tac 2/46,arpanet okc-unix 3/46,arpanet wpafb 0/47,arpanet wpafb-afwal 1/47,arpanet avsail wpafb-afal wpafb-tip 2/47,arpanet afwl 0/48,arpanet afwl-tip 2/48,arpanet bbnb 0/49,arpanet bbn-tenexb bbnc 3/49,arpanet bbn bbn-tenex darcom-tac 2/50,arpanet sri-unix 2/51,arpanet ada-vax 0/52,arpanet isi-vaxb ajpo vaxb usc-isie 1/52,arpanet isie usc-isif 2/52,arpanet isif usc-isib 3/52,arpanet isib afsc-ad 0/53,arpanet eglin ncsc 1/53,arpanet ncsl afsc-dev 2/53,arpanet eglin-dev martin 3/53,arpanet mmc cit-20 0/54,arpanet cal-tech cit-vax 1/54,arpanet cit-11 acc 2/54,arpanet jpl-vax 3/54,arpanet anl 0/55,arpanet argonne anl-mcs 1/55,arpanet sumex-aim 0/56,arpanet aim su-dsn 1/56,arpanet tycho 0/57,arpanet nsa coins-gateway 1/57,arpanet coins nyu 0/58,arpanet bnl 1/58,arpanet brookhaven rutgers 2/58,arpanet rutgers-20 rutgers-10 etac 0/59,arpanet centacs-mmp 0/60,arpanet coradcom-tip 2/60,arpanet centacs-tf 3/60,arpanet stla-tac 2/61,arpanet stl-tip utexas-11 0/62,arpanet utexas-20 1/62,arpanet utexas bbn-rsm 0/63,arpanet bbnr bbn-tac 1/63,arpanet martin-b 1/64,arpanet mmc-b robins-tac 2/64,arpanet wralc-tac robins-unix 3/64,arpanet afsc-sd 0/65,arpanet afsd afsc-sd-tac 1/65,arpanet sd-tip aerospace 2/65,arpanet aero mitre-bedford 0/66,arpanet mitre-b afgl 1/66,arpanet afgl-tac 2/66,arpanet afsc-hq 0/67,arpanet hqafsc afsc-hq-tac 1/67,arpanet hqafsc-tac usgs1-multics 0/68,arpanet reston rest usgs1-amdahl 2/68,arpanet reston-amdahl ram usgs1-tac 3/68,arpanet usgs2-multics 0/69,arpanet denver usgs2-tac 1/69,arpanet usafa-gateway 2/69,arpanet usafa usgs3-multics 0/70,arpanet menlo usgs3-tac 1/70,arpanet bbn-clxx 2/71,arpanet clxx bbn-nu 0/72,arpanet bbn-unix 1/72,arpanet bbnu bbnp 2/72,arpanet sri-nic 0/73,arpanet nic sri-warf 1/73,arpanet warf tscf sri-ai 2/73,arpanet aic sri-iu 3/73,arpanet iuv wsmr-tip 2/74,arpanet ypg 0/75,arpanet yuma-tac 2/75,arpanet bbn-testip 2/76,arpanet mit-tac 2/77,arpanet ucb-arpa 0/78,arpanet ucb-c70 1/78,arpanet berkeley ucb ucb-ingres 2/78,arpanet ucb-vax ucb-ingvax mcclellan 3/78,arpanet sacramento-unix dec-2136 0/79,arpanet dec-marlboro 1/79,arpanet dec hi-multics 0/80,arpanet honey sac2-tac 1/80,arpanet sac-tac 2/80,arpanet nalcon 0/81,arpanet dtnsrdc 1/81,arpanet david-tac 2/81,arpanet nems 3/81,arpanet bbnt 0/82,arpanet bbn-vax 1/82,arpanet bbnv bbn-inoc 2/82,arpanet bbns 3/82,arpanet bbn-noc2 6/82,arpanet nswc-dl 0/84,arpanet nswc-tac 2/84,arpanet nwc-387a 0/85,arpanet nwc-elf 1/85,arpanet nwc-tac 2/85,arpanet nwc-387b 3/85,arpanet sandia 0/87,arpanet snl nlm-mcs 0/88,arpanet nlm mcs washington 0/91,arpanet udub udub-ward washington-tac 2/91,arpanet uw-vlsi 3/91,arpanet udub-vlsi nusc-npt 2/92,arpanet nusc 3/92,arpanet office-8 0/93,arpanet of8 office-10 1/93,arpanet darcom-ka office-12 2/93,arpanet csnet-sh 1/94,arpanet csnetb csnet uwisc wisconsin s1-gateway 0/95,arpanet s1-a 1/95,arpanet s1-c 3/95,arpanet udel-relay 0/96,arpanet ud-relay csnet-relay darcom-hq udel udel-tcp 1/96,arpanet udel-ee 2/96,arpanet cornell 3/96,arpanet From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sun May 8 04:49:15 2022 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Sat, 07 May 2022 20:49:15 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20220507184915.nXfTT%steffen@sdaoden.eu> ron minnich wrote in : |I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always |assumed zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am |finding out maybe not. I talked to the IP OG, and he tells me that |padding was not in any standard. [side note: it's weird and wonderful |to still have so many people "present at the creation" of computing as |we know it still around, and to find they are so willing to answer |naive questions!] | |Padding is a standard in ip6, possibly because the addresses are so |long. :: is your friend. It was/is called compression there, and it was optional ("may") at first (in RFC 1884). RFC 1884 was an overall wonderful RFC, uppercase or lowercase are possible, leading zeros in a field were optional ("not necessary") etc. Unfortunately RFC 5952 loaded too much Sushi and Sake first, and turned this to a soldiers dream, "Leading zeros MUST be suppressed", "Shorten as Much as Possible", " "::" MUST NOT be used to shorten just one 16-bit 0 field", "longest run [.] MUST be shortened", "MUST [.] lowercase". Luckily SMTP seems to keep the elder |IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as |10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret |it as 10.0.0.2. The latter interpretation accords with what I learned |40y ago. | |But, I find myself wondering: where was the first use of the IP4 zero |padding convention? I did not even know this is possible, but for special software like postfix SMTP etc., where it de-facto means "substring", so 10.2 is 10.2.0.0/16 (unless i am totally mistakent now). I could imagine that the introduction of CIDR notation as such (RFC 1519) played a role? I have had no idea of networks but modem beeps at all, coming from a staid pupils' desk with C64 -> DOS -> 4DOS / Windows 3.1 -> 4DOS / Windows95B (and then, and then!! It became real) , and there you had the GUI boxes which "zero padded" anything, unless i am mistaken. Btw ipcalc(1) (of RedHat aka https://gitlab.com/ipcalc) is incapable to deal with that abbreviation at all. So it maybe is a generation issue, like most other things. "'Hope i die before i get old". --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 arnold at skeeve.com Sun May 8 05:03:42 2022 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Sat, 07 May 2022 13:03:42 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Alternative Implementation Proposal for Unix/370 (BTL, 1979) In-Reply-To: <20220506153317.D499D18C07A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20220506153317.D499D18C07A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <202205071903.247J3gQD002051@freefriends.org> Thanks Noel. Those reasons are quite compelling. One gets the sense that they wanted to get UNIX going on the 370 as quickly as posible. jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote: > > From: Tom Lyon > > > there were a few icustomer nstallations. Bell Labs Indian Hill was one > > - so that's why TSS was the base of their UNIX port. > > "A UNIX System Implementation for System/370" (by W. A. Felton, G. L. Miller, > and J. M. Milner): > > https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherports/ibm.html > > says "code to support System/370 I/O, paging, error recording and recovery, > and multiprocessing already existed in several available operating systems, > we investigated the possibility of using an existing operating system, or at > least the machine-interface parts of one, as a base to provide these > functions for the System/370 implementation ... Of the available systems, > TSS/370 came the closest to meeting our needs and was thus chosen as the base > for our UNIX system implementation". Alas, it doesn't say which other systems > were also considered. > > > >> On May 6, 2022, at 09:39, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > >> So, why, given the letter from these folks, including DMR, did they go > >> ahead and use the TSS solution anyway? > > That paper says: "We initially thought about porting the UNIX operating > system directly to System/370 with minimal changes. Unfortunately, there are > a number of System/370 characteristics that, in the light of our objectives > and resources, made such a direct port unattractive. The Input/Output (I/O) > architecture of System/370 is rather complex; in a large configuration, the > operating system must deal with a bewildering number of channels, > controllers, and devices, many of which may be interconnected through > multiple paths. Recovery from hardware errors is both complex and > model-dependent. For hardware diagnosis and tracking, customer engineers > expect the operating system to provide error logs in a specific format; > software to support this logging and reporting would have to be written. ... > Finally, several models of System/370 machines provide multiprocessing, with > two (or more) processors operating with shared memory; the UNIX system did > not support multiprocessing." > > Presumably these factors outweighed the factors listed in the > Haley/London/Maranzaro/Ritchie letter. > > Noel From imp at bsdimp.com Sun May 8 05:14:48 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 13:14:48 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 10:23 AM ron minnich wrote: > IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as > 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret > it as 10.0.0.2. The latter interpretation accords with what I learned > 40y ago. > 10.2 is ambiguous. In a network context, it means, typically, 10.2.0.0/16 (though your mileage may vary). In a host context, it means 10.0.0.2. It's this confusion that has lead to many efforts to outright kill this notation. > But, I find myself wondering: where was the first use of the IP4 zero > padding convention? > I know that it was around in the late 80s on TOPS-20 TCP/IP at Stanford, and in 4.2BSD (4.1c?). It may have also been in use at MIT. It's usage pre-dates my 1984 joining of the internet... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sun May 8 05:43:36 2022 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 15:43:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 Message-ID: <20220507194336.DC70918C075@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Ron Minnich > I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always assumed > zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am finding out > maybe not. I talked to the IP OG, and he tells me that padding was not > in any standard. I don't think it was very standardized; I've been working on the Internet since 1977, and this is the very first I ever recall hearing of it! :-) > From: Bakul Shah > The converse question is who came up with the a.b.c.d format where each > of a,b,c,d is in 0..255? Again, that was not standardized at an early stage, but was, as best I can now recall, just adopted by general usage (i.e. without any formal discussion). There were other ways of specifying a IP address numerically, initially; e.g. for a while at MIT we were using w,x,y,z (with w-z in octal - note the ','s, which were a syntatic tag for the octal form), which was easier to interpret when looking at a packet dump on a PDP-11. Here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/arc/tftp.c.1 is the source for a user command (from July, 1979) which allowed host addresses to be given in that form. I'm not sure who came up with the dotted decimal form; I suspect you'd need to find some really old email archives, and look in that. There was, early on, a list called "tcp-ip", used by people who were getting their machines ready for the NCP->TCP/IP conversion. However, I suspect the 'dotted quad' predates that; there was an even earlier mailing list, used in early experimental work, by the group working on internet technology, whose name escapes me (it was something like "internet working group"). It's possible that an IEN: https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien-index.html might mention the 'dotted quad' syntax; TCP and IP meeting minutes would be a good place to start. Noel PS: The A/B/C addresses are actually a moderately late stage of IP addresses. At the very start, they were all '8 bits network numbers, and 24 bits of 'rest''. From rminnich at gmail.com Sun May 8 05:50:44 2022 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 12:50:44 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: here's a simple example: rminnich at a300:~/tamago/t9$ ping 127.1 PING 127.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.056 ms telnet 127.1 22 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.1. All plan 9 programs I try parse 127.1 as 127.0.0.1 I first learned to use this convention in a BSD world, later on sunos. Interesting, the things you think are a standard, and are actually just a convention! On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 12:15 PM Warner Losh wrote: > > > > On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 10:23 AM ron minnich wrote: >> >> IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as >> 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret >> it as 10.0.0.2. The latter interpretation accords with what I learned >> 40y ago. > > > 10.2 is ambiguous. In a network context, it means, typically, 10.2.0.0/16 (though your mileage may vary). > In a host context, it means 10.0.0.2. It's this confusion that has lead to many efforts > to outright kill this notation. > >> >> But, I find myself wondering: where was the first use of the IP4 zero >> padding convention? > > > I know that it was around in the late 80s on TOPS-20 TCP/IP at Stanford, and in 4.2BSD (4.1c?). It may have also been in use at MIT. It's usage pre-dates my 1984 joining of the internet... > > Warner From rminnich at gmail.com Sun May 8 05:57:28 2022 From: rminnich at gmail.com (ron minnich) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 12:57:28 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: curiouser and curiouser, at least some Go packages parse it that way: rminnich at a300:~/go/src/github.com/u-root/u-root/cmds/core/ping$ cpu -key ~/.ssh/cpu_rsa 192.168.16 date Sat May 7 12:56:29 PM PDT 2022 rminnich at a300:~/go/src/github.com/u-root/u-root/cmds/core/ping$ cpu -key ~/.ssh/cpu_rsa 192.168.0.16 date Sat May 7 12:57:05 PM PDT 2022 rminnich at a300:~/go/src/github.com/u-root/u-root/cmds/core/ping$ [cpu is basically ssh with the plan 9 cpu command baked in, written in Go] So as a convention, it's been out and about for close to 40 years, many systems honor it, it seems not many people know of it, and not everything interprets it the same way. Huh! Well, you learn something new every day. I found it a wonderful shorthand when somebody showed it to me, and it's wired into my fingers at this point. I just assumed everyone else used it too. I may dig around and try to figure out when Plan 9 picked it up, that might give me some idea as to provenance. On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 12:50 PM ron minnich wrote: > > here's a simple example: > rminnich at a300:~/tamago/t9$ ping 127.1 > PING 127.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. > 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.056 ms > > telnet 127.1 22 > Trying 127.0.0.1... > Connected to 127.1. > > All plan 9 programs I try parse 127.1 as 127.0.0.1 > > I first learned to use this convention in a BSD world, later on sunos. > > Interesting, the things you think are a standard, and are actually > just a convention! > > On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 12:15 PM Warner Losh wrote: > > > > > > > > On Sat, May 7, 2022 at 10:23 AM ron minnich wrote: > >> > >> IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as > >> 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret > >> it as 10.0.0.2. The latter interpretation accords with what I learned > >> 40y ago. > > > > > > 10.2 is ambiguous. In a network context, it means, typically, 10.2.0.0/16 (though your mileage may vary). > > In a host context, it means 10.0.0.2. It's this confusion that has lead to many efforts > > to outright kill this notation. > > > >> > >> But, I find myself wondering: where was the first use of the IP4 zero > >> padding convention? > > > > > > I know that it was around in the late 80s on TOPS-20 TCP/IP at Stanford, and in 4.2BSD (4.1c?). It may have also been in use at MIT. It's usage pre-dates my 1984 joining of the internet... > > > > Warner From bakul at iitbombay.org Sun May 8 09:19:53 2022 From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 16:19:53 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On May 7, 2022, at 12:14 PM, Warner Losh wrote: > > 10.2 is ambiguous. In a network context, it means, typically, 10.2.0.0/16 (though your mileage may vary). > In a host context, it means 10.0.0.2. It's this confusion that has lead to many efforts > to outright kill this notation. On FreeBSD: ping 10.2 tries to ping 10.0.0.2 and ping 192.168.300 tries to ping 192.168.1.44 (1*2^8+44 == 300) ping 10.2.300 tries to ping 10.2.1.44 ping 192.1000000 tries to ping 192.15.66.64 (15*2^15+66*2^8+64 == 1000000) ping 1000000001 tries to ping 59.154.202.1 (59*2^24+154*2^16+202*2^8+1) ping 300.300 tries to ping 23.217.138.110 (I haven't worked this out! Prob. a bug) So the last number is treated as the host number on a given net. This may have some sense in the classful network world but is very confusing in the CIDR world. From imp at bsdimp.com Sun May 8 09:49:46 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 17:49:46 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, May 7, 2022, 5:19 PM Bakul Shah wrote: > On May 7, 2022, at 12:14 PM, Warner Losh wrote: > > > > 10.2 is ambiguous. In a network context, it means, typically, > 10.2.0.0/16 (though your mileage may vary). > > In a host context, it means 10.0.0.2. It's this confusion that has lead > to many efforts > > to outright kill this notation. > > On FreeBSD: > ping 10.2 tries to ping 10.0.0.2 and > ping 192.168.300 tries to ping 192.168.1.44 (1*2^8+44 == 300) > ping 10.2.300 tries to ping 10.2.1.44 > ping 192.1000000 tries to ping 192.15.66.64 (15*2^15+66*2^8+64 == 1000000) > ping 1000000001 tries to ping 59.154.202.1 (59*2^24+154*2^16+202*2^8+1) > ping 300.300 tries to ping 23.217.138.110 (I haven't worked this out! > Prob. a bug) > So the last number is treated as the host number on a given net. > This may have some sense in the classful network world but is > very confusing in the CIDR world. > We just know the dotted quad world. In the early days of sparse addresses and crappy name service (or out of date host files) these shortcuts were a lifesaver. Warner > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jason-tuhs at shalott.net Sun May 8 15:21:05 2022 From: jason-tuhs at shalott.net (jason-tuhs at shalott.net) Date: Sat, 7 May 2022 22:21:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always > assumed zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am > finding out maybe not. A friend spent some time digging into this issue not too long ago; you may find his write-up interesting: https://blog.dave.tf/post/ip-addr-parsing/ -Jason From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Sun May 8 20:22:08 2022 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Sun, 08 May 2022 11:22:08 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20220508102208.50A2822158@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Ron, > I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always > assumed zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am > finding out maybe not. It has been standardised; see inet_addr(3p) where ‘p’ means the POSIX version of the man page or https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/inet_addr.html Briefly, the string must be one of a.b.c.d a.b.cd a.bcd abcd where the number of bytes represented is the number of characters. Each number is as defined by ISO C, e.g. ‘0x...’ means hex, thus ‘ping 017777777776’. That's all there is to it. It's simple to explain and I've used it for years too. Given POSIX defines it, without deprecation, programming languages which don't use the C library and programs which must parse the string themselves should follow POSIX to avoid those annoying programs which deviate from the long-established norm. > IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as > 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret > it as 10.0.0.2. Bug the ip(1) folks, pointing to POSIX. :-) -- Cheers, Ralph. From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Sun May 8 20:28:46 2022 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Sun, 08 May 2022 11:28:46 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20220508102846.55F3222158@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Bakul, > On FreeBSD: > ping 10.2 tries to ping 10.0.0.2 and > ping 192.168.300 tries to ping 192.168.1.44 (1*2^8+44 == 300) > ping 10.2.300 tries to ping 10.2.1.44 > ping 192.1000000 tries to ping 192.15.66.64 (15*2^15+66*2^8+64 == 1000000) > ping 1000000001 tries to ping 59.154.202.1 (59*2^24+154*2^16+202*2^8+1) Ditto here on Linux with GNU libc. > ping 300.300 tries to ping 23.217.138.110 (I haven't worked this out! Prob. a bug) It doesn't parse as a numeric address. Given it's a.bcd, based on the notation in my other email, the first 300 is ‘a’ but is bigger than one byte so is invalid. Yes, a bug. $ ping 300.300 ping: 300.300: Name or service not known $ -- Cheers, Ralph. From michael at kjorling.se Mon May 9 00:54:06 2022 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Sun, 8 May 2022 14:54:06 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: <20220507194336.DC70918C075@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20220507194336.DC70918C075@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On 7 May 2022 15:43 -0400, from jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa): > PS: The A/B/C addresses are actually a moderately late stage of IP > addresses. At the very start, they were all '8 bits network numbers, and 24 > bits of 'rest''. Looks like that happened in 1978 or thereabouts? https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien46.txt -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” From steffen at sdaoden.eu Tue May 10 00:08:46 2022 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Mon, 09 May 2022 16:08:46 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: <20220508102208.50A2822158@orac.inputplus.co.uk> References: <20220508102208.50A2822158@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Message-ID: <20220509140846.Qaxea%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Ralph Corderoy wrote in <20220508102208.50A2822158 at orac.inputplus.co.uk>: |> I first learned in the 80s that 127.1 meant 127.0.0.1. I always |> assumed zero padding was defined in a standard *somewhere*, but am |> finding out maybe not. | |It has been standardised; see inet_addr(3p) where ‘p’ means the POSIX |version of the man page or |https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/inet_addr.html | |Briefly, the string must be one of | | a.b.c.d | a.b.cd | a.bcd | abcd | |where the number of bytes represented is the number of characters. |Each number is as defined by ISO C, e.g. ‘0x...’ means hex, thus |‘ping 017777777776’. | |That's all there is to it. It's simple to explain and I've used it for |years too. Given POSIX defines it, without deprecation, programming |languages which don't use the C library and programs which must parse |the string themselves should follow POSIX to avoid those annoying |programs which deviate from the long-established norm. | |> IP4 padding came up recently: the ip command interprets 10.2 as |> 10.2.0.0, whereas most things (golang libraries, ping, ...) interpret |> it as 10.0.0.2. | |Bug the ip(1) folks, pointing to POSIX. :-) "However", RFC 2553 says RFC 2553 Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6 March 1999 The address conversion functions -- inet_ntoa() and inet_addr() -- convert IPv4 addresses between binary and printable form. These functions are quite specific to 32-bit IPv4 addresses. We have designed two analogous functions that convert both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and carry an address type parameter so that they can be extended to other protocol families as well. And for this POSIX says If the af argument of inet_pton( ) is AF_INET, the src string shall be in the standard IPv4 dotted-decimal form: ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd where "ddd" is a one to three digit decimal number between 0 and 255 (see inet_addr( )). The inet_pton() function does not accept other formats [.] I am too lazy / busy to check whether inet_pton() with AF_INET gets the short version right. (I personally had IPAdress:: .. pub boolean fromString(const char *_straddr, ui4 _straddrlen=M1::ui4): * Tries to parse the address as stored in \a _straddr. * If \a _straddr was successfully parsed a true boolean is returned. * Otherwise \THIS has not been modified. * * This function can parse all usual address representations, * in particular all of those which can be produced with toString(). * It can even parse "127. 0. 0. 1", "127.000.000.001", * but \e cannot parse "127. 0.0000. 1" (room for four digits). * And ditto for IPv6. * * \remarks If result is IPv6, flowInfo() and scopeId() are set to 0. * \note * ARPA strings are not understood! * I.e., strings produced by toArpaString() cannot be re-parsed to * a plain address with this one! * * \note * ::0.0.0.0 and ::FFFF:0.0.0.0 will fail. * ::0.0.0.1 and ::FFFF:0.0.0.1 will also fail. and now find the need to do /* xxx Client had this already, simply binary pass it, too? */ c_af = (su_cs_find_c(pgp->pg_ca, ':') != NIL) ? AF_INET6 : AF_INET; if(inet_pton(c_af, pgp->pg_ca, (c_af == AF_INET ? S(void*,&c_sip.v4) : S(void*,&c_sip.v6))) != 1){ su_log_write(su_LOG_CRIT, _("Cannot re-parse an already " "prepared IP address?: "), pgp->pg_ca); goto jleave0; } c_ip = (c_af == AF_INET) ? R(u32*,&c_sip.v4.s_addr) : R(u32*,c_sip.v6.s6_addr); quite lengthy and complicated. Of course inet_pton() can be made "extended to other protocol families", and maybe they are already even, but i find this distressing as either you need to provide some kind of _(un)?register() or even hardwire, maybe with a tree of #ifdef, those other families. And better watch out for EAFNOSUPPORT at runtime. Of course i came late and wanted / needed something specific so i am fine out. --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 gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Tue May 10 02:12:46 2022 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 10:12:46 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: <67d0b1b5-e1b1-ebb4-6ebd-aba2fbd111ee@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> On 5/7/22 10:13 AM, Patrick Audley via TUHS wrote: > When I saw this, I started to think, "I bet we can make a regexp for that". :-D > Apparently, I do too much text processing. Na. I don't think so. Text processing seems to be one (of the many) thing(s) that Unix, et al., excel at. So I think it's probably natural for anyone well versed in Unix ... to think "RegEx"! > I'm up for helping process the archive if needed with sed, perl or > some such. I think we're thinking about two different layers of actions. Both using their own form of RegEx like behavior. It sounds like you're talking about processing / munging an mbox mail archive. I'm thinking about URL re-writing in the web server, be it on the fly or static configuration (for fixed list of old URLs). -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4017 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Tue May 10 02:14:16 2022 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 12:14:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 Message-ID: <20220509161416.EDB2F18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > There were other ways of specifying a IP address numerically, initially; I decided to set the Way-Back Machine to as close to 0 as I could get, and looked to see what the Terminal Interface Unit: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Terminal_Interface_Unit whose source I recently recovered, did. This is an interesting implementation, because it was definitely one of the first 4 TCP implementations done (before any UNIX ones); likely one of the first two, along with the TENEX one. (Actually, they both likely originally predate the split of TCP and IP into separate protocols, although this version post-dates that split.) The manual: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/mos/docs/tiunv1.lpt (in "B. TELNET Commands") and the source: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/mos/tiu/telnet-1.mac disagree on how the user gave addresses in numeric form in an 'open' command; both agree that it was '@O ,,', but the manual claims that 'rest' "may be specified symbolically, or numerically in decimal", but the code shows that '#xxx' could also be used, to give it in hex. (Although if hex were used, the number could be a max of 16 bits; decimal alloweded up to 42 bits.) > From: Michael Kjörling > Looks like [A/B/C addresses] happened in 1978 or thereabouts? > https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien46.txt No; it post-dates the IEN era; "Assigned Numbers" of September 1981 (RFC-790) is the first mention I could find of it. (That Dave Clark IEN is talking about what later became 'IP subnets' - which ironically long pre-date A/B/C - see IEN-82, February 1979.) The Internet Protocol spec of September 1981 (RFC-791) also has A/B/C; my memory is that this change was _not_ discussed in the INWG, Postel just sprung it on us in these two RFCs. I suspect what happened is that Jon (as keeper of the network numbers) realized that there was an increasing demand for network numbers, and 256 would only last so long, so he sprung into action and did the A/B/C thing. (If this topic is of more interest, it should get moved to the 'internet-history' list, it's off-topic here.) Interestingly, RFC-790 says: "One notation for internet host addresses commonly used divides the 32-bit address into four 8-bit fields and specifies the value of each field as a decimal number with the fields separated by periods." Note the "one notation", implying that it wasn't any kind of standard at that point. Noel From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Tue May 10 03:55:42 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 13:55:42 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <67d0b1b5-e1b1-ebb4-6ebd-aba2fbd111ee@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> <67d0b1b5-e1b1-ebb4-6ebd-aba2fbd111ee@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: Url rewriting That would mean supporting that forever including the overhead in contrast to the "SED modify the archive" approach is a one shot or so deal. On Mon, May 9, 2022, 12:15 PM Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > On 5/7/22 10:13 AM, Patrick Audley via TUHS wrote: > > When I saw this, I started to think, "I bet we can make a regexp for > that". > > :-D > > > Apparently, I do too much text processing. > > Na. I don't think so. Text processing seems to be one (of the many) > thing(s) that Unix, et al., excel at. So I think it's probably natural > for anyone well versed in Unix ... to think "RegEx"! > > > I'm up for helping process the archive if needed with sed, perl or > > some such. > > I think we're thinking about two different layers of actions. Both > using their own form of RegEx like behavior. > > It sounds like you're talking about processing / munging an mbox mail > archive. > > I'm thinking about URL re-writing in the web server, be it on the fly or > static configuration (for fixed list of old URLs). > > > > -- > Grant. . . . > unix || die > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danil at smirnov.la Tue May 10 04:37:20 2022 From: danil at smirnov.la (Danil Smirnov) Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 21:37:20 +0300 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: Hi Warren, пт, 6 мая 2022 г., 00:31 Warren Toomey via TUHS : > Yes, I plan on moving to Mailman 3.x. I'm hoping that I can import the raw > TUHS mbox (currently 130Mbytes). This, unfortunately, will break the > hyperlinks > in the current mail archive at https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ > I can provide you with advice on migration based on my vast experience. Feel free to ask! Sincerely, Danil Smirnov Mailman3.com > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rich.salz at gmail.com Tue May 10 05:22:11 2022 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 15:22:11 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> <67d0b1b5-e1b1-ebb4-6ebd-aba2fbd111ee@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: It depends on what status you send; 301 is "moved permanently" and search engines will get the hint; 302 is a temporary condition. A quick look shows it's running Apache; mod_rewrite can handle things. (And hey, on Linode, my $DAYJOB's latest acquisition :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Tue May 10 05:57:59 2022 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 13:57:59 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] TUHS web server has changed In-Reply-To: References: <20220504020824.GA27992@minnie.tuhs.org> <20220505212630.GA19111@minnie.tuhs.org> <515f9768-9508-5e07-9fb0-186744c2d461@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> <67d0b1b5-e1b1-ebb4-6ebd-aba2fbd111ee@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On 5/9/22 11:55 AM, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > Url rewriting Yes. > That would mean supporting that forever including the overhead in > contrast to the "SED modify the archive" approach is a one shot or so deal. I'm concerned with supporting the URLs that are in all of the emails that have been sent out over the years that point back to the archive. sed won't change what's in someone else's email box. URL rewriting will make sure that was was sent out in the past will continue to work in the future. ;-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4017 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Tue May 10 20:49:03 2022 From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 11:49:03 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] conventions around zero padding in ip4 In-Reply-To: <20220509140846.Qaxea%steffen@sdaoden.eu> References: <20220508102208.50A2822158@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <20220509140846.Qaxea%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: <20220510104903.DF66E221AE@orac.inputplus.co.uk> Hi Steffen, > > It has been standardised; see inet_addr(3p) where ‘p’ means the > > POSIX version of the man page or > > https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/inet_addr.html > > > > Briefly, the string must be one of > > > > a.b.c.d > > a.b.cd > > a.bcd > > abcd ... > "However", RFC 2553 says > > RFC 2553 Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6 March 1999 > > The address conversion functions -- inet_ntoa() and inet_addr() -- > convert IPv4 addresses between binary and printable form. These > functions are quite specific to 32-bit IPv4 addresses. We have > designed two analogous functions that convert both IPv4 and IPv6 > addresses So that RFC added inet_pton(3) and inet_ntop(3). > And for this POSIX says > > If the af argument of inet_pton( ) is AF_INET, the src string > shall be in the standard IPv4 dotted-decimal form: > ddd.ddd.ddd.ddd where "ddd" is a one to three digit decimal > number between 0 and 255 (see inet_addr( )). The inet_pton() > function does not accept other formats [.] True. The non-POSIX inet_pton(3) here points out it only accepts IPv4 in decimal 3.1.4.1 form and pushes the programmer to getaddrinfo(3) instead. NOTES Unlike inet_aton(3) and inet_addr(3), inet_pton() supports IPv6 addresses. On the other hand, inet_pton() accepts only IPv4 addresses in dotted-decimal notation, whereas inet_aton(3) and inet_addr(3) allow the more general numbers-and-dots notation (hexadecimal and octal number formats, and formats that don't require all four bytes to be explicitly written). For an interface that handles both IPv6 addresses, and IPv4 addresses in numbers-and-dots notation, see getaddrinfo(3). And POSIX's getaddrinfo(3p) punts to inet_addr(3p) for describing what IPv4 formats are accepted, so we've gone full circle. If the specified address family is AF_INET or AF_UNSPEC, address strings using Internet standard dot notation as specified in inet_addr() are valid. It looks to me that the RFC introduced a limited format which then had to be standardised but the older interface is still being spread by newer functions like getaddrinfo(). -- Cheers, Ralph. From mah at mhorton.net Wed May 11 01:28:21 2022 From: mah at mhorton.net (Mary Ann Horton) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 08:28:21 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy with a black 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I thought it was called AIX. I installed it, and recall it being very different from UNIX for sysadmin (different logs, different admin commands) but similar for users. I thought it was based on System III or thereabouts. I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for the original PC. Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called or based on? Thanks,     Mary Ann On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code > and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days experience > with it on a POS cash register fixing a client issue. The shocker - > they changed all the error messages to error codes with a look at the > manual requirement. > > Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. > But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite but > more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. > License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: > > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the > code." > > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if > the full path existed. oops. > > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to > handle AIX being different from just about everything else. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Wed May 11 02:08:06 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 10:08:06 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2022, 9:32 AM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy with a black > 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I thought it was called AIX. > I installed it, and recall it being very different from UNIX for sysadmin > (different logs, different admin commands) but similar for users. I thought > it was based on System III or thereabouts. > > I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for the > original PC. > > Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called or based > on? > The first 8086 port was inside of Bell Labs, but was for a system with a custom MMU. The first commercial one was Venix released in 1983 based on Version 7 with some Berkeley improvements using the MIT compilers of the time, but it had a blue label with a boring stylized V on it. IBM released PC/IX a year later (1984) and marketed heavily. It was a companion to its other unix offerings, and wasn't AIX. That port was based on System III. If anything had the clever Charlie Chaplin marketing materials, it was sure to be PC/IX. Microsoft's Xenix was also in this time frame, but wasn't marketed by IBM (and its earliest version in 1982 predate Venix, but were only for Intel's System 86 machines, and may have required an Intel MMU board (the quick research I did was unclear on this point, other than it was supported). SCO/Microsoft released in late 1983 and early 1984 versions for the commercially available PC and other variants at the time before the IBM-PC became the standardized x86 platform. So my money is on PC/IX. Warner Thanks, > > Mary Ann > On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > > My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code and > then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days experience with it on a > POS cash register fixing a client issue. The shocker - they changed all the > error messages to error codes with a look at the manual requirement. > > Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. > But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite but more > along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. > License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: > >> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I >> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the >> code." >> >> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. >> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if >> the full path existed. oops. >> >> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to >> handle AIX being different from just about everything else. >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From frew at ucsb.edu Wed May 11 02:42:01 2022 From: frew at ucsb.edu (James Frew) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 09:42:01 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: <2616d5bc-05c9-e72f-f7db-5d6cf6aafff4@ucsb.edu> In the early '80s UC Santa Barbara had a general assignment teaching lab full of IBM PC/ATs (i.e. 286s). We convinced the the powers-that-be to let us run Xenix on them for a remote sensing class, which meant we could port an image processing system I'd written under v6 (PDP-11/45) to an actual classroom. Xenix must have been v7 or pretty close, since the port was painless. (The display driver was a bit harder---it was (gasp!) 8-bits deep, first display I didn't have to dither on, but it wasn't memory-mapped, so you had to shovel pixels into it a byte a time. Made for nice dramatic slow reveals...) Thanks for the memories! /James Frew P.S.: Hardware brevis, software longa: https://github.com/USDA-ARS-NWRC/ipw On 2022-05-10 09:08, Warner Losh wrote: > > Microsoft's Xenix was also in this time frame, but wasn't marketed by > IBM (and its earliest version in 1982 predate Venix, but were only for > Intel's System 86 machines, and may have required an Intel MMU board > (the quick research I did was unclear on this point, other than it was > supported). From clemc at ccc.com Wed May 11 02:59:47 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 12:59:47 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: PC/IX ᐧ On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 11:32 AM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy with a black > 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I thought it was called AIX. > I installed it, and recall it being very different from UNIX for sysadmin > (different logs, different admin commands) but similar for users. I thought > it was based on System III or thereabouts. > > I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for the > original PC. > > Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called or based > on? > > Thanks, > > Mary Ann > On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > > My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code and > then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days experience with it on a > POS cash register fixing a client issue. The shocker - they changed all the > error messages to error codes with a look at the manual requirement. > > Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. > But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite but more > along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. > License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. > > On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: > >> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I >> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the >> code." >> >> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. >> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if >> the full path existed. oops. >> >> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to >> handle AIX being different from just about everything else. >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From heinz at osta.com Wed May 11 02:40:51 2022 From: heinz at osta.com (Heinz Lycklama) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 09:40:51 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: <88c0eb86-c9ef-2fa4-c032-7d87fffc61a7@osta.com> PC/IX was developed for IBM by INTERACTIVE Systems. It was based on UNIX System III. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporation Heinz On 5/10/2022 9:08 AM, Warner Losh wrote: > > > On Tue, May 10, 2022, 9:32 AM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > > I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy with > a black 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I thought > it was called AIX. I installed it, and recall it being very > different from UNIX for sysadmin (different logs, different admin > commands) but similar for users. I thought it was based on System > III or thereabouts. > > I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for > the original PC. > > Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called > or based on? > > > The first 8086 port was inside of Bell Labs, but was for a system with > a custom MMU. The first commercial one was Venix released in 1983 > based on Version 7 with some Berkeley improvements using the MIT > compilers of the time, but it had a blue label with a boring stylized > V on it. IBM released PC/IX a year later (1984) and marketed heavily. > It was a companion to its other unix offerings, and wasn't AIX. That > port was based on System III. If anything had the clever Charlie > Chaplin marketing materials, it was sure to be PC/IX. Microsoft's > Xenix was also in this time frame, but wasn't marketed by IBM (and its > earliest version in 1982 predate Venix, but were only for Intel's > System 86 machines, and may have required an Intel MMU board (the > quick research I did was unclear on this point, other than it was > supported). SCO/Microsoft released in late 1983 and early 1984 > versions for the commercially available PC and other variants at the > time before the IBM-PC became the standardized x86 platform. > > So my money is on PC/IX. > > Warner > > Thanks, > >     Mary Ann > > On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: >> My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source >> code and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days >> experience with it on a POS cash register fixing a client issue. >> The shocker - they changed all the error messages to error codes >> with a look at the manual requirement. >> >> Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. >> But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite >> but more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. >> License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. >> >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: >> >> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the >> first, as I >> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the >> code." >> >> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done >> quite right. >> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an >> error if >> the full path existed. oops. >> >> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to >> handle AIX being different from just about everything else. >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed May 11 03:18:57 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 13:18:57 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: Sorry, I hit return too soon. Mary Ann - I think PC/IX is what you were thinking. FWIW: it was one of the reasons why Andy developed Minix. He said at the time it was insufficient and if he was going to have a pure V7 port for the base 8088-based PC/XT (not 286s-based PC/AT) then he wanted something he could teach with. IIRC the early PC/IX (and I know for certain Minux did not) did not even recognize the MMU for the 286 of the AT (much less the later 386), but it did have a driver for the AT disk controller (which was/is a different controller than the XT). As Warner says, PC/XT was based on the new System III license we had just all negotiated earlier that winter. Microsoft had already started shipping Xenix on the x86/68000 and I think a z8000 using the V7 license, but I don't think IBM relicensed it. HP was shipping HP-UX for the original 9000 on the same, and Tek was also shipping it firsts emulator system on the V7 license. DEC had the original v7m which begat Ultrix, although I don't remember if DEC ever shipped binaries on the original V7 license. Charlie can correct me, but I don't think IBM ever shipped binaries on the V7 license either. [The original V7 redistribution license had terms that makers of $100K+ systems did not mind too much, but was difficult for what would eventually be called PCs and workstations at the <$10K (much less < $1K) price to swallow. FWIW: Years later, Linus famously got his 386 box from his parents for Christmas, got a copy of Andy's Minux (for a PC/XT), started writing his terminal program, and was annoyed that it did not use the VM/larger address space of hardware. ᐧ ᐧ On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 12:59 PM Clem Cole wrote: > PC/IX > ᐧ > > On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 11:32 AM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > >> I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy with a >> black 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I thought it was >> called AIX. I installed it, and recall it being very different from UNIX >> for sysadmin (different logs, different admin commands) but similar for >> users. I thought it was based on System III or thereabouts. >> >> I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for the >> original PC. >> >> Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called or based >> on? >> >> Thanks, >> >> Mary Ann >> On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: >> >> My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code >> and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days experience with it >> on a POS cash register fixing a client issue. The shocker - they changed >> all the error messages to error codes with a look at the manual >> requirement. >> >> Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. >> But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite but more >> along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. >> License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. >> >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: >> >>> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I >>> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the >>> code." >>> >>> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right. >>> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if >>> the full path existed. oops. >>> >>> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to >>> handle AIX being different from just about everything else. >>> >>> >>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sauer at technologists.com Wed May 11 04:05:43 2022 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer (he/him)) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 13:05:43 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: <5ebf4284-878f-ab85-6d6f-475add897315@technologists.com> I mostly defer to Heinz and Clem regarding PC/IX. It is hard to imagine the IBM people in Boca Raton allowing the Chaplin imagery to be used with a secondary product like PC/IX, but I don't remember the packaging. PC/IX was my first hands on experience with Unix. PC/IX was used extensively in the AIX development group while ROMP hardware was scarce. Before I got my own RT/PC, I used PC/IX primarily, until I got a PC/AT and started using some instance of Xenix that supported the 286 MMU. Charlie On 5/10/2022 12:18 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > Sorry, I  hit return too soon. > > Mary Ann -  I think  PC/IX is what you were thinking.  FWIW: it was one > of the reasons why Andy developed Minix.  He said at the time it was > insufficient and if he was going to have a pure V7 port for the base > 8088-based PC/XT (not 286s-based PC/AT) then he wanted something he > could teach with.   IIRC the early PC/IX (and I know for certain Minux > did not) did not even recognize the MMU for the 286 of the AT (much less > the later 386), but it did have a driver for the AT disk controller > (which was/is a different controller than the XT). > > As Warner says, PC/XT was based on the new System III license we had > just all negotiated earlier that winter.   Microsoft had already started > shipping Xenix on the x86/68000 and I think a z8000 using the V7 > license, but I don't think IBM relicensed it.   HP was shipping HP-UX > for the original 9000 on the same, and Tek was also shipping it firsts > emulator system on the V7 license.    DEC had the original v7m which > begat Ultrix, although I don't remember if DEC ever shipped binaries on > the original V7 license.  Charlie can correct me, but I don't think IBM > ever shipped binaries on the V7 license either. > > [The original V7 redistribution license had terms that makers of $100K+ > systems did not mind too much, but was difficult for what would > eventually be called PCs and workstations at the <$10K (much less < $1K) > price to swallow. > > FWIW: Years later, Linus famously got his 386 box from his parents for > Christmas, got a copy of Andy's Minux (for a PC/XT), started writing his > terminal program, and was annoyed that it did not use the VM/larger > address space of hardware. > ᐧ > ᐧ > > On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 12:59 PM Clem Cole > wrote: > > PC/IX > ᐧ > > On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 11:32 AM Mary Ann Horton > wrote: > > I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy > with a black 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I > thought it was called AIX. I installed it, and recall it being > very different from UNIX for sysadmin (different logs, different > admin commands) but similar for users. I thought it was based on > System III or thereabouts. > > I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for > the original PC. > > Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called > or based on? > > Thanks, > >     Mary Ann > > On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: >> My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V >> source code and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a >> days experience with it on a POS cash register fixing a client >> issue. The shocker - they changed all the error messages to >> error codes with a look at the manual requirement. >> >> Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. >> But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch >> rewrite but more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones >> of the time. >> License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. >> >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich > > wrote: >> >> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the >> first, as I >> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, >> write the >> code." >> >> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done >> quite right. >> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return >> an error if >> the full path existed. oops. >> >> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of >> code to >> handle AIX being different from just about everything else. >> >> -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Twitter: CharlesHSauer From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Wed May 11 05:08:40 2022 From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 15:08:40 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 10 May 2022 at 13:21, Clem Cole wrote: > DEC had the original v7m which begat Ultrix, although I don't remember if > DEC ever shipped binaries on the original V7 license. > What was the timeframe on that? As far as I can tell from looking through the Ultrix 2.0 source code, the earliest modifications were in very late '83 and reference imports from 4.2BSD dated at latest fall '83. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lars at nocrew.org Wed May 11 05:27:07 2022 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 19:27:07 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <5ebf4284-878f-ab85-6d6f-475add897315@technologists.com> (Charles H. Sauer's message of "Tue, 10 May 2022 13:05:43 -0500") References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> <5ebf4284-878f-ab85-6d6f-475add897315@technologists.com> Message-ID: <7wfslhp4s4.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Charles H Sauer wrote: > I mostly defer to Heinz and Clem regarding PC/IX. It is hard to > imagine the IBM people in Boca Raton allowing the Chaplin imagery to > be used with a secondary product like PC/IX, but I don't remember the > packaging. Here's something interesting from http://vtda.org/bits/OS/IBM/pcix/documentation/pcix.txt Anyway, the PC/IX binders were pinstriped, very dark charcoal gray, with white type, and a bud vase with a single red rose, harking back to the original IBM PC ad campaign featuring “The Little Tramp” (Charlie Chaplin lookalike with a red rose); the VM/IX binders were identical, except for a vase with a bouquet of red roses. From rich.salz at gmail.com Wed May 11 05:33:59 2022 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 15:33:59 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: Per wikipedia (FWIW), V7M was for PDP-11; Ultrix was the first VAX unix project and based on 4.2BSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix Armando Stettner is probably most famous for the NH license plate "Ultrix" The NH state motto, which appeared on all their license plates, was "Live Free or Die" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Wed May 11 06:28:09 2022 From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 16:28:09 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 10 May 2022 at 15:34, Richard Salz wrote: > > Armando Stettner is probably most famous for the NH license plate > "Ultrix" The NH state motto, which appeared on all their license plates, > was "Live Free or Die" > > I was very fortunate to accidentally stumble on an '80s Ohio license plate that had "VAX" on it, and it sits proudly on display next to my MicroVAX 3100 memory boards and a sadly now deceased PMAG-F. I picked up the graphics accelerator back when you could have old hardware for little more than a song, and I'm glad that I did as it seems that few people bought it at the time. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Wed May 11 06:43:17 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 14:43:17 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 1:35 PM Richard Salz wrote: > Per wikipedia (FWIW), V7M was for PDP-11; Ultrix was the first VAX unix > project and based on 4.2BSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix > At some point, Unix V7M was rebranded as Ultrix-11 and pulled in a lot from the BSD releases (2.9 or 2.10) to get TCP/IP networking onto the PDP-11. I don't think DEC ever shipped pure AT&T binaries. The V7M was a modified version of V7, with most of the modifications in the kernel to fix a few bugs with buffer handling, and also make it run on all the different PDP-11 models. All the sources to V7, V7M and the last Ultrix-11 version are in TUHS for people to peruse... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed May 11 06:46:50 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 16:46:50 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: a couple of small additions/corrections .... On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 3:34 PM Richard Salz wrote: > Per wikipedia (FWIW), V7M was for PDP-11; Ultrix was the first VAX unix > project and based on 4.2BSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix > Not quite... Indeed, V7M was a >>source<< distribution for the 11 - Fred Cantor and Bill Shannon were the primary hackers on same - actually]. I want to say that 1980 maybe 1981. This was available to any AT&T source licensee - using the traditional rules [Warren has it -- it actually is easier to get running on a PiDP-11 than the basic V7 distribution -- its supports more devices out of the box].. The key is that V7m booted on more systems out of the box than V7 and also it has Shannon's overlay code in it [which would eventually make its way in 2.X BSD]. Ultrix was the first VAX release of Ultrix that Armando and Bill shepherded using 4.1BSD, but Fred did the first Ultrix-11 also which was somewhere between 2.X BSD and V7m *and was a binary release*. Ultrix was the formal name of DEC's first UNIX a product. BTW: A number of the drivers from Ultrix went back to Merrimack via Shannon to CSRG. At the time ~82, I had the only pure DEC 780 at UCB [which DEC had donated to the CAD group] so Sam and I debugged the TU78 driver from Ultrix on the now burgeoning 4.1A on the UCBCAD machine 'coke' - with remote help from Bill. I don't remember all the differences but my system had a fully loaded I/O system and Shannon's system back in MKO did not. I think Sam must have rewritten the configuration support code a few times during that process. That said, that driver and device support may not have been released in the BSD stream until the 4.2BSD stuff was folded in. Famously, Bill Munson announced Ultrix at an early 1980s USENIX, reminding everyone that it meant Fortran, Cobol and the like would be coming too. Paul W and his mates in the Languages group had to do all sorts of stuff to make that so. I believe Paul has previously extolled us with moving the VMS linker over to the Unix to support at least Fortran. FYI, Sun does not yet exist (Shannon is still working for Munson in NH). At some point, Ultrix went to the PMAX (after Armando moved to Palo Alto and Shannon had left for Sun). Interesting tidbit, Ultrix was used to debug the Alpha and was the first OS that ran on it. History has shown the stupidity of not releasing that as a product [cost at least 4 years of revenue but I digress]. It's about the time of the original Ultrix work is when I stopped paying attention to the PDP-11s, so there are gaps in my knowledge. Ultrix definitely was released as a binary product for the 11. My >>memory<< is the first version for the Vax was 4.1 based with some new defined support and languages, but that version may not have gone too far outside of DEC and until the 4.2BSD version was the first one for revenue. The first Ultrix-11 was V7+some set of BSDisms. I know Shannon's overlay code went to UCB, but I'm not so sure when the BSD 11 changes came back to DEC. > Armando Stettner is probably most famous for the NH license plate "Ultrix" > No, he had the NH UNIX plate [on his Z-Car] not Ultrix, and he later sold it to Maddog when he moved to DEC Palo Alto. His Plate was the model for the famous DEC license plate [note I've had the Mass plate since '83 and I believe I am the only person that ever had it -- it's been a number of cars since - currently on my Model S. > The NH state motto, which appeared on all their license plates, was "Live > Free or Die" > Still does. As does the Old Man on the Mountain even though it's long gone. ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From srb at acm.org Wed May 11 10:52:34 2022 From: srb at acm.org (Steve Bourne) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 20:52:34 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate Message-ID: Armando also responsible for the UNIX "live free or die" plates. I still have a few. Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com Wed May 11 10:56:59 2022 From: kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com (Kenneth Goodwin) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 20:56:59 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: As I recall, The UNIX plates were the first in the series and distributed at a USENIX conference AT THE DEC booth The next year, they came out with the ULTRIX plates. On Tue, May 10, 2022, 8:54 PM Steve Bourne wrote: > Armando also responsible for the UNIX "live free or die" plates. I still > have a few. > > Steve > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed May 11 11:02:23 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 21:02:23 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Ultrix plates were much later. The original Unix plates were there for a few years. On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 8:58 PM Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > As I recall, The UNIX plates were the first in the series and distributed > at a USENIX conference AT THE DEC booth The next year, they came out with > the ULTRIX plates. > > On Tue, May 10, 2022, 8:54 PM Steve Bourne wrote: > >> Armando also responsible for the UNIX "live free or die" plates. I still >> have a few. >> >> Steve >> > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grog at lemis.com Wed May 11 12:12:20 2022 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 12:12:20 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20220511021220.GA17938@eureka.lemis.com> On Tuesday, 10 May 2022 at 20:56:59 -0400, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2022, 8:54 PM Steve Bourne wrote: > >> Armando also responsible for the UNIX "live free or die" plates. I still >> have a few. > > As I recall, The UNIX plates were the first in the series and > distributed at a USENIX conference AT THE DEC booth The next year, > they came out with the ULTRIX plates. FWIW I picked up a UNIX plate at USENIX 2001, possibly one of the last. It has the texts "Compaq" and "Tru64" on it. See http://www.lemis.com/grog/photos/Photos.php?dirdate=20040304 Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ron at ronnatalie.com Wed May 11 06:18:53 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 20:18:53 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: Armando’s plates didn’t say ULTRIX. The ULTRIX plates cae later (some complete marketing disaster at DEC). Armondo’s plate said UNIX. At one USENIX meeting, Armando got up and made an announcement that for many years UNIX and DEC had been synonymous, but DEC had never realized it. He was therefore happy to announce the first UNIX license from DEC and held out up one of the plates. I still have mine. Armondo had a NH vanity plate that said UNIX (like the replicas given away). He also had one of the DEC replicas on his car complete with the state renewal stickers. At one point it went missing. He announced that on the net, which led to a lot of people mentioning that they hadn’t seen it wherever they were. I believe he ultimately did recover it. ------ Original Message ------ >From "Richard Salz" To "Henry Bent" Cc "TUHS main list" Date 5/10/2022 9:33:59 PM Subject Re: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? >Per wikipedia (FWIW), V7M was for PDP-11; Ultrix was the first VAX unix >project and based on 4.2BSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix > >Armando Stettner is probably most famous for the NH license plate >"Ultrix" The NH state motto, which appeared on all their license >plates, was "Live Free or Die" > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Wed May 11 22:02:08 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 08:02:08 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I did not realize Shannon must have had it first. Armando had it on his Nisson and he passed it to John Hall (Maddog) when he moved. Somewhere I have a picture of Armando’s car and my then Black Jetta with the MA plate together. On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 9:53 PM Tom Lyon wrote: > Bill Shannon had the actual NH UNIX plates.Upgraded to VMUNIX for > California. > > On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 6:03 PM Clem Cole wrote: > >> Ultrix plates were much later. The original Unix plates were there for a >> few years. >> >> On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 8:58 PM Kenneth Goodwin < >> kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> As I recall, The UNIX plates were the first in the series and >>> distributed at a USENIX conference AT THE DEC booth The next year, they >>> came out with the ULTRIX plates. >>> >>> On Tue, May 10, 2022, 8:54 PM Steve Bourne wrote: >>> >>>> Armando also responsible for the UNIX "live free or die" plates. I >>>> still have a few. >>>> >>>> Steve >>>> >>> -- >> Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual >> > > > -- > - Tom > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joe at celo.io Wed May 11 22:47:44 2022 From: joe at celo.io (Joe) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 14:47:44 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] {TUHS] Interesting Commentary on Unix from Multicians In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <36b91424-e446-ce38-feff-4e84479f9004@celo.io> On 4/9/22 13:45, Douglas McIlroy wrote: >> Single Level Storage is an awesome concept and removes so many ugly >> hacks from algorithms that otherwise have to process data in files. > > This was Vic Vyssotsky's signature contribution to Multics, though in typical > Vyssotsky fashion he never sought personal credit for it. Other awesome > Vyssotsky inventions: > > [..] > A minimum-spanning-tree algorithm quite different from the well-known methods > due to his colleagues Bob Prim and Joe Kruskal, again unpublished. > Interesting, I had not heard about this before, and an internet search turned up: (some copy of "Algorithms in C++", by Robert Sedgewick) https://apprize.best/science/algorithms_2/3.html paragraph 4.3.23: graphs(4) -> mst(3) -> vyssotsky(23) https://github.com/reneargento/algorithms-sedgewick-wayne/blob/master/src/chapter4/section3/Exercise23_VyssotskyAlgorithm.java (an implementation of this by Rene Argento?) Algorithms in Java, 3rd edition (2003) R. Sedgewick 20.72: Exercises: [V. Vyssotsky] Develop an implementation of the algorithm discussed in Section 20.2 that builds the MST by adding edges one at a time and deleting the longest edges on the cycle formed (see Exercise 20.34). Use a parent-link representation of a forest of MST subtrees. Hint: Reverse links when traversing paths in trees. I was unable to fetch this slide deck https://web.archive.org/web/20081205054614/https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/cs226/2002/lectures/19mst.pdf which also appears to mention it at least in passing: "Other MST algorithms VYSSOTSKY (1960s) add edges one at a time delete longest on cycle formed" Does anyone know of a more complete source on this topic? It is not mentioned on Wikipedia, these seem like appropriate places to place a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_A._Vyssotsky From paul.winalski at gmail.com Thu May 12 01:51:48 2022 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 11:51:48 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5/11/22, Clem Cole wrote: > I did not realize Shannon must have had it first. Armando had it on his > Nisson and he passed it to John Hall (Maddog) when he moved. Somewhere I > have a picture of Armando’s car and my then Black Jetta with the MA plate > together. > I left grad school to join DEC as a software engineer in 1980, working on software development tools for VAX/VMS. Back in 1978 I'd interned at one of the VAX-11/780 beta test sites. The group I was in was based at DEC's Mill facility in Maynard MA but was slated to move in a few months to the new software engineering facility on Spit Brook Road in Nashua, NH. So I got an apartment in Nashua and commuted to Maynard for a while. When I registered my car I got the VAXVMS vanity license plate. When the VMS OS group moved to Nashua from Tewksbury they wondered who had the VAXVMS plates. Armando had the New Hampshire UNIX plates on his spiffy red Datsun (they weren't Nissan yet) sports car. My car was an old, rusted-out Datsun B210. Armando jokingly threatened to park his car next to mine and photograph UNIX and VAXVMS side-by-side. -Paul W. From frew at ucsb.edu Thu May 12 02:20:41 2022 From: frew at ucsb.edu (James Frew) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 09:20:41 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: At which point someone in the audience called out "Hey Armando, where'd you learn how to make those?" On 2022-05-10 13:18, Ronald Natalie wrote: > > At one USENIX meeting, Armando got up and made an announcement that > for many years UNIX and DEC had been synonymous, but DEC had never > realized it.   He was therefore happy to announce the first UNIX > license from DEC and held out up one of the plates. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Thu May 12 02:42:47 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 12:42:47 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Armando plate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Paul - thanks, s/Nissan/Datsun/ on my message -- I stand reminded of the name change from the USA Datsun brand to their worldwide name of Nissan. As you said Armando had a Z car at the time. I mentioned I had a Jetta, but after I wrote that I remembered that the picture was of my silver '79 Capri that predated my Jetta - which was the first unixmobile in my series of MA plated same. ᐧ On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 11:51 AM Paul Winalski wrote: > On 5/11/22, Clem Cole wrote: > > I did not realize Shannon must have had it first. Armando had it on his > > Nisson and he passed it to John Hall (Maddog) when he moved. Somewhere > I > > have a picture of Armando’s car and my then Black Jetta with the MA plate > > together. > > > I left grad school to join DEC as a software engineer in 1980, working > on software development tools for VAX/VMS. Back in 1978 I'd interned > at one of the VAX-11/780 beta test sites. The group I was in was > based at DEC's Mill facility in Maynard MA but was slated to move in a > few months to the new software engineering facility on Spit Brook Road > in Nashua, NH. So I got an apartment in Nashua and commuted to > Maynard for a while. When I registered my car I got the VAXVMS vanity > license plate. When the VMS OS group moved to Nashua from Tewksbury > they wondered who had the VAXVMS plates. > > Armando had the New Hampshire UNIX plates on his spiffy red Datsun > (they weren't Nissan yet) sports car. My car was an old, rusted-out > Datsun B210. Armando jokingly threatened to park his car next to mine > and photograph UNIX and VAXVMS side-by-side. > > -Paul W. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.winalski at gmail.com Thu May 12 02:44:10 2022 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 12:44:10 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On 5/10/22, Clem Cole wrote: > a couple of small additions/corrections .... > > Ultrix was the formal > name of DEC's first UNIX a product. Before that, Bill and Armando's engineering group was part of DEC's Telephone Industry Group (TIG) marketing organization. Their charter was to see that Unix and other AT&T software ran well on DEC hardware. Mainly they did device drivers and some kernel mods. DEC was getting increasing demand from those outside Telco who were running Unix to get a DEC-supported Unix on the VAX. And so TIG engineering was split off and did a full port and the result was called Ultrix. This started in 1982 IIRC. > Famously, Bill Munson announced Ultrix at an early 1980s USENIX, > reminding everyone that it meant Fortran, Cobol and the like would be > coming too. Paul W and his mates in the Languages group had to do all > sorts of stuff to make that so. I believe Paul has previously extolled us > with moving the VMS linker over to the Unix to support at least Fortran. > FYI, Sun does not yet exist (Shannon is still working for Munson in NH). That was a very nasty bit of DEC internal politics. As soon as we in DEC's software development tools departments (Technical Languages, Commercial Languages, Methods & Tools) heard about the creation of Ultrix, we began planning ports of the VAX/VMS compilers and other pieces of the tool chain to Ultrix. We got immediate and fierce push-back from the Ultrix engineering group. TIG had had a deeply ingrained culture of resisting innovation. Their job was to make sure Unix ran on DEC hardware, not to enhance Unix. Many of the Ultrix engineers had a religious belief in keeping Unix pure and platform-independent. Things available on only one hardware platform were perceived as "vendor traps" and to be avoided. The biggest fight was over Fortran. VAX Fortran was seen as the gold standard in Fortran compilers by the Fortran R&D community and there was a lot of demand for DEC to make it available on Ultrix. f77, the Unix alternative, was, by comparison, considered a toy that lacked key features. By careful cherry-picking the compiler people in the Ultrix group managed to put together a suite of Fortran benchmarks that hit all the glass jaws in the VAX Fortran optimizer. They claimed that this showed that f77 produced code at least as good, if not better, than VAX Fortran did. The VMS development tools group had better things to do than argue with the Ultrix group, so the whole idea of porting VAX/VMS tools to Ultrix was dropped. Many of the non-standard innovations in VAX Fortran were adopted by IBM and other vendors under pressure from the Fortran community. By 1985 DEC was losing sales to other vendors in the HPTC world due to lack of VAX Fortran features in f77. The Fortran team in Technical Languages and Environments had to do a rush-rush port of VAX Fortran and its runtime library to Ultrix. We were rather teed off since we'd proposed the same thing three years before and now it was a "we need it yesterday" crash project. It was decided that it would take too much time to teach the VAX Fortran code generator to produce a.out object files and so instead we ported the VMS linker to Ultrix and taught it to read and write a.out as well as VMS object files. The result was called lk. As the developer in the software tools organization who best understood linkers and object files (I'd written a link editor in grad school when interning at IBM) I was put in charge of the linker port. I've told that story already here in TUHS. > It's about the time of the original Ultrix work is when I stopped paying > attention to the PDP-11s, so there are gaps in my knowledge. Ultrix > definitely was released as a binary product for the 11. My >>memory<< is > the first version for the Vax was 4.1 based with some new defined support > and languages, but that version may not have gone too far outside of DEC > and until the 4.2BSD version was the first one for revenue. The first > Ultrix-11 was V7+some set of BSDisms. I know Shannon's overlay code went > to UCB, but I'm not so sure when the BSD 11 changes came back to DEC. IIRC the 4.1 version of VAX Ultrix was their prototype. I think PDP-11 Ultrix was just one of the existing Unix variants for the PDP-11 with the "Ultrix" marketing label slapped on. We can't have vendor traps, you know.... By the late 1980s the PDP-11/VAX style of CISC architecture had fallen way behind RISC in terms of performance. Alpha wasn't ready yet. To keep a toehold in the Unix marketplace, Ultrix was ported to the MIPS architecture and a MIPS code generator was implemented for the GEM back end so that DEC Fortran would be available. Unix was easier to port to Alpha than VMS was. Score one for writing in a HLL and maintaining platform neutrality. Clem has told that story here. Most of the VMS OS code was in assembler. A VAX MACRO compiler front end had to be written that read VAX assembly code and produced GEM intermediate language. To this day most of OpenVMS is still in VAX MACRO. -Paul W. From paul.winalski at gmail.com Thu May 12 02:51:20 2022 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 12:51:20 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On 5/11/22, James Frew wrote: > > At which point someone in the audience called out "Hey Armando, where'd > you learn how to make those?" Many have pointed out the irony of the prisoners in New Hampshire state penitentiaries having to spend their days stamping "Live Free or Die" on license plates. Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado would have been proud. :-) -Paul W. From clemc at ccc.com Thu May 12 03:09:18 2022 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 13:09:18 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 12:44 PM Paul Winalski wrote: > Many of the non-standard innovations in VAX Fortran were adopted by > IBM and other vendors under pressure from the Fortran community. By > 1985 DEC was losing sales to other vendors in the HPTC world due to > lack of VAX Fortran features in f77. > I would put it a little differently. As far as I'm concerned the best piece of marketing that DEC ever did was convincing the world that VMS FTN was standard Fortran-77. So when you went into a VMS shop trying to sell a UNIX box (from any manufacturer), many (most) had written their code in VMS FTN, and thus your Fortran compiler needed to accept the DEC VMS extensions. The fact was most customers swore up and down they had written their code in F77, but the UNIX compiler would die trying to compile it and as Paul point out, even if you did get the local compiler to accept your sources from a syntactical standpoint, the code generator and optimizer used in the PCC-based F77 compilers was not int he same league at the DEC or IBM compilers of the day. As I have mentioned on this list previously, a year after MASSCOMP was founded and about 5 years before Sun figured this issue out, we had hired a number of ex-DEC languages folks and they wrote our compiler C and Fortran compilers using the same optimization techniques that DEC had honed. In fact, one of the reasons why we added the RSX/VMS AST scheme to RTU, was to make porting customer code from VMS that much easier [tjt and I drew the line on QIO since we already had a different async I/O scheme, but UNIX signals were so far from AST it was never going to work -- again as I have said, I can build UNIX/POSIX signals from ASTs, but not the other way round]. ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:13:49 2022 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 13:13:49 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics? Message-ID: This is tangentially related to Unix, and came up randomly at work yesterday. In Kernighan's Unix memoir, on page 9, he touches briefly on the typography of "Unix": "(Multics was originally spelled MULTICS, but the lower-case version is less visually jarring; as with UNIX versus Unix and some other all-caps words, I’ll use the nicer-looking form even though it’s not historically accurate.)" Here, he is talking about interning at MIT in 1966. bwk would certainly know better than me, but I can find no historical reference to this "MULTICS" spelling; is anyone familiar with that? The earliest reference I can find (the 1965 paper from the FJCC: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1463891.1463912) uses the more "Multics" styling, but it may have been typeset later. Alternatively, could someone send me Brian's email address? - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lm at mcvoy.com Thu May 12 03:35:18 2022 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 10:35:18 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 12:44:10PM -0400, Paul Winalski wrote: > Many of the Ultrix > engineers had a religious belief in keeping Unix pure and > platform-independent. Things available on only one hardware platform > were perceived as "vendor traps" and to be avoided. Not unique to DEC, I very much had that attitude at Sun and wasn't alone. As a side effort from making SunOS POSIX compliant, I wrote lint libraries for BSD, Sys III, Sys V, POSIX, and I don't remember what else. The idea was that you could use Sun as a dev platform but lint your code against whatever platform you wanted to target. It was misguided, I bet I can count on one hand the number of people that used any of those, but I hated vendor traps as much as DEC, maybe more. From frew at ucsb.edu Thu May 12 04:08:28 2022 From: frew at ucsb.edu (James Frew) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 11:08:28 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8dae07f5-7782-7e56-85c7-8d19fea8349b@ucsb.edu> The Book (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/multics-system - I've always assumed this is the canonical non-mimeographed reference) uses "Multics". /Frew On 2022-05-11 10:13, Dan Cross wrote: > > This is tangentially related to Unix, and came up randomly at work > yesterday. > > In Kernighan's Unix memoir, on page 9, he touches briefly on the > typography of "Unix": > > "(Multics was originally spelled MULTICS, but the lower-case version > is less visually jarring; as with UNIX versus Unix and some other > all-caps words, I’ll use the nicer-looking  form even though it’s not > historically accurate.)" > > Here, he is talking about interning at MIT in 1966. bwk would > certainly know better than me, but I can find no historical reference > to this "MULTICS" spelling; is anyone familiar with that? The earliest > reference I can find (the 1965 paper from the FJCC: > https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1463891.1463912) uses the more > "Multics" styling, but it may have been typeset later. > > Alternatively, could someone send me Brian's email address? > >         - Dan C. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu May 12 05:57:17 2022 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 15:57:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics? Message-ID: <20220511195717.594E218C085@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Dan Cross > In Kernighan's Unix memoir, on page 9, he touches briefly on the > typography of "Unix": > "(Multics was originally spelled MULTICS ..." > Here, he is talking about interning at MIT in 1966. bwk would certainly > know better than me, but I can find no historical reference to this > "MULTICS" spelling; is anyone familiar with that? I looked at my early Multics stuff, and it's "Multics" almost everywhere: - "GE-645 System Manual", GE, 1968 - "The Multics Virtual Memory", GE, 1970 - "Introduction to Multics", MIT MAC TR-123, 1973 However, in my "A New Remote-Access Man-Machine System", on the title papge it says "Reprints of the MULTICS system presented at the" [FJCC, 1965]. No clue as to who printed it, or when - and all the FJCC papers themselves use "Multics". I have yet to ask Jerry Saltzer, but I suspect that if it ever was 'MULTICS', it was at a _very_ early stage, and was formally changed even before the FJCC papers (which were themselves very early). BTW, ISTR hearing that it was 'Unix' originally, and the 'UNIX' spelling was adopted at the insistence of Bell lawyers. So I went looking for an early (i.e. PDP-7 era) scanned document, to see what it was then, and all I could find was: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/McIlroy_v0/UnixEditionZero.pdf which seems to be from just after the PDP-7 -> PDP-11/20 transition, and it uses 'UNIX'. Would the Bell lawyers have already been involved at that stage? Noel From ron at ronnatalie.com Wed May 11 06:18:53 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie) Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 20:18:53 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: Armando’s plates didn’t say ULTRIX. The ULTRIX plates cae later (some complete marketing disaster at DEC). Armondo’s plate said UNIX. At one USENIX meeting, Armando got up and made an announcement that for many years UNIX and DEC had been synonymous, but DEC had never realized it. He was therefore happy to announce the first UNIX license from DEC and held out up one of the plates. I still have mine. Armondo had a NH vanity plate that said UNIX (like the replicas given away). He also had one of the DEC replicas on his car complete with the state renewal stickers. At one point it went missing. He announced that on the net, which led to a lot of people mentioning that they hadn’t seen it wherever they were. I believe he ultimately did recover it. ------ Original Message ------ >From "Richard Salz" To "Henry Bent" Cc "TUHS main list" Date 5/10/2022 9:33:59 PM Subject Re: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? >Per wikipedia (FWIW), V7M was for PDP-11; Ultrix was the first VAX unix >project and based on 4.2BSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix > >Armando Stettner is probably most famous for the NH license plate >"Ultrix" The NH state motto, which appeared on all their license >plates, was "Live Free or Die" > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu Thu May 12 09:47:19 2022 From: douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu (Douglas McIlroy) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 19:47:19 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics? Message-ID: The main FJCC 1964 papar, by Vyssotsky, Corbato, and Graham, spelled Multics with an initial cap. By contrast, Ken transcribed the aural pun as UNIX. The lawyers did their best to keep it that way after most of us had decided it looks better as a proper noun. As I recall, there was an acronymic reading of Multics, but it wasn't taken seriously enough to drag the word into all caps. Nobody proposed an acronymic reading of UNIX. So both words defy the convention of rendering acronyms in upper-case. Doug From ggm at algebras.org Thu May 12 10:16:42 2022 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 10:16:42 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> References: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: I don't think you were misguided. I do think Ultrix was a contained problem for code portability, probably because enough pre-existing code came into Sun, it was a compiler toolchain pre-motivated to work in Vax architecture machinecode. HP-UX on the other hand, and Apollos unix under Domain/OS, I recall as a nightmare. I regularly had to try and get current spec sendmail working on these, because both platforms were in use in Chemical Engineering and NMR related contexts as device controller and display platforms in the uni I worked in. Portable code onto these worlds, was frankly horrid: HP believed a single -lcompat type library provided everything you needed when in fact, #include path hell was inches away. Unisys was freaky bad. Their native IPv4 format for an address used comma, not dot as the dotted-quad separator. On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 3:35 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 12:44:10PM -0400, Paul Winalski wrote: > > Many of the Ultrix > > engineers had a religious belief in keeping Unix pure and > > platform-independent. Things available on only one hardware platform > > were perceived as "vendor traps" and to be avoided. > > Not unique to DEC, I very much had that attitude at Sun and wasn't alone. > As a side effort from making SunOS POSIX compliant, I wrote lint libraries > for BSD, Sys III, Sys V, POSIX, and I don't remember what else. The idea > was that you could use Sun as a dev platform but lint your code against > whatever platform you wanted to target. > > It was misguided, I bet I can count on one hand the number of people that > used any of those, but I hated vendor traps as much as DEC, maybe more. From crossd at gmail.com Thu May 12 10:34:20 2022 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 20:34:20 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you, Doug. I wrote to Brian, who responded very quickly, suggesting that he was likely mistaken. He's going to make a note in the errata for his memoir. Tom Van Vleck also wrote saying that he was unaware of there ever being an acronymic rendering, and that he recalled an early meeting in which Jerry Saltzer was quite adamant that Multics was a proper noun, not an acronym, and therefore mixed-case. He did say that occasionally people joining the project would mistakenly write 'MULTICS' until corrected; apparently some of the GE folks in Phoenix were in the habit of doing this, perhaps due to prior familiarity with GECOS. - Dan C. On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 7:49 PM Douglas McIlroy < douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote: > The main FJCC 1964 papar, by Vyssotsky, Corbato, and Graham, spelled > Multics with an initial cap. By contrast, Ken transcribed the aural > pun as UNIX. The lawyers did their best to keep it that way after most > of us had decided it looks better as a proper noun. > As I recall, there was an acronymic reading of Multics, but it wasn't > taken seriously enough to drag the word into all caps. Nobody proposed > an acronymic reading of UNIX. So both words defy the convention of > rendering acronyms in upper-case. > > Doug > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Thu May 12 12:49:49 2022 From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 22:49:49 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] FTP service is not happy Message-ID: Hello! As this service is being phased out, I am trying to download the relevant (well relevant to me) bits from it. And as it happens I found that the clients I use are triggering an interesting problem. This is from ncftp on Linux ncftp> open minnie.tuhs.org Server hungup immediately after connect. Stop connecting frequently Sleeping 20 seconds... And I first saw it using FileZilla, I promptly scaled it back from multiple connections for downloads, to one and only one, but it repeated. To put it simply, what am I doing wrong here? ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." From imp at bsdimp.com Thu May 12 15:22:15 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 23:22:15 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 10:45 AM Paul Winalski wrote: > On 5/10/22, Clem Cole wrote: > > a couple of small additions/corrections .... > > > > Ultrix was the formal > > name of DEC's first UNIX a product. > > Before that, Bill and Armando's engineering group was part of DEC's > Telephone Industry Group (TIG) marketing organization. Their charter > was to see that Unix and other AT&T software ran well on DEC hardware. > Mainly they did device drivers and some kernel mods. DEC was getting > increasing demand from those outside Telco who were running Unix to > get a DEC-supported Unix on the VAX. And so TIG engineering was split > off and did a full port and the result was called Ultrix. This > started in 1982 IIRC. > > > Famously, Bill Munson announced Ultrix at an early 1980s USENIX, > > reminding everyone that it meant Fortran, Cobol and the like would be > > coming too. Paul W and his mates in the Languages group had to do all > > sorts of stuff to make that so. I believe Paul has previously extolled > us > > with moving the VMS linker over to the Unix to support at least Fortran. > > FYI, Sun does not yet exist (Shannon is still working for Munson in NH). > > That was a very nasty bit of DEC internal politics. As soon as we in > DEC's software development tools departments (Technical Languages, > Commercial Languages, Methods & Tools) heard about the creation of > Ultrix, we began planning ports of the VAX/VMS compilers and other > pieces of the tool chain to Ultrix. We got immediate and fierce > push-back from the Ultrix engineering group. TIG had had a deeply > ingrained culture of resisting innovation. Their job was to make sure > Unix ran on DEC hardware, not to enhance Unix. Many of the Ultrix > engineers had a religious belief in keeping Unix pure and > platform-independent. Things available on only one hardware platform > were perceived as "vendor traps" and to be avoided. > That's kinda ironic. One of the biggest ticket items in the AUUG newsletters from the early days was how you can get FORTRAN, BASIC or MACRO-11 running under V6 or V7. There were several compatibility shims for RT-11 to accomplish this in a number of different ways. It was a big deal for many folks that needed to run their FORTRAN programs from a DEC OS, but wanted / needed to run Unix.... > The biggest fight was over Fortran. VAX Fortran was seen as the gold > standard in Fortran compilers by the Fortran R&D community and there > was a lot of demand for DEC to make it available on Ultrix. f77, the > Unix alternative, was, by comparison, considered a toy that lacked key > features. By careful cherry-picking the compiler people in the Ultrix > group managed to put together a suite of Fortran benchmarks that hit > all the glass jaws in the VAX Fortran optimizer. They claimed that > this showed that f77 produced code at least as good, if not better, > than VAX Fortran did. The VMS development tools group had better > things to do than argue with the Ultrix group, so the whole idea of > porting VAX/VMS tools to Ultrix was dropped. > It's clea*r* they'd forgotten the PDP-11 experience... > Many of the non-standard innovations in VAX Fortran were adopted by > IBM and other vendors under pressure from the Fortran community. By > 1985 DEC was losing sales to other vendors in the HPTC world due to > lack of VAX Fortran features in f77. The Fortran team in Technical > Languages and Environments had to do a rush-rush port of VAX Fortran > and its runtime library to Ultrix. We were rather teed off since we'd > proposed the same thing three years before and now it was a "we need > it yesterday" crash project. It was decided that it would take too > much time to teach the VAX Fortran code generator to produce a.out > object files and so instead we ported the VMS linker to Ultrix and > taught it to read and write a.out as well as VMS object files. The > result was called lk. As the developer in the software tools > organization who best understood linkers and object files (I'd written > a link editor in grad school when interning at IBM) I was put in > charge of the linker port. I've told that story already here in TUHS. > The macro-11 that was in 2BSD had its own companion linker that was basically the same. It could link in .OBJ files from other DEC tools as well... History repeated itself, eh? Warner > > It's about the time of the original Ultrix work is when I stopped paying > > attention to the PDP-11s, so there are gaps in my knowledge. Ultrix > > definitely was released as a binary product for the 11. My >>memory<< is > > the first version for the Vax was 4.1 based with some new defined support > > and languages, but that version may not have gone too far outside of DEC > > and until the 4.2BSD version was the first one for revenue. The first > > Ultrix-11 was V7+some set of BSDisms. I know Shannon's overlay code > went > > to UCB, but I'm not so sure when the BSD 11 changes came back to DEC. > > IIRC the 4.1 version of VAX Ultrix was their prototype. I think > PDP-11 Ultrix was just one of the existing Unix variants for the > PDP-11 with the "Ultrix" marketing label slapped on. We can't have > vendor traps, you know.... > > By the late 1980s the PDP-11/VAX style of CISC architecture had fallen > way behind RISC in terms of performance. Alpha wasn't ready yet. To > keep a toehold in the Unix marketplace, Ultrix was ported to the MIPS > architecture and a MIPS code generator was implemented for the GEM > back end so that DEC Fortran would be available. > > Unix was easier to port to Alpha than VMS was. Score one for writing > in a HLL and maintaining platform neutrality. Clem has told that > story here. Most of the VMS OS code was in assembler. A VAX MACRO > compiler front end had to be written that read VAX assembly code and > produced GEM intermediate language. To this day most of OpenVMS is > still in VAX MACRO. > > -Paul W. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron at ronnatalie.com Thu May 12 22:06:46 2022 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 12:06:46 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: The Undergraduate Computer Society (UCS) made a deal with the EE department that they could run UNIX on the departments 11/45 if they could get the BASIC PLUS that was running on the existing RSTS system running. Turns out that wasn't too difficult. UNIX uses trap as a system call, RSTS (like most DEC OS's for some odd reason) uses EMT. It only took a couple of calls that needed emulation in UNIX as well as an option to disable UNIX's automatic statck management (the "nostatck" system call). BASIC PLUS was at the core of the largest freshman EE class: Models and Simulation. MNS students had a disk quota of a whopping 8 blocks (4KB). It was encouraged that you buy a DECtape (something around 500Kb) for long term storage though the system had a papertape reader/punch (how else to load the MAINDEC software). I thought I was in fat city when me and my roommate chipped in and bought an RK05 pack (4872 blocks). At the time the system ran on three "always mounted" RK05's: The root, /sys1, and /sys2 (the latter being the user home directories). The system swapped to an RF-11 fixed head disk (1 MB). There were two extra RK05's shared between various users and were also dual ported to an 11/40 that ran MiniUNIX from time to time (until the guys upstairs bought an 11/23 that I moved UNIX to as well). By the time I left, the system had picked up an 80MB removable drive, a bulk core box (emulated another RF-11), and a tape drive. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cowan at ccil.org Thu May 12 22:43:32 2022 From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 08:43:32 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 8:07 AM Ron Natalie wrote: > UNIX uses trap as a system call, RSTS (like most DEC OS's for some odd > reason) uses EMT. > That's pretty much what the processor documentation says (in various wordings depending on what manual you look at). EMT is for the "system", TRAP is for the "user". The intention, I think, was that a user-mode program could use TRAP for its own purposes, and the supervisor would keep track of the TRAP vector in low memory associated with a process. Since Unix was a "user program", even though it ran in supervisor mode, the decision was made to use TRAP. Each DEC OS used EMT in a different way. Consequently, when the RSTS/E pseudo-hypervisor (it didn't provide full emulation) was written, hypervisor calls were performed with EMT 377 immediately followed by another EMT. This was unlikely to occur in any user program (at minimum you'd have to set up the registers for the second call). An EMT was acted on by the hypervisor only if it met these conditions (the second EMT was simply examined, not executed), otherwise it was vectored to the guest OS. Similarly, RSX/11-M used only EMT 376 and EMT 377, neither of which were used by RT-11 user programs, making it possible to run a thin RT-11 emulator as a user program that EMTed into RSX to do its work. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mparson at bl.org Fri May 13 11:09:00 2022 From: mparson at bl.org (Michael Parson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 20:09:00 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [TUHS] Document management in Unix, back in the day? In-Reply-To: References: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> <87pmo2leeg.fsf@loomcom.com> Message-ID: <454e6c44-d6cf-807a-41ef-f89773cde9ba@bl.org> On Fri, 4 Feb 2022, John Cowan wrote: > On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito wrote: > > Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^) >> > > I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a > documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used > in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original > electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so > environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when > they're just on the screen. Have you looked into e-ink tablets? The reMarkable series seems to be pretty popular. I recently got a Boox Nova Air e-ink tablet, works great as an e-reader, but it also has a pretty decent PDF editor built in that lets you scribble all over PDF docs like they're paper. -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX From ggm at algebras.org Fri May 13 11:52:24 2022 From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson) Date: Fri, 13 May 2022 11:52:24 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Document management in Unix, back in the day? In-Reply-To: <454e6c44-d6cf-807a-41ef-f89773cde9ba@bl.org> References: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> <87pmo2leeg.fsf@loomcom.com> <454e6c44-d6cf-807a-41ef-f89773cde9ba@bl.org> Message-ID: heading off-piste, the Boox series are also worth looking at. Android, anything android can do, a boox will do slowly in eInk. their version of the reMarkable markup thing may not be as "good" but its the alternate, and alternate pricepoint. when I think about the BSD manuals, bound with steel rods, in a metal construct welded to the desk at the back of the lab. Wonderful source of knowledge. Or.. the VMS fiche set, and the reader. you want to fix this problem? ok, if you learn Bliss32, then everything is in this stack of blue-grey plastic, if your eyes are good enough. No peeking. I think the experiential aspects of 2D thinking with pens, on paper are lost online. I totally don't engage with "visualisations" beyond the very very good. It is very easy to avoid having to say why by falling back on "my eyes aren't good" or "I don't understand this" but in truth, I dont LIKE them. I like paper, and I miss fanfold printout. Plus. I liked taking the boxes of it to kindergarden and handing them over for the kids to write on. On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 11:33 AM Michael Parson wrote: > > On Fri, 4 Feb 2022, John Cowan wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito wrote: > > > > Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^) > >> > > > > I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a > > documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used > > in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original > > electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so > > environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when > > they're just on the screen. > > Have you looked into e-ink tablets? The reMarkable series seems to be > pretty popular. I recently got a Boox Nova Air e-ink tablet, works > great as an e-reader, but it also has a pretty decent PDF editor built > in that lets you scribble all over PDF docs like they're paper. > > -- > Michael Parson > Pflugerville, TX From mparson at bl.org Fri May 13 12:04:06 2022 From: mparson at bl.org (Michael Parson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 21:04:06 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [TUHS] Document management in Unix, back in the day? In-Reply-To: References: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> <87pmo2leeg.fsf@loomcom.com> <454e6c44-d6cf-807a-41ef-f89773cde9ba@bl.org> Message-ID: <98b61318-3054-729-eb7b-f6d43525ea87@bl.org> On Fri, 13 May 2022, George Michaelson wrote: > heading off-piste, the Boox series are also worth looking at. Android, > anything android can do, a boox will do slowly in eInk. their version > of the reMarkable markup thing may not be as "good" but its the > alternate, and alternate pricepoint. I love my Boox Nova Air. I carry with me just about everywhere. I can read the book I'm currently reading, plus I also scribble notes and doodles in the note app. I've doodled ideas for things I later work up in FreeCAD for 3D printing. If my focus was more on the note taking and drawing, I'd have gone for the bigger, closer to sheet-of-paper sized devices, but I primarily wanted an e-ink e-reader that could also do other things. So far, I've been very impressed with the other things it could do. I've been a fan of e-ink displays for a long time. I really wish someone would make a reasonbly priced 20+ inch e-ink monitor. Most of the stuff I deal with is in text, and working with text on an e-ink display would be so much easier on the eyes. I only mentioned the reMarkable because it seems to be one of the popular ones out there, or maybe they just have better marketing. I think my wife said that one of the women she works with at her design firm has a reMarkable and loves it. > when I think about the BSD manuals, bound with steel rods, in a metal > construct welded to the desk at the back of the lab. Wonderful source > of knowledge. Or.. the VMS fiche set, and the reader. you want to fix > this problem? ok, if you learn Bliss32, then everything is in this > stack of blue-grey plastic, if your eyes are good enough. No peeking. > > I think the experiential aspects of 2D thinking with pens, on paper > are lost online. I totally don't engage with "visualisations" beyond > the very very good. It is very easy to avoid having to say why by > falling back on "my eyes aren't good" or "I don't understand this" but > in truth, I dont LIKE them. I like paper, and I miss fanfold printout. > Plus. I liked taking the boxes of it to kindergarden and handing them > over for the kids to write on. I miss fan-fold paper too... I pretty much quit printing out program listings when I quit having tractor-fed printers. It just wasn't the same. Also, no more multi-page big-text banners. :) -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX > On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 11:33 AM Michael Parson wrote: >> On Fri, 4 Feb 2022, John Cowan wrote: >>> On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito wrote: >>> >>> Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^) >>>> >>> >>> I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a >>> documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used >>> in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original >>> electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so >>> environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when >>> they're just on the screen. >> >> Have you looked into e-ink tablets? The reMarkable series seems to be >> pretty popular. I recently got a Boox Nova Air e-ink tablet, works >> great as an e-reader, but it also has a pretty decent PDF editor built >> in that lets you scribble all over PDF docs like they're paper. >> >> -- >> Michael Parson >> Pflugerville, TX > From bakul at iitbombay.org Fri May 13 12:41:32 2022 From: bakul at iitbombay.org (Bakul Shah) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 19:41:32 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Document management in Unix, back in the day? In-Reply-To: References: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> <87pmo2leeg.fsf@loomcom.com> Message-ID: <7DABD0D4-8C12-432E-A5F8-6F14CC9023FB@iitbombay.org> On Feb 4, 2022, at 12:51 PM, John Cowan wrote: > > > > On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito wrote: > > Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^) > > I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when they're just on the screen. > > [*] See . With feeling. There are iPad apps such as CollaNote (free) & GoodNotes ($) which allow you to write/scribble/doodle with an Apple Pencil. Note the same experience but there are some other benefits. You can zoom in to write small, easy ink color change, moving portions of written text, OCR, search, hyperlinks, digital planners, synchronized audio (with writing) etc. You can paste in pictures, videos, pdf and so on. And now you can easily scribble/highlight on any PDF etc. For some things I still prefer computation notebooks with 4x4 Quad light green paper but increasingly I am relying on the iADHD device! In any case I still prefer writing as opposed to typing when {t,m}aking notes and for design notes or sketching new ideas. The writing experience on the ipad is not great even with a paperLike(TM) plastic screen protector But I can live with that. In contrast the Unix GUI experience is falling further and further behind. Wish it weren't so. I haven't used any e-ink device as they are expensive and they seem limited in other ways compared to the iPad. From athornton at gmail.com Fri May 13 12:46:33 2022 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 19:46:33 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> References: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: > On May 11, 2022, at 10:35 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > As a side effort from making SunOS POSIX compliant, As good a time as any to thank you for this. Pity you couldn't convince them to put the POSIX sh in /bin/sh and the old sh in /usr/compat or some such, rather than having POSIX only in /usr/xpg4. Adam From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Fri May 13 14:01:53 2022 From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 21:01:53 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Document management in Unix, back in the day? In-Reply-To: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> References: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 10:02 AM Will Senn wrote: > Today I bit the bullet and dropped my many articles and electronic > documents related to my technical explorations into Zotero. I was tired of > constantly having to remember where the documents were located and I wanted > to be able to curate them better (I tried git for a while, back when, but > I'm not a fan of non-text data in my repos, and it wasn't really much > better than the base file system approach). I've been using Zotero for > years now, for academic works, but not for technical works unrelated to my > research. I realized the man-years of effort to clean up the entries that I > had created in about 30-40 seconds of exciting drag and drop, just about > the time I deleted them from their original locations. I think the work > will pay off in due time, but we'll see. > > Then I thought, surely, I'm not the first person to have had this > problem... it occurred to me that y'all must have faced this very problem, > a few years in, back in the late 70's, early 80's. That is, document > management. What did you do, variously, considering both text and non-text? > > Emacs org-mode comes to mind > Will > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From athornton at gmail.com Fri May 13 14:08:03 2022 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 21:08:03 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Document management in Unix, back in the day? In-Reply-To: References: <8b7daf0d-991a-e8be-9dff-63fe4fb688ab@gmail.com> Message-ID: <08997658-ED25-44DB-9C49-2115DE205310@gmail.com> > On May 12, 2022, at 9:01 PM, Kevin Bowling wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 10:02 AM Will Senn > wrote: > Today I bit the bullet and dropped my many articles and electronic documents related to my technical explorations into Zotero. I was tired of constantly having to remember where the documents were located and I wanted to be able to curate them better (I tried git for a while, back when, but I'm not a fan of non-text data in my repos, and it wasn't really much better than the base file system approach). I've been using Zotero for years now, for academic works, but not for technical works unrelated to my research. I realized the man-years of effort to clean up the entries that I had created in about 30-40 seconds of exciting drag and drop, just about the time I deleted them from their original locations. I think the work will pay off in due time, but we'll see. > > Then I thought, surely, I'm not the first person to have had this problem... it occurred to me that y'all must have faced this very problem, a few years in, back in the late 70's, early 80's. That is, document management. What did you do, variously, considering both text and non-text? > > > Emacs org-mode comes to mind And if you happen to need presentations.... https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal That's right: Javascript slide deck directly from org-mode. Better than sliced bread. Adam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mah at mhorton.net Sat May 14 12:56:46 2022 From: mah at mhorton.net (Mary Ann Horton) Date: Fri, 13 May 2022 19:56:46 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> Message-ID: It must have been PC/IX, that rings a bell. I also had Xenix in the same time frame, it was different (and I preferred Xenix).     Thanks!         Mary Ann On 5/10/22 09:08, Warner Losh wrote: > > > On Tue, May 10, 2022, 9:32 AM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > > I recall having an IBM PC port of UNIX in the 1980s on floppy with > a black 6x9 box and Charlie Chaplin with the red rose. I thought > it was called AIX. I installed it, and recall it being very > different from UNIX for sysadmin (different logs, different admin > commands) but similar for users. I thought it was based on System > III or thereabouts. > > I can't find any evidence of this. It appears AIX 1.0 wasn't for > the original PC. > > Does anyone else recall this distribution and what it was called > or based on? > > > The first 8086 port was inside of Bell Labs, but was for a system with > a custom MMU. The first commercial one was Venix released in 1983 > based on Version 7 with some Berkeley improvements using the MIT > compilers of the time, but it had a blue label with a boring stylized > V on it. IBM released PC/IX a year later (1984) and marketed heavily. > It was a companion to its other unix offerings, and wasn't AIX. That > port was based on System III. If anything had the clever Charlie > Chaplin marketing materials, it was sure to be PC/IX. Microsoft's > Xenix was also in this time frame, but wasn't marketed by IBM (and its > earliest version in 1982 predate Venix, but were only for Intel's > System 86 machines, and may have required an Intel MMU board (the > quick research I did was unclear on this point, other than it was > supported). SCO/Microsoft released in late 1983 and early 1984 > versions for the commercially available PC and other variants at the > time before the IBM-PC became the standardized x86 platform. > > So my money is on PC/IX. > > Warner > > Thanks, > >     Mary Ann > > On 5/1/22 19:08, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: >> My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source >> code and then proceeded to "make it their own". I had a days >> experience with it on a POS cash register fixing a client issue. >> The shocker - they changed all the error messages to error codes >> with a look at the manual requirement. >> >> Not sure if this is true in its entirety or not. >> But that's what I recall, thst it was not a from scratch rewrite >> but more along the lines of other vendor UNIX clones of the time. >> License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. >> >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 2:08 PM ron minnich wrote: >> >> in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the >> first, as I >> understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the >> code." >> >> Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done >> quite right. >> One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an >> error if >> the full path existed. oops. >> >> But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to >> handle AIX being different from just about everything else. >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lm at mcvoy.com Sun May 15 10:48:18 2022 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sat, 14 May 2022 17:48:18 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20220515004818.GL31822@mcvoy.com> On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 07:46:33PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > > > > On May 11, 2022, at 10:35 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > As a side effort from making SunOS POSIX compliant, > > As good a time as any to thank you for this. Pity you couldn't convince them to put the POSIX sh in /bin/sh and the old sh in /usr/compat or some such, rather than having POSIX only in /usr/xpg4. I was pretty green, it was my 3rd job after grad school. I didn't have pull at the time, I was a nobody who had to prove himself. Sun was pretty BSD centric at the time, it was more or less a bug fixed BSD with a well designed and well implemented replacement VM system. The POSIX stuff had a definite System V feel to it, and in some places, for the better. It felt like POSIX cleaned up signal semantics (I know, ASTs are better) and sorted out a bunch of differences between the various vendors. But Sun was not all in on POSIX, they were doing it because they had to. I was there as a contractor because none of the rank and file wanted anything to do with it. Whatever, doing that work was an education about all the code paths in the kernel, in retrospect I would have paid my entire college tuition to be forced to do that work. I learned a _lot_. This is sort of neither here nore there, but credit where credit is due. I enjoyed working with Don Cragun, Sun's rep to the POSIX meetings. Very soft spoken guy, but very detail oriented. When Don said "do this" I did what he said. --lm From stu at remphrey.net Sun May 15 12:00:14 2022 From: stu at remphrey.net (Stuart Remphrey) Date: Sun, 15 May 2022 12:00:14 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <57977CE7-DDCC-4861-BBD2-843B9B9F51C2@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: > My understanding of AIX was that IBM licensed the System V source code and then proceeded to "make it their own"... > The shocker - they changed all the error messages to error codes with a look at the manual requirement... > License the source, change the name and then beat it to death. Not just error codes, also configuration file stanzas and SMIT(e)! :-( AIX wasn't the first (QNX, maybe?), and it was initially derived from AT&T code, but it was intended not to be: Someone at IBM publicly stated their intention, quoted in an interview in one of the industry/VAR magazines, to avoid the license by replacing all the AT&T source code with their own. Though AFAIK this effort eventually sputtered and died in favour of Linux. I recall thinking at the time that's a "once bitten, twice shy" reaction to licensing DOS/Windows from Microsoft, "Oh, no, we're not going *there* again". I was (briefly) at Wang Australia (late 80's?) where we (re)sold RISC/6000 Unix/y systems, along with MIPS and HP. The MIPS agreement was local to Oz, but IBM and IIRC HP were global. Maybe the year before the U.S. head office filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors... when that happened, I got an apologetic phone call from my friend & colleague Ross Leighton who had recruited me from Pyramid the year before to support the Unix effort he was putting together at Wang Oz -- though it was too little, too late... Stuart. p.s. Dave Horsfall: Would you know Ross from Lionel Singer Group/Corp and Pyramid Technology Australia? I had been at LSG/LSC and then the memorably-named PTC BURP at Bond Uni Research Park. Recall PTAs books of customer SFA forms, in triplicate: Software Fault Advice about which we could do Sweet F*ck All. (until some pointy-haired boss changed the name) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From athornton at gmail.com Sun May 15 15:36:41 2022 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Sat, 14 May 2022 22:36:41 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: <20220515004818.GL31822@mcvoy.com> References: <1505232b-86bd-0d65-52c7-c8d19bd0663c@mhorton.net> <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> <20220515004818.GL31822@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: > On May 14, 2022, at 5:48 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 07:46:33PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: >> >> >>> On May 11, 2022, at 10:35 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: >>> As a side effort from making SunOS POSIX compliant, >> >> As good a time as any to thank you for this. Pity you couldn't convince them to put the POSIX sh in /bin/sh and the old sh in /usr/compat or some such, rather than having POSIX only in /usr/xpg4. > > I was pretty green, it was my 3rd job after grad school. I didn't have > pull at the time, I was a nobody who had to prove himself. What are you talking about? That wasn't a long time ago. It was only... ... ...aw crap. Adam From lm at mcvoy.com Sun May 15 23:37:04 2022 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sun, 15 May 2022 06:37:04 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code? In-Reply-To: References: <20220511173518.GF17911@mcvoy.com> <20220515004818.GL31822@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20220515133704.GT31822@mcvoy.com> On Sat, May 14, 2022 at 10:36:41PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > > > > On May 14, 2022, at 5:48 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 07:46:33PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > >> > >> > >>> On May 11, 2022, at 10:35 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > >>> As a side effort from making SunOS POSIX compliant, > >> > >> As good a time as any to thank you for this. Pity you couldn't convince them to put the POSIX sh in /bin/sh and the old sh in /usr/compat or some such, rather than having POSIX only in /usr/xpg4. > > > > I was pretty green, it was my 3rd job after grad school. I didn't have > > pull at the time, I was a nobody who had to prove himself. > > What are you talking about? That wasn't a long time ago. It was only... > > ... > > ...aw crap. Amen to that. I turned 60 this year and man, oh, man, that sucked. I've mostly been fine with getting older but 60? Are you kidding me? I'm 60? That's the first time a birthday made me feel closer to death. Yuck. From christopher.fujino at gmail.com Mon May 16 09:10:54 2022 From: christopher.fujino at gmail.com (christopher fujino) Date: Sun, 15 May 2022 16:10:54 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] [tuhs] Go programming language In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Really cool, thanks for sharing! On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 7:21 AM Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote: > List readers may enjoy a new article about the history of the Go > programming language published today: > > Russ Cox, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, Ian Lance Taylor, and > Ken Thompson > The Go programming language and environment > Comm. ACM 65(5) 70--78 May 2022 > https://doi.org/10.1145/3488716 > https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3488716 > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 > - > - University of Utah > - > - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: > beebe at math.utah.edu - > - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe at acm.org > beebe at computer.org - > - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: > http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wkt at tuhs.org Tue May 17 07:54:50 2022 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 07:54:50 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] tuhs.org e-mail cutover Message-ID: <20220516215450.GA24158@minnie.tuhs.org> Hi all, I'm hoping to cut the tuhs.org e-mail from the old server over to the new server tomorrow, at around 0400 UTC May 18 2002. I'll stop accepting e-mails on the old server first, then cut over and start accepting e-mails on the new server. If something goes pear shaped, you'll be able to contact me on my Gmail address warren.toomey at .... and on my DoctorWkt twitter account. Cheers & fingers crossed :-) Warren From rich.salz at gmail.com Wed May 18 09:11:38 2022 From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Richard Salz) Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 19:11:38 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Unix-haters handbook on Kindle for $3 Message-ID: Humor is kind of screed-like and may be dated, but some here might find it a fun read. (Disclaimer: I wrote the chapter on Usenet.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From athornton at gmail.com Wed May 18 10:42:59 2022 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 17:42:59 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix-haters handbook on Kindle for $3 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <73E4FB79-A1E0-49A5-8DA4-D1E688FAA6D8@gmail.com> > On May 17, 2022, at 4:11 PM, Richard Salz wrote: > > Humor is kind of screed-like and may be dated, but some here might find it a fun read. (Disclaimer: I wrote the chapter on Usenet.) > And I reviewed it several years ago, very much in the context of TUHS. Disclaimer: this may be the only time you find me agreeing with Eric Raymond. https://athornton.dreamwidth.org/14272.html Adam From fair-tuhs at netbsd.org Wed May 18 11:04:34 2022 From: fair-tuhs at netbsd.org (Erik E. Fair) Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 18:04:34 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Unix-haters handbook on Kindle for $3 In-Reply-To: <73E4FB79-A1E0-49A5-8DA4-D1E688FAA6D8@gmail.com> References: Message-ID: <20418.1652835874@cesium.clock.org> And the chapter on sendmail quotes entirely an email to the RISKS digest from me about an incidident while I was postmaster at apple. I remember being surprised to see it in print, until I saw a footnote quoting the email I'd sent giving permission to publish ... Erik Fair From wkt at tuhs.org Wed May 18 13:04:23 2022 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Wed, 18 May 2022 13:04:23 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] tuhs.org e-mail cutover In-Reply-To: <20220516215450.GA24158@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20220516215450.GA24158@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: <20220518030423.GA14642@minnie.tuhs.org> On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 07:54:50AM +1000, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > Hi all, I'm hoping to cut the tuhs.org e-mail from the old server over to the > new server tomorrow, at around 0400 UTC May 18 2002. I'll stop accepting > e-mails on the old server first, then cut over and start accepting e-mails > on the new server. OK, this should be the last TUHS e-mail on the old 'minnie' server. I'll disable the services once it goes out and then work on the transition. Hope to see you all on the other side :-) Cheers, Warren From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed May 18 14:25:49 2022 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey via TUHS) Date: Wed, 18 May 2022 14:25:49 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail Message-ID: If I'm lucky, this will be the first e-mail to the TUHS list using the mailman3 software on the new minnie server. Cheers, Warren From angus at fairhaven.za.net Wed May 18 14:27:26 2022 From: angus at fairhaven.za.net (Angus Robinson) Date: Wed, 18 May 2022 06:27:26 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: takes me back to the IRC days and "first post" after midnight. Big thank you for the migration Warren. Kind Regards, Angus Robinson On Wed, May 18, 2022 at 6:25 AM Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > If I'm lucky, this will be the first e-mail to the TUHS list using > the mailman3 software on the new minnie server. > > Cheers, Warren > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From athornton at gmail.com Wed May 18 14:29:21 2022 From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton) Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 21:29:21 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7B0C2956-39EE-4950-B4D6-D44A7108F14F@gmail.com> > On May 17, 2022, at 9:25 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > > If I'm lucky, this will be the first e-mail to the TUHS list using > the mailman3 software on the new minnie server. Loud and clear. Adam From lm at mcvoy.com Wed May 18 14:37:54 2022 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 21:37:54 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: <7B0C2956-39EE-4950-B4D6-D44A7108F14F@gmail.com> References: <7B0C2956-39EE-4950-B4D6-D44A7108F14F@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20220518043754.GC12645@mcvoy.com> On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 09:29:21PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > > > > On May 17, 2022, at 9:25 PM, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > > > > If I'm lucky, this will be the first e-mail to the TUHS list using > > the mailman3 software on the new minnie server. > > > Loud and clear. > > Adam I fish and get that reference, going out of the harbor, can I get a radio check on 19 please? --lm From alex at musolino.id.au Wed May 18 15:02:32 2022 From: alex at musolino.id.au (Alex Musolino) Date: Wed, 18 May 2022 14:32:32 +0930 Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <854E84137A51B556DD0C2376BD35A51F@musolino.id.au> > If I'm lucky, this will be the first e-mail to the TUHS list using > the mailman3 software on the new minnie server. It's echoing a bit. I have received two copies of each message in this thread so far. From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed May 18 15:07:30 2022 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey via TUHS) Date: Wed, 18 May 2022 15:07:30 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Archives of the TUHS mailing list Message-ID: All, now that the TUHS list has migrated over to the new mailman3 system, I should point out where the list archives are now available. They are: https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs at tuhs.org/ - new mailman3 format https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ - old mailman2 format https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/TUHS/Mail_list/ - same as above, but in a format that makes it easier to download All mail to the TUHS list should, eventually, end up in all three places. Cheers, Warren From dave at horsfall.org Wed May 18 16:25:33 2022 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 18 May 2022 16:25:33 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, 18 May 2022, Kenneth Goodwin wrote: > Looking good... > Except I seem to now be in the wrong TUHS > (The Eunuchs Hysterical Society) You can blame me for that :-) -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Thu May 19 14:56:19 2022 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 19 May 2022 14:56:19 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Nearly forgot: how does one pronounce "TUHS"? I'm torn between "TUSS" and "CHEWS"... -- Dave From dave at horsfall.org Thu May 19 16:38:42 2022 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 19 May 2022 16:38:42 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Pronunciation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 19 May 2022, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: > I've always spelled it out: tea ewe aches ess Ah, the days when I had to maintain an AIX box; I always pronounced it "aches" (as in "pains"). Mind you, I quite liked SMIT; it was the only sane way to admin the thing. -- Dave, drifting into COFF territory From cowan at ccil.org Thu May 19 21:49:17 2022 From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Thu, 19 May 2022 07:49:17 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] First test e-mail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 12:56 AM Dave Horsfall wrote: > Nearly forgot: how does one pronounce "TUHS"? I'm torn between "TUSS" and > "CHEWS"... > > "Tuss" sounds totally wrong to me. I would pronounce it like the first syllable in "Tuesday", which can be "tooz", "tyooz", or "choose", depending on your accent in English. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Fri May 20 00:23:32 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 19 May 2022 08:23:32 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Pronunciation In-Reply-To: <8659B0EF2600F6A9FB234390FEE1DACC.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <8659B0EF2600F6A9FB234390FEE1DACC.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2022, 6:54 AM Norman Wilson wrote: > It's spelled TUHS but it's pronounced values of beeta may give rise to dom! > When I say it, it alliterates with GIF. Warner > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dave at horsfall.org Fri May 20 13:32:31 2022 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Fri, 20 May 2022 13:32:31 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] Pronunciation (was: First test e-mail) In-Reply-To: <20220520004255.GA41717@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20220520004255.GA41717@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 20 May 2022, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > I pronounce it "pups", like young dogs. That was easy to pronounce, and > since I already had a folder Mail/pups, it seemed reasonable to keep it > when the name changed. Yep, the PDP Unix Preservation Society, which changed when it was evident that Unix ran on other platforms (including the famous Interdata port). -- Dave From imp at bsdimp.com Sat May 28 03:29:26 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 27 May 2022 11:29:26 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Historical application software In-Reply-To: <66ae3ff2-bd07-e192-a00f-f9c701d857c8@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> References: <64EEED76-2EBB-4D55-ADE4-DEDFAC391322@planet.nl> <66ae3ff2-bd07-e192-a00f-f9c701d857c8@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 11:00 AM Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > On 5/27/22 5:57 AM, Paul Ruizendaal wrote: > > I came across a website that discusses reviving an old binary for Lotus > > 1-2-3 for SysV Unix (386 COFF), on the way to making it run on Linux: > > > > https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html > > Yep. That is a very interesting article. > > Though I do think that some of what Tavis did was borderline > exceptional. I don't know many people that would consider writing their > own object utility to do things. But this just goes to show what is > possible if you are willing to do so. > People working on emulators run into these issues all the time as well. There was a greater diversity of object formats when Unix was younger as well, most have been displaced by ELF (PECOFF being the only exception that's still around outside of Windows). Also people that try to decompile things back into .o files run into these issues as well... There's been efforts over the years to extract different kinds of drivers from old binary-only kernels, for example, that have met with differing degrees of success. Though putting the relocation info back in after the fact can be quite tricky... The successful ones I know of disassembled and reassembled to cope with this issue after some post-processing phase to cope with places where there were tables... > > The audience here may enjoy the read, and maybe it is of use when > > reviving other old application software for 1980’s and 1990’s Unix. > > I've filed it away for future reference for this very reason. > Yea, it's quite interesting... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Sun May 29 10:57:54 2022 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Sat, 28 May 2022 18:57:54 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Historical application software In-Reply-To: References: <64EEED76-2EBB-4D55-ADE4-DEDFAC391322@planet.nl> <66ae3ff2-bd07-e192-a00f-f9c701d857c8@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 28, 2022 at 9:30 AM Paul Winalski wrote: > On 5/27/22, Warner Losh wrote: > > > > People working on emulators run into these issues all the time as well. > > There was a greater diversity of object formats when Unix was younger > > as well, most have been displaced by ELF (PECOFF being the only exception > > that's still around outside of Windows). > > The object formats that I'm aware of on Unix are: > > a.out - comes in three flavors: > OMAGIC - executable instructions (text) and static data in the same section > NMAGIC - text separate from data; shared text > ZMAGIC - text separate from data; demand paged bsd 2.11 has 6 different magic numbers. The three extra are one flavor of overlays that does the itself, and two flavor that do it automatically (I've not plumbed the depths of the code to know what that means) with separate I&D and one without. > MACH-O - Object and executable format for the MACH microkernel. This > is still the object format used by the Mac OS X operating system, > which IIRC was built by placing FreeBSD Unix on top of the MACH > microkernel. It allows more than the three sections (.text, .data, > .bss) in a.out. > > COFF - Common Object File Format. Allows up to 64 object fsections. > HP-UX had a weird form of COFF in the early days. IBM AIX had its own thing that wasn't quite COFF, nor was it quite a.out. Apollo also had a variation on COFF that wasn't quite standard. I wrote a symbol mangler for all of these in the early 90s and each one was its own special snowflake. > ELF - Executable and Linkable Format. Much more uniform (everything > is a section) than its predecessors, and allows essentially an > arbitrary number of sections. In addition to its use on Unix, this is > the object file and executable format used by Linux and OpenVMS (on > Itanium and x86). > > Are there others? > > PECOFF, Portable Executable and Common Object File Format, is the > object file and executable format used by Microsoft Windows. It is a > derivative of COFF, but, in typical Microsoft embrace-and-extend > fashion, there are significant differences. When Windows NT was > ported to the DEC Alpha processor, I had to add PECOFF support to > DEC's GEM compiler back end. I started by adding conditional code to > the existing COFF support, but I found that PECOFF differed enough > from vanilla COFF that it was easier and more maintainable to fork off > a separate module for it. > pecoff is also used for UEFI binaries... Though the subset that's used tends to be smaller than what windows itself uses. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: