- COFF - www.tuhs.org

by John Cowan

-tuhs +coff On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 1:30 AM <jason-tuhs(a)shalott.net> wrote: > As a vendor or distributor, you would care. Anyone doing an OS or other > software distribution (think the BSDs, of course; There is no legal reason why the BSDs can't distribute GPLed software; indeed, they did so for many years. Their objection is purely ideological. > but also think Apple or > Microsoft) needs to care. Apple and Microsoft can buy up, outspend, out-lawyer, or just outwait anyone suing them for infringement. Their only reasons for not doing so are reputational. > Anyone selling a hardware device with embedded > software (think switches/routers; think IOT devices; think consumer > devices like DVRs; etc) needs to care. Only if they are determined to infringe. Obeying the GPL's rules (most often for BusyBox) is straightforward, and the vast majority of infringers (per the FSF's legal team) are not aware that they have done anything wrong and are willing to comply once notified, which cures the defect (much less of a penalty than for most infringements). The ex-infringers do not seem to consider this a serious competitive disadvantage. GPL licensors are generous sharers, but you have to be willing to share yourself. I saw this dynamic in action while working for Reuters; we were licensing our health-related news to websites, and I would occasionally google for fragments of our articles. When I found one on a site I didn't recognize, I'd pass the website to Sales, who would sweetly point out that infringement could cost them up to $15,000 per article, and for a very reasonable price.... They were happy to sign up once they were made aware that just because something is available on the Internet doesn't mean you can republish it on your site. GPL (or similar "virally" > licensed) software carries legal implications for anyone selling or > distributing products that contain such software; and this can be a > motivation to use software with less-restrictive license terms. Only to the victims of FUD. Reusing source code is one thing: repackaging programs is another. I'll say no more about this here.

3 years, 4 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] ksh88 source code?

by Adam Thornton

MacOS finally pushed me to zsh. So I went all the way and installed oh-my-zsh. It makes me feel very dirty, and I have a two-line prompt (!!), but I can't deny it's convenient. tickets/DM-32983 ✗ adam@m1-wired:~/git/jenkins-dm-jobs$ (and in my terminal, the X glyph next to my git branch showing the status is dirty is red while the branch name is green) and if something doesn't exit with rc=0... adam@m1-wired:~/git/jenkins-dm-jobs$ fart zsh: command not found: fart tickets/DM-32983 ✗127 ⚠️ adam@m1-wired:~/git/jenkins-dm-jobs$ Then I also get the little warning glyph and the rc of the last command in my prompt. But then I'm also now using Fira Code with ligatures in my terminal, so I've pretty much gone full Red Lightsaber. Adam On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 7:41 AM Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org> wrote: > Thomas Paulsen: > > bash is clearly more advanced. ksh is retro computing. > > ==== > > Shell wars are, in the end, no more interesting than editor wars. > > I use bash on Linux systems because it's the least-poorly > supported of the Bourne-family shells, besides which bash > is there by default. Ksh isn't. > > I use ksh on OpenBSD systems because it's the least-poorly > supported of the Bourne-family shells, besides which kh > is there by default. Bash isn't. > > I don't actually care for most of the extra crap in either > of those shells. I don't want my shell to do line editing > or auto-completion, and I find the csh-derived history > mechanisms more annoying than useful so I turn them off > too. To my mind, the Research 10/e sh had it about right, > including the simple way functions were exported and the > whatis built-in that told you whether something was a > variable or a shell function or an external executable, > and printed the first two in forms easily edited on the > screen and re-used. > > Terminal programs that don't let you easily edit input > or output from the screen and re-send it, and programs > that abet them by spouting gratuitous ANSI control > sequences: now THAT's what I call retro-computing. > > Probably further discussion of any of this belongs in > COFF. > > Norman Wilson > Toronto ON >

3 years, 4 months

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Multics comes to amateur radio.

by Dan Cross

Chalk this up to "pointless hack" but I know many COFF readers (and presumably some multicians) are also ham radio enthusiasts, so perhaps some folks will find this interesting. I have succeeded in what I suspect may be a first: providing a direct interface from AX.25 amateur packet radio connections to a Multics installation (and TOPS-20). I've been interested in packet radio for a while and have run an AX.25 station at home for some time, and I have configured things so that incoming radio connections to a particular SSID proxy into telnet to a Unix machine on my AMPRNet subnet. I don't run the traditional AX.25 "node" software, but can log directly into a timesharing machine in my basement, which is pretty cool. Some recent upgrades provided an opportunity for a project interfacing "retro" computer instances with packet radio. AX.25 is a slow medium: 1200 BAUD (this is on 2m) packed switched over a high-loss, high-latency RF path. While my Unix machine does all right, it occurs to me that systems designed in the teletype era might actually be better suited to that kind of communications channel. So I set up a DPS8/M emulator and configured the packet node to forward an SSID to Multics. After some tweaking to clean up a bizarre number of ASCII NUL characters coming from the emulator (I suspect a bug there; I'm going to email those folks about that), things are working pretty well: I can connect into the system interactively and even use qedx to write PL/1 programs. To my knowledge, no one has done this with Multics before. A small session transcript follows at the end of this message (sorry, no PL/1). It's not fast, so one definitely comes to appreciate the brevity of expression in the interface. While I was at it, I also installed TOPS-20 on an emulated DECSYSTEM-20 and got it talking over AX.25 as well. Now, I'd like to set up an interface reminiscent of a PAD or TIP allowing access to all of these machines, muxing a single SSID. Sadly I have no idea what the user interface for those things looked like: if anyone has pointers I can use to craft some software, I'd be happy to hear about it! Pointless perhaps, but fun! - Dan C. PS: I'm happy to set folks up with accounts, if they'd like. Shoot me an email with your call sign. If you're in the greater Boston area, try KZ2X-1 and KX2X-3 on 145.090 MHz. ###CONNECTED TO NODE BROCK(W1MV-7) CHANNEL A Welcome to BROCK (W1MV-7) in Brockton, Mass ENTER COMMAND: B,C,J,N, or Help ? C KZ2X-3 ###LINK MADE Trying 44.44.107.8... Connected to sim.kz2x.ampr.org. Escape character is 'off'. HSLA Port (d.h001,d.h002,d.h003,d.h004,d.h005,d.h006,d.h007,d.h008,d.h009,d.h010,d.h011,d.h012,d.h013,d.h014,d.h015,d.h016,d.h017,d.h018,d.h019,d.h020 ,d.h021,d.h022,d.h023,d.h024,d.h025,d.h026,d.h027,d.h028,d.h029,d.h030,d.h031)? Attached to line d.h001 Multics MR12.7: KZ2X Multics (Channel d.h001) Load = 6.0 out of 90.0 units: users = 6, 12/21/21 1718.0 est Tue login KZ2X Password: You are protected from preemption until 17:18. KZ2X.Ham logged in 12/21/21 1718.6 est Tue from ASCII terminal "none". Last login 12/21/21 1717.0 est Tue from ASCII terminal "none". No mail. r 17:18 0.376 54 ls Segments = 5, Lengths = 4. r w 1 KZ2X.profile r w 1 start_up.ec r w 1 hello.pl1 0 KZ2X.mbx r w 1 KZ2X.value r 17:19 0.022 0 who -a -lg Multics MR12.7; KZ2X Multics Load = 7.0 out of 90.0 units; users = 7, 2 interactive, 5 daemons. Absentee users = 0 background; Max background absentee users = 3 System up since 12/21/21 0922.8 est Tue Last shutdown was at 12/21/21 0917.8 est Tue Login at TTY Load User ID 12/21/21 09:22 cord 1.0 IO.SysDaemon 09:22 bk 1.0 Backup.SysDaemon 09:22 prta 1.0 IO.SysDaemon 09:22 ut 1.0 Utility.SysDaemon 09:22 vinc 1.0 Volume_Dumper.Daemon 16:41 none 1.0 Cross.SysEng 17:18 none 1.0 KZ2X.Ham r 17:19 0.036 0 logout KZ2X.Ham logged out 12/21/21 1722.9 est Tue CPU usage 0 sec, memory usage 0.2 units, cost $0.12. ###DISCONNECTED BY KZ2X-3 AT NODE BROCK

3 years, 4 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

OK, this is my last _civil_ request to stop email-bombing both lists with trafic. In the future, I will say publicly _exactly_ what I think - and if screens still had phosphor, it would probably peel it off. I can see that there are cases when one might validly want to post to both lists - e.g. when starting a new discusson. However, one of the two should _always_ be BCC'd, so that simple use of reply won't generate a copy to both. I would suggest that one might say something like 'this discussion is probably best continued on the <foo> list' - which could be seeded by BCCing the _other_. Thank you. Noel

3 years, 4 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

by Adam Thornton

Probably time to move this to COFF, but along the line of Fission for Program Comprehension.... I wonder how many of you don't know about Don Lancaster. Pioneer in home computing back when that meant something, inventor of a very low cost 1970s video terminal (the TV Typewriter), tremendously skilled hacker, brilliant guy. Also still alive, lives a couple hours away from me in Safford, AZ, and has been doing fantastic research on Native American hanging canals for the last couple decades. Anyway: he wrote a magnificent piece on how to understand a (6502) program from its disassembly, which reminded me of Gibbons's work: https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/tearing_rework.pdf I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a lot from his works. Adam

3 years, 4 months

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ARPAnet now 4 nodes

by Dave Horsfall

The ARPAnet reached four nodes on this day in 1969; at least one "history" site reckoned the third node was connected in 1977 (and I'm still waiting for a reply to my correction). Well, I can believe that perhaps there were only three left by then... According to my notes, the nodes were UCSB, UCLA, SRI, and Utah. -- Dave

3 years, 4 months

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Software Tools on Tandem (was: Ratfor revived!)

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

In keeping with the list charters, I'm moving this to COFF. On Thursday, 2 December 2021 at 11:30:35 -0500, John Cowan wrote: > On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 12:45 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> The Byte article (the scan of which I am very grateful for; not having to >> go trawling through the stacks at the Oberlin College library is always a >> plus) claims that the tools have been implemented on: >> >> Tandem > > That would be me; at least I registered it with Addison-Wesley, > although someone else may have implemented it independently. I recall something about this, but I didn't find very much in my collection of old email messages. The most promising was: Date: 87-11-06 09:47 From: LEHEY_GREG To: ANDERSON_KEN @CTS Subject: ?? Is there a "make"-like utility for Tandem ?? In Reply to: 87-11-05 18:59 FROM ANDERSON_KEN @CTS 3:?? Is there a "make"-like utility for Tandem ?? No, but I'd LOVE to have one. Ask Dick Thomas - in his spare time, he converts software tools to Tandem. Did you have contact with Dick? Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)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

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Encoding an ISA

by Warren Toomey

All, I think it's time to move the ISA and random logic threads over to COFF :-) Thanks! Warren

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] Encoding an ISA: Random Logic vs. Control Stores

by Clem Cole

Moving to COFF as this is less UNIX and more computer architecture and design style... On Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 3:07 AM <pbirkel(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Given a random logic design it's efficient to organize the ISA encoding > to maximize its regularity. Probably also of some benefit to compilers in a memory-constrained > environment? > To be honest, I think that the regularity of the instruction set is less for the logic and more for the compiler. Around the time the 11 was being created Bill Wulf and I think Gordan as co-author, wrote a paper about how instruction set design, the regularity, lack of special cases, made it easier to write a code optimizer. Remember a couple of former Bell and Wulf students were heavily involved in the 11 (Strecker being the main one I can think of off the top of my head). Also remember that Gordan and the CMU types of those days were beginning to create what we now call Hardware Description Languages (HDL). Gordon describes in "Bell and Newell" (the definitive Computer Structures book of the 1970s) his Processor-Memory-Switch (PMS) diagrams. The original 11 (which would become the 11/20) was first described as a set of PMS diagrams. PMS of course, beget the Instruction Set Processor Language (ISPL) that Mario created a couple of years later. While ISPL was after the 11 had been designed, ISPL could synthesize a system using PDP-16 RTM modules. A later version from our old friend from UNIX land, Ted Kowalski [his PhD thesis actually], that could spit out TTL from the later ISPS simulator and compiler [the S being simulation]. ISPS would beget VHDL, which beget today Verilog/System Verilog. IIRC it was a lecture Gordon Gordan gave us WRT to microcode *vs.* direct logic. He offered that microcode had the advantage that you could more easily update things in the field, but he also felt that if we could catch the errors before you released the HW to the world, and if we could then directly synthesize, that would be even better - no errors/no need to update. That said, by the 11/40, DEC started to microcode the 11's, although as you point out the 11/34 and later 11/44, where more direct logic than the 11/40 - and of course Wulf would created the 11/40e - which writeable control store so they add some instructions and eventually build C.mmp.

3 years, 5 months

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PL/1 [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

by Nemo Nusquam

Over to COFF... On 2021-11-23 02:57, Henry Bent wrote: > On Mon, 22 Nov 2021 at 21:31, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net > <mailto:mah@mhorton.net>> wrote: > > PL/I was my favorite mainframe programming language my last two > years as > an undergrad. I liked how it incorporated ideas from FORTRAN, > ALGOL, and > COBOL. My student job was to enhance a PL/I package for a History > professor. > > > What language were the PL/I compilers written in? From AFIPS '69 (Fall): "The Multics compiler is the only PL/1 compiler written in PL/1 [...]" HOPL I has a talk on the early history of PL/1 (born as NPL) but nothing on the question. N. > > Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I > suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who > is using it and for what purpose. > > -Henry

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

by Clem Cole

Moving to COFF where this probably belongs because its less UNIX and more PL oriented. On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote: > What language were the PL/I compilers written in? > I don't know about anyone else, but the VAX PL/1 front-end was bought by DEC from Freiburghouse (??SP??) in Framingham, MA. It was written in PL/1 on a Multics system. The Front-end was the same one that Pr1me used although Pr1me also bought their Fortran, which DEC did not. [FWIW: The DEC/Intel Fortran Front-End was written in Pascal -- still is last time I talked to the compiler folks]. I do not know what the Freiburghouse folks used for a compiler-compiler (Steve or Doug might ), but >>I think<< it might not have used one. Culter famously led the new backend for it and had to shuttle tapes from MIT to ZKO in Nashua during the development. The backend was written in a combination of PL/1, BLISS32 and Assembler. Once the compiler could self host, everything moved to ZKO. That compiler originally targeted VMS, but was moved to Unix/VAX at one point as someone else pointed out. When the new GEM compilers were about 10-15 years later, I was under the impressions that the original Freiburghouse/Culter hacked front-end was reworked to use the GEM backend system, as GEM used BLISS, and C for the runtimes and a small amount of Assembler as needed for each ISA [And I believe it continues to be the same from VSI folks today]. GEM based PL/1 was released on Alpha when I was still at DEC, and I believe that it was released for Itanium a few years later [by Intel under contract to Compaq/HP]. VSI has built a GEM based Intel*64 and is releasing/has released VMS for same using it; I would suspect they moved PL/1 over also [Their target customer is the traditional DEC VMS customer that still has active applications and wants to run them on modern HW]. I'll have to ask one of my former coworkers, who at one point was and I still think is, the main compiler guy at VSI/resident GEM expert. > Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I > suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who is > using it and for what purpose. > As best I can tell, commercial sites still use it for traditional code, just like Cobol. It's interesting, Intel does neither but we spend a ton of money on Fortran because so much development (both old and new) in the scientific community requires it. I answered why elsewhere in more detail: Where is Fortran used these days <https://www.quora.com/Where-is-Fortran-used-these-days/answers/87679712> and Is Fortran still alive <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-still-alive/answer/Clem-Cole> My >>guess<< is that PL/1 is suffering the same fate as Cobol, and fading because the apps are being/have been slowly rewritten from custom code to using COTS solutions from folks like Oracle, SAS, BAAN and the like. Not so for Fortran and the reason is that the math has not changed. The core of these codes is the same was it was in the 1960s/70s when they were written. A friend of mine used to be the Chief Metallurgist for the US Gov at NIST and as Dr. Fek put it so well: * "I have over 60 years worth of data that we have classified and we understand what it is telling us. If you magically gave me new code to do the same thing as what we do with our processes that we have developed over the years, I would have to reclassify all that data. It's just not economically interesting." *I personally equate it to the QWERTY keyboard. Just not going to change. *i.e.* *"Simple economics always beats sophisticated architecture."*

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

by Dan Cross

[-TUHS, +COFF] On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, 22 Nov 2021 at 21:31, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote: > >> PL/I was my favorite mainframe programming language my last two years as >> an undergrad. I liked how it incorporated ideas from FORTRAN, ALGOL, and >> COBOL. My student job was to enhance a PL/I package for a History >> professor. >> > > What language were the PL/I compilers written in? > The only PL/I compiler I have access to is, somewhat ironically, the Multics PL/1 compiler. It is largely self-hosting; more details can be found here: https://multicians.org/pl1.html (Note Doug's name appears prominently.) Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I > suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who is > using it and for what purpose. > I imagine most of it is legacy code in a mainframe environment, similarly to COBOL. I can't imagine that many folks are considering new development in PL/1 other than in retro/hobbyist environments and some mainframe shops where there's a heavy existing PL/I investment. - Dan C.

3 years, 5 months

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Powershell better than Bourne shell?

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

I recently had a discussion with some colleagues on the topic of shells. Two people whom I respect both told me that Microsoft's Powershell runs rings round the Bourne shell. Somehow that sounds like anathema to me, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility. Before I waste time investigating, can anybody here give me some insights? Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)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

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation [ reallly inscrutable languages ]

by Adam Thornton

On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 3:24 PM Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Perl certainly had its detractors, but for a few years there it was the > lingua franca of system administration. > It's still what I reach for first when I need to write a state machine that processes a file made up of lines with some--or some set of--structures. The integration of regexps is far, far, far superior to what Python can do, and I adore the while(<>) construct. Maintaining other people's Perl usually sucks, but it's a very easy way to solve your own little problems. Adam

3 years, 5 months

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Joys of PL/I [Was: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation]

by Nemo Nusquam

On 2021-11-16 09:57, Douglas McIlroy wrote: > The following remark stirred old memories. Apologies for straying off > the path of TUHS. > >> I have gotten the impression that [PL/I] was a language that was beloved by no one. > As I was a designer of PL/I, an implementer of EPL (the preliminary > PL/I compiler used to build Multics), and author of the first PL/I > program to appear in the ACM Collected Algorithms, it's a bit hard to > admit that PL/I was "insignificant". I'm proud, though, of having > conceived the SIGNAL statement, which pioneered exception handling, > and the USES and SETS attributes, which unfortunately sank into > oblivion. I also spurred Bud Lawson to invent -> for pointer-chasing. > The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C. > > After the ACM program I never wrote another line of PL/I. > Gratification finally came forty years on when I met a retired > programmer who, unaware of my PL/I connection, volunteered that she > had loved PL/I above all other programming languages. My first language was actually PL/C (and the computer centre did not charge for runs in PL/C). I needed to use PL/I for some thesis-related work and ran into the JLC wall -- no issues with the former, many issues with the latter. One of the support people, upon learning that I was using PL/I, said: "PL/I's alright!" N. > > Doug

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

by Clem Cole

Moving to COFF ... On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 10:50 AM Adam Thornton <athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I'm not even sure how much of this you can lay at the feet of teachers: I > would argue that we see a huge efflorescence of essentially self-taught > programming cobbled together from (in the old days) the system manuals a > Ouch ... this is exactly my point. In my experience in ~55 years of programming, with greater than 45 of those being paid to do it, the best programmers I know and have worked with were taught/mentored by a master -- not self-taught. As I said, I had to be re-educated once I got the CMU. My Dad had done the best he knew, but much of what he taught me was shortcuts and tricks because that is what he knew 🠪 he taught me syntax, not how to think. I know a lot of programmers (like myself) that were self-taught or introduced to computing by novices to start and that experience get them excited, but all of them had real teachers/mentors who taught them the true art form and helped them unlearn a lot of crap that they had picked up or miss-interpreted. Looking at my father as a teacher, he really had never been taught to think like a programmer. In the late 1950s he was a 'computer' [see the movie "Hidden Figures"]. He was taught FORTRAN and BASIC and told to implement things he had been doing by hand (solving differential equations using linear algebra). The ideas we know and loved about structured programming and* how to do this well* were still being invented by folks like Doug and his sisters and brothers in the research community. It's no surprise that my Dad taught me to 'hack' because he and I had nothing to compare to. BTW: this is not to state all HS computer teachers are bad, but the problem is that most people that are really good at programming are actually quite rare and they tend to end up in research or industry -- not teaching HS. Today, the typical HS computer teacher (like one of my nieces) takes a course or two at UMASS in the teacher's college. They are never taught to program or take the same courses the kids in science and engineering take 🠪 BTW I also think this is why we see so much of the popular press talking about 'coding' not programming. They really think learning to program is learning the syntax of a specific programming language. When I look at the young people I hire (and mentor) told, it's not any different. BTW: Jon and I had a little bit of a disagreement when he wrote his book. He uses Javascript for a lot of his examples - because of exactly what you point out 🠪 Javascript today, like BASIC before it, has a very high "on-screen results" factor with little work by the user. Much is being done behind the covers to make that magic happen. I tend to believe that creates a false sense of knowledge/understanding. To Jon's credit, he tries to bridge that in his book. As I said, I thought I knew a lot more about computers until I got to CMU. Boy was I in for an education. That said, I was lucky to be around some very smart people who helped steer me. Clem ᐧ

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation

by Adam Thornton

>From TUHS (to Doug McIlroy): "Curious what you think of APL" I'm sure what Doug thinks of APL is unprintable. Unless, of course, he has the special type ball. <rimshot> On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 8:23 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C. >> > > You seem to have a gift for notation. That's rare. Curious what you think > of APL? >

3 years, 5 months

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Will someone please explain the history and usage of gpasswd / newgrp / sg?

by Grant Taylor

Hi, Will someone please explain the history and usage of gpasswd / newgrp / sg? I've run across them again recently while reading old Unix texts. I've been aware of them for years, but I've never actually used them for anything beyond kicking the tires. So I figured that I'd inquire of the hive mind that is TUHS / COFF. When was the concept of group passwords introduced? What was the problem that group passwords were the solution for? How common was the use of group passwords? I ran into one comment indicating that they used newgrp to work around a limitation in the number of (secondary) groups in relation to an NFS implementation. Specifically that the implementation of NFS they were using didn't support more than 16 groups. So they would switch their primary group to work around this limit. Does anyone have any interesting stories related to group passwords / gpasswd / newgrp / sg? -- Grant. . . . unix || die

3 years, 5 months

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Double posting

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Can people **please** send posts to one of these two lists, only? Having to go through and delete every other post (yeah, I know, I could relete _all_ messages to either list, since they are archived, but old habits are hard to break) is _really_ annoying. OK, I can see sending an _initial_ query to both lists, to get it to as wide a circle as possible: _but_ BCC at least one of them, to prevent lazy people just hitting 'reply all' and thereby sanding out multiple copies of their reply. Thank you. Noel

3 years, 5 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Will someone please explain the history and usage of gpasswd / newgrp / sg?

by Clem Cole

3BSD has the V7 scheme, the new kernel code where there is a group list in the process is not introduced until later/ ᐧ On Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 1:46 PM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, 15 Nov 2021 at 13:31, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote: > >> Grant, >> >> Mashey and crew basically did most of the original group work as part of >> PWB. If you look at the Sixth Edition sources and the PWB 1.0 stuff, that >> is one of the places you will find differences. With Seventh Edition (or I >> believe as part of the UNIX/TS work that Ken picked up), the Mashey group >> changes went back into the Research stream. With one of the predecessors to >> 4.2BSD (it may have 4.1A or 4.1B but frankly I have forgotten) Joy >> introduced the group scheme we all use today. >> >> > Looking at the TUHS archives, unless I'm missing something, 3BSD has > groups that appear to be in the modern format: > > % ls -l /bsd/3bsd/etc/group > -r--r--r-- 1 root root 44 1980-01-02 22:08 /bsd/3bsd/etc/group > % cat /bsd/3bsd/etc/group > staff:*:10:bill,ozalp > grad:*:20: > prof:*:30: > % find . -name 'chgrp*' | xargs ls -l > -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 6960 Dec 30 1979 ./usr/bin/chgrp > -r--r--r-- 1 root root 26 Feb 12 1979 ./usr/man/man1/chgrp.1 > -r--r--r-- 1 root root 754 Feb 12 1979 ./usr/src/cmd/chgrp.c > > -Henry >

3 years, 5 months

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Vaxen, my children, just don't belong some places

by Dave Horsfall

[ Warning: you need to be an OF to understand the references ] I don't think I've ever posted this here... And trust me, an IBM 3090 was really big iron in those days. I don't recall the author, but I found it on the 'net. ----- VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places. In my business, I am frequently called by small sites and startups having VAX problems. So when a friend of mine in an Extremely Large Financial Institution (ELFI) called me one day to ask for help, I was intrigued because this outfit is a really major VAX user - they have several large herds of VAXen - and plenty of sharp VAXherds to take care of them. So I went to see what sort of an ELFI mess they had gotten into. It seems they had shoved a small 750 with two RA60s running a single application, PC style, into a data center with two IBM 3090s and just about all the rest of the disk drives in the world. The computer room was so big it had three street addresses. The operators had only IBM experience and, to quote my friend, they were having "a little trouble adjusting to the VAX", were a bit hostile towards it and probably needed some help with system management. Hmmm, hostility... Sigh. Well, I thought it was pretty ridiculous for an outfit with all that VAX muscle elsewhere to isolate a dinky old 750 in their Big Blue Country, and said so bluntly. But my friend patiently explained that although small, it was an "extremely sensitive and confidential application." It seems that the 750 had originally been properly clustered with the rest of a herd and in the care of one of their best VAXherds. But the trouble started when the Chief User went to visit his computer and its VAXherd. He came away visibly disturbed and immediately complained to the ELFI's Director of Data Processing that, "There are some very strange people in there with the computers." Now since this user person was the Comptroller of this Extremely Large Financial Institution, the 750 had been promptly hustled over to the IBM data center which the Comptroller said, "was a more suitable place." The people there wore shirts and ties and didn't wear head bands or cowboy hats. So my friend introduced me to the Comptroller, who turned out to be five feet tall, 85 and a former gnome of Zurich. He had a young apprentice gnome who was about 65. The two gnomes interviewed me in whispers for about an hour before they decided my modes of dress and speech were suitable for managing their system and I got the assignment. There was some confusion, understandably, when I explained that I would immediately establish a procedure for nightly backups. The senior gnome seemed to think I was going to put the computer in reverse, but the apprentice's son had an IBM PC and he quickly whispered that "backup" meant making a copy of a program borrowed from a friend and why was I doing that? Sigh. I was shortly introduced to the manager of the IBM data center, who greeted me with joy and anything but hostility. And the operators really weren't hostile - it just seemed that way. It's like the driver of a Mack 18 wheeler, with a condo behind the cab, who was doing 75 when he ran over a moped doing its best to get away at 45. He explained sadly, "I really warn't mad at mopeds but to keep from runnin' over that'n, I'da had to slow down or change lanes!" Now the only operation they had figured out how to do on the 750 was reboot it. This was their universal cure for any and all problems. After all it works on a PC, why not a VAX? Was there a difference? Sigh. But I smiled and said, "No sweat, I'll train you. The first command you learn is HELP" and proceeded to type it in on the console terminal. So the data center manager, the shift supervisor and the eight day-operators watched the LA100 buzz out the usual introductory text. When it finished they turned to me with expectant faces and I said in an avuncular manner, "This is your most important command!" The shift supervisor stepped forward and studied the text for about a minute. He then turned with a very puzzled expression on his face and asked, "What do you use it for?" Sigh. Well, I tried everything. I trained and I put the doc set on shelves by the 750 and I wrote a special 40 page doc set and then a four page doc set. I designed all kinds of command files to make complex operations into simple foreign commands and I taped a list of these simplified commands to the top of the VAX. The most successful move was adding my home phone number. The cheat sheets taped on the top of the CPU cabinet needed continual maintenance, however. It seems the VAX was in the quietest part of the data center, over behind the scratch tape racks. The operators ate lunch on the CPU cabinet and the sheets quickly became coated with pizza drippings, etc. But still the most used solution to hangups was a reboot and I gradually got things organized so that during the day when the gnomes were using the system, the operators didn't have to touch it. This smoothed things out a lot. Meanwhile, the data center was getting new TV security cameras, a halon gas fire extinguisher system and an immortal power source. The data center manager apologized because the VAX had not been foreseen in the plan and so could not be connected to immortal power. The VAX and I felt a little rejected but I made sure that booting on power recovery was working right. At least it would get going again quickly when power came back. Anyway, as a consolation prize, the data center manager said he would have one of the security cameras adjusted to cover the VAX. I thought to myself, "Great, now we can have 24 hour video tapes of the operators eating Chinese takeout on the CPU." I resolved to get a piece of plastic to cover the cheat sheets. One day, the apprentice gnome called to whisper that the senior was going to give an extremely important demonstration. Now I must explain that what the 750 was really doing was holding our National Debt. The Reagan administration had decided to privatize it and had quietly put it out for bid. My Extreme Large Financial Institution had won the bid for it and was, as ELFIs are wont to do, making an absolute bundle on the float. On Monday the Comptroller was going to demonstrate to the board of directors how he could move a trillion dollars from Switzerland to the Bahamas. The apprentice whispered, "Would you please look in on our computer? I'm sure everything will be fine, sir, but we will feel better if you are present. I'm sure you understand?" I did. Monday morning, I got there about five hours before the scheduled demo to check things over. Everything was cool. I was chatting with the shift supervisor and about to go upstairs to the Comptroller's office. Suddenly there was a power failure. The emergency lighting came on and the immortal power system took over the load of the IBM 3090s. They continued smoothly, but of course the VAX, still on city power, died. Everyone smiled and the dead 750 was no big deal because it was 7 AM and gnomes don't work before 10 AM. I began worrying about whether I could beg some immortal power from the data center manager in case this was a long outage. Immortal power in this system comes from storage batteries for the first five minutes of an outage. Promptly at one minute into the outage we hear the gas turbine powered generator in the sub-basement under us automatically start up getting ready to take the load on the fifth minute. We all beam at each other. At two minutes into the outage we hear the whine of the backup gas turbine generator starting. The 3090s and all those disk drives are doing just fine. Business as usual. The VAX is dead as a door nail but what the hell. At precisely five minutes into the outage, just as the gas turbine is taking the load, city power comes back on and the immortal power source commits suicide. Actually it was a double murder and suicide because it took both 3090s with it. So now the whole data center was dead, sort of. The fire alarm system had its own battery backup and was still alive. The lead acid storage batteries of the immortal power system had been discharging at a furious rate keeping all those big blue boxes running and there was a significant amount of sulfuric acid vapor. Nothing actually caught fire but the smoke detectors were convinced it had. The fire alarm klaxon went off and the siren warning of imminent halon gas release was screaming. We started to panic but the data center manager shouted over the din, "Don't worry, the halon system failed its acceptance test last week. It's disabled and nothing will happen." He was half right, the primary halon system indeed failed to discharge. But the secondary halon system observed that the primary had conked and instantly did its duty, which was to deal with Dire Disasters. It had twice the capacity and six times the discharge rate. Now the ear splitting gas discharge under the raised floor was so massive and fast, it blew about half of the floor tiles up out of their framework. It came up through the floor into a communications rack and blew the cover panels off, decking an operator. Looking out across that vast computer room, we could see the air shimmering as the halon mixed with it. We stampeded for exits to the dying whine of 175 IBM disks. As I was escaping I glanced back at the VAX, on city power, and noticed the usual flickering of the unit select light on its system disk indicating it was happily rebooting. Twelve firemen with air tanks and axes invaded. There were frantic phone calls to the local IBM Field Service office because both the live and backup 3090s were down. About twenty minutes later, seventeen IBM CEs arrived with dozens of boxes and, so help me, a barrel. It seems they knew what to expect when an immortal power source commits murder. In the midst of absolute pandemonium, I crept off to the gnome office and logged on. After extensive checking it was clear that everything was just fine with the VAX and I began to calm down. I called the data center manager's office to tell him the good news. His secretary answered with, "He isn't expected to be available for some time. May I take a message?" I left a slightly smug note to the effect that, unlike some other computers, the VAX was intact and functioning normally. Several hours later, the gnome was whispering his way into a demonstration of how to flick a trillion dollars from country 2 to country 5. He was just coming to the tricky part, where the money had been withdrawn from Switzerland but not yet deposited in the Bahamas. He was proceeding very slowly and the directors were spellbound. I decided I had better check up on the data center. \Most of the floor tiles were back in place. IBM had resurrected one of the 3090s and was running tests. What looked like a bucket brigade was working on the other one. The communication rack was still naked and a fireman was standing guard over the immortal power corpse. Life was returning to normal, but the Big Blue Country crew was still pretty shaky. Smiling proudly, I headed back toward the triumphant VAX behind the tape racks where one of the operators was eating a plump jelly bun on the 750 CPU. He saw me coming, turned pale and screamed to the shift supervisor, "Oh my God, we forgot about the VAX!" Then, before I could open my mouth, he rebooted it. It was Monday, 19-Oct-1987. VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places. -- Dave

3 years, 6 months

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TOPS-10 question

by Adam Thornton

So I have a very vanilla TOPS-10 system running. The console is being spammed with: [DAEMON: %AVAIL.A77 already used, can't rename AVAIL.SYS] Somewhere, evidently, there's a directory of files that are backups of AVAIL.SYS, and it needs cleaning out. How do I find that directory? Adam

3 years, 6 months

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Charles Moore's Birthday

by Nemo Nusquam

Dave, No message about Charles Moore? N. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: Chuck;'s Birthday Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2021 10:37:29 -0700 From: Paul Rubin <no.email(a)nospam.invalid> Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Jurgen Pitaske <jpitaske(a)gmail.com> writes: > It is Chuck Moore's 83rd birthday today. > You might want to send some greetings, > here a link to his facebook - or you might have his email address > .https://www.facebook.com/charleshavicemoore Happy 83rd birthday Chuck! Or perhaps I should say: 83 birthday Chuck happy

3 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] What does your "cal" show? (fwd)

by Dave Horsfall

> Ah, leap seconds. I work for an observatory. Some things are in TAI > and some are in UTC. At least now I know what to look for when > something is 37 seconds off. Isn't about that the transit of the Moon or something? -- Dave

3 years, 7 months

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What does your "cal" show?

by Dave Horsfall

In 1752 we switched to the Gregorian calendar, with the peasants revolting (as if they weren't already) because they thought they'd lost 11 days of their lives. What does "cal 9 1752" show on your boxes? -- Dave

3 years, 7 months

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