TUHS October 2002

tuhs@tuhs.org

28 participants
37 discussions

by Dennis Ritchie

Lehey wondered: > .... can > you shed any light on the "Peter Weinberger stencil" incident? ... > Somebody came across the idea of > making a large stencil of his face in death-star like technology, > and used it to paint an image of him on a nearby water tower. > Allegedly the costs were charged to Peter's department. > Some years later, this stencil arrived in Greg Rose's office in > Australia from an anonymous sender. Greg has a suspicion who the > sender was, but no proof, so he doesn't want to comment. He gave it > to our own Warren Toomey, who still has it in his garage. > At some point, Peter Salus suggested that the image was of Rob Pike... I could recover some of the dates, but not accurately from memory. Weinberger was promoted, first to department head, then to being director of a newly-created but next-door center, then to our own executive director. This would have been mid-late 80s, early 90s. He was being groomed, it appears. Shortly before trivestiture, 1994ish, he went to the business part of AT&T, possibly in preparation for coming back to a higher management position at the Labs. When the Lucent/AT&T split occurred he was somewhat caught on the AT&T side. He ended up leaving AT&T and going to a financial quant company. His image was particularly striking, and was used to kid him in various ways, e,g, as a default image in mail icons. The image rendering his face with the Deathstar styling was done by Tom Duff, and it appeared, for example, on T-shirts worn publically at venues like Usenix and elsewhere. Other versions of it appear inscribed in concrete now buried beneath floors at the Labs. There is a bitmap version (rendered in 1cm magnets) of the full image, not death-starred, high on a steel wall above a landing on a nearby stairwell. The large stencilled image of the Deathstar/PJW rendition did indeed appear suddenly one day on a water tower; it must have been about 10 feet tall. Kernighan had a photo of it, and Gerard Holzmann just scanned it: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/pix/watertower.jpg It was painted over quite rapidly, a couple of days at most. (The tower itself is now gone, though not because of this.) The image was certainly not of Rob Pike. After this happened, a voucher was pinned up on a communal corkboard, claiming expenses for several cans of blue spray paint. The voucher was signed by one G. R. Emlin, a fictitious personage with his (later her) own history. Attached to it was a handwritten note from our then Executive Director (Vic Vyssotsky) saying approximately as follows: Unfortunately, this voucher cannot be approved by me; I am not empowered to approve Real Estate improvements. If Mr. Emlin would like to arrange a transfer to the Building and Grounds department, I would be happy to assist. So: who did it? If Greg Rose suspects certain aviation-inclined buddies, I in turn think his suspicions are likely to be well-founded. I managed to retrieve the image used to create the stencil; it's now linked-to near the bottom of http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/10thEdMan/v2pix.html Dennis

22 years, 2 months

C reference manual

by Tony Finch

I'm looking for a copy of the C reference manual from some time between the 6th Edition (1975) and the first version that came with 4.3BSD (1986). The stuff in the TUHS archive mostly seems to be missing the documentation sets, or in the case of the earlier BSDs they are ommitted for copyright reasons. There are some tutorials dating from about 1979 but they aren't much use. Any help would be appreciated. Tony. -- f.a.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ DOGGER: NORTHEAST 6 TO GALE 8 BACKING NORTHWEST 4 OR 5. RAIN OR SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD.

22 years, 2 months

rtm

by A.P.Garcia

I just recently picked up a copy of a book that's been out for some time, _Cyberpunk_ by Katie Hafner and John Markoff. The last chapter is about Robert T. Morris, Jr. and the worm incident (which in itself, I think, is an important event in Unix history). The book contains some interesting details, including some Unix folklore that I haven't seen anywhere else. For instance, RTM Sr. had a terminal at home, as did other members of the CSR group at Bell Labs. So a number of their kids had accounts! RTM Sr. comes off as a very likeable fellow, btw. At the Atlanta Linux Showcase in 1999, Norm Schryer gave a keynote speech, in which he told an amusing anecdote about Morris Sr. (I may be slightly off on some details; such is oral history): Morris, he said, was the kind of guy who always liked to tinker with things, and if an object had buttons, Morris just had to push them. In fact, sometimes Morris was just a little too quick with his fingers. On one side of a machine room was the light switch, and on the other side was the power to the machine. On at least one occasion, you guessed it -- Morris hit the wrong switch. Some people hung a disk pack that got ruined around his neck, and someone put up a big sign as a reminder: "THIS IS THE WEST WALL!" :-)

22 years, 2 months

Re: rtm

by Dennis Ritchie

Garcia is correct to praise the Hafner/Markoff account of the worm incident. There were some details about the kids' accounts and exploits that Markoff decided to elide; by the time he wrote that chapter he had become rather sympathetic with the Morris family. In 1995 another big incident occurred: the exploitation of the SYN TCP-connection takeover attack (Mitnick etc.) Markoff got another front-page NYT story out of this (and a book with Shimomura). I sent mail to Markoff at the time of the newspaper coverage reminding him that RTM had discovered the basic attack in 1985 (see CSTR 117 at http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr.html ); while here during a summer. Markoff replied in part, >Interesting how often RTM figures, one way or another, in your front-page >stories, and of course the [Cyberpunk] book.... > > Dennis Ritchie yes, this is true. you know i sat there on sunday for about ten minutes and thought about whether i should include rtm in my story - it would obviously have spiced it up. i finally decided not to on the grounds that 1. i have done enough to mythologize him for one decade 2. he is probably entitled not to be dragged through all this again. i still wonder whether i did the readers a disservice... Incidentally, "RTM Sr." was (while here) "rhm" by login name, and always called Bob; I don't think he actually has a middle name (at least I don't know it.) I think it's like Harry S Truman. RTM is called Robert, and never used Jr. About > [Bob] Morris, he said, was the kind of guy who always liked to tinker with > things, and if an object had buttons, Morris just had to push them. > In fact, sometimes Morris was just a little too quick with his fingers. > On one side of a machine room was the light switch, and on the other > side was the power to the machine. > On at least one occasion, you guessed it -- Morris hit the wrong switch. > Some people hung a disk pack that got ruined around his neck, and someone > put up a big sign as a reminder: "THIS IS THE WEST WALL!" I suspect that we may be dealing with the "Schryer filter" regarding some of the details. Norm S. was right about Bob's being an aggressive investigator and fiddler, but I don't connect the west-wall sign with Morris in particular, but my memory could be failing too. Norman Wilson might have been around for advent of the sign. In the event, it had more to do with circuit breakers labelled in small print "east wall" and "west wall" and someone choosing the wrong one. Dennis

22 years, 2 months

RE: [pups] Ultrix-3.1 boot tape inside the PDP-11 distribution directory

by Fred N. van Kempen

Gregg, > Question 1) Has anyone actually followed the instructions and > description of same, found inside the readme file found in the > directory? Yes. They are a cut-and-paste log of my actual screens, although I can't remember exactly what was in the file. > Question 2) Was this on actual hardware? Or inside the Simh simulator? > Or even with one version of E11? I did installs on real hardware (MicroPDP-11/23 and MicroPDP-11/83), and on Ersatz-11 (V3.0) for DOS. > In my case this will be inside the Simh simulator, and I am basically > working straight from the beginning. If all goes well, I'll move it to > the E11 one. Ultrix-11 runs fine on SimH, with the "downs" that because SimH does not do detailed and correct CPU emulation, Ultrix gets confuzed every now and then, which does not happen with E11. I am preparing a new (V3.2) release of Ultrix-11 which has major changes, including: - full system regeneration off single source tree - full RAxx support - addition of VTserver, TDU and compress - compressed manual pages and documentation - Y2K support (not just date(1) ;-) The installation procedure has also changed to a more modern style. I don't have much time right now, so progress is slow. The above is "done", though. If you need help with Ultrix-11, pse contact me off-list. --fred

22 years, 2 months

[pups] Ultrix-3.1 boot tape inside the PDP-11 distribution directory

by Gregg C Levine

Hello from Gregg C Levine This is both my first post from this address, and a couple of questions. Question 1) Has anyone actually followed the instructions and description of same, found inside the readme file found in the directory? Question 2) Was this on actual hardware? Or inside the Simh simulator? Or even with one version of E11? In my case this will be inside the Simh simulator, and I am basically working straight from the beginning. If all goes well, I'll move it to the E11 one. ------------------- Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon(a)worldnet.att.net ------------------------------------------------------------ "The Force will be with you...Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi "Use the Force, Luke." Obi-Wan Kenobi (This company dedicates this E-Mail to General Obi-Wan Kenobi ) (This company dedicates this E-Mail to Master Yoda )

22 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] rtm

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Jeffrey Sharp <jss(a)subatomix.com> wrote: > Yes, I believe I am somewhat younger than most the very respectable members > of this group. :-) I'm about the same. My timeline: 1979 born 1988 first computer: Soviet PDP-11 clone, first language: PDP-11 assembly 1995 first introduced to UNIX 1996 first live encounter with a VAX 1998 started maintaining my own version of VAX UNIX 2000 fully converted to it 2002 thinking about designing and building a new VAX CPU on an FPGA MS

22 years, 2 months

Actual names of boot images versus names listed in readme file for boot_images

by Gregg C Levine

Hello from Gregg C Levine I found out, on my system, and borrowing the Cygwin tools for file manipulation, the actual file name for .2,9BSD_rl02_1145.gz, it is rl02_2.9BSDroot, so I used that name in place of the one suggested inside the readme file. It works the same way. However, this is just the root collection. Is there any other pack available that contains the other members of the entire 2.9BSD system that provided us with this one? Also this was done with version 2.9-11 of Simh. So, when you get a chance, Warren, you can update the readme, and upload the appropriate file to the directory on your server. Oh yes, this came from a mirror of your site, its the one on ftp.tux.org Gregg C Levine drwho8(a)worldnet.att.net "Oh my!" The Second Doctor's nearly favorite phrase.

22 years, 2 months

Pack found in Tim Shoppa distribution but not listed

by Gregg C Levine

Hello from Gregg C Levine This is something that is totally different then what I first reported on regarding this distribution. In the readme for this one, it mentions everything list inside the directory, except the one marked down as "Unlabeled", and it originally came on a RL02 type diskpack. It is not listed in the Readme. Obviously it is what it says it is, an unlabled diskpack that Tim recovered the same day as the others, and those are indeed present, and listed. Except obviously the one that I first reported, that one isn't mentioned, and not there. That subject is done. I am just reporting on "Unlabeled", as far as everyone is concerned, is there anything on it? Or is it an empty pack? Gregg C Levine drwho8(a)worldnet.att.net "Oh my!" The Second Doctor's nearly favorite phrase.

22 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Can someone advise me regarding a gui for UNIX

by Aharon Robbins

Another reason the 5620 was botched so badly was that AT&T wanted >= $2000 for the development kit (read: C compiler and libraries) for it. Not a good way to get lots of 3rd party application developers on your bandwagon. I used one for a year or so; it was the first windowing system I'd used and the only one I've really liked. For about 10 years I've been using 9wm, which gives a similar feel (at least to me). Those who want to go all the way should adopt 9term as well. (I generally run xterm + bash these days, although for a long while it was 9term + es/rc.) Somewhere, I have an X version of the 5620 font. I found that it wasn't so pretty. I've been using the pelm-latin1-9 font from the sam distribution for years. Norman forgot to mention that the most long-lived split-design application is Rob Pike's sam editor, still available for X11 and still in use on Plan 9. Arnold

22 years, 2 months

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TUHS October 2002