I've assembled some notes from old manuals and other sources
on the formats used for on-disk file systems through the
Seventh Edition:
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~norman/old-unix/old-fs.html
Additional notes, comments on style, and whatnot are welcome.
(It may be sensible to send anything in the last two categories
directly to me, rather than to the whole list.)
Hi,
I successfully made SIMH VAX-11/780 emulator run 32V, 3BSD and 4.0BSD.
Details are on my web site (thogh rather tarse):
http://zazie.tom-yam.or.jp/starunix/
Enjoy!
Naoki Hamada
nao(a)tom-yam.or.jp
With the successful restoration of Unix V1, I was thinking of other
operating systems that could be restored in a similar way. The most
historically significant would probably be CTSS. The SIMH IBM 7094
simulator has everything necessary to run CTSS implemented already,
although the CTSS-specific stuff is untested (since as far as I know,
nobody has booted CTSS in it yet) and may need some patching.
There are several tapes of listings (for almost all of the system), and
a few tapes of binaries (one with supervisor binaries, and one with
"standalone" utilities, but nothing with user-mode programs) available.
The listings need to be converted back into source that can be assembled
or compiled. Part of this can be done automatically (I have written some
dumb scripts to do this), but there will likely be quite a bit of manual
editing involved. There is nothing to be OCRed, since everything is on
magtapes.
Most of the source is either assembly or MAD (an Algol-58 dialect), with
a few files in AED (another Algol dialect, for which no compiler appears
to have survived). Restoring the assembler stuff should be easy (there
exists a cross-assembler which would work), but restoring the MAD stuff
will be a little bit harder. There is no cross-compiler for it (there is
a compiler that runs under IBSYS, but it is probably just for an IBSYS
target, and I'm not sure if anyone has even figured out how to run it).
The AED stuff will have to be rewritten in MAD (which shouldn't be
especially hard, since AED and MAD are somewhat similar). Only a few
non-essential programs are written in AED.
I think that all (or at least most of) the stuff required for booting is
written in assembler, so the best way to get it working would be get a
minimal system booting (I suspect all that is necessary is the
supervisor, so the binaries on the tape might be of use), and run the
CTSS MAD compiler under it to compile all the MAD stuff (which includes
many of the "core" commands).
I'm not sure what the best way to get stuff into a filesystem is. The
standalone utilities run under FMS, and there is no bootable FMS tape.
There is a version of FMS that runs under IBSYS, but for some reason, it
returns an error when attempting to load the utilities off the tape.
It is probably possible to patch it to fix that bug, though. It would
also work to write utilities that run on the host system, much like what
was done for Unix V1 (although I think that fixing the bug in FMS would
probably be easier).
Maybe I should start a Sourceforge project.
Another, much simpler, system which might be possible to restore is
MUMPS-15, for which a PDF of a paper listing is available on bitsavers.
Restoring it would probably just be a matter of OCRing, correcting, and
assembling it (and maybe writing a bootstrap).
Working with the 1st Edition UNIX code has been a blast. I just thought I'd
quickly summarise the features of the 1st Edition. It's quite amazing the
system that had been written by the end of 1971:
- a multitasking system with up to 16 processes
- multiple users
- a hierachical filesystem, with empty directories used as mountpoints
- read/write file protection for user/other (no group), plus the
execute and set-userid bits
- i-nodes, and filenames separated from i-nodes, allowing hard links
- device files
Just as interesting is the fact that, out of the 33 system calls in 1st
Edition UNIX, only one has disappeared completely from modern UNIXes;
four have merged into signal(), and a few have morphed into other syscalls:
V1_RELE 0 /* release the CPU, i.e. pre-empt this process */
V1_EXIT 1 exit()
V1_FORK 2 fork()
V1_READ 3 read()
V1_WRITE 4 write()
V1_OPEN 5 open()
V1_CLOSE 6 close()
V1_WAIT 7 wait()
V1_CREAT 8 open(path, O_CREAT | O_TRUNC | O_WRONLY, mode);
V1_LINK 9 link()
V1_UNLINK 10 unlink()
V1_EXEC 11 exec()
V1_CHDIR 12 chdir()
V1_TIME 13 gettimeofday()
V1_MKDIR 14 mkdir()
V1_CHMOD 15 chmod()
V1_CHOWN 16 chown()
V1_BREAK 17 brk()
V1_STAT 18 stat()
V1_SEEK 19 lseek()
V1_TELL 20 lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_CUR);
V1_MOUNT 21 mount()
V1_UMOUNT 22 umount()
V1_SETUID 23 setuid()
V1_GETUID 24 getuid()
V1_STIME 25 settimeofday()
V1_QUIT 26 signal(SIGQUIT,...)
V1_INTR 27 signal(SIGINT,...)
V1_FSTAT 28 fstat()
V1_CEMT 29 signal(SIGEMT,...)
V1_SMDATE 30 utimes()
V1_STTY 31 fcntl(), tcsetattr()
V1_GTTY 32 fcntl(), tcgetattr()
V1_ILGINS 33 signal(SIGILL,...)
The fact that we are still using these system calls today speaks volumes
for the original design.
Cheers,
Warren
Seen in a .sig:
Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.
--
Milo Velimirović
University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601 USA 43 48 48 N 91 13 53 W
> Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 18:10:33 +0200
> From: "Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde(a)acm.org>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] V8 - V10
>
> Solaris has been open sourced and is heavily System V based. Novell
> argues now SCO was not entitled to, and so the Sun-SCO agreement that made it
> possible is probably void.
>
> [...]
> There remains the issue of the flow of SystemV licenses money to Novell
> after and if it is open sourced... I don't know how much that is, nor how much
> it might be 4-10 years from now when the SCO appeals are heard. So my evaluation
> is probably faulty.
I concur with your opinion.
If Novell could not get paid from The SCO Group of the percentage (about
90%) they are entitled to of the SVRX License Payment SUN made to The SCO
Group, and of the SVRX License Payment Microsoft made to The SCO Group
(because, you know, The SCO Group has filled for bankruptcy), then they are
probably going to action on the basis of said Licenses being void, or at
least in being void the part of such Licenses that allows to Sub-license
the material changing the terms of the License, or changing the License
altogether. According to this hypothesis on the future, in case The SCO
Group cannot find the money to pay Novell, Novell will probably try to
renegotiate such Licenses directly with SUN and Microsoft. Microsoft
will probably just return the material instead of paying for it (as they
don't need it), but SUN is in a totally different position.
SUN has now OpenSolaris, which was made possible by that License they got
from The SCO Group. So SUN will renegotiate and pay Novell to legalize
the SVRX License they got from The SCO Group which allowed them to
"open-source" Solaris.
Only after Novell gets that payment(s), either from The SCO Group or
SUN, will they consider "open-sourcing" the historical SVRX and
classical UNIX code. Otherwise, they could hardly monetize on it, as
they currently have the opportunity to do.
Regards,
--
Pepe
pepe(a)naleco.com
My take on this is multiple:
If I remember well from IBM vs. SCO the agreements between IBM and alike
and AT&T stated that the code was to be kept confidential but that if a third
party did release it, the licensees would no longer be bound by that restriction.
Solaris has been open sourced and is heavily System V based. Novell
argues now SCO was not entitled to, and so the Sun-SCO agreement that made it
possible is probably void.
Novell is now engaged against SCO. Once that is over, they'll have to
look at the Sun and MS agreements. My take on this is that they will renegotiate.
In the case of Sun there is no longer sense in asking for the code to be closed.
It's in the open now and has been for a long time. If I were Novell, I would
negotiate in a oblique direction: Solaris _may_ pose a competing threat to Novell
Linux business... arguably. Sun is interested in making Solaris GPL. If it were,
then Novell would have no standpoint against Sun as it would make no difference
then for them to use either Linux or Solaris, both being equally available and
third-party originated under the same license. Going after Solaris would give
them a very bad reputation among OSS followers. Thus, what would make more sense
would be to negotiate with Sun and ask for some more money in exchange for
dropping any charges and Solaris becoming GPL. Everybody wins and everybody is
happy.
Should it go that way, and probably only afterward, Novell may consider
opening up System V under an OSS license, as most of it would have been rendered
obsolete by OSS Solaris. It would also increase Novell's reputation and clear
this mess forever. Hopefully by the time this happens (counting on SCO or their
successors to appeal the Utah decision), maybe 10 years from now, System V will
have become as irrelevant -commercially I mean- as e. g. UNIX v5 is now while
historical interest and value will have raised after several years of TUHS
applying moderate pressure ;-) It would also be the time to ask IBM to release
the code for AIX and DYNIX (which is already in the wild according to
soothsayers), HP to open Tru64 (same and which they insist on phasing out),
etc...
There remains the issue of the flow of SystemV licenses money to Novell
after and if it is open sourced... I don't know how much that is, nor how much
it might be 4-10 years from now when the SCO appeals are heard. So my evaluation
is probably faulty.
Oh, well, I woke up in a dreamy mood today! :-)
j
--
These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!
José R. Valverde
De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural
> From: Aharon Robbins <arnold(a)skeeve.com>
>
> Is the SCO "stuff" settled enough that DMR can release V8 - V10 to TUHS?
It seems clear, now, that the copyright on that is Novell's, and that
The SCO Group *never* had the copyright for that transferred to them by
Novell, and that therefore the "open-sourcing" of that material done by
Caldera is void because Caldera was lacking just title to do such
re-licensing.
Therefore, you can legally release it to TUHS, provided you have a license or
permission from Novell to do so.
You could always release it anyway, and hope for the best, but then you
are on your own and betting for your luck. Anything could happen, but it
is unknown.
--
Pepe
pepe(a)naleco.com
Yow. I didn't expect such a flurry of legalese when I asked the question.
> Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 17:54:41 -0700
> From: lm(a)bitmover.com (Larry McVoy)
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] V8 - V10?
> To: Pepe <pepe(a)naleco.com>
> Cc: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
>
> > Therefore, only Novell can "open-source" V8 - V10, which is the point
> > being discussed here, and Caldera had no title to do it.
I hadn't kept up, so this was an interesting surprise. At least we know
more or less what's going on now.
> Has anyone asked Novell?
Indeed. Do we even know who to ask there?
Thanks,
Arnold
