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
All, IEEE Spectrum have asked me to write a paper on Unix to celebrate the
40th anniversary of the release of 1st Edition in November 1971. I'm after
ideas & suggestions!
I think my general thrust is that Unix is an elegant design, and the
design elements are still relevant today. The implementation is mostly
irrelevant (consider how much the code has changed from assembly -> C,
from the simple data structures in V7 through to current BSD), but the
original API is classic. Note that about 28 of the 1st Ed syscalls are
retained in current BSDs and Linux, and with the same syscall numbers.
I'm having some trouble thinking of the right way to explain what is
an elegant design at the OS/syscall level, so any inspirations/ideas
would be most welcome. I might highlight a couple of syscall groups:
open/close/read/write, and fork/exec/exit/wait.
If you have any references/URLs you think I should look at, please
pass them on to me.
I'm also trying to chase down some quotes; my memory seems to be failing me
but I'm sure I've seen these somewhere:
- in a paper, I think by Thompson & Ritchie, where they assert that the
kernel should provide no more than the most minimal services to the
userland programs. I thought this was the CACM paper, but I can't spot
this bit. Maybe it's in Thompson's preface to the Lions Commentary,
of which my copy is elsewere at present.
- I'm sure I remember someome (Kernighan?) say that Ritchie encouraged
them to espouse the use of processes as context switching was cheap,
but later measurements showed that in fact it wasn't that cheap in
the early versions of Unix.
Anyway, if you can think of good ideas/references about the elegance of
Unix, especially from the design perspective, I would much appreciate them.
Cheers,
Warren
Hi Warren.
Here's your answer. :-)
Arnold
> Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:39:24 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Brian Kernighan <bwk(a)CS.Princeton.EDU>
> To: Aharon Robbins <arnold(a)skeeve.com>
> Subject: Re: can you help warren w/this?
>
> well, he only has one child; that i know for sure. can't vouch for
> the quote, however; i have not heard it before.
>
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>
> > Hi. Warren runs The Unix Historical Society and is working on a paper.
> > Can you help him with this?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Arnold
> >
> >> Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:31:09 +1000
> >> From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org>
> >> To: tuhs(a)tuhs.org
> >> Subject: [TUHS] ken: # of children?
> >>
> >> All, apologies for these seemingly random questions. How many children does
> >> Ken Thompson have? I want to use the phrase that Unix was "Ken's other child",
> >> but it would be inaccurate if he had several real children.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Warren
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> TUHS mailing list
> >> TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org
> >> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
All, apologies for these seemingly random questions. How many children does
Ken Thompson have? I want to use the phrase that Unix was "Ken's other child",
but it would be inaccurate if he had several real children.
Thanks,
Warren
All, thanks for the help with that image of Ken and Dennis at the 11/20
console. Now I'm after a reference/citation to a great quote attributed to
Henry Spencer:
Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
Any ideas if/when Henry said this and where: date, first time it appeared
in print etc.
While we are at it, are there any other good Unix quotes that spring to mind?
Thanks,
Warren
I went to Dennis' home page this morning to find something, and it seems
to be gone. The URL I'm using is http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/
Does anybody know if it's moved or, if not, who to contact to fix it?
I'm actually after the hi-res version of the photo with dmr and ken
at the PDP-11/20 console. I think I have a copy cached away. If not, does
anybody else have a copy?
Cheers,
Warren
Warren:
I went to Dennis' home page this morning to find something, and it seems
to be gone. The URL I'm using is http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/
=======
Looks like there has been substantial reorganization of
the company's web pages, doubtless to reflect reorganization
of the company itself.
I dug around to see where personal web pages seem to be now,
and tried some obvious guesses, and still couldn't find Dennis's
stuff.
I've sent a query to someone on the inside; I'll report back
if I find the answer.
It might be worth trying the Wayback Machine in the mean time.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
> On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 08:53 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> > I'm actually after the hi-res version of the photo with dmr and ken
> > at the PDP-11/20 console.
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 01:07:29AM +0200, Hellwig Geisse wrote:
> I don't know if this is the resolution you are looking for:
> http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/pdp-11/Images/ken-den.jpeg
No, there's a huge one around, something like 4000x3000 pixels.
Also, Dennis is the bearded one standing, and Ken is the beardless one
sitting, to answer Jason's question.
Cheers,
Warren
Hi,
I'm currently reading J. Lion's commentary of Unix Code Level Six. It
is the most useful commentary to operating system kernel I have ever
read.
It would be really useful to also have the source code of SVR4 kernel
for Intel x86. Does anyone have that?
