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
Claude Shannon passed away on this day in 2001.
Regarded as the Father of Information Theory, I doubt whether you'll go
through a day without bumping into him: computers, electronics, file
compression, audio sampling, you name it and he was probably behind it.
Please take a moment to remember him.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Bliss is a MacBook with a FreeBSD server."
http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html (and check the home page whilst you're there)
> From: Mark Longridge
> There's no reason for it to be mode 777 is there?
Not that I know of. Once UNIX has booted, it has no use for 'unix' (or
whatever file it booted from), and the boot loader doesn't even read the mode.
I think I habitually set mine to 644. (The 'execute' bits are, of course,
pointless...)
Noel
I just had it brought to my attention that the unix kernel is mode 777
in Unix v5 and v6:
ls -l /unix
-rwxrwx 1 root 27066 Mar 23 1975 /unix
There's no reason for it to be mode 777 is there? It seems rather dangerous.
In Unix v7 it defaults to mode 775 and in 32v it is 755. I figure it
setting it to mode 755 will work and so far it seems fine in v5.
Mark
> From: Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org>
>> Once UNIX has booted, it has no use for 'unix' (or whatever file it
>> booted from)
> Didn't "ps" try and read its symbol table?
Sorry, meant 'UNIX the monolithic kernel'; yes, ps and siblings (e.g. iostat)
need to get the running system's symbol table.
> I had fun days when I booted, say, "/unix.new", and "ps" wouldn't
> sodding work...
Know that feeling! I added the following to one of the kernel data files:
char *endsys &end;
and then in programs which grab the system's symbol table, I have an nlist()
entry:
"_endsys",
with the follwing code:
/* Check that the namelist applies to the current system.
*/
checknms(symfile)
char *symfile;
{ char *chkloc, *chkval;
if (nl[0].type == 0)
cerror("No namelist\n");
chkloc = nl[ENDSYS].value;
chkval = rdloc(chkloc);
if (chkval != nl[END].value) {
cerror("Symbol table in %s doesn't match running system\n",
symfile);
}
}
on the theory that pretty much any change at all is going to result in a
change in the system's size (and thus the address of 'end').
Although in a split I/D system, this may not be true (you could change the
code, and have the data+BSS remain the same size); I should probably check
the location of 'etext' as well...
Anyway, a rebuilt system may result in the address of 'endsys' changing, and
thus the rdloc() won't return the contents of the running system's 'endsys',
but the chances of an essentially-random fetch being the same as the value of
'end' in /unix are pretty slim, I would say...
Noel
> From: Jacob Ritorto
> found a copy here, i think..
Ah, thanks.
You might want to look around in the parent directory; apparently there are
two differences between the 11/34 and 11/40, other than the clock and switch
register: the stack limit register, and different handling of
segmentation-violation aborted instructions (which affects instruction
restart on stack extension).
I don't know about 2.9, maybe it knows about these. For V6, the SLR won't be
an issue; the SLR is an option on the 11/40, so not all machines had it, and
m40.s in V6 doesn't use it. The instruction restart thing sounds like it will
be an issue with running V6 on a /34.
Noel
Would anyone know if it's still possible to just replace the platters and
clean the heads?
If the heads are really crashed, the only safe course is
to replace both the damaged heads and the damaged disk pack.
Anything else admits a substantial risk of carrying the
crash forward.
Cleaning the heads probably isn't an option; when they
crash, they don't just pick up material from the disk
platter, they may themselves be damaged enough that sharp
bits of the heads themselves are sticking out.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
> From: Noel Chiappa
> apparently there are two differences between the 11/34 and 11/40, other
> than the clock and switch register
Too early in the morning here, clearly... I was thinking of the 11/23 and the
11/40 here in the clock/SR comment, not the /34 and the /40.
_Iff_ the 11/34 is using the standard DL11-W console interface board (which
includes an LTC), there's no difference that I know of between the 11/34 and
the 11/40 on the LTC front (although the LTC is an option in the /40, so a /40
might not have one, in which case the V6 will panic on trying to boot unless
it has a KW11-P).
As for the switch register... I guess that on machines with a KY11-A, there
is no switch register? (Too lazy/busy to go read the manual(s) to confirm...)
Noel
