TUHS March 2017

tuhs@tuhs.org

87 participants
136 discussions

by Warren Toomey

We are going to need some historical uucp maps so that we can construct our simulated uucp network which bears some resemblance to the past. There is a 1984 map on pages 7 to 14 of http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V05.4.pdf As Dave mentioned, we need some key sites like ihnp4, cbosgd etc. What other key sites? Any volunteers to run some of them? Warren

7 years, 9 months

observations on Unix v6's mount command

by Mark Longridge

I was trying to look at mini-unix so I mounted the disk image inside unix v6 via: /etc/mount /dev/rk4 /usr/mini-unix and I noticed that if I ran the mount command as a user and not root that /etc/mtab would not be updated (but it was updated as expected as root). Of course /etc/mtab is owned by root :) Then I noticed something else when I did an ls in the /usr directory: drwxrwxrwx 20 31 368 Sep 3 1976 mini-unix Normally I would see things like: drwxrwxr-x 2 bin 48 May 13 1975 adm What does the 31 mean? Mark

7 years, 9 months

UUCP mis-history?

by Dave Horsfall

http://www.thefullwiki.org/UUCP ``UUCP was originally written at AT&T Bell Laboratories, by Mike Lesk, and early versions of UUCP are sometimes referred to as System V UUCP.'' Err, it was V7, wasn't it? That considerably predates SysV... -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

7 years, 9 months

UUCP Recreation Network

by Cory Smelosky

Okay - let's make this an easy-to-dredge-through thread so I can easily search for stuff later. What means of interconnection are we going to use? I should be able to provide: 1). Actual dial-in (probably not anything above 1200 baud...if I am lucky) 2). SIMH "virtual leased line" dial-in 3). Network mail A map/list of interconnections would be nice. Need a central database somewhere. -- Cory Smelosky b4(a)gewt.net

7 years, 9 months

C News: help!

by Warren Toomey

OK, C News is a bit more complicated than I expected :) The latest version is at ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/c-news/ AFAIKT and a printable install guide at http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/infosystems/news/transport/cnews/doc/guide.ps.gz Are there any C News experts out there who might be able to help? Can we encourage Henry or Geoff to help at all? Cheers, Warren

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Source code abundance?

by Doug McIlroy

> [a] case where AT&T attempted to see whether its Unix code had been stolen > Coherent? I doubt it. The only access to Coherent that I am aware of was Dennis's site visit (recounted in Wikipedia, no less). Steve's Yacc adventure probably concerned another company. Besides the affairs of Coherent and Yacc, there was a guy in Massachusetts who sold Unix-tool lookalikes; I don't remember his name. We were suspicious and checked his binaries against our source--bingo! At the same time, our patent lawyer happened to be negotiating cross-licenses with DEC. DEC had engaged the very plagiarist as an expert to support their claim that AT&T's pile of patents didn't measure up to theirs. After a day of bargaining, our lawyer somehow managed to bring casual conversation around to the topic of stolen code and eventually offered the suspect a peek at a real example. He readily agreed that the disassembled binary on the one hand must have been compiled from the source code on the other. In a Perry Mason moment, the lawyer pounced: "Would it surprise you if I told you that this is ours and that is yours?" The discredited expert didn't appear at next day's meeting. The lawyer returned to Murray Hill aglow about his coup. The product soon disappeared from the market. Doug

7 years, 9 months

UUCP History [was Re: Help request: uucp, mail on 4.2BSD]

by Dan Cross

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 5:04 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote: > On Tue, 7 Mar 2017, Dan Cross wrote: > > > One or more microcomputer BBS (Bulletin Board System) platforms had UUCP > > support to bridge their store-and-forward messaging networks to USENET > > and send email, etc. The implementation I remember off the top of my > > head was Waffle, written by Tom Dell. [...] > > Was this the UUCP that was available for CP/M? I found it on the old > Walnut Creek CD, moved it over to my CP/M box via SneakerNet (I ran CP/M > for years, carefully avoiding DOS/WinDoze) and it worked; it was overlaid > to hell and back hence really slow, but it worked. > Maybe? Though I tend to doubt it. It looks like Waffle originally ran on the Apple II, but was fairly quickly ported to DOS and then Unix/Xenix. I believe it was written in C, but the source code is not generally available. More information on it is here: http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/IBM/DOS/WAFFLE/ As I mentioned before, the BBS thing was kind of interesting. What strikes me, however, is how closely the timing lines up with developments in the Unix world. As Jacob mentions earlier, UUCP was "published" in February 1978 and an improved version distributed with 7th Edition in October of that year. The first BBS was announced via an article in the November 1978 edition of Byte magazine (available online, with some information here: https://www.wired.com/2010/02/0216cbbs-first-bbs-bulletin-board/) For those that don't know, the whole idea behind a BBS was that a person with a computer (usually a microcomputer), a modem, and a POTS phone line (usually into the person's house) would run software on the machine that answered the phone when called (assumed the remote caller was using a modem, of course) and presented the remote user with an interface for interacting with the local machine: most often, this was menu based. Most often, the BBS only had one phone line and the functionality was limited: sending and receiving simple messages, uploading and downloading files using protocols like x- y- and zmodem (or kermit!) and maybe playing specially written games. However, some BBSs became quite sophisticated supporting multiple lines, interactive chat, multiplayer games and so forth. Early software was mostly homebrew (the Byte article talks about software *and* hardware), but eventually packaged systems emerged. There was even a commercial marketplace for BBS software. Around 1984, they developed a messaging "network" called Fidonet for routing email and sending files around; the goal was to minimize long-distance telephone charges by relaying things through nodes in the network that were geographically "close" to the next calling region and transmitting things in batch. Think USENET (which predated it by several years) but much smaller in scope. The Internet killed it for the most part, of course, but these things developed quite the following; some are even still running, though most are now accessible via telnet/ssh. Somewhat confusingly, some of the operators seem to think they are some kind of alternative to the "Internet" instead of just another application of the net. It's sort of an odd viewpoint, but I think it comes from not being altogether all that savvy: it was mostly a hobbyist thing. But in the BBS heyday, there was something like 100,000 of them in North America alone. Sorry for the wall of text, but I think the parity between the rise of BBSs and UUCP/USENET is interesting. - Dan C.

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Help request: uucp, mail on 4.2BSD

by Warren Toomey

Warren wrote: > > I might call for participation > > in a uucp/Usenet reconstruction with people running simulated nodes on > > the Internet. On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 07:47:30AM +0100, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > Are modern systems welcome? I always wanted a bang path address! I can't see why not, as long as you can simulate a serial connection with a TCP connection, and can speak uucp. Cheers, Warren

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Early Unix manuals (Was: fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11)

by Paul McJones

This scanned version includes all the cited manuals: A Research UNIX Reader Annotated Excepts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986 M. Douglas McIlroy https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader > From: jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu <mailto:jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (Noel Chiappa) > >> From: Paul Ruizendaal > >> The "Research Unix Reader" > > Thanks for mentioning that; I'd never heard of it. Very interesting. > > > A query: it seems to have been written with access to a set of manuals for the > various early versions of Research Unix. The Unix Tree: > > http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl <http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl> > > has the manual pages for V3 and V4, and V6 and later, but not the other > ones. Do the manuals used for the preparatio of that note still exist; and, if > so, is there any chance of getting them scanned?

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Early Unix manuals (Was: fortran compiler, in assembly, for pdp-11)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal > The "Research Unix Reader" Thanks for mentioning that; I'd never heard of it. Very interesting. A query: it seems to have been written with access to a set of manuals for the various early versions of Research Unix. The Unix Tree: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl has the manual pages for V3 and V4, and V6 and later, but not the other ones. Do the manuals used for the preparatio of that note still exist; and, if so, is there any chance of getting them scanned? (I have a auto-page-feed scanner, and volunteer to do said scanning. Someone else is going to have to do the OCR, and back-conversion to NROFF source, though... :-) Noel

7 years, 9 months

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TUHS March 2017