TUHS March 2017

tuhs@tuhs.org

87 participants
136 discussions

by Cory Smelosky

Due to having an actual NSA VAX...I think I should get NSAVAX ;) Sent from my iPhone > On Mar 30, 2017, at 23:13, Dave Horsfall via Uucp <uucp(a)minnie.tuhs.org> wrote: > >> On Thu, 30 Mar 2017, Kurt H Maier via Uucp wrote: >> >> kremvax and moskvax are online. What's the policy on uucp.map entries >> for hosts that never really existed in the first place? > > Hmmm... I wouldn't mind having "kgbvax" in that case (I've relinquished > "utzoo" to Henry Spencer himself). Or possibly "ciavax" or "fbivax"... > > -- > Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

7 years, 1 month

Pi, samuel, cin and 8th, 9th, 10th Edition Unix

by Noel Hunt

I was just the other day apprised of the fact that Warren Toomey had finally got permission to make public sources from Eight, Ninth and Tenth Edition Unix. It was Paul McJones from the Software Preservation Group who made me aware of this because some months ago I was in touch with him in regard to the status of source for 'pads/pi' which is on the SPG website. That was donated by Bjorn Stroustrup in 2004 I believe, as an example of a large C++ project, along with sources for 'cfront'. I myself have been working on pads/pi in a desultory fashion since 1990 when I left the Basser Department of Computer Science at the University of Sydney; we had an Eighth Edition licence, hence source code, and all of the blit/jerq utilities. I ported 'pads' to the Plan9 graphics model many years ago, and finally started to port 'pi' to Solaris 11 a couple of years ago. This works in a rudimentary fashion, but needs a Dwarf interface. Given that Bjorn Stroustrup released this code long ago (a much later version than what I had), I daresay there are no problems with its publication. I have, however, also worked on 'samuel' and ported its functionality to the Plan9 'sam'. 'samuel' does not appear in any of the archives that Wareen Toomey has made available, so I am wondering what its status may be. It was written by John Puttress at the labs in the late '80s, when he was apparently working under Ted Kowalski. Ted Kowalski is also a 'person of interest' because he wrote 'cin', the C interpreter, an interface to which exists in 'samuel'. Ted Kowalski unfortunately passed away some years ago and no-one seems to know where the source is. It again, isn't in any of the archives that Wareen Toomey has been able to make available. If anyone has any information about 'samuel' or 'cin', I would be delighted to hear from him or her. Bruce Ellis, who wrote 'cyntax', told me that he worked on 'cin' a lot (in the '90s I think, when he worked at Bell Labs) but it was succeeded by something named 'vice', about which I can find no information. Again, I would be grateful for any information about this. Regards, Noel Hunt

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Ethernet in /dev (was Re: Were all of you.. Hippies?)

by Norman Wilson

Joerg Schilling: This is done on a UNIX implementation that uses STREAMS. SVr4 is such a UNIX. ====== I know that SVr4 has STREAMS (somewhat more elaborate than the original stream I/O system, but the same principles), and knew (though I'd forgotten) that Ethernet devices are stream-capable. I did an implementation of the late lamented Coraid's AoE protocol that took advantage of that. Somewhat like the Research IP implementation, in fact: there was an AoE line discipline to be pushed onto an Ethernet device, coupled to devices in /dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk. But is IP done that way in SVr4 (or at least in Solaris, its most-visible descendant)? I had the impression that the IP stack was more like the BSD one, with everything coupled together within the kernel and a fundamentally socket interface. I've never actually looked at the code, though. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Release of 8th, 9th and 10th Editions Unix

by Norman Wilson

Arnold: > Well, I'll take credit for pushing Norman yet again. :-) ARGGH. That should have been Well, I'll take credit for pushing Warren ... ^^^^^^ ===== I confess I didn't notice the fumble the first time. But in fact Warren has had the dubious pleasure of pushing me for something more than once. So just think of it as another level of indirection. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Ethernet in /dev (was Re: Were all of you.. Hippies?)

by Norman Wilson

Ron Natalie: It's a violation of the network layering concept to require or even allow the user to bind the application data streams to a physical device. ===== Oh, come on. If you mean an applications programmer shouldn't have to wallow in low-level network details, I agree. That's one of the reasons I think the socket interface now standard in nearly every UNIX is an abomination. It reminds me of the binary data structures you had to assemble just to open a file in TOPS-10, only ten times worse. But if you mean it's a violation of layering for the kernel to expose the pieces and let user-mode code to the work, I strongly disagree. By that argument, the very idea of inetd is an abomination. Possibly even the ifconfig command. And don't even get the hypothetical you started on microkernels. User-mode code for device drivers or file systems? Outrageous violation of layering! Send in the New Jersey Inquisition!! Or perhaps you misunderstand how it all works. Device files for Ethernet devices, /dev/ip*, and so on are like those for disk devices: you could allow anyone to read and write them, but in practice you probably wouldn't: you'd restrict access to the super-user and perhaps a special group to admit some sort of privilege reduction (like the group allowed to read disks on some systems, or to read /dev/kmem). That parts of the stack are assembled in user mode is a feature, not a bug. The one glaring flaw, as I said, is that no permissions are checked when pushing a stream line discipline onto a file. I think that happened because when Dennis first wrote the code, he was thinking about modules to implement canonical-tty semantics, or to invoke the very-different Datakit networking model. It's a fundamental flaw, though. I have had thoughts about fixing it, but never enough time nor enough motivation. (My technical mind is pretty much filled up by what I am paid to do these days; I haven't done much hobby computing in years.) Norman Wilson Toronto ON

7 years, 1 month

Ethernet in /dev (was Re: Were all of you.. Hippies?)

by Norman Wilson

Josh Good: Which brings up a question I have: why didn't UNIX implement ethernet network interfaces as file names in the filesystem? Was that "novelty" a BDS development straying away from AT&T UNIX? ====== Remember that UNIX has long been a family of systems; it's risky to make blanket statements! The following is from memory; I haven't looked at this stuff for a while and am a few kilometers from my manuals as I type this. I can dig out the complete story later if anyone wants it; for now, this is just the flavour and the existence proof. Research UNIX, once it supported Ethernet at all, did so using devices in /dev; e.g. /dev/qe0[0-7] were the conventional names for the first DEQNA/DELQA device on a MicroVAX. There were eight subdevices per physical device, each a channel that might receive datagrams of a particular 16-bit type, programmed by an ioctl. To set up what we now call an IP interface, one did the following: a. Open an unused channel for the proper Ethernet physical device. (I think the devices were exclusive- open to make this easier: open /dev/qe00, then qe01, and so on until one succeeds.) b. Issue the ioctl to set the desired datagram type, usually 0x800. c. Push the IP stream line discipline onto the open file. d. Issue an ioctl to inform that IP instance of its address and netmask. Now datagrams of the specified type arriving on that device are fed to the IP subsystem, and the IP subsystem uses the IP address and mask and possibly other information to decide which datagrams to route to that IP instance, which sends them out that physical device. I forget how ARP and Ethernet encapsulation fit in. I know that they were someone more naive early on, and that in the 10/e systems I can now admit I have running at home I made things a bit smarter and less brittle. But that's the basic architecture. So how does one actually make, say, a TCP connection? Another layer of the same sort: There are devices /dev/ipX, served by an IP device driver that is part of the IP subsystem. Originally minor device X was hard-connected to IP protocol X; I later changed that to be ioctl-configured as well. To make TCP usable: a. Open /dev/ip6 (old school), or find an unused /dev/ipX (again they are exclusive-open) and configure it to accept protocol 6. b. Push the TCP stream line discipline onto the open file. c. There are probably things one could then configure, but I don't remember them offhand. To make a TCP call, open an unused /dev/tcpNN device; write something to it (or maybe it was an ioctl) with the desired destination address; wait for an error or success. On success, writes to the file descriptor send to the network, encapsulated as a TCP stream; reads receive. To receive a TCP call, open an unused /dev/tcpNN device, and write something (or ioctl) to say `I want to listen on this local port.' Then read the file. When a call arrives, you will read a message saying who's calling, and what /dev/tcpXX device you should open to accept the call. Notice the general scheme: for both TCP and IP (and there was a primitive UDP at one point, but it has fallen out of use on my systems), the protocol implementation comprises: 1. A line discipline: push it onto devices that will transport your data. 2. A device driver: use those devices to send and receive calls. The two are inextricably coupled inside the operating system, of course. There are all sorts of unfortunate details surrounding communications; e.g. the TCP code knows it is talking to IP, and constructs datagrams with partly-filled-in IP headers. (It is not clear one can do better than that in practice, because the protocols themselves really are linked, but I still think it's unfortunate.) On the other hand, that the junctions between plumbing are accessible makes some things very simple. I wrote a PPP implementation in user mode, with no kernel changes: to plug itself into IP, it just pushed the IP line discipline onto one end of a pipe, and read and wrote datagrams on the other. I later extended it to PPPoE by having it open an Ethernet device set to the proper datagram types (there is one for data and another for connection setup). On the other other hand, there are no permissions on stream line disciplines, so an untrustworthy person (if I allowed such on my systems) could push the IP line discipline onto his own pipe and send whatever datagrams he liked. This is decidedly a flaw. Those familiar with the original stream-system implementation have already spotted a lesser flaw: the file descriptor with IP pushed on (or TCP, or whatever) must remain open; when it is closed, everything shuts down. In practice it is usually useful to have a daemon listening to that file anyway; that's a good way for the system to report errors or confusion. In practice, TCP incalls and outcalls all went through a special daemon anyway, so that programs didn't have to be full of TCP-specific crap; that's what Dave Presotto's `connection server' is all about. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

by Jason Stevens

Thanks for the hints, and whatnot... I got v8 running! > ---------- > From: Tim Newsham > Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 7:50 AM > To: David du Colombier > Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society > Subject: Re: [TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH > > Would be great if someone scripted it up to make it dog-simple. > Here's how I did it for v6: http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/myv6/README > (I should do this, but I'm not sure I'll have time in the near future). > > On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 8:58 AM, David du Colombier < 0intro(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Here are my notes to run 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH. > > http://9legacy.org/9legacy/doc/simh/v8 > > These notes are quite raw and unpolished, but should be > sufficient to get Unix running on SIMH. > > Fell free to use, improve and share. > > -- > David du Colombier > > > > > > -- > > Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | @newshtwit | > thenewsh.blogspot.com >

7 years, 1 month

Searching for 9th Edition Research Unix mail / Mail / mailx

by Steffen Nurpmeso

I am maintaining a BSD Mail derivative and one goal of the project is to have the complete history of Unix mail and BSD Mail in the repository. There yet exists a [timeline] branch, which has been fed with data from TUHS (thank you!) and CSRG; but it is coarse and further linear history and so the new V8 and V10 cannot be inserted, i will need to add new [unix-mail] and [bsd-Mail] (and maybe [bsd-csrg] with all commits preserved, like Spinellis did so in the Unix-history repository). Thanks to TUHS the former can be almost completed, except that there is no trace of 9th Edition mail. It would be fantastic if finally this project could provide the complete history of Unix mail. I would be thankful for informations where to get a copy of 9th Edition mail. Thank you. P.S.: apologizing for capturing the other thread with such a coarse message. --steffen

7 years, 1 month

Release of 8th, 9th and 10th Editions Unix

by Warren Toomey

All, today after some heroic efforts by numerous people over many years, Nokia-Alcatel has issued this statement at https://media-bell-labs-com.s3.amazonaws.com/pages/20170327_1602/statement%… Statement Regarding Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10 Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc. (“ALU-USA”), on behalf of itself and Nokia Bell Laboratories agrees, to the extent of its ability to do so, that it will not assert its copyright rights with respect to any non-commercial copying, distribution, performance, display or creation of derivative works of Research Unix®1 Editions 8, 9, and 10. The foregoing does not (i) transfer ownership of, or relinquish any, intellectual property rights (including patent rights) of Nokia Corporation, ALU-USA or any of their affiliates, (ii) grant a license to any patent, patent application, or trademark of Nokia Corporation, ALU-USA. or any of their affiliates, (iii) grant any third-party rights or licenses, or (iv) grant any rights for commercial purposes. Neither ALU-USA. nor Nokia Bell Laboratories will furnish or provided support for Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10, and make no warranties or representations hereunder, including but not limited to any warranty or representation that Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10 does not infringe any third party intellectual property rights or that Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10 is fit for any particular purpose. There are some issues around the copyright of third party material in 8th, 9th and 10th Editions Unix, but I'm going to bite the bullet and make them available in the Unix Archive. I'll post details later today. Cheers, Warren

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] 8th Edition Research Unix on SIMH

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Tim Newsham > Would be great if someone scripted it up to make it dog-simple. But if people just have to press a button (basically), they won't learn anything. I guess I'm not understanding the point of the exercise? To say they have V6 running? So what? All they did was press a button. If it's to experience a retro-computing environment, well, a person who's never used one of these older systems is going to be kind of lost - what are they going to do, type 'ls -ls' and look at the output? Not very illuminating. (On V6, without learning 'ed', they can't even type in a small C program, and compile and run it.) Sorry, I don't mean to be cranky, but I'm not understanding the point. Noel

7 years, 1 month

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TUHS March 2017