TUHS April 2019

tuhs@tuhs.org

63 participants
43 discussions

by Jon Steinhart

Don't know if this is of interest to anybody out there, but I was just looking for something else in the basement and came across two notebooks that look like a UNIX System Internals course. Appears to cover version 6, version 7, PWB, 32V, System III, and System V. Has the Western Electric seal of disapproval on the front. Jon

5 years, 8 months

UNIX System Internals

by Norman Wilson

I'd love to see this stuff. Were I not so far away I'd offer to scan them for you, but it shouldn't be hard to find someone who can in the Bay Area. (Attention USENIX Association, I approve use of my membership dues to support this!) Norman Wilson Toronto ON

5 years, 8 months

looking for HOSTS.TXT parsers and how is /dev/net/HOSTNAME enabled?

by reed＠reedmedia.net

This email is two parts. I am researching 1970's symbolic name to network address mapping routines. 1) I am looking for parsers for ancient (pre mid 1982) HOSTS.TXT. Since this is Unix list, for Unix is fine :) RFC 597 (12 December 1973) says a hostname list will be maintained at the NIC with the location to be announced. (Interestingly NIC as in FEINLER@NIC is probably a nickname as it is not listed in the host status list. I am guessing it is a nickname for SRI-ARC or OFFICE-1.) RFC 606 (December 1973) says there are different hosts lists, but "now" there is "the official list of host names". It proposed that it should be maintained online in machine-readable form. It proposes a format and suggested attributes. RFC 607 (January 10, 1974) the NIC agrees that NIC maintain a text file of hostnames, addresses, and attributes. (It has also been suggested separately.) The source is maintained in NLS format with multiple attributes. (What is this NLS format?) A program could be written to generate a weekly ASCII file. They will write the program and the generated file will be at OFFICE-1 (IMP #43?) with pathname of <NETINFO>HOSTS.TXT (It's not Unix. It's TENEX I think. The ">" is the directory delimiter, but what is "<"?) I have found a few copies of a hostname table, like https://emaillab.jp/pub/hosts/1974/host_names_1974.pdf and https://www.bortzmeyer.org/files/hosts.txt-1982-1.pdf But these don't appear to be the machine parseable files as defined in the RFC 608 format. These are just printed formats. (I have also found many of the host status reports.) Well I cannot find a copy of the HOSTS.TXT file anywhere. I am not looking for the RFC 810 (1 March 1982) or later format (which is easily found). http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/SRI_NIC_PERM_SRC_3_19910112/01/utility/ps-p… may have copies of it (old format is OHOSTS.TXT). But I cannot figure out if or where there are individual file downloads there. Any ideas?) That leads me to my question ... does anyone know where parser code for the HOSTS.TXT file is at? 2) I skimmed through some C code (for Unix) for sendmsg, mmdf, srvrftp, mailer.c, telnet.c that use /dev/net/ followed by up to 14-character hostname. I am trying to find the kernel code or routines that enable device driver named with a hostname. Any ideas? (In particular I'd like to know how those names map to a remote host's address.) I am researching 1970's symbolic name to network address mapping routines, but the only ones I have found are primitive: Purdue's "modest UNIX network" using mx and Berkeley's Berknet (single letter hostnames). But both use simple compiled-in name-to-address tables. (The Purdue implementation looks interesting as it has some design to connect between IMPs too, but I don't see any code for finding IMP numbers via names. By the way, their "csh" tool was their "connected shell" to run a shell on a remote host. The manual had the list of hostnames in it. See the Purdue usenix tape.) Thanks, Jeremy C. Reed echo 'EhZ[h ^jjf0%%h[[Zc[Z_W$d[j%Xeeai%ZW[ced#]dk#f[d]k_d%' | \ tr '#-~' '\-.-{'

5 years, 8 months

Paper discussing Unix boot process?

by Pat Barron

Long ago, I could swear I'd read a paper (or a TM, or something) that described the process of a Unix system booting. It presented a timeline describing the sequence of how the boot blocks are loaded, the kernel is loaded, MMU turned on, etc. However, other than that, I can't recall a thing about it - can't remember the title, the author, or where I found it. I don't remember if it talked about this process on a Bell Labs Unix system, or a BSD system (though it had to be one of those - either 7th Edition or BSD). The timeframe was probably mid to late 1980's, though I could be wrong about that. Does this ring a bell with anyone? I really wish I could find it again... --Pat.

5 years, 8 months

Talk about some interesting things about Dennis

by Norman Wilson

What is Dennis's character? Is he very humorous? Thank you. He was more humorous when he was still alive, but I think he would have appreciated this joke. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

5 years, 8 months

Talk about some interesting things about Dennis

by Caipenghui

Hello, everyone! Can you share some interesting things around Dennis? What is Dennis's character? Is he very humorous? Thank you. Caipenghui

5 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

by Paul Ruizendaal

Maybe xv6 has an explanation of the boot process that is of use to the original poster: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2018/xv6.html Paul

5 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Charles Anthony > The Multics System Initialization Program Logic Manual. 139 pages of > somewhat detailed information. I was going to mention the Multics init PLM! :-) Needless to say, it's probably not a good candidate for the original goal - a document describing how an OS boots - it's simply too complicated for ordinary mortals! (Reading it makes _my_ head hurt!) There are a couple of reasons it's so complex. Multics is not a monolitic OS, the way most versions of Unix are (although I gather this is no longer quite true of Linux); the OS isn't this large blob of bits you load into memory and start. Its structure makes heavy use of the segmentation model supported by the hardware. Moreover, although the first segments loaded aren't paged, many of the later ones are. (This makes sense in the context of the times; with limited core main memory, you wouldn't want to devote massive chunks of main memory to have the entire OS always resident.) However, this all makes for a more complex booting process; the standard Multics boot tape (a Multics System Tape) contains many modules, which get linked in individually at boot time. (In V6 terms - the version I'm most familiar with - it's as if a Unix boot tape contained 'lib1' and 'lib2', and the bootstrap included a linker to build the OS binary in memory.) And in fact the modules come in in tranches, and some of the earlier one are available for use in loading later tranches (e.g. paging). This does have some advantages, though; e.g. the MST is the same for all Multics machines (including the initial boot of a new machine); the system is customized to the particular configuration during the bootstrap process. This is actually not too crazy, there are reasons this makes sense. For one, the whole 'information utility' concept (where Multics admittedly went down the wrong path, in terms of the future of computers); a single giant machine (multi-processor, multi-memory bank, multi-I/O controller). The thing is that any of these could be switched out if it developed a fault, but then you have to be able to boot that new configuration. (In particular, Multics wasn't a master-slave multi-processor system, they're all the same; but only one CPU runs for most of booting, the others are started and added once the system is running. But the 'bootstrap CPU' might change if the original bootstrap CPU develops a fault...) Noel

5 years, 8 months

Also, VCF SE

by Warren Toomey

And Earl Baugh just let me know: VCF SE at the end of April will have Douglas McIlroy coming to speak. We also will have a number of Unix exhibits as well. Unix is the topic of the front of the show shirt. Earl http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southea…

5 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> > That's all I knew at the time :-) :-) I used nroff/troff for a bit, but I didn't like it; I don't recall why, but I suspect I wasn't using people's macro packages, which probably made it more difficult to use. My favourite was SCRIBE, but it alas seems to have died. > From: Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> >> the original Western Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through >> a typesetter ... > Indeed. Even the mid-90's Peer-to-Peer press reprinting appears to be, > roughly, a facsimile of line printer output. ... > Interestingly, the title page appears to be approximately original and > is typeset. I finally located my copy of the reprint (I'd been using it to help Fritz Mueller find a problem in his RK11C, and it wasn't in its normal place), and comparing it with my 'samizdat' set (which came from a set owned by Lincoln-Sudbury High School - they actually had an -11 running V6, I helped their computer person, I forget his name now, with it), I can confirm that: - The reprint does mostly reproduce the exact page images from the original (which was indeed, mostly line-printer out), except that the original does not have the typeset chapter/section header pages. It's possible that the pages in the reprint are a new printing, but if so, they have exactly matched not only the layout (not too hard) of the original, but also the font. - In a couple of places (e.g. Contents, pg. 1; Preface, pg. 1; Chapter One, pg. 1) "UNIX" has been replaced by "UNIX*" (different font), and at the bottom of the page has been added "* UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories", again in a different font. - The typeset 'Source Code' title page is in the original; the copy in the reprint is an exact image, except that the upper-case "This information ... Written permission of Bell Laboratories" section is not in the original, which says instead at that place: "This document may contain information covered by one or more licenses, copyrights and non-disclosure agreements. Circulation of this document is restricted to holders of a license for the UNIX Software System from Western Electric. All other circulation or reproduction is prohibited." - The typeset 'Commentary' title page is different in my samizdat First Edition original; it's a copy of the other title page, except that the second para is replaced by the first sentence of the 'Commentary' title page of the reprint, and of course the title is different from the other volume. Noel

5 years, 8 months

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TUHS April 2019