TUHS January 2024

tuhs@tuhs.org

43 participants
30 discussions

by Mychaela Falconia

Hello fellow lovers of old UNIX, Would anyone happen to have a raster scan (not OCR) of the original printing of UNIX Programmer's Manual, 7th edition? Does such a thing exist? Given that Brian S. Walden produced and published a PDF reprint of this manual (presumably done with some "modern" version of troff) back in 1998, I reason that there probably wasn't much interest in preserving the original print by painstaking scanning (and the files from such a scan would have been ginormous by 1998 standards), hence I am not certain if such a scanned version exists - but I thought I would ask nonetheless. I was however very pleased to discover that some very kind soul named Erica Fischer did scan and upload the complete set of Usenix printed books for 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD - here is the 4.2BSD version: https://archive.org/details/uum-ref-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-ref-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-supplement-4.2bsd https://archive.org/details/smm-4.2bsd and here is 4.3BSD: https://archive.org/details/uum-ref-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-ref-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-sup1-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/upm-sup2-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/smm-4.3bsd https://archive.org/details/uum-index-4.3bsd It is my understanding that all supplementary docs (the papers that were originally in volumes 2a and 2b in the V7 manual) were retroffed by UCB/Usenix for 4.3BSD edition, but the earlier 4.2BSD Usenix print seems to be different - it looks like for 4.2BSD they only did a new troff run for all man pages and for new (Berkeley-added) supplementary docs, but in the case of docs which originally appeared in V7 vol 2, it appears that Usenix did some kind of analogue mass reproduction from a historical V7 master, *without* doing a new troff run on those docs. *If* this hypothesis is correct, then Erica's uploaded scan of 4.2BSD manuals can serve as a practical substitute for the presumably- missing scan of the original printing of V7 manual - but I would like to double-check my hypothesis with others who are presumably more knowledgeable about this ancient history (some of you actually lived through that history, unlike me!), hence the reason for this post. I would appreciate either confirmation or correction of the guesses and conjectures I expressed above. M~

2 months, 2 weeks

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal >> the ambiguous phrase "had the first implementation of FTP", which >> has been flagged as needing clarification > From RFC 354 ... and from RFC 414 Those are NCP FTP, a slightly different protocol, and implementation, from TCP FTP. (The code from the NCP one was sometimes recycled into the TCP one; see e.g.: https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysnet/ftpu.161 which has both in one program.) These RFC's you listed are obviously pre-TCP; the first TCP RFC is RFC-675. (The first RFC that even mentions TCP seems to be RFC-661.) RFC's are all NCP-related until around #700 or so, when the mix starts to change. Maybe the "needing clarification" refers to these two different FTP's? Without an explicit classifier, does that text refer to NCP FTP or TCP FTP? Noel

3 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Bakul Shah > He was part of NSFNet, so could have got first FTP on NSFnet or a > later version of FTP. You all are talking about _two separate FTP's_ (as I pointed out previously). If you all would stop confusing yourselves, you'd be able to sort out the bogons. In this particular case, the NSFnet appeared at a _much_ later stage of the growth of the Internet (yes, it is spelled with a capital 'I'; the morons at the AP were not aware that 'internet' was a pre-existing word with a _different meaning_) than when Dave was working with the Fuzzball, and by that point there were _many_ TCP FTP's (e.g. the ITS one I previously sent the URL to the source for), so the 'first FTP on NSFnet' is a non-concept. The best bet for accurate data is to look at the TCP meeting minutes from the IEN series: https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien-index.html Looking quickly, the first one that Dave appears in might be IEN-160, "Internet Meeting Notes -- 7-8-9 October 1980". (He wasn't in the "Attendees" lists of any of the earlier ones I looked at.) Look in the "Status Reports" sections to see if he says anything about where he's at. The one for this one says: "Dave described the configuration of equipment at COMSAT which consists of a number of small hosts, mainly LSI-11s. ... COMSAT has also used NIFTP to transmit files between their hosts and ISIE. The NIFTP software was provided by UCL. ... COMSAT plans to .. arrange a permanent connection to the ARPANET." I have no idea what a "NIFTP" might be. Also, there is a reason that serious historians prefer contemporary written records, not people's memories. Noel

3 months

Re: Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by Paul Ruizendaal

> I see that the wording on his Wikipedia page has the ambiguous phrase "had > the first implementation of FTP", which has been flagged as needing > clarification, so I intend to provide it. > > In both this interview: > > https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/113899/oh403dlm.pdf > > ... and this video recording of Mills himself giving a lecture at UDel: > > https://youtu.be/08jBmCvxkv4?t=428 > > ... it's quite clear that it's literally true - he authored, compiled, > installed, implemented, and tested the very first (and apparently second) > FTP server. It may be impossible to provide hard evidence. From RFC 354 it seems to me that the protocol took on a recognisable shape around July 1972 and from RFC 414 it seems to me that there were a number of implementations by November 1972, and unfortunately Dave Mills is not mentioned. His recollection may well be correct, but finding proof he was the first in a 4 months time slot 50+ years ago may be too ambitious. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc354.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc414.txt Maybe the internet history list can shed some more light on the matter: https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

3 months

(Off topic) Dave Mills

by George Michaelson

Dave Mills, of fuzzball and ntp fame, one time U Delaware died on the 17th of January. He was an interesting, entertaining, prolific and rather idosyncratic emailer. Witty and informative. G

3 months

Mills' initial implementation of FTP - best citation?

by Royce Williams

What is the best public, unambiguous, non-YouTube reference I can cite for the late David Mills' initial FTP work? I see that the wording on his Wikipedia page has the ambiguous phrase "had the first implementation of FTP", which has been flagged as needing clarification, so I intend to provide it. In both this interview: https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/113899/oh403dlm.pdf ... and this video recording of Mills himself giving a lecture at UDel: https://youtu.be/08jBmCvxkv4?t=428 ... it's quite clear that it's literally true - he authored, compiled, installed, implemented, and tested the very first (and apparently second) FTP server. But Wikipedia's guidelines discourage YouTube-only citations, and the text in the interview seems insufficiently detailed to have citation value. What is the best reference I can cite? Thanks! -- Royce

3 months

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by G. Branden Robinson

Hi Lennart, At 2024-01-18T15:45:55+0000, Lennart Jablonka wrote: > Quoth John Gardner: > > Thanks for reminding me, Branden. :) I've yet to get V7 Unix working with > > the latest release of SimH, so that's kind of stalled my ability to develop > > something in K&R-friendly C. > > I went ahead and write a little C/A/T-to-later-troff-output converter in > v7-friendly and C89-conforming C: > > https://git.sr.ht/~humm/catdit This is an exciting prospect but I can't actually see anything there. I get an error. "401 Unauthorized You don't have the necessary permissions to access this page. Index" > I’m not confident in having got the details of spacing right (Is that > 55-unit offset when switching font sizes correct?) I've never heard of this C/A/T feature/wart before. Huh. > and the character codes emitted are still those of the C/A/T, > resulting in the wrong glyphs being used. The codes should probably be remapped by default, with a command-line option to restore the original ones. I would of course recommend writing out 'C' commands with groff special character names. > I created the attached document like this: > > v7$ troff -t /usr/man/man0/title >title.cat > host$ catdit <title.cat | dpost -F. -Tcat >title.ps > > (Where do the two blank pages at the end come from?) Good question; we may need to rouse a C/A/T expert. > PS: Branden, for rougher results, if you happen to have a Tektronix > 4014 at hand (like the one emulated by XTerm), you can use that to > look at v7 troff’s output. Tell your SIMH to pass control bytes > through and run troff -t | tc. I'd love to, just please make your repo available to the public. :) Regards, Branden

3 months, 1 week

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by Mychaela Falconia

John Gardner wrote: > I'm a professional graphic designer with access to commercial typeface > authoring software. Send me the highest-quality and most comprehensive > scans of a C/A/T-printed document, and I'll get to work. Are you offering to donate your labor in terms of typeface design, or will it be a type of deal where the community will need to collectively pitch in money to cover the cost of you doing it professionally? In either case, the "C/A/T-printed document" of most value to this project would be the same one G. Branden Robinson is referring to: > If you don't have my scan of CSTR #54 (1976), which helpfully dumps all > of the glyphs in the faces used by the Bell Labs CSRC C/A/T-4, let me > know and I'll send it along. I won't vouch for its high quality but it > should be comprehensive with respect to coverage. The paper in question is Nroff/Troff User's Manual by Joseph F. Ossanna, dated 1976-10-11, which was indeed also CSTR #54. The document is 33 pages long in its original form, and page 31 out of the 33 is the most interesting one for the purpose of font recreation: it is the page that exhibits all 4 fonts of 102 characters each. Here are the few published scans I am aware of: 1) Page 245 of: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seven… 2) Page 235 of: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seven… 3) Page 239 of: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/VA-004A_UNIX_Programmers_Manu… 4) Page 499 of: https://archive.org/details/uum-supplement-4.2bsd Question to Branden: the scan you are referring to as "my scan", how does it compare to the 4 I just linked above? If your scan has better quality than all 4 versions I linked above, can you please make it public? M~

3 months, 1 week

Re: PCS kernel sources

by Paul Ruizendaal

> All, I got this e-mail from Holger a while back. Somehow it went into > a folder and has lurked unseen for way too long. > > Does anybody know any more about PCS Unix and, if so, where should > I place the code that Holger has donated into the Unix Archive? I don’t know much about PCS Unix, but I did come across many references to Newcastle Connection (and Unix United) when researching early networking and the various approaches to giving early Unix a networking API. I think there is no other set of surviving sources for this. Maybe Holger disagrees, but I would say that PCS Unix is best placed in the “Early networking” section. By the way, for those interested, here is a start to read up on Unix United: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Connection To some extent, it is similar to the “RIDE” software developed at Bell Labs Naperville by Priscilla Lu and to S/F Unix developed by GWR Luderer at Murray Hill. As far as I know the sources for both of those have been lost to time, afaik.

3 months, 1 week

Re: Original print of V7 manual? / My own version of troff

by Mychaela Falconia

Hi again John, > I only meant "professional" insofar as aptitude with graphics is concerned. > I won't accept money; I'm offering my labour out of love for typography, > computer history and its preservation, and of course, the technology that > got Unix the funding it needed to revolutionise computing. In any case, > there's no actual "design" work involved: it's literally just tracing > existing shapes to recreate an existing design. I do stuff like this > <https://github.com/file-icons/icons#why-request-an-icon-cant-i-submit-a-pr> > for *fun*, for crying out loud. Sounds great! If you are indeed serious about trying to recreate the ancient C/A/T character set in PostScript fonts (or some other font format that can be converted into a form that can be downloaded into a genuine PostScript printer), I'll try to find some time to produce the following: 1) A set of C/A/T binary files corresponding to that CSTR #54 manual, as well as BWK's troff tutorial which usually follows right after in book compilations. This step is simply a matter of running the original troff executable (with -t option) on the original source files for these docs - but since I actually run an OS that still includes that original version of troff and you said you don't, it would probably be easier for me to produce and publish these files. 2) A converter tool from C/A/T binary codes to PostScript, using whatever fonts you give it. I'll test it initially using the set of fonts which I developed for my 4.3BSD-Quasijarus pstroff - all characters will be there, all positioning will come from original troff, but it won't look pretty because most PS native font characters don't match those of C/A/T. Then as you progress with your font drawing project, you should be able to substitute your fonts instead of mine, and see how the output improves. > Nice! The more material I have, the merrier. As for the scan that Branden > and I were referring to, I've uploaded a copy to Dropbox Using pdfimages utility with -list option, I compared the image format and resolution in various scans I described in my previous mail, plus this new one you just shared, and concluded that the best quality is contained in these two: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_Seven… http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/7th_Edition/VA-004A_UNIX_Programmers_Manu… Here are extracted PNG images of just the relevant page from both PDFs: https://www.freecalypso.org/members/falcon/troff/cstr54-fontpage-sri.png https://www.freecalypso.org/members/falcon/troff/cstr54-fontpage-ucb.png Each PNG is a lossless extract from the corresponding PDF, made with pdfimages utility. Each image is described as being 600x600 DPI in PDF metadata, and the print is said to be in 12 point - numbers for converting from pixels to .001m units in font reconstruction... M~

3 months, 1 week

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TUHS January 2024