TUHS

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6532 discussions

Any Surviving LIL Compilers/Code Artifacts?

by segaloco

So I'm doing a little bit of the footwork in prep for analyzing manual differences between Research, Program Generic, and PWB/UNIX, and found something interesting. The LIL Programming Language[1] was briefly available as a user-supported section 6 command on Fifth Edition (1974) UNIX, appearing as a page but not even making it into the TOC. It was gone as quickly as it appeared in the Research stream, not surviving into V6. However, with Al Kossow's provided Program Generic Issue 2 (1976) manual[2] as well as notes in the MERT Issue 0 (1977) manual [3], it appears that LIL was quite supported in the USG Program Generic line, making it into section 1 of Issue 2 and staying there through to Issue 3. lc(1) happens to be one of the pages excised in the transformation from PG Issue 3 to MERT Issue 0. This had me curious, so I went looking around the extant V5 sources and couldn't find anything resembling the LIL compiler. Does anyone know if this has survived in any other fashion? Additionally, does anyone have any recollection of whether LIL was in significant use in USG-supported UNIX sites, or if it somehow made it into section 1 and spread around due to the state of use in Research at the time USG sampled userland out. Finally, one little tidbit from P.J. Plauger's paper[1] stuck out to me: "...the resulting language was used to help write a small PDP-11/10 operating system at Bell Labs." Does anyone have any information about this operating system, whether it was a LIL experiment or something purpose-driven and used in its own right after creation? [1] - http://www.ultimate.com/phil/lil/ [2] - http://bitsavers.org/pdf/att/unix/6th_Edition/UNIX_Programmers_Manual_19760… [3] - https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Manuals/MERT_Release_0/Pgs%2001-…'s%20Manual%20for%20MERT.pdf

1 year

Re: Anyone ever heard of teaching a case study of Initial Unix?

by Douglas McIlroy

> Peter J Denning in 2008 wrote about reforming CACM in 1982/83. [ extract at end ] > <https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/dja-vu-all-over-again/> That "accomplishment" drove me away from the ACM. I hope the following explanation does not set off yet another long tangential discussion. The CACM had been the prime benefit of ACM membership. It carried generally accessible technical content across the whole spectrum of computing. The "Journal for all Members" (JAM) reform resulted in such content being thinly spread over several journals. To get the perspective that CACM had offered, one would have had to subscribe to and winnow a mountain of specialst literature--assuming the editors of these journals would accept some ACM-style articles. I had been an active member of ACM, having serving as associate editor of three journals, member of the publications planning committee, national lecturer, and Turing-Award chairman. When the JAM reform cut off my window into the field at large, I quit the whole organization. With the advent of WWW, the ACM Digital Library overcame the need to subscribe to multiple journals for wide coverage. Fortunately I had institutional acess to that. I rejoined ACM only after its decision to allow free access to all 20th century content in the DL. This public-spirited action more than atoned for the damage of the JAM reform and warranted my support. I have been happy to find that the current CACM carries one important technical article in each issue and a couple of interesting columnists among the generally insipid JAM content. And I am pleased by the news that ACM will soon also give open access to most 21st-century content. Doug

1 year

Re: Anyone ever heard of teaching a case study of Initial Unix?

by Steve Jenkin

Found these two. Anyone seen others? I bought this book soon after it was published. It’s a detailed study of some major IT projects, doesn’t draw “lessons” & rules like I’d expect of an MBA Case Study. Why information systems fail: a case study approach February 1993 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/174553> > On 5 Jul 2024, at 09:31, Lawrence Stewart <stewart(a)serissa.com> wrote: > > A quick search also shows a number of software engineering case study books. ================ Case Study Research in Software Engineering: Guidelines and Examples April 2012 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/2361717> Based on their own experiences of in-depth case studies of software projects in international corporations, in this bookthe authors present detailed practical guidelines on the preparation, conduct, design and reporting of case studies of software engineering. This is the first software engineering specific book on thecase study research method. ================ Case studies for software engineers May 2006 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1134285.1134497> The topic of this full-day tutorial was the correct use and interpretation of case studies as an empirical research method. Using an equal blend of lecture and discussion, it gave attendees a foundation for conducting, reviewing, and reading case studies. There were lessons for software engineers as researchers who conduct and report case studies, reviewers who evaluate papers, and practitioners who are attempting to apply results from papers. The main resource for the course was the book Case Study Research: Design and Methods by Robert K. Yin. This text was supplemented with positive and negative examples from the literature. ================ -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

1 year

Re: Anyone ever heard of teaching a case study of Initial Unix?

by Steve Jenkin

Links for those who’ve not read these articles. Open access, downloadable PDF’s. ================ Peter J Denning in 2008 wrote about reforming CACM in 1982/83. [ extract at end ] <https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/dja-vu-all-over-again/> The space shuttle primary computer system Sept 1984 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358234.358246> The TWA reservation system July 1984 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/358105.358192> ================ After Editor in Chief of the ACM, in 1993 Denning established "The Center for the New Engineer" (CNE) <http://www.denninginstitute.com/cne/cne-aug93.pdf> Great Principles of Computing, paper <https://denninginstitute.com/pjd/PUBS/ENC/gp08.pdf> Website <https://denninginstitute.com/pjd/GP/GP-site/welcome.html> ================ Denning, 2008 Another major success was the case studies conducted by Alfred Spector and David Gifford of MIT, who visited project managers and engineers at major companies and interviewed them about their projects, producing no-holds-barred pieces. This section was wildly popular among the readers. Unfortunately, the labor-intensive demands of the post got the best of them after three years, and we were not able to replace them. Also by that time, companies were getting more circumspect about discussing failures and lessons learned in public forums. ================ > On 5 Jul 2024, at 09:31, Lawrence Stewart <stewart(a)serissa.com> wrote: > > Alright, apologies for being late. > > Back in 1984, David Gifford and Al Spector started a series of case studies for CACM. > I think only two were published, on the TWA reservation system and on the Space Shuttle primary computer. -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

1 year

Lions book reprint by Bell Labs

by Tom Lyon

The fabulous Dr. Honeyman made a gift to me of his Lions' books which were printed by Bell Labs. Does anyone know WHEN that happened or WHO made it happen? I figure it must have been at least 1 year and maybe 2 after Lions' originals. See Images: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BIs3Qsihp6nI2iX1Ax3fNU-OFv5dfy0O/view?usp=… https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LoQUl8ND7D18z1W5I3NF-QwIvDkfXk0t/view?usp=… https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xg4TAJNAp5h8FljulJh9Zh0nzFy-YWda/view?usp=… https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u--blfYu5Iuzpc-qiwCGNq0p6u1DgucR/view?usp=… ps. *I* have no problem spelling Lions' name. A problem *with* the spelling, perhaps.

1 year

seismo/uunet uucp

by Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)

Does the source to the Rick Adams version of UUCP still exist anywhere? --lyndon

1 year

Anyone ever heard of teaching a case study of Initial Unix?

by norman＠oclsc.org

Steve Jenkin: I've never heard of a Computer Science or Software Engineering program that included a `case study' component, especially for Software Development & Projects. [...] Creating Unix V6, because it profoundly changed computing & development, would seem an obvious Case Study for many aspects of Software, Coding and Projects. ==== How about the course for which John Lions wrote his famous exegesis of the 6/e kernel? Norman Wilson Toronto ON

1 year

"X Window System At 40"

by Alexis

David Rosenthal reflects on his involvement with the development of the X Window System: > Although most of my time was spent developing NeWS, I rapidly > ported X version 10 to the Sun/1, likely the second port to > non-DEC hardware. It worked, but I had to kludge several areas > that depended on DEC-specific hardware. The worst was the > completely DEC-specific keyboard support. > > Because it was clear that a major redesign of X was needed to > make it portable and in particular to make it work well on Sun > hardware, Gosling and I worked with the teams at DEC SRC and WRL > on the design of X version 11. Gosling provided significant > input on the imaging model, and I designed the keyboard > support. As the implementation evolved I maintained the Sun port > and did a lot of testing and bug fixing. All of which led to my > trip to Boston to pull all-nighters at MIT finalizing the > release. > > My involvement continued after the first release. I was the > editor and main author of the X Inter-Client Communications > Conventions Manual (ICCCM) that forms Part III of Robert > Scheifler and Jim Gettys' X Window System. -- https://blog.dshr.org/2024/07/x-window-system-at-40.html Alexis.

1 year

Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

by Clem Cole

https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-museum-logs-off-for… These folks hosted the UNIX 50th Celebration and had a physical PDP-7 that was used to bring up UNIX V0 (after first getting it running on SIMH). That later was not easy because the original PDP-7s (like the one Ken had access to) did not have disk storage. BTL had paid DEC's Custom Special Systems (CSS) to splice a Burrough's disk that DEC was selling using for the 15 and later the PDP-9. It started with splicing reverse engineering that code to build a simulation of that disk into the simh, so we could ensure that UNIX ran—finally, modeling that HW with a custom microprocessor-based board with an SD card with a functional replica of a PDP-7 I/O interface on one side obeying the device registers and operations that UNIX expected to see. The LCM-L folks were incredibly gracious and generous. I am so sad to see their collection go away. In particular, I hope the PDP-7s and the CDC-6500 find new homes. Clem

1 year

most direct Unix descendant

by Andrew Lynch

Hi Out of curiosity, what would be considered the most direct descendent of Unix available today? Yes, there are many descendants, but they've all gone down their own evolutionary paths. Is it FreeBSD or NetBSD? Something else? I don't think it would be Minix or Linux because I remember when they came along, and it was well after various Unix versions were around. Does such a thing even exist anymore? I remember using AT&T Unix System V and various BSD variants back in college in the 1980's. System V was the "new thing" back then but was eventually sold and seems to have faded. Maybe it is only available commercially, but it does not seem as prominent as it once was. Any thoughts? Thanks, Andrew Lynch

1 year

Re: On the term "justification"

by Douglas McIlroy

Oops, my last post ascribed Runoff to the 15th century, "sixty decades" ago. Doug

1 year

Re: Documenting a set of functions with -man

by Douglas McIlroy

> The lack of a monospaced font is, I suspect, due either to > physical limitations of the C/A/T phototypesetter[1] or fiscal > limitations--no budget in that department to buy photographic > plates for Courier. Since the C/A/T held only four fonts, there was no room for Courier. But when we moved beyond that typesetter, inertia kept the old ways . Finally, in v9, I introduced the fixed-width "literal font", L, in -man and said goodbye to boldface in synopses. By then, though, Research Unix was merely a local branch of the Unix evolutionary tree, so the literal-font gene never spread. Doug

1 year

The thread about standards is now closed

by Warren Toomey

All, I've decided to bring the ANSI C/POSIX thread to a close. While initially the thread was informative, it's recently become host to comments which are inappropriate and certainly well out of scope for a mailing list about UNIX and its history. If someone wants to resurrect a thread about standards, feel free to use the COFF list. But please, keep the conversation on-topic. Thanks, Warren

1 year

another OSX 100% less Unix

by ron minnich

I have a directory, t: ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ ls -li total 0 23801442 -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a 23801443 -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b 23801443 -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c note that b and c are the same inode. let's make a cpio. ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -o >../t.cpio a b c ^D 1 block what's in it? ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -ivt < ../t.cpio -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c link to b "c link to b"? wtf? Who thought that was a good idea? because ... ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ touch 'c link to b' ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:22 c link to b and ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -o >../t.cpio a b c c link to b ^D ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ cpio -ivt < ../t.cpio -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c link to b -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:22 c link to b so ... it looks like a file is there twice, because somebody thought it was a good idea to confuse a file name and file metadata. And, anyway, it's just as accurate to have it say -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 a -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 b link to c -rw-r--r-- 2 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:21 c link to b -rw-r--r-- 1 rminnich wheel 0 Jun 26 20:22 c link to b Right? :-) From the same people who brought you this: ronsexcllentmbp:t rminnich$ bc >>> Somebody needs to get the osx folks a unix manual set :-)

1 year

Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Aron <aki(a)insinga.com> > Now if only his family would take those wishes of his into account and > tell the lawyers to finish the job. I suspect that was his real mistake; he trusted that his family would do what he wanted (perhaps so that instead of putting the final bow on this, he could pay attention to something else that was more important to him) after he was gone - and they decided not to. My suspicion is that there is something else that is more important to his sister (probably political), and she decided that the pittance she'd get from flushing the LCM would be better put towards her project(s). I've just been re-reading Thucydides' extraordinarily outstanding meditation on the revolution on Corcyra (which is really a meditation on the death of the Greek polei - and is a pre-epitaph on the death of many democracies since), and if my pupposition is correct, it applies to this too I wonder what'll happen to all the less-valuable stuff that was given to the LCM? A PDP-10 will fetch 10K's of $, but a lot of the rest is worth pennies. I hope they don't scrap it for pennies, or throw it in the trash. I'm sure that someone who would ignore her brother's wishes about important pieces of history that meant a lot to him would have no qualms about doing either. Noel

1 year

ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection

by segaloco

Good morning, I was wondering if anyone has the scoop on the rationale behind the selection of standards bodies for the publication of UNIX and UNIX-adjacent standards. C was published via the ANSI route as X3.159, whereas POSIX was instead published by the IEEE route as 1003.1. Was there every any consideration of C through IEEE or POSIX through ANSI instead? Is there an appreciable difference suggested by the difference in publishers? In any case, both saw subsequent adoption by ISO/IEC, so the track to an international standard seems to lead to the same organizations. - Matt G.

1 year

ACM Software System Award to Andrew S. Tanenbaum for MINIX

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

This announcement just arrived on the ACM Bulletins list: >> ... >> Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Vrije Universiteit, receives the ACM Software >> System Award (http://awards.acm.org/software-system) for MINIX, which >> influenced the teaching of Operating Systems principles to multiple >> generations of students and contributed to the design of widely used >> operating systems, including Linux. >> ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 year

Re: Origin of the name POSIX (was: ANSI (C) vs IEEE (POSIX) Standards Body Selection)

by John S Quarterman

Or like rms claimed Linux as part of GNU, he claimed POSIX and some people believed him. -jsq On Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 9:38 AM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 6:15 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 8:12 AM John S Quarterman <jsqmobile(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > I don't recall rms being involved, certainly not in the name. -jsq >> >> quip: Like childbirth, perhaps the unpleasant memory was simply blocked >> out? >> > > Is it possible that RMS suggested it as maybe an obvious quip to a > committee member who later credited him with that since that conversation > happened before that person heard it from others on the committee? Tricky > to know from this distance in time. > > Warner > > - Dan C. >> >

1 year

Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' • The Register

by Charles H Sauer (he/him)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/13/version_256_systemd/ I don't see the boast at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases/tag/v256, but ... Charlie -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

1 year

Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> <clemc(a)ccc.com> > In particular, I hope the PDP-7s and the CDC-6500 find new homes. Also, their collection of PDP-10's, which is absolutely unrivalled; they had a KA10 and a KI10; also the MIT-MC KL10. Also a Multics front panel; AFAIK, the ony one in the world other than the CHM's. Any idea where it's all being sold? I might enquire about the Multics panel. Noel

1 year

Fwd: [multicians] Dennis Ritchie's 1993 Usenet posting "BTL Leaves Multics"

by Dan Cross

FYI, Tom Van Vleck just passed this on the Multicians list; DMR's recollections of the end of Multics at BTL. I can't resist asking about the nugget buried in here about Ken writing a small kernel for the 645. Is that in the archives anywhere? - Dan C. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Tom Van Vleck via groups.io <thvv=multicians.org(a)groups.io> Date: Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 10:38 AM Subject: [multicians] Dennis Ritchie's 1993 Usenet posting "BTL Leaves Multics" To: <multicians(a)groups.io> in "alt.os.multics" about Unix, CTSS, Multics, BTL, qed, and mail https://groups.google.com/g/alt.os.multics/c/1iHfrDJkyyE Comments by DMR, me, RMF, PAG, PAK, BSG, PWB, JJL, AE, MAP, EHR, DMW Covers many issues. (I feel like we should save this thread somehow. hard to trust Google any more. the posting ends with a heading of a response by JWG but no content.) _._,_._,_ ________________________________ Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#5547) | Reply To Group | Reply To Sender | Mute This Topic | New Topic ________________________________ -- sent via multicians(a)groups.io -- more Multics info at https:://multicians.org/ ________________________________ Your Subscription | Contact Group Owner | Unsubscribe [crossd(a)gmail.com] _._,_._,_

1 year

Thank you all for your civility

by Warren Toomey

All, recently I saw on Bruce Schneier "Cryptogram" blog that he has had to change the moderation policy due to toxic comments: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/new-blog-moderation-policy.h… So I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your civility and respect for others on the TUHS and COFF lists. The recent systemd and make discussions have highlighted significant differences between people's experiences and opinions. Nonetheless, apart from a few pointed comments, the discussions have been polite and informative. These lists have been in use for decades now and, thankfully, I've only had to unsubscribe a handful of people for offensive behaviour. That's a testament to the calibre of people who are on the lists. Cheers and thank you again, Warren P.S. I'm a happy Devuan (non-systemd) user for many years now.

1 year

Re: autotools

by Steve Simon

my personal frustration with autotools was trying to port code to plan9. i wish autotools had an intermediate file format which described the packages requirements, that way i could have written my own backend to create my config.h and makefiles (or mkfiles) in the end i wrote my own tool which crudely parses a directory of C or F77 sourcecode and uses heuristics to create a config.h and a plan9 mkfile, it was named mkmk(1) it was almost _never_ completely correct, but usually got close enough that the files only needed a little manual hacking. it also took great pains to generate mkfiles that looked hand written; if you are going to auto generate files, make them look nice. -Steve

1 year

Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

by Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)

> This is The Way if you really care about portability. Autoconf, > once you get your head around what, why, and when it was created, > makes for nice Makefiles and projects that are easy to include in > the 100 Linux distributions with their own take on packaging the > world. This is outright claptrap and nonsense. In the latter half of the 90s I was responsible for writing installers and generating platform-native packages for about a dozen different commercial UNIX platforms (AIX, Solaris, Irix, HP/UX, OSF, BSD/OS, ...). Each of these package systems was as different as could be from the others. (HP/UX didn't even have one.) That entire process was driven by not very many lines of make recipes, with the assistance of some awk glue that read a template file from which it generated the native packages. And these were not trivial software distributions. We were shipping complex IMAP, X.400 and X.500 servers, along with a couple of MTAs. Our installers didn't just dump the files onto the system and point you at a README; we coded a lot of the site setup into the installers, so the end user mostly just had to edit a single config file to finish up. --lyndon

1 year

Fwd: Anyone have Plexus docs/software squirreled away?

by Al Kossow

FYI, for people like me that care about 80s 68K Unix systemf There is a pretty serious multi-purpose preservation effort that started a few weeks ago around Plexus systems as a result of a series of YouTube videos https://youtu.be/iltZYXg5hZw https://github.com/misterblack1/plexus-p20/

1 year

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