TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

20 participants
6516 discussions

by Johnny Billquist

Ooo. Fun. We're talking PDP-10s on a Unix list... :-) On 2017-02-27 16:13, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote: > In TOPS-10, you could detach from your current job, login again, and > keep going. Then, attach to the previous job, and go back and forth > endlessly. Right. But that is a different thing. Each terminal session only have one job. The fact that you can detach that, and log in as a new session is a different concept. > As for keeping memory around, it was very common on TOPS-10 to put code > in a "hiseg" that would stick around, and was shareable between "jobs". Yes. Again, that is a different thing as well. Hisegs are more related to shared memory. I assume you know all this, so I'm not going to go into details. But having the memory around for a program, even if it is not running, is actually sometimes very useful. If ITS could handle that, while treating them as separate processes, all associated to one terminal, and let you select which one you were currently fooling around in, while the others stayed around, that is something I don't think I've seen elsewhere. > For something like EMACS, it would be very efficient to have the first > person run it "compile" all the LISP, leave it in the hiseg, and other > jobs can then run that code. That would work, but it would then require that all other users be suspended until the first user actually completes the initialization, and after that, all the memory must be readonly. > Not knowing anything about EMACS, I'm not sure that compiled code was > actually shareable if it was customized, just thinking out loud. You can certainly customize and save your own image. But the general bootstrapping of Emacs consists of starting up the core system, and then loading a whole bunch of modules and configurations. All that loading and parsing of those files into data structures in memory is quite cpu intensive. Once all that processing is finished, you can start editing. Each person essentially wants all that work done, no matter what they'd like to do later. So, Emacs does it once, and then saves the state at the point where you can start editing. But it does not mean that the memory is shareable. It's full of various data structures, and code, and that will change as you go along editing things as well. > But even without leveraging the hiseg capability, it was relatively easy > to save an entire core image back to a .SAV or .LOW or later a .EXE. I > don't remember how easy it was to do that programmatically, but it was > easy from the terminal and if it saves a lot of processor time (and > elapsed time) people would have been happy to do it manually. Indeed. Like I said, Tops-10 have the same concept as Emacs does today. But there it was essentially what you always did. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

8 years, 3 months

Emacs and undump

by David

I ported GNU Emacs to the Celerity product line mostly because most of the programmers there wanted it over vi. Not me, I’m a vi guy. I remember that GNU Emacs launched the first time and then dumped itself out as a core file. Each subsequent launch would then ‘undump’ itself back into memory. All this because launching emacs the first time required compiling all that lisp code. Does anyone else remember this? David

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] The size of EMACS, and what hides in kLOCs

by Nemo

On 26 February 2017 at 12:28, Andy Kosela <andy.kosela(a)gmail.com> wrote: [...] > Are you sure it was emacs? Most probably it was pico, which was the default > editor for pine. We used pine/pico for all email at our university in the > 90's. It was wildly popular. Ah well, I am not sure -- that betrayed my emacs bias. I saw ^X^C and assumed emacs. N.

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] BSDi Imaging

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Deborah Scherrer > On 2/25/17 11:25 AM, Cory Smelosky wrote: >> MtXinu is something I really want. > I worked there for 10 years (eventually becoming President). I'll try > to dig up a tape. Say what you will about RMS, but he really did change the world of software. Most code (except for very specialized applications) just isn't worth much anymore (because of competition from open source) - which is part of why all these old code packages are now freely available. Although I suppose the development of portabilty - which really took off with C and Unix, although it had existed to some degree before that, q.v. the tools collection in FORTRAN we just mentioned - was also a factor, it made it possible to amortize code writing over a number of different types of machines. There were in theory portable languages beforehand (e.g. PL/1), but I think it probably over-specified things - e.g. it would be impossible to port Multics to another architecture without almost completely re-writing it from scratch, the code is shot through with "fixed bin(18)"'s every other line... Noel

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] The size of EMACS, and what hides in kLOCs

by Nemo

On 26 February 2017 at 07:46, Michael Kjörling <michael(a)kjorling.se> wrote: > On 26 Feb 2017 07:39 -0500, from jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa): >> I was never happy with the size of EMACS, and it had nothing to do with the >> amount of memory resources used. That big a binary implies a very large amount >> of source, and the more lines of code, the more places for bugs... > > But remember; without Emacs, we might never have had _The Cuckoo's > Egg_. Imagine the terror of that loss. Hhhmmm.... I must dig my copy out of storage because I do not remember emacs in there. As for emac uses, my wife was on (non-CS) staff at a local college affiliated with U of T. At the time, DOS boxes sat on staff desks and email was via a telnet connection to an SGI box somewhere on campus. A BATch file connected and ran pine but shelled out to an external editor. What was the editor? Well, I saw her composing a message once and ending the editor session by ^X^C. N.

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] SCO OpenDesktop 386 2.0.0

by Rudi Blom

Wasn't the default FS type S51K? Limitations like 14 chars directory names only. No symbolic link ? >Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2017 11:13:25 -0500 >From: Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> >To: Cory Smelosky <b4(a)gewt.net>, Jason Stevens > <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com>, tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org >Subject: Re: [TUHS] SCO OpenDesktop 386 2.0.0 >Message-ID: <f5a1d513-3cc1-6a4d-64a3-669b49d7226f(a)kilonet.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed" > >What filesystem type does it use for root/boot/whatever? > >Install operating system "X" that supports that filesystem type in the >virtual guest, create a new disk, newfs/mkfs it, arrange the bits from >the tape, take the newly-assembled disk and move to another VM and try >to boot it. > >Not remembering anything about how SVR3.2 boots (I think that's what >Opendesktop is?) that's the end of my help on the subject :)

8 years, 3 months

SCO OpenDesktop 386 2.0.0

by Cory Smelosky

Hey, Does anyone have any of the floppies for OpenDesktop 2.0.0? Mine got damaged in a dehumidifier failure before they got to California. The only survivor was of all things...the QIC-24 tape (which I have read fine) sco-tape> tar tf file0 | more ./tmp/_lbl/prd=odtps/typ=u386/rel=2.0.0a/vol=1 Anyone know a good starting point for attempting to install it in to a VM? ;) -- Cory Smelosky b4(a)gewt.net

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] The size of EMACS, and what hides in kLOCs

by Mutiny

> On 26 Feb 2017 07:39 -0500, from jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa):>> I was never happy with the size of EMACS, and it had nothing to do with >> the amount of memory resources used. That big a binary implies a very >> large amount of source, and the more lines of code, the more places for >>bugs...GNU Emacs 26.0.50, GTK+ Version 3.22.8) of 2017-02-25 (Fedora25, Kernel: 4.9.11:Virtual: 794.6Resident:  36.8 

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Joerg Schilling > He is a person with a strong ego and this may have helped to spread > Linux. Well, I wasn't there, and I don't know much about the early Linux versus UNIX-derivative contest, but from personal experience in a similar contest (the TCP/IP versus ISO stack), I doubt such personal attributes had _that_ much weight in deciding the winner. The maximum might have been that it enabled him to keep the Linux kernel project unified and heading in one direction. Not inconsiderable, perhaps, if there's confusion on the other side.,, So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux history? If not, there should be.) It seems to me that they key battleground must have been the IMB PC-compatible world - Linux is where it is now because of its success there. So why did Linux succeed there? Was is that it was open-source, and the competitor(s) all had licensing issues? (I'm not saying they did, I just don't know.) Was it that Linux worked better on that platform? (Again, don't know, only asking.) Perhaps there was an early stage where it was the only good option for that platform, and that's how it got going? Was is that there were too many Unix-derived alternatives, so there was no clarity as to what the alternatives were? Some combination of all of the above (perhaps with different ones playing a key role at different points in time)? Noel

8 years, 3 months

BSDi Imaging

by Cory Smelosky

All, I'm dumping as much BSD/OS stuff as I can tonight. This includes: SPARC, sources, and betas. Unable to dump any floppies, however. -- Cory Smelosky b4(a)gewt.net

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Access to Unix

by Doug McIlroy

> Then one day a couple of them ‘fell off a truck’ and my Dad just happened to be there to pick them up and bring them home. Wonderful story. It reminded me of the charming book, "five Finger Discount" by Helene Stapinski, whose father brought home truckfall steaks. Thanks for sharing the tale. Doug

8 years, 3 months

Put a copy of the TUHS mail archive into the Unix Archive?

by Warren Toomey

Is it worth putting a copy of this mailing list into the Unix Archive? I don't want to dump the mbox in, as it has all our e-mail addresses: spam etc. I could symlink in the monthly text archives, e.g. http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2016-December.txt.gz What do you think? Perhaps in Documentation/TUHS_Mail? Warren

8 years, 3 months

4.3BSD TAHOE aka what is a TAHOE?!

by jsteve＠superglobalmegacorp.com

It’s embarrassing to mention this, but I thought I’d share. I’ve always wondered what on earth a TAHOE was, as they disappeared just about as quickly as they came out. As we all know that they were instrumental from separating out the VAX code from 4.3BSD in the official CSRG source. I was looking through old usenet stuff when I typed in something wrong, and came across people looking for GCC for the Tahoe running BSD. (http://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/b128/comp/sys/tahoe/79.txt) In article <2287(a)trantor.harris-atd.com>, bbadger@x102c (Badger BA 64810) writes: `We have a Harris HCX-9 computer, also known as a Tahoe, and we'd like to `get gcc and g++ up and running. I haven't seen anything refering to `the HCX or any Tahoe machines in the gcc distribution. Anyone have it? `Working on it? Pointers to who might? Know if Berkely cc/ld/asm is PD? Turns out they were using Harris mini’s called the HCX-9. That’s when I went back to the source and saw this: # # GENERIC POWER 6/32 (HCX9) # machine tahoe cpu "TAHOE" ident GENERIC So if anyone else is wondering what was a Tahoe, did it exist, was there actual sales, is their pictures of it, etc, the answer is yes, it was a real machine, yes it was sold, and there are even print ads in Computer world. I thought it was interesting though. Sent from Mail for Windows 10

8 years, 3 months

Linux vs. other X86 options

by Charles H Sauer

Since the X86 discussions seem to have focused on BSD & Linux, I thought I should offer another perspective. TLDR: I worked on System V based UNIX on PCs from 1982 to 1993. IMO, excessive royalties & the difficulty of providing support for diverse hardware doomed (USL) UNIX on x86. It didn't help that SCO was entrenched in the PC market and slow to adopt new UNIX versions. Longer Summary: >From 1975-82 at IBM Research and UT-Austin C.S. dept, I tried to get access to UNIX but couldn't. At IBM Austin from '82 to '89, I worked on AIX and was involved with IBM's BSD for RT/PC. Starting in '89, I was the executive responsible for Dell UNIX (https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2008/01/10/a-brief-history-of-dell-un…) for most of its existence. The royalties Dell paid for SVR4 plus addons were hard to bear. Those royalties were at least an order of magnitude greater than what we paid to Microsoft. We couldn't support all of the devices Dell supplied to customers, certainly couldn't afford to support hardware only supplied by other PC vendors. SCO had dominant marketplace success with Xenix and SVRx products, seemingly primarily using PCs with multiport serial cards to enable traditional timesharing applications. Many at Dell preferred that we emphasize SCO over Dell SVR4. When I joined my first Internet startup in 1996 and had to decide what OS to use for hosting, I was pretty cognizant of all the options. I had no hands on Linux experience but thought Linux the likely choice. A Linux advocate friend recommended I choose between Debian and Red Hat. I chose Red Hat and have mostly used Red Hat & Fedora for my *IX needs since then. Today, Linux device support is comprehensive, but still not as complete as with Windows. I installed Fedora 24 on some 9 and 15 year old machines last week. The graphics hardware is nothing fancy, a low end NVIDIA card in the older one, just what Intel supplied on their OEM circuit boards in the newer one. Windows (XP/7/10) on those machines gets 1080p without downloading extra drivers. (Without extra effort??) Fedora 24 won't do more than 1024x768 on one and 1280x1024 with the other. Charlie

8 years, 3 months

Access to Unix

by David

(somewhat long story) After reading all the stories about how Unix source was protected and hard to access to I’ve got to say that my experience was a little different. I was at UCSD from 76-80 when UCSD got a VAX and I think it was running 32V at the time. Well being a CS student didn’t get you access to that machine, it was for the grad students and others doing all the real work. I became friends with the admin of the system (sdcsvax) and he mentioned one day that the thing he wanted more than anything else was more disks. He had a bunch of the removable disk packs and wanted a couple more to swap out to do things like change the OS quickly etc. My dad worked for CDC at the time, and he was making removable media of the same type that the VAX was using. My luck. I asked him about getting a disk pack, or two. He said that these things cost thousands and he couldn’t just pick them up and bring them home. Then one day a couple of them ‘fell off a truck’ and my Dad just happened to be there to pick them up and bring them home. You know, so the kids could see what he did for a job. I took them into the lab and gave them to the admin who looked the disks, then at me, and asked what I wanted in exchange. I asked for a seat at the VAX, with full access. Since then I’ve had a ucsd email account, and been a dyed in the wool Unix guy. David

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] A Couple of Early Networking Unix System

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Lars Brinkhoff > Yes, please do add some kind of IMP to SIMH! BTDT: http://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf Noel

8 years, 3 months

A Couple of Early Networking Unix System

by Warren Toomey

All, thanks to the hard effort of Noel Chiappa and Paul Ruizendaal, we now have a couple of early Unix systems with networking modifications. They can be found in: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Early_Networking/ I'll get them added to the Unix Tree soon. Cheers, Warren

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Why Linux not another PC/UNIX [was Mach for i386 ...]

by Clem Cole

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 9:25 PM, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote: > I started screwing around with Linux in the late 90s, and it would be many > years before any sort of real Unix (of the AT&T variety), in any form, was > readily available to me - that being Solaris when Sun started offering it > for free download. See my comment to Dan. I fear you may not have known where to look, or whom to ask. As I asked Dan, were you not at an university at time? Or where you running a Sun or the like -- i.e. working with real UNIX but working for someone with binary license, not sources from AT&T (and UCB)? I really am curious because I have heard this comment before and never really understood it because the sources really were pretty much available to anyone that asked. Most professionals and almost any/all university students had did have source access if they ask for it. That is part of why AT&T lost the case. The trade secret was out, by definition. The required by the 1956 consent decree to make the trade secrets available. A couple of my European university folks have answer that the schools kept the sources really locked down. I believe you, I never saw that at places like Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburg, Darmstad or other places I visited in those days in Europe. Same was true of CMU, MIT, UCB et al where I had been in the USA, so I my experience was different. The key that by definition, UNIX was available and there were already versions from AT&T or not "in the wild." You just need to know where to look and whom to ask. The truth is that the UCB/BSDi version of UNIX - was based on the AT&T trade secret, as was Linux, Minix, Coherent and all of the other "clones" -- aka look-a-likes and man of those sources were pretty available too (just as Minix was to Linus and 386BSD was to him also but he did not know to where/whom to ask). So a few years later when the judge said, these N files might be tain'ted by AT&T IP, but can't claim anything more. The game was over. The problem was when the case started, techies (like me, and I'm guessing Larry, Ron and other ex BSD hackers that "switched") went to Linux and started to making it better because we thought we going to lose BSD. That fact is if we had lost BSD, legally would have lost Linux too; but we did not know that until after the dust settled. But by that time, many hackers had said, its good enough and made it work for everyone. As you and Dan have pointed out, many non-hackers did know that UNIX really was available so they went with *Linux because they thought that had no other choice, *when if fact, you actually did and that to me was the sad part of the AT&T case. A whole generation never knew and by the time they did have a choice but a few religion began and new wars could be fought. Anyway - that's my thinking/answer to Noel's original question. Of why Linux over the over the PC/UNIX strains... I think we all agree that one of the PC/UNIX was going to be the winner, the question really is why did Linux and not a BSD flavor?

8 years, 3 months

Any BSDi interest?

by Cory Smelosky

Hi, Forgot I'm sitting on a lot of BSDi sources/binaries. Is there any interest in this aside from me? ;) -- Cory Smelosky b4(a)gewt.net

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

by Rudi Blom

Tonal languages are real fun. I'm living and working in Bangkok, Thailand and slightly tone deaf am still struggling. Which reminds me, regarding binary there are 10 types of people, those who understand and those who don't :-) Cheers, rudi

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Another odd comment in V6

by Norman Wilson

Noel: Instead, you have to modify the arguments so that the re-tried call takes up where it left off - in the example above, tries to read 5 characters, starting 5 bytes into the buffer). The hard part is that the return value (of the number of characters actually read) has to count the 5 already read! Without the proper design of the system call interface, this can be hard - how does the system distinguish between the _first_ attempt at a system call (in which the 'already done' count is 0), and a _later_ attempt? If the user passes in the 'already done' count, it's pretty straightforward - otherwise, not so much! ==== Sometime in the latter days of the Research system (somewhere between when the 9/e and 10/e manuals were published), I had an inspiration about that, and changed things as follows: When a system call like read is interrupted by a signal: -- If no characters have been copied into the user's buffer yet, return -1 and set errno to EINTR (as would always have been done in Heritage UNIX). -- If some data has already been copied out, return the number of characters copied. So no data would be lost. Programs that wanted to keep reading into the same buffer (presumably until a certain terminator character is encountered or the buffer is full or EOF) would have to loop, but a program that didn't loop in that case was broken anyway: it probably wouldn't work right were its input coming from a pipe or a network connection. I don't remember any programs breaking when I made that change, but since it's approaching 30 years since I did it, I don't know whether I can trust my memory. Others on this list may have clearer memories. All this was a reaction to the messy (both in semantics and in implementation) compromise that had come from BSD, to have separate `restart the system call' and `interrupt the system call' states. I could see why they did it, but was never satisfied with the result. If only I'd had my inspiration some years earlier, when there was a chance of it getting out into the real world and influencing POSIX and so on. Oh, well. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

by Rudi Blom

>On Tue, 21 Feb 2017 19:08:33 -0800 Cory Smelosky wrote: > >>On Tue, Feb 21, 2017, at 17:22, Rudi Blom wrote: >> Probably my (misplaced?) sense of humour, but I can't help it. >> >> After reading all comment I feel I have to mention I had a look at >> freeDOS :-). >> >> Cheers, >> rudi > >Do I need to pull out TOPS-10 filesystem code now, too? ;) In 1967 I was 12 and probably had barely discovered ScienceFiction novel and computers. Just quickly downloaded a TOPS-10 OS Commands Manual (from 1988) but no mention of the Level-D filesystem

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

by Rudi Blom

Probably my (misplaced?) sense of humour, but I can't help it. After reading all comment I feel I have to mention I had a look at freeDOS :-) Cheers, rudi

8 years, 3 months

OK, the archive has been reorganised

by Warren Toomey

All, after getting your feedback, I've reorganised the Unix Archive at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/ I'm sure there will be some rough edges, let me know if there is anything glaringly obvious. I'd certainly like a few helpers to take over responsibility for specific sections, e.g. UCB, DEC. Cheers all, Warren P.S It will take a while for the mirrors to pick this up.

8 years, 3 months

Re; Mach for i486 / Mt Xinu or other

by Doug McIlroy

> 2) **Most** Operating systems do not support /dev/* based access to SCSI. > This includes a POSIX certified system like Mac OS X. > > 3) **Most** Operating systems do not even support a file descriptor based > interface to SCSI commands. > This includes a POSIX certified system like Mac OS X. Had Ken thought that way, Unix's universal byte-addressable file format would never have happened; this mailing list would not exist; and we all might still be fluent in dialects of JCL. dd was sufficient glue to bridge the gap between Unix and **Most** Operating Systems. Meanwhile everyday use of Unix was freed from the majority's folly. Doug

8 years, 3 months

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TUHS