TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

31 participants
6541 discussions

CSRG report TR/4 was in Jim Joyce papers

by Paul Ruizendaal

Rich was kind enough to look through the Joyce papers to see if it contained "CSRG Tech Report 4: Proposals for Unix on the VAX”. It did. As list regulars will know I’ve been looking for that paper for years as it documents the early ideas for networking and IPC in what was to become 4.2BSD. It is an intriguing paper that discusses a network API that is imo fairly different from what ended up being in 4.1a and 4.2BSD. It confirms Kirk McKusick’s recollection that the select statement was modelled after the ADA select statement. It also confirms Clem Cole’s recollection that the initial ideas for 4.2BSB were significantly influenced by the ideas of Richard Rashid (Aleph/Accent/Mach). Besides IPC and networking, it also discusses file systems and a wide array of potential improvements in various other areas.

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question")

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> If you search for "Jolitz" Oh, I meant in the DDJ search box, not a general Web search. > One of the items listed in WP, "Copyright, Copyleft, and Competitive > Advantage" (Apr/1991) wasn't in the search results .. Since it's not in > the 'releases' page, it might not really be part of the series? Also, the last article in the series ("The Final Step") says the series was 17 articles long, not the 18 you get if you include "Copyright". Noel

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] screen editors

by Rudi Blom

>Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2020 14:57:40 -0500. >From: Doug McIlroy <> >To: tuhs(a)tuhs.org, thomas.paulsen(a)firemail.de >Subject: Re: [TUHS] screen editors >Message-ID: <202001071957.007JveQu169574(a)coolidge.cs.dartmouth.edu> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii .. snip .. >% wc -c /bin/vi bin/sam bin/samterm >1706152 /bin/vi > 112208 bin/sam > 153624 bin/samterm >These mumbers are from Red Hat Linux. >The 6:1 discrepancy is understated because >vi is stripped and the sam files are not. >All are 64-bit, dynamically linked. That's a real big vi in RHL. Looking at a few (commercial) unixes I get SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2 132898 Aug 22 1996 /usr/bin/vi - /usr/bin/vi: iAPX 386 executable Tru64 V5.1B-5 331552 Aug 21 2010 /usr/bin/vi - /usr/bin/vi: COFF format alpha dynamically linked, demand paged sticky executable or object module stripped - version 3.13-14 HP-UX 11.31 748996 Aug 28 2009 /bin/vi -- /bin/vi: ELF-32 executable object file - IA64

5 years, 6 months

bitsavers.org down?

by Warner Losh

I'm trying to grab some stuff from bitsavers.org. It seems to be failing to lookup name records. I'd send mail directly to Al, but the only address I have for him at at bitsavers.org :( Anybody have a better contact or good back-channel to Al? Warner

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question")

by Jason Stevens

I would imagine that the user land changes made its way into 386 Mach. Although I haven't seen anything I can recall off the top of my head about 386 commits in user land until much later. Maybe one day more of that Mt Xinu stuff will surface, although I'm still amazed I got the kernel to build. Internet legend is that the rift was massive. From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces(a)minnie.tuhs.org> on behalf of Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2020, 12:26 a.m. To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey Cc: UNIX Heritage Society Subject: Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 03:19:13PM +1100, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Friday, 17 January 2020 at 22:50:51 -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > > > > In the super-early days (late 1991, early 1992), those of us who > > worked on it just wanted a "something Unix-like" that we could run at > > home (my first computer was a 40 MHz 386 with 16 MB of memory). This > > was before the AT&T/BSD Lawsuit (which was in 1992) and while Jolitz > > may have been demonstrating 386BSD in private, I was certainly never > > aware of it > > At the start of this time, Bill was working for BSDI, who were > preparing a commercial product that (in March 1992) became BSD/386. Wikipedia says he was working on 386BSD as early has 1989 and that clicks with me (Jolitz worked for me around 1992 or 3). I don't remember him mentioning working at BSDI, are you sure about that part? Those guys did not like each other at all.

5 years, 6 months

Bruce Evans: RIP

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

Ted Ts'o mentioned Bruce Evans in a reply to "On the origins of Linux". I'm really sorry to have to announce that he died last month. His family is holding a "small farewell gathering" in Sydney in late February. To quote his sister Julie Saravanos: We would be pleased if you, or any other BSD/computer friend, came There's no date yet, and I don't think it's appropriate to broadcast details. If anybody is interested, please contact Warren or me. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

5 years, 6 months

Lions book

by Doug McIlroy

I learned from Marianne Lions that she's still receiving royalties from John's book. What a testimonial to both John and the system! Doug

5 years, 6 months

screen editors

by Doug McIlroy

> but…damn, even ex/vi 3.x is huge It was so excesssive right from the start that I refused to use it. Sam was the first screen editor that I deemed worthwhile, and I still use it today. Doug

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] History of TUHS

by Jason Stevens

Of all those CSV repositories, geocities sites and yahoo groups are any indicator, it's going to be up to people to put the past onto plastic and get it out there. If anything right now the utzoo archives along with people posting source and patches to usenet survived... Not to mention all those shovel ware CD-ROMs from the 90s that ironically preserved so much early free software and other gems of the pre Linux/NT world. Github will eventually be shuttered like anything else and all that will remain is dead links.. It really needs to be distributed by nature, but then you have people using Github as cloud storage of all things. I don't think the CSRG CD's were hot sellers, and I couldn't imagine getting utzoo or TUHS pressed... Although maybe it's something to look at. It might be interesting. From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces(a)minnie.tuhs.org> on behalf of Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> Sent: Friday, January 17, 2020, 2:47 p.m. To: Warren Toomey Cc: tuhs(a)tuhs.org Subject: Re: [TUHS] History of TUHS Warren Toomey wrote: > Heh, I hadn't thought that TUHS itself should now be considered > historical I often imagine future historians 100 years from now pouring over mailing list archives and bitrotted GitHub repositories, including those that contain historical research. Metahistory maybe? Hello people in the future! How's the singularity treating you? Sorry about the climate.

5 years, 6 months

History of TUHS

by Warner Losh

Is there a history of TUHS page I've missed? When was it formed? Was it an outgrowth of PUPS? etc. Again, I'm working on a talk and would like to include some of this information and it made me think that the history of the historians should be documented too. Warner

5 years, 6 months

free dead trees, to the best possible home

by Rich Morin

TL; DR. I'm trying to find the best possible home for some dead trees. I have about a foot-high stack of manilla folders containing "early Unix papers". They have been boxed up for a few decades, but appear to be in perfect condition. I inherited this collection from Jim Joyce, who taught the first Unix course at UC Berkeley and went on to run a series of ventures in Unix-related bookselling, instruction, publishing, etc. The collection has been boxed up for a few decades, but appears to be in perfect condition. I don't think it has much financial value, but I suspect that some of the papers may have historical significance. Indeed, some of them may not be available in any other form, so they definitely should be scanned in and republished. I also have a variety of newer materials, including full sets of BSD manuals, SunExpert and Unix Review issues, along with a lot of books and course handouts and maybe a SUGtape or two. I'd like to donate these materials to an institution that will take care of them, make them available to interested parties, etc. Here are some suggested recipients: - The Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA, USA) - The Internet Archive (San Francisco, CA, USA) - The Living Computers Museum (Seattle, WA, USA) - The UC Berkeley Library (Berkeley, CA, USA) - The Unix Heritage Association (Australia?) - The USENIX Association (Berkeley, CA, USA) According to Warren Toomey, TUHS probably isn't the best possibility. The Good News about most of the others is that I can get materials to them in the back of my car. However, I may be overlooking some better possibility, so I am following Warren's suggestion and asking here. I'm open to any suggestions that have a convincing rationale. Now, open for suggestions (ducks)... -r

5 years, 6 months

introduction and sales pitch...

by Rich Morin

I just found out about TUHS today; I plan to skim the archives RSN to get some context. Meanwhile, this note is a somewhat long-winded introduction, followed by a (non-monetary) sales pitch. I think some of the introduction may be interesting and/or relevant to the pitch, but YMMV... Introduction In 1970, I was introduced to programming by a cabal of social science professors at SF State College. They had set up a lab space with a few IBM 2741 (I/O Selectric) terminals, connected by dedicated lines to Stanford's Wylbur system. I managed to wangle a spot as a student assistant and never looked back. I also played a tiny bit with a PDP-12 in a bio lab and ran one (1) program on SFSC's "production system", an IBM 1620 Mark II (yep; it's a computer...). While a student, I actually got paid to work with a CDC 3150, a DEC PDP-15, and (once) on an IBM 360/30. After that, I had some Real Jobs: assembler on a Varian 620i and a PDP-11, COBOL on an IBM mainframe, Fortran on assorted CDC and assorted DEC machines, etc. By the late 80's, my personal computers were a pair of aging LSI-11's, running RT-11. At work (Naval Research Lab, in DC), I was mostly using TOPS-10 and Vax/VMS. I wanted to upgrade my home system and knew that I wanted all the cool stuff: a bit-mapped screen, multiprocessing, virtual memory, etc. There was no way I could afford to buy this sort of setup from DEC, but my friend Jim Joyce had been telling me about Unix for a few years, so I attended the Boston USENIX in 1982 (sharing a cheap hotel room with Dick Karpinski :-) and wandered around looking at the workstation offerings. I made a bet on Sun (buying stock would have been far more lucrative, but also more risky and less fun) and ended up buying Sun #285 from John Gage. At one point, John was wandering around Sun, asking for a slogan that Sun could use on a conference button to indicate how they differed from the competition. I suggested "The Joy of Unix", which he immediately adopted. This decision wasn't totally appreciated by some USENIX attendees from Murray Hill, who printed up (using troff, one presumes) and wore individualized paper badges proclaiming themselves as "The <whatever> of Unix". Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... (bows) IIRC, I received my Sun-1 late in a week (of course :-), but managed to set it up with fairly little pain. I got some help on the weekend from someone named Bill, who happened to be in the office on the weekend ... seemed quite competent ... I ran for a position on the Sun User Group board, saying that I would try to protect the interests of the "smaller" users. I think I was able to do some good in that position, not least because I was able to get John Gilmore and the Sun lawyers to agree on a legal notice, edit some SUGtapes, etc. Later on, I morphed this effort into Prime Time Freeware, which produced book/CD collections of what is now called Open Source software. Back when there were trade magazines, I also wrote a few hundred articles for Unix Review, SunExpert, etc. Of course, I continue to play (happily) with computers... Perkify If you waded through all of that introduction, you'll have figured out that I'm a big fan of making libre software more available, usable, etc. This actually leads into Perkify, one of my current projects. Perkify is (at heart) a blind-friendly virtual machine, based on Ubuntu, Vagrant, and VirtualBox. As you might expect, it has a strong emphasis on text-based programs, which Unix (and Linux) have in large quantities. However, Perkify's charter has expanded quite a bit. At some point, I realized that (within limits) there was very little point to worrying about how big the Vagrant "box" became. After all, a couple of dozen GB of storage is no longer an issue, and having a big VM on the disk (or even running) doesn't slow anything down. So, the current distro weighs in at about 10 GB and 4,000 or so APT packages (mostly brought in as dependencies or recommendations). Think of it as "a well-equipped workshop, just down the hall". For details, see: - http://pa.cfcl.com/item?key=Areas/Content/Overviews/Perkify_Intro/main.toml - http://pa.cfcl.com/item?key=Areas/Content/Overviews/Perkify_Index/main.toml Sales Pitch I note that assorted folks on this list are trying to dig up copies of Ken's Space Travel program. Amusingly, I was making the same search just the other day. However, finding software that can be made to run on Ubuntu is only part of the challenge I face; I also need to come up APT (or whatever) packages that Just Work when I add them to the distribution. So, here's the pitch. Help me (and others) to create packages for use in Perkify and other Debian-derived distros. The result will be software that has reliable repos, distribution, etc. It may also help the code to live on after you and I are no longer able (or simply interested enough) to keep it going. -r

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Spacewar at Bell Labs

by Brian Walden

> Papertape reader? The last Cyphercon had a paper tape reader in their badge -- https://hackaday.com/2019/04/12/cyphercon-badge-has-a-paper-tape-reader-bui… You can proably buy one from the con https://cyphercon.com/, or the makers http://www.tymkrs.com/ or ebay... -Brian

5 years, 6 months

MUNIX Sources

by Warner Losh

Greetings, I've so far been unable to locate a copy of munix. This is John Hawley's dual PDP-11/50 version of Unix he wrote for his PHd Thesis in June 1975 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. I don't suppose that any known copies of this exist? To date, my searches have turned up goose-eggs. Hawley's paper can be found here https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/20959 Warner P.S. I'm doing another early history talk at FOSDEM in a couple of weeks. So if you're in the audience, no spoilers please :)

5 years, 6 months

Spacewar at Bell Labs

by Lars Brinkhoff

Hello, https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/spacetravel.html says: > Later we fixed Space Travel so it would run under (PDP-7) Unix instead > of standalone, and did also a very faithful copy of the Spacewar game I have a file with ".TITLE PDP-9/GRAPHIC II VERSION OF SPACEWAR". (I hope it will go public soon.) It seems to be a standalone program, and it's written in something close to MACRO-9 syntax. I'm guessing the Bell Labs version would have been written using the Unix assembler. Best regards, Lars Brinkhoff

5 years, 6 months

History of symbol preemption

by Paul Winalski

The Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) is the modern standard for object files in Unix and Unix-like OSes (e.g., Linux), and even for OpenVMS. LInux, AIX and probably other implementations of ELF have a feature in the runtime loader called symbol preemption. When loading a shared library, the runtime loader examines the library's symbol table. If there is a global symbol with default visibility, and a value for that symbol has already been loaded, all references to the symbol in the library being loaded are rebound to the existing definition. The existing value thus preempts the definition in the library. I'm curious about the history of symbol preemption. It does not exist in other implementations of shared libraries, such as IBM OS/370 and its descendants, OpenVMS, and Microsoft Windows NT. ELF apparently was designed in the mid-1990s. I have found a copy of the System V Application Binary Interface from April 2001 that describes symbol preemption in the section on the ELF symbol table. When was symbol preemption when loading shared objects first implemented in Unix? Are there versions of Unix that don't do symbol preemption? -Paul W.

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] A portrait of cut(1)

by Brian Walden

Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> writes: >markus schnalke <meillo at marmaro.de> writes: >> [2015-11-09 08:58] Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> >>> things like "cut" and "paste", whose exact provenance >>> I can't recall. >> >> Thanks for reminding me that I wanted to share my portrait of >> cut(1) with you. (I sent some questions to this list, a few >> months ago, remember?) Now, here it is: >> >> http://marmaro.de/docs/freiesmagazin/cut/cut.en.pdf > >Did you happen to find out what GWRL stands for, in the the comments at >the top of early versions of cut.c and paste.c? > >/* cut : cut and paste columns of a table (projection of a relation) (GWRL) */ >/* Release 1.5; handles single backspaces as produced by nroff */ >/* paste: concatenate corresponding lines of each file in parallel. Release 1.4 (GWRL) */ >/* (-s option: serial concatenation like old (127's) paste command */ > >For that matter, what's the "old (127's) paste command" it refers to? I know this thread is almost 5 years old, I came across it searching for something else But as no one could answer these questions back then, I can. GWRL stands for Gottfried W. R. Luderer, the author of cut(1) and paste(1), probably around 1978. Those came either from PWB or USG, as he worked with, or for, Berkley Tague. Thus they made their way into AT&T commercial UNIX, first into System III and the into System V, and that's why they are missing from early BSD releases as they didn't get into Research UNIX until the 8th Edition. Also "127" was the internal department number for the Computer Science Research group at Bell Labs where UNIX originated Dr. Luderer co-authored this paper in the orginal 1978 BSTJ on UNIX -- https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Papers/BSTJ/bstj57-6-2201.pdf I knew Dr. Luderer and he was even kind enough to arrange for me stay with his relatives for a few days in Braunschweig, West Germany (correct county name for the time) on my first trip to Europe many decades ago. But haven't had contact nor even thought of him forever until I saw his initials. I also briefly worked for Berk when he was the department head for 45263 in Whippany Bell Labs before moving to Murray Hill. And doing a quick search for him, it looks like he wrote and autobiograhy, which I am now going to have to purchase http://www.lulu.com/shop/gottfried-luderer/go-west-young-german/paperback/p… -Brian

5 years, 6 months

Looking for Maitre'd tarball

by Ron Young

Hi All: I looking for the source code to the Maitre'd load balancer. It is used to run jobs on lightly used machines. It was developed by Brian Berhard at Berkeley's Computer Systems Support Group. I have the technical report for it (dated 17-dec-1985). But haven't run across the tarball. thanks -ron

5 years, 6 months

OK, keep going on type checking

by Warren Toomey

All, I've had a few subscribers argue that the type checking thread was still Unix-related, so feel free to keep posting here in TUHS. But if it does drift away to non-Unix areas, please pass it over to COFF. Thanks & apologies for being too trigger-happy! Cheers, Warren

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)

by Doug McIlroy

>> After scrolling through the command list, I wondered how >> long it was and asked to have it counted. Easy, I thought, >> just pass it to a wc-like program. But "just pass it" and >> "wc-like" were not givens as they are in Unix culture. >> It took several minutes for the gurus to do it--without >> leaving emacs, if I remember right. > This is kind of illustrative of the '60s acid trip that > perpetuates in programming "Everything's a string maaaaan". > The output is seen as truth because the representation is > for some reason too hard to get at or too hard to cascade > through the system. How did strings get into the discussion? Warner showed how emacs could be expected to do the job--and more efficiently than the Unix way, at that: (list-length (command-list-fn)). The surprise was that this wasn't readily available. Back then, in fact, you couldn't ask sh for its command list. help|wc couldn't be done because help wasn't there. Emacs had a different problem. It had a universal internal interface--lists rather than strings--yet did not have a way to cause this particular list to "cascade through the system". (print(command-list-fn)) was provided, while (command-list-fn) was hidden. Doug

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)

by Doug McIlroy

Mention of elevators at Tech Square reminds me of visiting there to see the Lisp machine. I was struck by cultural differences. At the time we were using Jerqs, where multiple windows ran like multiple time-sharing sessions. To me that behavior was a no-brainer. Surprisingly, Lisp-machine windows didn't work that way; only the user-selected active window got processor time. The biggest difference was emacs, which no one used at Bell Labs. Emacs, of course was native to the Lisp machine and provided a powerful and smoothly extensible environment. For example, its reflective ability made it easy to display a list of its commands. "Call elevator" stood out amng mundane programmering actions like cut, paste and run. After scrolling through the command list, I wondered how long it was and asked to have it counted. Easy, I thought, just pass it to a wc-like program. But "just pass it" and "wc-like" were not givens as they are in Unix culture. It took several minutes for the gurus to do it--without leaving emacs, if I remember right. Doug

5 years, 6 months

Sun employee interviews

by Richard Salz

Sarah Jeong is looking for Sun employees to interview for a potential book about its rise and fall. Thread here https://twitter.com/halvarflake/status/1215312568438480897?s=19

5 years, 6 months

Question about early C behavior.

by Dan Cross

This question comes from a colleague, who works on compilers. Given the definition `int x;` (without an initializer) in a source file the corresponding object contains `x` in a "common" section. What this means is that, at link time, if some object file explicitly allocates an 'x' (e.g., by specifying an initializer, so that 'x' appears in the data section for that object file), use that; otherwise, allocate space for it at link time, possibly in the BSS. If several source files contain such a declaration, the linker allocates exactly one 'x' (or whatever identifier) as appropriate. We've verified that this behavior was present as early as 6th edition. The question is, what is the origin of this concept and nomenclature? FORTRAN, of course, has "common blocks": was that an inspiration for the name? Where did the idea for the implicit behavior come from (FORTRAN common blocks are explicit). My colleague was particularly surprised that this seemed required: even at this early stage, the `extern` keyword was present, so why bother with this behavior? Why not, instead, make it a link-time error? Please note that if two source files have initializers for these variables, then one gets a multiple-definition link error. The 1988 ANSI standard made this an error (or at least undefined behavior) but the functionality persists; GCC is changing its default to prohibit it (my colleague works on clang). Doug? Ken? Steve? - Dan C.

5 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] screen editors and beyond

by Norman Wilson

Jon Steinhart: One amusing thing that Steve told me which I think I can share is why the symmetry of case-esac, if-fi was broken with with do-done; it was because the od command existed so do-od wouldn't work! ===== As I heard the story in the UNIX room decades ago (and at least five years after the event), Steve tried and tried to convince Ken to rename od so that he could have the symmetry he wanted. Ken was unmoved. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

5 years, 6 months

Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > when she found out the elevators were hacked and controlled by the > student's different computers, she stopped using them and would take > the stairs It wasn't quite as major as this makes it sound! A couple of inconspicuous wires were run from the 'TV 11' on the MIT-AI KA10 machine (the -11 that ran the Knight displays) into the elevator controller, and run onto the terminals where the wires from the 'down' call buttons on the 8th and 9th floors went. So it wasn't anything major, and there was really no need for her to take the stair (especially 8 flights up :-). The code is still extant, in 'SYSTEM; TV >'. It only worked (I think) from Knight TV keyboards; typing 'ESC E' called the elevator to the floor that keyboard was on (there's a table, 'ELETAB', which gives the physical floor for each keyboard). The machine could also open the locked 9th floor door to the machine room (with an 'ESC D'), and there some other less major things, e.g. print screen hardcopy. I'm not sure what the hardware in the TV-11 was (this was all run out of the 'keyboard multiplexor'); it may have been something the AI Lab built from scratch. Noel

5 years, 6 months

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

TUHS