Hi all,
I've been hard at work on my retro-fuse project over the past few
months, and so I thought I'd update the list with my progress.
I have just released version 7 of retro-fuse on github
(https://github.com/jaylogue/retro-fuse) This version adds support for
initializing and mounting 2.9 and 2.11BSD filesystems on modern
systems. It also includes fixes for a number of bugs in v6 and v7 support.
Beyond the work on 2.11 support, I also spent a significant amount of
time building an automated test framework. I'm a pretty big fan of
automated testing. So I'm happy to say that the project now includes a
series of tests verifying basic file I/O functionality as seen from the
modern system. While not exhaustive (because filesystem testing is
/hard/) the new tests give me reasonable confidence that things are
behaving as they should.
Additionally (in what was perhaps the most fun part of the project to
date) I have also created tests to verify the integrity of the generated
filesystems as seen from the historical systems. In particular, for each
of the supported Unix versions I've built tests that: launch the os
under simulation (simh), mount the generated filesystems, verify the
filesystems using the original integrity check tools (icheck/fsck), and
enumerate and compare the filesystem contents to that generated on the
modern system. As you might imagine, this involved a lot of
learning--from how to build size-reduced system images from the original
distribution tapes, to how to implement a modern POSIX cksum command
with old dev tools. All thoroughly enjoyable.
With this under my belt, I'll probably take a break from retro-fuse to
concentrate on other things. If anyone has any problems (or successes!)
using it, please drop me a line.
--Jay
Wow. Brings back memories
On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 1:32 PM Robert Diamond <rob(a)robdiamond.com> wrote:
> Just found this program from 1979 of an Explorer Club (aka “The Scouts”)
> Family Night, which included a talk from Ken Thompson on Computer Chess.
> There’s a few notable names in there.
>
> See PDF at
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/15fXhkk9KlmJNrhGlFnWuH23XQ09vLG4o/view?usp=…
--
Aaron Cohen
908-759-9069
> Did roff do all of what troff and nroff did?
No way. Ossanna deserves all the praise you give him. Roff extended
runoff in various ways:
relative numeric operators, e.g. .in +8
tabbing (left, right and centered)
underlining
tripartite headers and footers
arabic and roman page numbering
adjustable head and foot margins
automatic hyphenation, thanks to Molly Wagner
footnotes
merge patterns for change marks, column separators, etc.
various special requests: .ne, .ti, .tr, .po, .op (odd page)
But roff did NOT have conditionals, traps, special characters,
environments, or arbitrary motion control. Crucially (and ironically,
because I was Mr. Macro), it did not have anything like macros,
strings and diversions until after Joe pioneered them in nroff.
So there was a gaping disparity: nroff was Turing complete, roff
wasn't. Roff merely added features to runoff; nroff leapt into a
different universe.
-----------------------
The features listed above are in the January 1971 manual for BCPL
roff, which is probably the anonymous reference cited in the November
1971 v1 manual. The v1 manual lists Osanna, Ken and Dennis as authors
of the Unix implementation. I believe Ossanna is named because he
added line-numbering--and maybe more--to entice the patent department
to switch to roff.
BCPL roff allowed all four arithmetic operators in contexts like .ls
*3. Only + and - were allowed in nroff. Eventually both BCPL roff and
nroff got number registers (defined by different commands); I don't
recall which came first. BCPL roff also got a weak macro facility,
definitely after nroff.
Doug
Hello All.
If anyone is interested in struct, I have completed updating it
for modern day systems. Thanks to Jay Logue for invaluable help in
completing the work and to Bakul Shah for his interest and support.
See https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/struct; I have merged the
modernization work into the master branch. The README.md describes
what was done in more detail.
Doug McIlroy - if you want me to add anything to the README.md, please send
it on and I will do so, quoting you as appropriate.
Jay Logue and Bakul Shah - if you want me to add anything to the
README.md, please let me know (privately).
Thanks,
Arnold
Hi all,
Has anybody ever seen a console floppy image anywhere on the internet
labeled:
/"RX11 VAX DSK LD DEV #1"/
It is referenced in BSD 4 documentation with respect to formatting disks
(edited):
USING DEC SOFTWARE TO FORMAT
Warning: These instructions are for people with 11/780 CPU’s.
You should shut down UNIX and halt the machine to do any disk
formatting.
Formatting an RP06. Load the console floppy labeled, "RX11 VAX DSK
LD DEV #1" in the console disk drive, and type the following commands:
>>>BOOT
DIAGNOSTIC SUPERVISOR. ZZ-ESSAA-X5.0-119 23-JAN-1980 12:44:40.03
DS>ATTACH RH780 SBI RHO 8 5
DS>ATTACH RPO6 RHO DBA0
DS>SELECT DBAO
DS>LOAD EVRAC
DS>START/SEC:PACKINIT
This is for drive 0 on mbaO; use 9 instead of 8 for mbal, etc.
> I've just watched an interesting presentation given last Friday via
> video link to the Linux Conference in Australia:
> Brian Kernighan
> The early days of Unix at Bell Labs
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCr_KFl41E
Here's an earlier incarnation of the talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS-0Vrmok6Y
I rather enjoyed seeing it with closed captions in Spanish and
speakers turned off. Aided by the slides, I was pretty well able to
read the Spanish, which otherwise would have been quite mysterious.
Doug
