TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

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6532 discussions

Re: [TUHS] A stack of PDP-11 field maintenance print sets

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: John Floren > Can anyone on the list point me to either an existing archive where > these exist The canonical repository for historic documentation online is BitSavers. It has an almost-complete set of DEC stuff (both manuals and prints. QBUS devices are at: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/qbus/ QBUS CPU's will be in the relevant model directory, e.g.: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/1123/ and disk drives are in: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/disc/ I haven't checked your list, but I suspect most of them are there; I think the ADV11-A prints are missing, though. You can either send the originals to Al Kossow, or scan them for him; but check with him first, to make sure he doen't already have them, just hasn't got around to posting them yet. There's another site which indexes DEC online documentation: https://manx-docs.org/ There are a very few things which aren't in Bitsavers, and can be found there. > KFD11-A cpu I assume that's a typo for 'KDF11-A'? Noel

4 years, 3 months

A stack of PDP-11 field maintenance print sets

by John Floren

I've been hauling around a pile of DEC Field Maintenance Print Sets for PDP-11 components for over a decade now, intending to see if they're worth having scanned or if there are digital versions out there already. Can anyone on the list point me to either an existing archive where these exist, or an archivist who would be interested in scanning them? They're full of exploded diagrams, schematics, and assembly listings. Here's the list of what I have: Field Maintenance Print Set (17" wide, 11" high): RLV11 disk controller RL01-AK disk drive ADV-11A (??) Field Maintenance Print Set (14" wide, 8.5" high): RL01 disk drive DLV11-J serial line controller RLV11 disk controller KFD11-A cpu KEF11-A floating point processor PDP11/23 PDP11/03-L Thanks, John Floren

4 years, 3 months

tabs vs spaces - entab, detab

by Norman Wilson

I could chip in with my own strong opinions about code formatting, but I think others have already posted plenty of such boring off-topic fluff. A straight answer to Will's original question might be interesting, though: The oldest extant UNIX code samples I know are those the TUHS archive, in Distributions/Research/Dennis_v3/nsys.tar.gz; they're a very old kernel source tree. There are plenty of tabs there. This matches my memories of the V7-era source code, and of what I saw people like ken and dmr and rob and bwk and pjw typing in the not- so-early days of the 1980s when I worked with them. Tabs were generally eight spaces apart. In code, nobody worried about the effects on long lines, because the coding style was spare and didn't run to many deeply-nested constructs, so lines didn't get that long. (Maybe it was considered a feature rather than a bug that deep nesting and deep indentation looked messy, because it wasn't usually a good idea anyway.) I can't speak to original motivations, but I suspect my own reasons for using tabs aren't too different: -- It's quicker and faster to type than multiple spaces -- When not at the start of the line, tabs more often preserve alignment when earlier part of the line are edited -- Back when terminals were connected at speeds like 110 or 300 bps (I am old enough to have experienced that, especially when working from home), letting the system send a tab and the local terminal expand it was a lot faster, especially when reading code (more likely to have lots of indentation than prose). Not every device supported tabs, but enough did that it made a real difference. UNIX didn't originate any of this. I used tabs when writing in FORTRAN and ALGOL/SIMULA and MACRO-10 on the TOPS-10 system I used before I encountered UNIX. So did all the other hackers I knew in the terminal room where we all hung out. I don't know the history of entab/detab. Neither appears to have been around in the Research systems; they're not in V7 and they're not in V10. V7 does. As an aside, the V10 manual has a single manual page for col, [23456], mc, fold, and expand. It's a wonderful example of how gracefully Doug assembled collections of related small programs onto a single page to keep the manual size down. Also of his gift for concise prose: the first sentence is These programs rearrange files for appearance's sake. which is a spot-on but non-stodgy summary. I wish I could write half as well as Doug can. And as an almost-joke, it's a wonder those programs haven't all been made into options to cat in modern systems. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

4 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Favorite unix design principles?

by Tyler Adams

For sure, I've seen at least two interesting changes: - market forces have pushed fast iteration and fast prototyping into the mainstream in the form of Silicon valley "fail fast" culture and the "agile" culture. This, over the disastrous "waterfall" style, has led to a momentous improvement in overall productivity improvements. - As coders get pulled away from the machine and performance is less and less in coders hands, engineers aren't sucked into (premature) optimization as much. Tyler On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 6:10 AM M Douglas McIlroy < m.douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote: > Have you spotted an evolutionary trend toward better, more productive > programmers? Or has programmer productivity risen across the board due to > better tools? Arguably what's happened is that principle has been > self-obsoleting, for we have cut back on the demand for unskilled (i.e. > less capable) programmers. A broad moral principle may be in play: > programmers should work to put themselves out of business, i.e. it is wrong > to be doing the same kind of work (or working in the same way) tomorrowas > yesterday. > > Doug > > > On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 5:23 AM Tyler Adams <coppero1237(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> Looking at the 1978 list, the last one really stands out: >> >> "Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task" >> -- The concept of unskilled help for a programming task...doesn't really >> exist in 2020. The only special case is doing unskilled labor yourself. >> What unskilled tasks did people used to do back in the day? >> >> Tyler >> >> >> On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 4:07 AM M Douglas McIlroy < >> m.douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote: >> >>> It might be interesting to compare your final list with the two lists in >>> the 1978 special issue of the BSTJ--one in the Foreword, the other in the >>> revised version of the Ritchi/Thompson article from the CACM. How have >>> perceptions or values changed over time? >>> >>> Doug >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 7:32 AM Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> On Mon, 25 Jan 2021, Tyler Adams wrote: >>>> >>>> > I'm writing about my 5 favorite unix design principles on my blog this >>>> > week, and it got me wondering what others' favorite unix design >>>> principles >>>> > are? For reference, mine are: >>>> > >>>> > - Rule of Separation (from TAOUP < >>>> http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/> >>>> > ) >>>> > - Let the Machine Do the Dirty Work (from Elements of Programming >>>> Style) >>>> > - Rule of Silence (from TAOUP < >>>> http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>) >>>> > - Data Dominates (Rob Pike #5) >>>> > - The SPOT (Single Point of Truth) Rule (from TAOUP >>>> > <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/>) >>>> > >>>> > Tyler >>>> > >>>> >>>> 1. Pipes >>>> 2. Text as the preferred format for input and output >>>> 3. 'Most everything as a file >>>> 4. The idea of simple tools that are optimized for a single task >>>> 5. A powerful scripting language built into the system that, combined >>>> with >>>> 1-4, makes writing new tools heaps easier. >>>> >>>> -uso. >>>> >>>

4 years, 4 months

Abstractions

by M Douglas McIlroy

> - separation of code and data using read-only and read/write file systems I'll bite. How do you install code in a read-only file system? And where does a.out go? My guess is that /bin is in a file system of its own. Executables from /letc and /lib are probably there too. On the other hand, I guess users' personal code is still read/write. I agree that such an arrangement is prudent. I don't see a way, though, to update bin without disrupting most running programs. Doug

4 years, 4 months

Macs and future unix derivatives

by Will Senn

All, I was introduced to Unix in the mid 1990's through my wife's VMS account at UT Arlington, where they had a portal to the WWW. I was able to download Slackware with the 0.9 kernel on 11 floppies including X11. I installed this on my system at the time - either a DEC Rainbow 100B? or a handme down generic PC. A few years later at Western Illinois University - they had some Sun Workstations there and I loved working with them. It would be several years later, though, that I would actually use unix in a work setting - 1998. I don't even remember what brand of unix, but I think it was again, sun, though no gui, so not as much love. Still, I was able to use rcs and and when my Windows bound buddies lost a week's work because of some snafu with their backups, I didn't lose anything - jackflash was the name of the server - good memories :). However, after this it was all DOS and Windows until, 2005. I'd been eyeing Macs for some time. I like the visual aesthetics and obvious design considerations. But, in 2005, I finally had a bonus big enough to actually buy one. I bought a G5 24" iMac and fell in love with Mac. Next, it was a 15" G4 Powerbook. I loved those Macs until Intel came around and then it was game over, no more PC's in my life (not really, but emotionally, this was how I felt). With Mac going intel, I could dual boot into Windows, Triple boot into Linux, and Quadruple boot into FreeBSD, and I could ditch Fink and finally manage my unix tools properly (arguable, I know) with Homebrew or MacPorts (lately, I've gone back to MacPorts due to Homebrew's lack of support for older OS versions, and for MacPorts seeming rationality). Anyhow, I have thoroughly enjoyed the Mac ride, but with Catalina, the ride got really bumpy (too much phone home, no more 32 bit programs and since Adobe Acrobat X, which I own, outright, isn't 64 bit, among other apps, this just in not an option for me), and with Big Sur, it's gotten worse, potholes, sinkholes, and suchlike, and the interface is downright patronizing (remember Microsoft Bob?). So, here I am, Mr. Run-Any-Cutting-Edge-OS anytime guy, hanging on tooth and nail to Mac OS Mojave where I still have a modicum of control over my environment. My thought for the day and question for the group is... It seems that the options for a free operating system (free as in freedom) are becoming ever more limited - Microsoft, this week, announced that their Edge update will remove Edge Legacy and IE while doing the update - nuts; Mac's desktop is turning into IOS - ew, ick; and Linux is wild west meets dictatorship and major corporations are moving in to set their direction (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc.). FreeBSD we've beat to death over the last couple of weeks, so I'll leave it out of the mix for now. What in our unix past speaks to the current circumstance and what do those of you who lived those events see as possibilities for the next revolution - and, will unix be part of it? And a bonus question, why, oh why, can't we have a contained kernel that provides minimal functionality (dare I say microkernel), that is securable, and layers above it that other stuff (everything else) can run on with auditing and suchlike for traceability?

4 years, 4 months

Seeking wisdom from Unix Greybeards

by Grant Taylor

Hi, As I find myself starting yet another project that that wants to use ANSI control sequences for colorization of text, I find myself -- yet again -- wondering if there is a better way to generate the output from the code in a way that respects TERMinal capabilites. Is there a better / different control sequence that I can ~> should use for colorizing / stylizing output that will account for the differences in capabilities between a VT100 and XTerm? Can I wrap things that I output so that I don't send color control sequences to a TERMinal that doesn't support them? -- Grant. . . . unix || die

4 years, 4 months

Re: [TUHS] Abstractions

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

The recent discussions on the TUHS list of whether /bin and /usr/bin are different, or symlinked, brought to mind the limited disk and tape sizes of the 1970s and 1980s. Especially the lower-cost tape technologies had issues with correct recognition of an end-of-tape condition, making it hard to span a dump across tape volumes, and strongly suggesting that directory tree sizes be limited to what could fit on a single tape. I made an experiment today across a broad range of operating systems (many with multiple versions in our test farm), and produced these two tables, where version numbers are included only if the O/S changed practices: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Systems with /bin a symlink to /usr/bin (or both to yet another common directory) [42 major variants]: ArchLinux Kali RedHat 8 Arco Kubuntu 19, 20 Q4OS Bitrig Lite ScientificLinux 7 CentOS 7, 8 Lubuntu 19 Septor ClearLinux Mabox Solaris 10, 11 Debian 10, 11 Magiea Solydk Deepin Manjaro Sparky DilOS Mint 20 Springdale Dyson MXLinux 19 Ubuntu 19, 20, 21 Fedora Neptune UCS Gnuinos Netrunner Ultimate Gobolinux Oracle Linux Unleashed Hefftor Parrot 4.7 Void IRIX PureOS Xubuntu 19, 20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Systems with separate /bin and /usr/bin [60 major variants]: Alpine Hipster OS108 AltLinux KaOS Ovios Antix KFreeBSD PacBSD Bitrig Kubuntu 18 Parrot 4.5 Bodhi LibertyBSD PCBSD CentOS 5, 6 LMDE PCLinuxOS ClonOS Lubuntu 17 Peppermint Debian 7--10 LXLE Salix DesktopBSD macOS ScientificLinux 6 Devuan MidnightBSD SlackEX DragonFlyBSD Mint 18--20 Slackware ElementaryOS MirBSD Solus FreeBSD 9--13 MXLinux 17, 18 T2 FuryBSD NetBSD 6-1010 Trident Gecko NomadBSD Trisquel Gentoo OmniOS TrueOS GhostBSD OmniTribblix Ubuntu 14--18 GNU/Hurd OpenBSD Xubuntu 18 HardenedBSD OpenMandriva Zenwalk Helium openSUSE Zorinos ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some names appear in both tables, indicating a transition from separate directories to symlinked directories in more recent O/S releases. Many of these system names are spelled in mixed lettercase, and if I've botched some of them, I extend my apologies to their authors. Some of those systems run on multiple CPU architectures, and our test farm exploits that; however, I found no instance of the CPU type changing the separation or symbolic linking of /bin and /usr/bin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - 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/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4 years, 4 months

Re: [TUHS] Proliferation of options is great simplification of pipes, really?

by Norman Wilson

To fill out the historical record, the earliest doctype I know of was a shell (not rc) script. From my basement heater that happens to run 10/e: b$ man doctype | uniq DOCTYPE(1) DOCTYPE(1) NAME doctype - guess command line for formatting a document SYNOPSIS doctype [ option ... ] [ file ] DESCRIPTION Doctype guesses and prints on the standard output the com- mand line for printing a document that uses troff(1), related preprocessors like eqn(1), and the ms(6) and mm macro packages. Option -n invokes nroff instead of troff. Other options are passed to troff. EXAMPLES eval `doctype chapter.?` | apsend Typeset files named chapter.0, chapter.1, ... SEE ALSO troff(1), eqn(1), tbl(1), refer(1), prefer(1), pic(1), ideal(1), grap(1), ped(9.1), mcs(6), ms(6), man(6) BUGS It's pretty dumb about guessing the proper macro package. Page 1 Tenth Edition (printed 2/24/2021) doctype(1) is in the 8/e manual, so it existed in early 1985; I bet it's actually older than that. The manual page is on the V8 tape, but, oddly, not the program; neither is it in the V10 pseudo-tape I cobbled together for Warren long ago. I'm not sure why not. The version in rc is, of course, a B-movie remake of the original. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

4 years, 4 months

retro-fuse project

by Jay Logue

Lately, I've been playing around in v6 unix and mini-unix with a goal of better understanding how things work and maybe doing a little hacking. As my fooling around progressed, it became clear that moving files into and out of the v6 unix world was a bit tedious. So it occurred to me that having a way to mount a v6 filesystem under linux or another modern unix would be kind of ideal. At the same time it also occurred to me that writing such a tool would be a great way to sink my teeth into the details of old Unix code. I am aware of Amit Singh's ancientfs tool for osxfuse, which implements a user-space v6 filesystem (among other things) for MacOS. However, being read-only, it's not particularly useful for my problem. So I set out to create my own FUSE-based filesystem capable of both reading and writing v6 disk images. The result is a project I call retro-fuse, which is now up on github for anyone to enjoy (https://github.com/jaylogue/retro-fuse) A novel (or perhaps just peculiar) feature of retro-fuse is that, rather than being a wholesale re-implementation of the v6 filesystem, it incorporates the actual v6 kernel code itself, "lightly" modernized to work with current compilers, and reconfigured to run as a Unix process. Most of file-handling code of the kernel is there, down to a trivial block device driver that reflects I/O into the host OS. There's also a filesystem initialization feature that incorporates code from the original mkfs tool. Currently, retro-fuse only works on linux. But once I get access to my mac again in a couple weeks, I'll port it to MacOS as well. I also hope to expand it to support other filesystems as well, such as v7 or the early BSDs, but we'll see when that happens. As I expected, this was a fun and very educational project to work on. It forced me to really understand what was going in the kernel (and to really pay attention to what Lions was saying). It also gave me a little view into what it was like to work on Unix back in the day. Hopefully someone else will find my little self-education project useful as well. --Jay

4 years, 4 months

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TUHS