Dave Horsfall:
At one place I worked, every Unix bod sported facial fungus; it must be a
Unix thing...
====
Not really. I've seen bare faces and beards and operating systems
over the decades that would scare the bugs out of any of the above
beards and operating systems. There really isn't a lot of consistency.
I've known plenty of bare-faced UNIX hacks, and plenty of RSX and
VMS and Windows and IBM programmers who hide their embarrassment
behind beards.
The ultimate reference is, of course, the inhabitants of the UNIX
Room. During my time there in mid-to-late 1980s, some people wore
beards, some didn't. I have never seen Ken or Dennis or Brian
clean-shaven, but I have never seen Doug or Rob or Tom Duff or
Lorinda with a beard.
And despite a certain remark attributed to the late Vic Vyssotsky
(who I've never seen with a beard either), I am quite sure that
my appearance had nothing to do with my being recruited by the group.
Norman `too lazy to shave' Wilson
Toronto ON
Andrew Hume (dammit andrew):
i have probed recently about the origins of the b EGREGb (its all greg cession's fault) error in Research Unix.
alas, i recall nothing about this, and can't recall ever getting the message.
===
Your memory fails you, which is not unreasonable for stuff you
probably haven't thought about in more than 30 years:
/*
SCSI Pass-Thru driver for the TD Systems UD? -- Andrew Hume
Ninth Edition Unix
*/
[...]
scsiwrite(dev)
dev_t dev;
{
register count;
register struct scsi *p = &scsi[minor(dev)];
register struct mscmd *cmd = &p->junk->cmd.msg;
unsigned char flag, bus_id;
if(p->flag&NEXTWR)
p->flag &= ~NEXTWR;
else {
u.u_error = EGREG;
return;
}
As I remember it, EGREG went into errno.h and libc out
of a desire to have some never-normally-used error to
be returned when debugging. I forget just who was in
the UNIX Room conversation that created it; almost certainly
I was. I thought andrew was as well; very likely one or
more of andrew td presotto.
I do remember being a bit annoyed at Andrew for putting it
in permanent use in the raw-SCSI driver (which was at the
time of interest mainly to Andrew for controlling an
early optical-disc jukebox, used by the original File
Motel backup system).
As to the origin of `It's all Greg's fault' as a meme,
that was already around and established when I arrived at
the Labs in mid-1984, though Greg himself had already
moved west. Maybe Doug or Ken remembers how that started.
Andrew himself was responsible for or blamed by more than
one meme of the days. The scsi driver spawned one, in fact:
the first attempt used a SCSI interface from Emulex, which
never worked quite right, and despite repeated phone calls
to Emulex Andrew could never get it figured out. He tried
and tried, though, and his attempts spawned the catch
phrase `Time to call Emulex again!'
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
an urgent request: can someone please send me sam leaflet’s email address?
its needed for a funeral (dave tilbrook just died).
also, rob pike, can you send me your email please?
(these are for tilbrook’s son.)
i have probed recently about the origins of the “EGREG” (its all greg cession’s fault) error in Research Unix.
alas, i recall nothing about this, and can’t recall ever getting the message.
however, courtesy of Dave Presotto (i am fairly sure), there was an equivalent error
in Plan 9, where more or less randomly, if your user id was ‘andrew’, system calls would fail.
and yes, i did feel special; this was one of my lesser contributions to Plan 9.
this stopped after a while (several to many months, maybe).
andrew hume
fyi
-------- Original Message --------
From: joel(a)sirjofri.de
Sent: January 13, 2021 11:30:31 AM EST
To: sl(a)stanleylieber.com
Subject: Writer's Workbench on Plan 9/9front
Hello TUHS,
I don't know if that mail arrives since I'm not subscribed to the tuhs
mailing list. I just thought this might be interesting to some of
you, especially since I noticed there are some threads about the
writer's workbench.
Some weeks ago I started porting V10 wwb tools to 9front (which is a
fork of Plan 9). I have still many things to do and currently only
limited time, but the greater tools (style, diction and suggest) work.
Most code worked fine, btw, only minor changes needed. Especially
implicit C declarations and missing #includes. Comparison with the
original code in the archive is possible.
I also tried porting (or rewriting) the shell scripts in rc, and made
mkfiles that better fit the Plan 9 build systems. I also included
acme commands, they also translate the locations into the plumber
format for the files (filename:line).
Here's a link to the git repository (yes, we have a native git
implementation now): https://git.sr.ht/~sirjofri/wwb9
sirjofri
As the new year is about to kick in (down-under anyway), it got me to
thinking (always dangerous): how many here will be around for it to pick
up the pieces that are no doubt still lying around?
I'll be about the ripe old age of 85, so I may be around to see the
Imminent Death of the Internet (Film at 11).
2100? Forget it... Too bad, as "Revolt in 2100 (?)" is one of my
favourite Heinlein books.
Others?
-- Dave
We all know and love the UNIX beard, but I can't find anything on how the
beards started other than an old photo of Ken and Dennis with majestic
manes.
And, to make the question a bit more meta, what's the history of the joke
of the "UNIX beard"?
Tyler
>From output of 'what' on /bin/sh in SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2
- spname.c 23.2 91/02/21
Cheers,
uncle rubl
>Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 03:39:16 -05
>From: Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org>
>To: tuhs(a)tuhs.org
>Subject: Re: [TUHS] Question
>Message-ID: <1610181560.23999.for-standards-violators(a)oclsc.org>
>
>Rob Pike, re the spelling corrector in V8 and later Research
>versions of sh:
>
> That was done by Tom Duff, I believe before he came to Bell Labs. I might
> have brought the idea with me from Toronto.
>
>Very likely, since you left it behind at Caltech as well; it was
>in sh on cithep (a hostname meaningless to many but rob will remember)
>when I arrived in 1980.
>
>It was in the version of p you left behind there as well.
>
>I can confirm that spname remained in the shell through V10
>(it's still in my copy), but it seems to have disappeared from p.
>
>Norman Wilson
>Toronto ON
Rob Pike, re the spelling corrector in V8 and later Research
versions of sh:
> That was done by Tom Duff, I believe before he came to Bell Labs. I might
> have brought the idea with me from Toronto.
Very likely, since you left it behind at Caltech as well; it was
in sh on cithep (a hostname meaningless to many but rob will remember)
when I arrived in 1980.
It was in the version of p you left behind there as well.
I can confirm that spname remained in the shell through V10
(it's still in my copy), but it seems to have disappeared from p.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
Warner Losh:
Less ugly would be to declare time_t to be unsigned instead of signed...
It would break less code... Making time_t 64 bits also breaks code, even if
you declare you don't care about binary compat since many older apps know
time_t is 32-bits.
===
I remember chatting in 1998 with a consultant who worked with
clients in the financial industry. They still used 32-bit systems
at the time, and had already converted critical programs (I don't
know whether that included parts of libc or they had their own
conversion routines) to make time_t unsigned.
It mattered early to those folks because of 40-year bonds.
That suggests to me that the financial-services world may have
a head start on the 2038 problem, but I fear many others are
still lagging behind. 64 bits will help but not as much for
embedded systems and legacy stuff.
Us hobbyists will doubtless have fun too, as we already do
(ask Warren) when running the earliest existing UNIX images,
in which times are stored in sixtieths of a second.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
