TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

6464 discussions

by Paul Ruizendaal

I’m looking for the end-to-end datakit network protocol as it existed in 7th Edition. Context is as follows: - The Spider network guaranteed reliable, in-order delivery of packets at the TIU interface. There does not seem to have been a standard host end-to-end protocol, although applications did of course contain sanity checks (see for instance the ‘nfs’ source here: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/Spider/tree?ci=tip) - Datakit dropped the reliable delivery part (although it did retain the in-order guarantee) and moved this responsibility to the host. It is the (early) evolution of the related protocol that I’m trying to dig up. - 7th Edition appears to have had a (serial line based) Datakit connection. Datakit drivers are not in the distributed files, but its tty.h file has defines for several Datakit related constants. Also, as the first Datakit switches became operational at Murray Hill in ’78 or ’79, it seems a reasonable assumption that the Research code base included drivers & protocols for it around that time. - After that the trail continues with the 8th edition which has a stream filter (dkp.c) for the “New Datakit Protocol”: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/v8unix/artifact/01b4f6f05733aba5 This suggests that there was an “Old Datakit Protocol” as well - if so, this may have been the protocol in use at the time of 7th Edition. The “New Datakit Protocol” appears to be (more or less) the same as what was later called URP (Universal Receiver Protocol). At the time of Plan9 its IL/IP protocol appears to have been designed as an equivalent for URP/Datakit. The early protocols where apparently (co-)designed by Greg Chesson and maybe also stood at the base of his later XTP protocol work. Any recollections about the early history and evolution of this Datakit protocol are much appreciated. Also, if the source to the 7th Edition Datakit network stack survived I’d love to hear. Paul

5 years, 1 month

Also, a video service

by Warren Toomey

All, I've also set this up to try out for the video chats: https://meet.tuhs.org/COFF Password to join is "unix" at the moment. I just want to test it to confirm that it works; I'll be heading out the door to go to the shops soon. Cheers, Warren

5 years, 1 month

Unix50.org

by Paul Ruizendaal

I rather enjoyed having the “unix50.org” website around: very handy to test out bits and pieces of Unix history. It seems to have been taken down. Would it make sense to have this resource available permanently?

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] V9 shell [was Re: Warner's Early Unix Presentation]

by Doug McIlroy

> What i like is the autocorrect feature in v8: > > $ cd /usr/blot > /usr/blit > $ pwd > /usr/blit Here I am, editor of the v8 manual and unaware of the feature. We now know that silent correction is a terrible idea. Postel's principle: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" was doctrine in early HTML specs, and led to disastrous disagreement among browsers' interpretation of web pages. Sadly, the "principle" lives on despite its having been expunged from the HTML spec. Today's "langsec" movement grew out of bitter experience with malicious inputs exploiting "liberal" interpretation of nonconforming data. Today's NYT has an article about fake knockoffs of George Orwell for sale on Amazon. It cites an edition of "Animal Farm" apparently pirated by lowgrade OCR autocorrected and never proofread. One of the many gaffes is that every instance of "iv" beame ChapterIV, as in "prChapterIVacy". I didn't like some Lisp systems' DWIM (do what I mean) when I first heard about the feature, and I like it even less 40-some years on. I would probably have remonstrated with Rob had I realized the shell was doing it. Doug

5 years, 1 month

compiling v9sh

by arnold＠skeeve.com

For anyone who's interested, here is what it took to compile Geoff Collyer's v9sh on Ubuntu 18.04. Arnold ---------------------------------- diff -ur v9sh/error.c v9sh-new/error.c --- v9sh/error.c 2017-07-29 11:45:07.000000000 +0300 +++ v9sh-new/error.c 2020-02-10 17:31:33.275920947 +0200 @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ } if (per) { prs(colon); - prs(errno < 0 || errno >= sys_nerr? "Bad errno": sys_errlist[errno]); + prs(strerror(errno)); } newline(); exitsh(ERROR); diff -ur v9sh/pathserv.c v9sh-new/pathserv.c --- v9sh/pathserv.c 2017-07-29 12:06:25.000000000 +0300 +++ v9sh-new/pathserv.c 2020-02-10 17:29:43.666971083 +0200 @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ { struct stat buf; - if (stat(name, &buf) == 0 && (buf.st_mode&S_IFMT) == S_IFREG && + if (stat(name, &buf) == 0 && S_ISREG(buf.st_mode) && access(name, EXECUTE) == 0) return 0; else diff -ur v9sh/xec.c v9sh-new/xec.c --- v9sh/xec.c 2017-07-29 12:27:02.000000000 +0300 +++ v9sh-new/xec.c 2020-02-10 17:29:50.607030967 +0200 @@ -612,7 +612,7 @@ if (flags&ttyflg && (dir1 = spname(tempdir, &score)) && stat(dir1, &sb) == 0 && - (sb.st_mode&S_IFMT) == S_IFDIR && + S_ISDIR(sb.st_mode) && access(dir1, EXECUTE) == 0) { /* dir1 is a searchable directory. */ if (score < bestscore) {

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] screen editors

by Thomas Paulsen

>What's funny is that in doing the work to get 'se' running on Georgia >Tech's Vax, I had to learn vi. By the time I was done, vi had become >my main editor and had burned itself into my finger's ROMs. I do ed/se occasionally for simple tasks, vim frequently , because it loads fast, and emacs for all bigger projects, beside liteide for golang.

5 years, 1 month

keyboards and command names

by Rich Morin

I have always suspected that the brevity of the Unix command names was strongly influenced by the clunky keyboards on the teletypes that were being used. Can anyone confirm, deny, and/or comment on this? -r

5 years, 1 month

Discord channels for COFF/TUHS

by Warren Toomey

All, Silent700 has graciously set up channels underneath the ClassicCMP Discord server for COFF and TUHS: COFF: https://discordapp.com/channels/642419539946110997/675860587355308049 TUHS: https://discordapp.com/channels/642419539946110997/675860622738718775 I thought it made sense to have the channels on a server where there was already old computer people (old for either or both :-). Cheers, Warren

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Distributed systems, was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question"

by Andrew Warkentin

On 1/17/20, Brantley Coile <brantley(a)coraid.com> wrote: > what he said. > >> On Jan 17, 2020, at 6:20 PM, Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Plan 9 is not a "single-system-image cluster". >> >> -rob >> > > I guess SSI isn't the right term for Plan 9 clustering since not everything is shared, although I would still say it has some aspects of SSI. I was talking about systems that try to make a cluster look like a single machine in some way even if they don't share everything (I'm not sure if there's a better term for such systems besides the rather vague "distributed" which could mean anything from full SSI to systems that allow transparent access to services/devices on other machines without trying to make a cluster look like a single system).

5 years, 1 month

Idea: a regular video chat

by Warren Toomey

[x-posting to COFF] Idea: anybody interested in a regular video chat? I was thinking of one that progresses(*) through three different timezones (Asia/Aus/NZ, then the Americas, then Europe/Africa) so that everybody should be able to get to two of the three timezones. (* like a progressive dinner) 30-60 minutes each one, general old computing. Perhaps a guest speaker now and then with a short presentation. Perhaps a theme now and then. Perhaps just chew the fat, shoot the breeze as well. Platform: Zoom or I'd be happy to set up a private Jitsi instance. Something else? How often: perhaps weekly or fortnightly through the three timezones, so it would cycle back every three or six weeks. Comments, suggestions?! Cheers, Warren

5 years, 1 month

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