Long ago when we were running ACSnet
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHSnet) we lacked graphical
workstations so we never saw the Bell Labs face mail
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vismon) mechanism in action. I think
colleagues who later had Sun workstations might have briefly had
X-face in operation.
I see on Luca Cardelli's homepage that there was an icon for ACSnet
email, of course it is Kangaroo...
http://lucacardelli.name/indexArtifacts.html
scroll down Original 48x48 bitmaps for "face mail" at Bell Labs.
From: Doug McIlroy
> I have heard also that Isaacson's "Idea Factory" (about Bell Labs)
I was unable to find a book of this title by Isaacson? Did you mean the work
of this title by Jon Gertner? (I have yet to pull down my copy to see what it
says about Unix - it's in another room, and I'm lazy... :-)
> (In my recollection, McCarthy proseletized; Corbato led.)
I think that's an accurate 1-sentence summary.
> breathes not a word about Berkeley's work, without which ARPANET would
> have been an open circuit.
Can you elaborate on this point a bit - I'm not sure what it is you're
referring to?
> A couple of reviews predicted it would become the standard of the
> field.
Among people who spell 'Internet' with a lower-case 'i', perhaps it will
(sadly).
Noel
From: jkh(a)violet.Berkeley.EDU (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Subject: My Broadcast
Date: 2 April 1987 at 21:45:46 CEST
To: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU, tcp-ip(a)sri-nic.arpa
By now, many of you have heard of (or seen) the broadcast message I sent to
the net two days ago. I have since received 743 messages and have
replied to every one (either with a form letter, or more personally
when questions were asked). The intention behind this effort was to
show that I wasn't interested in doing what I did maliciously or in
hiding out afterwards and avoiding the repercussions. One of the
people who received my message was Dennis Perry, the Inspector General
of the ARPAnet (in the Pentagon), and he wasn't exactly pleased.
(I hear his Interleaf windows got scribbled on)
So now everyone is asking: "Who is this Jordan Hubbard, and why is he on my
screen??"
I will attempt to explain.
I head a small group here at Berkeley called the "Distributed Unix Group".
What that essentially means is that I come up with Unix distribution software
for workstations on campus. Part of this job entails seeing where some of
the novice administrators we're creating will hang themselves, and hopefully
prevent them from doing so. Yesterday, I finally got around to looking
at the "broadcast" group in /etc/netgroup which was set to "(,,)". It
was obvious that this was set up for rwall to use, so I read the documentation
on "netgroup" and "rwall". A section of the netgroup man page said:
...
Any of three fields can be empty, in which case it signifies
a wild card. Thus
universal (,,)
defines a group to which everyone belongs. Field names that ...
...
Now "everyone" here is pretty ambiguous. Reading a bit further down, one
sees discussion on yellow-pages domains and might be led to believe that
"everyone" was everyone in your domain. I know that rwall uses point-to-point
RPC connections, so I didn't feel that this was what they meant, just that
it seemed to be the implication.
Reading the rwall man page turned up nothing about "broadcasts". It doesn't
even specify the communications method used. One might infer that rwall
did indeed use actual broadcast packets.
Failing to find anything that might suggest that rwall would do anything
nasty beyond the bounds of the current domain (or at least up to the IMP),
I tried it. I knew that rwall takes awhile to do its stuff, so I left
it running and went back to my office. I assumed that anyone who got my
message would let me know.. Boy, was I right about that!
After the first few mail messages arrived from Purdue and Utexas, I begin
to understand what was really going on and killed the rwall. I mean, how
often do you expect to run something on your machine and have people
from Wisconsin start getting the results of it on their screens?
All of this has raised some interesting points and problems.
1. Rwall will walk through your entire hosts file and blare at anyone
and everyone if you use the (,,) wildcard group. Whether this is a bug
or a feature, I don't know.
2. Since rwall is an RPC service, and RPC doesn't seem to give a damn
who you are as long as you're root (which is trivial to be, on a work-
station), I have to wonder what other RPC services are open holes. We've
managed to do some interesting, unauthorized, things with the YP service
here at Berkeley, I wonder what the implications of this are.
3. Having a group called "broadcast" in your netgroup file (which is how
it comes from sun) is just begging for some novice admin (or operator
with root) to use it in the mistaken belief that he/she is getting to
all the users. I am really surprised (as are many others) that this has
taken this long to happen.
4. Killing rwall is not going to solve the problem. Any fool can write
rwall, and just about any fool can get root priviledge on a Sun workstation.
It seems that the place to fix the problem is on the receiving ends. The
only other alternative would be to tighten up all the IMP gateways to
forward packets only from "trusted" hosts. I don't like that at all,
from a standpoint of reduced convenience and productivity. Also, since
many places are adding hosts at a phenominal rate (ourselves especially),
it would be hard to keep such a database up to date. Many perfectly well-
behaved people would suffer for the potential sins of a few.
I certainly don't intend to do this again, but I'm very curious as to
what will happen as a result. A lot of people got wall'd, and I would think
that they would be annoyed that their machine would let someone from the
opposite side of the continent do such a thing!
Jordan Hubbard
jkh(a)violet.berkeley.edu
(ucbvax!jkh)
Computer Facilities & Communications.
U.C. Berkeley
On 4 Jan 2019, at 21:46, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
>From where did that wonderful clip come? It's clearly a sequence from something else. I've never seen it before.
>Thanks,
>Clem
They were from my email archives of Hackers_Guild and the umd cs department staff mailing list. Does anybody else have any h_g archives sitting around?
Here’s some more funny stuff about the NSA! Gotta love how Brian Reid and Rick Adams weigh in. ;)
-Don
From: yee(a)dali.berkeley.edu (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: For those who missed 997@lll-crg, here it is
Date: 19 November 1985 at 15:58:08 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Relay-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site lll-crg.ARpA
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site lll-crg.ARpA
Path: lll-crg!bandy
From: bandy(a)lll-crg.ARpA (Andrew Scott Beals)
Newsgroups: net.net-people
Subject: oh YES the NSA is on the net!
Message-ID: <997(a)lll-crg.ARpA>
Date: 19 Nov 85 07:11:36 GMT
Date-Received: 19 Nov 85 07:11:36 GMT
References: <324(a)ucdavis.UUCP> <2253(a)umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: bandy(a)lll-crg.UUCP (Andrew Scott Beals)
Distribution: net
Organization: Computation Research Group, Lawrence Livermore Labs
Lines: 94
Summary: (let's say) unintentional dis-information corrected
In article <2253(a)umcp-cs.UUCP> tlr(a)umcp-cs.UUCP (Terry L. Ridder) writes:
I can almost guarantee that the National Security Agency is
not on USENET or ARPANET. I can further almost guarantee that
very few employees of NSA are even aware that USENET exist.
Signed
Terry L. Ridder
UUCP: seismo!(mimsy.umd.edu|neurad)!bilbo!wiretap!(root|tlr)
^^^^^^^
PHONE: 301-490-2248 (home) 301-859-6642 (work)
Right.
There used to be a host called "TYCHO" (nickname "NSA") at host
zero on imp fifty-seven. (26.0.0.57) (information taken from the old
NIC (Network Information Center for Internet) host tables)
Now there is a machine called "DOCKMASTER" on that same imp port
(TYCHO was an old PDP-11 running version 6 unix (which rumors had
flown for quite some time that someone actually proved was secure)).
Here is what the NIC has to say about DOCKMASTER:
The National Computer Security Center (DOCKMASTER)
820 Elkridge Landing Road
Room A1127, Building FANX-II
Linthicum, MD 21090
NetAddress: 26.0.0.57
Nicknames: NCSC-MULTICS
Host Administrator and Liaison:
Aliff, Stephen W. (SWA1) Aliff.DODCSC@MIT-MULTICS
(301) 850-5888
Multics, if I remember correctly, was just given some level of
certification by the government that it was secure. Interesting, no?
Unfortunately, I'm not nearly as much of a Packrat as some might like
to think so I don't have a Maryland phone book (I do have my silly
putty though), so I can't tell you where this exchange is located
(nor where Terry's work number is located). However, looking up
Linthicum MD (I was born and raised just north of DC) shows that
it's just north of BWI (airport). There is a NASA center right near
there and next to that is an un-marked (of course) NSA center.
All of this points that imp 57 is still NSA's imp.
NIC has this to say about host 1 on imp 57:
National Security Agency (COINS-GATEWAY)
COINS Network Control Center
Fort George G. Meade, MD 20755
NetAddress: 26.1.0.57
Nicknames: COINS
Host Administrator and Liaison:
Smith, Ronald L. (RLS6) COINS@USC-ISI
(301) 688-6375
The NIC generally likes to give a machine the name "-GATEWAY" when
that machine is a gateway into another part of the internet. (the
machine type of COINS is a Plurbus, which is a multiprocessor
gateway machine manufactured by BBN (the folks who do the ARPANET
and MILNET hardware).
In any case, it seems that Mr Ridder is un-(or mis-?)informed.
Side note: at the last (Portland) USENIX, I happened across a
gentlemen (very cleancut) whose badge listed him as working for the
"Department of Defense, Fort Meade Maryland". I said "Oh, you're one
of those NSA guys!" To which he replied "How did you know?!"...
"Everyone else in DOD says /which/ part of DOD they work for..."
andrew scott beals
lawrence livermore national laboratory/university of california
Pooh-bah for LLL-CRG.ARPA
(415) 423-1948 (work) (533-1948 (FTS))
ps. In case anyone is wondering and before you go giving my name to
people that I don't want to talk to (like the Kind Folks at the NSA
(but I'm sure they've heard of me or will before I finish up with my
current round of paperwork with the DOE/OPM/FBI)), I obtained all of
this information through public channels.
--
There once was a thing called a V-2,
To pilot which you did not need to--
You just pushed a button,
And it would leave nuttin'
But stiffs and big holes and debris, too.
andy beals - bandy(a)lll-crg.arpa - {seismo,ihnp4!sun,dual}!lll-crg!bandy
From: jordan(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Jordan Hayes)
Subject: Re: ``dockmaster''
Date: 19 November 1985 at 16:27:34 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
for those so inclined, they should look at what is on port 2 of that
imp ... hmmm ... sorta like putting the CIA on port 4 of imp 78 ...
/jordan
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: Re: ``dockmaster''
Date: 19 November 1985 at 18:27:27 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu, jordan(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
Maryland lets NSA people use mimsy. The NSA is interested in the
supercomputer designs that they're working on there... (which is
why they have an imp connection)
In any case, I just got a long note from Mr Ridder. I'll forward
it to you when I'm done reading my mail...
andy
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: message from Mr. Ridder
Date: 19 November 1985 at 18:31:44 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)lll-crg.ARPA
From tlr(a)mimsy.umd.edu Tue Nov 19 06:13:44 1985
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 85 09:12:54 EST
From: Terry L. Ridder <tlr(a)mimsy.umd.edu>
Subject: Your posting
Mr. Andrew Scott Beals
I am writing to inform you of at least two facts:
The computer named "wiretap" belongs to my children,
age 9, age 7, age 2. Jennifer, the 7 year old, named
the computer. Sarah, the 9 year old, named the other
computer "bilbo".
Bilbo and wiretap are both private machines. The are
owned by my family and I. They are in no way shape or
form associated with the NSA.
Concerning your posting, I am concerned that you have
no regard for the safety of federal employees. Your
posting is marked for distribution "net", if you would
look at the two previous posting they are marked for
distribution 'usa'. Therefore, you probably have just
told most of the world the location of what you believe
to be an NSA facility. This probably has made the location
a target for any of a number of terrorist groups. What if
you are wrong? You have place in danger the lifes of
innocent people. Just because you may think you know something
does not mean that you tell most of the world.
I would hope that in the future that you would take the
time to think about all the ramifications before making
a posting, similiar in nature to the one in question.
I would hope that you will send out a cancel message on
your posting, before it gets to far.
I sincerely hope that you restrict your speculations about
my family's association with any federal agency. I hope
also that you are mature enough to post an apology for
inferring that my computers were associated with the NSA.
I do not want to think of what the implications are from
that speculation on your part. You may have damaged my
family's reputation and my own reputation.
Please be a little more responsible in the future.
Engage brain before fingers.
Signed
Terry L. Ridder
for the Terry L. Ridder family
---------------------
From: fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Erik E. Fair)
Subject: Re: message from Mr. Ridder
Date: 19 November 1985 at 18:42:34 CET
To: bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA
Cc: Hackers_Guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
I wonder if this bozoid has ever read `The Puzzle Palace'?
It identifies several `secret' NSA installations, including
one out in the wilds of Sonoma, just over the border from
Marin County, along the road from Tomales to Petaluma. All
from public sources and Freedom Of Information Act suits.
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
P.S. Be sure to waive hello in your Email to the folks at the
Maryland Procurement Office...
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: Re: message from Mr. Ridder
Date: 19 November 1985 at 19:11:36 CET
To: fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
Cc: Hackers_Guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
[mimsy.umd.edu]
Login name: tlr In real life: Terry L. Ridder
Office: Laurel MD 20707 Office phone: 859-6642
Home phone: 490-2248 Arpanet Sponsor
Directory: /u/tlr Shell: /bin/csh
Last login Tue Nov 19 09:17 on tty04
Project: To find a new job, raise three children, and have time for the wife.
Plan: To move overseas.
----------------------
Well, this is what it has to say about him. Arpanet sponsor, eh?
andy
From: fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Erik E. Fair)
Subject: Re: message from Mr. Ridder
Date: 19 November 1985 at 19:48:41 CET
To: bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA
Cc: Hackers_Guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Ask Chris Torek what an `Arpanet Sponsor' is...
Erik
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: more follies, dt if uninterested
Date: 20 November 1985 at 02:10:30 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)lll-crg.ARPA
Seems that the gentleman doesn't read his fucking news before going
off at the handle. I sent him an "Excuse me, but if you look at
article ..." note.
LLL General consul? Snicker snicker. Maybe Postmaster or root or
usenet will get a nice note from him telling me what a Bad Boy I've
been... :-)
andy
-----------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 85 18:46:28 EST
From: Terry L. Ridder <tlr(a)mimsy.umd.edu>
Subject: apology is inorder
Mr. Andrew Scott Beals
I again ask that you act in a mature manner and post an
apology concerning your inferring that my private computers
are associated with the NSA.
If you choose not to, would you be kind enough to inform me
what the phone number is for LLL general consul is?
Signed
Terry L. Ridder
From: jordan(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Jordan Hayes)
Subject: Re: ridder me this ...
Date: 20 November 1985 at 02:59:22 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Methinks either the man is an idiot or he's not really a force to
be reckoned with. If his main mail machine is mimsy, that means he's
on the same imp ... since NSA people have accounts at umd, maybe he's
FROM the NSA ... hmmm ...
/jordan
From: Milo S. Medin (NASA ARC Code ED) <medin(a)orion.ARPA>
Subject: Re: message from Mr. Ridder
Date: 20 November 1985 at 03:03:55 CET
To: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Cc: fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu, Hackers_Guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
LLL general counsel? uh oh..... That means lawyers....
Milo
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: ridder me this
Date: 20 November 1985 at 03:14:56 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)lll-crg.ARPA
One of my sources tells me that Mr Ridder is indeed an NSA person. Chris
Torek told me that an "Arpanet Sponsor" in their terminology means that
he's one of the people who helped them get on the network.
andy
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Ridder me this (qualification)
Date: 20 November 1985 at 03:31:22 CET
To: bandy(a)ll-crg.ARPA, deboor%buddy(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Cc: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Oh, I already sent him an apology. Here it is:
Relay-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site lll-crg.ARpA
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site lll-crg.ARpA
Path: lll-crg!bandy
From: bandy(a)lll-crg.ARpA (Andrew Scott Beals)
Newsgroups: net.net-people
Subject: Apology to Terry Ridder
Message-ID: <998(a)lll-crg.ARpA>
Date: 19 Nov 85 17:37:12 GMT
Date-Received: 19 Nov 85 17:37:12 GMT
References: <324(a)ucdavis.UUCP> <2253(a)umcp-cs.UUCP> <997(a)lll-crg.ARpA>
Reply-To: bandy(a)lll-crg.UUCP (Andrew Scott Beals)
Distribution: net
Organization: Computation Research Group, Lawrence Livermore Labs
Lines: 15
I would like to take this opportunity to formally extend my
apologies to Terry L. Ridder (tlr(a)mimsy.umd.edu) and his family for
insinuating that their home machines (bilbo and wiretap) and any
association with any Federal agency (the NSA in this case).
andrew scott beals
uc/llnl
--
There once was a thing called a V-2,
To pilot which you did not need to--
You just pushed a button,
And it would leave nuttin'
But stiffs and big holes and debris, too.
andy beals - bandy(a)lll-crg.arpa - {seismo,ihnp4!sun,dual}!lll-crg!bandy
---------------------
What was interesting was that the file was ~news/net/net-people/666 ...
Tee hee hee.
andy
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: calling LLL {lawyers,diplomats}
Date: 20 November 1985 at 03:38:35 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)lll-crg.ARPA
Of course, they'll tell him that "Anything that our employees say
is their own opinion unless they are a member of the LLNL Public
Information group and are speaking in an official capacity."
"Pin-heads. Pin-heads. Roly-poly pin-heads. Pin-heads. Pin-heads.
Watch them lose. Yow!"
andy
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: teehee
Date: 20 November 1985 at 17:18:25 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
From reid@glacier Wed Nov 20 06:59:01 1985
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 85 06:57:35 pst
From: Brian Reid <reid@glacier>
Subject: Re: Apology to Terry Ridder
Newsgroups: net.net-people
Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab
Terry Ridder is one of the biggest assholes on earth, and I can't fathom
anybody owing him an apology about anything. Oh well.
--
Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid
Stanford reid(a)SU-Glacier.ARPA
From: Andrew Scott Beals <bandy(a)lll-crg.ARPA>
Subject: philngai on tlr
Date: 21 November 1985 at 07:21:35 CET
To: hackers_guild(a)lll-crg.ARPA
From amdcad!phil Wed Nov 20 20:41:58 1985
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 85 20:08:04 pst
From: amdcad!phil (Phil Ngai)
Subject: Re: message from Mr. Ridder
what kind of asshole names a computer wiretap and then complains when
others make seemingly reasonable assumptions about it?
who should engage their brain, that's what i want to know.
--
Raise snails for fun and profit! Race them for amusement! Then eat the losers!
Phil Ngai +1 408 749-5720
UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil
ARPA: amdcad!phil(a)decwrl.dec.com
From: cuuxb!jab(a)lll-crg.ARPA
Subject: Re: message from Mr. Ridder
Date: 24 November 1985 at 02:25:13 CET
To: lll-crg!sdcsvax.arpa!hutch(a)lll-crg.ARPA
Cc: lll-crg!hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
The Ridder guy is a jerk. I would wonder why the ARPANET knows about his
private machines, anyhow: sounds like a misuse of government funding.
Jeff Bowles
Lisle, IL
From: Donnalyn Frey <donnalyn(a)seismo.css.gov>
Subject: Re: private machines on internet
Date: 24 November 1985 at 06:08:34 CET
To: cuuxb!jab(a)lll-crg.ARPA, deboor%buddy(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Cc: hackers_guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Ridders machines are NOT on the arpanet. They have uucp links to
Uof Maryland. Ridder himself has an account on mimsy.umd.edu.
Ridders two machines were named by his children. ONe had
just finished reading teh Hobbit (hence bilbo, despite the
2 other known bilbos [not to be confused with certain dildos being discussed])
and the other had finished some spy book, hence wiretap.
He is quite pompous and seems to think the world revolves around
him. We asked him to rename "bilbo" to not conflict. He replied that
the other machines should change because he had already named his
machine.
By the way, we're talking about toys here (maybe somthing as expensive
as an IBM-PC) not the "real" machines you might be led to believe.
He is best ignored.
---rick
(I originally posted this to hacker news, but I’ll repost it here too.)
At the University of Maryland, our network access was through the NSA's "secret" MILNET IMP 57 at Fort Mead. It was pretty obvious that UMD got their network access via NSA, because mimsy.umd.edu had a similar "*.57" IP address as dockmaster, tycho and coins.
https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/
HOST : 26.0.0.57 : TYCHO : PDP-11/70 : UNIX : TCP/TELNET,TCP/SMTP,TCP/FTP :
HOST : 26.0.0.57 : DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL,DOCKMASTER.DCA.MIL, DOCKMASTER.ARPA : HONEYWELL-DPS-8/70 : MULTICS : TCP/TELNET,TCP/FTP,TCP/SMTP,TCP/ECHO,TCP/DISCARD,ICMP :
HOST : 26.1.0.57 : COINS-GATEWAY,COINS : PLURIBUS : PLI ::
HOST : 26.2.0.57, 128.8.0.8 : MARYLAND,MIMSY,UMD-CSD,UMD8,UMCP-CS : VAX-11/780 : UNIX : TCP/TELNET,TCP/FTP,TCP/SMTP,UDP,TCP/ECHO,TCP/FINGER,ICMP :
https://multicians.org/site-dockmaster.html
Whenever the network went down (which was often), we had to call up a machine room at Fort Mead and ask them to please press the reset button on the box labeled "IMP 57". Sometimes the helpful person who answered the phone had no idea which box I meant, so I had describe to him which box to reset over the phone. ("Nope, that didn't work. Try the other one!" ;) They were even generous enough to issue us (CS department systems staff and undergrad students) our own MILNET TACACS card.
On mimsy, you could get a list of NSA employees by typing "grep contact /etc/passwd", because each of their courtesy accounts had "network contact" in the gecos field.
Before they rolled out TACACS cards, anyone could dial up an IMP and log in without a password, and connect to any host they wanted to, without even having to murder anyone like on TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVth6T3gMa0
I found this handy how-to tutorial guide for "Talking to the Milnet NOC" and resetting the LH/DH, which was useful for guiding the NSA employee on the other end of the phone through fixing their end of the problem. What it doesn't mention is that the key box with the chase key was extremely easy to pick with a paperclip.
Who would answer the Milnet NOC's 24-hour phone was hit or miss: Some were more helpful and knowledgeable than others, others were quite uptight.
Once I told the guy who answered, "Hi, this is the University of Maryland. Our connection to the NSA IMP seems to be down." He barked back: "You can't say that on the telephone! Are you calling on a blue phone?" (I can't remember the exact color, except that it wasn't red: that I would have remembered). I said, "You can't say NSA??! This is a green phone, but there's a black phone in the other room that I could call you back on, but then I couldn't see the hardware." And he said "No, I mean a voice secure line!" I replied, "You do know that this is a university, don't you? We only have black and green phones.”
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 13:53:45 EDT
From: Steve D. Miller <steve(a)brillig.umd.edu>
To: staff(a)mimsy.umd.edu
Subject: Talking to the Milnet NOC
This message is intended to be a brief tutorial/compendium of
information you probably want to know if you need to see about
getting the LH/DH thingy (and us) talking to the world.
First, you need the following numbers:
(1) Our IMP number (57),
(2) Mimsy's milnet host address (26.2.0.57),
(3) The circuit number for our link to the NSA
(DSEP07500-057)
(4) The NOC number itself (692-5726).
Second, you need to know something about the hardware. There
are three pieces of hardware that make up our side of the link:
the LH/DH itself, the ECU, and the modem. The LH/DH and the
ECU are the things in the vax lab by brillig; the ECU is the
thing on top (with the switches), and the LH/DH is the thing
on the bottom. The normal state is to have the four red LEDs
on the ECU on and the Host Master Ready, HRY, Imp Master Ready,
and IRY lights on at the LH/DH. If these lights are not on,
something is wrong. If mimsy is down, then we'll only have some
of the lights on, but that should fix itself when mimsy comes up.
Some interesting buttons or switches on the ECU are:
reset - resets something or another
stop - stops something or another
start - restarts something or another
local loopback -- two switches and two leds; you may need
to throw one or the other of these if the NOC asks
you to. These loopback switches should be distinguished
from those on the modem itself.
remote loopback -- like local loopback, but does something else.
The modem is in the phone room beside the terminal room (rm.
4322, if memory serves). It can be opened with the chase key from
the key box...but if someone official and outside of staff asks
you that, you probably shouldn't admit to it. It has a switch on
it, too; it seems that switch normally rests in the middle, and
there's a "LL" setting to the left which I assume puts the modem in
local loopback mode.
Now that you have some idea of where things are, call the NOC.
Identify yourself as from the University of Maryland, and say that
we're not talking to the outside world. They will probably ask for
our Milnet address or the number of the IMP we're connected to,
and will then poke about and see what's happening. They will ask
you to do various things; ask if you're not sure what they mean,
but the background info above should help in puzzling it out.
Hopefully, this will make it easier to find people to fix
our net problems in the future; it's still hard to do 'cause
we have so little info (no hardware manual, for example),
but this should give us a fighting chance.
-Steve
There were rumored to be "explosive bolts" on the ARPA/MILNET gateways (whether they were metaphorical or not, I don't know).
Here's something interesting that Milo Medin wrote about dual homed sites like NSA and NASA, that were on both the ARPANET and MILNET:
To: fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Erik E. Fair)
Cc: Hackers_Guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu, ucdavis!ccohesh(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: a question of definition
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 87 15:33:35 PST
From: Milo S. Medin (NASA ARC Code ED) <medin(a)orion.arpa>
Right, the core has many gateways on it now, maybe 20-30. All the LSI's will
be stubbed off the core however, and only buttergates will be left after
the mailbridges and EGP peers are all converted. Actually, I think DARPA is
paying for it all...
Ames is *not* getting a mailbridge. You are right of course, that we could
use 2 gateways, not just 1 (actually, there will be a prime and backup anyways),
and then push routing info appropriately. But that's anything but simple.
Firstly, the hosts have to know which gateway to send a packet to a given
network, and thus have to pick between the 2. That's a bad idea.
It also means that I have to pass all EGP learned info around on the
local cable, and if I do that, then I can't have routing info from
the local cable pass out via EGP. At least not without violating
the current EGP spec. Think about it. It'd be really simple to
create a loop that way. Thus, in order to maximize the use of both
PSN's, you really need one gateway wired to both PSN's, and just
have it advertise a default route inside. Or use a reasonble IGP,
of which RIP (aka /etc/routed stuff) is not. I'm hoping to get
an RFC out of BBN at this IETF meeting which may go a long way in
reducing the use of RIP as an IGP.
BTW, NSA is an example of a site on both MILNET and ARPANET but without
a mailbridge...
There is no restriction that a network can only be on ARPANET or MILNET.
That goes against the Internet model of doing things. Our local
NASA gatewayed nets will be advertised on both sides. The restriction
on BARRNet is that the constituent elements of BARRNet do not all
have access to MILNET. NSF has an understanding with DARPA and
DCA that NSFnet'd sites can use ARPANET. That does not extend to
the MILNET. Thus, Davis can use UCB's or Stanford's, our even NASA's
ARPANET gateways, with the approval of the site of course, but
not MILNET, even though NASA has MILNET coverage. Thus we are required
to restrict BARRNet routing through our MILNET PSN. If we were willing
to sponsor UCB's MILNET access, for some requirement which NASA
had to implement, then we would turn that on. But BARRNet itself will
but cutoff to MILNET (and probably ARPANET too) at Ames, but not
cut off to other NASA centers or sites that NASA connects. There is
no technical reason that prevents this, in fact, we have to take
special measures to prevent it. But those are the rules. Anyways,
mailbridge performance should improve after the conversion, so
UCB should be in better shape. And you'll certainly be able to
talk to us via BARRNnet... I have noticed recently that MILNET<->
ARPANET performance has been particularly poor... Sigh.
The DCA folks feel that in case of an emergency they may be
forced to use an unsecure network to pass certain info around. The
DDN brochure mentions SIOP related data for example. Who knows,
if the balloon goes up, the launch order might pass through Evans
Hall on its way out to SAC... :-)
Milo
I dug up an "explosive bolts" reference -- fortunately that brilliant plan didn't get far.
(Milo Medin knows this stuff first hand: https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio-Display/Article/139585… )
To: fair(a)ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Erik E. Fair)
Cc: ucdavis!ccohesh(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu, Hackers_Guild(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: a question of definition
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 87 12:29:36 PST
From: Milo S. Medin (NASA ARC Code ED) <medin(a)orion.arpa>
Actually its:
SCINET -- Secret Compartmented Information Net (if you don't know what
compartmented means, you don't need to ask)
DODIIS -- DoD Intelligence Information Net
The other stuff I think is right, at least without me looking things
up. I probably shouldn't have brought this subject of the secure part
of the DDN up. People like being low key about such things...
Erik, all the BBN gateways on MILNET and ARPANET currently comprise
the core, not just mailbridges. Some are used as site gateways, others
as EGP neighbors, etc... And just because you are dual homed doesn't mean
you get a mailbridge. And the IETF doesn't deal with low level stuff
like that; DCA does all that. In fact, the reason we are getting an
ARPANET PSN is because when DCA came out to do a site survey, they
liked our site so much they asked if they could put one here! It's
amazing how many sites have tried to get ARPANET PSN's the right
way and have had to wait much longer than us... BTW, since we are
dual homed (probably a gateway with 2 1822 interfaces in it), we
are taking steps to be sure that people on ARPANET or MILNET can't
use our gateway to bypass the mailbridges. The code will be hacked
to drop all packets that aren't going to a locally reachable network.
BARRNet, even though its locally reachable, will be excluded
from this however, since the current procedural limitations call for
not allowing any BARRNet traffic to flow out of BARRNet to MILNET
and the reverse. NASA traffic of course can traffic through BARRNet,
and even use ARPANET that way (though that's not a big deal when
we get our own ARPANET PSN). That's because only NASA is authorized
to directly connect to MILNET, not UCB or Stanford, etc...
DCA must have the ability to partition the ARPANET and MILNET in
case of an "emergency", and having non-DCA controlled paths between
the nets prevents that. There was talk some time ago about putting
explosive bolts in the mailbridges that would be triggered by
destruct packets... That idea didn't get far though...
The DDN only includes MILNET,ARPANET,SCINET,etc... Not the attached
networks. If it did, you'd need to file a TSR to add a PC to your
local cable. A TSR is a monstrous piece of paperwork that needs to
be done anytime anything is changed on the DDN... Rick knows all
about them don't you Rick?
The whole network game is filled with acronyms! I gave up trying
to write documents with full explainations in terms long ago...
I have yet to see a short and concise (and correct) way of describing
DDN X.25 Standard Service for example... That's probably one of the
harder things about getting into networking these days. We won't
even talk about Etherbunnies and Martians and other Millspeak...
Milo '1822' Medin
The issue of a.out magic numbers came up. The a.out header was 16 bytes. The first two bytes was 0407 in the original code. This was followed by 16 bit quantities for text, data, and bss sizes. Then the size of the symbol tables. I'm pretty sure the rest of the fields were blank in V6. Later a start address (previously always assumed to be zero) was added.
The number 407 was a neat kludge. It was a (relative) branch instruction on the PDP-11. 0400 was the base op code. 7 referred to jumping ahead 7 words which skipped you over the a.out header (the PC had already been incremented for the branch instruction itself). This allowed you to make a boot block without having to strip off the header. Boot blocks were just one 512 byte block loaded from block zero of the disk into low memory.
Later executables used 410 for a write protected text segment and 411 for split-I/D executables. Later versions added more codes (413 was used in BSD to indicate aligned pages followed etc... Even later systems coded the hardware type into the magic number to distinguish between different architectures.
Note that the fact that 410 and 411 were also PDP-11 branch instructions wasn't ever really used for anything.
According to my notes, the ARPAnet was converted from NCP to TCP on this
day in 1983; except for a temporary dispensation for a few hosts, NCP
support was switched off.
And as every Unix geek knows, today in 1970 is Unix's time epoch.
Trivia: I found a web site that thinks that that's my birthday! Not even
close; try October 1952 instead...
-- Dave
Warner Losh:
But wasn't it tsort that did the heavy lifting to get things in order?
ar c foo.a `tsort *.o`
Ranlib just made it fast by adding an index..
====
There's a little more than that to ranlib.
Without ranlib, ld made a single pass through each library,
loading the modules that resolved unresolved symbols. If
a module itself had unresolved symbols (as many do) and
some of those symbols were defined in a module ld had
already passed, you were out of luck, unless you explicitly
told ld to run a second pass, e.g. cc x.o y.o -la -la.
Hence the importance of explicit ordering when building
the library archive, and the usefulness of tsort.
Ranlib makes a list of all the .o file in this archive and
the global symbols defined or used by each module, and
places the list first in the archive. If ld is (as it
was) changed to recognize the index, it can then make a
list of all the object files needed from this archive, even
if needed only by some file it will load from the same
archive, then collect all required modules in a single pass.
Ld could all along have just made two passes through the
library, one to assemble the same list ranlib did in advance,
a second to load the files. (Or perhaps a first pass to
load what it knows it needs and assemble the list, and a
second only if necessary.) Presumably it didn't both to
make ld simpler and because disk I/O was much slower back
then (especially on a heavily-loaded time-sharing system,
something far less common today). I suspect it would work
fine just to do it that way today.
Nowadays ranlib is no longer a separate program: ar
recognizes object files and maintains an index if any are
present. I never especially liked that; ar is in
principle a general tool so why should it have a special
case for one type of file? But in practice I don't know
anyone who uses ar for anything except libraries any more
(everyone uses tar for the general case, since it does a
better job). Were I to wave flags over the matter I'd
rather push to ditch ar entirely save for compatibility
with the past, move to using tar rather than ar for object
libraries, and let ld do two passes when necessary rather
than requiring that libraries be specially prepared. As
I say, I think modern systems are fast enough that that
would work fine.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
Happy New Year to you all. It's also the year we will celebrate the
50th anniversary of the Unix timesharing system. Just FYI, I hope to
be in Los Angeles the week before the 2019 Usenix ATC, to go to the
CHM. Then to Seattle before the ATC to visit the LCM+L, then the ATC.
Hope to see some of you along the way.
I'm feeling the need to get a few other people to help out curate and
maintain the Unix Archive. Not that it changes very often, but it might
help to have some fresh eyes (and opinions) look at it and add/improve it.
So if there is any interest from a few of the long-time TUHS members,
please e-mail me. I run Nextcloud on the server, so if you can run a
client at your end and have about 4G spare disk space (or less if
you are only interested in a specific section), that would be great.
I'll be away for about 7 days but I'll try to read/respond to e-mails.
Cheers, Warren
I found this project online recently. For those who love K&R and the 64 bit world.
https://github.com/gnuless/ncc
It outputs to a custom a.out format so it's not immediately usable.
It's a dual clause BSD license too!
