Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> comments on the use of "home
directory" on Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:14:19 -0400 (EDT):
>> I _did_ find "home directory" in the ITS documentation; the oldest doc file I
>> found it in was dated 5/25/79. If ITS was the source, not sure how it spread -
>> maybe via EMACS?
I looked in my own TECO code (> 12K lines), and found "home directory"
in two files with internal date headers from 1983.
I scanned my archive of TOPS-20 emacs source code and found these
uses:
% grep -i 'home dire' *
babyl.info:operating system; this file resides in the user's "home directory" and
conv.info:stands for the user's home directory. If neither file exists, the
emacs.info:Home Directory Your home directory is the one on which your mail and
emacs.info: may be the same as your home directory's name.
emacs.mss:@Index{Home Directory}@Index{User Name}
emacs.mss:it should be called @ITS{<home directory>;<user name> EVARS instead of EMACS.}
emacs.mss:@Index{Home Directory}
emacs.mss:EMACS into the file @ITS[<home directory>;TS ESAVE](a)Twenex[ESAVE.EXE]
Binary file mkdump.info matches
teco.archiv:*) FS U HSNAMEnd FS U MAILllow you to get a user's home directory
teco.archiv:* FS HSNAME$ is the user's home directory, as a numeric sixbit word.
teco.archiv:On old versions of ITS that don't have home directories, it is the
teco.archiv:same as FS MSNAME$. The home directory is (presumably) where such things
teco.archiv: B) People whose home directory is a shared directory
tecord.info: If you @EJ a file TS FOO on your home directory, then FOO^K
tecord.info:FS HSNAME s the user's home directory. The home directory
tecord.ref:FS HSNAME user's home directory
tecord.ref:FS U HSNAME used to determine a user's home directory
Here are the file dates:
% grep -l -i 'home dire' * | xargs ls -log
-rw-r--r-- 1 51376 Jun 5 1981 babyl.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 81689 Oct 16 1981 conv.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 466772 Dec 28 1981 emacs.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 412673 Oct 16 1981 emacs.mss
-rw-r--r-- 1 12570 May 24 1982 mkdump.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 121865 Oct 16 1981 teco.archiv
-rw-r--r-- 1 225207 Oct 16 1981 tecord.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 16407 Dec 28 1981 tecord.ref
In another directory named emacs-162, there were 18 files containing
"home directory"; the oldest is dated 6-Mar-1980.
However, when I dug into teco.archiv, I found that the match occurred
in a change log block that begins
TECO 699:
RMS 10/14/77 Many changes
...
ITS only:
Thus, 14-Oct-1977 is the earliest date that I can find for "home
directory", credited to Richard Stallman.
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- University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
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> My memory is that the term "home directory" predates /home - perhaps on
> other OS's such as TOPS-20, but I don't have time to research that.
Well, I looked at the "Introduction to MIT-XX" (a TOPS-20 machine), and it
also used the terms "logged-in directory" (home dir) and "connected directory"
(current dir).
I couldn't find any use of 'home' in the V6 documentation.
I _did_ find "home directory" in the ITS documentation; the oldest doc file I
found it in was dated 5/25/79. If ITS was the source, not sure how it spread -
maybe via EMACS?
Noel
> I couldn't find any use of 'home' in the V6 documentation.
$HOME was set by default in v7. It probably dates from the
advent of enviroment variables.
Doug
At college we had /h but that may be an interdata/edition7 thing. mine was /h/beng4/ssimon.
each course/year was in a separate disk partition - if group filled their partition other groups could still work.
-Steve
As a followup to discussions on this thread about hardware
architectures, some of you may be interested in this new letter
published today:
Letters to the editor: Hennessy and Patterson on the roots of RISC
Comm. ACM 61(10) 6 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3273019http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/3280000/3273019/p6-friedman.pdf
The short two-paragraph letter is from Fred Brooks, noted computer
architect, author, and computer scientist.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Dan Cross
> particular in sites with lots of users like universities and
> production-focused corporate groups
The existence of /usr, /usr/bin, /etc, /lib, etc dates back to the Research
group at Bell, so I don't think we can look to these other environments for an
explanation.
> "Hmm. Well, we've got space in /usr: create /usr/bin
I seem to recall reading (don't recall where, OTTOMY) an explanation for the
creation of /usr/bin, and I think it was performance related; IIRC the issue
was that they wanted to keep the directory size down (both for disk block
caching, and search time, reasons). Or maybe that was later on, and it was
originally created for 'user-maintained' ancillary programs (another vague
memory)?
> The more intriguing possibility from the antiquarian point of view is
> whether someone coined "/home" and then THAT led to the rise of the "home
> directory" nomenclature.
My memory is that the term "home directory" predates /home - perhaps on other
OS's such as TOPS-20, but I don't have time to research that. (I did look
quickly in the Multics docs, and it has 'working directory', i.e. current dir
- but it refers to the home dir as 'original WD', i.e. the WD at the time of
login.)
Noel
> From: Jon Forrest
> Another reason why the home directory part of /usr was made into /home
> is because after doing so, it was possible to mount /usr read-only, and
> supply it from a server.
The real issue is that /usr contained stuff which wasn't true 'user data' -
e.g. /usr/bin. The reasons for that must have seemed good at the time it
started, but it was IMO a mistake. (Disgression about partitions, physical
packs, etc elided for now.)
Noel
> Did the 5150 have a UNIX available anywhere near its launch date? I know
> that it had DOS, CP/M-86, and the UCSD p-System relatively early on. It's
> not clear to me whether Xenix ever supported the original PC; were there
> other early porting efforts?
The first version of Venix-86 ran on the PC/XT, almost a 5150, in May 83. It was V7 based. I think it was the first Unix on a PC.
Heinz Lycklama (who did Unix LSX and MX at Bell labs in the 70’s) did PC/IX about a year later, based on Sys III. This was marketed by IBM.
Based on the early Xenix porting chart here http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html , a PC/XT version of Xenix appeared around the same time as PC/IX. However, if the chart is correct there may have been Xenix versions for other 8086-based machines a year before that. Note that in this chart the “Xenix 2.0” and “Xenix 3.0” labels refer to MS internal versions, i.e. these numbers are not to be confused with the marketing labels IBM PC Xenix 2.0 and 3.0.
These versions are a hole in the TUHS archive (unless they are in the confidential archive). It would be wonderful if MS would open up pre-1984 Xenix on the occasion of Unix 50th. These builds would well illustrate the broad Unix portability, which was unique at the time.
Paul
> From: Arthur Krewat
> Also, granted, to this day you can still use only 8-bits of a register:
Yeah, but that's not totally useless; lots of byte-organized data out there in
the world, e.g. ASCII strings. 16-bit data, less so, although there is some in
networking protocols (checksums, ports, etc - although the checksums you
_compute_ using bigger chunks).
(Not a defense of the x86 instruction set, mind!)
Noel
