Thanks, Doug and Warren, for the new files at
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/McIlroy_v0/
At the TUHS mirror at my site, you can find an additional file
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/mirrors/minnie.tuhs.org/PDP-11/Distributions/r…ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/mirrors/minnie.tuhs.org/PDP-11/Distributions/re…
that is less than half the size, and is (somewhat) searchable, thanks
to Adobe Acrobat Pro 11 OCR conversion. Please include that in the
TUHS master archive, even renaming it to the original file, if you
wish.
I like the beginning of "Section 2. Hardware", where Dennis wrote:
>> ...
>> The PDP-11 on which UNIX is implemented is a 16-bit 12K computer,
>> and UNIX occupies 8K words. More than half of this space, however, is
>> utilized for a variable number of disk buffers; with some loss of
>> speed the number of buffers could be cut significantly.
>> ...
How much more powerful early Unix was compared to CP/M and MS-DOS, in
a small fraction of their memory space!
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> Woe betide the user if any string was changed at run time...
That was then. Now it would be OK to do so for const data.
(Unless the tool chain has discarded const indications.)
Doug
> It's worth noting that Unix was built for troff. Typesetting patents
if I recall correctly.
This is a stretch. Unix was really built because Ken and Dennis
had a good idea. The purchase of a PDP-11 for it was in part
justified by the goal of making a word-processing system. The
first in-house "sale" of Unix was indeed to the patent department
for typing patents--the selling point was that roff could be
made (by an overnight modification) to print line numbers as
USPTO required, whereas that was not a feature of a commercial
competitor. The timeline is really roff--Unix--patent--nroff--troff.
Though roff antedated Unix, it did not motivate Unix.
> Is this The UNIX Time-Sharing System, or related to it? The same
> claim appears in the first paragraph:
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cacm.html
This draft clearly dates from 1971. Pieces of it were worked
into subsequent versions of the manual as well as published
descriptions of Unix, including the SIGOPS/CACM paper.
Doug
Hi,
I wanted to at least give it a try porting 2.11 BSD to my Z8001
machine. I din't really wrote any kernel part until now so it
will be a huge learning curve for sure. No idea what my spare
time permits, but... at least I'm planning giving it a try.
I didn't found something like "thing you should do first when
porting 2.11 BSD to another architecture" online so I thought
myself... maybe it would be good to start with the standalone
utilities - more precisely with "disklabel".
Is there a good "HOWTO" for "first things first" as implementing
disklabel seems to require quite some "device work" before the
first "hello world" is there - is there something else which
should be could be done first and does not require so much to
port (the whole disk subsystem on that machine is different
from "usual" disk subsystems as it is handled via a PIO)
Regards, Oliver
I know that I'm jumping the gun a bit, but if/when someone has any news
of any 50th anniversary celebrations for Unix in mid-2019?
I'd love to start planning things now, given I'm in Australia and I also
need to convince my darling wife of the need for a holiday in the U.S
[or elsewhere 8-) ].
I will keep asking every six months.
Cheers, Warren
> I've not seen anything before Dennis' scan of the 1st
> Edition manuals. Can you make a scan of this one available?
I shall, as I had intended to do if this document was as
unknown or forgotten by others as it was by me.
Doug
> The phototypesetter version of Unix was V7.
I'm not sure of what's being said here. Manuals from
the 4th edition on were phototypeaet, first on a
CAT and later a Linotron (if I remember the name right).
Doug
Hi all, I just receivd this e-mail from Will Senn who has just joined
the TUHS mailing list:
----- Forwarded message from Will Senn -----
Hi,
I am conducting research on older UNIX operating systems and came
across a letter from Richard Wolf to Ian Johnstone, dated Feb 5, 1979.
On p. 29 of the AUUGN, Volume 1 number 3, Mr. Wolf refers to a set of
101 fixes for research version 6. In my research, I am currently using
v6 and wondered if you knew where I might find the fixes or if the
bits are known to exist?
Kind Regards,
Will
----- End forwarded message -----
Will, there was a "50 bugs" tape for 6th Edition Unix that was "released"
to Unix owners in a very interesting distribution method: see
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20060616172103795
You can find it in the Unix Archive. Look in Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz. It is the file usr/sys/v6unix/unix_changes.
Does anybody know of something which could be described as "101 fixes for
research version 6"? The phototypesetter version of Unix was V7.
Cheers all and welcome to the list Will.
Warren
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.unix/Cya18ywIebk/2SI8HrSciyYJ
Apparently the 8th Edition shell had the ability to export functions via
the environment.
I'm wondering - were there (are there?) any other shells other than bash
that picked up this feature? How was it implemented, considering this
was the cause of the "Shellshock" vulnerability?
I was amused to see it come up in one of the olduse.net newsgroups I've
been following.
Interestingly, the SysIII version of cut.c does not have the line
mentioned here. That's because it doesn't initialize _any_ of the flag
variables. The line was added some time between then and SysV, and that
is the _only_ significant change between the SysIII and pdp11v versions.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.bugs.usg/iAkgNVBJNSo/PgXAC2vi044J
