TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

6532 discussions

Re: [TUHS] Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark Longridge > I'm not sure where Unix v1 is loading the kernel from. > From: Warren Toomey > Have a look here: https://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/ Thanks for the pointer! From poking around there, it looks like V1 had special 'cold boot' and 'warm boot' disk partitions. I wonder why they lost the 'warm boot' capability in later versions? Maybe it became reliable enough that the extra complexity of supporting it wasn't worth it? Noel

10 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark Longridge <cubexyz(a)gmail.com> > I'm not sure where Unix v1 is loading the kernel from. .. In all the > other versions of Unix there was always a file like 'unix' in the root > directory but I guess Unix v1 was different? I don't know much about the other versions, but it would all depend on what's in the bootstrap (usually contained in block 0 of drive 0, at least on older 11's). In V6, the bootstrap in block 0 prompts for a file name, and when that is entered, it loads that file into memory and starts it. (It doesn't have to be in the root directory, IIRC - I'm pretty sure the bootstrap will accept full path names.) How did you create a V1 filesystem? (I don't know, BTW, what they look like - is that documented anywhere?) It's probably not the same layout as the V6 (which I think is the same as V5). Noel

10 years, 1 month

Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by Mark Longridge

Ok, I looked around for the instructions on how to assemble the Unix v1 kernel and couldn't find anything so I tried: as u0.s u1.s u2.s u3.s u4.s u5.s u6.s u7.s u8.s u9.s ux.s and that made a.out and I stripped it and it looked like it was around the same size as /etc/core (it was 16400 bytes rather than 16448 for some reason). I'm not sure where Unix v1 is loading the kernel from. I'm guessing it's /etc/core and if that's the case then I must have been successful building the kernel. In all the other versions of Unix there was always a file like 'unix' in the root directory but I guess Unix v1 was different? Mark

10 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Project Athena archive

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Sergey Lapin > Is there some archives of project Athena? > I'd like to see how it was back then... There is an _very_ extensive online archive of stuff here: http://web.mit.edu/afs/ and what you're looking for might be in there _somewhere_. If not, I know some people I can ask (I never used it myself). But, if so, a bit more detail? Athena was huge, presumably you don't want all the students' files! But just the operating system? (IIRC it was initially mostly 4.3BSD, with some minor extensions.) Or the tools and applications they wrote as well? (E.g. X-Windows, IIRC, came from Athena.) Most of that does seem to be in that archive. Noel

10 years, 2 months

Project Athena archive

by Sergey Lapin

Hi, all! Is there some archives of project Athena? I'd like to see how it was back then... Thanks, S.

10 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70

by Doug McIlroy

To tell whether Ken installed v6 or a copy of his home system, look at /usr/dict/words. On the home system that file is the wordlist from Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 7th edition, licensed for Bell Labs use only. On distribution systems we substituted the wordlist for "spell". The latter list contains many more proper names, acronyms, etc than the dictionary did, in particular names that appear in Unix documentation such as Ritchie, Kernighan, and McIlroy. It also lacks lots of trivially derivable words like "organizationally". If you do have the Webster file rather than the spell file, please don't propagate it. Doug

10 years, 2 months

Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70

by Jacob Goense

I'm experimenting with adapting Unix history and lore using the new EXPECT/SEND feature in simh. My favorite guinea pig is the story of Ken Thompsons sabbatical at Berkeley where he brings up V6 on new 11/70 with Bob Kridle and Jeff Schriebman. Any details not yet recorded in obvious places[1] are of course more than welcome! One of the things I'm trying to get right is what they actually brought up there initially in 1975. This must have been standard V6 or the Bell UNIX Ken brought with him, but I can't figure it out. Salus has Schriebman, Haley and Joy installing the fixes on the 50 bugs tape late summer 1976. This suggests it was stock V6 initially, but they might have been playing on a different system or working from a fresh install in 1976. If it was stock V6 initially, what were they waiting for? Legal stuff? If it was 1975 Bell UNIX, can I reconstruct this using the 54 patches collected by Mike O'Brien[2], or is that going to be way off from what Thompson left in Urbana-Champaign with Greg Chesson in 1975? [1] http://www.tuhs.org/books.html minus the Bell journals for example [2] Hidden in /usr/sys/v6unix/unix_changes in one of the Spencer tapes http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz

10 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Three Questions

by Doug McIlroy

> Does anything at all exist of PDP-7 Unics? All I know about is that > there was a B language interpreter. Maybe a printout of the manual has > survived? There was no manual. doug

10 years, 3 months

Three Questions

by Mark Longridge

Ok, the first question is: Has anyone got Unix sysv running on PDP-11 via simh? I downloaded some files from archive.org which included the file 'sys_V_tape' but so far I haven't got anywhere with it. Looks interesting though. Second question is: What is the deal with Unix version 8? Except for the manuals v8 seems to have disappeared into the twilight zone. Wikipedia doesn't say much, only "Used internally, and only licensed for educational use". So can we look at the source code? Was it sold in binary form only? Ok, now the big question: Does anything at all exist of PDP-7 Unics? All I know about is that there was a B language interpreter. Maybe a printout of the manual has survived? Mark

10 years, 3 months

Three Questions

by norman＠oclsc.org

Mark Longridge: What is the deal with Unix version 8? Except for the manuals v8 seems to have disappeared into the twilight zone. Wikipedia doesn't say much, only "Used internally, and only licensed for educational use". So can we look at the source code? Was it sold in binary form only? ======= The Eighth Edition system was never released in any general way, only to a few educational institutions (I forget the number but it was no more than a dozen) under specific letter agreements that forbade redistribution. It was never sold, in source or binary or any other form; the tape included a bootstrap image and full source code. I was involved in all this--in fact one of the first nontrivial things I did after arriving at Bell Labs was to help Dennis assemble the tape--but that was more than 30 years ago and the details have faded. The system as distributed ran only on the VAX-11/750 and 11/780. The bootstrap image on the tape was probably more restrictive than that; if one of the licensees needed something different to get started we would have tried to make it, but I don't remember whether that ever happened. Later systems (loosely corresponding to the Ninth and Tenth editions of the manual) ran on a somewhat wider set of VAXes, in particular the MicroVAX II and III and the VAX 8700 and 8550 (but not the dual- processor 8800). There was never a real distribution of either of those systems, though a few sites made special requests and got hand-crafted snapshots under the same restrictive letter agreement. So far as I know, no Research UNIX system after 7/e has ever been made available under anything but a special letter agreement. There was at one point some discussion amongst several interested parties (including me and The Esteemed Warren Toomey) about strategies to open up the later source code, but that was quashed by the IBM vs The SCO Group lawsuit. It would likely be very hard to make happen now, because I doubt there's anyone left inside Bell Labs with both the influence and the interest, though I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong on that. I know of one place in the world where (a descendant of) that system is still running, but I am not at the moment in a position to say where that is. I do know, however, of at least two places where there are safe copies of the source code, so it is unlikely to disappear from the historic record even if that record cannot be made open for a long time. Norman Wilson Toronto ON (Computing Science Research Centre, Bell Labs, 1984-1990)

10 years, 3 months

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TUHS