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
> 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
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
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)
There was a posting on the SIMH list today from Joerg Hoppe
<j_hoppe(a)t-online.de> about a project to build a microfiche scanner
that has now successfully converted 53,545 document pages to
electronic form, and the files are being uploaded to the PDP-11
section of bitsavers.org. The scanner is described here:
http://retrocmp.com/projects/scanning-micro-fiches
There are links on that page to the rest of the story. It is an
amazing piece of work for a single person.
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- 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 -
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Claude Shannon passed away on this day in 2001.
Regarded as the Father of Information Theory, I doubt whether you'll go
through a day without bumping into him: computers, electronics, file
compression, audio sampling, you name it and he was probably behind it.
Please take a moment to remember him.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Bliss is a MacBook with a FreeBSD server."
http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html (and check the home page whilst you're there)
> From: Mark Longridge
> There's no reason for it to be mode 777 is there?
Not that I know of. Once UNIX has booted, it has no use for 'unix' (or
whatever file it booted from), and the boot loader doesn't even read the mode.
I think I habitually set mine to 644. (The 'execute' bits are, of course,
pointless...)
Noel
I just had it brought to my attention that the unix kernel is mode 777
in Unix v5 and v6:
ls -l /unix
-rwxrwx 1 root 27066 Mar 23 1975 /unix
There's no reason for it to be mode 777 is there? It seems rather dangerous.
In Unix v7 it defaults to mode 775 and in 32v it is 755. I figure it
setting it to mode 755 will work and so far it seems fine in v5.
Mark
> From: Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org>
>> Once UNIX has booted, it has no use for 'unix' (or whatever file it
>> booted from)
> Didn't "ps" try and read its symbol table?
Sorry, meant 'UNIX the monolithic kernel'; yes, ps and siblings (e.g. iostat)
need to get the running system's symbol table.
> I had fun days when I booted, say, "/unix.new", and "ps" wouldn't
> sodding work...
Know that feeling! I added the following to one of the kernel data files:
char *endsys &end;
and then in programs which grab the system's symbol table, I have an nlist()
entry:
"_endsys",
with the follwing code:
/* Check that the namelist applies to the current system.
*/
checknms(symfile)
char *symfile;
{ char *chkloc, *chkval;
if (nl[0].type == 0)
cerror("No namelist\n");
chkloc = nl[ENDSYS].value;
chkval = rdloc(chkloc);
if (chkval != nl[END].value) {
cerror("Symbol table in %s doesn't match running system\n",
symfile);
}
}
on the theory that pretty much any change at all is going to result in a
change in the system's size (and thus the address of 'end').
Although in a split I/D system, this may not be true (you could change the
code, and have the data+BSS remain the same size); I should probably check
the location of 'etext' as well...
Anyway, a rebuilt system may result in the address of 'endsys' changing, and
thus the rdloc() won't return the contents of the running system's 'endsys',
but the chances of an essentially-random fetch being the same as the value of
'end' in /unix are pretty slim, I would say...
Noel
