23 Apr
2018
23 Apr
'18
9:09 p.m.
On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 2:41 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
Speaking of fixed-head disks, one of the Bell
systems used (IIRC) an RS04
fixed-head disk for the root. DEC apparently only used that disk for
swapping
in their OS's... So the DEC diagnsotics felt free to scribble on the disk.
So, Field Circus comes in to work on the machine... Ooops!
teklabs 11/70 the RS04 was /tmp not quite an dangerous as root, but
since the fs got wiped out the system would not boot - as it would fail
trying to mount /tmp.
IIRC the it was the field exerciser that did that by default. I seem to
remember that you could configure it to use something else like the field
service pack itself or may be not disk at all, but if I remember right if
the exerciser found an RS04 it thought it was available by default. So, I
had a big sticker on the FS pack that said see me before you loaded it
after the first time the service guys took out /tmp.
ᐧ