On 10/4/21 12:22 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
My question is: how was this sort of thing done in the
real world? If
I was a site running stock 4.3BSD, would I have received (or been able
to request) updated tapes at regular intervals? The replacement
process that I have been using is fairly labor intensive and on a real
VAX would have been very time intensive too. Fortunately two to three
years' worth of changes were not so drastic that I ever found myself
in a position where the existing tools were not able to compile pieces
of Tahoe that I needed to proceed, but I could easily imagine finding
myself in such a place. (This was, by the way, what I ran into when
attempting to upgrade from 2.9BSD to 2.10BSD, despite a fully
documented contemporary upgrade procedure).
Hi Henry,
I expect folks who actually ran this can weigh in with the 'real world'
perspective. What I can offer is that the document entitled, "Installing
and Operating 4.3BSD-tahoe UNIX* on the VAX" by the folks doing the
release (CSRG) is probably canonical:
http://blog.livedoor.jp/suzanhud/BSD/4.3BSD_Tahoe_VAX.pdf
There's a section on migrating 4.2/4.3 to tahoe and the like. After it's
up and running, it looks a little shy on details, but getting there
seems well enough documented. If it's anything like 1bsd+, it seems like
it was usually unpack and copy to the right locations, with the
occasional compile with the right options thrown in.
Will