Re: [TUHS] Unix v6 File System information

Already been done: see http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/ Arnold Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote: > ​Will Senn asked > >> Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of a V6 filesystem > > on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in simh as an RK05 and >> > mount and access its files and directories from a V6 instance? >> > ​Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and > Ersatz11)​ > > ​ work. > You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command > system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05. > ​But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly, > since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools to > push/pull V6 "files" from the image. This is the same as the "DOS Tools" > trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT file > system images. You would need to do the same thing. If you poke around > the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there. > > ​What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of using > a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image. Then use tar/cpio or > whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits. > Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago. The UNIX ar(1) format is > sometimes used also, since it was common. cpio -c also works, but that > was not on the research systems.​ My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote a > really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX. That should back port to > v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler for > V6 which supported enough of the V7 C. The advantage of the ANSI tape > format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX. > > > That said, you can be smarter and more automatic. As Noel says Ersatz11 > supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do. > Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many > different emulators. Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with such a > shared FS. At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work. > > The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would be > Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff that > Google released. If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could mount > the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools. > I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time. If I ever > became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more > like this. > > Clem