1 Oct
2019
1 Oct
'19
8:38 a.m.
Ok. I know there was never a v6.5... officially. But there are several
references to that in different bits of the early user group news letters.
This refers to v6 plus all the patches that "leaked" out of bell Labs via
udel and Lou Katz.
My question is, have they survived? The story sure has, but I didn't find
them in the archive..
1 Oct
1 Oct
8:54 a.m.
On Mon, 30 Sep 2019, Warner Losh wrote:
Ok. I know there was never a v6.5... officially. But
there are several
references to that in different bits of the early user group news letters.
This refers to v6 plus all the patches that "leaked" out of bell Labs via
udel and Lou Katz.
My question?is,? have they survived? The story sure has, but I didn't find them
in the archive..?
I think these are the same as what went other places too.
See
Archive/Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz
unsw3/usr/sys/v6unix/ directory.
has annotated changes and a diff
(following from my writings...)
In preparation to his year sabbatical, Thompson put together a Unix
system to take. ``Since it was almost a release, I made a `diff' with
V6. On the way to Berkeley, I stopped by Urbana-Champaign ... I left the
`diff' tape there and ... [said] I wouldn't mind it if it got
around.''\cite{salus2008}
At the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, research assistant Mike
O'Brien got a copy of the single-file diff (from Thompson directly). Its
main purpose was to keep the Bell Labs systems from crashing. O'Brien
went through it, diff by diff, and annotated it so others would have
some idea of what it was what and whether they were
useful.\cite{mikeobrien1}
...
By the end of the summer, Haley and Joy began to explore the kernel
internals. With Schriebman's observance, they installed the fixes
and improvements provided on the ``fifty changes'' tape from Bell Labs.
As they learned to maneuver through the kernel code, they suggested
several small enhancements to streamline certain
bottlenecks.\cite{mckusick85}
9:25 a.m.
Right. That’s the V6 diff tape. I’m not sure where the story of it coming from Lou comes
from (I’ve never heard that before to be honest). But the source for many of us was Kens
trip to CA and the stop to see Chesson at U of I.
I don’t remember who gave it to us at CMU at the time but like copies of the Lions book
there was an active underground in those days.
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite.
On Sep 30, 2019, at 10:54 PM, reed(a)reedmedia.net
wrote:
On Mon, 30 Sep 2019, Warner Losh wrote:
Ok. I know there was never a v6.5... officially. But there are several
references to that in different bits of the early user group news letters.
This refers to v6 plus all the patches that "leaked" out of bell Labs via
udel and Lou Katz.
My question?is,? have they survived? The story sure has, but I didn't find them
in the archive..?
I think these are the same as what went other places too.
See
Archive/Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz
unsw3/usr/sys/v6unix/ directory.
has annotated changes and a diff
(following from my writings...)
In preparation to his year sabbatical, Thompson put together a Unix
system to take. ``Since it was almost a release, I made a `diff' with
V6. On the way to Berkeley, I stopped by Urbana-Champaign ... I left the
`diff' tape there and ... [said] I wouldn't mind it if it got
around.''\cite{salus2008}
At the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, research assistant Mike
O'Brien got a copy of the single-file diff (from Thompson directly). Its
main purpose was to keep the Bell Labs systems from crashing. O'Brien
went through it, diff by diff, and annotated it so others would have
some idea of what it was what and whether they were
useful.\cite{mikeobrien1}
...
By the end of the summer, Haley and Joy began to explore the kernel
internals. With Schriebman's observance, they installed the fixes
and improvements provided on the ``fifty changes'' tape from Bell Labs.
As they learned to maneuver through the kernel code, they suggested
several small enhancements to streamline certain
bottlenecks.\cite{mckusick85}
11 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 9:25 PM Clem cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Right. That’s the V6 diff tape.
Yea. This copy looks like it has been applied and has the commentary on
it. A rather nice find. There are a plethora of copies of v6 with changes
here and there for bug fixes and new drivers.
The other nugget is that "many of the changes ... are in our own sources"
suggesting they are in AUSAM since unsw was part of that effort...
I'll have to audit the diffs between v6.5 and v7...
I’m not sure where the story of it coming from Lou comes from (I’ve never
heard that before to be honest).
Wikipedia :). It comes from our friend Warren:
Toomey, Warren (December 2011). "The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix"
<http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix/0>
. *IEEE Spectrum <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_Spectrum>*. IEEE
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE>. Retrieved December 15, 2012.
Maybe he can say...
Warner
But the source for many of us was Kens trip to CA and the stop to see
Chesson at U of I.
I don’t remember who gave it to us at CMU at the time but like copies of
the Lions book there was an active underground in those days.
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
quite.
On Sep 30, 2019, at 10:54 PM, reed(a)reedmedia.net
wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Sep 2019, Warner Losh wrote:
>
> Ok. I know there was never a v6.5... officially. But there are several
> references to that in different bits of the early user group news
letters.
> This refers to v6 plus all the patches that
"leaked" out of bell Labs
via
> udel and Lou Katz.
> My question?is,? have they survived? The story sure has, but I didn't
find them
in the
archive..?
I think these are the same as what went other places too.
See
Archive/Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz
unsw3/usr/sys/v6unix/ directory.
has annotated changes and a diff
(following from my writings...)
In preparation to his year sabbatical, Thompson put together a Unix
system to take. ``Since it was almost a release, I made a `diff' with
V6. On the way to Berkeley, I stopped by Urbana-Champaign ... I left the
`diff' tape there and ... [said] I wouldn't mind it if it got
around.''\cite{salus2008}
At the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, research assistant Mike
O'Brien got a copy of the single-file diff (from Thompson directly). Its
main purpose was to keep the Bell Labs systems from crashing. O'Brien
went through it, diff by diff, and annotated it so others would have
some idea of what it was what and whether they were
useful.\cite{mikeobrien1}
...
By the end of the summer, Haley and Joy began to explore the kernel
internals. With Schriebman's observance, they installed the fixes
and improvements provided on the ``fifty changes'' tape from Bell Labs.
As they learned to maneuver through the kernel code, they suggested
several small enhancements to streamline certain
bottlenecks.\cite{mckusick85}
11:56 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 11:00:44PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
Wikipedia :). It comes from our friend Warren:
Toomey, Warren (December 2011). [2]"The Strange Birth and Long Life of
Unix". [3]IEEE Spectrum. [4]IEEE. Retrieved December 15, 2012.
Maybe he can say...
Actually it comes from Salus' "A Quarter Century of Unix", pg. 139:
Lou Katz’s version is a bit different:
A large number of bug fixes was collected, and rather than
issue them one at a time, a collection tape (”The 50 fixes”)
was put together by Ken. Some of the fixes were quite important,
though I don't remember any in particular. I suspect
that a significant fraction of the fixes were actually done by
non-Bell people. Ken tried to send it out, but the lawyers kept
stalling and stalling and stalling.
Finally, in complete disgust, someone "found a tape on
Mountain Avenue” which had the fixes. [The address of Bell
Labs is 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ.]
When the lawyers found out about it, they called every
licensee and threatened them with dire consequences if they
didn’t destroy the tape, after trying to find out how they got
the tape. I would guess that no one would actually tell them
how they came by the tape (I didn’t). It was the first of many
attempts by the lawyers to justify their existence and to kill
Unix.
Cheers, Warren
P.S In 2002 I wrote on the list:
The mythical `50 bugs' tape, described in Peter Salus' book `A Quarter
Century of UNIX' has been found lurking in the Unix Archive. You can
find it in Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz as the file
usr/sys/v6unix/unix_changes.
12:05 p.m.
On Mon, 30 Sep 2019, Warner Losh wrote:
Ok. I know there was never a v6.5... officially. But
there are several
references to that in different bits of the early user group news
letters. This refers to v6 plus all the patches that "leaked" out of
bell Labs via udel and Lou Katz.
I was once referred to as "Mr Unix V6.5" when I shoehorned as much of V7
into V6 (with AUSAM mods) as I could, such as XON/XOFF etc. Those lucky
buggers at Elec Eng and AGSM had 11/70s, whereas I had to support a number
of 11/40s etc.
My question is, have they survived? The story sure
has, but I didn't find
them in the archive..
Sadly, not my version (UNSW/CSU).
-- Dave
1909
days inactive
1909
days old
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Clem cole -
Dave Horsfall -
reed＠reedmedia.net -
Warner Losh -
Warren Toomey