24 Sep
2015
24 Sep
'15
8:08 p.m.
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:27 AM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
I think the Berkeley guys had an underground
pipeline to Bell labs and some stuff got out that way. :-)
It was not underground at all. Tools packaged in BSD came from all over
the community. style and diction were released into the wild by
themselves before the were packaged into an AT&T USG UNIX or Research UNIX
release. It got them personally directly and had them installed at
Tektronix soon after first publishing and a talk about them at USENIX (IIRC
that was the Boulder conference in the "Black Hole" movie theatre.
Since I had a minor stake in it (as my first C program) fsck is another
good example of the path to UCB . Ted started the predecessor program
when he was at UMich (with Bill Joy). He did his OYOC year and later a
full PhD at CMU. He was one of my lab partners in his OYOC year. fsck
was a we know it now was done during that time ( and I helped him a bit).
He was bring the sources back and forth from Summit to CMU (at the time in
an RK05 or sometimes a bootable DOS tape image of one - I may still have
one of these). I believe he gave a copy of the sources very early to wnj
-- which is how it ended up in 4.1BSD. I don't think it was in the
original 3.0 or 4.0 packages as it was not in V5, V6 or V7 either. I
believe it was released in PWB 2.0 - not sure and Minnie does not seem to
have them.
I'm pretty the SCCS and cpio sources came through one of the PWB releases
(1 or 2) that UCB got from AT&T.
Clem
24 Sep
24 Sep
9:20 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
I defer to Clem on these.
As I heard it, Lorinda wrote the Writers Workbench, a name pun on PWB,
of which style and diction were the cornerstones. I thought she was at
Bell Labs at the time. I recall a Bell Labs written summary booklet of
DWB, although I can't find it in my museum.
I also heard that Ted K (aka "frodo") got fsck released to Berkeley by
swearing (somehow with a straight face) to the Bell Labs lawyers that it
had no commercial value.
Mary Ann
On 09/24/2015 07:08 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:27 AM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com
<mailto:arnold@skeeve.com>> wrote:
I think the Berkeley guys had an underground
pipeline to Bell labs and some stuff got out that way. :-)
It was not underground at all. Tools packaged in BSD came from all
over the community. style and diction were released into the wild by
themselves before the were packaged into an AT&T USG UNIX or Research
UNIX release. It got them personally directly and had them installed
at Tektronix soon after first publishing and a talk about them at
USENIX (IIRC that was the Boulder conference in the "Black Hole" movie
theatre.
Since I had a minor stake in it (as my first C program) fsck is
another good example of the path to UCB . Ted started the predecessor
program when he was at UMich (with Bill Joy). He did his OYOC year
and later a full PhD at CMU. He was one of my lab partners in his
OYOC year. fsck was a we know it now was done during that time ( and
I helped him a bit). He was bring the sources back and forth from
Summit to CMU (at the time in an RK05 or sometimes a bootable DOS tape
image of one - I may still have one of these). I believe he gave a
copy of the sources very early to wnj -- which is how it ended up in
4.1BSD. I don't think it was in the original 3.0 or 4.0 packages as
it was not in V5, V6 or V7 either. I believe it was released in PWB
2.0 - not sure and Minnie does not seem to have them.
I'm pretty the SCCS and cpio sources came through one of the PWB
releases (1 or 2) that UCB got from AT&T.
Clem
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11:08 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
Have a look in your repo for this commit comment in diction/dprog.c.
(Committed by Robert R. Henry I think.)
D 4.2 82/11/06 14:32:50 rrh 2 1 00181/00044/00354
MRs:
COMMENTS:
Bill Jolitz @ Berkeley received this version from Lorindia Cherry
around September 1981, as the ``most recent version''. Deltas
seem to be progressive, rather than regressive, although the BTL sid for
deroff.c is retrograde; this is probably a case of parallel development
11:28 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote:
I also heard that Ted K (aka "frodo") got
fsck released to Berkeley by
swearing (somehow with a straight face) to the Bell Labs lawyers that it
had no commercial value.
That would have so much like Ted. I never heard that story, but I would
believe it. I do believe that he told them (rightfully) that it was
primarily developed at CMU using CMU computing resources (the 11/34A for
the Digital Lab in the EE Dept that Ted and I ran). IIRC: the primary
feature hat he did to it at Summit besides support for the changes in the
V7 filesystems, was support for large disks (aka RP06) when attached to a
small address space (11/40 class) systems, of which CMU had a number as I
believe the Labs did also. Armando's I believe you two were office mates
in those days, do you have memory?
We had it at Tektronix because I brought it from CMU.
Clem
26 Sep
26 Sep
8:37 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thu, 24 Sep 2015, Clem Cole wrote:
the primary feature hat he did to it at Summit besides
support for the
changes in the V7 filesystems, was support for large disks (aka RP06)
when attached to a small address space (11/40 class) systems, of which
CMU had a number as I believe the Labs did also. Armando's I believe
you two were office mates in those days, do you have memory?
You had an RP-06 on a li'l' old /40? You jammy bastard :-)
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
27 Sep
27 Sep
5:22 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
If will make you feel better the CMU drives were CDC with aftermarket controllers.
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 25, 2015, at 10:37 PM, Dave Horsfall
<dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Thu, 24 Sep 2015, Clem Cole wrote:
the primary feature hat he did to it at Summit besides support for the
changes in the V7 filesystems, was support for large disks (aka RP06)
when attached to a small address space (11/40 class) systems, of which
CMU had a number as I believe the Labs did also. Armando's I believe
you two were office mates in those days, do you have memory?
You had an RP-06 on a li'l' old /40? You jammy bastard :-)
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
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12:52 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
I actually recall him having done much of the work at CMU but can’t be sure. I also seem
to recall him finish up the paper. I was lucky in my office mates: I had John Lions and
tjk. Some place, I have a few pics of USG’s computer room. I only recall RP04s however.
:(
aps.
On Sep 24, 2015, at 10:28 AM, Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net
<mailto:mah@mhorton.net>> wrote:
I also heard that Ted K (aka "frodo") got fsck released to Berkeley by swearing
(somehow with a straight face) to the Bell Labs lawyers that it had no commercial value.
That would have so much like Ted. I never heard that story, but I would believe it. I
do believe that he told them (rightfully) that it was primarily developed at CMU using CMU
computing resources (the 11/34A for the Digital Lab in the EE Dept that Ted and I ran).
IIRC: the primary feature hat he did to it at Summit besides support for the changes in
the V7 filesystems, was support for large disks (aka RP06) when attached to a small
address space (11/40 class) systems, of which CMU had a number as I believe the Labs did
also. Armando's I believe you two were office mates in those days, do you have
memory?
We had it at Tektronix because I brought it from CMU.
Clem
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11:31 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
4 5 or 6 - just a few megabytes ;-)
Same RH11 interface.
On Sun, Sep 27, 2015 at 2:52 AM, Armando Stettner <aps(a)ieee.org> wrote:
I actually recall him having done much of the work at
CMU but can’t be
sure. I also seem to recall him finish up the paper. I was lucky in my
office mates: I had John Lions and tjk. Some place, I have a few pics of
USG’s computer room. I only recall RP04s however. :(
aps.
On Sep 24, 2015, at 10:28 AM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote:
I also heard that Ted K (aka "frodo")
got fsck released to Berkeley by
swearing (somehow with a straight face) to the Bell Labs lawyers that it
had no commercial value.
That would have so much like Ted. I never heard that story, but I would
believe it. I do believe that he told them (rightfully) that it was
primarily developed at CMU using CMU computing resources (the 11/34A for
the Digital Lab in the EE Dept that Ted and I ran). IIRC: the primary
feature hat he did to it at Summit besides support for the changes in the
V7 filesystems, was support for large disks (aka RP06) when attached to a
small address space (11/40 class) systems, of which CMU had a number as I
believe the Labs did also. Armando's I believe you two were office mates
in those days, do you have memory?
We had it at Tektronix because I brought it from CMU.
Clem
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28 Sep
28 Sep
8:59 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015, Armando Stettner wrote:
I also seem to recall him finish up the paper. I was
lucky in my office
mates: I had John Lions and tjk. Some place, I have a few pics of USG’s
computer room. I only recall RP04s however. :( aps.
Dr. John Lions? He was one of my Comp.Sci lecturers, and a brilliant
bloke.
It was a sad day when we lost him.
I remember a USENET posting from long ago (yeah, I know), when someone
swore that it was Lyons. Someone then replied along the lines of "Well,
I've just walked past his office door; it's Lions, as in the big cat."
Of course, my memory could be a little flakey by now.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
10:55 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
Lions' books on Unix and PCC were brilliant, although they had limited
circulation. I confess that the PCC book was sometimes difficult reading,
as code that I cobbled together at 2AM was laid bare to the world. I
remember a particularly tangled mess of 10 or so lines that John displayed
with the comment "advocates of structured programming might have preferred
to see:" followed by 3 short, elegant lines of code...
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015, Armando Stettner wrote:
I also seem to recall him finish up the paper.
 I was lucky in my
office
mates: I had John Lions and tjk. Â Some place, I have a few pics of
USGâs
computer room. Â I only recall RP04s however. Â :( Â Â aps.
Dr. John Lions? He was one of my Comp.Sci lecturers, and a brilliant
bloke.
It was a sad day when we lost him.
I remember a USENET posting from long ago (yeah, I know), when someone
swore that it was Lyons. Someone then replied along the lines of "Well,
I've just walked past his office door; it's Lions, as in the big cat."
Of course, my memory could be a little flakey by now.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
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29 Sep
29 Sep
5:23 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Monday, 28 September 2015 at 9:55:47 -0700, scj(a)yaccman.com wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Sep 2015, Armando Stettner wrote:
>
>> I also seem to recall him finish up the paper. Â I was lucky in my
>> office
>> mates: I had John Lions and tjk. Â Some place, I have a few pics of
>> USGâs
>> computer room. Â I only recall RP04s however. Â :( Â Â aps.
>
> Dr. John Lions? He was one of my Comp.Sci lecturers, and a brilliant
> bloke.
>
> It was a sad day when we lost him.
>
> I remember a USENET posting from long ago (yeah, I know), when someone
> swore that it was Lyons. Someone then replied along the lines of "Well,
> I've just walked past his office door; it's Lions, as in the big
cat."
>
> Of course, my memory could be a little flakey by now.
Possibly, but not in this case.
Lions' books on Unix and PCC were brilliant,
although they had
limited circulation.
I haven't seen the PCC book, though I'd like to, but Warren published
a version of the Commentary on alt.folklore.computers in May 1994, and
I've had it up on my web site for over 10 years:
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/
You'll note Dave Horsfall's name in the acknowledgements, along with a
number of other (now) well-known names.
Greg
--
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1 Oct
1 Oct
8:09 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Tue, 29 Sep 2015, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
You'll note Dave Horsfall's name in the
acknowledgements, along with a
number of other (now) well-known names.
Ah, my only real claim to Unix fame :-) I helped with the proof-reading,
and arranged for the printing on my department's PDP-11 (I think we had a
fancy printer).
Oh, and I also wrote many articles for AUUGN, and presented the original
Unix paper at a DECUS conference, just to stir up the VMSoids.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
9:52 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thursday, 1 October 2015 at 12:09:21 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
Oh, and I also wrote many articles for AUUGN, and presented the
original Unix paper at a DECUS conference, just to stir up the
VMSoids.
I'll address the AUUGN issue some other time (do you want a whole lot
of back issues?), but the Unix paper at DECUS reminds me of when I
presented a paper entitled "Why BSD is better than Linux" at the 2002
Linux.conf.au. http://www.lemis.com/grog/slashdot/
Greg
--
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See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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10:51 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
I'll address the AUUGN issue some other time (do
you want a whole lot of
back issues?),
No need for the issues; I have a copy of Warren's site on DVD (I was
planning on being a mirror for it).
but the Unix paper at DECUS reminds me of when I
presented a paper
entitled "Why BSD is better than Linux" at the 2002 Linux.conf.au.
http://www.lemis.com/grog/slashdot/
I'll bet that went over well...
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
29 Sep
29 Sep
12:57 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
Hi.
This is the first I've heard that there was a book on PCC. I think
many of us would like to see it. Do you have a copy that can be
scanned? Or does anyone have the source?
Thanks,
Arnold
scj(a)yaccman.com wrote:
Lions' books on Unix and PCC were brilliant,
although they had limited
circulation. I confess that the PCC book was sometimes difficult reading,
as code that I cobbled together at 2AM was laid bare to the world. I
remember a particularly tangled mess of 10 or so lines that John displayed
with the comment "advocates of structured programming might have preferred
to see:" followed by 3 short, elegant lines of code...
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015, Armando Stettner wrote:
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https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs I also seem to recall him finish up the paper.
 I was lucky in my
office
mates: I had John Lions and tjk. Â Some place, I have a few pics of
USGâ␦␦s
computer room. Â I only recall RP04s however. Â :( Â Â aps.
Dr. John Lions? He was one of my Comp.Sci lecturers, and a brilliant
bloke.
It was a sad day when we lost him.
I remember a USENET posting from long ago (yeah, I know), when someone
swore that it was Lyons. Someone then replied along the lines of "Well,
I've just walked past his office door; it's Lions, as in the big cat."
Of course, my memory could be a little flakey by now.
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
_______________________________________________
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25 Sep
25 Sep
1:04 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thu, 24 Sep 2015, Clem Cole wrote:
I believe he gave a copy of the sources very early
to wnj -- which is how
it ended up in 4.1BSD. I don't think it was in the original 3.0 or 4.0
packages as it was not in V5, V6 or V7 either. I believe it was released in
PWB 2.0 - not sure and Minnie does not seem to have them.
Yes, it is in 4.0BSD (the copy I have has it documented in the setup.t
from Nov. 15, 1980, fsck.mm from Oct. 15, 1980). It appears to be the
same code as in 4.1 also.
(But I cannot find 4.0 in Diomidis's git repo. I also don't have the
original SCCS data from the early fsck, probably because it got moved
and extended in different location.)
By the way, I see the .8 manual for it got a Regents copyright placed on
it between 4.2 and 4.3 (even though contained lots of original text as
in 4.0BSD). The extensive rewrite to the fsck code happening between 4.1
and 4.3. fsck.c split up into main.c and others in August 1981, even
though 4.2 a later year still shipped fsck.c and not the new code.
(Reminds me I need to listen to video from McKusick about history of
ffs again.)
"the calm before the storm ... the storm ... the Coast Guard to the
rescue" (from the fsck document)
2:13 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed(a)reedmedia.net> wrote:
The extensive rewrite to the fsck code happening
between 4.1
and 4.3. fsck.c split up into main.c and others in August 1981, even
though 4.2 a later year still shipped fsck.c and not the new code.
IIRC - Kirk did that as part of the FFS work he started.
2:16 a.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
BTW: If I can find one of my old CMU tapes and it is still readable - I
should have a version from before it was released in PWB or elsewhere. I
know I >>had<< it in one of CMU EE directories but I do not have that
online these days.
BTW: Historical note, the reason the errors were in UPPER CASE was because
Ted was a MTS hacker and I was a TSS hacker before Unix and that's how MTS
and TSS signaled errors.
Clem
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 4:13 PM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed(a)reedmedia.net>
wrote:
The extensive rewrite to the fsck code happening
between 4.1
and 4.3. fsck.c split up into main.c and others in August 1981, even
though 4.2 a later year still shipped fsck.c and not the new code.
IIRC - Kirk did that as part of the FFS work he started.
2:04 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On 24/09/2015 22:04, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
On Thu, 24 Sep 2015, Clem Cole wrote:
This is the link to the 4.0BSD fsck version in the history repo:
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-4/usr/src/cmd/fsck…
To navigate to the 4.0BSD release in the repo, the process is not the
most intuitive. Click on the top-right button labeled "Branch: master",
click on the "Tags" tab, and select BSD-4. This drives you to
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/BSD-4.
I believe he gave a copy of the sources very
early to wnj -- which is how
it ended up in 4.1BSD. I don't think it was in the original 3.0 or 4.0
packages as it was not in V5, V6 or V7 either. I believe it was released in
PWB 2.0 - not sure and Minnie does not seem to have them.
Yes, [fsck] is in 4.0BSD (the copy I have has it documented in the setup.t
from Nov. 15, 1980, fsck.mm from Oct. 15, 1980). It appears to be the
same code as in 4.1 also.
(But I cannot find 4.0 in Diomidis's git repo. I also don't have the
original SCCS data from the early fsck, probably because it got moved
and extended in different location.)
6:04 p.m.
New subject: Questions regarding early Unix contributors
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed(a)reedmedia.net> wrote:
But I cannot find 4.0 in Diomidis's git repo. I
also don't have the
original SCCS data from the early fsck, probably because it got moved
and extended in different location.
FYI: "Early" fsck was developed before SCCS and PWB 1.0. Version
control was what Ted has on his disk at the time. At some point, I would
have expected that he put it under control @ Summit and wnj is likely to
have done the same at UCB. What is in the BSD repository is about 3-4
years into development.
As I said, Ted taught us all to use DOS-11 backup to make an image of his
RK05 to small of reel 9-track tape [800 bpi IIRC]. As I said, at one point
I had a couple of those tapes. I looked for the box of them from CMU but I
free I may have disposed of them when I lost access to an 800 bpi drive [I
now have one, although it has an issue loading tapes I need to fix].
Clem
3369
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19 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
Armando Stettner -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Clem Cole -
Clement T. Cole
-
Dave Horsfall -
Diomidis Spinellis -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Jeremy C. Reed -
Mary Ann Horton -
scj＠yaccman.com