All, I've just received another 5 SCO Ancient UNIX license details in the mail, bringing the total purchased from SCO to 101. I think that's pretty impressive. Just thought you'd like to know. Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id DAA22073 for pups-liszt; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 03:52:43 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from timaxp.trailing-edge.com (trailing-edge.wdn.com [198.232.144.27]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id DAA22068 for <PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU>; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 03:52:29 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com) Received: by timaxp.trailing-edge.com for PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU; Thu, 26 Nov 1998 11:50:34 -0500 Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 11:50:34 -0500 From: Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com> To: PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU Message-Id: <981126115034.2a2004dc(a)trailing-edge.com> Subject: Pro/Venix and Y2K Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk The following exchange recently took place on comp.sys.dec.micro/ vmsnet.pdp-11/alt.sys.pdp11. In it, I made the guess that PRO Venix is based on 2.9BSD - does anyone know more details about its heritage? Donato B. Masaoy III wrote: The PRO 380 Time-Of-Year clock has two modes: 1. BCD mode, where the year is stored in two decimal digits. 2. Binary mode, where the year is stored as at least 7 bits (more likely 8 bits - it's been a couple of months since the changes were implemented the fix in RT-11's PI.SYS, PIX.SYS, and SETUP.SAV to make it Y2K compliant.) When in BCD mode, 31-Dec-99 rolls over into 1-Jan-00, and the clock keeps accurately ticking. Venix evidently chokes on this and doesn't interpret "00" as "2000". As Unix is incapable of representing times internally outside the range 1970-2038, the obvious fix is to interpret BCD years in the range 70-99 as being in the 1900's, and the BCD years in the range 00-38 as in the 2000's. This is, for example, how BSD2.11 interprets the two-digit 11/93 or 11/94 clock year. Of course, finding the sources to Pro 380 Venix to implement the changes may be difficult. The PUPS archive has a version of 2.9BSD patches for the Pro, and if you're lucky Venix may be close enough that you can use the Pro-specific clock sources to patch your kernel binary. In the 2.9BSD Pro patches, the clock code is in "/sys-dev/prostuff.c", and begins: /* These two fuctions handle the pro 300's clock * This code is defunct at the end of the century. * Will Unix still be here then?? */ -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927 Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id FAA22435 for pups-liszt; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 05:49:47 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from mgate.nwnexus.com (mgate.nwnexus.com [206.63.63.200]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id FAA22430 for <PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU>; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 05:49:37 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from djenner(a)halcyon.com) Received: from halcyon.com (66-a-usw.rb1.blv.nwnexus.net [206.63.251.66]) by mgate.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA03033; Thu, 26 Nov 1998 10:48:52 -0800 Message-ID: <365DA28D.5C541C8C(a)halcyon.com> Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 10:48:45 -0800 From: "David C. Jenner" <djenner(a)halcyon.com> Reply-To: djenner(a)halcyon.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com> CC: PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU Subject: Re: Pro/Venix and Y2K References: <981126115034.2a2004dc(a)trailing-edge.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk There probably isn't much BSD lineage in Version 1 of Venix, but there is some in Version 2. Probably mostly in the form of the usual add-ons like VI. There's some confusion about this (at least in my mind), so any authoritative info would be interesting. First of all there's: "Venix/Pro" from Venturecom, which is definitely of AT&T lineage, probably V7/SysIII for V1 of Venix/Pro, and perhaps a bit of BSD stuff mixed in for V2 of Venix/Pro. This is what you find at Internet archives. Then there's: "Pro/Venix" from DEC, which is a repackaging of Venix/Pro. Again, there are Versions 1 and 2 of this. I have V1 and docs for V2, but no disks for V2. I'd really like to find a copy of the distribution of DEC Pro/Venix V2, if it's legal (and having the Ancient Unix license would seem to make it OK for at least the AT&T side). For Pro/Venix, V2, the manual entry for "clock(7) - time-of-day clock" is: /dev/clock refers to a time-of-day, battery-backed-up clock. This device node is provided primarily for the benefit of the date com- mand, which will read from it given the -l flag (usually done on system start-up), and write to it if a new date is set. ... struct clkbuf { int clk_sec; /* second (0-59) */ int clk_min; /* minute (0-59) */ int clk_hour; /* hour (0-23) */ int clk_mday; /* day of month (1-31) */ int clk_mon; /* month (0-11) */ int clk_year; /* year (00-99) */ int clk_wday; /* day of the week (Sunday = 0) */ int clk_yday; /* day of the year (0-365) */ int clk_dst; /* non-zero if daylight savings applies */ }; So, it looks bad at least from the internal representation of the year. Since I don't have this version, I can't comment on exactly what happens. Dave Tim Shoppa wrote: Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id GAA22497 for pups-liszt; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:05:10 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from math.uwaterloo.ca (kcwellsc(a)math.uwaterloo.ca [129.97.140.144]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id GAA22489 for <PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU>; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:05:00 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from kcwellsc(a)math.uwaterloo.ca) Received: (from kcwellsc@localhost) by math.uwaterloo.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA22036; Thu, 26 Nov 1998 14:04:36 -0500 (EST) From: Ken Wellsch <kcwellsc(a)math.uwaterloo.ca> Message-Id: <199811261904.OAA22036(a)math.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: Re: Pro/Venix and Y2K To: SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 14:04:36 -0500 (EST) Cc: PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU In-Reply-To: <981126115034.2a2004dc(a)trailing-edge.com> from "Tim Shoppa" at Nov 26, 98 11:50:34 am Organization: University of Waterloo, Math Faculty Computing Facility (Alumni) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Hi Tim, | The following exchange recently took place on comp.sys.dec.micro/ | vmsnet.pdp-11/alt.sys.pdp11. In it, I made the guess that PRO Venix | is based on 2.9BSD - does anyone know more details about its heritage? There are several folks with vastly better knowledge on this than I, but should they not speak up, I'll mumble on what little I know. Venix is an outgrowth of V6 UNIX I believe - from my fadding memory of the little I played with it, the file system is definitely V6 based (with the notion of "huge" files, i.e. the index pointers would switch from direct to indirect, while I believe V7 took a much better approach). The 2BSD branch I believe took a much later fork, V7 or later? It also played a more central role than Venix I expect, contributing a goodly amount of later PDP-11/UNIX based things that others borrowed (e.g. Ultrix 3 from DEC took csh and vi among other goodies). | As Unix is incapable of representing times internally outside | the range 1970-2038, the obvious fix is to interpret BCD years | in the range 70-99 as being in the 1900's, and the BCD years | in the range 00-38 as in the 2000's. This is, for example, | how BSD2.11 interprets the two-digit 11/93 or 11/94 clock year. Gee, I didn't think there was one "UNIX" in the world 8-) How big are your integers? Do you use signed or unsigned values for the epoch since Jan 1 1970? It seems hard to believe anything in the UNIX world of today has this limitation. I'll agree there is likely just the one "RT-11" though 8-) -- Ken Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id GAA22536 for pups-liszt; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:17:19 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from timaxp.trailing-edge.com (trailing-edge.wdn.com [198.232.144.27]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id GAA22531 for <PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU>; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:17:10 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com) Received: by timaxp.trailing-edge.com for PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU; Thu, 26 Nov 1998 14:15:17 -0500 Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 14:15:17 -0500 From: Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com> To: PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU Message-Id: <981126141517.2a2003cb(a)trailing-edge.com> Subject: Re: Pro/Venix and Y2K Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk I agree - and would love more definitive information (Or, even better, the sources to Pro/Venix.) I've learned an amazing amount about segments of the Unix lineage just from the comments in the past week, but the gaps in my knowledge still loom large! It's entirely possible that Pro/Venix uses the Pro clock in BCD mode - it looked to me that the 2.9BSD version does it in binary mode. It depends on what you want to call "bad". It's quite possible to build a Y2K compliant system out of non-Y2K compliant components! 2.11BSD's date(1) was patched for Y2K in such a way that "00" in the two-digit year would be interpreted as the year 2000. (See patch #327 for the details.) Would similar fixes for more historic Unices be useful to the general folk here? -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927 Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id GAA22638 for pups-liszt; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:50:39 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from mgate.nwnexus.com (mgate.nwnexus.com [206.63.63.200]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id GAA22633 for <PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU>; Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:50:31 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from djenner(a)halcyon.com) Received: from halcyon.com (66-a-usw.rb1.blv.nwnexus.net [206.63.251.66]) by mgate.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA03155; Thu, 26 Nov 1998 11:49:55 -0800 Message-ID: <365DB0DB.CD18A664(a)halcyon.com> Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 11:49:47 -0800 From: "David C. Jenner" <djenner(a)halcyon.com> Reply-To: djenner(a)halcyon.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com> CC: PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU Subject: Re: Pro/Venix and Y2K References: <981126141517.2a2003cb(a)trailing-edge.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk It's "bad" in the sense that the evidence available (empirical, and sparse code) suggests that the software (and probably the hardware) is working with only two-digit years. You could, of course, try to remedy the Y2K problem by properly handling the clock. But the evidence suggests that the problem may be spread over lots of code. As you say, it would be nice to have the Pro/Venix code (as opposed to the Venix/Pro code). DEC's Pro/Venix is more flexible than Venturecom's Venix/Pro. You can write and link custom device drivers with the kernel in Pro/Venix. There is some hope you could actually "fix" /dev/clock, but this probably isn't enough to solve the whole Y2K problem. Again, any knowledge about the whereabouts of even the binary distribution disks of DEC's V2 Pro/Venix would be great. Dave Tim Shoppa wrote: