10 Apr
2019
10 Apr
'19
8:02 p.m.
The paper I am thinking of (gee, I wish I could remember any other details
about it...) was *very* detailed and specific, and was hardware-specific
to either the PDP-11 or VAX. It would not at all be applicable to Linux
or any kind of modern OS.
I am wondering if it is something in the Leffler et al book, I'll have to
go back and review that. I'll have to find my copy of it first...
--Pat.
10 Apr
10 Apr
8:14 p.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6 Unix
for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer Communications in
1996.
https://www.peerllc.com/?option=com_content&task=view&id&Itemi…
I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is ...
Erik
8:28 p.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
Lion's chapter 6, has some stuff and exact but might not be what you are
remembering, Chapter 13 of the BSD book is 'system startup' and
more general than the Lions description. The other place I would suggest
looking is the three DDJ articles Bill and Lynn Jolitz wrote; although he
might have talked about the 386 specifics, not the vaxen/11.
ᐧ
On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:15 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org> wrote:
That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started"
of the Lions Commentary on v6
Unix for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer
Communications in 1996.
https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id &ItemidD
I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is
...
Erik
9:05 p.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
https://github.com/kanner/lions-book <https://github.com/kanner/lions-book>
has the TeX version of the book. You can probably find a PDF version online.
The 4.3 BSD book may be a better bet.
On Apr 10, 2019, at 11:28 AM, Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Lion's chapter 6, has some stuff and exact but might not be what you are
remembering, Chapter 13 of the BSD book is 'system startup' and more general
than the Lions description. The other place I would suggest looking is the three DDJ
articles Bill and Lynn Jolitz wrote; although he might have talked about the 386
specifics, not the vaxen/11.
ᐧ
On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:15 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org
<mailto:fair-tuhs@netbsd.org>> wrote:
That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6 Unix
for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer Communications in
1996.
https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id
<https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id> &ItemidD
I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is ...
Erik
11 Apr
11 Apr
12:24 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions book
including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].
On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 3:06 PM Bakul Shah <bakul(a)bitblocks.com> wrote:
https://github.com/kanner/lions-book
has the TeX version of the book. You can probably find a PDF version
online.
The 4.3 BSD book may be a better bet.
On Apr 10, 2019, at 11:28 AM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Lion's chapter 6, has some stuff and exact but might not be what you are
remembering, Chapter 13 of the BSD book is 'system startup' and
more general than the Lions description. The other place I would suggest
looking is the three DDJ articles Bill and Lynn Jolitz wrote; although he
might have talked about the 386 specifics, not the vaxen/11.
ᐧ
On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:15 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org> wrote:
That might well Chapter 6 "Getting
Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6
Unix for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer
Communications in 1996.
https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id &ItemidD
I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is
...
Erik
ᐧ 
12:53 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 06:24:56PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions
book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].
That's all I knew at the time :-)
Warren
3:45 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
On Thursday, 11 April 2019 at 8:53:42 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 06:24:56PM -0400, Clem Cole
wrote:
A bit of background: the sources come from a uuencoded posting on
alt.folklore.computers in May 1994 (almost exactly 25 years ago;
that's interesting in context of 50 years of Unix). It was titled
"Leo's notes", and I grabbed them before they disappeared. I didn't
meet Warren in person until some years later.
The source comes from scans that Warren made, and they contain typical
scan errors. I have a number of patches backed up that I should
apply; I'll send another message when I have.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions
book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].
That's all I knew at the time :-)
1:19 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions book including PS
and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
Sorry to disappoint you but it's the same LaTeX source.
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little
beyond me].
May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
6:52 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Not to be too negative, but converting it to troff would be somewhat of
an effort; however, the gains for that seem to be comparatively small.
It would be a change from one language to another, neither of which are
a 1:1 copy of the original.
Even if you had the original troff sources of the book,
groff, heirloom-troff and Plan9 ditroff probably all have line breaking
and character positioning algorithms that don't match the original troff
at the time.
If someone were to undertake this troff endeavor, aiming for a perfect
recreation would be the most beneficial (yet also most difficult) thing
to do.
I've never seen the original commentary, but I'll assume that it used a
homebrewed set of macros.
Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the troff macros used
to typeset the book.
Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
this can possibly be automated entirely.
Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
(likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).
[...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
Sorry to disappoint you but it's the same LaTeX source.
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little
beyond me].
May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
3:48 p.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
As my very fragile nth edition photocopy shows, the original Western
Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through a typesetter because John
(like most of us at the time) did not have access to one (and Tom Ferrin
had not yet done the vcat(1) hack at UCSF). Lions used standard nroff
output - (in this case, originally to 132 column line printer paper I
believe).
FWIW: [I would check with one of his former students who might know for
sure], but I was under the impression he used the 5th/6th edition version
of the Mike Lesk Macro's (-ms) that were around with nroff at the time. I
don't remember how underlining was done in the book, because raw nroff
generated ASR37 codes native, and the ul(1) program would not get a wide
release until after BSD [but it is probable that other folks did something
similar too]. Again, I've forgotten how this all worked, but sadly there
was a time when I used it every day ;-) IIRC early nroff may have had a
switch to generate line printer codes instead.
Also, the 'memorandum macros' (-mm) came out of Whippany, and I believe
were first released with PWB. They may have been included with the
typesetter C release too, but I don't think they are part of V7. Eric's
UCB thesis macros, (-me) show up with one of the BSDs releases.
It's funny, I used -ms first then got really hot for -mm because they
could do things like Lists better and used them until I went to UCB. But
after doing my thesis I went back to the simplicity of Lesk's macros, but
carry a couple of extra (like Lists) in my personal front end.
Like Larry, troff/nroff still my preferred way to do a large document with
chapters
Clem.
On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 12:58 AM Fabio Scotoni <fabio(a)esse.ch> wrote:
On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
>
> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff
thankfully.
Sorry to disappoint you but it's the same LaTeX source.
Not to be too negative, but converting it to troff would be somewhat of
an effort; however, the gains for that seem to be comparatively small.
It would be a change from one language to another, neither of which are
a 1:1 copy of the original.
Even if you had the original troff sources of the book,
groff, heirloom-troff and Plan9 ditroff probably all have line breaking
and character positioning algorithms that don't match the original troff
at the time.
If someone were to undertake this troff endeavor, aiming for a perfect
recreation would be the most beneficial (yet also most difficult) thing
to do.
I've never seen the original commentary, but I'll assume that it used a
homebrewed set of macros.
Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the troff macros used
to typeset the book.
Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
this can possibly be automated entirely.
Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
(likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little
beyond me].
May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
4:54 p.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 9:49 AM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
As my very fragile nth edition photocopy shows, the
original Western
Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through a typesetter because John
(like most of us at the time) did not have access to one (and Tom Ferrin
had not yet done the vcat(1) hack at UCSF). Lions used standard nroff
output - (in this case, originally to 132 column line printer paper I
believe).
Indeed. Even the mid-90's Peer-to-Peer press reprinting appears to be,
roughly, a facsimile of line printer output. I say 'roughly' because there
is some prefatory material at the beginning that is properly typeset:
dedications, acknowledgements, etc, all written at the time of
(re)publication and similarly a set of "appreciations" at the end.
Interestingly, the title page appears to be approximately original and is
typeset. It also includes this little gem of a note: "COPY NO. 050B NAME
PROPERTY OF BELL LABORATORIES, INC. COPY TO BE RETURNED TO: COMPUTING
INFORMATION SERVICE MH 2F-128 UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM SOURCE CODE VERSION 6"
(line breaks elided).
I don't think I've ever seen a copy of the original; I suspect the title
page was reset for the PP publication, though it is of course possible that
Lions could have prepared that specially: doing a "one-off" for a single
page, perhaps under contract with an actual publishing company or graphic
artist or something, would have been reasonable while the rest of the
booklet contents were taken from listings.
[snip]
- Dan C.
5:36 p.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
When I was at Tektronix in the late 70s, I was able to get my boss to buy
me (us - but for my desk) a copy of the original (with the orange and red
covers for the two books - the commentary was in one and the sources in the
other but I have forgotten which was which). However, my own (current)
photocopy was from CMU a few years before. I left Tek and I have no idea
what happened to that new copy since Tek owned it (and I was not smart
enough at the time to re-duplicate it, so my current copy is a fading nth
generation one). I must have handed the "real" one to the late Terry
Lawskodi, or maybe Larry Morandi or Steve Glaser (I'll have to ask Steve
and Larry if they know what became of the Tek copy).
ᐧ
On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 10:55 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 9:49 AM Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
As my very fragile nth edition photocopy shows,
the original Western
Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through a typesetter because John
(like most of us at the time) did not have access to one (and Tom Ferrin
had not yet done the vcat(1) hack at UCSF). Lions used standard nroff
output - (in this case, originally to 132 column line printer paper I
believe).
Indeed. Even the mid-90's Peer-to-Peer press reprinting appears to be,
roughly, a facsimile of line printer output. I say 'roughly' because there
is some prefatory material at the beginning that is properly typeset:
dedications, acknowledgements, etc, all written at the time of
(re)publication and similarly a set of "appreciations" at the end.
Interestingly, the title page appears to be approximately original and is
typeset. It also includes this little gem of a note: "COPY NO. 050B NAME
PROPERTY OF BELL LABORATORIES, INC. COPY TO BE RETURNED TO: COMPUTING
INFORMATION SERVICE MH 2F-128 UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM SOURCE CODE VERSION 6"
(line breaks elided).
I don't think I've ever seen a copy of the original; I suspect the title
page was reset for the PP publication, though it is of course possible that
Lions could have prepared that specially: doing a "one-off" for a single
page, perhaps under contract with an actual publishing company or graphic
artist or something, would have been reasonable while the rest of the
booklet contents were taken from listings.
[snip]
- Dan C.
26 Jun
26 Jun
4:28 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
[Resurrecting an old thread to provide some input from Dave Horsfall]
On 2019-Apr-11 06:52:08 +0200, Fabio Scotoni <fabio(a)esse.ch> wrote:
On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff
thankfully.
>
> May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
...
Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the
troff macros used
to typeset the book.
Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
this can possibly be automated entirely.
Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
(likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).
On 2019-Jun-26 11:34:31 +1000, Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
'Twas NROFF on the CSU's LA120 (I should
know; I ran the Unix section),
with draft versions on a Duckwriter which I helped proof-read. Don't know
whether custom macros were used; quite likely, as he was that sort of
bloke. After all, he was a Comp Sci lecturer (one of mine!) and if you
find yourself writing the same lines over and over again...
Going by that snippet of the thread (too much to follow, as I'm still
figuring out from which lists I've been bounced) it would be a heroic
effort to reverse-engineer it, and quite likely not worth the trouble.
The original source would've been at Elec Eng, but long gone by now.
As for TROFF, well, I'm not aware that UNSW has a C/A/T :-)
Oh, the LA120 had a single-use nylon ribbon, I think, not fabric, hence
the somewhat high quality (I no longer have my Lions books to check; lost
after several house moves).
--
Peter Jeremy
9:57 a.m.
New subject: Paper discussing Unix boot process?
On Jun 25, 2019, at 7:28 PM, Peter Jeremy <peter(a)rulingia.com> wrote:
[Resurrecting an old thread to provide some input from Dave Horsfall]
On 2019-Apr-11 06:52:08 +0200, Fabio Scotoni <fabio(a)esse.ch> wrote:
> On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff
thankfully.
>>
>> May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
Er... I wasn't entirely serious but if I were doing this, I'd start
with detexing the source and then manually adding in -ms macros.
The detexed source is about 14 lines and surprisingly readable. Almost.
This should be a piece of cake for one of you nroff wizards!
...
Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer
the troff macros used
to typeset the book.
Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
this can possibly be automated entirely.
Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
(likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).
On 2019-Jun-26 11:34:31 +1000, Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
'Twas NROFF on the CSU's LA120 (I
should know; I ran the Unix section),
with draft versions on a Duckwriter which I helped proof-read. Don't know
whether custom macros were used; quite likely, as he was that sort of
bloke. After all, he was a Comp Sci lecturer (one of mine!) and if you
find yourself writing the same lines over and over again...
Going by that snippet of the thread (too much to follow, as I'm still
figuring out from which lists I've been bounced) it would be a heroic
effort to reverse-engineer it, and quite likely not worth the trouble.
The original source would've been at Elec Eng, but long gone by now.
As for TROFF, well, I'm not aware that UNSW has a C/A/T :-)
Oh, the LA120 had a single-use nylon ribbon, I think, not fabric, hence
the somewhat high quality (I no longer have my Lions books to check; lost
after several house moves).
--
Peter Jeremy
1988
days inactive
2065
days old
13 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Bakul Shah -
Clem Cole -
Dan Cross -
Erik E. Fair -
Fabio Scotoni -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Pat Barron -
Peter Jeremy -
Warren Toomey