From crossd at gmail.com Thu Aug 1 01:34:53 2024
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2024 11:34:53 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Interesting history of Bell Labs
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W5WWpQfnyN7HjRdrnkkVg7-UBNoEG=DnChbMWhLPyXj3Q@mail.gmail.com>
Steve Bellovin just posted this on Mastodon, I thought it might
interest some folks here. It's more about Bell Labs than Unix, but of
course Unix, as a product of Bell Labs, is related and is mentioned.
- Dan C.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-would-it-take-to-recreate-bell
From clemc at ccc.com Fri Aug 2 04:09:20 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2024 14:09:20 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MyDN+Fn0C-nDYeZOj1xNuimm-Twe0Y_OvPiupv3uKO5Q@mail.gmail.com>
Please excuse the wide distribution, but I suspect this will have general
interest in all of these communities due to the loss of the LCM+Labs.
The good folks from SDF.org are trying to create the Interim Computer
Museum:
https://icm.museum/join.html
As Lars pointed out in an earlier message to COFF there is a 1hr
presentation on the plans for the ICM.
https://toobnix.org/w/ozjGgBQ28iYsLTNbrczPVo
FYI: The yearly (Bootstrap) subscription is $36
They need to money to try to keep some of these systems online and
available. The good news is that it looks like many of the assets, such as
Miss Piggy, the Multics work, the Toads, and others, from the old LCM are
going to be headed to a new home.
бђ§
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From gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com Fri Aug 2 11:55:40 2024
From: gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com (Gregg Levine)
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2024 21:55:40 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MyDN+Fn0C-nDYeZOj1xNuimm-Twe0Y_OvPiupv3uKO5Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAC20D2MyDN+Fn0C-nDYeZOj1xNuimm-Twe0Y_OvPiupv3uKO5Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC5iaNHhsr3wNM++St00-656TuWLxifP6Sc955=GW0Gk1D47bg@mail.gmail.com>
Hello!
Pardon me for asking Clem, but would you mind naming the survivors? I
have an idea what these Toads are, and of course what Multics happened
to be, but that's it.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 2:10 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> Please excuse the wide distribution, but I suspect this will have general interest in all of these communities due to the loss of the LCM+Labs.
>
> The good folks from SDF.org are trying to create the Interim Computer Museum:
> https://icm.museum/join.html
>
> As Lars pointed out in an earlier message to COFF there is a 1hr presentation on the plans for the ICM. https://toobnix.org/w/ozjGgBQ28iYsLTNbrczPVo
>
> FYI: The yearly (Bootstrap) subscription is $36
> They need to money to try to keep some of these systems online and available. The good news is that it looks like many of the assets, such as Miss Piggy, the Multics work, the Toads, and others, from the old LCM are going to be headed to a new home.
> бђ§
From lars at nocrew.org Fri Aug 2 15:32:46 2024
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2024 05:32:46 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum
In-Reply-To: <CAC5iaNHhsr3wNM++St00-656TuWLxifP6Sc955=GW0Gk1D47bg@mail.gmail.com>
(Gregg Levine's message of "Thu, 1 Aug 2024 21:55:40 -0400")
References: <CAC20D2MyDN+Fn0C-nDYeZOj1xNuimm-Twe0Y_OvPiupv3uKO5Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC5iaNHhsr3wNM++St00-656TuWLxifP6Sc955=GW0Gk1D47bg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7wr0b7v69t.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
I think this is off topic for TUHS and more appropriate for COFF.
Gregg Levine wrote:
> Pardon me for asking Clem, but would you mind naming the survivors? I
> have an idea what these Toads are, and of course what Multics happened
> to be, but that's it.
We don't know exactly yet, but according to the video, there's a VAX
7000 and a DEC-2020. The TOAD computers are XKL's PDP-10 remake;
there's also another one called SC-40. Stephen also mentions Multics
tapes were rescued.
Maybe the best way to see what is there right now, is to dial into
"ssh menu at sdf.org"
[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]
-+- SDF Vintage Systems REMOTE ACCESS -+-
[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]
[a] multics Multics MR12.8 Honeywell 6180
[b] toad-2 TOPS-20 7(110131)-1 XKL TOAD-2
[c] twenex TOPS-20 7(63327)-6 XKL TOAD-2
[d] sc40 TOPS-20 7(21733) SC Group SC40
[e] lc ITS ver 1648 PDP-10 KS10
[f] ka1050 TOPS-10 6.03a sim KA10 1050
[g] kl2065 TOPS-10 7.04 sim KL10 2065
[h] rosenkrantz OpenVMS 7.3 VAX 7000-640
[i] tss8 TSS/8 PDP-8/e
[j] ibm4361 VM/SP5 Hercules 4361
[k] ibm7094 CTSS i7094
[l] cdc6500 NOS 1.3 DTCyber CDC-6500
[z] bitzone NetBSD BBS AMD64
[1] Proceed to the UNIX Systems sub-menu
[2] Information about Vintage Systems at SDF.ORG
And the Unix section:
[a] misspiggy UNIX v7 PDP-11/70
[c] lcm3b2 UNIX SVR3.2.3 AT&T 3B2/1000-70
[d] guildenstern BSD 4.3 simh MicroVAX 3900
[e] snake BSD 2.11 PDP-11/84
[f] hkypux HP/UX 10.20 HP9000/715
[g] truly TRU64 5.0 DEC Alpha 500au
[h] three SunOS 4.1.1 Sun-3/160
[i] indy IRIX 6.5 SGI Indy R5000
[j] ultra Ultrix 4.5 simh MicroVAX 3900
From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 3 00:58:43 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2024 10:58:43 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum
In-Reply-To: <CAC5iaNHhsr3wNM++St00-656TuWLxifP6Sc955=GW0Gk1D47bg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAC20D2MyDN+Fn0C-nDYeZOj1xNuimm-Twe0Y_OvPiupv3uKO5Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC5iaNHhsr3wNM++St00-656TuWLxifP6Sc955=GW0Gk1D47bg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2M3p_5yanUHbtBBZGXhs-P9Gdzn5dx7_n1O1sP6psKO=g@mail.gmail.com>
Greg, this needs to move to COFF, so I'm BCCing TUHS in my reply. (My error
in the original message was that I should have BCC'd everyone but COFF, so
replies were directed there. Mei culpa).
However, since I have seen different people on all these lists bemoan the
loss of the LCM+L, I hope that by the broader announcement, a number of you
will consider the $36/yr membership to help Stephen and his team to be able
to keep these systems running and the at least the "labs" port of the old
LCM+L mission alive.
On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 9:56 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello!
> Pardon me for asking Clem, but would you mind naming the survivors?
The details are still coming out from Stephen and friends -- I would
recommend listening to his presentation and then maybe joining the List
Server at SDF by sending a (plain text) email to majordomo at sdf.org with
the subject and body containing the line: subscribe museum-l
I have an idea what these Toads are, and of course what Multics happened to
> be, but that's it.
>
LCM+L owned a real Honeywell 6180 front panel. The folks in their lab
interfaced it to a microcontroller (I think it was an RP3 or 4, but it
could be something like a BeagleBone, I never knew). It was running
Multics Release 12.8 on a SimH-derived Honeywell 6180 [I'm not sure if
those changes ever made it back to OpenSIMH - I have not personally tried
it myself]. This system seems to have been moved to SDF's new site.
Also, a number of the MIT Multics tapes had been donated to the LCM+L.
These have survived, and the SDF has them. I'll not repeat Stephen's
report here, but he describes what they have and are doing.
Miss Piggy is the PDP 11/70 that Microsoft purchased and used for their SW
original development. It has been running a flavor of Unix Seventh Edition
- I do not know what type of updates were added, but I expect the DEC v7m
and the V7 addendum to be there. You can log in and try it yourself by ssh
menu at sdf.org" and picking Miss Piggy in the UNIX submenu. Miss Piggy
used to live and be on display at the LCM+L, but Stephen and the SDF were
involved in its admin/operation. Stephen says in his presentation that they
are trying to get Miss Piggy back up and running [my >>guess<< is that the
"Miss Piggy" instance on the SDF menu is currently running on an OpenSIMH
instance while the real hardware is being set up at the new location].
In the early 1980s, as DEC started to de-commit to the 36-bit line after
they introduced the 32-bit Vax systems, a number of PDP-10 clones appeared
on the market. For instance, the System Concepts SC-40 was what
Comp-U-Serve primarily switched to. Similarly, many ex-Stanford AI types
forked to create the Toad Systems XXL, a KL10 clone. SDF and LCM+L owned
several of these two styles of systems and were on display and available
for login. Since Twenex.org is live (and has been) and Stephen shows a
picture of the SC40, again, I am (again) >>guessing<< that these have all
been moved to the new location for SDF.
Stephen mentioned in his presentation that they have the LCM-L's Vax7000
but do not yet have the 3-phase power in their computer room. He suggested
that it is one of the most popular machines in the SDF menu, and they
intend to make it live shortly.
It is unclear what became of some of the other items. It was pointed out
that running a CDC6500 is extremely expensive to operate from a power
standpoint, so they offer an NOS login using the DTCyber simulator. He
never mentioned what became of the former Purdue machine that the LCM owned
and had restored.
I am interested in knowing what happened to the two PDP-7s. I know that at
least one was privately owned, but was being restored and displayed at the
LCM+L. It was one of these systems that Unix V0 was resurrected and ran
for the UNIX 50th Anniversary Party that the LCM+L hosted. The LCM+L had
some interesting peripherals. For instance, the console for Miss Piggy was
a somewhat rare ASR37 [which is Upper/Lower case and the "native" terminal
for Research Unix]. I hope they have it also. The LCM+L had a number of
different types of tape transports for recovering old data. Stephen
mentioned that they have some of these but did not elaborate.
Clem
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Tue Aug 6 13:26:57 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (segaloco via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2024 03:26:57 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
Message-ID: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
I'm paraphrasing here but I've read in a few places something to the effect that UNIX was "selected" as the basis on which to build a portable operating system standard, which of course we all know as POSIX. However, I got thinking on the implications of that phrasing, and have to ask, was there actually a "selection" made picking UNIX over some other candidate, or was it pretty much established from the outset of pursuing a standard that UNIX was going to get standardized?
Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first, desire for a portable base system definition that UNIX happened to fit nicely, or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship by the working groups, IEEE, etc.? Did any other OS contend for this coveted honor?
- Matt G.
From ggm at algebras.org Tue Aug 6 13:38:46 2024
From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 13:38:46 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAKr6gn1xjzSaEZnUps4UhR7+fO3RdUZMnvqKeZmiCTALfWUyXw@mail.gmail.com>
its weak thinking on my part, but I always understood the POSIX
branding to be a very explicit nod to this being a stamp of approval
on a burgeoning UNIX-varieties ecology.
I do not think VMS, or a DOS derivitive, or PICK was a serious
consideration except perhaps in a post-fact rationalisation.
1 let's invent our own
2 let's not thats too stupid
3 so all the mainframe OS targetting IBM are not really much more than
JCL or what MIT and Stanford do and anyway
4 nobody buys anything but minicomputers now and they all run versions
of unix but
5 porting is a royal pain.
6 ok so lets pick a subset of required behaviour to make C and shell work
7 and for good measure is there anyone here who seriously wants VMS? No
8 ok done. Now, for the next 15 committee meetings, lets have many
fine luncheons
9 <time traveller> Richard Stallman is smelly and people don't like him
10 noted. Thank goodness we came up with POSIX independently as a backronym
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 1:27 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> I'm paraphrasing here but I've read in a few places something to the effect that UNIX was "selected" as the basis on which to build a portable operating system standard, which of course we all know as POSIX. However, I got thinking on the implications of that phrasing, and have to ask, was there actually a "selection" made picking UNIX over some other candidate, or was it pretty much established from the outset of pursuing a standard that UNIX was going to get standardized?
>
> Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first, desire for a portable base system definition that UNIX happened to fit nicely, or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship by the working groups, IEEE, etc.? Did any other OS contend for this coveted honor?
>
> - Matt G.
From arnold at skeeve.com Tue Aug 6 16:39:46 2024
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:39:46 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
Message-ID: <202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first, ...
> ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
> by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
This.
Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
- IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
- DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
based workstations
- Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
- Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
- Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
- Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
of mixing and matching happening, too.
There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C standard
also helped.
HTH,
Arnold
From tuhs at tuhs.org Tue Aug 6 23:29:20 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (=?utf-8?b?UGV0ZXIgV2VpbmJlcmdlciAo5rip5Y2a5qC8KSB2aWEgVFVIUw==?=)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 09:29:20 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>
> segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first, ...
> > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
> > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
>
> This.
>
> Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
> a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
>
> - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
> AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
>
> - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
> based workstations
>
> - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
>
> - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
>
> - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
> Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
>
> - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
> 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
>
> Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
> Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
> of mixing and matching happening, too.
>
> There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
> Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C standard
> also helped.
>
> HTH,
>
> Arnold
From rik at rikfarrow.com Wed Aug 7 03:31:42 2024
From: rik at rikfarrow.com (Rik Farrow)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 10:31:42 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
Unix variant rather than something else.
Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the late
80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between Unix
systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
text that was to be displayed.
Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
Rik
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (жё©еЌљж ј) via TUHS <
tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
> my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> >
> > segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first,
> ...
> > > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
> > > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
> >
> > This.
> >
> > Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
> > a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
> >
> > - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
> > AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
> >
> > - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
> > based workstations
> >
> > - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
> >
> > - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
> >
> > - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
> > Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
> >
> > - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
> > 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
> >
> > Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
> > Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
> > of mixing and matching happening, too.
> >
> > There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
> > Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C standard
> > also helped.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > Arnold
>
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From mrochkind at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 04:04:20 2024
From: mrochkind at gmail.com (Marc Rochkind)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 12:04:20 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
As I remember, part of the rationale was that DEC wanted something that
could be specified in an RFP that was defined in terms of an interface,
rather than an implementation. In theory this would allow them to propose
VMS with an appropriate interface layer. I don't know if anything like this
was ever created. But the interface standard sure was, of course.
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:32 AM Rik Farrow <rik at rikfarrow.com> wrote:
> I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
> government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
> products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
> Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
>
> So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
> Unix variant rather than something else.
>
> Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the late
> 80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between Unix
> systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
> Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
> systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
> needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
> text that was to be displayed.
>
> Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
>
> Rik
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (жё©еЌљж ј) via TUHS <
> tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
>> my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came
>> first, ...
>> > > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
>> > > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
>> >
>> > This.
>> >
>> > Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
>> > a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
>> >
>> > - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
>> > AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
>> >
>> > - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
>> > based workstations
>> >
>> > - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
>> >
>> > - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
>> >
>> > - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
>> > Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
>> >
>> > - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
>> > 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
>> >
>> > Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
>> > Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
>> > of mixing and matching happening, too.
>> >
>> > There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
>> > Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C
>> standard
>> > also helped.
>> >
>> > HTH,
>> >
>> > Arnold
>>
>
--
*My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
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From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Aug 7 04:09:48 2024
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:09:48 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
For a long time DEC had "VMS POSIX" product. I don't know much
more about it, other than that it existed and was what you
describe, more or less.
Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I remember, part of the rationale was that DEC wanted something that
> could be specified in an RFP that was defined in terms of an interface,
> rather than an implementation. In theory this would allow them to propose
> VMS with an appropriate interface layer. I don't know if anything like this
> was ever created. But the interface standard sure was, of course.
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:32 AM Rik Farrow <rik at rikfarrow.com> wrote:
>
> > I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
> > government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
> > products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
> > Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
> >
> > So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
> > Unix variant rather than something else.
> >
> > Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the late
> > 80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between Unix
> > systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
> > Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
> > systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
> > needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
> > text that was to be displayed.
> >
> > Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
> >
> > Rik
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (жё©еЌљж ј) via TUHS <
> > tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> >> and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
> >> my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
> >>
> >> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came
> >> first, ...
> >> > > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
> >> > > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
> >> >
> >> > This.
> >> >
> >> > Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
> >> > a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
> >> >
> >> > - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
> >> > AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
> >> >
> >> > - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
> >> > based workstations
> >> >
> >> > - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
> >> >
> >> > - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
> >> >
> >> > - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
> >> > Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
> >> >
> >> > - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
> >> > 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
> >> >
> >> > Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
> >> > Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
> >> > of mixing and matching happening, too.
> >> >
> >> > There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
> >> > Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C
> >> standard
> >> > also helped.
> >> >
> >> > HTH,
> >> >
> >> > Arnold
> >>
> >
>
> --
> *My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
From rik at rikfarrow.com Wed Aug 7 04:18:01 2024
From: rik at rikfarrow.com (Rik Farrow)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 11:18:01 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACY3YMFD4dJg81sWjokFdU6_hWLw_RLHV7jV6_TceV6_C7s0UA@mail.gmail.com>
A little digging turned up FIPS 151-2:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140220130516/http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip151-2.htm
This website also explains Microsoft's desire to support several APIs:
https://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
Rik
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:04 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I remember, part of the rationale was that DEC wanted something that
> could be specified in an RFP that was defined in terms of an interface,
> rather than an implementation. In theory this would allow them to propose
> VMS with an appropriate interface layer. I don't know if anything like this
> was ever created. But the interface standard sure was, of course.
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:32 AM Rik Farrow <rik at rikfarrow.com> wrote:
>
>> I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
>> government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
>> products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
>> Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
>>
>> So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
>> Unix variant rather than something else.
>>
>> Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the
>> late 80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between
>> Unix systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
>> Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
>> systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
>> needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
>> text that was to be displayed.
>>
>> Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
>>
>> Rik
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (жё©еЌљж ј) via TUHS <
>> tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>>> and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
>>> my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came
>>> first, ...
>>> > > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
>>> > > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
>>> >
>>> > This.
>>> >
>>> > Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
>>> > a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
>>> >
>>> > - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
>>> > AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
>>> >
>>> > - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
>>> > based workstations
>>> >
>>> > - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
>>> >
>>> > - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
>>> >
>>> > - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
>>> > Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
>>> >
>>> > - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
>>> > 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
>>> >
>>> > Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't
>>> portable.
>>> > Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
>>> > of mixing and matching happening, too.
>>> >
>>> > There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
>>> > Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C
>>> standard
>>> > also helped.
>>> >
>>> > HTH,
>>> >
>>> > Arnold
>>>
>>
>
> --
> *My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
>
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From clemc at ccc.com Wed Aug 7 04:19:19 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 14:19:19 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OyTpgGzRKbQFqogSL6UF65P0+pH9yT-C0F65XP+jyMmA@mail.gmail.com>
On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 11:27 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> I'm paraphrasing here but I've read in a few places something to the
> effect that UNIX was "selected" as the basis on which to build a portable
> operating system standard, which of course we all know as POSIX.
I hate history rewrites and marketing spin. *No other OS API or ABI was
ever considered!!!*
However, I got thinking on the implications of that phrasing, and have to
> ask, was there actually a "selection" made picking UNIX over some other
> candidate, or was it pretty much established from the outset of pursuing a
> standard that UNIX was going to get standardized?
>
Yes -- see below.
>
> Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first,
> desire for a portable base system definition that UNIX happened to fit
> nicely, or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship by
> the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
UNIX needed IEEE -- see below.
> Did any other OS contend for this coveted honor?
>
No.
Ok, the history. The commercial ISVs, particularly in the Minicomputer and
Mainframe works, were tired of customizing applications for VMS, AOS, NOS,
VM, or the like, and UNIX, as a "portable" operating system, offered them a
potential solution, but the problem was that the HW vendors had an
instilled concept of "value add" (embrace and extend) that would take UNIX
and customize it. Note there were two primary schools of thought in those
days, the idea of an ABI (application binary interface) definition, which
was popular for systems that were being cloned (*i.e*., the IBM Mainframes
and the new PCs with CP/M and DOS), and the API (application programming
interface) folks that wanted to use something more like what was proving to
be successful in the programming language world - which was that the
minicomputer vendors favored.
So, the "Open Systems" community of the early 1980s had a problem. People
already knew that the availability of application SW that solves people's
problems drove HW sales, so the question was: How to make more applications
available for UNIX and do it in a manner that the ISVs would support.
There were two organizations at the time, USENIX and /usr/group (later
renamed "uniform"), that were the primary place where that could be
solved. USENIX was the Academic Research Community, and everyone had
sources, so helping commercial ISVs was not really on their plate. But
/usr/group were the folks that were trying to build a new commercial market
for UNIX. They sponsored a group led by TUHS's Heinz Lycklama to try to
create an* API standard* that the ISVs could accept.
The members of that committee were: *J. Bass, R. Bott, J. Boykin, B. Boyle,
J. Brodie, E. Brunner, D. Buck, H. Burgess, P. Caruthers, F. Christiansen,
D. Clark, C. Cole, A. Cornish, W. Corwin, B. Cox, D. Cragun, I. Darwin, L.
Ford, C. Forney, M. Gien, S. Glaser, A. Godino, J. Goldberg, T. Green, J.
Guist, M. Hakam, R. Hammons, G. Harris, S. Head, T. Hoffman, T. Houghton,
J. Isaak, B. Joy, M. Katz, D. Kretsch, D. Ladermann, G. Laney, M.
Laschkewitsch, B. Laws, Jr., H. Lycklama, J. McGinness, R. Michael, J.
Moskow, M. O’Dell, D. Peachey, E. Petersen, P. Plauger, T. Plum, C.
Prosser, R. Ptak, J. Schriebman, S. Sherman, H. Stenn, R. Swartz, T.
Tabloski, M. Teller, J. Thomas, M. Tilson, D. Weisman, M. Wilens, R. Wirt,
D. Wollner.*
In November 1984, the original /usr/group standard was published. BTW: a
residual effect of this work can be seen today, as this is the document
where the <unistd.h> was defined.
As a side note, this document is "perfect bound" and I have been reluctant
to break the back on my copy of it. At some point, I may have to do that
so it can be properly scanned.
As soon as it was published, it was known to be incomplete and, of course,
lacked the user (command) level standard and an ABI standard. It also has
had one huge issue, in that /usr/group was not recognized by any of the
American Standards or ISO to create a document that could be brought
forward for International standardization. Furthermore, without a formal
proposal from an American Standard a Federal Information
Processing Standard (FIPS) couldn't be proposed, so a document needed to
created from one of the blessed organizations that could be.
Maurice Graubie had recently been the chair of IEEE 802. Jim Issak, then
of Charles RIver Data System with Maurice's sponsorship was able to get
IEEE to open a committee under their guidance to create a portable OS.
The scope and purpose are cut/pasted from the charge:
A.003.2
15JAN85
Scope and Purpose of the IEEE P1003 Working Group
"To define a standard operating system interface and environment based
on the UNIX Operating System documentation to support application
portability at the source level. (UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs)"
This effort entails three major components:
1. Definitions - Terminology and objects referred to in the document.
In the case of objects, the structure, operations that modify these,
and the effects of these operations need to be documented as well.
(Sample Term: Pipe, Sample Object: File Descriptor)
2. Systems Interface and Subroutines (C-Language Binding)
This area includes:
A. The range of interface & subroutines in the /usr/group document
B. IOCTL/TermIO
C. IFDEF Specifications
D. Real Time (Contiguous files, synchronization, shared data, priority
scheduling, etc.)
E. Device interface, including Termcaps/TermIO
F. Job Control, Windowing
G. Network Interface (but not Protocol)
H. Distributed Systems
I. Device Drivers
J. Error Handling & Recovery
3. User interface issues, including:
A. Shell, Command Set, Syntax
B. Portability - Media/Formats
C. Error Handling & Recovery
In all of these areas, consideration will be given to defining the impact on
security, international usage (language and character sets, etc.), and
application needs such as transaction processing.
The following areas may require review and commentary, perhaps even
revisions
and updates, but are outside of the scope of the current effort: Network
Protocols, Graphics, DBMS, Record I/O.
Two areas are explicitly outside of the scope of the group: Binary compati-
bility/exchange of software in executable form, and the end-user interface
(where ease-of-use is a critical issue).
Target "consumers" of the documents are: Systems implementations (including
AT&T Licensees, those developing compatible systems, and those implementing
"hosted" systems), and application implementors - for areas 1 and 2. With
Area 3, multivendor systems integrators and shell users are also identified
as document consumers.
All of these efforts will not occur at once. The initial document for
balloting will be based on Section 1 and 2-A and B above. As this goes
through the balloting process, additional areas in 2 and 3 will be readied
for balloting. At this point, it is not clear if this will represent
separate
revisions of a common document, separate "chapters" or "modules" of a
common
document, or separate standards documents.
At the first meeting of the /usr/group committee in 1985, Jim presented
this document from IEEE. We voted to disband and reconvene the meeting
under IEEE's rules, with Heinz graciously stepping back and Jim becoming
the new chair of the new committee.
The first IEEE version was published in 1988, and the first ISO version in
1990. Somewhere in between FIPS-151 was published.
бђ§
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From clemc at ccc.com Wed Aug 7 04:23:13 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 14:23:13 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2OyTpgGzRKbQFqogSL6UF65P0+pH9yT-C0F65XP+jyMmA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2OyTpgGzRKbQFqogSL6UF65P0+pH9yT-C0F65XP+jyMmA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OdMcin8QqsBtHZWNLjn5KJs+yCWpzJff=OugC7z9RwNg@mail.gmail.com>
typo: Jim Isaak
бђ§
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:19 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 11:27 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> I'm paraphrasing here but I've read in a few places something to the
>> effect that UNIX was "selected" as the basis on which to build a portable
>> operating system standard, which of course we all know as POSIX.
>
> I hate history rewrites and marketing spin. *No other OS API or ABI was
> ever considered!!!*
>
> However, I got thinking on the implications of that phrasing, and have to
>> ask, was there actually a "selection" made picking UNIX over some other
>> candidate, or was it pretty much established from the outset of pursuing a
>> standard that UNIX was going to get standardized?
>>
> Yes -- see below.
>
>>
>> Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came first,
>> desire for a portable base system definition that UNIX happened to fit
>> nicely, or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship by
>> the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
>
> UNIX needed IEEE -- see below.
>
>
>
>> Did any other OS contend for this coveted honor?
>>
> No.
>
> Ok, the history. The commercial ISVs, particularly in the Minicomputer
> and Mainframe works, were tired of customizing applications for VMS, AOS,
> NOS, VM, or the like, and UNIX, as a "portable" operating system, offered
> them a potential solution, but the problem was that the HW vendors had an
> instilled concept of "value add" (embrace and extend) that would take UNIX
> and customize it. Note there were two primary schools of thought in those
> days, the idea of an ABI (application binary interface) definition, which
> was popular for systems that were being cloned (*i.e*., the IBM
> Mainframes and the new PCs with CP/M and DOS), and the API (application
> programming interface) folks that wanted to use something more like what
> was proving to be successful in the programming language world - which was
> that the minicomputer vendors favored.
>
> So, the "Open Systems" community of the early 1980s had a problem. People
> already knew that the availability of application SW that solves people's
> problems drove HW sales, so the question was: How to make more applications
> available for UNIX and do it in a manner that the ISVs would support.
>
> There were two organizations at the time, USENIX and /usr/group (later
> renamed "uniform"), that were the primary place where that could be
> solved. USENIX was the Academic Research Community, and everyone had
> sources, so helping commercial ISVs was not really on their plate. But
> /usr/group were the folks that were trying to build a new commercial market
> for UNIX. They sponsored a group led by TUHS's Heinz Lycklama to try to
> create an* API standard* that the ISVs could accept.
>
> The members of that committee were: *J. Bass, R. Bott, J. Boykin, B.
> Boyle, J. Brodie, E. Brunner, D. Buck, H. Burgess, P. Caruthers, F.
> Christiansen, D. Clark, C. Cole, A. Cornish, W. Corwin, B. Cox, D. Cragun,
> I. Darwin, L. Ford, C. Forney, M. Gien, S. Glaser, A. Godino, J. Goldberg,
> T. Green, J. Guist, M. Hakam, R. Hammons, G. Harris, S. Head, T. Hoffman,
> T. Houghton, J. Isaak, B. Joy, M. Katz, D. Kretsch, D. Ladermann, G. Laney,
> M. Laschkewitsch, B. Laws, Jr., H. Lycklama, J. McGinness, R. Michael, J.
> Moskow, M. O’Dell, D. Peachey, E. Petersen, P. Plauger, T. Plum, C.
> Prosser, R. Ptak, J. Schriebman, S. Sherman, H. Stenn, R. Swartz, T.
> Tabloski, M. Teller, J. Thomas, M. Tilson, D. Weisman, M. Wilens, R. Wirt,
> D. Wollner.*
>
> In November 1984, the original /usr/group standard was published. BTW: a
> residual effect of this work can be seen today, as this is the document
> where the <unistd.h> was defined.
>
> As a side note, this document is "perfect bound" and I have been reluctant
> to break the back on my copy of it. At some point, I may have to do that
> so it can be properly scanned.
>
> As soon as it was published, it was known to be incomplete and, of course,
> lacked the user (command) level standard and an ABI standard. It also has
> had one huge issue, in that /usr/group was not recognized by any of the
> American Standards or ISO to create a document that could be brought
> forward for International standardization. Furthermore, without a formal
> proposal from an American Standard a Federal Information
> Processing Standard (FIPS) couldn't be proposed, so a document needed to
> created from one of the blessed organizations that could be.
>
> Maurice Graubie had recently been the chair of IEEE 802. Jim Issak, then
> of Charles RIver Data System with Maurice's sponsorship was able to get
> IEEE to open a committee under their guidance to create a portable OS.
> The scope and purpose are cut/pasted from the charge:
>
>
> A.003.2
> 15JAN85
>
>
> Scope and Purpose of the IEEE P1003 Working Group
>
> "To define a standard operating system interface and environment based
> on the UNIX Operating System documentation to support application
> portability at the source level. (UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs)"
>
> This effort entails three major components:
>
> 1. Definitions - Terminology and objects referred to in the document.
> In the case of objects, the structure, operations that modify these,
> and the effects of these operations need to be documented as well.
> (Sample Term: Pipe, Sample Object: File Descriptor)
>
> 2. Systems Interface and Subroutines (C-Language Binding)
> This area includes:
>
> A. The range of interface & subroutines in the /usr/group document
> B. IOCTL/TermIO
> C. IFDEF Specifications
> D. Real Time (Contiguous files, synchronization, shared data, priority
> scheduling, etc.)
> E. Device interface, including Termcaps/TermIO
> F. Job Control, Windowing
> G. Network Interface (but not Protocol)
> H. Distributed Systems
> I. Device Drivers
> J. Error Handling & Recovery
>
> 3. User interface issues, including:
>
> A. Shell, Command Set, Syntax
> B. Portability - Media/Formats
> C. Error Handling & Recovery
>
> In all of these areas, consideration will be given to defining the impact
> on
> security, international usage (language and character sets, etc.), and
> application needs such as transaction processing.
>
> The following areas may require review and commentary, perhaps even
> revisions
> and updates, but are outside of the scope of the current effort: Network
> Protocols, Graphics, DBMS, Record I/O.
>
> Two areas are explicitly outside of the scope of the group: Binary
> compati-
> bility/exchange of software in executable form, and the end-user interface
> (where ease-of-use is a critical issue).
>
> Target "consumers" of the documents are: Systems implementations
> (including
> AT&T Licensees, those developing compatible systems, and those
> implementing
> "hosted" systems), and application implementors - for areas 1 and 2. With
> Area 3, multivendor systems integrators and shell users are also
> identified
> as document consumers.
>
> All of these efforts will not occur at once. The initial document for
> balloting will be based on Section 1 and 2-A and B above. As this goes
> through the balloting process, additional areas in 2 and 3 will be readied
> for balloting. At this point, it is not clear if this will represent
> separate
> revisions of a common document, separate "chapters" or "modules" of a
> common
> document, or separate standards documents.
>
> At the first meeting of the /usr/group committee in 1985, Jim presented
> this document from IEEE. We voted to disband and reconvene the meeting
> under IEEE's rules, with Heinz graciously stepping back and Jim becoming
> the new chair of the new committee.
>
> The first IEEE version was published in 1988, and the first ISO version in
> 1990. Somewhere in between FIPS-151 was published.
>
>
>
>
> бђ§
>
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From heinz at osta.com Wed Aug 7 04:36:18 2024
From: heinz at osta.com (Heinz Lycklama)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 11:36:18 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
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<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
The POSIX standard is based on the /usr/group standard
which we started in 1981 under /usr/group, and turned
into the standard in 1984, which was then turned over
to the IEEE under the leadership of Jim Isaac. As the
chair of the /usr/group standards effort, we made every
attempt to include as many UNIX vendors as possible,
systems vendors as well as application vendors. The
work of the /usr/group standard was joined by all major
computer manufacturers - mainframe, mini-computer,
and micro-computer - plus applications vendors who
were interested in having their apps run on as many
platforms as possible. The members of the /usr/group
standard committee also included the vendors of
UNIX-like systems who did not have access to the source
code for the UNIX System.
ISCВ (my employer at the time) also developed a UNIX
emulation product that ran on the VAX VMS system in 1979.
We had an interest in providing a platform for as many
applications as possible on the VAX UNIX emulation platform.
I do not recall that Govt contracts were a big concern at
the time that we started the UNIX standards effort, but it
did become a concern over the years.
My recall of the UNIX standards beginnings.
Heinz
On 8/6/2024 11:09 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> For a long time DEC had "VMS POSIX" product. I don't know much
> more about it, other than that it existed and was what you
> describe, more or less.
>
> Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As I remember, part of the rationale was that DEC wanted something that
>> could be specified in an RFP that was defined in terms of an interface,
>> rather than an implementation. In theory this would allow them to propose
>> VMS with an appropriate interface layer. I don't know if anything like this
>> was ever created. But the interface standard sure was, of course.
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:32 AM Rik Farrow <rik at rikfarrow.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
>>> government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
>>> products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
>>> Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
>>>
>>> So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
>>> Unix variant rather than something else.
>>>
>>> Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the late
>>> 80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between Unix
>>> systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
>>> Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
>>> systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
>>> needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
>>> text that was to be displayed.
>>>
>>> Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
>>>
>>> Rik
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (жё©еЌљж ј) via TUHS <
>>> tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
>>>> my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>>>>> segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came
>>>> first, ...
>>>>>> ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
>>>>>> by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
>>>>> This.
>>>>>
>>>>> Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
>>>>> a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
>>>>>
>>>>> - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
>>>>> AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
>>>>>
>>>>> - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
>>>>> based workstations
>>>>>
>>>>> - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
>>>>>
>>>>> - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
>>>>>
>>>>> - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
>>>>> Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
>>>>>
>>>>> - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
>>>>> 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
>>>>>
>>>>> Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
>>>>> Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
>>>>> of mixing and matching happening, too.
>>>>>
>>>>> There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
>>>>> Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C
>>>> standard
>>>>> also helped.
>>>>>
>>>>> HTH,
>>>>>
>>>>> Arnold
>> --
>> *My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
From g.branden.robinson at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 04:49:08 2024
From: g.branden.robinson at gmail.com (G. Branden Robinson)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 13:49:08 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2OyTpgGzRKbQFqogSL6UF65P0+pH9yT-C0F65XP+jyMmA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2OyTpgGzRKbQFqogSL6UF65P0+pH9yT-C0F65XP+jyMmA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240806184908.ejbll27chramhgvl@illithid>
At 2024-08-06T14:19:19-0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> There were two organizations at the time, USENIX and /usr/group (later
> renamed "uniform"),
Should that be "Uniforum"?
Regards,
Branden
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From clemc at ccc.com Wed Aug 7 04:55:47 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 14:55:47 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <20240806184908.ejbll27chramhgvl@illithid>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2OyTpgGzRKbQFqogSL6UF65P0+pH9yT-C0F65XP+jyMmA@mail.gmail.com>
<20240806184908.ejbll27chramhgvl@illithid>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OFcbAkcCrdD4MX8udBNdP6Sne1Z9=Nhio-F9xZSGErsA@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:49 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> At 2024-08-06T14:19:19-0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > There were two organizations at the time, USENIX and /usr/group (later
> > renamed "uniform"),
>
> Should that be "Uniforum"?
>
Officially it should be capitalized and as you point out correctly, spelled
with a U, so thank you. Dyslexia-r-me.
BTW: Rik Farrow says, *"**Wow, they have a web page from the mid-1990s:*
http://www.uniforum.org/"
бђ§
бђ§
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Aug 7 04:45:21 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (segaloco via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2024 18:45:21 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
<cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
Message-ID: <3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
On Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 at 11:36 AM, Heinz Lycklama <heinz at osta.com> wrote:
> The POSIX standard is based on the /usr/group standard
> which we started in 1981 under /usr/group, and turned
> into the standard in 1984, which was then turned over
> to the IEEE under the leadership of Jim Isaac. As the
> chair of the /usr/group standards effort, we made every
> attempt to include as many UNIX vendors as possible,
> systems vendors as well as application vendors. The
> work of the /usr/group standard was joined by all major
> computer manufacturers - mainframe, mini-computer,
> and micro-computer - plus applications vendors who
> were interested in having their apps run on as many
> platforms as possible. The members of the /usr/group
> standard committee also included the vendors of
> UNIX-like systems who did not have access to the source
> code for the UNIX System.
>
> ISC (my employer at the time) also developed a UNIX
> emulation product that ran on the VAX VMS system in 1979.
> We had an interest in providing a platform for as many
> applications as possible on the VAX UNIX emulation platform.
> I do not recall that Govt contracts were a big concern at
> the time that we started the UNIX standards effort, but it
> did become a concern over the years.
>
> My recall of the UNIX standards beginnings.
>
> Heinz
>
> On 8/6/2024 11:09 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>
> > For a long time DEC had "VMS POSIX" product. I don't know much
> > more about it, other than that it existed and was what you
> > describe, more or less.
> >
> > Marc Rochkind mrochkind at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > As I remember, part of the rationale was that DEC wanted something that
> > > could be specified in an RFP that was defined in terms of an interface,
> > > rather than an implementation. In theory this would allow them to propose
> > > VMS with an appropriate interface layer. I don't know if anything like this
> > > was ever created. But the interface standard sure was, of course.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 11:32 AM Rik Farrow rik at rikfarrow.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
> > > > government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
> > > > products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
> > > > Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
> > > >
> > > > So POSIX was born partially as a way of letting it be known you wanted a
> > > > Unix variant rather than something else.
> > > >
> > > > Certainly porting was an issue. I did work for a software shop in the late
> > > > 80s and early 90s that produced graphics software, and porting between Unix
> > > > systems was relatively easy, compared to, say, moving the software to
> > > > Apollo's DomainIX, a sort of Unix-like version of Apollo Domain. With Unix
> > > > systems and this software, the biggest issue was fonts, as the software
> > > > needed to be able to calculate the extent, that is, the bounding box, for
> > > > text that was to be displayed.
> > > >
> > > > Strangely enough, the other big issue was time.
> > > >
> > > > Rik
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:29 AM Peter Weinberger (жё©еЌљж ј) via TUHS <
> > > > tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
> > > > > my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > segaloco via TUHS tuhs at tuhs.org wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Another way to put it would be as a chicken and egg, which came
> > > > > > > first, ...
> > > > > > > ..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
> > > > > > > by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
> > > > > > > This.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
> > > > > > a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
> > > > > > AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
> > > > > > based workstations
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
> > > > > > Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
> > > > > > 3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
> > > > > > Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
> > > > > > of mixing and matching happening, too.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
> > > > > > Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C
> > > > > > standard
> > > > > > also helped.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > HTH,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Arnold
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com mrochkind at gmail.com
Thank you so much everyone for the thorough clarifications! I think this little "selected" nugget may originate with verbiage on Wikipedia although I feel like I've seen at least one other source attempt to posit there was a selection to be made. From the Wikipedia overview:
"Unix was selected as the basis for a standard system interface partly because it was "manufacturer-neutral"."
My understanding aligns with what others have stated, that this was always a UNIX standardization effort, not some "which OS is it gonna be" that landed on UNIX for convenience. I figured this was the case but worth asking about anyhow. Maybe it's time to dig out the old Wikipedia account and clarify that verbiage...
- Matt G.
From paul.winalski at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 05:07:54 2024
From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 15:07:54 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <CABH=_VQ8g3QBLgv_OE_PNnt30ZKDyE0_aNgyPVgqH4Bnxo6Axw@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:10 PM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> For a long time DEC had "VMS POSIX" product. I don't know much
> more about it, other than that it existed and was what you
> describe, more or less.
>
> IIRC VMS POSIX was what motivated the product name change from VMS to
OpenVMS. I thought the name change was an expensive and stupid idea at the
time. I still do.
-Paul W.
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From clemc at ccc.com Wed Aug 7 05:31:09 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 15:31:09 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
<cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
<3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PxppfRJ+HJbVBDaNvubDhcQ78Gyfj4jvS9EurEgUUoXQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 3:05 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> "Unix was selected as the basis for a standard system interface partly
> because it was "manufacturer-neutral"."
>
BS ... the cart is before the horse here.
The minicomputer and workstation manufacturers had already picked "UNIX'
and we had a term for it already: "Open Systems" - because the sources for
the interfaces were open and the core UNIX technology (*i.e.*, the AT&T and
BSD sources) were >>freely available<< to vendors, ISVs and even users (but
they might have to >>pay<< for a license -- *i.e.*, it was "open" (free as
in "libre" but not "free" as in beer).
It was not neutral at all. What seems to be forgotten/misunderstood in
today's world, the core problem being solved was getting >>ISV<< codes to
your system.
Thus, the ABI *vs.* API argument. In many ways, the ISVs like the ABIs
over the API as it cuts down their tests/number of versions needed -- but
if we could create an API that everyone could agree to, that would be
neutral - as then the difference for an ISV would be packaging and
testing. The concept was "just recompile." ISTR Heinz was one of the
people who reminded us on the committee early on that without a real ABI,
we would never have as many applications as either the mainframes or the
PCs. But no vendor would give up control. AT&T tried to create an ABI and
did define one for their System V (I think R2 originally), but as they were
so backward /behind in the OS features due to NIH and frankly heavy-handed
in licenses and business issues, few vendors trusted them. By the time of
SVR4, that was a lost cause.
Funny, even Linux never got there, contrary to what it says. This is why
Intel has to develop the Cluster Ready Program. I know of one HPC ISV
that had a test matrix of 144 different Linux cluster configurations they
had tested their code - when you counted, N versions of Red Hat, Ubuntu,
SUSE, and then manufacturers: IBM vs HP vs Cray, and everyone had different
interconnects. What a nightmare!!!
бђ§
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From mobile at majumdar.org.uk Wed Aug 7 05:41:25 2024
From: mobile at majumdar.org.uk (Dibyendu Majumdar)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 20:41:25 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Debate re optimization between Bill Harrison and Steve
Johnson at POPL 8
Message-ID: <CACXZuxdxu6-qGyRoDBPn3tU+YNB2o8X2p9m041BAF6bPHoCJOw@mail.gmail.com>
Hi
I am looking for any write-up or recollection about the debate mentioned here:
https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~reps/popl00/cfd00.html
And also mentioned in an interview with Fran Allen (Coders at Work).
Many thanks
Regards
Dibyendu
From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Wed Aug 7 05:59:58 2024
From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 15:59:58 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Debate re optimization between Bill Harrison and Steve
Johnson at POPL 8
In-Reply-To: <CACXZuxdxu6-qGyRoDBPn3tU+YNB2o8X2p9m041BAF6bPHoCJOw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CACXZuxdxu6-qGyRoDBPn3tU+YNB2o8X2p9m041BAF6bPHoCJOw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEdTPBfLxeh29WMBuL=D23qkM+PP2YcmS-7rmiyg+xFWZCrhXw@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 at 15:51, Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile at majumdar.org.uk>
wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am looking for any write-up or recollection about the debate mentioned
> here:
>
> https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~reps/popl00/cfd00.html
>
> And also mentioned in an interview with Fran Allen (Coders at Work).
>
Did you contact the conference chair about getting access to the position
papers, or for his recollections? I believe he is still in the same
position (CS Professor at the University of Wisconsin) and it is entirely
possible that his contact information is still valid.
-Henry
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From mobile at majumdar.org.uk Wed Aug 7 06:13:26 2024
From: mobile at majumdar.org.uk (Dibyendu Majumdar)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 21:13:26 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Debate re optimization between Bill Harrison and Steve
Johnson at POPL 8
In-Reply-To: <CAEdTPBfLxeh29WMBuL=D23qkM+PP2YcmS-7rmiyg+xFWZCrhXw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CACXZuxdxu6-qGyRoDBPn3tU+YNB2o8X2p9m041BAF6bPHoCJOw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEdTPBfLxeh29WMBuL=D23qkM+PP2YcmS-7rmiyg+xFWZCrhXw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACXZuxdyUfiEAqnyvccD1xxN+VHYmWJXoFr_=8N3JJL5t7fCCg@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 at 21:00, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 at 15:51, Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile at majumdar.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> I am looking for any write-up or recollection about the debate mentioned here:
>>
>> https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~reps/popl00/cfd00.html
>>
>> And also mentioned in an interview with Fran Allen (Coders at Work).
>
>
> Did you contact the conference chair about getting access to the position papers, or for his recollections? I believe he is still in the same position (CS Professor at the University of Wisconsin) and it is entirely possible that his contact information is still valid.
>
No, I haven't - thank you for the suggestion.
Regards
Dibyendu
From mobile at majumdar.org.uk Wed Aug 7 07:51:08 2024
From: mobile at majumdar.org.uk (Dibyendu Majumdar)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2024 22:51:08 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Debate re optimization between Bill Harrison and Steve
Johnson at POPL 8
In-Reply-To: <CACXZuxdxu6-qGyRoDBPn3tU+YNB2o8X2p9m041BAF6bPHoCJOw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CACXZuxdxu6-qGyRoDBPn3tU+YNB2o8X2p9m041BAF6bPHoCJOw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACXZuxeFXh=cDm=6ehrNuGbbecCA_x-qPL2ZuVAjNG+7AvBbkQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 at 20:41, Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile at majumdar.org.uk> wrote:
>
> I am looking for any write-up or recollection about the debate mentioned here:
>
> https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~reps/popl00/cfd00.html
>
> And also mentioned in an interview with Fran Allen (Coders at Work).
>
I found the position papers in the POPL 8 archives:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/567532.567541
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/567532.567542
Regards
Dibyendu
From tytso at mit.edu Wed Aug 7 14:06:44 2024
From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o)
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2024 00:06:44 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240807040644.GA4511@mit.edu>
On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 10:31:42AM -0700, Rik Farrow wrote:
> I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
> government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted to specify
> products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
> Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
That might have been *a* consideration, and that might have been a
reason to take a pre-existing standard work and turn it into something
official such as IEEE.
There was a similar dynamic at work with the Linux Standard Base,
which was originally an effort (which I was involved in), to create a
ABI standard for Linux. The hope at the time was that this might make
it easier for application vendors to make comercial software available
that would work across multiple Linux distributions --- and in
particular SuSE and Red Hat.
This work went on for awhile, and we had developed an ABI standard
that worked aross multiple architectures, including (but not limited
to) x86/64, PowerPC, and S/390. At one point, in order to sell into
certain government market (both the US and some European countries),
there was a desire by certain major companies that we take the LSB to
some Official Standards Body (the Free Standards Group, and which
merged with OSDL to form the Linux Foundation wasn't good enough for
government bureaucrats). So I was involved with various corporate
strategists about which standards body would be easy enough to
control; we considered IEEE, ECMA, and ISO. Ultimately the choice was
ISO, and various big companies (including IBM and HP) sent their
employees to various national standards bodies, and I got bunch of
international trips to Europe and Asia, and after a year or two, the
Linux Standard Base became ISO/IEC 23360.
Of course, keeping an ISO standard up to date took a huge amount of
effort and money, and over time, the requirement from government
buyers that an OS came with an Internaional Standard went away --- and
then my employer at the time, as well as the other major Linux
companies, abandoned the effort completely.
So while it may have been the case that at one point the US Government
may have had a requirement, and the US Government may have looked down
on plebian standards bodies like Uniforum and the Free Standards Body,
and this might have inspired the $$$$ and effort to get an officially
blessed International Standard, this was very likely *not* the reason
why the stndard was written in the first place.
- Ted
P.S. For those of you who heard the controversy of how Microsoft
manipulated the ISO process by stacking the deck with the employees at
multiple countries' national bodies to influence the Office Open XML
File Format (ISO/IEC 29500, previously known as ECMA-376), I can say
quite authoratively that IBM and HP, as multinational, were not above
doing something very similar with ISO/IEC 23360. The only difference
was that it wasn't quite a high stakes, and it didn't result in
appeals up to ISO/IEC JTC like what happened with ISO/IEC 29500.
But as a result, I'm quite cynical about standards bodies which do
voting by countries' national standards bodies, since I've seen how
easy it is for multinationals to put fairly major thumbs on the scales
to get a desired business outcome...
From steffen at sdaoden.eu Thu Aug 8 06:56:14 2024
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2024 22:56:14 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <20240807040644.GA4511@mit.edu>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<20240807040644.GA4511@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20240807205614.Kj1pd4YI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Theodore Ts'o wrote in
<20240807040644.GA4511 at mit.edu>:
|On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 10:31:42AM -0700, Rik Farrow wrote:
|> I recall something different than what others had suggested. When the US
|> government issued requests for proposals, they weren't permitted \
|> to specify
|> products by name. In particular, if you wanted something that wasn't
|> Microsoft, you couldn't actually specify that it be Unix.
|
|That might have been *a* consideration, and that might have been a
|reason to take a pre-existing standard work and turn it into something
|official such as IEEE.
|
|There was a similar dynamic at work with the Linux Standard Base,
|which was originally an effort (which I was involved in), to create a
|ABI standard for Linux. The hope at the time was that this might make
|it easier for application vendors to make comercial software available
|that would work across multiple Linux distributions --- and in
|particular SuSE and Red Hat.
|
|This work went on for awhile, and we had developed an ABI standard
|that worked aross multiple architectures, including (but not limited
|to) x86/64, PowerPC, and S/390. At one point, in order to sell into
|certain government market (both the US and some European countries),
|there was a desire by certain major companies that we take the LSB to
|some Official Standards Body (the Free Standards Group, and which
|merged with OSDL to form the Linux Foundation wasn't good enough for
|government bureaucrats). So I was involved with various corporate
|strategists about which standards body would be easy enough to
|control; we considered IEEE, ECMA, and ISO. Ultimately the choice was
|ISO, and various big companies (including IBM and HP) sent their
|employees to various national standards bodies, and I got bunch of
|international trips to Europe and Asia, and after a year or two, the
|Linux Standard Base became ISO/IEC 23360.
|
|Of course, keeping an ISO standard up to date took a huge amount of
|effort and money, and over time, the requirement from government
|buyers that an OS came with an Internaional Standard went away --- and
|then my employer at the time, as well as the other major Linux
|companies, abandoned the effort completely.
|
|So while it may have been the case that at one point the US Government
|may have had a requirement, and the US Government may have looked down
|on plebian standards bodies like Uniforum and the Free Standards Body,
|and this might have inspired the $$$$ and effort to get an officially
|blessed International Standard, this was very likely *not* the reason
|why the stndard was written in the first place.
|
| - Ted
|
|P.S. For those of you who heard the controversy of how Microsoft
|manipulated the ISO process by stacking the deck with the employees at
|multiple countries' national bodies to influence the Office Open XML
|File Format (ISO/IEC 29500, previously known as ECMA-376), I can say
|quite authoratively that IBM and HP, as multinational, were not above
|doing something very similar with ISO/IEC 23360. The only difference
|was that it wasn't quite a high stakes, and it didn't result in
|appeals up to ISO/IEC JTC like what happened with ISO/IEC 29500.
|
|But as a result, I'm quite cynical about standards bodies which do
|voting by countries' national standards bodies, since I've seen how
|easy it is for multinationals to put fairly major thumbs on the scales
|to get a desired business outcome...
--End of <20240807040644.GA4511 at mit.edu>
Btw how ridiculous is the view onto those Chinese Linux
Distributions which put effort in making Linux POSIX compatible,
and even pay money for making that official?
I personally was *tremendously*, well, pissed, once one of those
distributions was (just recently, ie, years later) not allowed to
join the encrypted part of oss-security.
Too much politics in a non-free world.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
|
| Only during dog days:
| On the 81st anniversary of the Goebbel's Sportpalast speech
| von der Leyen gave an overlong hypocritical inauguration one.
| The brew's essence of our civilizing advancement seems o be:
| Total war - shortest war -> Permanent war - everlasting war
From tytso at mit.edu Thu Aug 8 09:47:55 2024
From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o)
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2024 19:47:55 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <20240807205614.Kj1pd4YI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<20240807040644.GA4511@mit.edu>
<20240807205614.Kj1pd4YI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Message-ID: <20240807234755.GB4511@mit.edu>
On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 10:56:14PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Btw how ridiculous is the view onto those Chinese Linux
> Distributions which put effort in making Linux POSIX compatible,
> and even pay money for making that official?
Well, that's their choice. No US companies that I know of care about
POSIX compliance, so I don't know if any US-based distributions that
are paying money (or more importantly) engineer time, to make it
official. If Chinese distributions are investing resources in that
way, well.... that's there stupidity or maybe, a very good business
choice. :-)
> I personally was *tremendously*, well, pissed, once one of those
> distributions was (just recently, ie, years later) not allowed to
> join the encrypted part of oss-security.
> Too much politics in a non-free world.
In the real wrld things get complicated. In 2019 the US put export
restrictions for Huawei, which was interpreted at the time that public
discussions on open mailing lists relating to Linux was totally fine.
But there was some legal interpreations that direct
engineer-to-engineer e-mail might be considered lending assistance
that could potentially run afoul some of the export restrictions. I'm
not a lawyer, but an encrypted distribution to certain chinese
entities might be... complex from a legal perspective. Talk to your
corporate legal counsel for specific legal advice.
Things are even worse with Russian companies, since the OFAC (Office
of Foreign Assets Controls, at https://ofac.trasury.gov) sanctions are
even more strict. Even if the exchange happens on an open source
mailing list, if the patches come from a sanctioned entity, or an
entity controlled by a sanctioned entity, and the patches say, contain
device drivers used by a Russian SOC that is known to be used in
Russin missiles used against Ukraine (completely hypothetically, of
course...) --- if a US based engineer accepts those patches, that's
considered rendering assistance to a sanctioned entity, and you and
your company have to file paperwork acknowledging that it was done
unknowingly, and the patches need to be reverted. Again, talk to your
friendly neighborhood legal counsel before you do anything with an
entity that may be from Russia, because the OFAC database of
sanctioned entities is constantly changing, and its search functions
are terribly primitive.
The joys of being an open source maintainer in the 21st century....
Not only do you have to worry about trojan horse constributions from
agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (ala xz), you also
have to worry about the US government and OFAC-administered sanctions.
- Ted
From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Thu Aug 8 11:25:12 2024
From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling)
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2024 18:25:12 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PxppfRJ+HJbVBDaNvubDhcQ78Gyfj4jvS9EurEgUUoXQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
<cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
<3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2PxppfRJ+HJbVBDaNvubDhcQ78Gyfj4jvS9EurEgUUoXQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAK7dMtAwvuZqXXN28DxeL63xsd_zRAYJN3ft3y6JFs2eQt96ZA@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 12:31 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 3:05 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> "Unix was selected as the basis for a standard system interface partly
>> because it was "manufacturer-neutral"."
>>
> BS ... the cart is before the horse here.
>
> The minicomputer and workstation manufacturers had already picked "UNIX'
> and we had a term for it already: "Open Systems" - because the sources for
> the interfaces were open and the core UNIX technology (*i.e.*, the AT&T
> and BSD sources) were >>freely available<< to vendors, ISVs and even users
> (but they might have to >>pay<< for a license -- *i.e.*, it was "open"
> (free as in "libre" but not "free" as in beer).
>
> It was not neutral at all. What seems to be forgotten/misunderstood in
> today's world, the core problem being solved was getting >>ISV<< codes to
> your system.
>
> Thus, the ABI *vs.* API argument. In many ways, the ISVs like the ABIs
> over the API as it cuts down their tests/number of versions needed -- but
> if we could create an API that everyone could agree to, that would be
> neutral - as then the difference for an ISV would be packaging and
> testing. The concept was "just recompile." ISTR Heinz was one of the
> people who reminded us on the committee early on that without a real ABI,
> we would never have as many applications as either the mainframes or the
> PCs. But no vendor would give up control. AT&T tried to create an ABI and
> did define one for their System V (I think R2 originally), but as they were
> so backward /behind in the OS features due to NIH and frankly heavy-handed
> in licenses and business issues, few vendors trusted them. By the time of
> SVR4, that was a lost cause.
>
I often wonder about SCO when these kinds of discussions come up. Speaking
about SCO is always a sticky wicket because the name became disgraced with
the late form.
My understanding is the SCO Xenix -> {SCO UNIX v3, OpenDesktop, OpenServer}
lineage was the largest volume UNIX for most of the 1980s and 1990s.
Relevant to Clem's point, it seems like the iBCS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Binary_Compatibility_Standard served to
try and provide some uniformity for ISVs providing binary software on a
variety of x86 UNIX. The bit it says about Linux having support is true
too, I have some old boxed Linux distros and that is one of the features
they advertise.
Of course this all started to collapse by the mid to late 1990s.. but once
upon a time it seems like SCO was a big deal.. although I guess it appealed
to a different crowd.
> Funny, even Linux never got there, contrary to what it says. This is why
> Intel has to develop the Cluster Ready Program. I know of one HPC ISV
> that had a test matrix of 144 different Linux cluster configurations they
> had tested their code - when you counted, N versions of Red Hat, Ubuntu,
> SUSE, and then manufacturers: IBM vs HP vs Cray, and everyone had different
> interconnects. What a nightmare!!!
>
>
> бђ§
>
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From tytso at mit.edu Thu Aug 8 13:56:55 2024
From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o)
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2024 23:56:55 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CAK7dMtAwvuZqXXN28DxeL63xsd_zRAYJN3ft3y6JFs2eQt96ZA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
<cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
<3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2PxppfRJ+HJbVBDaNvubDhcQ78Gyfj4jvS9EurEgUUoXQ@mail.gmail.com>
<CAK7dMtAwvuZqXXN28DxeL63xsd_zRAYJN3ft3y6JFs2eQt96ZA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240808035655.GE4511@mit.edu>
On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 06:25:12PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
>
> Relevant to Clem's point, it seems like the iBCS
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Binary_Compatibility_Standard served to
> try and provide some uniformity for ISVs providing binary software on a
> variety of x86 UNIX. The bit it says about Linux having support is true
> too, I have some old boxed Linux distros and that is one of the features
> they advertise.
Around 1994, MIT purchased a site license for a proprietary
spreadsheet program for SCO because we knew it would work on Linux
(and we had a lot of Linux usage on campus; we had ported a good chunk
of the Project Athena infrastruture, including the Andrew File System
to Linux).
An amusing anecdote; I worked with one of their primary software
developers so we could get a custom build of the software that would
only work if the IP address of the machine was 18.X.Y.Z, since MIT had
class A network. This person would eventually become one of the
founders of Red Hat, and I told him that we were purchasing it
intended to run it on Linux. He told me that this would be perfectly
fine, because he had compiled the iBCS binary on Linux. Turns out the
development environment on Linux was far more developer friendly (at
least in his eyes) than SCO, so he was building a SCO/iBCS binary on
Linux. Since he had done his basic automated regression testing on
Linux with iBCS emulation, and only later sent the binary to do QA on
the SCO client, he was quite confident that it work just _fine_ on our
student's Linux desktops.
- Ted
From marc.donner at gmail.com Thu Aug 8 18:46:28 2024
From: marc.donner at gmail.com (Marc Donner)
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2024 04:46:28 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <20240808035655.GE4511@mit.edu>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
<cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
<3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2PxppfRJ+HJbVBDaNvubDhcQ78Gyfj4jvS9EurEgUUoXQ@mail.gmail.com>
<CAK7dMtAwvuZqXXN28DxeL63xsd_zRAYJN3ft3y6JFs2eQt96ZA@mail.gmail.com>
<20240808035655.GE4511@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CALQ0xCAFDmJ5fwua6=Nx71YpsssD0GW-cTzzTb+W8VgmXkcTSA@mail.gmail.com>
To summarize this discussion, if I may, the unifying driver was developer
friendliness, with all of its deeper implications, that drove the process.
Reflecting on this theme, I note that MSFT focused on developers in the
golden age of Windows. Some of it was investment in powerful IDEs but an
awful lot of it was stuff like their MVP program that created community as
well as offering participants some differentiation in their competition for
customers.
Looking back, the community-building aspects attracted me in the early days.
Marc
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 11:57 PM Theodore Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 06:25:12PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> >
> > Relevant to Clem's point, it seems like the iBCS
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Binary_Compatibility_Standard
> served to
> > try and provide some uniformity for ISVs providing binary software on a
> > variety of x86 UNIX. The bit it says about Linux having support is true
> > too, I have some old boxed Linux distros and that is one of the features
> > they advertise.
>
> Around 1994, MIT purchased a site license for a proprietary
> spreadsheet program for SCO because we knew it would work on Linux
> (and we had a lot of Linux usage on campus; we had ported a good chunk
> of the Project Athena infrastruture, including the Andrew File System
> to Linux).
>
> An amusing anecdote; I worked with one of their primary software
> developers so we could get a custom build of the software that would
> only work if the IP address of the machine was 18.X.Y.Z, since MIT had
> class A network. This person would eventually become one of the
> founders of Red Hat, and I told him that we were purchasing it
> intended to run it on Linux. He told me that this would be perfectly
> fine, because he had compiled the iBCS binary on Linux. Turns out the
> development environment on Linux was far more developer friendly (at
> least in his eyes) than SCO, so he was building a SCO/iBCS binary on
> Linux. Since he had done his basic automated regression testing on
> Linux with iBCS emulation, and only later sent the binary to do QA on
> the SCO client, he was quite confident that it work just _fine_ on our
> student's Linux desktops.
>
> - Ted
>
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From sauer at technologists.com Fri Aug 9 02:09:59 2024
From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer (he/him))
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2024 11:09:59 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <CALQ0xCAFDmJ5fwua6=Nx71YpsssD0GW-cTzzTb+W8VgmXkcTSA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAOkr1zXLHv7h2Vx686_etJagfzpnGOmjw=aouy9uTbwvyHK0iA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408061809.476I9mJK528152@freefriends.org>
<cb2a0e6f-e1ac-46c0-b2cd-48d95ec3222d@osta.com>
<3Gs5oFUWInK1A8py_MnyO58pLGhczbTJrehgdJrgP-BxK4bVJd1hMo84s2Pbn7ulnr34c85DO-DzWFjxJmRUQdfHH2c4iAtQysuPbDPrri8=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2PxppfRJ+HJbVBDaNvubDhcQ78Gyfj4jvS9EurEgUUoXQ@mail.gmail.com>
<CAK7dMtAwvuZqXXN28DxeL63xsd_zRAYJN3ft3y6JFs2eQt96ZA@mail.gmail.com>
<20240808035655.GE4511@mit.edu>
<CALQ0xCAFDmJ5fwua6=Nx71YpsssD0GW-cTzzTb+W8VgmXkcTSA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7970daae-4387-41ce-8108-66b3ec144abb@technologists.com>
Yes, MSFT and their
https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Professional_Developers_Conference
were important, especially the 1993 Anaheim one that gave many of us our
first real taste of "Chicago." That Brad Silverberg and Steve Ballmer
paid special attention to people like me didn't hurt. I suspect Brad
deserves even more credit than he gets regarding supporting developers.
To keep things vaguely Unix related, that Anaheim conference was after
Rick Rashid had moved to MSFT Research. He and I bumped into each other
in a gift shop in Fantasyland, and discussed our career changes (I had
just left Dell for VTEL).
Charlie
On 8/8/2024 3:46 AM, Marc Donner wrote:
> To summarize this discussion, if I may, the unifying driver was
> developer friendliness, with all of its deeper implications, that drove
> the process.
>
> Reflecting on this theme, I note that MSFT focused on developers in the
> golden age of Windows.В Some of it was investment in powerful IDEs but
> an awful lot of it was stuff like their MVP program that created
> community as well as offering participants some differentiation in their
> competition for customers.
>
> Looking back, the community-building aspects attracted me in the early days.
>
> Marc
> =====
> nygeek.net <http://nygeek.net>
> mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
--
voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/Twitter: CharlesHSauer
From steffen at sdaoden.eu Fri Aug 9 10:53:37 2024
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2024 02:53:37 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Other POSIX Candidates?
In-Reply-To: <20240807234755.GB4511@mit.edu>
References: <R8WtCFqKXY8xyewIEJiQ_uoaZCFaEu_t3oGTUb6JUlhu2ta5htve_1eTZbxArVbzPlqOuBiTOPuIEmF4JtzczY-J1-e11NVMiH5xelMsK0w=@protonmail.com>
<202408060639.4766dk6x480855@freefriends.org>
<CAOUkXSrhE5WoarCXHA3PBtBj=i+-3d3h-Zrb2dSYrnpnn-5mrw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACY3YMEosHPh9-HOpgCyOGSeMyD=9VEBh5X=xZrnc+=SrhE8pg@mail.gmail.com>
<20240807040644.GA4511@mit.edu> <20240807205614.Kj1pd4YI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
<20240807234755.GB4511@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20240809005337.sGlwZxJm@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Theodore Ts'o wrote in
<20240807234755.GB4511 at mit.edu>:
|On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 10:56:14PM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
|> Btw how ridiculous is the view onto those Chinese Linux
|> Distributions which put effort in making Linux POSIX compatible,
|> and even pay money for making that official?
|
|Well, that's their choice. No US companies that I know of care about
|POSIX compliance, so I don't know if any US-based distributions that
|are paying money (or more importantly) engineer time, to make it
|official. If Chinese distributions are investing resources in that
|way, well.... that's there stupidity or maybe, a very good business
|choice. :-)
|
|> I personally was *tremendously*, well, pissed, once one of those
|> distributions was (just recently, ie, years later) not allowed to
|> join the encrypted part of oss-security.
|> Too much politics in a non-free world.
|
|In the real wrld things get complicated. In 2019 the US put export
|restrictions for Huawei, which was interpreted at the time that public
|discussions on open mailing lists relating to Linux was totally fine.
|But there was some legal interpreations that direct
|engineer-to-engineer e-mail might be considered lending assistance
|that could potentially run afoul some of the export restrictions. I'm
|not a lawyer, but an encrypted distribution to certain chinese
|entities might be... complex from a legal perspective. Talk to your
|corporate legal counsel for specific legal advice.
|
|Things are even worse with Russian companies, since the OFAC (Office
|of Foreign Assets Controls, at https://ofac.trasury.gov) sanctions are
|even more strict. Even if the exchange happens on an open source
|mailing list, if the patches come from a sanctioned entity, or an
|entity controlled by a sanctioned entity, and the patches say, contain
|device drivers used by a Russian SOC that is known to be used in
|Russin missiles used against Ukraine (completely hypothetically, of
|course...) --- if a US based engineer accepts those patches, that's
|considered rendering assistance to a sanctioned entity, and you and
|your company have to file paperwork acknowledging that it was done
|unknowingly, and the patches need to be reverted. Again, talk to your
|friendly neighborhood legal counsel before you do anything with an
|entity that may be from Russia, because the OFAC database of
|sanctioned entities is constantly changing, and its search functions
|are terribly primitive.
Thanks for the answer.
(I try to be strong and just hope *that* is over soon.)
|The joys of being an open source maintainer in the 21st century....
|Not only do you have to worry about trojan horse constributions from
|agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (ala xz), you also
Aaaah! Not north korean, .. they are only out for the money.
(And are blocked at github, like i think cuba, iran, whoever.)
I see. I did not know that rock-solid argumentation (except for
the lengthy commit time sleuthing posts).
|have to worry about the US government and OFAC-administered sanctions.
Yes i have read "small lip notices" by Kroah-Hartman on
oss-security (before Linux "started emitting own CVEs").
That is no fun. Let's just hope we can somehow overcome all that.
Good bye, ciao, and good night from Germany.
Thanks.
Now unfortunately i cannot keep my mouth shut, and it is likely
that most people do not want to read this further. But it is all
about (the remains of) Unix (aka free software world, mostly, with
lots of people spending free time for the very famous
https://xkcd.com/2347/), from a red flag waving NetBSD
mailing-list, aka tech-pkg AT netbsd.org, from the 4th of April
this year, while responding to an (american) email ending "I think
we should really discuss this...", and pointing to
https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/reflections_on_distrusting_xz, all
of which i have forgotten. I apologise in advance. Sorry!!!
Short:
I am so disappointed that all the opportunities for bashing
people have been omitted, like that you do not win wars.
[.] jiat75 reads like dschiha:d, and 5.6.0 was shortly before
ramadan
Isn't it a shame that muslims are not valued enough for being real
hacking threats, are they only good enough for kamikaze?
(I love what Rainer Maria Rilke said about the Koran btw. In my
bad bad translation it reads like "Islam is a 'religion of the
undisguised space', of pure creature feeling: earth can be
perceived as a 'pure star': 'creatureliness of the earth can
appear pure and undisguised'".)
And then (i apologize for quoting this, i did not know the
maintainer was hm dissed over months)
He publically mentioned his mental health issues multiple times,
and -- sorry if i got that thread starter wrong even -- that may
make people think of Jekyl and Hyde who then gets himself what he
is actually worth, with schizophrenically (i am not an expert as
you see) raising alert signs to others, like explicitly mentioning
mental health issues.
That reminds me that the Helter Skelter murders drive 55 today.
Longer:
I reverted to 5.4.0 locally. I looked at the ~half a dozen
commits of jiat75 by then, and they looked good.
But AlpineLinux stayed at 5.6.1, they simply autoreconf -vis or
what, instead of using anything provided. There are a few hundred
commits of jiat, and the poor original developer has to crawl
through them. Then again i personally have my doubts and said so
in public already.
[Does not smell Chinese style imho, they have lots of autonomous
regions with a whole lotta different "tribes" aka cultures.
Granted the Han are the by far largest sort. But still. I mean,
there *are* muslims, ok.]
[now it cums. I mean, not that Iran shoots its own ships no more
at the moment, as it did under Trump, but the Palestinians are
where his son-in-law wanted them .. etc etc etc etc]
And jiat75 reads like dschiha:d, and 5.6.0 was
shortly before Ramadan, so i think it surely is a small-minded not
even christian educated western-style desired-to-be-criminal.
...
[*That* still *could* be Chinese nonetheless, of course.] And
|One thing we need to discuss for sure is the blame game currently
|being played by quite a few parties. "You merged a Jia Tan commit,
[btw "jia tan" reads in german like "dschiha:d on", which is
a particularly smart name for a chinese secret service guy]
|you must be a plant as well!" Personally, I find the danger of that kind of
[A German talking. I .. think .. with born-eastern experience, ..]
|attitude turning away a lot of volunteers a lot more harmful.
Here we are back at the famous https://xkcd.com/2347/.
Technically .. well. Well, technically, i think much more
sophisticated miracles were already seen in the past, in the end
all the software and hardware designs are US controlled.
Not that i would have been able to invent it, or even, do it.
Now -- I must and wholeheartly do admit that i adore political
Chinese cartoons, they still have the black wit that i miss so much
in Germany, but which was still present when i was a younger man,
say, thirty years ago, snappy cabaret artists like the "forever"
unforgotten Dieter Hildebrandt etc etc.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/cartoon/
curl --insecure -O https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2024/2024-02-08/d4010c2b-f01f-4370-8424-0f3e84950662_s.jpeg
curl --insecure -O https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2024/2024-02-19/fcb05453-2619-4932-9888-bcd471c5252c_s.jpeg
curl --insecure -O https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2023/2023-04-13/a3d522d5-2a81-4569-b325-7e0ed5bc0bad_s.jpeg
300 KB, and i do admit they are very one-sided.
| - Ted
--End of <20240807234755.GB4511 at mit.edu>
I am sorry, dear Warren.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
|
| Only during dog days:
| On the 81st anniversary of the Goebbel's Sportpalast speech
| von der Leyen gave an overlong hypocritical inauguration one.
| The brew's essence of our civilizing advancement seems o be:
| Total war - shortest war -> Permanent war - everlasting war
From tuhs at tuhs.org Mon Aug 12 14:28:37 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Pete Wright via TUHS)
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:28:37 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
Message-ID: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
Hey there folks, I'm going to find myself in Berkeley for the day this
week and was curious if the buildings where the CSRG group worked are
still standing? Thought it would be a fun place to visit after hacking
on BSD for all these years.
Cheers,
-pete
--
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
From fair-tuhs at netbsd.org Mon Aug 12 18:16:41 2024
From: fair-tuhs at netbsd.org (Erik E. Fair)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 01:16:41 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
Message-ID: <21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
The key building is Evans Hall, a large, brutalist croncrete thing that is slated to be demolished & replaced for earthquake concerns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_(UC_Berkeley)
CSRG's offices & machine room (including ARPANET IMP #78 when that was delivered; before that, ARPANET was connected to the Ingres PDP-11/45 (or 11/70?) in Cory Hall) was on the 4th floor, east side - windowed offices had a view to the Hearst Mining Circle and the Molecular Biology buildin - windowed offices had a view to the Hearst Mining Circle and the Molecular Biology building.
The CS department (College of Letters & Science) offices were on the 5th floor.
The main campus computer center was in the basement, but they charged by the CPU/second, so only classes used those systems - in my day (1980-1983), the computer center had a CDC 6400 and six or seven DEC PDP-11/70s. BerkNet (RS-232c long haul lines) connected the PDP-11s, and later the VAXen, though Ethernet supplanted it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berknet
The other building of note is Cory Hall - that's where the EECS (College of Engineering) was headquartered, and the Cory Hall DEC PDP-11/70 was in a couple of rooms on the south side of the west entrance, with an additional terminal room just opposite on the north side.
https://eecs.berkeley.edu/about/visiting/
I believe all of CS has since moved into Soda Hall on the other side of Hearst Avenue, which is built atop the site of UCB's former (decommissioned) nuclear reactor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
The neighborhood has changed, but it looks like La Val's Pizza is still there on Euclid Avenue - one of the favored student hangouts in those days. The Top Dog sausage restaurant has closed its Hearst Avenue branch, but the location on Durant Avenue (southside of campus) is still there for additional local flavor. There were (and probably still are) many fine restaurants along Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley and points north.
I also recommend the commanding view westward of the San Franciso Bay from the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) -
https://lawrencehallofscience.org/visitors/directions-parking/
which was also used as the exterior of an AI computer control center for a dystopian movie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
Some of that view could also be had in the 10th floor (west side) UCB Mathematics grad student lounge in Evans Hall, but I think that's no longer accessible.
Erik Fair
From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 12 21:51:31 2024
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:51:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
Message-ID: <20240812115131.B731A18C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> From: "Erik E. Fair"
> before that, ARPANET was connected
NOTE: "ARPANET" is _always_ (**ALWAYS**) used with the definite article
("the"). Don't take my word for it; check out, e.g.
A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade
https://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion-report.pdf
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA115440.pdf
(There are a lot more contemporaneous documents - AFIPS conference papers,
etc - if anyone is interested in them.)
I was somewhat polite about it _this_ time.
Noel
From will.senn at gmail.com Mon Aug 12 22:10:36 2024
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:10:36 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <20240812115131.B731A18C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20240812115131.B731A18C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <e78a2cae-b4e9-4df9-a3ea-32aa42884d8f@gmail.com>
On 8/12/24 06:51, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: "Erik E. Fair"
>
> > before that, ARPANET was connected
>
> NOTE: "ARPANET" is _always_ (**ALWAYS**) used with the definite article
> ("the"). Don't take my word for it; check out, e.g.
>
> A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade
> https://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion-report.pdf
> https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA115440.pdf
>
> (There are a lot more contemporaneous documents - AFIPS conference papers,
> etc - if anyone is interested in them.)
>
> I was somewhat polite about it _this_ time.
>
> Noel
Nice. the ARPANET... why do I think history and language fluidity will
win the war of words? google code-shifting. Just typing that last
sentence is enough to give grammarians everywhere tremors.
Great links though.
Will
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From lm at mcvoy.com Tue Aug 13 00:23:34 2024
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:23:34 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <20240812115131.B731A18C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20240812115131.B731A18C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20240812142334.GF1475@mcvoy.com>
On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 07:51:31AM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: "Erik E. Fair"
>
> > before that, ARPANET was connected
>
> NOTE: "ARPANET" is _always_ (**ALWAYS**) used with the definite article
> ("the"). Don't take my word for it; check out, e.g.
>
> A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade
> https://walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-completion-report.pdf
> https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA115440.pdf
>
> (There are a lot more contemporaneous documents - AFIPS conference papers,
> etc - if anyone is interested in them.)
>
> I was somewhat polite about it _this_ time.
>
> Noel
The amazing thing, to me, is I was a CS student in very early 1980's and I
had no idea of the history behind the arpanet. I was on UUCP, lm at cs.wisc.edu
was not yet a thing for me. All this history going on around me and I was
clueless.
The executive summary in that first link is spot on, They knew what they
had.
Sadly, they didn't anticipate facebook and bots et al, but I'm not sure,
even now, that they could have done anything about that, a packet is a
packet whether it is for good or evil.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
From tuhs at tuhs.org Tue Aug 13 00:33:30 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Pete Wright via TUHS)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:33:30 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
References: <21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
Message-ID: <B6E766C1-67A2-4965-836B-4AB2EF085AF2@nomadlogic.org>
Amazing - thanks so much!
-pete
Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 12, 2024, at 1:16 AM, Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs at netbsd.org> wrote:
>
> п»їThe key building is Evans Hall, a large, brutalist croncrete thing that is slated to be demolished & replaced for earthquake concerns.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_(UC_Berkeley)
>
> CSRG's offices & machine room (including ARPANET IMP #78 when that was delivered; before that, ARPANET was connected to the Ingres PDP-11/45 (or 11/70?) in Cory Hall) was on the 4th floor, east side - windowed offices had a view to the Hearst Mining Circle and the Molecular Biology buildin - windowed offices had a view to the Hearst Mining Circle and the Molecular Biology building.
>
> The CS department (College of Letters & Science) offices were on the 5th floor.
>
> The main campus computer center was in the basement, but they charged by the CPU/second, so only classes used those systems - in my day (1980-1983), the computer center had a CDC 6400 and six or seven DEC PDP-11/70s. BerkNet (RS-232c long haul lines) connected the PDP-11s, and later the VAXen, though Ethernet supplanted it.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berknet
>
> The other building of note is Cory Hall - that's where the EECS (College of Engineering) was headquartered, and the Cory Hall DEC PDP-11/70 was in a couple of rooms on the south side of the west entrance, with an additional terminal room just opposite on the north side.
>
> https://eecs.berkeley.edu/about/visiting/
>
> I believe all of CS has since moved into Soda Hall on the other side of Hearst Avenue, which is built atop the site of UCB's former (decommissioned) nuclear reactor.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
>
> The neighborhood has changed, but it looks like La Val's Pizza is still there on Euclid Avenue - one of the favored student hangouts in those days. The Top Dog sausage restaurant has closed its Hearst Avenue branch, but the location on Durant Avenue (southside of campus) is still there for additional local flavor. There were (and probably still are) many fine restaurants along Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley and points north.
>
> I also recommend the commanding view westward of the San Franciso Bay from the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) -
> https://lawrencehallofscience.org/visitors/directions-parking/
>
> which was also used as the exterior of an AI computer control center for a dystopian movie:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
>
> Some of that view could also be had in the 10th floor (west side) UCB Mathematics grad student lounge in Evans Hall, but I think that's no longer accessible.
>
> Erik Fair
From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Aug 13 00:34:09 2024
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:34:09 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
References: <21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
Message-ID: <f3d405d2-84d4-8765-53e6-d0b2c624062b@bitsavers.org>
On 8/12/24 1:16 AM, Erik E. Fair wrote:
> The main campus computer center was in the basement, but they charged by the CPU/second
I made a similar pilgrimage when I moved out here in the mid 80s
I think the 6600 console was still in the hall, and there was a want ad for
a kernel hacker up on the wall from DEC WRL when they were bringing up Titan
I made a cold call there, but Smokey wasn't around (I was young and dumb!)
From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Aug 13 00:36:57 2024
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:36:57 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <20240812142334.GF1475@mcvoy.com>
References: <20240812115131.B731A18C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
<20240812142334.GF1475@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <fbf92704-c52d-ea86-bc9b-b5495bcda6da@bitsavers.org>
On 8/12/24 7:23 AM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> I was on UUCP, lm at cs.wisc.edu
> was not yet a thing for me. All this history going on around me and I was
> clueless.
and I was at UW-Milw who had a connection through INHP-4
Weirdly, I ran into Rusty at a rest stop on I-80 in Jan 1984 heading west.
From clemc at ccc.com Tue Aug 13 03:34:06 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 13:34:06 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
Erik - great job - nothing to quibble about, here adding a little color.
On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 4:16 AM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs at netbsd.org> wrote:
> The key building is Evans Hall, a large, brutalist croncrete thing that is
> slated to be demolished & replaced for earthquake concerns.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_(UC_Berkeley)
>
> ARPANET was connected to the Ingres PDP-11/45 (or 11/70?) in Cory Hall
>
Ing70 via a VDH interface to LBL was rather late in the ARPANET history.
UCB was supposed to have its own connection earlier, but for reasons I
never knew, it did not happen. I understand that it was targeted to be
installed in the computer center, and UCB politics somehow waylayed it.
When the Ingres contract was let, the Ingres team got the VDH connection as
a part of it. No other systems could connect to the ARPANET. As Erik
mentioned, in '78 Eric Schimdt's MS thesis work was developing the RS-232C
9600 baud "Berk-Net" for three machines -- 2 in Evan and then a wire in the
steam tunnel that Bob Kridle pulled allowed them to connect the Cory
Hall70, which was the "student" system that was were the primary work
for 1BSD and 2BSD occurred (ex/csh et al.). Bob later ran a serial line
up the stairwells of Cory and picked up the Ingres and the first CAD
machine. Kurt Shoens, who was the primary UCB Mail author, hacked the
Berknet support into his work. One of his primary additions was removing
the "delivery" part of the mail into a separate program - that he called
"delivermail."
Eric Alman was the system administrator of Ing70, so Eric hacked
delivermail to pass email to and from the Berknet to the ARPANET. All was
good until Ernie covax showed up and was connected to the UUCP net ;-)
Eric refers to that time as "the email format of the week" and sendmail was
created to allow him to more easily handle the different formats. By then
there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user at host), Berknet (host:user), UUCP
(host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at UCB, as well as crap showing
up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET and various other places trying
be exchanged.
> The CS department (College of Letters & Science) offices were on the 5th
> floor.
>
Ah .. but CS was a division of EECS -- very interesting history about
that. The EE Dept was considered top three in the country and #1 by many
ratings. They already had a huge history of working with industry and had
created the Industrial Laison Office (ILO - which was how the UNIX BSD
tapes were distributed until the creation of CSRG and a factoid. The ILO
folks advised Fabry on how to run CSRG)). When CS was created, it was
forked from the Math Dept. But, the Regents felt that if the CS was to have
a chance to become a top 10 program, it needed to be put under the auspices
of the EE Dept like MIT was -- and was attached to EE -- hence EECS.
>
> The main campus computer center was in the basement, but they charged by
> the CPU/second, so only classes used those systems - in my day (1980-1983),
> the computer center had a CDC 6400 and six or seven DEC PDP-11/70s.
I could be wrong - but ISTR, there was an IBM 360/370 system down there
also.
The 70s were used to teach CS courses such as the one I taught -- I think
Bart Miller, Mike Carey and I taught CS-40 a qtr or two after Erik was an
undergrad.
> BerkNet (RS-232c long haul lines) connected the PDP-11s
Actually, not at all, which was all the more amazing. There were just CAT3
twisted pair with no conditioning. When we had an electrical storm, it
was not usually to have the replace the 488/489 transcievers in the DHs or
DZs. Kridle got pretty adept and putting machines sockets into the boards
and he kept a box of chips in his office.
> , and later the VAXen, though Ethernet supplanted it.
>
It was initially with 3Mbit Xerox boards. We were a little itchy about
that, so Bob got an optical coupler/repeater (I assume from Xerox, but I
don't know) in Cory's CAD machine room. The 10M stuff came about two
years later, originally 3COM equipment with. There was a LAN in the Ingres
machine room, another in the CAD, and another in CSRG's in Evans. The UCB
CAD machine was on all three networks as it was in the middle. That is why
Sam wrote the original routed stuff -- based on things he had seen at PARC
for PUP.
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From luther.johnson at makerlisp.com Tue Aug 13 04:20:26 2024
From: luther.johnson at makerlisp.com (Luther Johnson)
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 11:20:26 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <bd9dc098-168e-328c-13fc-5b6efd88194d@makerlisp.com>
I really enjoy all the history and perspective. A phrase just popped in
to my head, that I think for me, sums up much of Unix evolution. And it
is something that not all Linux developers get, as many continue to
mutate Linux further and further away from traditional Unix ideas:
Necessity is the mother of *convention*.
I think what I wish more of the Linux community would understand, is
that most of Unix design style is what it is, in order to deal with the
above-stated reality, in a simple and practical way. Many times, when
faced with a choice that might seem arbitrary at the time, but because I
know that I never know, which choices will live on and have future
impacts, I think WWUD (what would Unix do) ?
On 08/12/2024 10:34 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> Erik - great job - nothing to quibble about, here adding a little color.
>
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 4:16 AM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs at netbsd.org
> <mailto:fair-tuhs at netbsd.org>> wrote:
>
> The key building is Evans Hall, a large, brutalist croncrete thing
> that is slated to be demolished & replaced for earthquake concerns.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_(UC_Berkeley)
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_%28UC_Berkeley%29>
>
> ARPANET was connected to the Ingres PDP-11/45 (or 11/70?) in Cory Hall
>
> Ing70 via a VDH interface to LBL was rather late in the ARPANET history.
>
> UCB was supposed to have its own connection earlier, but for reasons I
> never knew, it did not happen. I understand that it was targeted to
> be installed in the computer center, and UCB politics somehow waylayed
> it. When the Ingres contract was let, the Ingres team got the VDH
> connection as a part of it. No other systems could connect to the
> ARPANET. As Erik mentioned, in '78 Eric Schimdt's MS thesis work was
> developing the RS-232C 9600 baud "Berk-Net" for three machines -- 2 in
> Evan and then a wire in the steam tunnel that Bob Kridle pulled
> allowed them to connect the Cory Hall70, which was the "student"
> system that was were the primary work for 1BSD and 2BSD occurred
> (ex/csh et al.). Bob later ran a serial line up the stairwells of
> Cory and picked up the Ingres and the first CAD machine. Kurt Shoens,
> who was the primary UCB Mail author, hacked the Berknet support into
> his work. One of his primary additions was removing the "delivery"
> part of the mail into a separate program - that he called "delivermail."
>
> Eric Alman was the system administrator of Ing70, so Eric hacked
> delivermail to pass email to and from the Berknet to the ARPANET. All
> was good until Ernie covax showed up and was connected to the UUCP net ;-)
>
> Eric refers to that time as "the email format of the week" and
> sendmail was created to allow him to more easily handle the different
> formats. By then there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user at host),
> Berknet (host:user), UUCP (host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at
> UCB, as well as crap showing up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET
> and various other places trying be exchanged.
>
>
> The CS department (College of Letters & Science) offices were on
> the 5th floor.
>
> Ah .. but CS was a division of EECS -- very interesting history about
> that. The EE Dept was considered top three in the country and #1 by
> many ratings. They already had a huge history of working with
> industry and had created the Industrial Laison Office (ILO - which was
> how the UNIX BSD tapes were distributed until the creation of CSRG and
> a factoid. The ILO folks advised Fabry on how to run CSRG)). When CS
> was created, it was forked from the Math Dept. But, the Regents felt
> that if the CS was to have a chance to become a top 10 program, it
> needed to be put under the auspices of the EE Dept like MIT was -- and
> was attached to EE -- hence EECS.
>
>
> The main campus computer center was in the basement, but they
> charged by the CPU/second, so only classes used those systems - in
> my day (1980-1983), the computer center had a CDC 6400 and six or
> seven DEC PDP-11/70s.
>
> I could be wrong - but ISTR, there was an IBM 360/370 system down
> there also.
>
> The 70s were used to teach CS courses such as the one I taught -- I
> think Bart Miller, Mike Carey and I taught CS-40 a qtr or two after
> Erik was an undergrad.
>
> BerkNet (RS-232c long haul lines) connected the PDP-11s
>
> Actually, not at all, which was all the more amazing. There were just
> CAT3 twisted pair with no conditioning. When we had an electrical
> storm, it was not usually to have the replace the 488/489 transcievers
> in the DHs or DZs. Kridle got pretty adept and putting machines
> sockets into the boards and he kept a box of chips in his office.
>
> , and later the VAXen, though Ethernet supplanted it.
>
> It was initially with 3Mbit Xerox boards. We were a little itchy about
> that, so Bob got an optical coupler/repeater (I assume from Xerox, but
> I don't know) in Cory's CAD machine room. The 10M stuff came about
> two years later, originally 3COM equipment with. There was a LAN in
> the Ingres machine room, another in the CAD, and another in CSRG's in
> Evans. The UCB CAD machine was on all three networks as it was in the
> middle. That is why Sam wrote the original routed stuff -- based on
> things he had seen at PARC for PUP.
>
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From crossd at gmail.com Tue Aug 13 23:47:55 2024
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 19:17:55 +0530
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
- Dan C.
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From will.senn at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 00:21:18 2024
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 09:21:18 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2146c5ed-b7fb-426d-a3f4-da89ff7525cb@gmail.com>
On 8/13/24 08:47, Dan Cross wrote:
> I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near
> Mumbai Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
>
> В В В В - Dan C.
>
>
Wow, cool. But those coconuts have seen better days, is it sad that they
still trigger a yearning for fresh coconut?
- will
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From ralph at inputplus.co.uk Wed Aug 14 00:33:51 2024
From: ralph at inputplus.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:33:51 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240813143351.8AB0320145@orac.inputplus.co.uk>
Hi,
Dan wrote:
> I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
> Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
Their wares: https://unixindia.in
--
Cheers, Ralph.
From clemc at ccc.com Wed Aug 14 01:03:40 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 11:03:40 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2On2U9mro19dbJa5QqBKsGvKHUbF1Fkt+aHXXT1nqtNiA@mail.gmail.com>
Outstanding. IIRC Dennis used to have a collection of unices people sent
him. Some of them were pretty interesting. The logo on thet umbrella
makes me think that was one he had, but I can not tell you what it was
from. FWIW: The only one I found is a tube of super glue:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CIhuRZl5dnI7yNo5pBO3PWh1gI_OLVAk/view?usp=sharing
On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 9:48 AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
> Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
>
> - Dan C.
>
>
>
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From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Aug 14 04:13:39 2024
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:13:39 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> Eric refers to that time as "the email format of the week" and sendmail was
> created to allow him to more easily handle the different formats. By then
> there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user at host), Berknet (host:user), UUCP
> (host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at UCB, as well as crap showing
> up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET and various other places trying
> be exchanged.
Small correction. CSNet didn't happen until the mid-80s, by which time
sendmail was firmly entrenched in the BSD world. Circa 1987/1988, I was
the Unix sysadmin at Emory U., and we got a CSNet connection via Georgia
Tech. It required a leased X.25 (!) line and a special board to put
in one of our Vaxen. There was a driver for it for 4.2BSD but we were
running 4.3. Ron Hutchins at GT and I ported it over to 4.3BSD.
Around that time I did some work with Ease, which was a prettier
language for writing sendmail config files; the sources, including
my mods to it, are in comp.sources.unix somewhere. I wrote a sendmail
config file *from scratch* using it. As a result, the Morris worm
passed us by. :-)
Arnold
P.S. I have *literally* forgotten more about sendmail than most
people ever know. :-)
From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Aug 14 04:14:33 2024
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:14:33 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <bd9dc098-168e-328c-13fc-5b6efd88194d@makerlisp.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<bd9dc098-168e-328c-13fc-5b6efd88194d@makerlisp.com>
Message-ID: <202408131814.47DIEXm61159172@freefriends.org>
Luther Johnson <luther.johnson at makerlisp.com> wrote:
> I really enjoy all the history and perspective. A phrase just popped in
> to my head, that I think for me, sums up much of Unix evolution. And it
> is something that not all Linux developers get, as many continue to
> mutate Linux further and further away from traditional Unix ideas:
>
> Necessity is the mother of *convention*.
This was carried even further in Plan 9, making it possible to transparently
network systems of different architectures.
Arnold
From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Aug 14 04:15:45 2024
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:15:45 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2On2U9mro19dbJa5QqBKsGvKHUbF1Fkt+aHXXT1nqtNiA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2On2U9mro19dbJa5QqBKsGvKHUbF1Fkt+aHXXT1nqtNiA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <202408131815.47DIFjCw1159257@freefriends.org>
BWK certainly does --- there are some pictures in his memoirs, including
some Unix pens I found in Israel and sent to him, many, many moons ago.
Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> Outstanding. IIRC Dennis used to have a collection of unices people sent
> him. Some of them were pretty interesting. The logo on thet umbrella
> makes me think that was one he had, but I can not tell you what it was
> from. FWIW: The only one I found is a tube of super glue:
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CIhuRZl5dnI7yNo5pBO3PWh1gI_OLVAk/view?usp=sharing
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 9:48 AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
> > Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> > https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
> >
> > - Dan C.
> >
> >
> >
From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 04:37:51 2024
From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:37:51 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <CAEdTPBdfNRaBuQnjcqSQdTVAtNLjg7P-CH3nCZmtv-9LTg2QGg@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 at 14:31, <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> Around that time I did some work with Ease, which was a prettier
> language for writing sendmail config files; the sources, including
> my mods to it, are in comp.sources.unix somewhere. I wrote a sendmail
> config file *from scratch* using it. As a result, the Morris worm
> passed us by. :-)
>
I believe the most recent version is preserved at
https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume25/ease3.5/
There are also older versions in that same archive if for some reason they
are of interest.
-Henry
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From arnold at skeeve.com Wed Aug 14 04:53:44 2024
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:53:44 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAEdTPBdfNRaBuQnjcqSQdTVAtNLjg7P-CH3nCZmtv-9LTg2QGg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAEdTPBdfNRaBuQnjcqSQdTVAtNLjg7P-CH3nCZmtv-9LTg2QGg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <202408131853.47DIri1Z1161441@freefriends.org>
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 at 14:31, <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>
> > Around that time I did some work with Ease, which was a prettier
> > language for writing sendmail config files; the sources, including
> > my mods to it, are in comp.sources.unix somewhere. I wrote a sendmail
> > config file *from scratch* using it. As a result, the Morris worm
> > passed us by. :-)
> >
>
> I believe the most recent version is preserved at
> https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume25/ease3.5/
Thanks! I had forgotten that Bruce was the formal maintainer.
But I am named in the README. :-)
Hmmm. I see it was posted on
> Wrapped by vixie at cognition.pa.dec.com on Tue Dec 10 08:45:55 1991
That was well after I'd left Emory.
Thanks!
Arnold
From clemc at ccc.com Wed Aug 14 04:56:42 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:56:42 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 2:13 PM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> ... CSNet didn't happen until the mid-80s, by which time
> sendmail was firmly entrenched in the BSD world. ...
Right -- my bad. CSNET did not occur until a few years after I had
finished my grad work and left. ISTR CSNET used MMDF as the mail transport
agent (not sendmail). But my point was that there were numerous alternate
mail systems, commercial and independent, that had "portals" into and out
of the USENET and the ARPANET and later the Internet - so email headers
were getting warped in strange ways and trying to be able to reliably reply
was often difficult.
Eric was having to deal with some new hacks fairly regularly, and the idea
of a production language to convert format A to B to C was a good one. The
only real mistake in my mind was that (unlike MMDF) he built the SMTP
daemon in sendmail. MMDF and some of the other systems had programs that
converted to/from a canonical form (usually RFC733/822 style) and then some
sets of external utilities that talked to the "port" - be it UUCP, SMTP,
"PhoneNet", or whatever. But making it built into sendmail itself, in fact
, was a violation of the UNIX "do one job well" idea and would, of course,
be the attack vector. The two sad parts of that IMO is that first most
people did not need most of the features of sendmail -- they needed just
SMTP and maybe UUCP, but send sendmail was the SMTPD for BSD, that is what
they had. But the BBN TCP/IP package that UCB started with had a separate
SMTPD and Eric could have just called it like he did the UUCP subsystem.
бђ§
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Aug 14 04:57:38 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Bakul Shah via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 11:57:38 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
Message-ID: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
п»ї
On Aug 13, 2024, at 6:48 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> п»їI thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
A lot of shells under that Unix umbrella!
Coconut water + its jelly like flesh can be quite refreshing
on a hot Mumbai day. Did you try any?
From phil at ultimate.com Wed Aug 14 05:13:14 2024
From: phil at ultimate.com (Phil Budne)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:13:14 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <202408131913.47DJDE3U075896@ultimate.com>
arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> > Eric refers to that time as "the email format of the week" and sendmail was
> > created to allow him to more easily handle the different formats. By then
> > there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user at host), Berknet (host:user), UUCP
> > (host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at UCB, as well as crap showing
> > up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET and various other places trying
> > be exchanged.
>
> Small correction. CSNet didn't happen until the mid-80s, by which time
> sendmail was firmly entrenched in the BSD world. Circa 1987/1988, I was
> the Unix sysadmin at Emory U., and we got a CSNet connection via Georgia
> Tech. It required a leased X.25 (!) line and a special board to put
> in one of our Vaxen. There was a driver for it for 4.2BSD but we were
> running 4.3. Ron Hutchins at GT and I ported it over to 4.3BSD.
CSNet had a dialup POTS based service, PhoneNet, using MMDF. I think
that was Boston University's 4.2BSD VAX 11/780's primary email
connection until we got an Internet connection via Cypress(*) c. 1986,
initially using an 11/725 (a re-packaged 11/730), running, I think,
Ultrix.
Back in the day, global email was a maze of twisty passages with
gateways between the worlds of The ARPANET, BITNET, UUCP, CSNet, etc,
and which required excruciating navigation with percent signs used for
manual routing, tho sendmail configs would route user at host.BITNET etc
to the right gateway with the right incantation. Often, but not
always, a simple reply would work, but sometimes the rewrites didn't
get the sender address right...
(*) https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1565&context=cstech
From henry.r.bent at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 05:41:51 2024
From: henry.r.bent at gmail.com (Henry Bent)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:41:51 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Edison Design Group C Front End
Message-ID: <CAEdTPBfou=hBnaFVK3XoBC2BjnthbBjJU0Ner3prrzth0=-WkA@mail.gmail.com>
Hi all,
I was working with my IRIX 4 machine recently and noticed a mysterious file
- /usr/lib/ecfe. It turns out that this is the Edison Design Group C (not
C++) Front End, included almost certainly by accident with the last release
of the Developer Toolkit for IRIX 4. No other piece of the compiler
toolchain references the EDG product in any way and there is no
documentation for it whatsoever.
The research that I did seems to indicate that this is a source to source
translator, akin to the contemporary Kuck & Associates product - is that
correct? I also found a reference to EDG's tool being used in the Apogee C
compiler. I have a copy of Apogee C for SunOS and it does appear that
"cfe" is the same EDG product. Unfortunately there is no documentation
specific to the C front end, and I don't have a license for Apogee C so I
can't run the compiler to see how it's calling cfe. Just running a C file
"blah.c" through the IRIX front end with no switches results in a
transformed file "blah.int.c". Unfortunately running anything even
moderately complex through the front end results in code that either
doesn't compile or doesn't run, so I feel that I must be missing some flags
or basic options.
Does anyone have any information about SGI's use of this software, or any
documentation/information in general about the EDG product? My usual
sources came up empty.
-Henry
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From luther.johnson at makerlisp.com Wed Aug 14 07:08:12 2024
From: luther.johnson at makerlisp.com (Luther Johnson)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:08:12 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Edison Design Group C Front End
In-Reply-To: <CAEdTPBfou=hBnaFVK3XoBC2BjnthbBjJU0Ner3prrzth0=-WkA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEdTPBfou=hBnaFVK3XoBC2BjnthbBjJU0Ner3prrzth0=-WkA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <994174b0-0d1e-4620-2c01-0a78a3f0f61f@makerlisp.com>
I don't know if you've seen this, but:
https://www.edg.com/
Edison Design Group has produced many compiler front ends, this part of
a compiler scans and parse the input language, and emits an intermediate
representation, the first representations in the chain of compiler
phases are usually a parse tree, then a cleaned-up version of the parse
tree that has removed all sorts of contingent data, tied to the the
original program, but not necessary for further processing - this is
usually called the 'abstract syntax tree'. I've never used EDG products
in my work, but I have talked with them a couple of times. I imagine if
you have an EDG front end, in addition to that output you describe, it
probably is meant to write some (possibly serialized) version of an
abstract syntax tree to some file somewhere (perhaps with the right
options on invocation).
You could call them and ask them, they seemed very friendly and helpful
a couple of years ago when I talked to them.
On 08/13/2024 12:41 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was working with my IRIX 4 machine recently and noticed a mysterious
> file - /usr/lib/ecfe. It turns out that this is the Edison Design
> Group C (not C++) Front End, included almost certainly by accident
> with the last release of the Developer Toolkit for IRIX 4. No other
> piece of the compiler toolchain references the EDG product in any way
> and there is no documentation for it whatsoever.
>
> The research that I did seems to indicate that this is a source to
> source translator, akin to the contemporary Kuck & Associates product
> - is that correct? I also found a reference to EDG's tool being used
> in the Apogee C compiler. I have a copy of Apogee C for SunOS and it
> does appear that "cfe" is the same EDG product. Unfortunately there
> is no documentation specific to the C front end, and I don't have a
> license for Apogee C so I can't run the compiler to see how it's
> calling cfe. Just running a C file "blah.c" through the IRIX front
> end with no switches results in a transformed file "blah.int.c".
> Unfortunately running anything even moderately complex through the
> front end results in code that either doesn't compile or doesn't run,
> so I feel that I must be missing some flags or basic options.
>
> Does anyone have any information about SGI's use of this software, or
> any documentation/information in general about the EDG product? My
> usual sources came up empty.
>
> -Henry
From luther.johnson at makerlisp.com Wed Aug 14 07:11:42 2024
From: luther.johnson at makerlisp.com (Luther Johnson)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:11:42 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Edison Design Group C Front End
In-Reply-To: <994174b0-0d1e-4620-2c01-0a78a3f0f61f@makerlisp.com>
References: <CAEdTPBfou=hBnaFVK3XoBC2BjnthbBjJU0Ner3prrzth0=-WkA@mail.gmail.com>
<994174b0-0d1e-4620-2c01-0a78a3f0f61f@makerlisp.com>
Message-ID: <e6943970-e20e-6a81-8069-8e7173409ec1@makerlisp.com>
... of course it is serialized, there has to be some convention on
writing a tree out in some order to a file ... well anyway I'm sure they
can tell you what that product is and does.
On 08/13/2024 02:08 PM, Luther Johnson wrote:
> I don't know if you've seen this, but:
>
> https://www.edg.com/
>
> Edison Design Group has produced many compiler front ends, this part
> of a compiler scans and parse the input language, and emits an
> intermediate representation, the first representations in the chain of
> compiler phases are usually a parse tree, then a cleaned-up version of
> the parse tree that has removed all sorts of contingent data, tied to
> the the original program, but not necessary for further processing -
> this is usually called the 'abstract syntax tree'. I've never used EDG
> products in my work, but I have talked with them a couple of times. I
> imagine if you have an EDG front end, in addition to that output you
> describe, it probably is meant to write some (possibly serialized)
> version of an abstract syntax tree to some file somewhere (perhaps
> with the right options on invocation).
>
> You could call them and ask them, they seemed very friendly and
> helpful a couple of years ago when I talked to them.
>
> On 08/13/2024 12:41 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I was working with my IRIX 4 machine recently and noticed a
>> mysterious file - /usr/lib/ecfe. It turns out that this is the
>> Edison Design Group C (not C++) Front End, included almost certainly
>> by accident with the last release of the Developer Toolkit for IRIX
>> 4. No other piece of the compiler toolchain references the EDG
>> product in any way and there is no documentation for it whatsoever.
>>
>> The research that I did seems to indicate that this is a source to
>> source translator, akin to the contemporary Kuck & Associates product
>> - is that correct? I also found a reference to EDG's tool being used
>> in the Apogee C compiler. I have a copy of Apogee C for SunOS and it
>> does appear that "cfe" is the same EDG product. Unfortunately there
>> is no documentation specific to the C front end, and I don't have a
>> license for Apogee C so I can't run the compiler to see how it's
>> calling cfe. Just running a C file "blah.c" through the IRIX front
>> end with no switches results in a transformed file "blah.int.c".
>> Unfortunately running anything even moderately complex through the
>> front end results in code that either doesn't compile or doesn't run,
>> so I feel that I must be missing some flags or basic options.
>>
>> Does anyone have any information about SGI's use of this software, or
>> any documentation/information in general about the EDG product? My
>> usual sources came up empty.
>>
>> -Henry
>
From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Aug 14 08:35:06 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (segaloco via TUHS)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 22:35:06 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <202408131815.47DIFjCw1159257@freefriends.org>
References: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2On2U9mro19dbJa5QqBKsGvKHUbF1Fkt+aHXXT1nqtNiA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131815.47DIFjCw1159257@freefriends.org>
Message-ID: <lfcdzrKfgUxJPDwqdJJEZFoUA11uHYwHXszt1Wp_Zp54wEwHdw4os0B3JOSCcuOkNb_kGwyn2W3_EHJ4Q6YK4gFZcspv39V_lTFWIXdGhrg=@protonmail.com>
On Tuesday, August 13th, 2024 at 11:15 AM, arnold at skeeve.com <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> BWK certainly does --- there are some pictures in his memoirs, including
> some Unix pens I found in Israel and sent to him, many, many moons ago.
>
> Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com wrote:
>
> > Outstanding. IIRC Dennis used to have a collection of unices people sent
> > him. Some of them were pretty interesting. The logo on thet umbrella
> > makes me think that was one he had, but I can not tell you what it was
> > from. FWIW: The only one I found is a tube of super glue:
> > https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CIhuRZl5dnI7yNo5pBO3PWh1gI_OLVAk/view?usp=sharing
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 9:48 AM Dan Cross crossd at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
> > > Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> > > https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
> > >
> > > - Dan C.
The relevant pages on dmr's Bell Labs page:
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherunix.html
I think of his collection of "diverse" UNIX variants whenever I see something particularly out of place in an auction search for UNIX stuff. Among other things, UNIX is a popular abbreviation for unisex, so I often find myself combing through auctions for tshirts and shoes while trying to find computing history...
- Matt G.
P.S. Lumping in the bwk memoirs plug, purchased a copy not too long ago and I found it a great read, certainly a good starting place for anyone first dipping their toes into UNIX lore.
From grog at lemis.com Wed Aug 14 09:58:43 2024
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:58:43 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <lfcdzrKfgUxJPDwqdJJEZFoUA11uHYwHXszt1Wp_Zp54wEwHdw4os0B3JOSCcuOkNb_kGwyn2W3_EHJ4Q6YK4gFZcspv39V_lTFWIXdGhrg=@protonmail.com>
<2146c5ed-b7fb-426d-a3f4-da89ff7525cb@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO@hydra.lemis.com>
On Tuesday, 13 August 2024 at 9:21:18 -0500, Will Senn wrote:
> On 8/13/24 08:47, Dan Cross wrote:
>> I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
>> Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
>> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
>>
> Wow, cool. But those coconuts have seen better days, is it sad that they
> still trigger a yearning for fresh coconut?
FWIW, that's just the husk. The contents were probably completely OK.
I'm just wondering how you use a coconut as a mobile phone accessory.
On Tuesday, 13 August 2024 at 22:35:06 +0000, The UNIX Heritage Society wrote:
>
> The relevant pages on dmr's Bell Labs page:
>
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherunix.html
One that's missing there is one I saw in Frankfurt (Main) in the late
1980s: a car rental company called "Unix rent". Unfortunately I never
had a camera with me when I saw it. A Google search brings up a
number of poor quality links, a few images and
http://web.deu.edu.tr/berent/unix/otherunix.html , which appears to be
a modified version of dmr's page.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at 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.php
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From steffen at sdaoden.eu Wed Aug 14 10:03:54 2024
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 02:03:54 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO@hydra.lemis.com>
References: <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO@hydra.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <20240814000354.ah5sftuI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in
<ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO at hydra.lemis.com>:
|On Tuesday, 13 August 2024 at 9:21:18 -0500, Will Senn wrote:
|> On 8/13/24 08:47, Dan Cross wrote:
|>> I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai
|>> Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
|>> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
|>>
|> Wow, cool. But those coconuts have seen better days, is it sad that they
|> still trigger a yearning for fresh coconut?
|
|FWIW, that's just the husk. The contents were probably completely OK.
|I'm just wondering how you use a coconut as a mobile phone accessory.
|
|On Tuesday, 13 August 2024 at 22:35:06 +0000, The UNIX Heritage Society \
|wrote:
|>
|> The relevant pages on dmr's Bell Labs page:
|>
|> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherunix.html
|
|One that's missing there is one I saw in Frankfurt (Main) in the late
|1980s: a car rental company called "Unix rent". Unfortunately I never
Hmm but there is one with identical logo, only from DГјsseldorf
iirc. That's the same logo, no?
|had a camera with me when I saw it. A Google search brings up a
|number of poor quality links, a few images and
|http://web.deu.edu.tr/berent/unix/otherunix.html , which appears to be
|a modified version of dmr's page.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
From ggm at algebras.org Wed Aug 14 10:12:08 2024
From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 10:12:08 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <20240814000354.ah5sftuI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
References: <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO@hydra.lemis.com>
<20240814000354.ah5sftuI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Message-ID: <CAKr6gn0Nb4VvbWwRJxrauAe6+B8Os6OuhG3ma32g=5UTKEsyQg@mail.gmail.com>
Yokohama:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2NN4whKHESoV1NgJ6
https://photos.app.goo.gl/GbB48bAj4mR8sLf18
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From grog at lemis.com Wed Aug 14 10:13:08 2024
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 10:13:08 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <20240814000354.ah5sftuI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
References: <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO@hydra.lemis.com>
<20240814000354.ah5sftuI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Message-ID: <Zrv2lDGCxsy3dNeL@hydra.lemis.com>
On Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 2:03:54 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO at hydra.lemis.com>:
>>
>> One that's missing there is one I saw in Frankfurt (Main) in the late
>> 1980s: a car rental company called "Unix rent". Unfortunately I never
>
> Hmm but there is one with identical logo, only from DГјsseldorf
> iirc. That's the same logo, no?
I presume so. After 35 years I wouldn't lay my hand in the fire. The
search results pointed to a number of places in Germany. Solingen
seems to have been popular.
And in passing, for today's calendar, we have:
Aug 14 First Unix-based mallet created, 1954
I think we once came to an explanation, but I have forgotten it.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at 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.php
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From fariborz.t at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 10:55:40 2024
From: fariborz.t at gmail.com (Skip Tavakkolian)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 17:55:40 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <lfcdzrKfgUxJPDwqdJJEZFoUA11uHYwHXszt1Wp_Zp54wEwHdw4os0B3JOSCcuOkNb_kGwyn2W3_EHJ4Q6YK4gFZcspv39V_lTFWIXdGhrg=@protonmail.com>
References: <CAEoi9W5kAr_xfOUR9-aC17H1rV47biycD8iyUPMRV=gr0aWeOw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2On2U9mro19dbJa5QqBKsGvKHUbF1Fkt+aHXXT1nqtNiA@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131815.47DIFjCw1159257@freefriends.org>
<lfcdzrKfgUxJPDwqdJJEZFoUA11uHYwHXszt1Wp_Zp54wEwHdw4os0B3JOSCcuOkNb_kGwyn2W3_EHJ4Q6YK4gFZcspv39V_lTFWIXdGhrg=@protonmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAA1C+h0=uJgon6w89b3JtmEQMW8nxz52Rif2kf=bsMGy3mzfPw@mail.gmail.com>
I keep my Glenda in a UNIX box:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/yozuWteeEhNehJxE9
On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 3:35 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 13th, 2024 at 11:15 AM, arnold at skeeve.com <
> arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>
> > BWK certainly does --- there are some pictures in his memoirs, including
> > some Unix pens I found in Israel and sent to him, many, many moons ago.
> >
> > Clem Cole clemc at ccc.com wrote:
> >
> > > Outstanding. IIRC Dennis used to have a collection of unices people
> sent
> > > him. Some of them were pretty interesting. The logo on thet umbrella
> > > makes me think that was one he had, but I can not tell you what it was
> > > from. FWIW: The only one I found is a tube of super glue:
> > >
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CIhuRZl5dnI7yNo5pBO3PWh1gI_OLVAk/view?usp=sharing
> > >
> > > On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 9:48 AM Dan Cross crossd at gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > I thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near
> Mumbai
> > > > Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> > > > https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
> > > >
> > > > - Dan C.
>
> The relevant pages on dmr's Bell Labs page:
>
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/otherunix.html
>
> I think of his collection of "diverse" UNIX variants whenever I see
> something particularly out of place in an auction search for UNIX stuff.
> Among other things, UNIX is a popular abbreviation for unisex, so I often
> find myself combing through auctions for tshirts and shoes while trying to
> find computing history...
>
> - Matt G.
>
> P.S. Lumping in the bwk memoirs plug, purchased a copy not too long ago
> and I found it a great read, certainly a good starting place for anyone
> first dipping their toes into UNIX lore.
>
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From crossd at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 16:38:37 2024
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 02:38:37 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
References: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W6OucNQUO31thyiPax=k3oXNcsKKL21asJy8pGntqL-xA@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 2:57 PM Bakul Shah <bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:
> On Aug 13, 2024, at 6:48 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> > п»їI thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
> > https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
>
> A lot of shells under that Unix umbrella!
>
> Coconut water + its jelly like flesh can be quite refreshing
> on a hot Mumbai day. Did you try any?
Of course! We had some just yesterday, and will again today.
As Groggy noted, the husk may look a little worse for wear, but the
coconuts themselves are quite fresh.
- Dan C.
From crossd at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 16:43:45 2024
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 02:43:45 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
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Message-ID: <CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 3:06 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 2:13 PM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>> ... CSNet didn't happen until the mid-80s, by which time
>> sendmail was firmly entrenched in the BSD world. ...
>
> Right -- my bad. CSNET did not occur until a few years after I had finished my grad work and left. ISTR CSNET used MMDF as the mail transport agent (not sendmail). But my point was that there were numerous alternate mail systems, commercial and independent, that had "portals" into and out of the USENET and the ARPANET and later the Internet - so email headers were getting warped in strange ways and trying to be able to reliably reply was often difficult.
I tried to set up MMDF on an RT running AOS once; this was during the
era when Sendmail was getting hacked nearly continuously. It was kind
of a nifty architecture; different formats used different "channels"
feeding into a common routing core.
It sort of broke down because the inter-message separately wasn't
compatible with any clients we were using; they didn't use the BSD
"mbox" format, but rather, used a set of (4?) `^A`'s as the message
separator.
I'm sure there was some way to change this, but I never investigated
sufficiently to figure out what it was.
> Eric was having to deal with some new hacks fairly regularly, and the idea of a production language to convert format A to B to C was a good one. The only real mistake in my mind was that (unlike MMDF) he built the SMTP daemon in sendmail. MMDF and some of the other systems had programs that converted to/from a canonical form (usually RFC733/822 style) and then some sets of external utilities that talked to the "port" - be it UUCP, SMTP, "PhoneNet", or whatever. But making it built into sendmail itself, in fact, was a violation of the UNIX "do one job well" idea and would, of course, be the attack vector. The two sad parts of that IMO is that first most people did not need most of the features of sendmail -- they needed just SMTP and maybe UUCP, but send sendmail was the SMTPD for BSD, that is what they had. But the BBN TCP/IP package that UCB started with had a separate SMTPD and Eric could have just called it like he did the UUCP subsystem.
> бђ§
Zmailer had an architecture kind of like that; at least some folks
were running it locally. But it never really caught on, as far as I
could tell, and eventually qmail and postfix (nee vmailer) provided a
better alternative. I guess some folks still swear by Exim.
I kind of wonder if the days of Unix MTAs as anything other than a
detail are mostly over.
- Dan C.
From wobblygong at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 18:05:51 2024
From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:05:51 +1200
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
References: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
Message-ID: <3b364b8a-ecea-465b-8d19-59143eae003e@gmail.com>
In Papua New Guinea, where I grew up, kulaus - young coconuts whose
flesh hadn't hardened yet into what gets dried and sold as copra - were
prized for that reason.
Wesley Parish
On 14/08/24 06:57, Bakul Shah via TUHS wrote:
> п»ї
>
> On Aug 13, 2024, at 6:48 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> п»їI thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
>> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
> A lot of shells under that Unix umbrella!
>
> Coconut water + its jelly like flesh can be quite refreshing
> on a hot Mumbai day. Did you try any?
From ggm at algebras.org Wed Aug 14 21:35:21 2024
From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 21:35:21 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
Many people lived with mbox as an intermediate delivery form and then did
post fact rewrites on the /var/spool/user file.
I continue to use (n)MH reading from Imap sources with an oauth2 provider
and my mail is in maildir as an intermediate state, very annoying.
I liked mmdf, much because I liked the people who worked on it. Steve Kille
in UCL and Julian Onions in Nottingham amongst others. Marshall rose may
have had a bit of it, and Doug crocker. Smart people. Better coders than me
by far!
G
On Wed, 14 Aug 2024, 16:44 Dan Cross, <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 3:06 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 2:13 PM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
> >> ... CSNet didn't happen until the mid-80s, by which time
> >> sendmail was firmly entrenched in the BSD world. ...
> >
> > Right -- my bad. CSNET did not occur until a few years after I had
> finished my grad work and left. ISTR CSNET used MMDF as the mail transport
> agent (not sendmail). But my point was that there were numerous alternate
> mail systems, commercial and independent, that had "portals" into and out
> of the USENET and the ARPANET and later the Internet - so email headers
> were getting warped in strange ways and trying to be able to reliably reply
> was often difficult.
>
> I tried to set up MMDF on an RT running AOS once; this was during the
> era when Sendmail was getting hacked nearly continuously. It was kind
> of a nifty architecture; different formats used different "channels"
> feeding into a common routing core.
>
> It sort of broke down because the inter-message separately wasn't
> compatible with any clients we were using; they didn't use the BSD
> "mbox" format, but rather, used a set of (4?) `^A`'s as the message
> separator.
>
> I'm sure there was some way to change this, but I never investigated
> sufficiently to figure out what it was.
>
> > Eric was having to deal with some new hacks fairly regularly, and the
> idea of a production language to convert format A to B to C was a good
> one. The only real mistake in my mind was that (unlike MMDF) he built the
> SMTP daemon in sendmail. MMDF and some of the other systems had programs
> that converted to/from a canonical form (usually RFC733/822 style) and then
> some sets of external utilities that talked to the "port" - be it UUCP,
> SMTP, "PhoneNet", or whatever. But making it built into sendmail itself,
> in fact, was a violation of the UNIX "do one job well" idea and would, of
> course, be the attack vector. The two sad parts of that IMO is that first
> most people did not need most of the features of sendmail -- they needed
> just SMTP and maybe UUCP, but send sendmail was the SMTPD for BSD, that is
> what they had. But the BBN TCP/IP package that UCB started with had a
> separate SMTPD and Eric could have just called it like he did the UUCP
> subsystem.
> > бђ§
>
> Zmailer had an architecture kind of like that; at least some folks
> were running it locally. But it never really caught on, as far as I
> could tell, and eventually qmail and postfix (nee vmailer) provided a
> better alternative. I guess some folks still swear by Exim.
>
> I kind of wonder if the days of Unix MTAs as anything other than a
> detail are mostly over.
>
> - Dan C.
>
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From will.senn at gmail.com Wed Aug 14 22:49:15 2024
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:49:15 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W6OucNQUO31thyiPax=k3oXNcsKKL21asJy8pGntqL-xA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
<CAEoi9W6OucNQUO31thyiPax=k3oXNcsKKL21asJy8pGntqL-xA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2c57fdda-de18-4bfc-8228-75fac2699ab4@gmail.com>
On 8/14/24 01:38, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 2:57 PM Bakul Shah<bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:
>> On Aug 13, 2024, at 6:48 AM, Dan Cross<crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> п»їI thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.
>>> https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
>> A lot of shells under that Unix umbrella!
>>
>> Coconut water + its jelly like flesh can be quite refreshing
>> on a hot Mumbai day. Did you try any?
> Of course! We had some just yesterday, and will again today.
>
> As Groggy noted, the husk may look a little worse for wear, but the
> coconuts themselves are quite fresh.
>
> - Dan C.
The vendor's got several kinds available in that cart, not just husks
and not just fresh. I prefer fresh, but the slightly fermented ones are
good too. I grew up on coconut and sugar cane. In India, they're better
in Bangalore/Chennai. Delhi has the brown ones we're used to in the
states, mostly. Here in Texas, I can only get sugar cane over in the
Asian part of town. Coconut's available, but it's a pale reflection of
fresh and the brown's only good for cooking and candy bars.
I wonder if there's any connection with Unix and coconuts aside from
this umbrella?
Will
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From pugs78 at gmail.com Thu Aug 15 00:52:39 2024
From: pugs78 at gmail.com (Tom Lyon)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:52:39 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <2c57fdda-de18-4bfc-8228-75fac2699ab4@gmail.com>
References: <F57F340E-BF3A-409B-814E-ADE59FA95ADB@iitbombay.org>
<CAEoi9W6OucNQUO31thyiPax=k3oXNcsKKL21asJy8pGntqL-xA@mail.gmail.com>
<2c57fdda-de18-4bfc-8228-75fac2699ab4@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CANxB0bSkkEMSZO=JNrQBhkosuQWwZ3hAZ6rVQc70ei0HMCh_Tg@mail.gmail.com>
I'm imagining a Venn diagram featuring 'shell' and 'bash'.
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 7:46 AM Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/14/24 01:38, Dan Cross wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 2:57 PM Bakul Shah <bakul at iitbombay.org> <bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:
>
> On Aug 13, 2024, at 6:48 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> п»їI thought some may appreciate the linked photo: Unix spotted near Mumbai Central Railway Station, Mumbai (Bombay), Maharashtra, India.https://photos.app.goo.gl/acTTsfvYt5suP4wS6
>
> A lot of shells under that Unix umbrella!
>
> Coconut water + its jelly like flesh can be quite refreshing
> on a hot Mumbai day. Did you try any?
>
> Of course! We had some just yesterday, and will again today.
>
> As Groggy noted, the husk may look a little worse for wear, but the
> coconuts themselves are quite fresh.
>
> - Dan C.
>
> The vendor's got several kinds available in that cart, not just husks and
> not just fresh. I prefer fresh, but the slightly fermented ones are good
> too. I grew up on coconut and sugar cane. In India, they're better in
> Bangalore/Chennai. Delhi has the brown ones we're used to in the states,
> mostly. Here in Texas, I can only get sugar cane over in the Asian part of
> town. Coconut's available, but it's a pale reflection of fresh and the
> brown's only good for cooking and candy bars.
>
> I wonder if there's any connection with Unix and coconuts aside from this
> umbrella?
>
> Will
>
>
>
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From rich.salz at gmail.com Thu Aug 15 01:43:40 2024
From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 11:43:40 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
Several folks at BBN worked on MMDF as well, often as part of the CSNET
project which BBN ran.* I always thought the five control-A's were a
failure of imagination (never going to send binary?). MMDF's biggest
failure was synchronous sending -- if you made a typo in an email address
the mail UA would bring it back to edit-mode -- which didn't work for
store-and-forward mail configurations.
Steve Bellovin had a funny quip about CSNET and Usenet, comparing
professors applying for NSF grants and grad students just setting up modems.
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 15 02:45:17 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 12:45:17 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 11:44 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz at gmail.com> wrote:
> I always thought the five control-A's were a failure of imagination
> (never going to send binary?).
>
As always, it's about history and how they got there. What was reasonable
for one group, over time was not for another.
To be fair, that was Bruce Borden-ism from the Rand Mailer Handler (MH).
Longer before things LIKE Ease/MMDF *et al*., Rand was running UNIX
machines on the ARPANET early on (and UUCP did not yet exist). The mailer
header format needed to be RFC733 in those days. The use of the "UNIX"
headers - was rather limited to a couple of programs in the Fifth and Sixth
Edition. Bruce had replaced the Fifth and Sixth edition "mail" program
(which was both the MUI and MTA combined), with separate programs already
as part of creating this new user interface and mailer agent. Thus, a new
mailbox format was fair game.
It was not a failure of imagination, binary was not an issue for Bruce -
since it was not allowed in RFC733 at that point. Now, remember that many
UNIX folks on the ARPANET had already switched to MH (that's why we
switched to using it at CMU), so MMDF picking Bruce's format was a good
idea (for them). Remember, AT&T Research is not on the ARPANET, so the
mail (local to a single machine in those days) could be in any format
they wanted.
RFC733 (and later 822) headers were not an issue, so the funky "From:"
worked fine.
As I pointed out, UCB was not on the ARPANET, so when Kurt wrote the UCB
MUI and split out the MTA as delivermail, he kept the V5/V6 mailbox format (
mbox) from Research. The issue came when people started using the mail
system as a programmatic messaging scheme (*i.e.,* fork: some_program |
mail user) and other programs started to parse the output. More
importantly, getting an ARPANET connection was difficult, so many fewer
sites needed to support the ARPANET (later Internet) header format, whereas
a USENET connection via UUCP was easy. So >>lots<< of people started to
pick up Mail(1) [Kurt's new MUI) and did not use/know about, much less need
to switch over to MH and RFC733/822.
Thus, the switch from the Research "mbox" format to Borden's scheme started
to become problematic in that if the new utility "knew" about mbox, it had
to be hacked if you were using MH or something that was derived from MH
(like MMDF or PMDF).
бђ§
бђ§
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From steffen at sdaoden.eu Thu Aug 15 04:18:41 2024
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:18:41 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
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<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240814181841.74CmunJ-@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Clem Cole wrote in
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA at mail.gmail.com>:
|On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 11:44 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz at gmail.com> wrote:
|
|> I always thought the five control-A's were a failure of imagination
|> (never going to send binary?).
|>
|As always, it's about history and how they got there. What was reasonable
|for one group, over time was not for another.
|
|To be fair, that was Bruce Borden-ism from the Rand Mailer Handler (MH).
|Longer before things LIKE Ease/MMDF *et al*., Rand was running UNIX
|machines on the ARPANET early on (and UUCP did not yet exist). The mailer
|header format needed to be RFC733 in those days. The use of the "UNIX"
|headers - was rather limited to a couple of programs in the Fifth and Sixth
|Edition. Bruce had replaced the Fifth and Sixth edition "mail" program
|(which was both the MUI and MTA combined), with separate programs already
|as part of creating this new user interface and mailer agent. Thus, a new
|mailbox format was fair game.
|
|It was not a failure of imagination, binary was not an issue for Bruce -
|since it was not allowed in RFC733 at that point. Now, remember that many
Depending on what you mean by "at that point" i think here you
misremember. (To the contrary 733 and also 822 allow practically
anything, it was RFC 2822 from 2001 which then at least says "The
NUL character (ASCII value 0) was once allowed, but is no longer
for compatibility reasons". Except for NUL (comments) can still
as of today contain the now-called obs-NO-WS-CTL defined as
obs-NO-WS-CTL = %d1-8 / %d11 / %d12 / %d14-31 / %d127;
; US-ASCII controls except CR, LF, and whitespace)
|UNIX folks on the ARPANET had already switched to MH (that's why we
|switched to using it at CMU), so MMDF picking Bruce's format was a good
|idea (for them). Remember, AT&T Research is not on the ARPANET, so the
|mail (local to a single machine in those days) could be in any format
|they wanted.
|RFC733 (and later 822) headers were not an issue, so the funky "From:"
|worked fine.
|
|As I pointed out, UCB was not on the ARPANET, so when Kurt wrote the UCB
|MUI and split out the MTA as delivermail, he kept the V5/V6 mailbox \
|format (
|mbox) from Research. The issue came when people started using the mail
|system as a programmatic messaging scheme (*i.e.,* fork: some_program |
|mail user) and other programs started to parse the output. More
|importantly, getting an ARPANET connection was difficult, so many fewer
|sites needed to support the ARPANET (later Internet) header format, whereas
|a USENET connection via UUCP was easy. So >>lots<< of people started to
|pick up Mail(1) [Kurt's new MUI) and did not use/know about, much less need
|to switch over to MH and RFC733/822.
|
|Thus, the switch from the Research "mbox" format to Borden's scheme started
|to become problematic in that if the new utility "knew" about mbox, it had
|to be hacked if you were using MH or something that was derived from MH
|(like MMDF or PMDF).
As a remark, the MBOX format as standardized by POSIX decades ago
line beginning with From<space>
[one or more header fields; see Commands in mailx (on page 3112)]
empty line
[zero or more body lines
empty line]
[line beginning with From<space>...]
is pretty clear (the BSD Mail i took maintainership of only did it
too laxe, and it took prodding by Dr. Werner Fink of SuSE for me
to realize *how* much, in 2019). And even more so the MBOX format
as standardized by RFC 4155! Compare to the Unicode people, who
advise on looking for and then fully trust the BOM (U+FEFF), which
is only 16-bit.
(And also, with MIME, which was standardized in its iterated, current
version 28 years ago, and RFC 4155 from 2005, one would normally
save content-encoded data in the thus unambiguous,
non-misinterpretable database that MBOX is; the IETF has not yet
iterated RFC 4155, so all the "UTF-8" email extensions do not
apply, and 4155 states: "Eight-bit data within the stream MUST be
converted to a seven-bit form (using appropriate, standardized
encoding) and appropriately tagged (with the correct header
fields) before the database is transferred".)
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
From rich.salz at gmail.com Thu Aug 15 04:47:35 2024
From: rich.salz at gmail.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:47:35 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
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<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFH29tpR1cwE29bsSsUN_rc6F2kB7bbkEoE3fPmb3gQ9CXfbsQ@mail.gmail.com>
>
> I always thought the five control-A's were a failure of imagination
>> (never going to send binary?).
>>
> As always, it's about history and how they got there. What was reasonable
> for one group, over time was not for another.
>
True. I joined BBN after the TCP/IP flag day, after 4.2BSD, and so on.
When I used MH, it kept one message/file; I only know the control-a thing
from MMDF.
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 15 04:50:25 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:50:25 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <20240814181841.74CmunJ-@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
<20240814181841.74CmunJ-@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O33LZvF2-gn2J8yB_84jk8jfPAdgsvyT476qv54o9U1w@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:18 PM Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu> wrote:
> Depending on what you mean by "at that point" i think here you
> misremember. (To the contrary 733 and also 822 allow practically anything
>
Page 3 of SMTPD -- RFC 821 [which the 822 sits on top of says]:
"Commands and Replies are composed of characters from the ASCII character
set. When a transport service provides an 8-bit byte (octet) transmission
channel, each 7-bit character is transmitted right justified in an octet
with the *high order bit cleared to zero*"
BTW, this was specified in 821 because it had been a factor in earlier
experience of the ARPANET [733 and using FTP as a mail transport, which was
how much of this all started], and binary was explicitly not allowed. 822
force 7-bit ASCII because of the earlier issues of things like CDC's
display code (what a nightmare), much less EBCDIC. The key was that those
of us in the ARPANET community could not allow "anything," - but we did
have to detail what was there.
Some of us lived in this world and wrote programs that dealt with those
constraints at the time. I am relaying to you what it was and how it
happened. As I said, we have what we have because that was what we were
living with -- two distinct worlds, the ARPANET community - which was
setting the standards for interchange, and UNIX (USENET), which was de
facto and growing because it cost little to join it.
> As a remark, the MBOX format as standardized by POSIX decades ago
>
Ouch -- I was part of POSIX and /usr/group before that. And had >>nothing<<
to do with it. The POSIX definition was at least 15 years After Bruce
wrote MH and Kurt did delivermail and if I count I >>suspect<< it is
correctly closer to 20-25. mbox was created I believe by Ken (Doug do you
remember?), but I'm not sure who actually wrote the original "mail" program
for Fifth edition (maybe Fourth) - which as I said was both an MUI and a
MTA. But that development was over 15 yrs before we started the
/usr/group standard, much less the POSIX ones.
You are probably correct that until it was formally specified in the POSIX
definition, the format was defined originally in Ken's code, then Kurt's
and finally in Eric's. IIRC, Bruce actually had a man page in MH that
described his format that used the ^A characters, but I would have to
rummage through old sources to be 100% certain. Certainly, later
distributions of it did describe it, and MMDF may have also - but I'm not
sure.
BTW: by about 4.2BSD time (maybe a little earlier), particularly because of
sendmail - the MH system (which had left Rand and was then being supported
by someone else ??UC Irvine maybe??) had been hacked to handle the mbox
format
бђ§
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 15 04:51:19 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:51:19 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAFH29tpR1cwE29bsSsUN_rc6F2kB7bbkEoE3fPmb3gQ9CXfbsQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tpR1cwE29bsSsUN_rc6F2kB7bbkEoE3fPmb3gQ9CXfbsQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MQjXwq5EMa7hVx9OHRD=mtEvbOSbe2ahta0nUpk2RpLA@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:47 PM Rich Salz <rich.salz at gmail.com> wrote:
> I always thought the five control-A's were a failure of imagination
>>> (never going to send binary?).
>>>
>> As always, it's about history and how they got there. What was
>> reasonable for one group, over time was not for another.
>>
>
> True. I joined BBN after the TCP/IP flag day, after 4.2BSD, and so on.
> When I used MH, it kept one message/file; I only know the control-a thing
> from MMDF.
>
Rich, that was a much later version.
бђ§
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 15 04:52:38 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:52:38 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2O33LZvF2-gn2J8yB_84jk8jfPAdgsvyT476qv54o9U1w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
<20240814181841.74CmunJ-@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
<CAC20D2O33LZvF2-gn2J8yB_84jk8jfPAdgsvyT476qv54o9U1w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Px5R5qEa=fcU0DJQiP13UoJQ7MZGZQRvKPY2YDfHqkgg@mail.gmail.com>
s/to detail/to deal with/ - I hate autocorrect
бђ§
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:50 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:18 PM Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu>
> wrote:
>
>> Depending on what you mean by "at that point" i think here you
>> misremember. (To the contrary 733 and also 822 allow practically
>> anything
>>
> Page 3 of SMTPD -- RFC 821 [which the 822 sits on top of says]:
>
> "Commands and Replies are composed of characters from the ASCII character
> set. When a transport service provides an 8-bit byte (octet) transmission
> channel, each 7-bit character is transmitted right justified in an octet
> with the *high order bit cleared to zero*"
>
>
> BTW, this was specified in 821 because it had been a factor in earlier
> experience of the ARPANET [733 and using FTP as a mail transport, which was
> how much of this all started], and binary was explicitly not allowed. 822
> force 7-bit ASCII because of the earlier issues of things like CDC's
> display code (what a nightmare), much less EBCDIC. The key was that those
> of us in the ARPANET community could not allow "anything," - but we did
> have to detail what was there.
>
> Some of us lived in this world and wrote programs that dealt with those
> constraints at the time. I am relaying to you what it was and how it
> happened. As I said, we have what we have because that was what we were
> living with -- two distinct worlds, the ARPANET community - which was
> setting the standards for interchange, and UNIX (USENET), which was de
> facto and growing because it cost little to join it.
>
>
>> As a remark, the MBOX format as standardized by POSIX decades ago
>>
> Ouch -- I was part of POSIX and /usr/group before that. And had
> >>nothing<< to do with it. The POSIX definition was at least 15 years
> After Bruce wrote MH and Kurt did delivermail and if I count I >>suspect<<
> it is correctly closer to 20-25. mbox was created I believe by Ken (Doug
> do you remember?), but I'm not sure who actually wrote the original "mail"
> program for Fifth edition (maybe Fourth) - which as I said was both an MUI
> and a MTA. But that development was over 15 yrs before we started the
> /usr/group standard, much less the POSIX ones.
>
> You are probably correct that until it was formally specified in the POSIX
> definition, the format was defined originally in Ken's code, then Kurt's
> and finally in Eric's. IIRC, Bruce actually had a man page in MH that
> described his format that used the ^A characters, but I would have to
> rummage through old sources to be 100% certain. Certainly, later
> distributions of it did describe it, and MMDF may have also - but I'm not
> sure.
>
> BTW: by about 4.2BSD time (maybe a little earlier), particularly because
> of sendmail - the MH system (which had left Rand and was then being
> supported by someone else ??UC Irvine maybe??) had been hacked to handle
> the mbox format
>
>
> бђ§
>
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 15 04:57:11 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:57:11 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MQjXwq5EMa7hVx9OHRD=mtEvbOSbe2ahta0nUpk2RpLA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tpR1cwE29bsSsUN_rc6F2kB7bbkEoE3fPmb3gQ9CXfbsQ@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2MQjXwq5EMa7hVx9OHRD=mtEvbOSbe2ahta0nUpk2RpLA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Mm=Cq8K_Sch1Cs4jR7OBz-c0kSAPgHshDa0v1skzR6mA@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:51 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:47 PM Rich Salz <rich.salz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I always thought the five control-A's were a failure of imagination
>>>> (never going to send binary?).
>>>>
>>> As always, it's about history and how they got there. What was
>>> reasonable for one group, over time was not for another.
>>>
>>
>> True. I joined BBN after the TCP/IP flag day, after 4.2BSD, and so on.
>> When I used MH, it kept one message/file; I only know the control-a thing
>> from MMDF.
>>
> Rich, that was a much later version.
>
FWIW: The big complaint about MH was not the mailbox format, it was that
Bruce stored your files in separate files, which on a small machine like a
PDP-11, eats up inode space, although it made doing things like grep and
finding something easy.
бђ§
>
бђ§
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Thu Aug 15 04:58:51 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (segaloco via TUHS)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 18:58:51 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Xvo87Y9tlTLnzdQCJEk1AQdSzhnGwk7d31C_aqGwTpORVLN1fpbKS_zfTbLUC8Ag_94yVsXFyxBq_TeZ14SrEBHIwdZmwQMf96Zqc8cEmHU=@protonmail.com>
On Wednesday, August 14th, 2024 at 9:45 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> ...
> The issue came when people started using the mail system as a programmatic messaging scheme (i.e., fork: some_program | mail user) and other programs started to parse the output.
> ...
Mail as IPC...that's what I'm reading from that anyway...now that's an interesting concept. Did that idea ever grow any significant legs? I can't tell if the general concept is clever or systems abuse, in those days it seems like it could've gone either way.
I guess it sorta did survive in the form of automated systems today expecting specially formatted emails to trigger "stuff" to happen.
- Matt G.
From paul at guertin.net Thu Aug 15 05:01:09 2024
From: paul at guertin.net (Paul Guertin)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 15:01:09 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Unix spotted in Mumbai.
In-Reply-To: <CAKr6gn0Nb4VvbWwRJxrauAe6+B8Os6OuhG3ma32g=5UTKEsyQg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <ZrvzM1vdHU8LjkkO@hydra.lemis.com>
<20240814000354.ah5sftuI@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
<CAKr6gn0Nb4VvbWwRJxrauAe6+B8Os6OuhG3ma32g=5UTKEsyQg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <294186b7-b31e-4d3d-8fcf-d8d2ae2ca156@guertin.net>
Unix roofing company in Montreal:
https://toitureunix.com/
From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 15 05:20:18 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 15:20:18 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
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References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
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<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CAC20D2PvYP_uMjmOWnfv_DSgrub2gv_fJk6tp1oJpAg3N-Wguw@mail.gmail.com>
Matt - I'm going to BCC: TUHS and move this to COFF - since while UNIX was
certainly in the mix in all this, it was hardly first or the only place it
happenned.
On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:59 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 14th, 2024 at 9:45 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > ...
> > The issue came when people started using the mail system as a
> programmatic messaging scheme (i.e., fork: some_program | mail user) and
> other programs started to parse the output.
> > ...
>
> Mail as IPC...that's what I'm reading from that anyway...now that's an
> interesting concept.
It's kind of funny the history. ARPANET gives us FTP as a way to
exchange files. So, people figure out how to hack the mailer to call FTP
to send a file remotely and set up a submit a cron/batch submission, a.k.a
RJE. This is encouraged by DARPA because part of the justification of the
ARAPNET was to be able to share resources, and this enables supercomputers
of the day to be able to provide cycles to DARPA folks who might not have
access to larger systems. Also, remember, mailers were local to systems
at that point.
So someone gets the bright idea to hooker the mailer into this system --
copy the "mail file" and set up a remote job to mail it locally. Let's
just say this prioves to be a cool idea and the idea of intersystem email
begins in the >>ARPANET<< community.
So the idea of taking it to the next level was not that far off. The
mailer transports started to offer (limited) features to access services.
By the time of Kurt's "delivermail" but he added a feature, thinking it was
system logs that allowed specific programs to be called. In fact, it may
have been invented elsewhere but before Eric would formalize "vacation" -
Jim Kleckner and I hacked together a "awk" script to do that function on
the UCB CAD 4.1 systems. I showed it to Sam and a few other people, and I
know it went from Cory to Evans fairly quickly. Vacation(1) was written
shortly there after to be a bit more flexible than our original script.
Did that idea ever grow any significant legs?
I guess the word here is significant. It certainly was used where it made
sense. In the CAD group, we had simulations that might run for a few
days. We used to call the mailer every so often to send status and
sometimes do something like a checkpoint. It lead to Sam writing syslogd,
particularly after Joy created UNIX domain sockets. But I can say we used
it a number of places in systems oriented or long running code before
syslogd as a scheme to log errors, deal with stuff.
> I can't tell if the general concept is clever or systems abuse, in those
> days it seems like it could've gone either way.
>
> I guess it sorta did survive in the form of automated systems today
> expecting specially formatted emails to trigger "stuff" to happen.
Exactly.
бђ§
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From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Thu Aug 15 05:48:03 2024
From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling)
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 12:48:03 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
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References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
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On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 11:59 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, August 14th, 2024 at 9:45 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > ...
> > The issue came when people started using the mail system as a programmatic messaging scheme (i.e., fork: some_program | mail user) and other programs started to parse the output.
> > ...
>
> Mail as IPC...that's what I'm reading from that anyway...now that's an interesting concept. Did that idea ever grow any significant legs? I can't tell if the general concept is clever or systems abuse, in those days it seems like it could've gone either way.
I like Clem's answer on mail IPC/RPC.
To add I have heard some stories of NNTP being used once upon a time
at some service providers the way ansible/mcollective/salt might be
used to orchestrate UNIX host configurations and application
deployments. The concept of Control messages is somewhat critical to
operations, so it's not totally crazy, but isolating article flows
would give me some heartburn if the thing has privileged system
access.. would probably want it on a totally distinct
instance+port+configuration.
Email and Usenet both have some nice properties of implementing a
"Message Queue" like handling offline hosts when they come back. But
the complexity of mail and nntp implementations lean more towards
system abuse IMO.
> I guess it sorta did survive in the form of automated systems today expecting specially formatted emails to trigger "stuff" to happen.
>
> - Matt G.
From steffen at sdaoden.eu Thu Aug 15 09:04:32 2024
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 01:04:32 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2O33LZvF2-gn2J8yB_84jk8jfPAdgsvyT476qv54o9U1w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
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<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
<20240814181841.74CmunJ-@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
<CAC20D2O33LZvF2-gn2J8yB_84jk8jfPAdgsvyT476qv54o9U1w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240814230432.W46kezZs@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
Clem Cole wrote in
<CAC20D2O33LZvF2-gn2J8yB_84jk8jfPAdgsvyT476qv54o9U1w at mail.gmail.com>:
|On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 2:18 PM Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu> \
|wrote:
|> Depending on what you mean by "at that point" i think here you
|> misremember. (To the contrary 733 and also 822 allow practically \
|> anything
|>
|Page 3 of SMTPD -- RFC 821 [which the 822 sits on top of says]:
|
|"Commands and Replies are composed of characters from the ASCII character
|set. When a transport service provides an 8-bit byte (octet) transmission
|channel, each 7-bit character is transmitted right justified in an octet
|with the *high order bit cleared to zero*"
Sure, that is the 8-bit thing that i introduced into the
discussion. You all were talking about binary, which means
"lots of non-printable characters".
|BTW, this was specified in 821 because it had been a factor in earlier
|experience of the ARPANET [733 and using FTP as a mail transport, which was
|how much of this all started], and binary was explicitly not allowed. 822
|force 7-bit ASCII because of the earlier issues of things like CDC's
|display code (what a nightmare), much less EBCDIC. The key was that those
|of us in the ARPANET community could not allow "anything," - but we did
|have to detail what was there.
Ok, mails had to be transferred somehow. So without binary
transport no binary storage. (RFC 822 allows any ASCII character,
except that CRLF ends a line.)
|Some of us lived in this world and wrote programs that dealt with those
|constraints at the time. I am relaying to you what it was and how it
|happened. As I said, we have what we have because that was what we were
|living with -- two distinct worlds, the ARPANET community - which was
|setting the standards for interchange, and UNIX (USENET), which was de
|facto and growing because it cost little to join it.
|
|> As a remark, the MBOX format as standardized by POSIX decades ago
|>
|Ouch -- I was part of POSIX and /usr/group before that. And had >>nothing<<
|to do with it. The POSIX definition was at least 15 years After Bruce
|wrote MH and Kurt did delivermail and if I count I >>suspect<< it is
|correctly closer to 20-25. mbox was created I believe by Ken (Doug do you
|remember?), but I'm not sure who actually wrote the original "mail" program
|for Fifth edition (maybe Fourth) - which as I said was both an MUI and a
|MTA. But that development was over 15 yrs before we started the
|/usr/group standard, much less the POSIX ones.
That all is very interesting. For now i always presumed s2/mail.c
was mostly written by Ken Thompson? Yes, Research V5 already did
some sort of From_, and ensured a blank line when doing concat()
onto the target users "MBOX" file.
|You are probably correct that until it was formally specified in the POSIX
|definition, the format was defined originally in Ken's code, then Kurt's
|and finally in Eric's. IIRC, Bruce actually had a man page in MH that
|described his format that used the ^A characters, but I would have to
|rummage through old sources to be 100% certain. Certainly, later
|distributions of it did describe it, and MMDF may have also - but I'm not
|sure.
The difference, and what i meant, is that POSIX says "one or more
header lines". Compare this to Kurt Shoen's ishead() from 1978,
where he only tests a single line by itself. (But "From " plus
date plus user of maximally 17 bytes is still better than five
times ^A i would think, except that consecutive ^A are rare.)
So i would think the problem stems from the fact that in early
[mM]ails there was no separating newline in between the "From "
line and message text *unless* there was some header to put:
fprintf(fout, "From %s %s", myname, date);
puthead(hp, fout);
while ((c = getc(fo)) != EOF)
putc(c, fout);
->
puthead(hp, fo)
struct header *hp;
FILE *fo;
{
if (hp->h_to != NOSTR)
fprintf(fo, "To: %s\n", hp->h_to);
if (hp->h_subj != NOSTR)
fprintf(fo, "Subj: %s\n", hp->h_subj);
if (hp->h_cc != NOSTR)
fprintf(fo, "Cc: %s\n", hp->h_cc);
if (hp->h_to != NOSTR || hp->h_subj != NOSTR || hp->h_cc != NOSTR)
putc('\n', fo);
return(0);
}
So there *could* be no separating empty line after the
(so-called) From_ line. This actually changed with POSIX, and it
took more than fourty years until Werner Fink pointed to the fact
that this "one ore more header lines" can be taken into account
when doing From_ line detection in a MBOX file.
Or 31 years, if it was POSIX 1988 which brought that rule.
For a later born one
- it is de facto hard to understand why noone cared for some sort
of content encoding for neither of SMTP nor text messages.
I mean, if one reads the early RFCs, before 1975, say, it was
all unbelievable "direct", trial and error, discovery, etc.
But, take for example RFC 698 from July 1975, "TELNET EXTENDED
ASCII OPTION", which says
Several sites[.] for example MIT-AI, use keyboards which use
almost all 128 characters as printable characters, and use one
or more additional bits as "control' bits as command modifiers
[.] several characters cannot be entered as text because they
are used for control purposes, such as the greek letter "beta'
which on a TELNET connection is CONTROL-C and is used for
stopping ones job.
Ie "control by external player" was not only the usual thing,
but it was recognized as causing problems.
It is fascinating to read Postel's RFC 767 from 1980, "A
Structured Format for Transmission of Multi-Media Documents".
To the contrary it took until the early 90s until it was no
longer expected that receivers "know" (like RFC 767, which
assumes users know how to interpret data formats to the odd
bit) by converting data to harmless text "garbage" which needs
dedicated and declared support on the receiver side to become
interpreted.
And i hope IETF's new thing SML will not bring back such.
- Why the 8-bit problem, at all? Already RFC 354 says:
The transfer byte size must be 8 bits.
It is really amazing that in hindsight to data formats like RFC
767 encoding for (the) local storage (that) MBOX (is) was not
worth an RFC. (Until MIME came which *i* use to circumvent any
possible problem; it must be said that especially in the OSS world
people *explicitly* do not do this, so that messages with >From
quoting, aka *without* MIME, can still be seen.)
|BTW: by about 4.2BSD time (maybe a little earlier), particularly because of
|sendmail - the MH system (which had left Rand and was then being supported
|by someone else ??UC Irvine maybe??) had been hacked to handle the mbox
|format
These days anyone runs away from MBOX. Even the dovecot IMAP(++)
server no longer uses it (by default) i think, since not too long
ago. I think they all went the Maildir way, which also stores
one message per file. I love MBOX (with MIME encoded messages
etc), however i -- for the MUA i maintain -- still have the way to
go they all have passed, and that is external index files etc.
Netscape's mailer had that thirty years ago...
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 17 04:25:56 2024
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 14:25:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
Message-ID: <20240816182556.5F9FB18C07A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> From: Larry McVoy
{Moving this to COFF, as it's not UNIX-related. I'll have another reply there
as well, about the social media point.}
> The amazing thing, to me, is I was a CS student in very early 1980's
> and I had no idea of the history behind the arpanet.
I don't think that was that uncommon; at MIT (slightly earlier, I think -
-'74-'77 for me) the undergrad's weren't learning anything about networking
there either, then.
I think the reason is that there wasn't much to teach - in part because we
did not then know much about networking, and in part because it was not yet
crystal clear how important it would become (more below on that).
There was research going on in the area, but even at MIT one doesn't teach
(or didn't then; I don't know about now) on-going research subjects to
undergrads. MIT _did_ have, even then, a formal UROP ('undergrad research
opportunities') program, which allowed undergrads to be part of research
groups - a sheer genius idea - which in some fast-moving fields, like CS, was
an inestimable benefit to more forward undergrads in those fields.
I joined the CSR group at LCS in '77 because I had some operating system
ideas I wanted to work on; I had no idea at that point that they were doing
anything with networks. They took me on as the result of the sheerest chance;
they had just gotten some money from DARPA to build a LAN, and the interface
was going to be built for a UNIBUS PDP-11, and they needed diagnostics, etc
written; and they were all Multicians. I, by chance, knew PDP-11 assembler -
which none of them did - the MIT CS introductory course at that point taught
it. So the deal was that I'd help them with that, and I could use the machine
to explore my OS ideas in return.
Which never really happened; it fairly became clear to me that data
networking was going to have an enormous impact on the world, and at that
point it was also technically interesting, so I quickly got sucked into that
stuff. (I actually have a written document hiding in a file drawer somewhere
from 1978 or so, which makes it plain that that I'm not suffering 20-20
hindsight here, in talking about foreseeing the impact; I should dig it up.)
The future impact actually wasn't hard to foresee: looking at what printed
books had done to the world, and then telgraphs/telephones, and what
computers had already started to do at that point, it was clear that
combining them all was going to have an incredible impact (and we're still
adapting to it).
Learning about networking at the time was tricky. The ARPANET - well, NCP and
below - was pretty well documented in a couple of AFIPS papers (linked to at
the bottom here:
https://gunkies.org/wiki/ARPANET
which I have a very vague memory I photocopied at the time out of the bound
AFIPS proceedings in the LCS library). The applications were only documented
in the RFC's.
(Speaking of which, at that level, the difference between the ARPANET and the
Internet was not very significant - it was only the internals, invisible to
the people who did 'application' protocols, that were completely different.
HTTP would probably run just fine on top of NCP, for instance.)
Anything past that, the start of the internet work, that, I picked up by i)
direct osmosis from other people in CSR who were starting to think about
networks - principally Dave Clark and Dave Reed - and then ii) from documents
prepared as part of the TCP/IP effort, which were distributed electronically.
Which is an interesting point; the ARPANET was a key tool in the internet
work. The most important aspect was email; non-stop discussion between the
widely separated groups who were part of the project. It also made document
distribution really easy (which had also been true of the latter stages of
the ARPANET project, with the RFC's). And of course it was also a long-haul
network that we used to tie the small internets at all the various sites
(BBN, SRI, ISI - and eventually MIT) into the larger Internet.
I hate to think about trying to do all that work on internets, and the
Internet, without the ARPANE there, as a tool.
Noel
From nobozo at gmail.com Sat Aug 17 05:35:31 2024
From: nobozo at gmail.com (Jon Forrest)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 12:35:31 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <20240816182556.5F9FB18C07A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20240816182556.5F9FB18C07A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <e3208faa-52d1-4471-8eee-b7e27f64bc9c@gmail.com>
On 8/16/24 11:25 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: Larry McVoy
>
> {Moving this to COFF, as it's not UNIX-related. I'll have another reply there
> as well, about the social media point.}
>
> > The amazing thing, to me, is I was a CS student in very early 1980's
> > and I had no idea of the history behind the arpanet.
>
> I don't think that was that uncommon; at MIT (slightly earlier, I think -
> -'74-'77 for me) the undergrad's weren't learning anything about networking
> there either, then.
I was at UC Santa Barbara as an undergrad from 1973 to 1976, and then
back from 1978 to 1985. UCSB was one of the original 4 Arpanet nodes
but virtually nobody outside of a small group in EE knew about it.
I think the Culler-Harrison time sharing research and the speech
research at UCSB and SCRL (Speed Communication Research Laboratory,
a private speech research lab where many of the people were also
affiliated with UCSB), were some of the reasons why UCSB was on
the Arpanet so early.
There were no classes (that I'm aware of) that studied networking,
nor classes that used networking as a tool. In fact, the only
campus-wide network on campus was an Ungerman-Bass network used
to connect terminals to important nodes on campus. When I left UCSB
in 1985 the only WAN networking in place was DECNET between the
Physics Dept (where I was the computing manager) and SLAC.
Jim Frew, who sometimes posts on the list, could correct me if I'm wrong
about any of this. It was a long time ago.
Jon Forrest
From tuhs at tuhs.org Sat Aug 17 07:08:17 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Eric Allman via TUHS)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 14:08:17 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
Clem, normally your history is completely accurate, but this time I need
to provide a few corrections.
On 2024-08-12 10:34, Clem Cole wrote:
> csh et al.).В В Bob later ran a serial line up the stairwells of Cory
> and picked up the Ingres and the first CAD machine.В Kurt Shoens, who
> was the primary UCB Mail author, hacked the Berknet support into his
> work.В One of his primary additions was removing the "delivery" part
> of the mail into a separate program - that he called "delivermail."
Actually, I'm the one who separated the delivery into another program
that was indeed called "delivermail". I modified /bin/mail to do actual
delivery if it was invoked with -d, otherwise call delivermail. I took
out the hacks for networks such as UUCP and moved them to delivermail.
>
> Eric Alman was the system administrator of Ing70, so Eric hacked
> delivermail to pass email to and from the Berknet to the ARPANET. All
> was good until Ernie covax showed up and was connected to the UUCP net ;-)
That part is correct. In fact, the ARPANET was the reason for
delivermail in the first place. The BerkNet hacks had already been done
to /bin/mail, I think by Eric Schmidt.
>
> Eric refers to that time as "the email format of the week" and
> sendmail was created to allow him to more easily handle the different
> formats.В By then there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user at host),
> Berknet (host:user), UUCP (host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at
> UCB, as well as crap showing up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET
> and various other places trying be exchanged.
Don't forget DECnet (host::user) and things like some mercifully dead UK
network that reversed the domain names, so this mailing list would be
"tuhs at org.tuhs". And the compiled in configuration that delivermail used
was becoming unwieldy as the world get bigger, hence a configuration file.
But the real reason for sendmail was the advent of the Internet, which
used an entirely new mail protocol called SMTP. That required
implementing queuing and better error reporting than returning an exit
status. Bill Joy talked me into it because "you know mail better than
anyone around here." I didn't expect it to turn into the cornerstone of
my professional life. There are more stories there, but they are off topic.
eric
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From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 17 07:15:58 2024
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 17:15:58 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MQDjsiK4RgZDHTVNKBic=XfBK1rCOhoFbN652ZVLK8aw@mail.gmail.com>
thank you.
бђ§
On Fri, Aug 16, 2024 at 5:08 PM Eric Allman <tuhs at eric.allman.name> wrote:
> Clem, normally your history is completely accurate, but this time I need
> to provide a few corrections.
> On 2024-08-12 10:34, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> csh et al.). Bob later ran a serial line up the stairwells of Cory and
> picked up the Ingres and the first CAD machine. Kurt Shoens, who was the
> primary UCB Mail author, hacked the Berknet support into his work. One of
> his primary additions was removing the "delivery" part of the mail into a
> separate program - that he called "delivermail."
>
> Actually, I'm the one who separated the delivery into another program that
> was indeed called "delivermail". I modified /bin/mail to do actual delivery
> if it was invoked with -d, otherwise call delivermail. I took out the hacks
> for networks such as UUCP and moved them to delivermail.
>
>
> Eric Alman was the system administrator of Ing70, so Eric hacked
> delivermail to pass email to and from the Berknet to the ARPANET. All
> was good until Ernie covax showed up and was connected to the UUCP net ;-)
>
> That part is correct. In fact, the ARPANET was the reason for delivermail
> in the first place. The BerkNet hacks had already been done to /bin/mail, I
> think by Eric Schmidt.
>
>
> Eric refers to that time as "the email format of the week" and sendmail
> was created to allow him to more easily handle the different formats. By
> then there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user at host), Berknet (host:user),
> UUCP (host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at UCB, as well as crap
> showing up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET and various other places
> trying be exchanged.
>
> Don't forget DECnet (host::user) and things like some mercifully dead UK
> network that reversed the domain names, so this mailing list would be
> "tuhs at org.tuhs" <tuhs at org.tuhs>. And the compiled in configuration that
> delivermail used was becoming unwieldy as the world get bigger, hence a
> configuration file.
>
> But the real reason for sendmail was the advent of the Internet, which
> used an entirely new mail protocol called SMTP. That required implementing
> queuing and better error reporting than returning an exit status. Bill Joy
> talked me into it because "you know mail better than anyone around here." I
> didn't expect it to turn into the cornerstone of my professional life.
> There are more stories there, but they are off topic.
>
> eric
>
>
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Sat Aug 17 07:21:14 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Eric Allman via TUHS)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 14:21:14 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Mailer History -- was Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PvYP_uMjmOWnfv_DSgrub2gv_fJk6tp1oJpAg3N-Wguw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<202408131813.47DIDdZp1159124@freefriends.org>
<CAC20D2O41i9c1M2rG0UjJ+bstxq=KnJkhv3xVGBqbm6wmRTy7Q@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W508UNB116fv6NCP0v+UmSoNhN_wKvKTBQBoHCWNncvkw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAKr6gn2D=28wf5k6+vu9VrfgpJfZwpvszPY9d02K-if6Hg-xrg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAFH29tqxZeZAey8SuqFv+=EYHrRbPOyAqC+-_TxRJPH5dLSheA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2Nin-yvELys6QHGZjw1otuLegXy3keyg4-E1kd3ZME+KA@mail.gmail.com>
<Xvo87Y9tlTLnzdQCJEk1AQdSzhnGwk7d31C_aqGwTpORVLN1fpbKS_zfTbLUC8Ag_94yVsXFyxBq_TeZ14SrEBHIwdZmwQMf96Zqc8cEmHU=@protonmail.com>
<CAC20D2PvYP_uMjmOWnfv_DSgrub2gv_fJk6tp1oJpAg3N-Wguw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e94ef09f-5ce7-4bc0-8bfd-70b7e950d588@eric.allman.name>
On 2024-08-14 12:20, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> Did that idea ever grow any significant legs?
>
> I guess the word here is significant.В It certainly was used where it
> made sense.В In the CAD group, we had simulations that might run for a
> few days.В В We used to call the mailer every so often to send status
> and sometimes do something like a checkpoint. It lead to Sam writing
> syslogd, particularly after Joy created UNIX domain sockets.В В But I
> can sayВ we used it a number of places in systems oriented or long
> running code before syslogd as a scheme to log errors, deal with stuff.
Another correction: I wrote syslogd as part of the delivermail/sendmail
project, but I did intentionally make it generic so it could be used by
other services. Interestingly, I even got it to work on v6 using
something called "mpx files".
eric
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From ggm at algebras.org Sat Aug 17 10:47:22 2024
From: ggm at algebras.org (George Michaelson)
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2024 10:47:22 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
Message-ID: <CAKr6gn0aKMZouzGLP9JDcPqmYn5bhcKuGasaOz2xkrqGHw1rSA@mail.gmail.com>
On Sat, 17 Aug 2024, 7:08 am Eric Allman via TUHS, <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> Don't forget DECnet (host::user) and things like some mercifully dead UK
> network that reversed the domain names, so this mailing list would be
> "tuhs at org.tuhs" <tuhs at org.tuhs>. And the compiled in configuration that
> delivermail used was becoming unwieldy as the world get bigger, hence a
> configuration file.
>
> eric
>
Steve Kille famously said on the JANET (for that was the network) uk mail
list for mail of the UK.ac decision "its research and its ok to experiment"
- the main advantage was clarity of the scoping to which element to look at
going to far off faroffia: it was the rightmost element in the token list
for you normal people and the leftmost for us. Since we are western
alphabet and alrwsdy parsing the user at host left to right it meant in
principle the channel for faroffia was found faster from a shorter index
token starting from 0.
Jim at, Leeds uni and then heriot-watt wrote the sendmail.cf to
dis-un-combobulate uk.ac to ac.uk which obviously many many sysadmins in
the UK ran with. He was really meant to be doing functional programming
research I think. We shared an office for a few months at Leeds, it was ex
English school and reputedly where Tolkien sat out his days before
Cambridge came good. Leeds could have taken free(ish) mail from York on x25
and preferred to dial the Heriot-Watt in edinburgh to get uucp. Acoustic
coupler modem days. I think has they known, Charles Forsyth in York would
have done uucp over Janet /x25 but people sometimes do the other thing, not
because it's hard but just because.
G
>
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Sat Aug 17 11:20:37 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Eric Allman via TUHS)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 18:20:37 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <CAKr6gn0aKMZouzGLP9JDcPqmYn5bhcKuGasaOz2xkrqGHw1rSA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
<CAKr6gn0aKMZouzGLP9JDcPqmYn5bhcKuGasaOz2xkrqGHw1rSA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fc654c6e-2475-4672-82fb-ecfcb5e9a43d@eric.allman.name>
On 2024-08-16 17:47, George Michaelson wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 17 Aug 2024, 7:08 am Eric Allman via TUHS, <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> Don't forget DECnet (host::user) and things like some mercifully
> dead UK network that reversed the domain names, so this mailing
> list would be "tuhs at org.tuhs" <mailto:tuhs at org.tuhs>. And the
> compiled in configuration that delivermail used was becoming
> unwieldy as the world get bigger, hence a configuration file.
>
> eric
>
>
> Steve Kille famously said on the JANET (for that was the network) uk
> mail list for mail of the UK.ac decision "its research and its ok to
> experiment" - the main advantage was clarity of the scoping to which
> element to look at going to far off faroffia:В it was the rightmost
> element in the token list for you normal people and the leftmost for
> us. Since we are western alphabet and alrwsdy parsing the user at host
> left to right it meant in principle the channel for faroffia was found
> faster from a shorter index token starting from 0.
Ah yes, I was trying to remember JANET but was too lazy to do the research.
Honestly, I thought that JANET got it right and the rest of us
different, so that:
user at top.middle.bottom (e.g., eric at edu.berkeley.cs)
would allow strict left-to-right parsing. Actually I wanted
cs.berkeley.edu:eric — if that was true everywhere, sendmail would have
been so much easier. A major reason for very generic rewriting rules is
that basic parsing algorithms (notably LALR(1)) couldn't be made
generic. At Berkeley
uunet!foo!bar at berkeley.edu
meant that the message should be sent to the UUCP host (ucbvax at the
time, iirc, which from Ing70 translated to "ucbvax:uunet!foo!bar"), but
host::user at decwrl.com
should be sent to decwrl unchanged. See the book "!%@:: A directory of
Electronic Mail Addressing & Networks" for a taste of just how bad it was.
>
> Jim at, Leeds uni and then heriot-watt wrote the sendmail.cf
> <http://sendmail.cf> to dis-un-combobulate uk.ac <http://uk.ac> to
> ac.uk <http://ac.uk> which obviously many many sysadmins in the UK ran
> with. He was really meant to be doing functional programming research
> I think. We shared an office for a few months at Leeds, it was ex
> English school and reputedly where Tolkien sat out his days before
> Cambridge came good. Leeds could have taken free(ish) mail from York
> on x25 and preferred to dial the Heriot-Watt in edinburgh to get uucp.
> Acoustic coupler modem days. I think has they known, Charles Forsyth
> in York would have done uucp over Janet /x25 but people sometimes do
> the other thing, not because it's hard but just because.
>
> G
Heh. It reminds me of some of Teus Hagen's escapades in the early days.
But Teus was earlier, when networking meant UUCP.
eric
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From paul at mcjones.org Sat Aug 17 11:40:54 2024
From: paul at mcjones.org (Paul McJones)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 18:40:54 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 105, Issue 7
In-Reply-To: <172346464599.2437431.5756065624524210280@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <172346464599.2437431.5756065624524210280@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <49559B2E-051E-4E0E-8458-A794CE8E5D85@mcjones.org>
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 01:16:41 -0700,"Erik E. Fair" <fair-tuhs at netbsd.org <mailto:fair-tuhs at netbsd.org>> wrote:
>
> The main campus computer center was in the basement, but they charged by the CPU/second, so only classes used those systems - in my day (1980-1983), the computer center had a CDC 6400 and six or seven DEC PDP-11/70s.
The CDC 6400 finally went away in September 1982:
September 3rd, 1982
Memo to: Computing Affairs Staff
From: M.Stuart Lynn, Director
Subject: CDC 6400 Departure
The CDC 6400 is no more. ...
https://caltss.computerhistory.org/archive/820903-cdc-6400-departure-msl.pdf
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From tuhs at tuhs.org Sat Aug 17 21:12:25 2024
From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Jaap Akkerhuis via TUHS)
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2024 13:12:25 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Berkeley CSRG Building
In-Reply-To: <fc654c6e-2475-4672-82fb-ecfcb5e9a43d@eric.allman.name>
References: <711f46e8-c277-4d56-975b-cb0b469676e2@nomadlogic.org>
<21863.1723450601@cesium.clock.org>
<CAC20D2MTrT_Rusw_pM7CBES2Uc296=GGapXqX8oPMSFwdoNxuw@mail.gmail.com>
<c36a5520-b365-4595-a302-d6065aeb7d90@eric.allman.name>
<CAKr6gn0aKMZouzGLP9JDcPqmYn5bhcKuGasaOz2xkrqGHw1rSA@mail.gmail.com>
<fc654c6e-2475-4672-82fb-ecfcb5e9a43d@eric.allman.name>
Message-ID: <F9B764DB-2061-48C6-BEBA-A43B922A0726@xs4all.nl>
Hi Eric,
> On 17 Aug 2024, at 03:20, Eric Allman via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> Heh. It reminds me of some of Teus Hagen's escapades in the early days. But Teus was earlier, when networking meant UUCP.
>
Yes. I do remember him writing the first sendmail.cf file. Many people
used his version which you could always recognize because of the comment
"Will this ever work?” or something like that. I do remember I
found it back in various Ultix and other distributions. This is likely
because it ended up on the EUUG networking distribution tapes.
jaap
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From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Sat Aug 31 09:39:56 2024
From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 16:39:56 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
Message-ID: <CAK7dMtCmFLaeQpRQfydjFrF_Z+x_dHmct3ETaFPYoX-wkP+how@mail.gmail.com>
I have been playing around a bit with this in VirtualBox.
Maybe due to the backing company, I had assumed it was a commercial FreeBSD
variant. But looking a bit harder, it seems like it was a distinct strain
of 386bsd like NetBSD and FreeBSD. There seems to be scant information
about it online. Does anyone know if its story is told somewhere?
Regards,
Kevin
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From imp at bsdimp.com Sat Aug 31 09:44:20 2024
From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 17:44:20 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
In-Reply-To: <CAK7dMtCmFLaeQpRQfydjFrF_Z+x_dHmct3ETaFPYoX-wkP+how@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAK7dMtCmFLaeQpRQfydjFrF_Z+x_dHmct3ETaFPYoX-wkP+how@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 5:40 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling at kev009.com>
wrote:
> I have been playing around a bit with this in VirtualBox.
>
> Maybe due to the backing company, I had assumed it was a commercial
> FreeBSD variant. But looking a bit harder, it seems like it was a distinct
> strain of 386bsd like NetBSD and FreeBSD. There seems to be scant
> information about it online. Does anyone know if its story is told
> somewhere?
>
Wasn't this from BSDi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD/OS It wasn't a
commercial version of 386bsd, per se, but based on a porting to the PC work
Jolitz had done prior to 386BSD. They shared a common (very recent)
ancestor. And there was much drama around it all.
Or is this something else?
Warner
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From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Sat Aug 31 10:15:15 2024
From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 17:15:15 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAK7dMtCmFLaeQpRQfydjFrF_Z+x_dHmct3ETaFPYoX-wkP+how@mail.gmail.com>
<CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAK7dMtD5rt9Y09VQcqmddK7VQx52ZKvemqXUnrfp+WBc-mA2Pg@mail.gmail.com>
On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 4:44 PM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 5:40 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling at kev009.com> wrote:
>>
>> I have been playing around a bit with this in VirtualBox.
>>
>> Maybe due to the backing company, I had assumed it was a commercial FreeBSD variant. But looking a bit harder, it seems like it was a distinct strain of 386bsd like NetBSD and FreeBSD. There seems to be scant information about it online. Does anyone know if its story is told somewhere?
>
>
> Wasn't this from BSDi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD/OS It wasn't a commercial version of 386bsd, per se, but based on a porting to the PC work Jolitz had done prior to 386BSD. They shared a common (very recent) ancestor. And there was much drama around it all.
Yeah you got it, this is the BSDi product that was previously called
BSD/386 and eventually wound down at WindRiver.
What I've gleaned so far is like you said, some of the 386bsd patch
set and then maybe the 4.4-lite refresh along the way. The final
version has FreeBSD's CAM.
https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent page on seem to
suggest it originated off Net/2 directly.
Very hard to find a cohesive story for some reason.
> Or is this something else?
>
> Warner
From johnl at taugh.com Sat Aug 31 12:10:35 2024
From: johnl at taugh.com (John Levine)
Date: 30 Aug 2024 22:10:35 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAK7dMtCmFLaeQpRQfydjFrF_Z+x_dHmct3ETaFPYoX-wkP+how@mail.gmail.com>
<CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240831021035.88DDA92D1442@ary.qy>
It appears that Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> said:
>Wasn't this from BSDi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD/OS It wasn't a
>commercial version of 386bsd, per se, but based on a porting to the PC work
>Jolitz had done prior to 386BSD. They shared a common (very recent)
>ancestor. And there was much drama around it all.
Yes, it was a commercial peer of the other BSD forks. I used it for
quite a while until the company was sold and refocused on embedded
applications. It wasn't hard to move to FreeBSD which is what I am
still using.
When I moved tp upstate NY in 1996, I wanted an Internet connection
for my work. So I called up the local independent telco who told me
they had just rolled out their new Internet service. Great, can I have
a T-1? Dunno, have to ask the boss.
They called back and said there was no techncial problem but nobody in
my small town had ever ordered a T-1 before so they had to get a T-1
rate added to the tariff they had on file with the state. That took
about a month, after which a guy in suspenders with a ladder showed
up, ran the two-pair wire, he and I looked at the manual for the
CSU/DSU I'd gotten, wired it up, and whaddaya know it worked. (It was
worth the wait, their price was half what Verizon would have charged
in Ithaca.)
Well, that part worked. They hadn't anticipated leased line customers
who wanted a /24 (which they just let me use, this was 30 years ago)
so they added me to their internal OSPF network. I was running BSDI
on a cheap 386 box, set everything up, and oh crud, the routing
daemon didn't work due to bugs.
I contacted BSDI and, in one of those things that would be too strange
to be fiction, we found that the guy at Cornell who'd written the open
source routing daemon now worked for BSDI and lived about 10 minutes
from me. I called him up, he sent me some patches, and everything
worked. I could not have asked for better software support.
He and I are still the local nerds which you can tell because his
car's license plate says TCP-IP and mine says IPV4.
R's,
John
From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 31 14:12:16 2024
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:12:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
Message-ID: <20240831041216.2970318C089@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> From: Kevin Bowling
> https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent page on seem to suggest
> it originated off Net/2 directly.
I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
*BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have gotten
details wrong
I myself later just tried to quickly, without much effort, work out roughly
what the relationship was between those *BSD systems, based on what other
people had written. E.g the now-'BSD/OS' page was originally at '386/BSD',
and I seem to have worked out that it's correct name was BSD/OS and moved it
there. The BSD/386 page is probably roughly correct, since it contains a scan
of a contemporary ad for it.
(So confusing that '386BSD' is something different from 'BSD/386'. Was there ever
actually a '386/BSD'?)
Someone who knows the early history of all the *BSD systems (as in, you lived
through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any errors therein.
Noel
From kevin.bowling at kev009.com Sat Aug 31 14:40:29 2024
From: kevin.bowling at kev009.com (Kevin Bowling)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 21:40:29 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
In-Reply-To: <20240831041216.2970318C089@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20240831041216.2970318C089@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CAK7dMtAwTuos1EJPTM6PSMm4hYgEvGY_4jGyhJAfHRcEFkBjZw@mail.gmail.com>
On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 9:12 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > From: Kevin Bowling
>
> > https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent page on seem to suggest
> > it originated off Net/2 directly.
>
> I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
> *BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have gotten
> details wrong
>
> I myself later just tried to quickly, without much effort, work out roughly
> what the relationship was between those *BSD systems, based on what other
> people had written. E.g the now-'BSD/OS' page was originally at '386/BSD',
> and I seem to have worked out that it's correct name was BSD/OS and moved it
> there. The BSD/386 page is probably roughly correct, since it contains a scan
> of a contemporary ad for it.
>
> (So confusing that '386BSD' is something different from 'BSD/386'. Was there ever
> actually a '386/BSD'?)
>
> Someone who knows the early history of all the *BSD systems (as in, you lived
> through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any errors therein.
I am not that person but I hit the google pretty hard to mostly
satisfy my curiosity. I would be delighted to hear from such a
person. Sadly, I think the best guy would have been Mike Karels.
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2. Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
I don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
Not much sourcing to go on for BSD/OS 3.x.
Luckily for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
* https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.01/bsdos-4.01-binary.iso&file=RELEASENOTES.pdf
* https://ia800900.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/21/items/bsdos-4.1/bsdos-4.1-binary.iso&file=RELEASENOTES.pdf
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on but we can take an indirect
approach from some FreeBSD SMPng reports where BSDi donated source
code that was not used wholesale but instead had to be reintegrated or
rewritten:
* http://www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html
* https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/lehey/lehey_html/
And what I was initially after, a comparative report on how BSD/OS
related to others:
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix99/full_papers/metz/metz.pdf
(page 6)
I would be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2 that eventually wound
up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in its later years. According to
grog in (www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html) there
was an attempt by BSDi to rebase to FreeBSD but it was abandoned.
I've found scant detail on what WindRiver did with 5.0 and 5.1 so I am
unsure, but in playing around with 5.1 it does have FreeBSD's CAM
layer but does not look like i.e. FreeBSD 5.x in a variety of material
ways.
Regards,
Kevin
> Noel
From lm at mcvoy.com Sat Aug 31 14:54:51 2024
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 21:54:51 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAK7dMtCmFLaeQpRQfydjFrF_Z+x_dHmct3ETaFPYoX-wkP+how@mail.gmail.com>
<CANCZdfrK_kmxaCmEfSnT6TckhNLnJQwVg27R72bwXAZ8bA5ZKw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20240831045451.GU11259@mcvoy.com>
On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 05:44:20PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 5:40???PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling at kev009.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I have been playing around a bit with this in VirtualBox.
> >
> > Maybe due to the backing company, I had assumed it was a commercial
> > FreeBSD variant. But looking a bit harder, it seems like it was a distinct
> > strain of 386bsd like NetBSD and FreeBSD. There seems to be scant
> > information about it online. Does anyone know if its story is told
> > somewhere?
> >
>
> Wasn't this from BSDi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD/OS It wasn't a
> commercial version of 386bsd, per se, but based on a porting to the PC work
> Jolitz had done prior to 386BSD. They shared a common (very recent)
> ancestor. And there was much drama around it all.
Pretty sure this was BSDi and had a bunch of the CSRG people trying to
make money off of BSD. There was much drama and it didn't go anywhere.
Sun was pretty much the only company to make money off of BSD and it
was because SunOS was famously known as "a bug fixed, and completed,
BSD". wnj had the mmap docs somewhere, he had the idea, Sun actually
implemented it and realized that a page cache and a buffer cache are
two caches of the same thing (read/write went through the buffer cache,
mmap went through the page cache) and unified them. Killed the buffer
cache except for directories and maybe inodes. Took the other Unix
implementations at least a decade to catch up. Ask me about HP-UX.
BSDi never did anything like what Sun did but they wanted the money,
hence the drama.
From grog at lemis.com Sat Aug 31 16:38:35 2024
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 16:38:35 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
In-Reply-To: <CAK7dMtAwTuos1EJPTM6PSMm4hYgEvGY_4jGyhJAfHRcEFkBjZw@mail.gmail.com>
<20240831041216.2970318C089@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <ZtK6a7gGr3ucQba8@hydra.lemis.com>
On Saturday, 31 August 2024 at 0:12:16 -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> From: Kevin Bowling
>
>> https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent page on seem to suggest
>> it originated off Net/2 directly.
>
> I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
> *BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have gotten
> details wrong
FWIW, my understanding is also that it came from Net/2. But it's been
a few years now, and I wasn't directly involved. I just can't think
of anything else from which it could have been derived.
> (So confusing that '386BSD' is something different from
> 'BSD/386'. Was there ever actually a '386/BSD'?)
Not to my knowledge.
> Someone who knows the early history of all the *BSD systems (as in,
> you lived through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any
> errors therein.
I wouldn't exactly call it early history, but my first exposure to
(any kind of) BSD was in March 1992, when I installed BSDI's BSD/386
(something like Beta 0.3.1). You can read more than you want at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-mar1992.php
I subsequently (August 1992) visited Rob Kolstad, who was running the
show at the time, and he filled me in. With his help, what I recall
is:
- Some time in or before 1991, a company called Berkeley Software
Design Inc (BSDI) was formed with the intention of completing and
marketing a BSD variant. The system was released as BSD/386 in
1992.
- BSDI had a number of prominent BSD people, including Bill Jolitz.
Bill was not in agreement that they should charge money for it, and
as Rob tells me, in December 1991 Bill left the company after
significant altercations, destroying all his work. He later
released his version, 386BSD.
- At some later date BSDI released a SPARC port, at which point the
name BSD/386 seemed inappropriate, so they changed it to BSD/OS. I
have a CD set of release 2.0 labeled BSD/OS.
- The last CD set I have is undated, version 3.0, labeled BSDI
Internet Server. I think it was still called BSD/OS, but I can't be
sure.
Round this time I moved away from BSD/OS, since it cost money, and
FreeBSD seemed to be just as good.
- In June 2000 we (FreeBSD) discussed merging the code bases of BSD/OS
and FreeBSD, specifically for SMP improvements. At the time the
BSD/OS release was 4.x, and we were looking at the 5.0 code. This
is also the first time where I saw the name written as BSDi;
previously, including all the CDs, it was always BSDI.
On Friday, 30 August 2024 at 21:40:29 -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
>
> BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2. Source:
> https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
> To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
> probably rely on first hand accounts.
As mentioned above, not at all. When the first flaky 386BSD betas
were released, BSD/386 was already up and running.
> I don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it seems like it was
> about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
> http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
Yes, this would have been one of the results of the AT&T lawsuit.
FreeBSD 2.0 was also rebased on 4.4BSD-Lite.
> Luckily for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
> *
> https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.01/bsdos-4.01-binary.iso&file=RELEASENOTES.pdf
Yes, that looks good. It also narrows the time frame for when BSDI
became BSDi, some time between July 1998 and June 2000.
> For 5.x I again don't have much to go on but we can take an indirect
> approach from some FreeBSD SMPng reports where BSDi donated source
> code that was not used wholesale but instead had to be reintegrated or
> rewritten:
> * http://www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html
Heh. I had forgotten about that.
> I would be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
> derivative but a first order derivative of net/2
Yes, I think so. I can't think of anything else that could have been
in between.
> ... that eventually wound up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in
> its later years.
Hmm. You haven't discussed how FreeBSD evolved, which was from
386BSD. And my understanding is that 386BSD, like BSD/386, was also
derived from Net/2. I used both BSD/OS and FreeBSD side by side for a
number of years without noticing significant differences. It wasn't
until I started porting the SMP code from BSD/OS 5.0 to FreBSD
(coincidentally also 5.0) that I realized how different the kernel had
become.
> According to grog in
> (www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html) there was an
> attempt by BSDi to rebase to FreeBSD but it was abandoned.
My recollection was that the intention was to merge rather than
rebase. What we did do (the SMP code) was definitely from BSD/OS to
FreeBSD. The rest of the merge idea didn't get very far, and I can't
recall any significant attempts to push it forward.
> I've found scant detail on what WindRiver did with 5.0 and 5.1 so I
> am unsure, but in playing around with 5.1 it does have FreeBSD's CAM
> layer but does not look like i.e. FreeBSD 5.x in a variety of
> material ways.
It's worth considering what things were like at the time. You, as
potential user, have the choice: BSD/OS for $1000 or FreeBSD for free.
What advantage do you get from BSD/OS? Yes, there were some, but they
weren't really enough to keep BSD/OS viable. That's why I had made
the change a few years earlier, and I don't think that WindRiver's
heart was really in it. So the SMP code was really something like a
swan song.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at 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.php
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From rodrigosloop at gmail.com Sat Aug 31 19:59:34 2024
From: rodrigosloop at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Rodrigo_G=2E_L=C3=B3pez?=)
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 11:59:34 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] the Y window system
Message-ID: <CA+cCjXorutdCWYvNhTggLohhK864QXsgc1EM7b77rUtL36WCcg@mail.gmail.com>
hello everyone,
i recently came across a little window manager, written in Alef, that
i've had in my /tmp folder
for the last five years. it's called Y (probably as a response to X),
and i grabbed it from
9gridchan's public griddisk; run by the late mycroftiv until 2022.
i think it must've been an experimental project by Pike, Rosenthal or
Tom Duff, but i can't find
any documentation about it anywhere. i'd love to know if any of you
remembers this, and if so,
would you share the story behind it?
i uploaded the source code here: http://antares-labs.eu/isometric/Y.tgz
and it runs on 2nd ed plan 9 without issue (see the attached screenshot.)
cheers!
-rodri
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From robpike at gmail.com Sat Aug 31 20:56:15 2024
From: robpike at gmail.com (Rob Pike)
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 20:56:15 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] the Y window system
In-Reply-To: <CA+cCjXorutdCWYvNhTggLohhK864QXsgc1EM7b77rUtL36WCcg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CA+cCjXorutdCWYvNhTggLohhK864QXsgc1EM7b77rUtL36WCcg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAKzdPgxYCaLdi2oLB_40v6QUcfKvqz+Y40S+bDKZVnp_poFB8g@mail.gmail.com>
I've never heard of it.
-rob
On Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at 8:16 PM Rodrigo G. López <rodrigosloop at gmail.com>
wrote:
> hello everyone,
>
> i recently came across a little window manager, written in Alef, that
> i've had in my /tmp folder
> for the last five years. it's called Y (probably as a response to X),
> and i grabbed it from
> 9gridchan's public griddisk; run by the late mycroftiv until 2022.
>
> i think it must've been an experimental project by Pike, Rosenthal or
> Tom Duff, but i can't find
> any documentation about it anywhere. i'd love to know if any of you
> remembers this, and if so,
> would you share the story behind it?
>
> i uploaded the source code here: http://antares-labs.eu/isometric/Y.tgz
>
> and it runs on 2nd ed plan 9 without issue (see the attached screenshot.)
>
>
> cheers!
>
> -rodri
>
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 31 23:07:25 2024
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 09:07:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [TUHS] BSD/OS
Message-ID: <20240831130725.BCD3418C089@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> From: Noel Chiappa
> Was there ever actually a '386/BSD'?
I decided (for not particular reason) to take a quick read through Marshall
Kirk McKusick's "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix From AT&T-Owned to Freely
Redistributable":
https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
and he refers to Jolitz's system as "386/BSD" (apparently incorrectly). (So
there's a lesson there; even people who '_were_ there' can occasionally get it
wrong - something that professional historians are well aware of. I have a
funny story of my learning that lesson, here:
http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/nontech/tmlotus.html
in a totally different technical area.)
I have yet to see a _scan_ of contemporary documentation (I believe nothing
that isn't a contemporary _physical artifact_) that confirms it was actually
named "386BSD", but that does seem to be the name as given in the Dr. Dobbs
series on it. That series confirms that it was based directly on the 'Net/2'
BSD release (although 'diff's on the sources are probably the most reliable
proof).
Noel