From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Dec  2 07:41:16 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 07:41:16 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Strange Birth of Unix
Message-ID: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>

All,
	My IEEE Spectrum article finally got published and you can read it
on-line here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix/0

I've had a few e-mails about it. This one has a few more snippets about
early Unix history (from Rey Bonachea):

  It was with great pleasure and a bit of nostalgia that I read your IEEE
  article below. Thank you very much for writing it. One aspect that did
  not get mention, and that perhaps you may or may not be aware of, was
  the pseudo real time applications of Unix.

  In 1972 I joined Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ working on a project by the name
  of Switching Control Center System. At the beginning I was just a brand
  new member of the technical staff working on circuit design for
  interfaces to the PDP11/20. This project was meant to centralize the data
  streams from the maintenance channel of switching machine. Then, in a
  multi-user environment , would analyze the incoming data streams and raise
  alarms as appropriate. It also provided a whole suite of analysis tools to
  allow switch maintenance personnel to trouble shoot the electronic
  switches.

  Because the switches could not buffer messages or be slowed by flow
  control, the Unix system had to catch messages in real time and put it
  away on disk for later analysis. Due to the near real time requirements, a
  number of features were added to Unix such as semaphores. The Unix based
  Switching Control Center System (SCCS) software was trialed in New
  Brunswick NJ in 1973 and later that year was released as the first
  commercial application of the Unix OS.

  I learned to program on that PDP 11/20 computer running Unix and
  eventually wrote many applications for the SCCS, initially in assembly
  language and then in C as we were also the first project to use C
  commercially.

Cheers,
	Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Dec  2 08:45:09 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 08:45:09 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Downloadable Usenet groups?
Message-ID: <20111201224509.GA15471@minnie.tuhs.org>

Also, is there a place where I can download archives of Usenet groups
in a plain text format? I think I've got v6.bugs and v7.bugs and some
of comp.sources.unix. I just came across net.unix on Google Groups,
but I'd rather not have to wget all that HTML!

Thanks,
	Warren


From madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com  Fri Dec  2 12:18:59 2011
From: madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com (Michael Kerpan)
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 21:18:59 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Strange Birth of Unix
In-Reply-To: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAHfSdrXXwREkqpdEjxUxfDNoV4at1a8AzOgxpLH3MsuTOFHSRg@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 4:41 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> All,
>        My IEEE Spectrum article finally got published and you can read it
> on-line here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix/0

Thanks for the heads-up. It's a good read and I'm glad to see that it
wasn't locked behind a paywall like so many other articles from IEEE
publications.

Mike


From tim.newsham at gmail.com  Fri Dec  2 12:41:57 2011
From: tim.newsham at gmail.com (Tim Newsham)
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 16:41:57 -1000
Subject: [TUHS] Strange Birth of Unix
In-Reply-To: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAGSRWbgppKHr7wr_dnSK1MqLouZFJDzb3M5M4gJ=Fbopjr=zhA@mail.gmail.com>

great read!  short enough for the casual reader, very approachable,
compelling narrative.

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> All,
>        My IEEE Spectrum article finally got published and you can read it
> on-line here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix/0
>
> I've had a few e-mails about it. This one has a few more snippets about
> early Unix history (from Rey Bonachea):
>
>  It was with great pleasure and a bit of nostalgia that I read your IEEE
>  article below. Thank you very much for writing it. One aspect that did
>  not get mention, and that perhaps you may or may not be aware of, was
>  the pseudo real time applications of Unix.
>
>  In 1972 I joined Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ working on a project by the name
>  of Switching Control Center System. At the beginning I was just a brand
>  new member of the technical staff working on circuit design for
>  interfaces to the PDP11/20. This project was meant to centralize the data
>  streams from the maintenance channel of switching machine. Then, in a
>  multi-user environment , would analyze the incoming data streams and raise
>  alarms as appropriate. It also provided a whole suite of analysis tools to
>  allow switch maintenance personnel to trouble shoot the electronic
>  switches.
>
>  Because the switches could not buffer messages or be slowed by flow
>  control, the Unix system had to catch messages in real time and put it
>  away on disk for later analysis. Due to the near real time requirements, a
>  number of features were added to Unix such as semaphores. The Unix based
>  Switching Control Center System (SCCS) software was trialed in New
>  Brunswick NJ in 1973 and later that year was released as the first
>  commercial application of the Unix OS.
>
>  I learned to program on that PDP 11/20 computer running Unix and
>  eventually wrote many applications for the SCCS, initially in assembly
>  language and then in C as we were also the first project to use C
>  commercially.
>
> Cheers,
>        Warren
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs



-- 
Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com


From dugo at xs4all.nl  Tue Dec  6 04:13:18 2011
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 19:13:18 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Downloadable Usenet groups?
In-Reply-To: <20111201224509.GA15471@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111201224509.GA15471@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <2011108b772eb26cebf38631cfaaa384.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

> Also, is there a place where I can download archives of Usenet groups
> in a plain text format? I think I've got v6.bugs and v7.bugs and some
> of comp.sources.unix. I just came across net.unix on Google Groups,
> but I'd rather not have to wget all that HTML!

The UTZOO tapes come to mind..

I have an extracted copy of
  http://www.archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive and
can tar/compress a selection based on the Newsgroups: line for you if
you want. I can eg. include net.unix-wizzards, exclude cross posts etc.

Kind regards,


/Jacob



From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Dec  9 08:58:20 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 08:58:20 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Field Circus
Message-ID: <20111208225820.GA7489@minnie.tuhs.org>

All, not terribly Unix specific, but here's a good
read for those who have suffered at the hands of
field circus engineers :)

http://nemesis.lonestar.org/stories/stages.html

Have a good Xmas everyone.
	Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Dec  9 09:08:20 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 09:08:20 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
Message-ID: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>

Hi all, in the past few days I've been getting some
interesting e-mails from a new TUHS member,
Jonathan Gevaryahu. He has been searching for some
lost software, and his story of how he found it
is a good reminder to check through all the zeroes
and ones on the digital media at hand. With his
permission, I reproduce the e-mails below.

Cheers,
	Warren


Hi, I'm Jonathan Gevaryahu, one of the developers of MESS but also a
speech synthesis history buff. I've been trying to find a copy of the
old unix 'speak' command source code and rule tables that M. D. Mcilroy
wrote back in 1974ish, but the TUHS archives only have the man pages
for it, and not the actual program or its tables.

As for the "why?" of this, its an important piece of history, and the
phoneme set used on the Federal Screw Works "VOTRAX" Model VS-4 unit
which was used with 'speak' at Bell Labs is compatible with the later
Votrax Model VS-6 unit at CHM, and also with the Votrax "SC-01" chip
used in some arcade/video games, several computer peripherals, and on
the "Type 'N' Talk" and "Personal Speech System" products. So actually
running the old code and having it speak should be quite doable, if we
can recover enough of it to be useful.

[ Jonathan assumed that the 'speak' source code had been lost. ]

I even asked Doug McIlroy about it a few years ago and he didn't have
a copy, and I had assumed it was just plain lost... Until today.
I was poking around in random TUHS files (after reading about
the v1 unix restoration project) and noticed that the size of
recovered files from the ritchie v6 tapes in the .tar.gz files
is actually significantly smaller than the tapes themselves. I
assumed there had to be some other data there, possibly corrupt or
fragmentary, and got down to peeking at the file contents themselves.
There were some mentions of speak.m and .c and .v, but finally, in
http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.gz
I found the remains of the speak program. See
http://pastebin.com/FdvRYM2T for what I've managed to recover so far
(actually since i pasted that I recovered a good deal more of it, but
a lot is out of order and bits are missing) The file is fragmentary as
far as I can see, and is only speak.c (the .m file containing the rules
I haven't found yet, but since Doug has a scanned copy of the paper
describing speak on his website, hopefully I can just regenerate the
rule tables if needed), but it is there! Hopefully speak.m or .v are
still waiting to be found on that or one of the other tape images.

Also there are other things on that tape like the chess program, and
tic tac toe, which may not exist elsewhere. (Though, for these two I
honestly haven't checked)

Also, in the last 5 minutes I found a chunk of what I'm pretty sure is
either speak.m or speak.v, so there's more than just the .c file there.

Further progress attached of recovering speak from deleted disk pack
sectors: I have all of speak.c in order except for one 512-byte sector,
which was overwritten at some point, in the phoneme table. (This has to
be the least "damaging" sector of the entire program. lucky!) I also
have a good chunk (maybe 50-60%) of what may be a mix of speak.m and
speak.v, both out of order. I did not yet find
a copy of 'speakm', the rule displayer program for speak.m/.v. There is
a program, located after speak.c on the disk image, which looks like it
would convert numbers and months to their full speakable names.

In addition, either slightly more or slightly less of the files may be intact
on the
http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Ken_Wellsch_v6/v6.tape.gz
image, which appears to be originally an exact dd-copy of the dennis_v6
disk packs.

Ok, here's the 'repaired' speak.c file, with the missing entries of the
table filled in (this was IMMENSELY helped by the fact that speak.o, the
compiled object file, was also on the disk pack and appears to be fully
intact including the table; the ruleset files are fragmentary so far.)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: speak.fixed.c
Type: text/x-csrc
Size: 14336 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111209/ac749b67/attachment.c>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: speak.o
Type: application/x-object
Size: 2560 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111209/ac749b67/attachment.o>

From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Fri Dec  9 09:05:30 2011
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 18:05:30 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Field Circus
In-Reply-To: <20111208225820.GA7489@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111208225820.GA7489@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20111208230529.GA12537@mercury.ccil.org>

Warren Toomey scripsit:

> All, not terribly Unix specific, but here's a good
> read for those who have suffered at the hands of
> field circus engineers :)

And on no account forget to mount a scratch monkey first!

-- 
Your worships will perhaps be thinking          John Cowan
that it is an easy thing to blow up a dog?      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
[Or] to write a book?
    --Don Quixote, Introduction                 cowan at ccil.org


From aek at bitsavers.org  Sat Dec 10 08:43:12 2011
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:43:12 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <4EE28F00.8070904@bitsavers.org>

I dug through some of my old tape images and found a modified version
for another synthesizer

I've put the tarball under
http://bitsavers.org/bits/ATT/unix/sw_oldUnix_tar

the files are under
./uug/4/UK/qmc/s2




From aek at bitsavers.org  Sat Dec 10 09:17:00 2011
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:17:00 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <4EE28F00.8070904@bitsavers.org>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<4EE28F00.8070904@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <4EE296EC.2000608@bitsavers.org>

On 12/9/11 2:43 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
> I dug through some of my old tape images and found a modified version
> for another synthesizer
>

the sources for V6 chess are under harvard/3/ken/chess



From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Sun Dec 11 02:07:38 2011
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:07:38 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Strange Birth of Unix
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.64.1112110216430.28648@dave.horsfall.org>
References: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<Pine.BSI.4.64.1112110216430.28648@dave.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20111210160737.GA4888@mercury.ccil.org>

Dave Horsfall scripsit:

> Great atricle :-)

Great ventricle, too.

-- 
But you, Wormtongue, you have done what you could for your true master.  Some
reward you have earned at least.  Yet Saruman is apt to overlook his bargains.
I should advise you to go quickly and remind him, lest he forget your faithful
service.  --Gandalf             John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>


From wkt at tuhs.org  Sun Dec 11 10:25:54 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:25:54 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] E-mail address for Dick Haight?
Message-ID: <20111211002554.GA4435@minnie.tuhs.org>

All, would anybody have an e-mail address for Dick Haight? I am still
trying to narrow done the date when pipes were added to Unix, so far
between June 72 and January 73. I have this quote from Dick:

     "I happened to have been visiting the research crew the
     day they implemented pipes. It was clear to everyone
     practically minutes after the system came up with pipes
     working that it was a wonderful thing. Nobody would ever go
     back and give that up if they could help it."

so he might be able to provide a smaller date range than what I have
at present.

Cheers,
	Warren


From arnold at skeeve.com  Sun Dec 11 17:16:41 2011
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:16:41 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] E-mail address for Dick Haight?
Message-ID: <201112110716.pBB7GfjL000450@sls-af11p1.sea2.superbservers.com>

Have you asked Doug McIlroy?


From norman at oclsc.org  Mon Dec 12 04:52:20 2011
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:52:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] E-mail address for Dick Haight?
Message-ID: <1323629557.15026.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Arnold Skeeve:

  Have you asked Doug McIlroy?

=======

Actually I did, last night, on Warren's behalf.
I had meant to drop Doug a note anyway to apologize
for not letting him know I was in his general neighborhood
last week.

Here's Doug's reply:

  Pipes were first documented
  in v3, Feb 1973.  At that time my original clumsy shell
  syntax, cmd>cmd>[file] was still in use.  Within a few
  months, Ken invented today's pipe symbol as something
  more presentable at a talk he'd been invited to give
  in England--an Infosys "State of the Art" conference
  if I remember correctly (not the same Infosys as the
  current Indian giant). 

  I also remember the very blackboard in the garret
  lab where I sketched my syntax and Ken exclaimed,
  "I'll do it".  That was late in the day and I'm
  quite sure it was dark outside.  Unlike Ken, I
  was not in the habit of staying in the lab into
  the evening.  That makes me think that pipe day
  was not too far off the solstice.

  It would be nice to believe that pipes preciptated
  the third edition, but in fact the first four editions
  came out almost like clockwork at 8-month intervals,
  so any correlation with pipes is highly speculative.

======

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(actually Ramsey NJ at the moment, a good bit north of Murray Hill)


From jgevaryahu at hotmail.com  Mon Dec 12 18:13:25 2011
From: jgevaryahu at hotmail.com (Jonathan Gevaryahu)
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 03:13:25 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP40522A0F3C78DDB240E3474C7BC0@phx.gbl>

Here's speak.m, or rather, what little I could find of it. I believe 
there's some way documented in the speak.6 manpage of using TR or some 
command line parameters to speak.o to regenerate it from speak.v; only 3 
sectors on disk survived of speak.m

There's also a lot of other interesting stuff on disk here, like what 
looks like an early version or predecessor to red, the restricted ed, 
which doesn't seem to survive elsewhere except in a much modified and 
comments-translated-to-russian version here:
http://code.google.com/p/retrobsd/source/browse/trunk/bin/re-src/r.wind.c?spec=svn251&r=251
(there's at least one sector of code missing, the beginning of the 
setupviewport function and the end of the comment block that precedes 
it, and I may be unintentionally merging two files in my current attempt)
(or maybe it does survive on the tarred disk Al K. posted, which I still 
haven't figured out how to un-tar)
There is also some stuff which looks like it was intended for children 
to use (as part of an exhibit at bell labs?), interacting with the 
pdp-11 using a green button and possibly speech using speak, to play 
hangman and other games. It includes kid friendly messages "Sorry, the 
turtle is either napping or too busy." "we have to stop the computer for 
a few minutes so that we can fix it. please stand by." etc.
There's also the source code to SNOBOL III here, I don't know how 
fragmentary or complete.

I could probably spend WEEKS figuring out all the stuff hidden on the 
disk image!

-- 
Jonathan Gevaryahu AKA Lord Nightmare
jgevaryahu at gmail.com
jgevaryahu at hotmail.com

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: speak.chunk.m
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 2560 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111212/99129fcf/attachment.obj>

From random832 at fastmail.us  Tue Dec 13 13:08:20 2011
From: random832 at fastmail.us (Random832)
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:08:20 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Command line post-arguments with #!
In-Reply-To: <BLU0-SMTP40522A0F3C78DDB240E3474C7BC0@phx.gbl>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<BLU0-SMTP40522A0F3C78DDB240E3474C7BC0@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4EE6C1A4.7030107@fastmail.us>

On 12/12/2011 3:13 AM, Jonathan Gevaryahu wrote:
> comments-translated-to-russian version

Speaking of DEMOS, I was browsing through that a while back (when it was 
first posted here; I forgot to post about it at the time) and saw a 
feature that doesn't seem to have existed anywhere else that I could 
find - placing interpreter arguments after the command line arguments of 
a script.

I.e. something like "#!/bin/foo bar $* baz". Has any American unix had 
this? Some these days won't even allow multiple arguments at all.

I don't know Russian - it'd be interesting to see what else was 
unique/new in DEMOS.


From jgevaryahu at hotmail.com  Wed Dec 14 05:29:02 2011
From: jgevaryahu at hotmail.com (Jonathan Gevaryahu)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:29:02 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <BLU0-SMTP40522A0F3C78DDB240E3474C7BC0@phx.gbl>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<BLU0-SMTP40522A0F3C78DDB240E3474C7BC0@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP117D9E619875BBB81F28B64C7BD0@phx.gbl>

On 12/12/2011 3:13 AM, Jonathan Gevaryahu wrote:
> [I'm seeing] what looks like an early version or predecessor to red, 
> the restricted ed, which doesn't seem to survive elsewhere except in a 
> much modified and comments-translated-to-russian version here:
> http://code.google.com/p/retrobsd/source/browse/trunk/bin/re-src/r.wind.c?spec=svn251&r=251 
>
> (there's at least one sector of code missing, the beginning of the 
> setupviewport function and the end of the comment block that precedes 
> it, and I may be unintentionally merging two files in my current attempt)
> (or maybe it does survive on the tarred disk Al K. posted, which I 
> still haven't figured out how to un-tar)
Well, I figured out how to untar Al's disk (it needs commandline bsd or 
gnu tar -xf, 7zip does NOT LIKE IT), and indeed a later but still very 
similar version of that editor, which is the RAND editor (as mentioned 
here: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/notes/2006/N2239-1.pdf 
), not restricted ed at all (unless red is based on rand editor, which I 
don't know yet). Hence, RE-SRC (rand editor source) in the russian 
thing. The version on dennis_v6 is older(1975?) than the one on the tar 
Al posted (1982?), but much of the code is nearly the same. The code is 
unfortunately missing quite a few sectors, and some parts of the 1982? 
code were reorganized enough to make reassembling the 1975? code difficult.

-- 
Jonathan Gevaryahu AKA Lord Nightmare
jgevaryahu at gmail.com
jgevaryahu at hotmail.com



From jgevaryahu at hotmail.com  Sun Dec 11 10:34:59 2011
From: jgevaryahu at hotmail.com (Jonathan Gevaryahu)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:34:59 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP63862CB1645D6DF33961D7C7BF0@phx.gbl>

On 12/8/2011 6:08 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:

Here's a few extras so far:
An excel spreadsheet used to verify the contents while restoring the 
table, and the un-fixed NUL-padded speak.c file as present on disk. The 
missing sector is filled with NULs.
The votrax sc-01 datasheet i used to fill in the excel sheet can be 
found at http://www.redcedar.com/sc01/sc01.pdf

I'm working on restoring speak.v right now, and am also looking at that 
new image Al Kossow sent.
Doug Mcilroy sent me a copy of speak.v from a later non-votrax 
(apl-based?) synthesizer and the words/rules seem to be in the same 
order as in the original votrax version. I don't know if I can 
distribute it.

One thing I didn't mention if you're diving into the disk image with a 
hex editor: for some reason, I'm not exactly sure why, the file is 
stored spread all over the place but (almost?) always generally in 
reverse sector order. So if each letter represents a sector and A is the 
first sector (and x are sectors you're not interested in) the file would 
be arranged:
...HxxxxGxFxxxxExxDxxxCBxxxxxA

-- 
Jonathan Gevaryahu AKA Lord Nightmare
jgevaryahu at gmail.com
jgevaryahu at hotmail.com

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: speak.c
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 14336 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111210/aaea25f5/attachment.obj>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: speak_c_table.xlsx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
Size: 15834 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111210/aaea25f5/attachment.xlsx>

From jgevaryahu at hotmail.com  Sun Dec 11 12:11:15 2011
From: jgevaryahu at hotmail.com (Jonathan Gevaryahu)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:11:15 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <4EE28F00.8070904@bitsavers.org>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<4EE28F00.8070904@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP2499A0D3E2404D2A75AB5E8C7BF0@phx.gbl>

A bit more recovered from the dennis_v6 tape:
speak.v (I believe in its entirety, so the speak program is probably 
usable now! The file Doug sent me helped quite a bit here, as the order 
isn't only alphabetical which was throwing me off)
vs.c (this exists in the v5 archive 
(http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V5/usr/sys/dmr/vs.c) but 
the version here has ~2 lines different; the 'vsmap' character array 
only exists in the v5 one, here it is embedded in the code as a string, 
hence may be slightly older?)

Note both of these files violated the 'all sectors appear in reverse 
order' "rule" and each had one sector which appeared 'out of pattern'.


-- 
Jonathan Gevaryahu AKA Lord Nightmare
jgevaryahu at gmail.com
jgevaryahu at hotmail.com

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: speak.v
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 11696 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111210/770a12f5/attachment.obj>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: vs.c
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111210/770a12f5/attachment.c>

From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu  Sun Dec 11 12:51:58 2011
From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:51:58 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose
In-Reply-To: <BLU0-SMTP63862CB1645D6DF33961D7C7BF0@phx.gbl>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<BLU0-SMTP63862CB1645D6DF33961D7C7BF0@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <201112110251.pBB2pwVn024682@stowe.cs.dartmouth.edu>

Astonishing.  I have no recollection of Coulouris's port to
another synthesizer.  A case of arheologists knowing more
about a bygone era than its inhabitants did.

doug


From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Dec 14 13:50:42 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:50:42 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Provenance of the documents used to restore 1st Ed Unix
Message-ID: <20111214035042.GA16236@minnie.tuhs.org>

All, here's a special Christmas present, especially for those who
helped out with the restoration of the 1st Ed Unix system, see
http://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/

To do the restoration we needed a copy of the 1st Ed Unix kernel
source code, and Al Kossow had found these two documents and
scanned them in:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v1/Kernel_Subroutine_Descriptions_Mar72.pdf
http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v1/PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf

At the time nobody could work out who had studied the kernel source code,
why they had done it etc. Nor could we work out who Ted Bashkow was and
why he was involved.

After my IEEE Spectrum article I was contacted by Jim DeFelice to say
thanks for the article. I recognised him as one of the people named in
the above documents, and asked him about the kernel study. He has contacted
some of the people involved and sent me the e-mail below, which gives
a full description of the work!

Before I get to it, just an aside. According to Berkley Tague,
Ted Bashkow "was a visiting Professor for the summer some time around
1970 or 1971 and worked with me and others in research on various
topics. I don't believe he contributed much to UNIX at that time, but
was an early user of the early systems." 

Cheers,
	Warren

 [ Jim's story]
    Here is as coherent a story as I can piece together  Let me know if you
    have any more questions.
    Jim.
    The documents that describe the UNIX system as it was implemented on
    the PDP-11/20
    circa 1971 originated as a consequence of a project undertaken within
    the comptrollers
    department of the AT&T General Departments.  The project was titled the 
    Investment and Cost Information System (ICIS).  It was a major new
    accounting system intended to track
    detailed cost information for the operating telephone companies of the
    Bell System.
    ICIS was a major IBM mainframe based system which was being developed
    in COBOL.
    I transferred from Bell Labs in late 1970 to join Chuck Everhart who
    preceded me from the Labs. In 1971 we were joined by Ron Silacci, Cathy
    Judge, and later (early '72?) Jerry Conser all from Bell Labs.  We
    formed the core of what would become
    a much larger Development staff by 1973.   
    In preparation for a major development effort, we wanted to develop a
    system to maintain the spate of expected ICIS specification and design
    documents including graphics such as flowcharts.   We decided on the
    PDP-11/20 with a Tecktronix T4002 graphics terminal as the hardware
    platform for the development of our document maintenance system.
    For obscure reasons, in order to purchase the PDP-11/20, the ICIS team
    needed to get approval from the Bell Labs computer aquisition review
    department headed
    by Berkley Tague.  Berk made the approval for the purchase contingent
    us agreeing to use UNIX as the operating system.First hearing of this
    "UNIX" verbally, my mind was filled with scenes from the Arabian
    Nights.  "Eunuchs" seemed a strange name for an operating system.
    At the time, the only instances of UNIX were to be found in the hands
    of the developers (Ken Thompson & Co.) at Murray Hill, NJ.  We
    naturally asked for all the documentation.  We were told there was
    none.  What we got was a source listing  of the PDP-11 assembly
    language UNIX Kernel.  It was virtually without any commentary or
    external description.  In order to proceed we undertook to reverse
    engineer the listing in order to understand how to
    modify UNIX to support the T4002.  To that end, in late 1971, we set up
    shop at a Labs facility in Piscataway, NJ.   The team got occasional
    hints and pointers from the UNIX developers at Murray Hill, but they
    tended to be focussed on their own work (the C programmimg language,
    troff, etc.).  Initial progress was slow, but as the overall design
    structure emerged and the team became fluent with PDP assembly
    language and the coding style of the UNIX developers things moved
    along.  Early work was
    done with paper and pencil resulting in the document named by you as
    "Kernel Subroutine
    Description...".  Once we took delivery of our PDP-11/20, we were able 
    to make
    use of the UNIX tools "ed" and "roff" to create a more easily edited
    digital document
    "Preliminary UNIX Implementation Document"

    The detailed timing of all this is uncertain. The hand work was done
    from late 1971 through
    March 1972 resulting in the Kernel Subroutine documentation.  Chuck
    Everhart left AT&T
    in late 1971 and I became the group supervisor. A draft of the machine
    based Preliminary
    Implementation document was completed by June 1972 per the date on my
    cover letter for its first distribution.  By June 1972 there was
    evidently a lot of interest in UNIX inside Bell Labs. The computer  
    commitee was pushing UNIX for all PDP based projects inside Bell Labs. 
    The ICIS owned PDP-11/20 was probably received after March 1972. The
    hand written cover letter to Ted Bashkow is dated 4/3/72.  Once we had
    use of the PDP-11 we would have entered our work directly. The
    modifications for the T4002 are not dated in
    your PDF version and do not appear in the original printout that I
    still have.  I don't know why the date on all the printed pages is  
    3/17/72. Also, missing in the PDF version of the Preliminary
    Implementation document that is in the paper version is a subroutine
    cross reference listing that lists which subroutines are called by
    which.
    Regarding the authorship of the documents. Looking at the handwriting
    it seems
    at least four people contributed to the Kernel Subroutine document.  
    Myself and Ron
    have actually reviewed the document and can claim authorship to  
    specific sections.  By sections:
    J. DeFelice
    H0_01, H0_02, H0_03,H0_04,H0_05, H2-11_sysexec call chain,
    H2.4,H2_1.7,H2-8,
    H2-9 H4-3, H5-1, H5-2, H5-3, H5-4, H5-7,
    H7-1, H7-2, H7-4, H7-5,H7-6, H8-01.2, H8-02, H8-03, H8-05, H8-06, 
    H8-07,
    H8-08, h8-09-00, h5-6
    Ron Silacci
    sysclose, syscreate, sysent, sysexit, sysfork, sysmdate, sysgetty,  
    sysmdir,
    error, badsys, sysopen, sysret, sysrele, sysstty, syswait, read, write,
    ani,
    sysstat, sysgetuid, sysintr, syslink, sysseek, syssetuid, sysstat,
    sysstime,
    systime, sysquit, sysunlink, wdir, fclose, isdir, isown, maknod, mkdir,
    getf,
    seektell, sysbreak, syschdir, syschmod, syschown, clear, idle, putlu,  
    swap,  
    tswap, unpack, rswap, wswap, clock, isintr, retisp, sleepo, setisp, 
    tty0,
    wakall, ttyi, wakeup, itrunc, imap, dskr, cpass, readi, canon, cesc,
    ctty,
    ttych, getspl, iclose, iopen, sysmount, sysumount, bread, bwrite,   
     dioreg, drum, preread, rtap, tape, tstdeve, trapt, rw1, intract, otty.
    Unknown 1 (all caps)
    H4_00, H4_01, H4_02, H4_2.1, H6_2.2, H6_3.0, H6_6, H7_0.0.4, H7_3.0,
    H7_3.2
    H7_3.3, H9_00.1, H9_01, H9_02, H9_03
    Unknown 2
    H0_06, H0_07, H2_0.2, H2_3,H2_4, H3_2, H3_4, H5_2.0, H5_2.1,H6_0.9,
    H6_1.0,
    H6_1, H6_2.0, H6_2.2, H6_3, H6_4, H8_09, H8_11
    The two unknowns would be Jerry Conser and Cathy Judge.  I have not 
    been able to track
    them down.
    The comments in the listing were made by the people who authored the
    corresponding man pages. We would comment the listing and as
    understanding dawned write up the man page. I had a major hand in   
    Section F but can't claim sole responsibility.
    The people listed in the recipients list in Ted Bashkow's cover letter
    are the members of the computer aquisition department.  According to
    Joe Maranzano:
    "Ted Bashkow was a professor from Columbia who was on a 6-month
    sabbatical in Berkley Tague's department.
    The other names on the memo are:
    Dan Clayton
    David Copp
    Gwen Hansen
    Jossie Hintz
    Ruth Klein
    Jim Ludwig
    Georgette Petit
    Joe Ritacco
    Berk Tague
    Dan Vogel
    Linda Wright
    This was the composition of the Department in 1972 and most of us were
    working on Computer Acquisition Reviews for
    the Computer Centers. The Unix Support Group was formed in 1973."
    By the time the Tecktronix application was developed, the ICIS
    development project was ramping up.  The developers were using punch
    cards for their Cobol programs.  It occurred to me that we could
    utilize our UNIX system to eliminate punch cards which were difficult  
    to manage and instead enter and edit the Cobol code using "ed". My
    management (rotated in from Bell Operating Companies) was not keen on  
    diverting resources towards
    more tool building but I had enough autonomy to push through the    
    ordering of a PDP-11/45 and a DEC developed Bisync communications
    interface card. This configuration allowed the UNIX system to emulate
    an IBM card reader/printer.
    The PDP11/45 had memory protection, which made committing all the   
    source code for a major project to UNIX thinkable. I did all the
    development work on a bisync driver myself while my group attacked the
    main IBM development. The resulting system worked well and over the 
    course of a few months all the die hard card rearder afficianados had
    converted to the new system. This despite the occasional file system
    crash.  At the time you could go in and edit i-nodes by hand to recover
    lost files and directories. So with frequent tape backups for insurance
    we never lost more that a few hours worth of work.
    The Bell Labs UNIX support department (formed in 1973) eventually took
    over the maintenance of the system and dubbed it the Programmers Work
    Bench.  Other types of workbench were to follow.  I lost track of
    developments in the UNIX world till I transferred back to Bell Labs in
    1982. By then the UNIX support organization was an entire
    Laboratory.  The hardware platform was the DEC VAX system, UNIX was
    rewritten in C, and Berkely UNIX was a major competitor to the AT&T 
    version.  I still have the design and code for the Bisync driver if you
    are interested.


From tim.newsham at gmail.com  Wed Dec 14 14:47:11 2011
From: tim.newsham at gmail.com (Tim Newsham)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:47:11 -1000
Subject: [TUHS] Provenance of the documents used to restore 1st Ed Unix
In-Reply-To: <20111214035042.GA16236@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20111214035042.GA16236@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAGSRWbiw7otjcqR2rqROY2ks6cPY03-EU7wYzEwD5dStoPgXaA@mail.gmail.com>

Awesome.. I remember trying to track him down earlier and
not getting very far.  You should add this tidbit to the
jun 72 tree!

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> All, here's a special Christmas present, especially for those who
> helped out with the restoration of the 1st Ed Unix system, see
> http://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/
>
> To do the restoration we needed a copy of the 1st Ed Unix kernel
> source code, and Al Kossow had found these two documents and
> scanned them in:
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v1/Kernel_Subroutine_Descriptions_Mar72.pdf
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v1/PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf
>
> At the time nobody could work out who had studied the kernel source code,
> why they had done it etc. Nor could we work out who Ted Bashkow was and
> why he was involved.
>
> After my IEEE Spectrum article I was contacted by Jim DeFelice to say
> thanks for the article. I recognised him as one of the people named in
> the above documents, and asked him about the kernel study. He has contacted
> some of the people involved and sent me the e-mail below, which gives
> a full description of the work!
>
> Before I get to it, just an aside. According to Berkley Tague,
> Ted Bashkow "was a visiting Professor for the summer some time around
> 1970 or 1971 and worked with me and others in research on various
> topics. I don't believe he contributed much to UNIX at that time, but
> was an early user of the early systems."
>
> Cheers,
>        Warren
>
>  [ Jim's story]
>    Here is as coherent a story as I can piece together  Let me know if you
>    have any more questions.
>    Jim.
>    The documents that describe the UNIX system as it was implemented on
>    the PDP-11/20
>    circa 1971 originated as a consequence of a project undertaken within
>    the comptrollers
>    department of the AT&T General Departments.  The project was titled the
>    Investment and Cost Information System (ICIS).  It was a major new
>    accounting system intended to track
>    detailed cost information for the operating telephone companies of the
>    Bell System.
>    ICIS was a major IBM mainframe based system which was being developed
>    in COBOL.
>    I transferred from Bell Labs in late 1970 to join Chuck Everhart who
>    preceded me from the Labs. In 1971 we were joined by Ron Silacci, Cathy
>    Judge, and later (early '72?) Jerry Conser all from Bell Labs.  We
>    formed the core of what would become
>    a much larger Development staff by 1973.
>    In preparation for a major development effort, we wanted to develop a
>    system to maintain the spate of expected ICIS specification and design
>    documents including graphics such as flowcharts.   We decided on the
>    PDP-11/20 with a Tecktronix T4002 graphics terminal as the hardware
>    platform for the development of our document maintenance system.
>    For obscure reasons, in order to purchase the PDP-11/20, the ICIS team
>    needed to get approval from the Bell Labs computer aquisition review
>    department headed
>    by Berkley Tague.  Berk made the approval for the purchase contingent
>    us agreeing to use UNIX as the operating system.First hearing of this
>    "UNIX" verbally, my mind was filled with scenes from the Arabian
>    Nights.  "Eunuchs" seemed a strange name for an operating system.
>    At the time, the only instances of UNIX were to be found in the hands
>    of the developers (Ken Thompson & Co.) at Murray Hill, NJ.  We
>    naturally asked for all the documentation.  We were told there was
>    none.  What we got was a source listing  of the PDP-11 assembly
>    language UNIX Kernel.  It was virtually without any commentary or
>    external description.  In order to proceed we undertook to reverse
>    engineer the listing in order to understand how to
>    modify UNIX to support the T4002.  To that end, in late 1971, we set up
>    shop at a Labs facility in Piscataway, NJ.   The team got occasional
>    hints and pointers from the UNIX developers at Murray Hill, but they
>    tended to be focussed on their own work (the C programmimg language,
>    troff, etc.).  Initial progress was slow, but as the overall design
>    structure emerged and the team became fluent with PDP assembly
>    language and the coding style of the UNIX developers things moved
>    along.  Early work was
>    done with paper and pencil resulting in the document named by you as
>    "Kernel Subroutine
>    Description...".  Once we took delivery of our PDP-11/20, we were able
>    to make
>    use of the UNIX tools "ed" and "roff" to create a more easily edited
>    digital document
>    "Preliminary UNIX Implementation Document"
>
>    The detailed timing of all this is uncertain. The hand work was done
>    from late 1971 through
>    March 1972 resulting in the Kernel Subroutine documentation.  Chuck
>    Everhart left AT&T
>    in late 1971 and I became the group supervisor. A draft of the machine
>    based Preliminary
>    Implementation document was completed by June 1972 per the date on my
>    cover letter for its first distribution.  By June 1972 there was
>    evidently a lot of interest in UNIX inside Bell Labs. The computer
>    commitee was pushing UNIX for all PDP based projects inside Bell Labs.
>    The ICIS owned PDP-11/20 was probably received after March 1972. The
>    hand written cover letter to Ted Bashkow is dated 4/3/72.  Once we had
>    use of the PDP-11 we would have entered our work directly. The
>    modifications for the T4002 are not dated in
>    your PDF version and do not appear in the original printout that I
>    still have.  I don't know why the date on all the printed pages is
>    3/17/72. Also, missing in the PDF version of the Preliminary
>    Implementation document that is in the paper version is a subroutine
>    cross reference listing that lists which subroutines are called by
>    which.
>    Regarding the authorship of the documents. Looking at the handwriting
>    it seems
>    at least four people contributed to the Kernel Subroutine document.
>    Myself and Ron
>    have actually reviewed the document and can claim authorship to
>    specific sections.  By sections:
>    J. DeFelice
>    H0_01, H0_02, H0_03,H0_04,H0_05, H2-11_sysexec call chain,
>    H2.4,H2_1.7,H2-8,
>    H2-9 H4-3, H5-1, H5-2, H5-3, H5-4, H5-7,
>    H7-1, H7-2, H7-4, H7-5,H7-6, H8-01.2, H8-02, H8-03, H8-05, H8-06,
>    H8-07,
>    H8-08, h8-09-00, h5-6
>    Ron Silacci
>    sysclose, syscreate, sysent, sysexit, sysfork, sysmdate, sysgetty,
>    sysmdir,
>    error, badsys, sysopen, sysret, sysrele, sysstty, syswait, read, write,
>    ani,
>    sysstat, sysgetuid, sysintr, syslink, sysseek, syssetuid, sysstat,
>    sysstime,
>    systime, sysquit, sysunlink, wdir, fclose, isdir, isown, maknod, mkdir,
>    getf,
>    seektell, sysbreak, syschdir, syschmod, syschown, clear, idle, putlu,
>    swap,
>    tswap, unpack, rswap, wswap, clock, isintr, retisp, sleepo, setisp,
>    tty0,
>    wakall, ttyi, wakeup, itrunc, imap, dskr, cpass, readi, canon, cesc,
>    ctty,
>    ttych, getspl, iclose, iopen, sysmount, sysumount, bread, bwrite,
>     dioreg, drum, preread, rtap, tape, tstdeve, trapt, rw1, intract, otty.
>    Unknown 1 (all caps)
>    H4_00, H4_01, H4_02, H4_2.1, H6_2.2, H6_3.0, H6_6, H7_0.0.4, H7_3.0,
>    H7_3.2
>    H7_3.3, H9_00.1, H9_01, H9_02, H9_03
>    Unknown 2
>    H0_06, H0_07, H2_0.2, H2_3,H2_4, H3_2, H3_4, H5_2.0, H5_2.1,H6_0.9,
>    H6_1.0,
>    H6_1, H6_2.0, H6_2.2, H6_3, H6_4, H8_09, H8_11
>    The two unknowns would be Jerry Conser and Cathy Judge.  I have not
>    been able to track
>    them down.
>    The comments in the listing were made by the people who authored the
>    corresponding man pages. We would comment the listing and as
>    understanding dawned write up the man page. I had a major hand in
>    Section F but can't claim sole responsibility.
>    The people listed in the recipients list in Ted Bashkow's cover letter
>    are the members of the computer aquisition department.  According to
>    Joe Maranzano:
>    "Ted Bashkow was a professor from Columbia who was on a 6-month
>    sabbatical in Berkley Tague's department.
>    The other names on the memo are:
>    Dan Clayton
>    David Copp
>    Gwen Hansen
>    Jossie Hintz
>    Ruth Klein
>    Jim Ludwig
>    Georgette Petit
>    Joe Ritacco
>    Berk Tague
>    Dan Vogel
>    Linda Wright
>    This was the composition of the Department in 1972 and most of us were
>    working on Computer Acquisition Reviews for
>    the Computer Centers. The Unix Support Group was formed in 1973."
>    By the time the Tecktronix application was developed, the ICIS
>    development project was ramping up.  The developers were using punch
>    cards for their Cobol programs.  It occurred to me that we could
>    utilize our UNIX system to eliminate punch cards which were difficult
>    to manage and instead enter and edit the Cobol code using "ed". My
>    management (rotated in from Bell Operating Companies) was not keen on
>    diverting resources towards
>    more tool building but I had enough autonomy to push through the
>    ordering of a PDP-11/45 and a DEC developed Bisync communications
>    interface card. This configuration allowed the UNIX system to emulate
>    an IBM card reader/printer.
>    The PDP11/45 had memory protection, which made committing all the
>    source code for a major project to UNIX thinkable. I did all the
>    development work on a bisync driver myself while my group attacked the
>    main IBM development. The resulting system worked well and over the
>    course of a few months all the die hard card rearder afficianados had
>    converted to the new system. This despite the occasional file system
>    crash.  At the time you could go in and edit i-nodes by hand to recover
>    lost files and directories. So with frequent tape backups for insurance
>    we never lost more that a few hours worth of work.
>    The Bell Labs UNIX support department (formed in 1973) eventually took
>    over the maintenance of the system and dubbed it the Programmers Work
>    Bench.  Other types of workbench were to follow.  I lost track of
>    developments in the UNIX world till I transferred back to Bell Labs in
>    1982. By then the UNIX support organization was an entire
>    Laboratory.  The hardware platform was the DEC VAX system, UNIX was
>    rewritten in C, and Berkely UNIX was a major competitor to the AT&T
>    version.  I still have the design and code for the Bisync driver if you
>    are interested.
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs



-- 
Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com


From mascheck at in-ulm.de  Thu Dec 15 09:36:31 2011
From: mascheck at in-ulm.de (Sven Mascheck)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:36:31 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Command line post-arguments with #!
In-Reply-To: <4EE6C1A4.7030107@fastmail.us>
References: <20111208230820.GA8547@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<BLU0-SMTP40522A0F3C78DDB240E3474C7BC0@phx.gbl>
	<4EE6C1A4.7030107@fastmail.us>
Message-ID: <20111214233631.GA9448@lisa.in-ulm.de>

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:08:20PM -0500, Random832 wrote:

> Speaking of DEMOS, I was browsing through that a while back (when it
> was first posted here;

I guess this: http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2011-May/002387.html

> I forgot to post about it at the time) and saw a feature that
> doesn't seem to have existed anywhere else that I could find -
> placing interpreter arguments after the command line arguments
> of a script.

> I.e. something like "#!/bin/foo bar $* baz".

Now that looks like a quite special hack to me,
The mentioned d22.tar.gz -> d22/sys/sys.tar.Z -> sys/sys1.c has
# define SCRMAG  "#!"
# define SCRMAG2 "/*#!"
# define ARGPLACE "$*"
# define SHSIZE  70
# define ARGV    11
it accepts both #! and /*#! (equivalent), 70 chars, at most
11 arguments, and explains (russian guessed and then omitted here):

usually

    script x with "#!CMD A1 A2 A3"
    called as "x B1 B2"
    results in "CMD A1 A2 A3 /.../.../x B1 B2"

while in D22

    script x with "#!CMD A1 $* A2 A3"
    called as "x B1 B2"
    results in "CMD A1 /.../.../x B1 B2 A2 A3"

> Has any American unix had this?

I haven't seen such anywhere, but not the above until now, either.
But I believe that you can discard those which are listed here
http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/shebang/#results
from your list of candidates.

> Some these days won't even allow multiple arguments at all.

Well the original implementation (post 7th ed and 4.0/4.1 BSD)
didn't allow arguments at all ;-)  But multiple arguments
definitely is the minority (AFAIK Plan9, some FreeBSD,
MacOSX, Minix, BSD/OS, and some early cygwin).


From norman at oclsc.org  Thu Dec 15 09:57:39 2011
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:57:39 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Command line post-arguments with #!
Message-ID: <20111214235740.04D421DE369@lignose.oclsc.org>

Sven Mascheck:

  Well the original implementation (post 7th ed and 4.0/4.1 BSD)
  didn't allow arguments at all ;-)

======

I believe you're mistaken.  All the implementations I've
ever used allowed a single argument in the #! line,
and inserted the name of the script between that (if
present) and the arguments given to exec.

e.g. if ./lipsum began with

	#!/usr/bin/awk -f

awk would be invoked with `/usr/bin/awk -f ./lipsum ...'.

Without allowing one argument for -f or the like,
#! wouldn't have been useful for much but the shell.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON


From mascheck at in-ulm.de  Thu Dec 15 10:25:10 2011
From: mascheck at in-ulm.de (Sven Mascheck)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:25:10 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Command line post-arguments with #!
In-Reply-To: <20111214235740.04D421DE369@lignose.oclsc.org>
References: <20111214235740.04D421DE369@lignose.oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <20111215002510.GB9448@lisa.in-ulm.de>

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 06:57:39PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
> Sven Mascheck:
> 
>   Well the original implementation (post 7th ed and 4.0/4.1 BSD)
>   didn't allow arguments at all ;-)
> 
> ======
> 
> I believe you're mistaken.  All the implementations I've
> ever used allowed a single argument in the #! line,

With "original implementation (post 7th ed", I meant the undistributed
BellLabs-internal further development of 7th, the first system ever
to implement #!, leading to 8th ed, etc. (4BSD just incorporated this).
Not System V or other relatives, though.


From norman at oclsc.org  Thu Dec 15 11:46:38 2011
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:46:38 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Command line post-arguments with #!
Message-ID: <1323913617.13187.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Sven Mascheck:

  With "original implementation (post 7th ed", I meant the undistributed
  BellLabs-internal further development of 7th, the first system ever
  to implement #!, leading to 8th ed, etc. (4BSD just incorporated this).
  Not System V or other relatives, though.

=======

Can you cite a reference?

I'm quite familiar with what went on inside the system that was
later called 8th Edition, having been on the inside at Bell Labs
starting in mid-1984.  But that was after the original research
group's general move to VAXes--they had no PDP-11s left by then,
except a few LSI-11s running special-purpose systems rather than
UNIX.  In fact the VAX kernel they had adopted, I think sometime
earlier that year, was derived from that of 4.1 BSD.  (It diverged
quite a bit from that start later, for which I am appreciably
to blame, but that has nothing to do with #!).

So if #! was implemented in an earlier kernel I don't know just
what was done.  I'd assumed it was no different; if I'm
mistaken I'd love to see just how it really was.

Alas, the person I know was on the spot and was likely to
remember just what happened in what order can no longer answer
questions ...

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON


From mascheck at in-ulm.de  Thu Dec 15 13:07:46 2011
From: mascheck at in-ulm.de (Sven Mascheck)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:07:46 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Command line post-arguments with #!
In-Reply-To: <1323913617.13187.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
References: <1323913617.13187.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <20111215030746.GC9448@lisa.in-ulm.de>

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 08:46:38PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
> Can you cite a reference?
> 
> I'm quite familiar with what went on inside the system that was
> later called 8th Edition, having been on the inside at Bell Labs
> starting in mid-1984.

All I know is the two mails from DMR from '80,

http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4BSD/usr/src/sys/newsys/sys1.c

">From dmr Thu Jan 10 04:25:49 1980 remote from research
The system has been changed so that if a file being executed
begins with the magic characters #! , [...]"

That's why I call it post-7th ed (between 7th and 8th ed) and why
I understand the above as original code (but I have no idea about
what went on with research Unix then).
Or should I interpret DMRs mail differently or with caution?


From lehmann at ans-netz.de  Mon Dec 19 08:26:47 2011
From: lehmann at ans-netz.de (Oliver Lehmann)
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:26:47 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] recreating C source from binary
Message-ID: <20111218232647.Horde.Q3mEU6Qd9PdO7minRi6UVUA@avocado.salatschuessel.net>


Hi,

I'm trying to re-create the source files for the Z8000 UNIX I have
on my Z8000 system (it is a S8000+ZEUS clone).
Easy programs like sync.c where easy. But when argc/argv is involved,
I'm not able to generate 1:1 matching binary code.

I'm working on /etc/unlink for now.

I tried the following C file:

char whatstr[] = "@[$]unlink.c  2.1  07/23/82 21:19:30 - 87wega3.2";

main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char **argv;
{
         if(argc!=2) {
                 write(2, "Usage: /etc/unlink name\n", 24);
                 exit(1);
         }
         unlink(argv[1]);
         exit(0);
}

The original ASM code for the beginning of main() until the argc
check is:

0042                 abf3  dec     r15,#4
0044             5df60000  ldl     %0000(r15),rr6
0048             0b070002  cp      r7,#%0002


The ASM code my C file generates is:

0042                 abf3  dec     r15,#4
0044                 1df6  ldl     @r15,rr6
0046             0b070002  cp      r7,#%0002

keep in mine, that r15 is considered as the "stack pointer".

I wonder how to get the ldl from the original binary.
I also tried to declare argv with "char *argv[]" which
resulted in the same code. Forcing the compiler to store
argv into a register by using the "register" keyword results
in completly different code:

(sp = stack pointer = r15)

#17 adb unlink
ADB: P8000 1.6
? 0x0042/i
%0042:          dec     sp,#6
?
%0044:          ld      %0004(sp),r14
?
%0048:          ld      %0002(sp),r7
?
%004c:          ld      r14,r6
?
%004e:          cp      r7,#%0002
? $q
#18


Maybe  the C compiler used to compile /etc/unlink differs from
the C compiler shipped with the system (maybe an older version)
but I don't want this to be true for now ;)

Anyone with deeper ASM and C knowledge than me sees what could
be done here?

Before someone asks - yes I'm sure the source file was in C
and not ASM based on the whatstr. Symboltable of the original
/etc/unlink is empty as well (striped binary).

Regards, Oliver


From lehmann at ans-netz.de  Mon Dec 19 20:14:48 2011
From: lehmann at ans-netz.de (Oliver Lehmann)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:14:48 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] early version of top
Message-ID: <20111219111448.Horde.a30SW6Qd9PdO7w6Y6fFbxzA@avocado.salatschuessel.net>


Hi,

I wonder if someone has an early version of top lying around? I'd
like to try getting it to work on my ZEUS clone. I'd start with
1.0 from 1984 if possible ;)

   Regards, Oliver


From wkt at tuhs.org  Mon Dec 19 22:44:21 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:44:21 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] early version of top
In-Reply-To: <20111219111448.Horde.a30SW6Qd9PdO7w6Y6fFbxzA@avocado.salatschuessel.net>
References: <20111219111448.Horde.a30SW6Qd9PdO7w6Y6fFbxzA@avocado.salatschuessel.net>
Message-ID: <20111219124421.GA28007@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 11:14:48AM +0100, Oliver Lehmann wrote:
> I wonder if someone has an early version of top lying around? I'd
> like to try getting it to work on my ZEUS clone. I'd start with
> 1.0 from 1984 if possible ;)

top 2.1 is here:
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/usenet/ftp.uu.net/comp.sources.unix/volume10/top_s375/

That's after a quick search for comp.sources.unix.

Cheers,
	Warren


From norman at oclsc.org  Sun Dec 25 23:10:04 2011
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:10:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
Message-ID: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Rather a nice tribute to Dennis and C, published
in the New York Times Magazine:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?ref=magazine#view=dennis_ritchie


From wkt at tuhs.org  Tue Dec 27 07:11:45 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:11:45 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 08:10:04AM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
> Rather a nice tribute to Dennis and C, published
> in the New York Times Magazine:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?ref=magazine#view=dennis_ritchie

Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
though: what command would "bring the system down"?

Thanks Norman,
	Warren


From wkb at xs4all.nl  Tue Dec 27 07:15:37 2011
From: wkb at xs4all.nl (Wilko Bulte)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:15:37 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20111226211537.GA30874@freebie.xs4all.nl>

Quoting Warren Toomey, who wrote on Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 07:11:45AM +1000 ..
> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 08:10:04AM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
> > Rather a nice tribute to Dennis and C, published
> > in the New York Times Magazine:
> > 
> > http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?ref=magazine#view=dennis_ritchie
> 
> Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
> though: what command would "bring the system down"?

kill -9 1 

?

> Thanks Norman,
> 	Warren
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
--- End of quoted text ---


From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com  Tue Dec 27 07:28:31 2011
From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:28:31 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAFCBnZuL+i8vvMzFgD8yvYdxuAjE8YHVquHSPDYaQhdc1PN8uw@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 08:10:04AM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
> > Rather a nice tribute to Dennis and C, published
> > in the New York Times Magazine:
> >
> >
> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?ref=magazine#view=dennis_ritchie
>
> > Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
> > though: what command would "bring the system down"?
>

anything that consumes too many resources, i suppose. the morris worm would
have several copies of itself running on the same machine running a
password cracker, using up all the cpu and bringing the system to its
knees. hog too much memory and you could run into thrashing. even more evil
things may include a fork bomb, perhaps? or emacs? ;-)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111226/fec3ac77/attachment.html>

From lyndon at orthanc.ca  Tue Dec 27 07:20:38 2011
From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:20:38 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <64876D43-44BD-465F-A003-7783B7C1A23F@orthanc.ca>


On 2011-12-26, at 13:11 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:

> Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
> though: what command would "bring the system down"?

'kill -1 1' will bring terror to anyone who had the misfortune of dealing with Xenix.

I think the writer is getting at how UNIX bypassed the 'i ask you three times' dance.

--lyndon

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 801 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111226/b383ffc0/attachment.sig>

From aps at ieee.org  Tue Dec 27 07:53:11 2011
From: aps at ieee.org (Armando Stettner)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:53:11 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <64876D43-44BD-465F-A003-7783B7C1A23F@orthanc.ca>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<64876D43-44BD-465F-A003-7783B7C1A23F@orthanc.ca>
Message-ID: <1494CB5B-D54F-4FB5-AE4E-0624C2006A30@ieee.org>

I, of course, liked the warning from dump(1): "Are you sure you know what you are doing?"

  aps.


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] hello, world
> Date: December 26, 2011 4:20:38 PM EST
> To: Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>
> Cc: tuhs at tuhs.org, Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org>
> 
> 
> On 2011-12-26, at 13:11 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
> 
>> Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
>> though: what command would "bring the system down"?
> 
> 'kill -1 1' will bring terror to anyone who had the misfortune of dealing with Xenix.
> 
> I think the writer is getting at how UNIX bypassed the 'i ask you three times' dance.
> 
> --lyndon
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs


From michael_davidson at pacbell.net  Tue Dec 27 08:13:10 2011
From: michael_davidson at pacbell.net (Michael Davidson)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:13:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <1494CB5B-D54F-4FB5-AE4E-0624C2006A30@ieee.org>
Message-ID: <1324937590.14361.YahooMailClassic@web82404.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Mon, 12/26/11, Armando Stettner <aps at ieee.org> wrote:

I, of course, liked the warning from dump(1): "Are you sure you know what you are doing?"

... or the even scarier "Last chance before scribbling on hp(0,0)" from restor ...

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111226/dad41b6d/attachment.html>

From a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com  Tue Dec 27 11:08:26 2011
From: a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com (A. P. Garcia)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:08:26 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <CAFCBnZuL+i8vvMzFgD8yvYdxuAjE8YHVquHSPDYaQhdc1PN8uw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<CAFCBnZuL+i8vvMzFgD8yvYdxuAjE8YHVquHSPDYaQhdc1PN8uw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFCBnZvGZSVfiGvTEQFo4op6h-qOEtaXPeie6p+hHZwhfVtqqg@mail.gmail.com>

When I worked at a university, one of our linux web servers crashed one
day. In place of /dev/null was a history file. The last entry?

mv .bash_history /dev/null

Ah, script kiddies...
On Dec 26, 2011 3:28 PM, "A. P. Garcia" <a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 08:10:04AM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
>> > Rather a nice tribute to Dennis and C, published
>> > in the New York Times Magazine:
>> >
>> >
>> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?ref=magazine#view=dennis_ritchie
>>
>> > Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
>> > though: what command would "bring the system down"?
>>
>
> anything that consumes too many resources, i suppose. the morris worm
> would have several copies of itself running on the same machine running a
> password cracker, using up all the cpu and bringing the system to its
> knees. hog too much memory and you could run into thrashing. even more evil
> things may include a fork bomb, perhaps? or emacs? ;-)
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111226/b175090b/attachment.html>

From dgunix at gmail.com  Tue Dec 27 16:11:02 2011
From: dgunix at gmail.com (Adam)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:11:02 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAO_Q6iw2KT1gSnSWb2234ufTUGS6sUpkhLfPJth==RkL8ZFQsw@mail.gmail.com>

> Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
> though: what command would "bring the system down"?

Great read.
Would just like to add that on some Unixes a simple command with no
args will bring a system down - killall.

Adam


From tim.newsham at gmail.com  Wed Dec 28 04:01:26 2011
From: tim.newsham at gmail.com (Tim Newsham)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:01:26 -1000
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.64.1112271711290.603@dave.horsfall.org>
References: <1324818619.20775.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
	<20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<Pine.BSI.4.64.1112271711290.603@dave.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <CAGSRWbiszc80-gnDSEatBzYnhjSkjAq-t9n9aQ3a=ft1XWSBfQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 8:15 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Dec 2011, Warren Toomey wrote:
>> Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
>> though: what command would "bring the system down"?
>
> It's right here: "Programmers were free to poke around to see and directly
> manipulate what was in the computer's memory."

http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/unix-jun72/2008-May/000250.html

> -- Dave

-- 
Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com


From m_d at pacbell.net  Tue Dec 27 07:28:43 2011
From: m_d at pacbell.net (Michael Davidson)
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:28:43 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
 A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?

Well, if you are logged in as root the possibilities are almost endless, the classic one being:

# rm -rf *

run from the root directory. Strictly speaking, of course, that doesn't "bring the system down" but there really isn't much that you can do with the system after running it ...


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111226/9a62f585/attachment.html>

From mascheck at in-ulm.de  Wed Dec 28 10:13:54 2011
From: mascheck at in-ulm.de (Sven Mascheck)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:13:54 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20111228001354.GE1474@lisa.in-ulm.de>

Michael Davidson wrote:
> --- On Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
>  A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?
> 
> Well, if you are logged in as root the possibilities are almost endless, [...]

Sure.  I was just tempted to exaggerate this discussion with:
"init 0, halt or shutdown".  But such commands had no been
implemented even in 7th ed, yet :)

I wonder if Warren rather had different issues in mind,
which would lead to "unexpected" downs. The previously
mentioned resource problems probably match this--not too
suprisingly, because I always had the impression that Unix
aimed at protecting processes from each other, not users.

I'd like to remind of an according, earlier, quite fitting
discussion from DMR:

In "The UNIX Time-sharing System--A Retrospective"
the paragraph "Security"
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/retro.html

-Sven


From wkb at xs4all.nl  Wed Dec 28 10:20:34 2011
From: wkb at xs4all.nl (Wilko Bulte)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:20:34 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111228001354.GE1474@lisa.in-ulm.de>
References: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<20111228001354.GE1474@lisa.in-ulm.de>
Message-ID: <20111228002034.GA6195@freebie.xs4all.nl>

Quoting Sven Mascheck, who wrote on Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 01:13:54AM +0100 ..
> Michael Davidson wrote:
> > --- On Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >  A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?
> > 
> > Well, if you are logged in as root the possibilities are almost endless, [...]
> 
> Sure.  I was just tempted to exaggerate this discussion with:
> "init 0, halt or shutdown".  But such commands had no been
> implemented even in 7th ed, yet :)

ISTR that starting another init has it's own interesting effects though :)

Wilko

> 
> I wonder if Warren rather had different issues in mind,
> which would lead to "unexpected" downs. The previously
> mentioned resource problems probably match this--not too
> suprisingly, because I always had the impression that Unix
> aimed at protecting processes from each other, not users.
> 
> I'd like to remind of an according, earlier, quite fitting
> discussion from DMR:
> 
> In "The UNIX Time-sharing System--A Retrospective"
> the paragraph "Security"
> http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/retro.html
> 
> -Sven
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
> 
--- End of quoted text ---


From corey at lod.com  Wed Dec 28 10:53:44 2011
From: corey at lod.com (Corey Lindsly)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:53:44 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20111228005345.1A4F540A1@lod.com>


> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 08:10:04AM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
> > Rather a nice tribute to Dennis and C, published
> > in the New York Times Magazine:
> > 
> > http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?ref=magazine#view=dennis_ritchie
> 
> Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
> though: what command would "bring the system down"?

The one that has stuck with me since the first time I read it 30 years ago
is from an article titled "On the Security of UNIX" (dmr, 1978?) ... 

  Here is a particularly ghastly shell sequence guaranteed
  to stop the system:
    
    while :; do
      mkdir x
      cd x
    done

  Either a panic will occur because all the i-nodes on the
  device are used up, or all the disk blocks will be consumed,
  thus preventing anyone from writing files on the device.

(from the UNIX programmer's manual, vol.2 p.592)

---corey


From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Dec 28 17:34:06 2011
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:34:06 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111228001354.GE1474@lisa.in-ulm.de>
References: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<20111228001354.GE1474@lisa.in-ulm.de>
Message-ID: <20111228073405.GA26729@minnie.tuhs.org>

 On Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >  A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 01:13:54AM +0100, Sven Mascheck wrote:
> I wonder if Warren rather had different issues in mind,

I just took umbrage at the article, in that it implied Unix provided
machanisms for the ordinary user to "bring the system down". This is,
of course, not true, at least once the hardware supported
inter-process and kernel protection.

However, it does remind me of Dennis' story about the days before proper
memory protection (from http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html):

	Back around 1970-71, Unix on the PDP-11/20 ran on hardware that
	not only did not support virtual memory, but didn't support
	any kind of hardware memory mapping or protection, for example
	against writing over the kernel. This was a pain, because we were
	using the machine for multiple users. When anyone was working on
	a program, it was considered a courtesy to yell "A.OUT?" before
	trying it, to warn others to save whatever they were editing.

	At some point several were sitting around working away. Bob
	Morris asked, almost conversationally, "what are the arguments to
	ld?" Someone told him. We continued typing for the next minute,
	as a thought began to percolate, not quite to the top of the
	brain -- in other words, not quite fast enough. The terminal
	stopped echoing before anyone could stop and say "Hold on Bob,
	what is it you're trying to do?"

Cheers,
	Warren


From ori at helicontech.co.il  Wed Dec 28 20:16:50 2011
From: ori at helicontech.co.il (Ori Idan)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:16:50 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<1324934923.37156.YahooMailClassic@web82402.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CACyhTRE7te5zRVKdKh_XVF6DhE5mfMQKB+3kXSZFmnPXD6qh1w@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:28 PM, Michael Davidson <m_d at pacbell.net> wrote:

> --- On *Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>* wrote:
>
>  A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?
>
> Well, if you are logged in as root the possibilities are almost endless,
> the classic one being:
>
> # rm -rf *
>
> run from the root directory. Strictly speaking, of course, that doesn't
> "bring the system down" but there really isn't much that you can do with
> the system after running it ...
>
>
>
> That's reminds me of an accident happened to a friend who try making some
order on his computer and since he did not know exactly what a file named
unix is doing, he deleted it. The system worked but of course would not
boot again...

-- 
Ori Idan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20111228/719165f1/attachment.html>

From asbesto at freaknet.org  Wed Dec 28 20:54:17 2011
From: asbesto at freaknet.org (asbesto)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:54:17 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111228005345.1A4F540A1@lod.com>
References: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<20111228005345.1A4F540A1@lod.com>
Message-ID: <20111228105417.GA456@freaknet.org>

Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 04:53:44PM -0800, Corey Lindsly wrote:

> > Yes, a good reminder on the power that programming brings us. A question
> > though: what command would "bring the system down"?
> 

So I have to cite here our shell UNIX Forkbomb, coded by
Jaromil, that will bring on knees almost every misconfigured system:

 :(){ :|:& };:

some references here:

 http://www.runme.org/project/+forkbombsh/
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaromil

I think some limits/ulimits configuration can prevent this but
i'm not so sure about it ;)


-- 
[ ::::::::: 73 de IW9HGS : http://freaknet.org/asbesto ::::::::::: ]
[ Freaknet Medialab :: Poetry Hacklab : Dyne.Org :: Radio Cybernet ]
[ NON SCRIVERMI USANDO LETTERE ACCENTATE  -  NON MANDARMI ALLEGATI ]
[ *I DELETE* EMAIL > 100K, ATTACHMENTS, HTML, M$-WORD DOC and SPAM ]



From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Thu Dec 29 04:32:23 2011
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:32:23 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <20111228105417.GA456@freaknet.org>
References: <20111226211145.GA1335@minnie.tuhs.org>
	<20111228005345.1A4F540A1@lod.com>
	<20111228105417.GA456@freaknet.org>
Message-ID: <20111228183223.GD11843@mercury.ccil.org>

asbesto scripsit:

> So I have to cite here our shell UNIX Forkbomb, coded by
> Jaromil, that will bring on knees almost every misconfigured system:
> 
>  :(){ :|:& };:

Well, that version depends on shell functions, a relatively modern
(in TUHS terms) feature of the shell.  A more classical fork bomb,
which will run on every shell, is to place the following into a file:

	$0 & $0 &

and execute the file.

-- 
John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org    http://ccil.org/~cowan
If a soldier is asked why he kills people who have done him no harm, or a
terrorist why he kills innocent people with his bombs, they can always
reply that war has been declared, and there are no innocent people in an
enemy country in wartime.  The answer is psychotic, but it is the answer
that humanity has given to every act of aggression in history.  --Northrop Frye


From barto at kdbarto.org  Thu Dec 29 06:56:27 2011
From: barto at kdbarto.org (David Barto)
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:56:27 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] hello, world
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1325037601.24307.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.1.1325037601.24307.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <3840176A-25FF-45C2-81DA-D3047871752D@kdbarto.org>

A long time ago at the University that I graduated from. . .

Shell scripts had just added the ability to have functions in them, so I wrote a script to do some processing of files that I had, and then logged off to let it run in the background.

The shell script was named 'A'.

In the script was a function, named 'A'

When the script ran, instead of calling 'A' the function, it called 'A' the script, and you can see where this goes from here.

2 days later I received an email from the admin (thankfully a friend) who enclosed the 'ps -axl' output from the machine. It showed thousands of copies of my script running and a load that indicated that the machine was useless for almost everything.

With the admonishment: "Don't ever do this again."

I haven't.

	David


David Barto
barto at kdbarto.org
barto at ucsd.edu




