From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 15:41:29 +1200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm trying to get my head around this, in relation to the U of Canterbury, NZ's setup. I know they had had some PDPs, because one was offered for sale c 1992. I expect it would've been running 2.xBSD, because the U of C NZ was by and large a BSD house - when I asked about a suitable OS for my brand-new 486 in 1991 I was told if I could afford the (AT&T) license I could have the source tree of (would've been) 4.3BSD. I know they had VAXes, and from what I recall, though the admin ones were VMS boxen, the Computer Science one/s would've been running Unix. They also had Sun pizza boxes. Am I right in assuming that 2.xBSD was the state of the play on PDP while 4.xBSD was the source tree compatible state of play on the VAXes? That if you had a VAX you got the 4.xBSD tapes, whereas if you had a PDP you got the 2.xBSD tapes? Wesley Parish On 8/7/20, Warner Losh wrote: > On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 2:22 PM Clem Cole wrote: > >> That said, when the distribution of UNIX moved to USG in Summit, things >> started >> to a bit more formal. But there were still differences inside, as we >> have tried to unravel. PWB/TS and eventually System x. FWIW, BSD went >> through the same thing. The first BSD's are really the binary state of >> the world on the Cory 11/70, later 'Ernie.' By the time CSRG gets stood >> up because their official job (like USG) is to support Unix for DARPA, >> Sam >> and company are acting a bit more like traditional SW firms with >> alpha/beta >> releases and a more formal build process. Note that 2.X never really >> went through that, so we are all witnessing the wonderful efforts to try >> to >> rebuild early 2.X BSD, and see that the ephemeral nature of the bits has >> become more obvious. >> > > I'm rebuilding 2.11BSD as released, not any of the early bits... :) 1991 is > quite late in the 2BSD timeline (oh, wait, it's still going strong in > PiDP-11 land). > > Having said that, though, 2BSD through at least 2.8BSD gives the feeling of > the tape of the day club. If you look closely at what's in the TUHS > archive, and what's in Kirk's archive as well as other copies around, > you'll likely notice small variations. Or you'll see a dozen or two files > having newer dates than the documented release date. And the 2.79BSD > tape... I'm more than half convinced it was really the 79th tape that had > been made and they said 'nuts to that, for a while we'll do 2.8BSD since we > now have a kernel'. This is pure speculation, I've not asked around... > > 2.9BSD, 2.10BSD and 2.10.1BSD all seem to be a little more controlled, > though 2.9BSD has a lot of forks and it's not entirely clear they all > started from the same spot. There's references to 2.9-SEISMO and 2.9.1 and > 2.9 with patches and it isn't at all clear if these are the same thing or > different (I think the same, but there's a 2.9 from princeton that's > clearly a rollup release years later in kirk's archives). > > And even my 2.11BSD reconstruction shows that proper CM wasn't deployed for > it. I've found half a dozen missing patches that were not released as real > patches, but showed up in the 'catch-up' kit that seems to be hiding these > sorts of minor sins in the first couple of years after 2.11BSD was > released. I'm down to 10-20 files that I'm unsure about ever recovering. > These are clearly local files (different kernel configs, UUCP data, games > high score files), and I doubt I'll be able to recover them completely.... > Though in the scheme of things, they likely are the least important files > since they only had relevance to the site making the tapes and were deleted > from later versions (which is why I can't find them :). > > In a way I've started thinking about this like quantum physics. Why you > look at it at the macro level, it's all predictable, orderly and makes > sense. But when you zoom in too much to any point on the timeline, you find > that things get messy, chaotic and a bit indeterminate. > > Warner >