From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 8889 invoked from network); 8 Apr 2022 16:10:01 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 8 Apr 2022 16:10:01 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 310979D6E6; Sat, 9 Apr 2022 02:09:59 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 014239D680; Sat, 9 Apr 2022 02:07:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 5F96E9D680; Sat, 9 Apr 2022 02:07:36 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mercury.lcs.mit.edu (mercury.lcs.mit.edu [18.26.0.122]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 562869D665 for ; Sat, 9 Apr 2022 02:07:35 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11178) id 380DB18C0A8; Fri, 8 Apr 2022 12:07:34 -0400 (EDT) To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Message-Id: <20220408160734.380DB18C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2022 12:07:34 -0400 (EDT) From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Interesting commentary on Unix from Multicians. X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" > From: Clem Cole > Not to put too fine a point on it, It seems like it would be fair to > say Multics was 'complete' by the time Organick published his book This is a pretty ill-judged claim, IMO - but not for any particulars about the Organick book, etc. The problem is more global. When was UNIX 'complete' - when the first people were able to do real work on the PDP-7? When non-programmer clerks from the patent group were able to use the assembler UNIX on the PDP-11 to format parent documents? When it was re-written in C for the 4th Edition (since the _portability_ of UNIX was IMO perhaps the greatest factor in its eventual domination)? Etc, etc, etc. The exact same problem applies to the question of 'when was Multics 'complete''. > don't know when it first appeared and can not seem to find it. ... I > bet I have the 3rd printing. ... Anyone have a first edition around > with the publication date? The third printing _is_ the first edition. Anyway, it doesn't matter - see above. And of course even if the book _wriring_ was finished at time T, it wouldn't have been printed until some unknown time later. So that's really pretty useless as a temporal marker; we have much better ones availablw. > From: Dan Cross > I can't see any indication that this is anything other than the first > printing. My 3rd printing says 3rd was 1980, 2nd in 1976, and copyright 1972. > Organick's book is often said to describe an earlier version of the > system Yes; I'm not sure if the version described in it was ever available for general usege (which could be my definition of 'complete') - or even usage my Multics system programmers. I don't remember all the details of the differences (it's been way too long since I read it, and I don't know the details of the 'first operational' Multics well enough), but for instance: ISTR that it describes a version which had a linkage segment (holding intermediate locations in outbound links - since segment >a>b>c might well have different segment numbers assigned to it in the address spaces of processes X and Y, so one copy of >a>b>c, shared between X and Y, couldn't contain direct outbound links) _per segment_ (data or code) - but operational Multics (I don't know if this is from 'first available to users', or 'first available to Multics system programmers', or what) collapsed all the linkage info into a 'combined linkage segment', in which the linkage info from all the segments in a process' address space were combined (by copying) into a single linkage segment. Etc, etc, etc. > I understand that Multics got much better after the move to the 6180 I'm not sure that the 6180 made that big a difference to the environment the average use saw. My understanding (not having been there) was that the big _architectural_ difference was that cross-ring inter-segment references were done and monitored in hardware, so a host of security holes caused by insufficient checking of cross-ring inter-segment pointers were caught automatically. (The 6180 was also built out of SSI chips, unlike the 645 which was individual transistors, like a KA10.) Noel