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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 333 invoked from network); 4 Mar 2023 14:41:46 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 4 Mar 2023 14:41:46 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE260412C6; Sun, 5 Mar 2023 00:41:40 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mercury.lcs.mit.edu (mercury.lcs.mit.edu [18.26.0.122]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 018B8412C5 for ; Sun, 5 Mar 2023 00:41:36 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11178) id A3AFD18C091; Sat, 4 Mar 2023 09:41:34 -0500 (EST) To: tuhs@tuhs.org Message-Id: <20230304144134.A3AFD18C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2023 09:41:34 -0500 (EST) From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Message-ID-Hash: RZRBY7LJXEX76SYDYTYSQFZQT2EG4YQX X-Message-ID-Hash: RZRBY7LJXEX76SYDYTYSQFZQT2EG4YQX X-MailFrom: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Unix v7 icheck dup problem List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: > From: Clem Cole wrote: > It had more colorful name originally - fsck (pronounced as fisk BTW) > was finished. I suspect the fcheck name was a USG idea. I dunno. I don't think we at MIT wold have gratuitously changed the name to 'fcheck'; I rather think that was its original name - and we pretty definitely got it from CMU. 'fsck' was definitely descended from 'fcheck' (below). > From: Jonathan Gray >> (are 'fsck' and 'fcheck' the same program?) > https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7addenda/fsck Having looked the the source to both, it's quite clear that 'fcheck' is a distant ancestor of 'fsck' (see below for thoughts on the connection(s)). The latter has been _very_ extensively modified, but there are still some traces of 'fcheck' left. A lot of the changes are to increase the portability, and also to come into compliance with the latest 'C' (e.g. function prototypes); others are just to get rid of oddities in the original coding style. E.g.: unsigned dsize, fmin, fmax ; Perfectly legal C, but nobody uses that style. > From: Jonathan Gray > fcheck is from Hal Pierson at Bell according to > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/CB_Unix/readme.txt Hmm. "the major features that were added to UNIX by CB/UNIX ... Hal Person (or Pierson?) also rewrote the original check disk command into something that was useful by someone other than researchers." I poked around in CB/UNIX, and found 'check(1M)': https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/CB_Unix/cbunix_man1_01.pdf (dated November 1979). Alas, the source isn't there, but it's clearly in the fheck/fsck family. (CB/UNIX also has chkold(1M), which looks to me like it's 'icheck'.) So now we have a question about the ancestry of 'check' and 'fcheck' - is one an ancestor of the other, and if so, which - or are they independent creations? Without the source, it's hard to be definitive, bur from the messages (as given in the manual), they do seem related. Clem's message of 3 Mar, 14:35 seems to indicate the the original was from CMU, authored by Ted Kowalski; he also: https://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=anecdotes:clem_cole_student says "Ted Kowalski shows up for his OYOC year in the EE dept after his summer at Bell Labs ... He also brought his cool (but unfinished) program he had started to write originally at U Mich - fsck". So maybe the CB/UNIX 'check' is descended from a version that Ted left behind at Bell Labs? Is anyone in touch with Hal Pierson? He could surely clear up these questions. Noel