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From: Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Pre-init initialization
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2019 19:46:22 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <94138535-c502-109d-752d-5ef7a6d53b23@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PjoKqSfEeBu9pJuOOR772hDhwmUh_k0TbYZU-WTnHSNA@mail.gmail.com>

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On 8/7/19 7:04 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> FWIW: V7 had /stand which was a funky UNIX-like standalone system that 
> some applications could be compiled.

I've seen /stand on a few systems (I think SCO OpenServer and / or 
UnixWare) but never really knew what it was for.  I think I had naively 
assumed it was associated with the kernel and / or booting.

Now I'm somewhat more curious what it was.  Was it a simplified version 
of the OS with minimal utilities with fewer dependencies so that the 
system could boot and load more features.

I thought that Linux's initramfs / initrd had the usual suspect files / 
utilities copied from /.  So the idea that a utility in /stand would be 
different from the same utility in / seems strange to me.

> The problem was that it was a little different so you would end up 
> seeing #ifdef STAND in code for things like fsck, fsdb, even cat. 
> At Masscomp we ended up with three target environments for a couple of 
> the system maintenance utilities: the OS, /stand and the boot ROMS. 
> This was expensive/a PITA to maintain and keep straight, and in the 
> case of the boot ROM, space was a huge problem.

Ya.  I can see how that would be a PITA to maintain.

> The RAMFS idea was created to get rid of at least /stand and IIRC we 
> were able to drop a number of utilities out of the boot ROM.  I'm not 
> sure how far they took it.   I left for Stellar and it was always the 
> way Stellix booted.

ACK



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


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  parent reply	other threads:[~2019-08-09  1:47 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-08-06 23:46 Grant Taylor via TUHS
2019-08-07  1:22 ` Andrew Warkentin
2019-08-07 13:04 ` Clem Cole
2019-08-07 16:40   ` Warner Losh
2019-08-08 13:31     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-08-09  1:52       ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2019-08-10  0:23         ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-08-10  2:28           ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2019-08-10  4:21             ` Kevin Bowling
2019-08-10  4:50               ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2019-08-10  4:52               ` Adam Thornton
2019-08-08 13:43     ` Clem Cole
2019-08-08 18:59       ` Warner Losh
2019-08-09  1:46   ` Grant Taylor via TUHS [this message]
2019-08-09  2:15     ` Warner Losh
2019-08-09  6:43       ` Kevin Bowling
2019-08-10  1:45 ` Chris Hanson

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