Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Pat Barron]

The paper I am thinking of (gee, I wish I could remember any other details 
about it...) was *very* detailed and specific, and was hardware-specific 
to either the PDP-11 or VAX.  It would not at all be applicable to Linux 
or any kind of modern OS.

I am wondering if it is something in the Leffler et al book, I'll have to 
go back and review that.  I'll have to find my copy of it first...

--Pat.

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Erik E. Fair]

That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6 Unix for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer Communications in 1996.

https://www.peerllc.com/?option=com_content&task=view&id\x14&ItemidD

I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is ...

	Erik

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Clem Cole]

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Lion's chapter 6, has some stuff and exact but might not be what you are
remembering,   Chapter 13 of the BSD book is 'system startup' and
more general than the Lions description.   The other place I would suggest
looking is the three DDJ articles Bill and Lynn Jolitz wrote; although he
might have talked about the 386 specifics, not the vaxen/11.
ᐧ

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:15 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs@netbsd.org> wrote:

> That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6
> Unix for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer
> Communications in 1996.
>
> https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id &ItemidD
>
> I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is
> ...
>
>         Erik
>

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Bakul Shah]

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https://github.com/kanner/lions-book <https://github.com/kanner/lions-book>

has the TeX version of the book. You can probably find a PDF version online.

The 4.3 BSD book may be a better bet. 

> On Apr 10, 2019, at 11:28 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> Lion's chapter 6, has some stuff and exact but might not be what you are remembering,   Chapter 13 of the BSD book is 'system startup' and more general than the Lions description.   The other place I would suggest looking is the three DDJ articles Bill and Lynn Jolitz wrote; although he might have talked about the 386 specifics, not the vaxen/11.         
> ᐧ
> 
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:15 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs@netbsd.org <mailto:fair-tuhs@netbsd.org>> wrote:
> That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6 Unix for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer Communications in 1996.
> 
> https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id <https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id> &ItemidD
> 
> I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is ...
> 
>         Erik


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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Clem Cole]

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http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions book
including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
[Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 3:06 PM Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:

> https://github.com/kanner/lions-book
>
> has the TeX version of the book. You can probably find a PDF version
> online.
>
> The 4.3 BSD book may be a better bet.
>
> On Apr 10, 2019, at 11:28 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
> Lion's chapter 6, has some stuff and exact but might not be what you are
> remembering,   Chapter 13 of the BSD book is 'system startup' and
> more general than the Lions description.   The other place I would suggest
> looking is the three DDJ articles Bill and Lynn Jolitz wrote; although he
> might have talked about the 386 specifics, not the vaxen/11.
> ᐧ
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 2:15 PM Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs@netbsd.org> wrote:
>
>> That might well Chapter 6 "Getting Started" of the Lions Commentary on v6
>> Unix for the PDP-11. My nicely bound copy was published by Peer-to-Peer
>> Communications in 1996.
>>
>> https://www.peerllc.com/?optioncom_content&taskview&id &ItemidD
>>
>> I'm not sure I know where my samizdat copy from UCB in the early 1980s is
>> ...
>>
>>         Erik
>>
>
> ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Warren Toomey]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 06:24:56PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
>    http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions
>    book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
>    [Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].

That's all I knew at the time :-)
	Warren

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Thursday, 11 April 2019 at  8:53:42 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 06:24:56PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
>>    http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions
>>    book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
>>    [Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].
>
> That's all I knew at the time :-)

A bit of background: the sources come from a uuencoded posting on
alt.folklore.computers in May 1994 (almost exactly 25 years ago;
that's interesting in context of 50 years of Unix).  It was titled
"Leo's notes", and I grabbed them before they disappeared.  I didn't
meet Warren in person until some years later.

The source comes from scans that Warren made, and they contain typical
scan errors.  I have a number of patches backed up that I should
apply; I'll send another message when I have.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Bakul Shah]

On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.

Sorry to disappoint you but it's the same LaTeX source.

> [Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].


May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Fabio Scotoni]

On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
> 
> Sorry to disappoint you but it's the same LaTeX source.
> 
>> [Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].
> 
> 
> May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
> 
> 

Not to be too negative, but converting it to troff would be somewhat of
an effort; however, the gains for that seem to be comparatively small.
It would be a change from one language to another, neither of which are
a 1:1 copy of the original.
Even if you had the original troff sources of the book,
groff, heirloom-troff and Plan9 ditroff probably all have line breaking
and character positioning algorithms that don't match the original troff
at the time.

If someone were to undertake this troff endeavor, aiming for a perfect
recreation would be the most beneficial (yet also most difficult) thing
to do.
I've never seen the original commentary, but I'll assume that it used a
homebrewed set of macros.
Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the troff macros used
to typeset the book.
Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
this can possibly be automated entirely.
Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
(likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Clem Cole]

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As my very fragile nth edition photocopy shows, the original Western
Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through a typesetter because John
(like most of us at the time) did not have access to one (and Tom Ferrin
had not yet done the vcat(1) hack at UCSF).  Lions used standard nroff
output - (in this case, originally to 132 column line printer paper I
believe).

FWIW: [I would check with one of his former students who might know for
sure], but I was under the impression he used the 5th/6th edition version
of the Mike Lesk Macro's (-ms) that were around with nroff at the time.   I
don't remember how underlining was done in the book, because raw nroff
generated ASR37 codes native, and the ul(1) program would not get a wide
release until after BSD [but it is probable that other folks did something
similar too].  Again, I've forgotten how this all worked, but sadly there
was a time when I used it every day ;-)    IIRC early nroff may have had a
switch to generate line printer codes instead.

Also, the 'memorandum macros' (-mm) came out of Whippany, and I believe
were first released with PWB. They may have been included with the
typesetter C release too, but I don't think they are part of V7.    Eric's
UCB thesis macros, (-me) show up with one of the BSDs releases.

It's funny, I used -ms first then got really hot for -mm  because they
could do things like Lists better and used them until I went to UCB.  But
after doing my thesis I went back to the simplicity of Lesk's macros, but
carry a couple of extra (like Lists) in my personal front end.

Like Larry, troff/nroff still my preferred way to do a large document with
chapters

Clem.

On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 12:58 AM Fabio Scotoni <fabio@esse.ch> wrote:

> On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> > On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff
> thankfully.
> >
> > Sorry to disappoint you but it's the same LaTeX source.
> >
> >> [Why someone would convert it to tex is a little beyond me].
> >
> >
> > May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
> >
> >
>
> Not to be too negative, but converting it to troff would be somewhat of
> an effort; however, the gains for that seem to be comparatively small.
> It would be a change from one language to another, neither of which are
> a 1:1 copy of the original.
> Even if you had the original troff sources of the book,
> groff, heirloom-troff and Plan9 ditroff probably all have line breaking
> and character positioning algorithms that don't match the original troff
> at the time.
>
> If someone were to undertake this troff endeavor, aiming for a perfect
> recreation would be the most beneficial (yet also most difficult) thing
> to do.
> I've never seen the original commentary, but I'll assume that it used a
> homebrewed set of macros.
> Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the troff macros used
> to typeset the book.
> Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
> this can possibly be automated entirely.
> Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
> (likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
> Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
> PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
> comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
> work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).
>

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Dan Cross]

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On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 9:49 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> As my very fragile nth edition photocopy shows, the original Western
> Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through a typesetter because John
> (like most of us at the time) did not have access to one (and Tom Ferrin
> had not yet done the vcat(1) hack at UCSF).  Lions used standard nroff
> output - (in this case, originally to 132 column line printer paper I
> believe).
>

Indeed. Even the mid-90's Peer-to-Peer press reprinting appears to be,
roughly, a facsimile of line printer output. I say 'roughly' because there
is some prefatory material at the beginning that is properly typeset:
dedications, acknowledgements, etc, all written at the time of
(re)publication and similarly a set of "appreciations" at the end.

Interestingly, the title page appears to be approximately original and is
typeset. It also includes this little gem of a note: "COPY NO. 050B  NAME
PROPERTY OF BELL LABORATORIES, INC. COPY TO BE RETURNED TO: COMPUTING
INFORMATION SERVICE MH 2F-128 UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM SOURCE CODE VERSION 6"
(line breaks elided).

I don't think I've ever seen a copy of the original; I suspect the title
page was reset for the PP publication, though it is of course possible that
Lions could have prepared that specially: doing a "one-off" for a single
page, perhaps under contract with an actual publishing company or graphic
artist or something, would have been reasonable while the rest of the
booklet contents were taken from listings.


> [snip]
>
>
        - Dan C.

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Clem Cole]

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When I was at Tektronix in the late 70s, I was able to get my boss to buy
me (us - but for my desk) a copy of the original  (with the orange and red
covers for the two books - the commentary was in one and the sources in the
other but I have forgotten which was which).  However, my own (current)
photocopy was from CMU a few years before.   I left Tek and I have no idea
what happened to that new copy since Tek owned it (and I was not smart
enough at the time to re-duplicate it, so my current copy is a fading nth
generation one).  I must have handed the "real" one to the late Terry
Lawskodi, or maybe Larry Morandi or Steve Glaser (I'll have to ask Steve
and Larry if they know what became of the Tek copy).
ᐧ

On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 10:55 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 9:49 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> As my very fragile nth edition photocopy shows, the original Western
>> Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through a typesetter because John
>> (like most of us at the time) did not have access to one (and Tom Ferrin
>> had not yet done the vcat(1) hack at UCSF).  Lions used standard nroff
>> output - (in this case, originally to 132 column line printer paper I
>> believe).
>>
>
> Indeed. Even the mid-90's Peer-to-Peer press reprinting appears to be,
> roughly, a facsimile of line printer output. I say 'roughly' because there
> is some prefatory material at the beginning that is properly typeset:
> dedications, acknowledgements, etc, all written at the time of
> (re)publication and similarly a set of "appreciations" at the end.
>
> Interestingly, the title page appears to be approximately original and is
> typeset. It also includes this little gem of a note: "COPY NO. 050B  NAME
> PROPERTY OF BELL LABORATORIES, INC. COPY TO BE RETURNED TO: COMPUTING
> INFORMATION SERVICE MH 2F-128 UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM SOURCE CODE VERSION 6"
> (line breaks elided).
>
> I don't think I've ever seen a copy of the original; I suspect the title
> page was reset for the PP publication, though it is of course possible that
> Lions could have prepared that specially: doing a "one-off" for a single
> page, perhaps under contract with an actual publishing company or graphic
> artist or something, would have been reasonable while the rest of the
> booklet contents were taken from listings.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>
>         - Dan C.
>
>

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Peter Jeremy]

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[Resurrecting an old thread to provide some input from Dave Horsfall]
On 2019-Apr-11 06:52:08 +0200, Fabio Scotoni <fabio@esse.ch> wrote:
>On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
>> 
>> May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?
...
>Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the troff macros used
>to typeset the book.
>Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
>this can possibly be automated entirely.
>Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
>(likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
>Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
>PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
>comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
>work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).

On 2019-Jun-26 11:34:31 +1000, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>'Twas NROFF on the CSU's LA120 (I should know; I ran the Unix section),
>with draft versions on a Duckwriter which I helped proof-read.  Don't know
>whether custom macros were used; quite likely, as he was that sort of
>bloke.  After all, he was a Comp Sci lecturer (one of mine!) and if you
>find yourself writing the same lines over and over again...
>
>Going by that snippet of the thread (too much to follow, as I'm still
>figuring out from which lists I've been bounced) it would be a heroic
>effort to reverse-engineer it, and quite likely not worth the trouble.
>
>The original source would've been at Elec Eng, but long gone by now.
>
>As for TROFF, well, I'm not aware that UNSW has a C/A/T :-)
>
>Oh, the LA120 had a single-use nylon ribbon, I think, not fabric, hence
>the somewhat high quality (I no longer have my Lions books to check; lost
>after several house moves).

-- 
Peter Jeremy

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Bakul Shah]

On Jun 25, 2019, at 7:28 PM, Peter Jeremy <peter@rulingia.com> wrote:
> 
> [Resurrecting an old thread to provide some input from Dave Horsfall]
> On 2019-Apr-11 06:52:08 +0200, Fabio Scotoni <fabio@esse.ch> wrote:
>> On 4/11/19 1:19 AM, Bakul Shah wrote:
>>> On Apr 10, 2019, at 3:24 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> [...] is the Lions book including PS and PDF and in the original troff thankfully.
>>> 
>>> May be someone will be inspired enough to convert this to troff?

Er... I wasn't entirely serious but if I were doing this, I'd start
with detexing the source and then manually adding in -ms macros.
The detexed source is about 14 lines and surprisingly readable. Almost.
This should be a piece of cake for one of you nroff wizards!

> ...
>> Thus, the first step would be to reverse engineer the troff macros used
>> to typeset the book.
>> Then the TeX sources would need to be converted to those troff macros;
>> this can possibly be automated entirely.
>> Then the matching version of troff would need to be used to typeset it
>> (likely via apout and V6 or V7 troff).
>> Finally, the C/A/T typesetter output would need to be converted to
>> PostScript or PDF (either Adobe's psroff or Chris Lewis's psroff from
>> comp.unix.sources can likely help with that; I got Lewis's psroff to
>> work a while ago, but it's pretty brittle).
> 
> On 2019-Jun-26 11:34:31 +1000, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>> 'Twas NROFF on the CSU's LA120 (I should know; I ran the Unix section),
>> with draft versions on a Duckwriter which I helped proof-read.  Don't know
>> whether custom macros were used; quite likely, as he was that sort of
>> bloke.  After all, he was a Comp Sci lecturer (one of mine!) and if you
>> find yourself writing the same lines over and over again...
>> 
>> Going by that snippet of the thread (too much to follow, as I'm still
>> figuring out from which lists I've been bounced) it would be a heroic
>> effort to reverse-engineer it, and quite likely not worth the trouble.
>> 
>> The original source would've been at Elec Eng, but long gone by now.
>> 
>> As for TROFF, well, I'm not aware that UNSW has a C/A/T :-)
>> 
>> Oh, the LA120 had a single-use nylon ribbon, I think, not fabric, hence
>> the somewhat high quality (I no longer have my Lions books to check; lost
>> after several house moves).
> 
> -- 
> Peter Jeremy

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

Maybe xv6 has an explanation of the boot process that is of use to the original poster:

https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2018/xv6.html

Paul

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Warner Losh]

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On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 11:43 PM Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl> wrote:

> Maybe xv6 has an explanation of the boot process that is of use to the
> original poster:
>
> https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2018/xv6.html


If you are looking for a generic answer, it goes something like this:

1. Power is applied to the system
2. Support circuits initialize (details vary widely, may include
initializing memory controllers and loading microcode into the CPU)
3. CPU comes out of reset and jumps to a well known location (that's either
initialized by 2 or is ROM of some flavor)
4. The initial boot code confirms this is a power-on reset (and not a
wakeup from sleeping or other condition) and loads the next boot loader
from some media like tape, disk or network
5. The loader then loads the next stage loader, if any. Repeat 5 as many
times as needed to get to loading the kernel. Loader constructs metadata
about the system and passes that to the kernel.
6. Once the kernel is loaded, execution is passed off to the kernel which
looks at the loader metadata to know what's it needs to about the system
that it can't easily get by other means.
6a. Memory is partitions, VM system booted, MMU comes on line, devices
initialized, root is mounted and control passes to init which forks /etc/rc
to bring the sytem up

For most people, this is a sufficient level of detail, unless they are
trying to debug one of the steps then the actual details matter. :)

Warner

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Charles Anthony

    > The Multics System Initialization Program Logic Manual. 139 pages of
    > somewhat detailed information. 

I was going to mention the Multics init PLM! :-) Needless to say, it's
probably not a good candidate for the original goal - a document describing
how an OS boots - it's simply too complicated for ordinary mortals! (Reading
it makes _my_ head hurt!) There are a couple of reasons it's so complex.

Multics is not a monolitic OS, the way most versions of Unix are (although I
gather this is no longer quite true of Linux); the OS isn't this large blob
of bits you load into memory and start. Its structure makes heavy use of the
segmentation model supported by the hardware. Moreover, although the first
segments loaded aren't paged, many of the later ones are. (This makes sense
in the context of the times; with limited core main memory, you wouldn't want
to devote massive chunks of main memory to have the entire OS always
resident.)

However, this all makes for a more complex booting process; the standard
Multics boot tape (a Multics System Tape) contains many modules, which get
linked in individually at boot time. (In V6 terms - the version I'm most
familiar with - it's as if a Unix boot tape contained 'lib1' and 'lib2', and
the bootstrap included a linker to build the OS binary in memory.) And in fact
the modules come in in tranches, and some of the earlier one are available for
use in loading later tranches (e.g. paging).

This does have some advantages, though; e.g. the MST is the same for all
Multics machines (including the initial boot of a new machine); the system is
customized to the particular configuration during the bootstrap process. This
is actually not too crazy, there are reasons this makes sense.

For one, the whole 'information utility' concept (where Multics admittedly
went down the wrong path, in terms of the future of computers); a single
giant machine (multi-processor, multi-memory bank, multi-I/O controller). The
thing is that any of these could be switched out if it developed a fault, but
then you have to be able to boot that new configuration. (In particular,
Multics wasn't a master-slave multi-processor system, they're all the same;
but only one CPU runs for most of booting, the others are started and added
once the system is running. But the 'bootstrap CPU' might change if the
original bootstrap CPU develops a fault...)

	Noel

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org>

    > That's all I knew at the time :-)

:-) I used nroff/troff for a bit, but I didn't like it; I don't recall why,
but I suspect I wasn't using people's macro packages, which probably made it
more difficult to use. My favourite was SCRIBE, but it alas seems to have
died.

    > From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>

    >> the original Western Electric copies are not troff'ed and run through
    >> a typesetter ...

    > Indeed. Even the mid-90's Peer-to-Peer press reprinting appears to be,
    > roughly, a facsimile of line printer output. ...
    > Interestingly, the title page appears to be approximately original and
    > is typeset.

I finally located my copy of the reprint (I'd been using it to help Fritz
Mueller find a problem in his RK11C, and it wasn't in its normal place), and
comparing it with my 'samizdat' set (which came from a set owned by
Lincoln-Sudbury High School - they actually had an -11 running V6, I helped
their computer person, I forget his name now, with it), I can confirm that:

- The reprint does mostly reproduce the exact page images from the original
(which was indeed, mostly line-printer out), except that the original does not
have the typeset chapter/section header pages. It's possible that the pages in
the reprint are a new printing, but if so, they have exactly matched not only
the layout (not too hard) of the original, but also the font.

- In a couple of places (e.g. Contents, pg. 1; Preface, pg. 1; Chapter One,
pg. 1) "UNIX" has been replaced by "UNIX*" (different font), and at the bottom
of the page has been added "* UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories", again
in a different font.

- The typeset 'Source Code' title page is in the original; the copy in the
reprint is an exact image, except that the upper-case "This information ...
Written permission of Bell Laboratories" section is not in the original,
which says instead at that place: "This document may contain information
covered by one or more licenses, copyrights and non-disclosure agreements.
Circulation of this document is restricted to holders of a license for the
UNIX Software System from Western Electric. All other circulation or
reproduction is prohibited."

- The typeset 'Commentary' title page is different in my samizdat First
Edition original; it's a copy of the other title page, except that the
second para is replaced by the first sentence of the 'Commentary' title
page of the reprint, and of course the title is different from the other
volume.

	Noel

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Pat Barron]

The more I think about this, the more I'm sure I'm barking up the wrong 
tree...

From bits and pieces I've been able to recall, the thing I am looking for 
was not about Unix - it was about TOPS-20.  It was a timeline of the 
system bootstrap activities from power-on to the point where users could 
log in.  I still don't remember where I found it originally, but at least 
now I'm pretty sure I've been looking in all the wrong places...  I 
believe it originated at CMU, but I don't know for sure that that's where 
I originally located it.

The actual problem I'm trying to solve is, at this point in my 
professional career, I'm starting to interact with a lot of people (even 
experienced software developers) who just have no clue of what has to 
happen to get a computer from the point of "power-on" to the point where 
they can actually use it to do things.  This makes me sad...  So, I'm 
looking for something that I can point these people to that could clue 
them in...  I think the whole bootstrap process is useful to understand 
for a lot of reasons, partly because it makes you think about all the 
little fiddly details that have to be attended to to make the computer do 
what you want - when I was first learning about this, I remember being 
particularly fascinated by what had to happen to prepare for that moment 
at which you turn on the MMU, to make sure that the system continues 
executing in a place you expect it to, in the right processor mode.  I 
know most people that I interact with are using Linux or Windows on 
Intel-architecture machines, but the boot process for Unix on the PDP-10 
or VAX (or even TOPS-20 on the PDP-10) I thought would be a much simpler 
thing to understand.  Though maybe that's the wrong thought process, maybe 
I should just find something related to Linux that is comparable (even 
though I think it's more complicated).

While searching, I also came across a decent presentation by a friend of 
mine who teaches at CMU, and discusses hardware that people probably 
actually work with right now, but I think it would be best consumed along 
with the actual lecture that it goes with.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~410-f08/lectures/L20_Bootstrap.pdf

Maybe I'll find what I was originally looking for at some point, but after 
spinning on this for most of the day, I don't think it's related to 
Unix...

--Pat.

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Charles Anthony]

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On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 6:07 PM Pat Barron <patbarron@acm.org> wrote:

>
>
> Maybe I'll find what I was originally looking for at some point, but after
> spinning on this for most of the day, I don't think it's related to
> Unix...
>

The Multics System Initialization Program Logic Manual. 139 pages of
somewhat detailed information. There was a time during the dps8/m emulator
development when I could have told you what page and line the emulator had
made it to that day.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/honeywell/multics/AN70-1_systemInitPLM_May84.pdf
<http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/honeywell/multics/AN70-1_systemInitPLM_May84.pdf>

-- Charles

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Erik E. Fair]

Pat,

I still know a few people from the 36-bit world so I could put you in touch, but if you really want people to understand primitives, you might want to start with a simpler model, e.g., 16-bit minicomputers like the DEC PDP-11 (smaller models), the DG Nova, perhaps the original mc68000 (no MMU or FPU on-chip in that).

Once you add MMUs to the picture, life gets a lot more complicated, and I'm pretty sure the typical applications programmer doesn't really need to know that class of details, but going for PDP-10 (more "mainframe-ish" system) is going to take them there.

	Erik

[TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Pat Barron]

Long ago, I could swear I'd read a paper (or a TM, or something) that
described the process of a Unix system booting.  It presented a timeline
describing the sequence of how the boot blocks are loaded, the kernel
is loaded, MMU turned on, etc.

However, other than that, I can't recall a thing about it - can't remember
the title, the author, or where I found it.  I don't remember if it talked
about this process on a Bell Labs Unix system, or a BSD system (though it
had to be one of those - either 7th Edition or BSD).  The timeframe was
probably mid to late 1980's, though I could be wrong about that.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?  I really wish I could find it again...

--Pat.

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Erik E. Fair]

Pat,
	Any such description is either going to be very hardware/system specific, or vague to the point of uselessness. The experience of the NetBSD community, which prides itself on extreme portability and working around broken or  ... let's say "incomplete" vendor firmware, is that such things are highly system-specific.

The vague description is easy:

	some booter or firmware loads the kernel into RAM,

	the kernel initializes the MMU and the rest of the processor(s),
	devices are somehow probed or listed and device drivers called to
	initialize minimally necessary I/O devices (console, data storage so
	you can mount / (root)),

	a process is created, and /sbin/init is exec'd.

Details of firmware or booter provided environment and parameters to the kernel vary a lot; thus that famously small-ish percentage of any Unix kernel that is written in assembler for the processor involved, rather than C.

See also

https://www.quora.com/Are-bootloaders-like-GRUB-and-LILO-hardware-specific/answer/Erik-Fair

https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-concise-explanation-for-the-UNIX-bootstrap-process/answer/Erik-Fair

	Erik

Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Dan Cross]

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On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:00 PM Pat Barron <patbarron@acm.org> wrote:

> Long ago, I could swear I'd read a paper (or a TM, or something) that
> described the process of a Unix system booting.  It presented a timeline
> describing the sequence of how the boot blocks are loaded, the kernel
> is loaded, MMU turned on, etc.
>
> However, other than that, I can't recall a thing about it - can't remember
> the title, the author, or where I found it.  I don't remember if it talked
> about this process on a Bell Labs Unix system, or a BSD system (though it
> had to be one of those - either 7th Edition or BSD).  The timeframe was
> probably mid to late 1980's, though I could be wrong about that.
>
> Does this ring a bell with anyone?  I really wish I could find it again...
>

The book "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix Operating
System" by Leffler et al has a lengthy explanation of booting 4.3BSD on the
VAX towards the beginning of the book. Could that be it? I thought I had a
copy in my office, but don't see it on my bookshelf at the moment. Bach's,
"The Design of the Unix Operating System" contains a brief and very
high-level overview in the chapter on process control, but I recall Leffler
et al having significantly greater detail.

        - Dan C.

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Re: [TUHS] Paper discussing Unix boot process?

[Chris Hanson]

It may not be exactly what you were thinking of, but there have been a few “bring-up” papers to come out of NetBSD about getting it working on new CPU architectures and new system types. Perhaps one of those is what you read?

  -- Chris