From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.7 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,PLING_QUERY,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 5b53e789 for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2019 14:51:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id E17F29BC57; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:51:51 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6AB5E9B96C; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:51:33 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 9FAB39B96C; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:51:30 +1000 (AEST) Received: from smtp-out-4.mxes.net (smtp-out-4.mxes.net [198.205.123.69]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CC5439B8C4 for ; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:51:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: from Customer-MUA (mua.mxes.net [10.0.0.1]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.mxes.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 6301D2739D for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2019 10:51:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Ronald Natalie Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 12.4 \(3445.104.11\)) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2019 09:51:25 -0500 References: <20191012135513.57C4818C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society In-Reply-To: <20191012135513.57C4818C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.3445.104.11) X-Sent-To: Subject: Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment? 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: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" I graduated high school in 1977. I hadn=E2=80=99t heard anything = about UNIX but I had hung around the University of Maryland and the like = enough to know about Digital Equipment Corporation. One of my = friend=E2=80=99s mother worked in the doc room a the local DEC office in = Lanham and being the budding computer geeks we had, we=E2=80=99d often = stop by the office and pick up whatever manuals she could spare to give = us. I had processor handbooks, software handbook, peripheral handbook, = etc=E2=80=A6 all in my personal library when I enrolled at Johns Hopkins = that year. I got a letter from Professor Bill Huggins who was teaching my first = year course =E2=80=9CModels and Simulation=E2=80=9D stating that the = course would be taught on the departments PDP-11/45 computer (this I = found in my documents) using BASIC/PLUS (again a fine DEC product taken = from the RSTS operating system) on the UNIX operating system. The = last one stumped me. There was not a mention (obviously) of UNIX = anywhere in my docs. Of course, you couldn=E2=80=99t google it back = then, and I probably could have asked around at the UofM (I had friends = in various computer installations there) but probably would have not = yielded an answer. All was answered a few weeks later when I started classes. The EE = department had the PDP-11 and it was run by an organization called the = UCS (Undergraduate Computer Society) on behalf of the department. This = was a group of indeed undergraduates headed at the time by Michael Muuss = and Pete Koziar. It was split into groups including the system = programming headed by those two, documentation (led by George Toth), = hardware (run by Bill Lindeman), and Operations (Joe Pistritto). It = was at an early meeting of this where the whole UNIX things was = explained to me. Also, having pretty much BASIC=E2=80=99d myself out = in high school (We used HP 2000 systems that only ran basic) and was = desperate for a higher level language (I=E2=80=99d done some Fortran and = Cobol as well as APL and PLUM (and odd PL/I-ish variant at UofM), I set = to learn C. At the time there were mimeographed copies of K&R=E2=80=99= s document which was the first chapter of =E2=80=9CThe C Programming = Language.=E2=80=9D Mike Muuss, always the one to mentor someone, = helped review my early stabs at C. I remember typing many of these on = a Model 33 using \( \) for curly braces, etc=E2=80=A6 I quickly moved through becoming an operator (where you had to = demonstrate knowledge of the file system structure as well as use of = icheck/dcheck/clri and the like to recover from crashes). Mike then = mentored me through basic system programming. He printed out a copy of = the kernel sources for me. I volunteered to debug some device drivers = George Toth had written and Mike spent a night half sleeping on a bean = bag chair in the computer room supervising my stabs at Kernel work. At that point UNIX did crash a bit and this wasn=E2=80=99t helped by the = fact that there were many students who thought that crashing or = otherwise hacking on the machine was sport. I rapidly became adept = at working both sides of the scheme, but trying to break the machine = from user mode and then going back and fixing things (either ones I had = found or figuring out what others had done). It was probably the = only machine other than ones I owned myself that I was deeply involved = in all aspects of. The University had a graphics display system = donated to them and I set about using a DR-11 to interface it. After college I was hired to do database work on an RSX-11M system. = However, the QA department had just gotten in to PWB and source code = control so I got deputized into helping set up an IS PWB system to = maintain the source and project documentation. It was here that I = hacked on the -ms macro package and the lineprinter spooler to handle = security classifications. About six months into it, I ran into Mike and former classmates Bob = Miles and Doug Kingston at a Unix conference and they told me they were = porting UNIX to a supercomputer, the Delelcor HEP. I actually had a = HEP manual (my friends at the UofM had given it to me after they passed = at doing the software). Soon I was back at BRL working with Mike = doing not only the HEP (I did the ld and F77 ports and all the IO = system, as well as conspiring with Denelcor=E2=80=99s Burton Smith on = redesigning the IO system so it had reasonable performance), but also on = early TCP/IP work. I was going to use the MIT C gateway (written by = fellow list member Noel Chiappa) but support from MIT was problematic as = Noel had been deported to Bermuda (or some such thing) at the critical = time, so I wrote my own based on my own pidjin operating system, though = it booted using a UNIX boot block and filesystem. Among other things I did, having detested the C shell syntax, was add = many features (notably job control and the TCSH-style command line = editing) to /bin/sh. (KSH hadn=E2=80=99t escaped the labs yet). = Amusingly, since I sat down at a UNIX conference and explained to some = guys working on some of the open source shells how job control actually = worked, my name showed up in many of the Linux manual set as a = contributor. Those were really the glory days. Mike=E2=80=99s standard answer to = any computer problem at the labs was =E2=80=9CLet=E2=80=99s put UNIX on = it=E2=80=9D and we usually did. I then went off to spend several years as a University administrator = (Rutgers) and then got sucked into a startup Image Processing company = where I remained for 21 years only randomly dabbling in UNIX. Though = several years in I was using a MIPS workstation. Of course, I was = using /bin/sh and absent mindedly typed =E2=80=9Cfg.=E2=80=9D It came = back and said =E2=80=9CJob control not enabled.=E2=80=9D That was = odd, I thought. It sounds like something I wrote. I typed =E2=80=9Cset= -J=E2=80=9D and it said =E2=80=9CJob control enabled.=E2=80=9D Holy = crap, this is one of my shells. I later found that Doug Gwyn had put = my shell on his SYSV-on-BSD emulation package tape. The mach guys = included the shell from that in all their distributions, so any = mach-derived system had a =E2=80=9Cron shell=E2=80=9D on it.