[TUHS] Unix v6 File System information

[clemc@ccc.com (Clem Cole)]

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It has not been updated since about 10.5 so I'm not surprised.

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 3:45 PM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've tried to use ancientfs, but couldn't get it to work. Other fuse FSes,
> yes, ancientfs, no.
>
>
> On 2/21/16 1:31 PM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>
>> Already been done: see http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/
>>
>> Arnold
>>
>> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>> ​Will Senn asked
>>>
>>> Supposing I created a byte faithful representation of a V6 filesystem
>>>>
>>>   > on my mac, would I then be able to load the file in simh as an RK05
>>> and
>>>
>>>>   > mount and access its files and directories from a V6 instance?
>>>>
>>>> ​Not 100% sure how to parse this... but that is exactly how simh (and
>>> Ersatz11)​
>>>
>>> ​ work.
>>> You have a UNIX file on your mac and at the simh interactive command
>>> system, you "attach" it as the data for the simulated RK05.
>>> ​But it's a manual process to do the attachment AND more importantly,
>>> since Mac OSx just sees it as bits, as a minimum you need to write tools
>>> to
>>> push/pull V6 "files" from the image.  This is the same as the "DOS Tools"
>>> trick you see in a lot of UNIX systems that know how to "grok" DOS/FAT
>>> file
>>> system images.   You would need to do the same thing.  If you poke around
>>> the Warren's TUHS archives, you might find some of this already there.
>>>
>>> ​What many of us do it attach a file as a virtual disk but instead of
>>> using
>>> a UNIX file system format, use it is a tape image.   Then use tar/cpio or
>>> whatever if you already a tool on both sides that can interpret the bits.
>>> Hence, the v6tar discussion of a few weeks ago.   The UNIX ar(1) format
>>> is
>>> sometimes used also, since it was common.   cpio -c also works, but that
>>> was not on the research systems.​   My old room mate, Tom Quarles, wrote
>>> a
>>> really good ANSI tape reader/writer for BSD UNIX.  That should back port
>>> to
>>> v6 with a little work, particularly if you the "typesetter C" compiler
>>> for
>>> V6 which supported enough of the V7 C.   The advantage of the ANSI tape
>>> format is that its common with the DEC systems as well as UNIX.
>>>
>>>
>>> That said, you can be smarter and more automatic.   As Noel says Ersatz11
>>> supports a virtual shared disk (the same way VMware and Parallels) do.
>>> Writing such a device for simh would be cool and in fact useful for many
>>> different emulators.  Warning there are a lot of dragons hidden with
>>> such a
>>> shared FS.   At is definitely doable, but is going to take some work.
>>>
>>> The other thing you could do that might be a little less work, but would
>>> be
>>> Mac specific, is Mac OSX has the FUSE file system emulation that stuff
>>> that
>>> Google released.  If hacked up support for the old Unix FS, you could
>>> mount
>>> the V6 "disk" image as Mac OSx disk and see the bits with normal tools.
>>> I've thought about doing this but I have never had the time.  If I ever
>>> became a serious user of the simh, I would probably want something more
>>> like this.
>>>
>>> Clem
>>>
>>
>
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