[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Joerg Schilling

    > He is a person with a strong ego and this may have helped to spread
    > Linux.

Well, I wasn't there, and I don't know much about the early Linux versus
UNIX-derivative contest, but from personal experience in a similar contest
(the TCP/IP versus ISO stack), I doubt such personal attributes had _that_
much weight in deciding the winner.

The maximum might have been that it enabled him to keep the Linux kernel
project unified and heading in one direction. Not inconsiderable, perhaps, if
there's confusion on the other side.,,

So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who
were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
history? If not, there should be.)

It seems to me that they key battleground must have been the IMB PC-compatible
world - Linux is where it is now because of its success there. So why did
Linux succeed there?

Was is that it was open-source, and the competitor(s) all had licensing
issues? (I'm not saying they did, I just don't know.) Was it that Linux worked
better on that platform? (Again, don't know, only asking.)  Perhaps there was
an early stage where it was the only good option for that platform, and that's
how it got going?  Was is that there were too many Unix-derived alternatives,
so there was no clarity as to what the alternatives were?

Some combination of all of the above (perhaps with different ones playing a key
role at different points in time)?

     Noel

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote:
 |So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who
 |were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
 |derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
 |history? If not, there should be.)

Likely this can at least in parts be explained with human
behaviour and social movement.  It was new, it was fresh, the
early postings of Linus Torvalds give a clear impression that he
wants to get out and rise and get this thing done.  His thing was
completely baggage-free (means something, just listen [1]) and
everybody was welcome to take part and make this something
one can be prowd of.  Or nearby that.
And it has grown a very, very large codebase.  Just yesterday:

  ?0[steffen at wales ]$ sysctl hw.ncpu
  sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/hw/ncpu: No such file or directory

Then again i wildly guess and find this is to be a GNU problem.
And: you don't have to write a good documentation, or any at all.
I will _never_ forget once i came from SUSE, then RedHat and
Halloween Linux to FreeBSD the first time, with all that grown
infrastructure, also that in /usr/share/doc and /usr/share/misc,
that was nothing but an enlightenment to me.  Plan9 i didn't know
at all until three or so years ago, there you also have nice
documentation (and if you include doc.cat-v.org).

You are a student, you have no girl friend, you don't have much
money, saturday nights are long and boring, and there you can get
something really great going, can be creative and get some
self-fulfilment, and communicate with others all over the world
which all pull together.  That is pretty cool -- and the result
really was, too, even before IBM and such spent billions of
dollars to improve it even further.  About, i don't know, 16 or so
years later?, Linux is still free software, and it has not be torn
in pieces due to all the interests: i think that really is a great
achievement, and likely that the person Linus Torvalds is not
innocent at it.

  [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45OhGdzcEFk

--steffen

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Michael Kjörling]

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On 21 Feb 2017 13:24 +0100, from steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso):
> And it has grown a very, very large codebase.  Just yesterday:
> 
>   ?0[steffen at wales ]$ sysctl hw.ncpu
>   sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/hw/ncpu: No such file or directory

Not sure what you meant to show by that...


> About, i don't know, 16 or so
> years later?, Linux is still free software, and

The Linux kernel was originally released in September 1991 (and was
Torvald's way of learning about the 80386). 0.12 was the first GPL'd
version, released in February 1992; and 1.0 was released in March
1994. So we are just about 23 years past Linux kernel 1.0.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
                 “People who think they know everything really annoy
                 those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:02 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

> So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who
> were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
> derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
> history? If not, there should be.)
>


​I​'ve thought and written a bit about this question a bit [
Would it be possible/advantageous to rewrite the Linux kernel in Rust when
the language is stable?
<https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-possible-advantageous-to-rewrite-the-Linux-kernel-in-Rust-when-the-language-is-stable>
 &
 Why did Unix succeed and not Multics
<https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Unix-succeed-and-not-Multics> ] ​
​
and I'll not repeat all of here but
​as one of the people that did switch from 386BSD to linux at the time, the
reason for me was purely because of the AT&T/BSDi case.    You are right, I
wanted a "free" (i.e. very inexpensive) UNIX for the 386 and the "big
guns"​ were not going to give it.   I thought we had it the 386 port BSD
which I had helped in a small way to create.

​But I like, most hackers of the day, misunderstood incorrectly​ the case
to be about *trade secret *and the all based around the 1956 consent
decree, IBM vs AT&T; telephones and the computers. I was worried AT&T would
win because it was going to hard to cleaim that that the BSD code was not a
derivative work of the AT&T *copyright code base *(not understanding the *trade
secret*  and the  *copyright* difference mattered).

So...I switched to Linux *not because I thought it was "better"* - in fact,
I b*tched (and still do) about many gratuitous differences, but as I knew
that we needed something for "consumer" HW (which was bring driven by the
WINTEL economics), and I was willing to use the "lessor" technology (Linux)
because it was "good enough" and gave me what I needed (UNIX on a PC/386).
I thought (incorrectly) somehow original Linux's European authorship was
going to protect me and my fellow hackers ever though it was not as good as
my beloved BSD system.

Simple put - using Christiansen's theories:  Linux "won" because:

   - it was "good enough",
   - had a lot of people behind it that valued that was there and invested
   in making it "better", and
   - the economics of the platform (PC/386 - WINTEL etc) was on the fastest
   grow curve [and its Christiansen's economic disruption was displacing the
   Mini & Workstation].


BTW: at the time, I argued with the Roger Gourd and the OSF folks, that if
they released (sold) the OSF/1 RI uK which had not AT&T technology in it
(again thinking Copyright not Trade Secret); I was suggesting $100/copy
there was a market for it.  I just could not get them interested.

Sun has done the RoadRunner and had their 386 port of Solaris; but again.
All the "UNIX" folks were still interested in pushing out "iron" so were
blind to the WINTEL economic disruption.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda .... sigh

Clem
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Dan Cross]

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On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:02 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others
>> who
>> were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
>> derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
>> history? If not, there should be.)
>>
>
> ​I​'ve thought and written a bit about this question a bit [
> Would it be possible/advantageous to rewrite the Linux kernel in Rust when
> the language is stable?
> <https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-possible-advantageous-to-rewrite-the-Linux-kernel-in-Rust-when-the-language-is-stable>
>  &
>  Why did Unix succeed and not Multics
> <https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Unix-succeed-and-not-Multics> ] ​
> ​
> and I'll not repeat all of here but
> ​as one of the people that did switch from 386BSD to linux at the time,
> the reason for me was purely because of the AT&T/BSDi case.    You are
> right, I wanted a "free" (i.e. very inexpensive) UNIX for the 386 and the
> "big guns"​ were not going to give it.   I thought we had it the 386 port
> BSD which I had helped in a small way to create.
>
> ​But I like, most hackers of the day, misunderstood incorrectly​ the case
> to be about *trade secret *and the all based around the 1956 consent
> decree, IBM vs AT&T; telephones and the computers. I was worried AT&T
> would win because it was going to hard to cleaim that that the BSD code was
> not a derivative work of the AT&T *copyright code base *(not
> understanding the *trade secret*  and the  *copyright* difference
> mattered).
>
> So...I switched to Linux *not because I thought it was "better"* - in
> fact, I b*tched (and still do) about many gratuitous differences, but as I
> knew that we needed something for "consumer" HW (which was bring driven by
> the WINTEL economics), and I was willing to use the "lessor" technology
> (Linux) because it was "good enough" and gave me what I needed (UNIX on a
> PC/386).  I thought (incorrectly) somehow original Linux's European
> authorship was going to protect me and my fellow hackers ever though it was
> not as good as my beloved BSD system.
>
> Simple put - using Christiansen's theories:  Linux "won" because:
>
>    - it was "good enough",
>    - had a lot of people behind it that valued that was there and
>    invested in making it "better", and
>    - the economics of the platform (PC/386 - WINTEL etc) was on the
>    fastest grow curve [and its Christiansen's economic disruption was
>    displacing the Mini & Workstation].
>
>
> BTW: at the time, I argued with the Roger Gourd and the OSF folks, that if
> they released (sold) the OSF/1 RI uK which had not AT&T technology in it
> (again thinking Copyright not Trade Secret); I was suggesting $100/copy
> there was a market for it.  I just could not get them interested.
>
> Sun has done the RoadRunner and had their 386 port of Solaris; but again.
> All the "UNIX" folks were still interested in pushing out "iron" so were
> blind to the WINTEL economic disruption.
>
> Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda .... sigh
>

If I may, I think there was an additional thing at play: Linux was
essentially Unix.

Linux "won" because people wanted low-cost or free (as in gratis) Unix with
source that could run on modest commodity hardware, and Unix wasn't
available at a price point that was reasonable for most individuals
(certainly not with source). The people working on successor systems
weren't trying to reinvent Unix: they were working on new systems that
weren't Unix, but that's not what people wanted: Unix was good enough and
people were familiar and comfortable with it and that's what they wanted.
So Linux comes along and it's basically a "simplest possible solution"
Unix, freely available, runs on a PC, comes with source, and wasn't mired
in a lawsuit brought by a major US company. It was the right thing in the
right place at the right time.

I think there's a network effect that blinds a lot of folks to this
reality. Most of the folks on this list had access to Unix source and, with
no disrespect intended, it's easy to lose sight of what a big deal that
was. But unless you were in a position to already have access to it, it was
remarkably difficult to come by. Linux filled a gap that a lot of people
were looking to have filled.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Steve Nickolas]

On Tue, 21 Feb 2017, Dan Cross wrote:

> If I may, I think there was an additional thing at play: Linux was
> essentially Unix.
>
> Linux "won" because people wanted low-cost or free (as in gratis) Unix with
> source that could run on modest commodity hardware, and Unix wasn't
> available at a price point that was reasonable for most individuals
> (certainly not with source). The people working on successor systems
> weren't trying to reinvent Unix: they were working on new systems that
> weren't Unix, but that's not what people wanted: Unix was good enough and
> people were familiar and comfortable with it and that's what they wanted.
> So Linux comes along and it's basically a "simplest possible solution"
> Unix, freely available, runs on a PC, comes with source, and wasn't mired
> in a lawsuit brought by a major US company. It was the right thing in the
> right place at the right time.
>
> I think there's a network effect that blinds a lot of folks to this
> reality. Most of the folks on this list had access to Unix source and, with
> no disrespect intended, it's easy to lose sight of what a big deal that
> was. But unless you were in a position to already have access to it, it was
> remarkably difficult to come by. Linux filled a gap that a lot of people
> were looking to have filled.
>
>        - Dan C.
>

I started screwing around with Linux in the late 90s, and it would be many 
years before any sort of real Unix (of the AT&T variety), in any form, was 
readily available to me - that being Solaris when Sun started offering it 
for free download.

-uso.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:50 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> If I may, I think there was an additional thing at play: Linux was
> essentially Unix.
>
​But that is of course my point.   Linux is (was) UNIX, AND ...  "UNIX" as
a free UNIX *was *available at the time.​



>
> Linux "won" because people wanted low-cost or free (as in gratis) Unix
> with source that could run on modest commodity hardware, and Unix wasn't
> available at a price point that was reasonable for most individuals
> (certainly not with source).
>
​Indeed - that was 386BSD.​   At first anyone with a source license (which
was just about anyone at University - so that means students like Linus
BTW), and most commercial places had access to the BSD license.  The ftp
site for download 'Jolix' as some one called it earlier today was pretty
much the worst kept secret on the Internet.   All you had to do is ask, and
you could find it and once NET/2 was released, and then FreeBSD, NetBSD et
al came to be it was all over.

They key was in the case of 386BSD, you want to ask for it (and
officially needed a license to ask), but long before Linux shows up there
were >>freely<< available PC/UNIX systems.

And you point, which is 100% in agreement with my own is that under the
rules of Christiansen disruption, a PC/386 based UNIX that was "cheap
enough" was going to win.

The question Noel asked was why did *this flavor *of UNIX win over the
others since there were other choices.   That is what I tried to answer.
As Larry and I both pointed out, if the BSDi/AT&T suit had not occurred the
"hackers" which Larry described very well in his document, were going to
find something.   386BSD was that place.   Then it got clouded in legal
nonsense and lot of us fled.

Larry suggest there were other reasons.  He and many others think the GPL/2
vs the BSD license was important.  I really don't think so.  But that's
less of an argument.   The key is that the BSD version was cloud in legal
issues (and as Larry pointed out some strong personalities).


​...
>  So Linux comes along and it's basically a "simplest possible solution"
> Unix, freely available, runs on a PC, comes with source, and wasn't mired
> in a lawsuit brought by a major US company. It was the right thing in the
> right place at the right time.
>

​Exactly ... ​
Linux arrive at the right time, free of the *perceived* legal issues.  The
sad truth is that if AT&T had won, technically Linux would have had to be
removed from the market in the US and NATO countries.   I'll not try to
speculate what would have happened then other than to say the not only was
cow out of the barn, th
​e​
barn had caught fire so there was not place to put it back.




>
> I think there's a network effect that blinds a lot of folks to this
> reality. Most of the folks on this list had access to Unix source and, with
> no disrespect intended, it's easy to lose sight of what a big deal that
> was. But unless you were in a position to already have access to it, it was
> remarkably difficult to come by.
>
​Actually, I always found that a strange statement.  I hear you and no
disrespect intended, but  I fear that people that make that claim just did
not know where to look.  It was ignorance (not stupidity mind you) - just
lack of knowledge that is was available.

I'm going to ask Dan, were you not at an university at time?  Most schools
in the US and Europe had BSD licenses.  If you working, I can understand it
somewhat.   Many people's first UNIX experience was on a Sun Workstation so
those folks did not have UNIX source licenses.   But if you were at a
either a University or commercial enterprise with a AT&T and BSD license,
 All it took was making sure you university had one and sending and email
to the UCB folks (which many of us on this list were some of the folks that
might have read it).​ They reply (I if I got searching through old email I
might even have a copy of some where) basically was the url of the blind
ftp address to pull the iso off the ucb ftp site.  It was incredibly easy
to get but you did have to have ftp access (and know the magic path - which
if you asked was easy to get).   Even with the first ISO, at one point, I
seem to remember the bazillion *BSD floppies showed up on the one of the
netnews channels and clogging up the dial-up links for a few days.

The point was if you were at all in the community, it was pretty easy to
find the BSD code.

Which brings me to my point... many developers abandoned it - and most of
them certainly know how to get it.  They why I think the incorrect belief
that legal entanglement (miss guided as it turned out) where not there with
Linux.

By the time the legal case was settled, the developed had "completed
enough" of what was missing in Linux from *BSD that many folks never went
back.   And the newbie never knew any better.




> Linux filled a gap that a lot of people were looking to have filled.
>
​Agreed..​ but that gap would not have been there if the AT&T legal case
had not clouded it all.   Imagine that if the case had no occurred, the
hackers were already working with *BSD.

So then the question comes which Larry raises, was the UNIX personalities
and/or the licensing what would have caused Linux to rise.

I don't think so, because BSD had too much of a lead - already had
networking, windowing, and in fact had a "better" installer on a PC/386.
The first stuff "distro" that was at all reasonably easy t install was a PC
was slackware and that was partly because they pulled a bunch of stuff from
the stuff Jordan had created.

But they problem was that FreeBSD et al was starting under a legal cloud, I
know I was worried.  I ran it on two of my systems, but was working on
Linux on another to hedge my bet.  I was not sure BSDi/UCB would win, so I
started helping make Linux work better too.

Clem
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Dan Cross]

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On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 10:11 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> [snip: I think we're mostly in agreement here, Clem]
>
>> I think there's a network effect that blinds a lot of folks to this
>> reality. Most of the folks on this list had access to Unix source and, with
>> no disrespect intended, it's easy to lose sight of what a big deal that
>> was. But unless you were in a position to already have access to it, it was
>> remarkably difficult to come by.
>>
> ​Actually, I always found that a strange statement.  I hear you and no
> disrespect intended, but  I fear that people that make that claim just
> did not know where to look.  It was ignorance (not stupidity mind you) -
> just lack of knowledge that is was available.
>
> I'm going to ask Dan, were you not at an university at time?  Most schools
> in the US and Europe had BSD licenses.  If you working, I can understand it
> somewhat.   Many people's first UNIX experience was on a Sun Workstation so
> those folks did not have UNIX source licenses.   But if you were at a
> either a University or commercial enterprise with a AT&T and BSD license,
>  All it took was making sure you university had one and sending and email
> to the UCB folks (which many of us on this list were some of the folks that
> might have read it).​ They reply (I if I got searching through old email I
> might even have a copy of some where) basically was the url of the blind
> ftp address to pull the iso off the ucb ftp site.  It was incredibly easy
> to get but you did have to have ftp access (and know the magic path - which
> if you asked was easy to get).   Even with the first ISO, at one point, I
> seem to remember the bazillion *BSD floppies showed up on the one of the
> netnews channels and clogging up the dial-up links for a few days.
>

So I was in high school, but I was affiliated with a major university (one
that, yes, did have a Unix source license) because I held a part-time
sysadmin job. For the curious, it was Penn State University; not a huge CS
powerhouse like, say, MIT or CMU, but it held it's own as a large research
university (they have, for instance, hands-down the best Acoustics
department in the world. Also, while it may seem quaint, they hands-down
have the best agriculture department in the world: kind of important for
that whole food thing. :-)). I didn't go there as a student, but lived in
the town during high school and cut my teeth on their computers.

I can say from first-hand experience that it was NOT easy to get access to
Unix source code there. The cadre of university system administrators that
formed something of a cabal did not hand it out lightly, and it took
significant time to gain the sort of trust that would result in you getting
access to it. I strongly suspect that if a random CS student had written to
UCB asking for access to the BSD source code, and that had gotten back to
the aforementioned cabal, it would not have gone well for the student. Lots
of intrusive questions would have been asked; angry letters written and
placed into files. Uncomfortable meetings with academic advisors and the
university computer security officer would have taken place. Questions of
academic malfeasance or expulsion may have come up, etc.

Was any of that justified? No, not really. I suspect much of it came from
an outsized sense of trying to protect the university from potential
litigation should a poorly-secured student machine on the dorm network be
compromised with AT&T proprietary material/trade secrets on it, etc. As
became clear a few years ago, perhaps that energy should have been spent
looking into the school's football program, but of course the local
sysadmins had nothing to do with that. Anyway, for what it's worth, as a
student/low-level staff in the early- to mid- 90s? No, you weren't going to
get access to Unix code using the site license -- even from Berkeley --
unless you were on a first-name basis with a number of folks in the local
computing community. And that wasn't going to happen for the majority of
students for logistical reasons if nothing else.

The point was if you were at all in the community, it was pretty easy to
> find the BSD code.
>

Please see above. It may have been easy, but that didn't mean there
wouldn't be consequences due to misunderstandings or what have you.

Which brings me to my point... many developers abandoned it - and most of
> them certainly know how to get it.  They why I think the incorrect belief
> that legal entanglement (miss guided as it turned out) where not there with
> Linux.
>
> By the time the legal case was settled, the developed had "completed
> enough" of what was missing in Linux from *BSD that many folks never went
> back.   And the newbie never knew any better.
>

The point I was trying to make was that the newbie didn't know any better
but didn't want anything else, even if s/he did know any better. Plan 9 was
available after 2000 gratis, but by then no one wanted it (more's the pity,
IMHO). If I think about the systems that were interesting in the research
sphere in the late 80s early 90s, they were V, Chorus, Minix and Xinu for
education, Mach, NeXTSTEP, etc: again, no one really wanted them. They
wanted Unix a la SunOS 4/System V instead. As you noted, BSD's future
looked dubious, so they got Linux instead: it was the next closest thing
that didn't look like it might result in a trench-coated G-man breaking
down your door.

Linux filled a gap that a lot of people were looking to have filled.
>>
> ​Agreed..​ but that gap would not have been there if the AT&T legal case
> had not clouded it all.   Imagine that if the case had no occurred, the
> hackers were already working with *BSD.
>
> So then the question comes which Larry raises, was the UNIX personalities
> and/or the licensing what would have caused Linux to rise.
>
> I don't think so, because BSD had too much of a lead - already had
> networking, windowing, and in fact had a "better" installer on a PC/386.
> The first stuff "distro" that was at all reasonably easy t install was a PC
> was slackware and that was partly because they pulled a bunch of stuff from
> the stuff Jordan had created.
>
> But they problem was that FreeBSD et al was starting under a legal cloud,
> I know I was worried.  I ran it on two of my systems, but was working on
> Linux on another to hedge my bet.  I was not sure BSDi/UCB would win, so I
> started helping make Linux work better too.
>

I think you are absolutely right. It's kind of sad, in a way. Oh well.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 11:07:20PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> I can say from first-hand experience that it was NOT easy to get access to
> Unix source code there. The cadre of university system administrators that
> formed something of a cabal did not hand it out lightly, and it took
> significant time to gain the sort of trust that would result in you getting
> access to it. I strongly suspect that if a random CS student had written to
> UCB asking for access to the BSD source code, and that had gotten back to
> the aforementioned cabal, it would not have gone well for the student. Lots
> of intrusive questions would have been asked; angry letters written and
> placed into files. Uncomfortable meetings with academic advisors and the
> university computer security officer would have taken place. Questions of
> academic malfeasance or expulsion may have come up, etc.

My experience at UWisc-Madison, during the time they were working on
4.3-Uwisc, matches Dan's pretty well.  Yup, source was there.  Access
was restricted, you had to get a login on slovax, and you had to be
"somebody" to get that login.  I don't remember how I got access, 
I just knew I wanted it.  So I probably just begged and eventually
one of the admins took pity on me?  Dunno.

I don't think it was like what Clem says for most people.  Clem went
to CMU if I remember correctly, that puts him in a pretty elite class
right there.  I can easily imagine that the CMU CS department let all
their students have access to the source if they wanted it.  I don't
think that was anywhere near as common as Clem thinks it was.  My guess
is that Clem interacted with a bunch of people who were his peers (aka
pretty elite people) and all those guys had source access.  Us unwashed
masses had to work a lot harder to get it.

Once 386BSD came out, yeah, source was easy.  Not before.

Even when I was at Sun the historic source was there, v7, 32v, etc., but
you had to get past Shannon to get at it.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Nemo]

On 21 February 2017 at 23:17, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote (in part):
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 11:07:20PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote (in part):
>> I can say from first-hand experience that it was NOT easy to get access to
>> Unix source code there.
>
> My experience at UWisc-Madison, during the time they were working on
> 4.3-Uwisc, matches Dan's pretty well.
>
> I don't think it was like what Clem says for most people.  Clem went
> to CMU if I remember correctly, that puts him in a pretty elite class
> right there.  I can easily imagine that the CMU CS department let all
> their students have access to the source if they wanted it.  I don't
> think that was anywhere near as common as Clem thinks it was.

Agreement here.  I was a grad student at Toronto but in math, not CS.
Outside CS were the hoi-poli.  (But there was a lively MINIX
community, especially in biomed.)

N.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

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On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was a grad student at Toronto but in math, not C


​I hear you and accept that was your experience, but I do find that it is
interesting, that one of the most  infamous and notorious UNIX hackers of
all time is Henry Spenser of the UT Zoology Dept - not Math, not CS or EE.
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Nemo]

On 23 February 2017 at 11:00, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I was a grad student at Toronto but in math, not C
>
>
> I hear you and accept that was your experience, but I do find that it is
> interesting, that one of the most  infamous and notorious UNIX hackers of
> all time is Henry Spenser of the UT Zoology Dept - not Math, not CS or EE.

Sure -- this is real irony (and a missed opportunity).  I walked past
Zoo almost daily ignorant of Henry's existence.  (Had I known, I would
have gladly stopped in to talk.) The point is that though we had Sun
kit in the math dep't, we were not part of the UNIX "in crowd".

N.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Thu, 23 Feb 2017, Clem Cole wrote:

> I hear you and accept that was your experience, but I do find that it is 
> interesting, that one of the most  infamous and notorious UNIX hackers 
> of all time is Henry Spenser of the UT Zoology Dept - not Math, not CS 
> or EE.

Spencer, not Spenser; I actually met him when he visited Australia, and 
he's about the most unassuming guy you will ever meet.

His email address was something like *vax!utzoo!henry.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

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On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 5:02 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> Spencer, not Spenser;
>
​sorry and yes that is correct - dyslexia-r-me -- I'll often not notice the
error. until you point it out.




> I actually met him when he visited Australia, and
> he's about the most unassuming guy you will ever meet.
>

​Indeed - ​I've know him for years.  He's an old USENIX type (like me).

Clem
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Thu, 23 Feb 2017, Clem Cole wrote:

> > I actually met [Henry Spencer] when he visited Australia, and he's 
> > about the most unassuming guy you will ever meet.
> 
> ​Indeed - ​I've know him for years.  He's an old USENIX type (like me).

Yep; his USENET fame did not go to his head.  And if my failing memory 
serves me correctly, he wrote C-News in conjunction with Geoff Collier, as 
B-News was starting to show its age and limitations.  All of which of 
course got blown away when NNTP arrived...

There was an infamous USENET forgery of him, complete with his style and 
diction, and Henry actually congratulated the forger!

Sigh; those were the days...  Now everything is based upon instant 
gratification by the kiddie brigade (overnight batch jobs on ye olde 
360/50, anyone?).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Jason Stevens]

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And thanks to Henry we have those Usenet tapes!  It's amazing that a decade of Usenet is about 7GB.

On February 24, 2017 12:00:47 AM GMT+08:00, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
>On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Nemo < cym224 at gmail.com
><mailto:cym224 at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
>
>I was a grad student at Toronto but in math, not C
>
>
>​I hear you and accept that was your experience, but I do find that it
>is interesting, that one of the most  infamous and notorious UNIX
>hackers of all time is Henry Spenser of the UT Zoology Dept - not Math,
>not CS or EE.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[jsteve]

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I always hear that universities had access, but it wasn’t undergrads in 1000 level classes that arrived.  Asking for that kind of thing was either greeted with laughs, or should shrugging.  Access to anything like that was for either graduate students or people ‘in the click’ and people just arriving were neither.

Just like the partitioning code that was apparently common, none of this stuff was available to anyone that simply didn’t know as there was no central clearing house of information.  And I gather the fear of AT&T meant it wasn’t anything anyone was willing to share.  Not everyone got 20th generation photocopies of the Lions book, nor did they get access to anything other than what teachers were willing to let kids have access to.

Prior to Net/2 people were trying to hack milnet to find BSD source code.  And even when Net/2 was a thing I can tell you that in south Florida among hackers I knew that were my age, none of us had heard of it, or knew anything about it.  When people saw us kids swapping floppies, and lugging around our 386’s to do Linux install parties nobody ever once mentioned anything about having BSD source or anything.  It was a very much gated community, and new students were certainly not welcome.  In those regards it really is no surprise that Linux used nothing from places with ‘source licenses’ as nothing in that was available to actually look at.

Another thing that killed Net/2 was that second networking package for Linux, surprisingly called NET2 shared an incredibly similar name, and even in it’s readme:

	NOTE: In this document, ``NET-2'' does not refer to the Berkeley
	Software Distribution NET-2 release of BSD UNIX. Yes, the names
	are conflicting. In this FAQ, ``NET-2'' refers only to the new
	generation of TCP/IP code in the Linux kernel.

And I’m sure the lawyers were happy that way as us 1000 level kids didn’t care and would happily steal said source, and try to use it.  Even today I’m finding out about this CMU Mach+4.3BSD that was available in 1990, and I suspect there are other i386 based BSD’s that could have filled some kind of gap but either chose not to, or were at best public secrets.

Just as I’m sure if the non Portuguese world had heard of Tropix (http://www.tropix.nce.ufrj.br/) it too may have had a following.

Had AT&T won, there was no stopping Linux though.  It didn’t use anything from AT&T, and back then it was still based on a.out, and some people were looking at using COFF... After AT&T’s defeat did the whole ELF thing come, and then there was the lawsuits on API’s and headers.

If anything I’m more so surprised that the USSR with their stolen BSD didn’t push some kind of Soviet UNIX (DEMOS) into the west, to ride that whole ‘free’ software thing.  Or they were just too politically blind, and figured that westerns would be highly suspicious of Russians pushing stolen American tech.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Clem Cole
Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2017 11:27 AM
To: Dan Cross
Cc: TUHS main list; Noel Chiappa
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other


On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:50 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
If I may, I think there was an additional thing at play: Linux was essentially Unix.
​But that is of course my point.   Linux is (was) UNIX, AND ...  "UNIX" as a free UNIX was available at the time.​

 

Linux "won" because people wanted low-cost or free (as in gratis) Unix with source that could run on modest commodity hardware, and Unix wasn't available at a price point that was reasonable for most individuals (certainly not with source).
​Indeed - that was 386BSD.​   At first anyone with a source license (which was just about anyone at University - so that means students like Linus BTW), and most commercial places had access to the BSD license.  The ftp site for download 'Jolix' as some one called it earlier today was pretty much the worst kept secret on the Internet.   All you had to do is ask, and you could find it and once NET/2 was released, and then FreeBSD, NetBSD et al came to be it was all over.

They key was in the case of 386BSD, you want to ask for it (and officially needed a license to ask), but long before Linux shows up there were >>freely<< available PC/UNIX systems.

And you point, which is 100% in agreement with my own is that under the rules of Christiansen disruption, a PC/386 based UNIX that was "cheap enough" was going to win.

The question Noel asked was why did this flavor of UNIX win over the others since there were other choices.   That is what I tried to answer.   As Larry and I both pointed out, if the BSDi/AT&T suit had not occurred the "hackers" which Larry described very well in his document, were going to find something.   386BSD was that place.   Then it got clouded in legal nonsense and lot of us fled.

Larry suggest there were other reasons.  He and many others think the GPL/2 vs the BSD license was important.  I really don't think so.  But that's less of an argument.   The key is that the BSD version was cloud in legal issues (and as Larry pointed out some strong personalities).  


​... 
 So Linux comes along and it's basically a "simplest possible solution" Unix, freely available, runs on a PC, comes with source, and wasn't mired in a lawsuit brought by a major US company. It was the right thing in the right place at the right time.

​Exactly ... ​
Linux arrive at the right time, free of the perceived legal issues.  The sad truth is that if AT&T had won, technically Linux would have had to be removed from the market in the US and NATO countries.   I'll not try to speculate what would have happened then other than to say the not only was cow out of the barn, th
​e​
barn had caught fire so there was not place to put it back.


 

I think there's a network effect that blinds a lot of folks to this reality. Most of the folks on this list had access to Unix source and, with no disrespect intended, it's easy to lose sight of what a big deal that was. But unless you were in a position to already have access to it, it was remarkably difficult to come by. 
​Actually, I always found that a strange statement.  I hear you and no disrespect intended, but  I fear that people that make that claim just did not know where to look.  It was ignorance (not stupidity mind you) - just lack of knowledge that is was available.

I'm going to ask Dan, were you not at an university at time?  Most schools in the US and Europe had BSD licenses.  If you working, I can understand it somewhat.   Many people's first UNIX experience was on a Sun Workstation so those folks did not have UNIX source licenses.   But if you were at a either a University or commercial enterprise with a AT&T and BSD license,  All it took was making sure you university had one and sending and email to the UCB folks (which many of us on this list were some of the folks that might have read it).​ They reply (I if I got searching through old email I might even have a copy of some where) basically was the url of the blind ftp address to pull the iso off the ucb ftp site.  It was incredibly easy to get but you did have to have ftp access (and know the magic path - which if you asked was easy to get).   Even with the first ISO, at one point, I seem to remember the bazillion *BSD floppies showed up on the one of the netnews channels and clogging up the dial-up links for a few days.

The point was if you were at all in the community, it was pretty easy to find the BSD code.  

Which brings me to my point... many developers abandoned it - and most of them certainly know how to get it.  They why I think the incorrect belief that legal entanglement (miss guided as it turned out) where not there with Linux.

By the time the legal case was settled, the developed had "completed enough" of what was missing in Linux from *BSD that many folks never went back.   And the newbie never knew any better.  


 
Linux filled a gap that a lot of people were looking to have filled.
​Agreed..​ but that gap would not have been there if the AT&T legal case had not clouded it all.   Imagine that if the case had no occurred, the hackers were already working with *BSD.

So then the question comes which Larry raises, was the UNIX personalities and/or the licensing what would have caused Linux to rise.

I don't think so, because BSD had too much of a lead - already had networking, windowing, and in fact had a "better" installer on a PC/386.   The first stuff "distro" that was at all reasonably easy t install was a PC was slackware and that was partly because they pulled a bunch of stuff from the stuff Jordan had created.

But they problem was that FreeBSD et al was starting under a legal cloud, I know I was worried.  I ran it on two of my systems, but was working on Linux on another to hedge my bet.  I was not sure BSDi/UCB would win, so I started helping make Linux work better too.

Clem


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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Chet Ramey]

On 2/21/17 7:02 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who
> were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
> derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
> history? If not, there should be.)
> 
> It seems to me that they key battleground must have been the IMB PC-compatible
> world - Linux is where it is now because of its success there. So why did
> Linux succeed there?
> 
> Was is that it was open-source, and the competitor(s) all had licensing
> issues? (I'm not saying they did, I just don't know.) Was it that Linux worked
> better on that platform? (Again, don't know, only asking.)  Perhaps there was
> an early stage where it was the only good option for that platform, and that's
> how it got going?  Was is that there were too many Unix-derived alternatives,
> so there was no clarity as to what the alternatives were?

I was there at the time (bash was the first thing Linus ported to Linux)
and I have to say it was the combination of the availability, since the
BSDs were still encumbered, the accessibility, since its hardware demands
were very modest, and the FSF's enthusiastic porting of all the GNU apps
to it. It was the perfect student/starting system for the time.  You can
talk about lost opportunities, but it was the right system at the time,
and I say this as a BSD guy from way back.

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 07:02:18AM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who
> were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
> derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
> history? If not, there should be.)

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/srcos.html

is worth a read, I was very much in the middle of all this at the time.

I think Linux succeeded because:

    - it was free and GPLed.  BSD license is nice but it has the problem
      that people can take it closed source and not give back changes.

    - no lawsuit

    - Linus (as mentioned, much stronger leader than any in the Unix world)

    - no religion.  I can't make this point hard enough.  At Sun, we couldn't
      change any API, any utility, it was compat to the point that it was not
      useful.  Look at SVr4/Solaris /proc and then look at Linux /proc.  The
      Linux one is way, way, way, way more useful, you can dig shit out with
      shell scripts.  The rest of the Unix world was blindly posix compat
      even when posix compat made no sense.  Linux was glorious in that 
      Linus wanted compat but was willing to break it for good reasons.

    - good enough

    - fun, all the cool kids were there.

Here is perhaps something that will resonate with this crowd.  When I was
teaching OS at Stanford, for file systems I made people go through the
thought process on when you write what (think the sync writes so the FS
isn't busted when you crash).

For years, the BSD guys insisted that Linux was doing it wrong because
they didn't do the sync writes, they did ordered writes (but the BSD
guys didn't understand the write ordering so they thought it was busted,
as did I).  

But Linux wasn't busted, they had carefully gone through the process
of figuring out when stuff had to be first so that you could survive
a crash.

The BSD guys refused to believe that it was possible, they were stuck
on writes had to be synchronous in order to get a file system that 
wasn't corrupted on a crash.

I eventually started convincing them that Linux had it right by saying
just untar some big tarball and unplug the power in the middle of that
on a system with UFS and a system with ext2.  Tell me what happens when
you power it up.  Answer?  The UFS based system dropped you into a fsck
nightmare of unattached inodes, the ext2 based systems lost some data
but the file system was fine.

Obviously, the Linux approach won, it's better.  Way better, higher 
performance and a much better user experience.  But the traditional
Unix guys had to be dragged kicking and screaming, over a decade, 
into that world.  It's stuff like that that made Unix stagnate while
Linux forged ahead.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

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comments below, before I start, I will say - "hear, hear" - I agree with
Larry on this way more than I disagree.

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 11:47 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/srcos.html
>
> is worth a read,

​Indeed - I agreed then and still do.​  I was trying to do the same thing
at OSF.   But we were working the same ideas.




> I was very much in the middle of all this at the time.
>
Indeed, I can verify that ;-)​




>
> I think Linux succeeded because:
>
>     - it was free

​I agree...​




> and GPLed.  BSD license is nice but it has the problem
>       that people can take it closed source and not give back changes.
>
​This is where we disagree and probably always have on this point, but
that's topic for a beer sometime which I definitely want to have!
​

>
>     - no lawsuit
>
​100% agree, to be that was the most important point after the
acquisition cost.
​

>
>     - Linus (as mentioned, much stronger leader than any in the Unix world)
>
​Mumble - maybe.   Like you, I've know the players.  Linus' ego is​ not
better or worse than any of the rest of them, although I admit some of the
UNIX players got really nasty.  Sadly, the old "he who has the gold, rules"
game held true [a dragon's curse maybe].  The best I ever saw were folks
that never really wanted it.  Dennis and Vic (as Doug said), were quiet
leaders.   Linus was better at the beginning, but he really did not listen
well either.   There was a lot of reinventing going on, with little true
advantage other than said person was able to say they did it.

For instance, I personally don't think ext[234] are much better that
BFFS/UFS[12], certainly compared to MegaSafe (aka AdvFS) or XFS.   But Ted
got to write his own, which was cool for a young guy at the time.  To me,
it would have made a lot more sense because BSD was freely licensed to just
grab the BFFS to replace Minux FS and run with it.

But Linus was not that type of leader,  I also think he is a very smart
guy, but was blind to a lot of the things on outside of his world.  He
admits he did not know about 386BSD when he started.

That said, Linus got along with enough folks at it worked.   If, Linus has
had say, Theo's or some of other personalities of the day, maybe he would
have ticked off more people early on and you might be right.   So
personally >>helped<< here but I don't think it was as important as being
at the right place, when the law suit came about a lot of scared hackers
like me looking for an alternative for the 386.




>
>     - no religion.  I can't make this point hard enough.

​I'ld change that a little.  It started with less religion, it now is as
contentions, if not worse than the UNIX Wars of the day.   The difference
is when is started it did not have the economic impact of the "big UNIX/big
Iron" so it was irgnored.   That's Christiansen disruption -- a worse
technology is ignored by the big guys.​




> ​      ​
> At Sun, we couldn't
>       change any API, any utility, it was compat to the point that it was
> not
>       useful.

​I get it and I will grant this to a point.​



> ​      ​
> Look at SVr4/Solaris /proc and then look at Linux /proc.  The
>       Linux one is way, way, way, way more useful, you can dig shit out
> with
>       shell scripts.  The rest of the Unix world was blindly posix compat
>       even when posix compat made no sense.  Linux was glorious in that
>       Linus wanted compat but was willing to break it for good reasons.
>
​Yep, a clean sheet can help when you are lucky enough to be able to ignore
the past.  But Linux got started and it's toe hold because it did not
ignore the past.  It was the POSIX nature that allowed us to consider it.
What you are saying is that UNIX dogma, got in the way.  Again, we let
traditional "Harvard Business School -H-BS" thinking set up sustaining
thinking, and could not see it was killing the golden goose.​




>
>     - good enough
>
​Amen brother... I really think this is the key point.   It was good
enough, and worked on a the WINTEL economic disruption.   Yup is was not
"as good" but it was good enough, and with *BSD
being tainted by the USL/BSDi legal actions, folks like you, me and folks
on this list not only said " we can fix that", that did it and filled in
what was missing.

​

>
>     - fun, all the cool kids were there.

​All amend that to say, many of the cool kids ran over there because the
pool was not being "peed in" by all the other messes we just discussed.

Anyway - as I said, I agree way more than I disagree.
Well said Larry!!
Clem
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[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 01:58:40PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> For instance, I personally don't think ext[234] are much better that
> BFFS/UFS[12], certainly compared to MegaSafe (aka AdvFS) or XFS.   

So I was also at SGI, I know the whole XFS (and XLV) team, and I know
the code pretty well, I plugged it into NFS so that NFS could use
all that bandwidth:

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/talks/bds.pdf

In terms of crash worthyness, ext2 was better.  I think the ext2 people
took the approach that they wanted to be as robust as dos but with 
performance.  And they made it, it's some very nice work.

> got to write his own, which was cool for a young guy at the time.  To me,
> it would have made a lot more sense because BSD was freely licensed to just
> grab the BFFS to replace Minux FS and run with it.

Nope.  And I sort of made my name working on FFS with srk, I'm a fan of
what FFS/UFS could do but ext2 went way way further.  And did so pretty
quickly, far more quickly than any of the Unix shops would have done,
they were more cautious.

The linux kids were like the young guys you got straight out of school
and told them to do the impossible.  Once in a while, they did.

> That said, Linus got along with enough folks at it worked.   

Sort of.  i think a far bigger deal was that he commanded respect,
there were lots of stories floating around like when people sent him
patches he knew the code well enough that an context diff was enough
context that he'd see a bug in the patch, edit the patch, and apply it.
I've seen him do that, he's a programmer's programmer.  Unlike a lot
of leaders who lead but when they have to get their hands dirty they 
are sort of wussy.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 2:21 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> In terms of crash worthyness, ext2 was better.  I think the ext2 people
> took the approach that they wanted to be as robust as dos but with
> performance.  And they made it, it's some very nice work.
>
​Fair enough - It never seems from the outside a much different and when I
was working with it, it was just enough different that all of the tools
(like BSD backup/restore) broke.​

Having personally worked on fsck v6/v7 at CMU and Kirk reimplementing it
with BSD, I had a fairly strong sense of "keep the tools" working.  I
actually hated SysV's FSDB, but could use it.   Kirk and Sam reimplemented
dump/restore but kept the "script" level interface pretty much as is.

So, here come linux and the only part of file kits that still works is part
of the user space stuff (ls, tar, cp).   But beyond that it is all
different.   Ted/Steve eventually did do a fsck-like thing for ext2 fairly
quickly, but nothing else - so that was part of my comment about
"gratuitous changes."  Why because by 1991 when linux comes into my house,
I have a set of other UNIX systems at home running and here it is I have to
have different tools for this new linux box.   grumble...



>
> Nope.  And I sort of made my name working on FFS with srk, I'm a fan of
> what FFS/UFS could do but ext2 went way way further.
>
​Fair enough...​




> And did so pretty
> quickly, far more quickly than any of the Unix shops would have done,
> they were more cautious.
>
​Agreed, although I always thought megasafe (advfs) was pretty cool and
have had fairly good experiences with XFS after SGI let it out to other
folks (still run it on my linux based NAS box truth known) .  As I said, my
main complaint against ext2 was when I first encountered it none of the BSD
FS tools worked and that ticked me off.



​

>
> The linux kids were like the young guys you got straight out of school
> and told them to do the impossible.  Once in a while, they did.
>
​Ok, I'll accept that.  ​

Clem
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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Steve Nickolas]

On Tue, 21 Feb 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:

> In terms of crash worthyness, ext2 was better.  I think the ext2 people
> took the approach that they wanted to be as robust as dos but with
> performance.  And they made it, it's some very nice work.

Wouldn't "as robust as DOS" be a *bad* thing?

-uso.

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 03:28:13PM -0500, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Feb 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> >In terms of crash worthyness, ext2 was better.  I think the ext2 people
> >took the approach that they wanted to be as robust as dos but with
> >performance.  And they made it, it's some very nice work.
> 
> Wouldn't "as robust as DOS" be a *bad* thing?

The DOS file system, while stupid, was very robust in the face of crashes
(sort of had to be, he says slyly).

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Wesley Parish]

Now that brings up another reason why I think Linux won. Most of the early Linux developers were 
educated partly in the MS/PC/DR DOS world. They wanted a Unix, but they had bought IBM PC clones 
with MS DOS and were familiar with the DOS way of doing things.

Linux's disk partitioning is very familiar to anyone who's familiar with the DOS way of disk partitioning. 
BSD's disk partitioning is a culture shock. (I know. I'd gotten used to the DOS way of doing things after 
learning about disk partitioning with my 486 and IBM OS/2 - the hard way. I tried Linux and the 
terminology was the same and due to a neat trick with the DOS filesystem I could experiment with it on 
an unchanged DOS system. I then tried FreeBSD and I didn't understand the terminology. So I stuck with 
what I'd learnt.)

FWLIW :)

Wesley Parish

Quoting Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>:

> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 03:28:13PM -0500, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Feb 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > 
> > >In terms of crash worthyness, ext2 was better. I think the ext2
> people
> > >took the approach that they wanted to be as robust as dos but with
> > >performance. And they made it, it's some very nice work.
> > 
> > Wouldn't "as robust as DOS" be a *bad* thing?
> 
> The DOS file system, while stupid, was very robust in the face of
> crashes
> (sort of had to be, he says slyly).
>  



"I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor,
Method for Guitar

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Clem Cole]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5143 bytes --]

​below... this one made me a laugh a little because it skipped a few steps
that knew (and was a part).​

Once again it was ignorance and little luck that brought us what we got,
not invention nor knowledge.

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 5:58 PM, Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
wrote:

> Now that brings up another reason why I think Linux won. Most of the early
> Linux developers were
> ​ ​
> educated partly in the MS/PC/DR DOS world. They wanted a Unix, but they
> had bought IBM PC clones
> ​ ​
> with MS DOS and were familiar with the DOS way of doing things.
>
​Sort of.... but be careful of a little history here.​




>
> Linux's disk partitioning is very familiar to anyone who's familiar with
> the DOS way of disk partitioning.
>
​Yes, because Linux was not not really enough of UNIX hacker to know that
UNIX partition scheme for PC's was open source and all the code to do it
was available to him.  He wrote his own.​  I remember when I first
encountered the Linux craziness and thinking something on the order of:
 "Why, why are they putting things in DOS partitions ... the BIOS ROMS are
a mess and are already broken... we fixed this already for UNIX on the
386!!!!"

In truth, most end users running real UNIX on a PC/386 were not trying to
dual boot DOS and UNIX, so other than being able to boot the system into
UNIX, they just wanted partitions to map an entire drive and properly load
the read OS (UNIX). So the UNIX scheme, of reserving the disk from the boot
rom, and getting those damned DOS roms out the way ASAP was a fine
solution.  And in the beginning of PC/UNIX that is all that was wanted and
what was there.





> BSD's disk partitioning is a culture shock.
>
The PC Disk partitioning scheme was developed by Intel and the code
released to the UNIX community.  It was the same code base for all 3 System
V ports (which were all done by Interactive Systems under contract for each
of Intel, IBM, and AT&T - one of the best bit of salesmanship Phil Shevrin
ever pulled off IMO -- they did one port and sold it three times).  It was
also used by the AIX/386 folks and eventually usd by Sun.   Part of the
original deal was a project CMU had done with both Intel and IBM for during
that time frame, and between Intel and IBM they got the CMU code made
available (as part of the Andrew project IIRC).   CMU would of course use
this bot/partition code for the Mach port, Jolitz for the BSD port, as well
as all the AT&T base versions.  In fact, it was because of CMU, that UNIX
partition type (type 63) was defined as Intel got Microsoft to add it to
the master database.

The history was something like this as I understand it.... Microsoft starts
to develop Xenix for the 286/68K/Z8000 and maybe one other processor I've
forgotten.  One of the original Xenix ports it to the PC/AT which is 286
based, which it is doing jointly with Intel as well as IBM.  CMU was
working with IBM in Andrew and some how got into that mix and is using
PC/AT as part of the Andrew project.   CMU guys want C tools, so they write
an fdisk/boot system for their stuff.   That migrates back to Intel which
migrates to back to Xenix and Microsoft.   They also made it to UCB as a
version of them is what Jolitz uses for 386BSD.

The question I always wonder was why Andy Tannenbaum did not use those
tools with Minix, but I'm guessing he was trying to do everything virgin
and clean.   Because Linus started with the Minix fdisk, the rest is
history.  Had Linus looked (or asked) the code was very available and he
might have used it too.

The point is that until Minux and Linux, it was actually kinda cool.  All
of the UNIX on a PC/386 platform used the made boot and disk scheme and
hard started with the same C source for boot and fdisk.






> I then tried FreeBSD and I didn't understand the terminology. So I stuck
> with
> what I'd learnt.)
>

That said, as disks kept getting bigger and bigger and the "big iron" folks
had better boot roms, folks like Sun, Masscomp, DEC et al, had much better
support for disk geometry.   The original UNIX on PC partition scheme had
some rough edges, particularly WRT linear addressed drives (such stated
with SCSI, but the PC morphed there also), so BSD took the current scheme
and re-did. Hence, one group PC/UNIX (BSD) folks started to trying to make
the PC boxes do the same things that the Workstations and Mini's could.

So the FreeBSD guys start to extend (sounds like folks from Redmond
eh...)....  Anyway, that's were the new terms like "slice" came from, and I
​admit by the 3rd or 4th rewrite what was in PC/BSD and what was originally
in PC/UNIX differed.

Of course, Microsoft/Intel also had to deal with the bigger and bigger
disks and the same issues withe BIOS that IBM had given us from very small
disks a long time ago but they were not trying emulate "big unix."   So
they did something that worked well for them.    Linux was able to ride the
MS/Intel solutions.   ​
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[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Arthur Krewat]

Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search and 
couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere, let me 
know, I'd like to take a look at it.

It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0

Where I got it from, that will remain nameless, used it to compile 
against BSD 4.3 on VAX, and possibly even 4.2

Is it not releasable?

I also seem to have version 3.2, but I need to verify that. For example: 
/* @(#)showmount.c      1.3 87/08/13 3.2/4.3NFSSRC */

thanks!

--
Arthur Krewat
krewat at kilonet.net

[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Clem Cole]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net> wrote:

> Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search and
> couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere, let me know,
> I'd like to take a look at it.
>
> It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
>
Since, the core of Solaris was made FOSS, I would hope there is(are)
persons at Oracle/Sun that can officially stamp the technology has only
historical value.

Anyone know whom that should be so it can make it from the dark side.
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[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Arthur Krewat]

So what's the consensus at this point? Open source? Already released?

I can't vouch that this wasn't some under-the-table exchange. It was for 
an "educational" institution but did not necessarily wind up there. 
Hence why I want to compare with similar releases if it exists.

The sources all have copyright dates ranging from 1983 to 1985 for 
Sun-generated bits that looks like this:

static char sccsid[] = "@(#)domainname.c 1.1 85/05/30 Copyr 1984 Sun Micro";

And sccsid's like this for sources taken from BSD and altered to fit:

df.c:static     char sccsid[] = "@(#)df.c 1.1 85/05/30 SMI"; /* from UCB 
4.18 84/02/02 */

Sorry for fracturing this thread already.


On 2/21/2017 8:46 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net 
> <mailto:krewat at kilonet.net>> wrote:
>
>     Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search
>     and couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere,
>     let me know, I'd like to take a look at it.
>
>     It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
>
> Since, the core of Solaris was made FOSS, I would hope there is(are) 
> persons at Oracle/Sun that can officially stamp the technology has 
> only historical value.
>
> Anyone know whom that should be so it can make it from the dark side.
>
>

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[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Arthur Krewat]

I've never received an answer to this, and I wonder if it was because it 
was sent another route and got choked as SPAM after the mailing list (I 
received it from the mailing list).

On 2/22/2017 8:33 AM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> So what's the consensus at this point? Open source? Already released?
>
> I can't vouch that this wasn't some under-the-table exchange. It was 
> for an "educational" institution but did not necessarily wind up 
> there. Hence why I want to compare with similar releases if it exists.
>
> The sources all have copyright dates ranging from 1983 to 1985 for 
> Sun-generated bits that looks like this:
>
> static char sccsid[] = "@(#)domainname.c 1.1 85/05/30 Copyr 1984 Sun 
> Micro";
>
> And sccsid's like this for sources taken from BSD and altered to fit:
>
> df.c:static     char sccsid[] = "@(#)df.c 1.1 85/05/30 SMI"; /* from 
> UCB 4.18 84/02/02 */
>
> Sorry for fracturing this thread already.
>
>
> On 2/21/2017 8:46 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net 
>> <mailto:krewat at kilonet.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google
>>     search and couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there
>>     somewhere, let me know, I'd like to take a look at it.
>>
>>     It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
>>
>> Since, the core of Solaris was made FOSS, I would hope there is(are) 
>> persons at Oracle/Sun that can officially stamp the technology has 
>> only historical value.
>>
>> Anyone know whom that should be so it can make it from the dark side.
>>
>>
>

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[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[arnold]

It got to the list. I think you didn't get an answer because
noone here knows what to tell you.

I suggest working off-list with Warren to get him the code and
help him try to figure out if he can publish it.

Arnold

Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net> wrote:

> I've never received an answer to this, and I wonder if it was because it 
> was sent another route and got choked as SPAM after the mailing list (I 
> received it from the mailing list).
>
> On 2/22/2017 8:33 AM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> > So what's the consensus at this point? Open source? Already released?
> >
> > I can't vouch that this wasn't some under-the-table exchange. It was 
> > for an "educational" institution but did not necessarily wind up 
> > there. Hence why I want to compare with similar releases if it exists.
> >
> > The sources all have copyright dates ranging from 1983 to 1985 for 
> > Sun-generated bits that looks like this:
> >
> > static char sccsid[] = "@(#)domainname.c 1.1 85/05/30 Copyr 1984 Sun 
> > Micro";
> >
> > And sccsid's like this for sources taken from BSD and altered to fit:
> >
> > df.c:static     char sccsid[] = "@(#)df.c 1.1 85/05/30 SMI"; /* from 
> > UCB 4.18 84/02/02 */
> >
> > Sorry for fracturing this thread already.
> >
> >
> > On 2/21/2017 8:46 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net 
> >> <mailto:krewat at kilonet.net>> wrote:
> >>
> >>     Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google
> >>     search and couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there
> >>     somewhere, let me know, I'd like to take a look at it.
> >>
> >>     It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
> >>
> >> Since, the core of Solaris was made FOSS, I would hope there is(are) 
> >> persons at Oracle/Sun that can officially stamp the technology has 
> >> only historical value.
> >>
> >> Anyone know whom that should be so it can make it from the dark side.
> >>
> >>
> >
>

[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Cory Smelosky]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017, at 17:35, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search and 
> couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere, let me 
> know, I'd like to take a look at it.
> 
> It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
> 
> Where I got it from, that will remain nameless, used it to compile 
> against BSD 4.3 on VAX, and possibly even 4.2
> 
> Is it not releasable?
> 
> I also seem to have version 3.2, but I need to verify that. For example: 
> /* @(#)showmount.c      1.3 87/08/13 3.2/4.3NFSSRC */
> 
> thanks!
> 
> --
> Arthur Krewat
> krewat at kilonet.net

Is this pre- or post- 4.3-UWisc?

-- 
  Cory Smelosky
  b4 at gewt.net

[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Arthur Krewat]

In the release.ms included on the tape:

"This section lists the steps required to install this distribution on a 
Vax running 4.2"

And from bin/passwd.c, for example:

static  char sccsid[] = "@(#)passwd.c 1.1 85/05/30 SMI"; /* from UCB 4.4 
82/07/10 */

Yet, from the 4.3 Uwisc passwd.c on tuhs.org:

static char sccsid[] = "@(#)passwd.c	4.24 (Berkeley) 5/28/86";




On 2/21/2017 9:07 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017, at 17:35, Arthur Krewat wrote:
>> Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search and
>> couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere, let me
>> know, I'd like to take a look at it.
>>
>> It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
>>
>> Where I got it from, that will remain nameless, used it to compile
>> against BSD 4.3 on VAX, and possibly even 4.2
>>
>> Is it not releasable?
>>
>> I also seem to have version 3.2, but I need to verify that. For example:
>> /* @(#)showmount.c      1.3 87/08/13 3.2/4.3NFSSRC */
>>
>> thanks!
>>
>> --
>> Arthur Krewat
>> krewat at kilonet.net
> Is this pre- or post- 4.3-UWisc?
>

[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Larry McVoy]

So Sun did a public release of the RPC / XDR code and I think all the
user space utilities.  It used to be on sunsite.  Is there an archive
of that somewhere?  I may have an archive on CD somewhere (maybe).

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 08:35:42PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search and
> couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere, let me know,
> I'd like to take a look at it.
> 
> It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0
> 
> Where I got it from, that will remain nameless, used it to compile against
> BSD 4.3 on VAX, and possibly even 4.2
> 
> Is it not releasable?
> 
> I also seem to have version 3.2, but I need to verify that. For example: /*
> @(#)showmount.c      1.3 87/08/13 3.2/4.3NFSSRC */
> 
> thanks!
> 
> --
> Arthur Krewat
> krewat at kilonet.net

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[arnold]

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> So Sun did a public release of the RPC / XDR code and I think all the
> user space utilities.  It used to be on sunsite.  Is there an archive
> of that somewhere?  I may have an archive on CD somewhere (maybe).

It was posted in a USENET source group. My archive of UUNET's ftp site
with all the sources group archivess from ~ 2004 is also in the archives,
so it should be findable.

Thanks,

Arnold

[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Warren Toomey]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 08:35:42PM -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Anyone interested in this source code? I did a quick Google search and
> couldn't find anything relevant. If it's out there somewhere, let me know,
> I'd like to take a look at it.
> It's Network File System Sun Microsystems Release 2.0

I eyeballed it against the 4.3BSD from UWisc that is in the archive already.
It looks like the UWisc code is either a later version or a modified version
of this NFSv2 code. Therefore, I think it's safe to put the original NFSv2
code into the archive.

It's at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/

I'll add it and the early networking code to the Unix Tree soon.

Thanks Arthur!
	Warren
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[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Warren Toomey]

On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 06:57:31AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> I think it's safe to put the original NFSv2 code into the archive.
> It's at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/
> I'll add it and the early networking code to the Unix Tree soon.

I've added NFSv2, the BBN and the SRC-NOSC networking code to the Unix Tree:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl

Cheers, Warren
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[TUHS] Sun NFS version 2.0

[Josh Good]

On 2017 Feb 25, 06:57, Warren Toomey wrote:
> 
> I eyeballed it against the 4.3BSD from UWisc that is in the archive already.
> It looks like the UWisc code is either a later version or a modified version
> of this NFSv2 code. Therefore, I think it's safe to put the original NFSv2
> code into the archive.
> 
> It's at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Sun/
> 
> I'll add it and the early networking code to the Unix Tree soon.
> 
> Thanks Arthur!
> 	Warren

Hi, Warren.

Perhaps it's because of the ancient version of GnuPG that I am running,
but your PGP-signed message I'm replying to does not verify with your
public key you have published here: http://minnie.tuhs.org/warren.html

I get this output from my GnuPG install:
---------------------------------------
gpg: Signature made Fri Feb 24 21:57:31 2017 CET
gpg:                using RSA key 0xAC26979D28FF474E
gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found
---------------------------------------


I must be doing something wrong, I suppose.

-- 
Josh Good

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[jsteve]

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[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2484 bytes --]

Yeah slices? A: b: c: d: e:?  But C: is the whole drive??? I had some really old BSD book that talks about needing 4 people to install a harddisk as they were so heavy, and talking about it’s massive ‘500MB’ capacity (Eagle drive on a VAX?) but it certainly didn’t fit in the DOS / OS/2 / Windows NT world.

And OS/2 was so much like MS-DOS needing to reboot and so clunky, while Windows NT let you partition at will, and even concatenating disks, or setting up software raid with absolute ease it made you wonder why it always was so difficult on anything else.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Wesley Parish
Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2017 7:14 AM
To: Larry McVoy
Cc: TUHS main list; Noel Chiappa
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

Now that brings up another reason why I think Linux won. Most of the early Linux developers were 
educated partly in the MS/PC/DR DOS world. They wanted a Unix, but they had bought IBM PC clones 
with MS DOS and were familiar with the DOS way of doing things.

Linux's disk partitioning is very familiar to anyone who's familiar with the DOS way of disk partitioning. 
BSD's disk partitioning is a culture shock. (I know. I'd gotten used to the DOS way of doing things after 
learning about disk partitioning with my 486 and IBM OS/2 - the hard way. I tried Linux and the 
terminology was the same and due to a neat trick with the DOS filesystem I could experiment with it on 
an unchanged DOS system. I then tried FreeBSD and I didn't understand the terminology. So I stuck with 
what I'd learnt.)

FWLIW :)

Wesley Parish

Quoting Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>:

> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 03:28:13PM -0500, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Feb 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > 
> > >In terms of crash worthyness, ext2 was better. I think the ext2
> people
> > >took the approach that they wanted to be as robust as dos but with
> > >performance. And they made it, it's some very nice work.
> > 
> > Wouldn't "as robust as DOS" be a *bad* thing?
> 
> The DOS file system, while stupid, was very robust in the face of
> crashes
> (sort of had to be, he says slyly).
>  



"I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor,
Method for Guitar

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn

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[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Andy Kosela]

On Tuesday, February 21, 2017, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 07:02:18AM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others
> who
> > were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
> > derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
> > history? If not, there should be.)
>
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/srcos.html
>
> is worth a read, I was very much in the middle of all this at the time.
>
> I think Linux succeeded because:
>
>     - it was free and GPLed.  BSD license is nice but it has the problem
>       that people can take it closed source and not give back changes.
>
>     - no lawsuit
>
>     - Linus (as mentioned, much stronger leader than any in the Unix world)
>
>     - no religion.  I can't make this point hard enough.  At Sun, we
> couldn't
>       change any API, any utility, it was compat to the point that it was
> not
>       useful.  Look at SVr4/Solaris /proc and then look at Linux /proc.
> The
>       Linux one is way, way, way, way more useful, you can dig shit out
> with
>       shell scripts.  The rest of the Unix world was blindly posix compat
>       even when posix compat made no sense.  Linux was glorious in that
>       Linus wanted compat but was willing to break it for good reasons.
>
>     - good enough
>
>     - fun, all the cool kids were there.
>
> Here is perhaps something that will resonate with this crowd.  When I was
> teaching OS at Stanford, for file systems I made people go through the
> thought process on when you write what (think the sync writes so the FS
> isn't busted when you crash).
>
> For years, the BSD guys insisted that Linux was doing it wrong because
> they didn't do the sync writes, they did ordered writes (but the BSD
> guys didn't understand the write ordering so they thought it was busted,
> as did I).
>
> But Linux wasn't busted, they had carefully gone through the process
> of figuring out when stuff had to be first so that you could survive
> a crash.
>
> The BSD guys refused to believe that it was possible, they were stuck
> on writes had to be synchronous in order to get a file system that
> wasn't corrupted on a crash.
>
> I eventually started convincing them that Linux had it right by saying
> just untar some big tarball and unplug the power in the middle of that
> on a system with UFS and a system with ext2.  Tell me what happens when
> you power it up.  Answer?  The UFS based system dropped you into a fsck
> nightmare of unattached inodes, the ext2 based systems lost some data
> but the file system was fine.
>
> Obviously, the Linux approach won, it's better.  Way better, higher
> performance and a much better user experience.  But the traditional
> Unix guys had to be dragged kicking and screaming, over a decade,
> into that world.  It's stuff like that that made Unix stagnate while
> Linux forged ahead.
>

Interesting points.  I think Linux really succeded because big IT players
like IBM, HP, Oracle etc. started to promote and financially support
it around 99.  Before that time Linux and FreeBSD went head-to-head and one
can argue that actually FreeBSD was more technically advanced at that time.

When IBM poured millions of dollars in developing Linux it showed.  After
year 2000 the growth of Linux was phenomenal -- it started to show
up everywhere, from embedded world to supercomputers.

Hardware support from big vendors also helped make it the official Open
Source Unix.  To this day you will not get a support contract for FreeBSD
from HP or Dell, and they make up the majority of what you see in modern
data centers.

--Andy
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[ron minnich]

I got to thinking about the file system sync vs. order argument as a result
of this interesting discussion.

Back in NJ in 1998 I had a 144-node PC cluster. It started with 80 FreeBSD
nodes, and a few months later we add 64 Linux nodes. It was DARPA funded
and we were looking at issues around clustering.

What we discovered, when we added the Linux cluster, was that building
power was really terrible. We had not realized it with the freebsd cluster
because it tended to cleanly recover from unplanned nasty power cycles. But
the Linux cluster tended to always have a small number of nodes that did
not get through fsck.

yeah, it's not that good a data point maybe, but we found it interesting.
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[jason-tuhs]

> I got to thinking about the file system sync vs. order argument as a 
> result of this interesting discussion.
> [...]
> What we discovered, when we added the Linux cluster, was that building 
> power was really terrible. We had not realized it with the freebsd 
> cluster because it tended to cleanly recover from unplanned nasty power 
> cycles. But the Linux cluster tended to always have a small number of 
> nodes that did not get through fsck.

Soft updates was available in 1998.  Were you running that?

Surprised it hasn't come up already in this discussion; I've been waiting 
for someone to mention it.

http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/

There was some licensing issue with it in the early days: it was freely 
available and free to use, but McKusick wanted a chance to try to sell it 
to a commercial unix vendor as well.  But he ended up BSD-licensing it a 
couple years later.

The original README from the FreeBSD source tree:
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/3.0.0/contrib/sys/softupdates/README?revision=42952&view=co


Anyway, it solved the on-disk consistency problem and boosted performance 
as well.  I enabled it on all my systems.


  -Jason

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Larry McVoy]

That was pretty early, Ron.  I betcha if you tried it now (or 10 years 
ago) things would be different.

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 01:04:16AM +0000, ron minnich wrote:
> I got to thinking about the file system sync vs. order argument as a result
> of this interesting discussion.
> 
> Back in NJ in 1998 I had a 144-node PC cluster. It started with 80 FreeBSD
> nodes, and a few months later we add 64 Linux nodes. It was DARPA funded
> and we were looking at issues around clustering.
> 
> What we discovered, when we added the Linux cluster, was that building
> power was really terrible. We had not realized it with the freebsd cluster
> because it tended to cleanly recover from unplanned nasty power cycles. But
> the Linux cluster tended to always have a small number of nodes that did
> not get through fsck.
> 
> yeah, it's not that good a data point maybe, but we found it interesting.

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[ron minnich]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:18 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> That was pretty early, Ron.  I betcha if you tried it now (or 10 years
> ago) things would be different.
>
>
>

I think that is true. But from my point of view "linux winning" was not
necessarily "linux was better at the time." I think it was a lot of factors.

When I got to Los Alamos in 1999, it was still a tossup between the BSDs
and Linux as to "which is better." Nevertheless, for lots of reasons, in
1998 (the same year I found Linux to be less reliable over time) Los Alamos
had cast its lot with Linux, for all kinds of reasons.
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[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 03:45:54AM +0000, ron minnich wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:18 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > That was pretty early, Ron.  I betcha if you tried it now (or 10 years
> > ago) things would be different.
> 
> I think that is true. But from my point of view "linux winning" was not
> necessarily "linux was better at the time." I think it was a lot of factors.
> 
> When I got to Los Alamos in 1999, it was still a tossup between the BSDs
> and Linux as to "which is better." Nevertheless, for lots of reasons, in
> 1998 (the same year I found Linux to be less reliable over time) Los Alamos
> had cast its lot with Linux, for all kinds of reasons.

I lived through all this and payed close attention to all of the people
involved (Theo has/had my Sun 4/470, we argued about VM systems in my
flat in SF, Jolitz worked for me, I hung with Chris Demetriou back in
the 386BSD days, I was all over that stuff and wanted it to succeed).

The open source BSD stuff was a train wreck from the very beginning.
Nobody could get along with Jolitz, so NetBSD started, then Theo wanted
to be in charge of something so OpenBSD was born.  I can't remember how
FreeBSD got spun out, but what I do remember is that there were power
struggles from day 1.  Everyone thought they were better than the other
guy, when in fact, what was pretty good was the BSD source base and most
of these people, initially, had very little skin in the game in the form
of code, they were all leveraging the BSD source base.  I actually think
Jolitiz had more code in there in the beginning than anyone else.

No matter who did what, they couldn't / wouldn't / didn't rally around a
single leader and a single project.  So it was "divide and fail" where
Linux was a big tent, anyone who could write decent code was welcome,
but you had to get it past Linus.  Which was fine, people figured out he
had a clue and put up with the fact that they had to get past his filter
(many of us, myself included, valued that filter very, very much).

By 1998/1999, all of these BSD struggles for power were blindingly obvious
to anyone who was remotely paying attention.  I think they were obvious
4-5 years before that.  And it wasn't obvious just to people like me,
management types track this stuff far more than most people believe.
They have to back the right horse or it costs them.  Linux was simply
a safer bet.  The community was larger and growing very fast.  I was
program committee chair at Linux Expo in 1999 (sort of their Usenix
at the time).  It was way more fun than Usenix.

I think a lot of the "better" stuff came from the fact that Linux got
networking long after BSD had pretty sweet networking.  The BSD guys
still think their networking is better than Linux (pro tip, it is not,
go read networking research papers, they all use Linux as the platform
and it's not because there is so much to fix, it's because Linux 
networking is better).  BSD hasn't been better than Linux in any way
that I know of for about 15 years.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 08:06:29PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The open source BSD stuff was a train wreck from the very beginning.
> Nobody could get along with Jolitz, so NetBSD started, then Theo wanted
> to be in charge of something so OpenBSD was born.  I can't remember how
> FreeBSD got spun out, but what I do remember is that there were power
> struggles from day 1.  

Oh, and I forgot, then there was the BSDi group.  While we all loved 
those guys, they left a sour taste.  There was some bad blood between
them and Jolitz (he unfairly got the short end of that stick).  And
as Clem says, we all wanted a free or really really cheap Unix and
these guys wanted $995 for a release.  I think a lot of us felt like
they sort of betrayed the ethos of Unix, we wanted free like it was
when you got a tape from dmr (no, I never got one, just got to hear
the stories and they sounded great).

The whole BSD thing in the early 90's was a train wreck.  In my opinion.