From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: clemc@ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 14:35:47 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] finding help in v7 in 1980 In-Reply-To: <20171110183230.4C30B18C09C@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20171110183230.4C30B18C09C@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 10, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Will Senn > > > what was it like to sit down and learn unix V7 on a PDP? ... What > > resources did you consult in your early days > > Well, I started by reading through the UPM (the 8-section thing, with > commands > in I, system calls in II, etc). I also read a lot of Unix documentation > which > came as larger documents (e.g the Unix Intro, C Tutorial and spec, etc). > ​Exactly -- BTW the printed ​binders that Larry mentions were a few years away. Brian Redman of Whippany (the 'ber' of honey-dan-ber UUCP), got them printed in the early 1980s. > > I should point out that back then, this was a feasible task. ​Agreed...​ > Most man pages > were really _a_ page, and often a short one. By the end of my time on the > PWB1 > system, there were about 300 commands in /bin (which includes sections II, > VI > and VIII), but a good chunk (I'd say probably 50 or more) were ones we'd > written. So there were not that many to start with (section II was maybe > 3/4" > of paper), and you could read the UPM in a couple of hours. (I read > through it > more than once; you'd get more retained, mentally, on each pass.) > ​Yup, I'm not sure how many times I read through UPM, but it was a few times. What was amazing to me, was compared to say TOPS or even RSTS it seemed like I could actually understand the whole thing.​ > > There were no Unix people at all in the group at MIT which I joined, so I > couldn't ask around; there were a bunch in another group on the floor > below, > although I didn't use them much - mostly it was RTFM. > ​It was very much a learn as you go. Ted Kowalski would show up a little later and start to explain/argue about things that I had confused./wrong. But my first attempts were pretty lonely. > > Mailing lists? Books? Fuhgeddaboutit! > ​:-)​ > > My next step in learning the kernel was to start reading the sources. ​ditto...​ > (I > ​ ​ > didn't have access to Lyons.) ​I got access to Lyons after Ted showed up. I was so impressed ;-)​ > I did an 'cref' of the entire system, and > transferred the results to a large piece of paper, so I could see who was > calling who in the kernel. > ​Great mind thinks a like. Although I had to transfer some of the stuff to the PDP-10​ I had 'tools' there and was still learning the UNIX ones. I did not understand grep at first. I remember the moment of enlightenment the first time, I understood what I could do with it. Seriously, find and grep were the two new tools that changed the way I started to think about computers. I had nothing like them on the 10's. > > > > What were your goto resources? More than just man and the sources? > > That's all there was! > > I should point out that reading the sources to command 'x' taught you more > than just how 'x' worked - you saw how people interacted with the kernel, > what > it could do, etc, etc. ​Yeah, same here. I spent a lot of time staring at Kernel and Application code.​ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: