On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 7:43 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 12:40 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>> This obviated the need to copy a filesystem to a new disk's swap space
>> and then use that to really install the system.
>>
>
> Thanks for the reminder.   I don't remember if V7 on the PDP-11 used the
> swap space (but I don't think so). That said, I fairly sure that by BSD 4.1
> the boot loader did, which I think is when that trick was first added to
> boot phase.
>

Just checked the archives. V7 had a stand alone program to restore a
filesystem image form the tape to the disk that you ran after running the
stand alone program to partition and newfs the disk... I think you are
right on your timeline. I installed a dozen Sun3 boxes from tape and hated
mistyping the file number and having to start over...


> Again, it was all about trying to get rid of the special /stand version of
> things.   Funny, history would move on and we come back to that idea with
> busybox 🤔
>

Well, busybox is special in many ways, so there's that in common with
/stand, but it runs under a full otherwise standard kernel, not as some
special mini-exec that provides just enough of the unix APIs to keep the
standalone programs happy.

Warner