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* [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
@ 2022-01-29 21:48 Will Senn
  2022-01-29 21:56 ` Henry Bent
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 10+ messages in thread
From: Will Senn @ 2022-01-29 21:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

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I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:



"There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the libraries."



Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a functional system?



Will


Sent from my iPhone

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* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 21:48 [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution Will Senn
@ 2022-01-29 21:56 ` Henry Bent
  2022-01-29 22:08   ` Henry Bent
  2022-01-29 22:13 ` Warner Losh
                   ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread
From: Henry Bent @ 2022-01-29 21:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Will Senn; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 at 16:49, Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:
>
>
> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and
> network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from
> Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the
> NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the
> libraries."
>
>
> Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping
> yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a
> functional system?
>

gettable uses flat files to map names to numbers.  It hasn't existed in
probably 30+ years, and I can't even imagine how large the files it creates
would be for the modern internet.

Amusingly, for some strange reason it still exists in Solaris 11.2:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36784_01/html/E36871/gettable-1m.html

-Henry

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* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 21:56 ` Henry Bent
@ 2022-01-29 22:08   ` Henry Bent
  2022-01-29 23:02     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread
From: Henry Bent @ 2022-01-29 22:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Will Senn; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 at 16:56, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 at 16:49, Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:
>>
>>
>> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and
>> network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from
>> Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the
>> NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the
>> libraries."
>>
>>
>> Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping
>> yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a
>> functional system?
>>
>
> gettable uses flat files to map names to numbers.  It hasn't existed in
> probably 30+ years, and I can't even imagine how large the files it creates
> would be for the modern internet.
>
> Amusingly, for some strange reason it still exists in Solaris 11.2:
> https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36784_01/html/E36871/gettable-1m.html
>
>
A quick search found me a site with an archive of the HOSTS.TXT files that
gettable and friends used: https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/

To give you an idea of how soon things were obsolete, the files from the
'90s have 132.162.32.243 listed as Oberlin's VAX 11/780 ocvaxa, a machine
that had not existed for many years at that point.  The distributed nature
of DNS made things much, much easier to keep current.

-Henry

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* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 21:48 [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution Will Senn
  2022-01-29 21:56 ` Henry Bent
@ 2022-01-29 22:13 ` Warner Losh
  2022-01-29 22:25   ` George Michaelson
  2022-01-29 22:59 ` Clem Cole
  2022-01-30  0:09 ` Jeremy C. Reed
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-01-29 22:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Will Senn; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 2:49 PM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:
>
>
> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and
> network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from
> Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the
> NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the
> libraries."
>
>
> Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping
> yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a
> functional system?
>

DNS post-dates 4.3BSD. The first DNS RFC was published in Nov 1987. 4.3BSD
was June 1986. The host table update was a thing, but my school was far
enough off the beaten path that by the time we were on the internet, DNS
was a thing...

Warner

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* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 22:13 ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-01-29 22:25   ` George Michaelson
  2022-01-29 22:35     ` Erik E. Fair
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2022-01-29 22:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warner Losh; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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If you can find source for bind 4<=  I'm sure it will compile and give you
a working named. Getting the client side code cleanly would mean a later
release of BSD but there are client side libs in the bind code AFAIK. You
can possibly link against them for rational gethostbyname(). If the link
loader ordering thing works, they might supercede simply by placing
-lresolv before libc.

Bear in mind all the RR type richness postdated this time so you could be
sent UDP > 512, and internal state you can't grok. But for A and PTR lookup
it should be fine. Since it won't do TCP or DNSSEC or large packet EDNS0
signalling, I suspect a bit of dns flow inbound would be perplexing for the
resolver.

G

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022, 8:13 am Warner Losh, <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 2:49 PM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:
>>
>>
>> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and
>> network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from
>> Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the
>> NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the
>> libraries."
>>
>>
>> Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping
>> yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a
>> functional system?
>>
>
> DNS post-dates 4.3BSD. The first DNS RFC was published in Nov 1987. 4.3BSD
> was June 1986. The host table update was a thing, but my school was far
> enough off the beaten path that by the time we were on the internet, DNS
> was a thing...
>
> Warner
>

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* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 22:25   ` George Michaelson
@ 2022-01-29 22:35     ` Erik E. Fair
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread
From: Erik E. Fair @ 2022-01-29 22:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: George Michaelson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

See RFC 1101, which I'm in part responsible for because I asked Mockapetris for preservation of the functionality.

I don't think very many sites bother to maintain this info, and I don't know what (if anything) uses it - kinda like the HINFO RR.

	Erik Fair

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 21:48 [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution Will Senn
  2022-01-29 21:56 ` Henry Bent
  2022-01-29 22:13 ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-01-29 22:59 ` Clem Cole
  2022-01-29 23:24   ` Phil Budne
  2022-01-30  0:09 ` Jeremy C. Reed
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-01-29 22:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Will Senn; +Cc: tuhs

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Isn't time wonderful .....   4.2 and 4.3BSD predates the release of bind,
which was separately sent into the wild..

The good news is that you can certainly get things working with a static
host table.   And frankly for a simulated system, the network is likely to
be very small and you are unlikely to need more modern services like a
browser with URLs et al.   That said, the early bind will work on 4.2/4.3
without a lot of hassle, as that's the system that it was developed.
Except .....   the problem is the >>client side<< is used all over the
place AND that needs to know you a DNS.

My suggestion is getting 4.3 running up with a very small (static) host
table.   Then take on the DNS.   The resolv library (client code) is likely
to have a lot of static calls to the old (non-DNS based) versions of
gethostbyXXX and the like.   If you bring bind over, you'r probably going
to have to do a full rebuild and relink , reinstall of applications space
clients use the DNS, not the static tables.

Have fun.

Clem

On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 4:49 PM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm working through 4.3BSD setup and configuration and came across this:
>
>
> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and
> network name databases are normally derived from a file retrieved from
> Internet Network Information Center at SRI... use gettable to retrieve the
> NIC host database and htable to convert it to the format used by the
> libraries."
>
>
> Does this mean I should expect functionality like resolv.conf and ping
> yahoo.com not to work in 4.3, or by some miracle is gettable still a
> functional system?
>
>
> Will
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>

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* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 22:08   ` Henry Bent
@ 2022-01-29 23:02     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread
From: Theodore Y. Ts'o @ 2022-01-29 23:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Henry Bent; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 05:08:32PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote:
> > gettable uses flat files to map names to numbers.  It hasn't existed in
> > probably 30+ years, and I can't even imagine how large the files it creates
> > would be for the modern internet.

This brings back memories.

Way back when I was on the MIT Network Group[1], I wrote a program
which translated a file in HOSTS.TXT format into a DNS zone file for
BIND, since originally the HOSTS.TXT format file (stored in RCS for
source control) was the source of truth for IP address assignments at
MIT.  Later on, the authoratative source was the Moira[2] server,
which stored the information in an Oracle database, but the nightly
extract from the database was still done in a HOSTS.TXT format, which
then got translated into a zone file and distributed to MIT's DNS
servers.

It's quite possible, Moira DCM extract to the HOSTS.TXT file is still
in use today; MIT is still using Moira, although there is a web front
end that I suspect most of the admins are using these days, instead of
the CLI or Curses interfaces.  (The hard core Moira admins or
developers would occasionally need to do surgery by accessing the
Oracle database directly; that's how I first learned SQL.  :-)

[1] http://web.mit.edu/afs/net.mit.edu/admin/www/network/group.html
[2] http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3902604

						- Ted

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 22:59 ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-01-29 23:24   ` Phil Budne
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread
From: Phil Budne @ 2022-01-29 23:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: will.senn, clemc; +Cc: tuhs

4.3 BSD Quasijarus (a pre-Tahoe branch of 4.3)
looks like it comes with resolver files in libc.

Ready to run .dsk file for SimH:
https://github.com/narukeh/4.3BSD-Quasijarus

Instructions on installing from tape image:
https://www.tavi.co.uk/unixhistory/quasijarus.html
http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_4.3_BSD_Quasijarus_on_SIMH

Sources repo?
https://github.com/abs0/4.3BSD-Quasijarus

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution
  2022-01-29 21:48 [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution Will Senn
                   ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2022-01-29 22:59 ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-01-30  0:09 ` Jeremy C. Reed
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread
From: Jeremy C. Reed @ 2022-01-30  0:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Will Senn; +Cc: tuhs

> "There is no equivalent service for network names yet. The full host and

I see that in usr/doc/smm/01.setup/5.t

Do you have usr/doc/smm/11.named ?

Have a look at the resolver(3) and resolver(5) and gethostbyname(3n)  
and named(8) manual pages with 4.3BSD.

And see /usr/src/etc/named/doc
for the November 1983 RFC 883 specification.

(I haven't used that old one, but I did use a 1990 BIND 4.8.3 from 
4.3BSD-Reno / 386BSD using NetBSD compat and documented some of its 
behavior with modern DNS.)


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread

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Thread overview: 10+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-01-29 21:48 [TUHS] 4.3 BSD network name resolution Will Senn
2022-01-29 21:56 ` Henry Bent
2022-01-29 22:08   ` Henry Bent
2022-01-29 23:02     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2022-01-29 22:13 ` Warner Losh
2022-01-29 22:25   ` George Michaelson
2022-01-29 22:35     ` Erik E. Fair
2022-01-29 22:59 ` Clem Cole
2022-01-29 23:24   ` Phil Budne
2022-01-30  0:09 ` Jeremy C. Reed

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