[TUHS] 2.11BSD Status Update

[TUHS] 2.11BSD Status Update

[Warner Losh]

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OK. I'm plowing through a lot of issues with the putative 2.11BSD
reconstructions I've done to date. I keep finding things dated too new to
be right.

And it turns out that a few patches "snuck in" when the patch 80 catch up
was done. I've outlined the ones I've found so far at
https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/08/missing-211bsd-patches.html but I'm
sure there's at least one more. There was much ambiguity over /usr/new and
/usr/local that lead to some of these, but others look like they were in
the master tree, but never formally published that have all the hallmarks
of legit bug fixes...

I've also detailed the issues  in going backwards. 2.11BSDpl195 had a
different .o format than 2.11BSDpl0. And to make matters worse, its
assembler couldn't assemble the assembler from the initial release, so I
had to get creative (using apout, thanks to all who contributed to that!).
I've also blogged about how to walk back a binary change when the old
programs no longer build on the new system. I think I got lucky that it was
possible at all :).
https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/08/bootstrapping-211bsd-no-patches-from.html
has the blow by blow. There are a lot of steps to building even a normal
system... Let alone walking through the minefield of errors that you need
to do when stepping back...

And neither of these even begin to get into the issues with the build
system itself requiring workarounds for that...

But anyway, I keep making "ur2.11BSD" tapes, installing them and fixing the
issues I find... While much information was destroyed in the process,
there's a surprising amount of redundancy that one can use to 'test'
putative tapes.

Warner

P.S. ur2.11BSD is from urFOO in linguisting, meaning the original FOO
that's been lost and which some amount of reconstruction / speculation is
offered about it. Still looking for a good name for the reconstructed
2.11BSD release....

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