[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Will Senn]

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All,

I'm not 100% sure how best to ask this, but here goes...

I own a copy of the CSRG Archives CD Set that Kirk McKusick maintained. 
I bought them ages and ages ago  (BTW, they are now all available on 
Archive.org). I dusted them off today because I had the brilliant idea 
that with my significant growth in understanding related to all things 
unix and ancient unix, that I might find them interesting and useful. 
They are interesting, jury's out on useful beyond being a broweasable 
historical archive of individual files. One of the CD's contains a 4.4 
and 4.4BSD-Lite2 folder and is labeled releases (disk 3). I opened the 
4.4 folder and it appears to be a set of folders and files I would 
expect to find on a release tape, but unlike a tape, which one could 
mount and boot from, I have no idea if this would be usable as install 
media (if you do, please let me know how).

I googled about the two releases and although the same text appears all 
over the place about how Berkeley released one version, then removed 
some components, then re-released, and eventually wound up at 
4.4BSD-Lite2, I could not figure out whether the word release meant 
sourcecode, installable media, or what. I gather a lot of this made 
sense back in the early 1990's but it's all a bit muddy to me in 2017. 
In trying to figure it all out, I came across a webpage talking about 
2.11BSD (maintained into this decade) and another about 4.3BSD 
Quasijarus (also maintained in this decade?). Both descriptions 
contained the text, "It is the release of 4.4BSD-Lite, and requires the 
original UNIX license" (see http://damnsmallbsd.org/pub/BSD-UNIX). My 
sense of things after reading and browsing and such is that with regards 
to 4.4, 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2, they are either not released 
(4.4), encumbered and retracted (4.4BSD-Lite), or not installable 
(4.4BSD-Lite2)...

Dang, so confusing...

My interest is pretty much based on a strong desire to boot up a 4.4 
system that as closely as possible maps to the one described in "The 
Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" that I can 
experiment with as I'm going through the text. I think I understand the 
version history as it is described in various places, but I just can't 
figure how the last handful of versions relate to real media that is 
available to enthusiasts.

Questions begging answers:

What is the last bootable and installable media, officially distributed 
by Berkeley?

Is that image currently publicly accessible?

What is the closest version, that is currently available, that would 
match the os described in "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD 
Operating System"?

Many thanks,

Will






-- 
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462  7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF

[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Michael Parson]

On 2017-10-22 00:38, Will Senn wrote:

<snip>

> Questions begging answers:
> 
> What is the last bootable and installable media, officially
> distributed by Berkeley?

As I understood it, there were no bootable 4.4 BSD lite releases from 
Berkley.  The 'lite' releases had the AT&T encumbered stuff removed and 
not replaced, it wasn't a complete and functional OS.

> Is that image currently publicly accessible?
> 
> What is the closest version, that is currently available, that would
> match the os described in "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4
> BSD Operating System"?

If you want something bootable, your closest bet is probably the 1.0 
releases of Free[1] or NetBSD[2].

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

[1] ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/
[2] ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.0/

[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 9:18 AM, Michael Parson <mparson at bl.org> wrote:

> On 2017-10-22 00:38, Will Senn wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> Questions begging answers:
>>
>> What is the last bootable and installable media, officially
>> distributed by Berkeley?
>>
>
> As I understood it, there were no bootable 4.4 BSD lite releases from
> Berkley.  The 'lite' releases had the AT&T encumbered stuff removed and not
> replaced, it wasn't a complete and functional OS.


It had the 9 files that were trivial to replicate removed, yes.


> Is that image currently publicly accessible?
>>
>> What is the closest version, that is currently available, that would
>> match the os described in "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4
>> BSD Operating System"?
>>
>
> If you want something bootable, your closest bet is probably the 1.0
> releases of Free[1] or NetBSD[2].


Both FreeBSD and NetBSD took different approaches to getting a bootable
system, and to fixing many of the issues in 4.4BSD. While these are close,
the 386BSD releases from Jolitz might be closer still (though technically
based on net2 releases, the delta between that and 4.4 kernel I ).
http://gunkies.org/wiki/386_BSD has pointers to the releases (including
mirrors in TUHS). 386bsd.org doesn't seem to have them, though there's lots
of pointers to the Dr Dobb's articles.

Warner

-- 
> Michael Parson
> Pflugerville, TX
> KF5LGQ
>
> [1] ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/
> [2] ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.0/
>
>
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[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Steve Mynott]

On 22 October 2017 at 16:31, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 9:18 AM, Michael Parson <mparson at bl.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 2017-10-22 00:38, Will Senn wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> Questions begging answers:
>>>
>>> What is the last bootable and installable media, officially
>>> distributed by Berkeley?
>>
>>
>> As I understood it, there were no bootable 4.4 BSD lite releases from
>> Berkley.  The 'lite' releases had the AT&T encumbered stuff removed and not
>> replaced, it wasn't a complete and functional OS.
>
>
> It had the 9 files that were trivial to replicate removed, yes.

There seems to be some confusion about exactly what was removed to
create 'lite'.

http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2012-April/004227.html lists three files.

and

https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd

appears to have copies of these three files (so they were probably not
actually deleted from the original version control)

https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd/commit/e58c89522e6fbf136e9cdf55a393a6bdbdc4eb45#diff-771e2cfcd8808541adc96aa1fa1a0aae

is interesting!

I wonder how many systems actually ever displayed the "4.4 BSD UNIX"
banner? At least one did at UCB.

[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Dan Cross]

On Oct 22, 2017 1:39 AM, "Will Senn" <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

[...]
What is the last bootable and installable media, officially distributed by
Berkeley?

Is that image currently publicly accessible?

What is the closest version, that is currently available, that would match
the os described in "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating
System"?


Probably one of the best ways to get questions about installation media
answered is to simply email Kirk McKusick. He's a really nice guy and will
probably give you an answer pretty quickly.

That said, of the three distributions you mentioned, bootable/installable
media only existed for 4.4BSD (also called the "encumbered" distribution).
-Lite and -Lite2 were "reference distributions." It didn't take *too* much
work to get -Lite working, but it wasn't something that ran out of the box
(or more properly, off of the tape). The original idea was to release
4.4BSD-encumbered to Unix source licensees, and at the same time publish
4.4BSD-Lite sans the redacted bits as an open source distribution. These
were to be the final BSD releases from UCB, but the CSRG found they had
some coin left in the coffers a few months later, so they did -Lite2 as
something of a final hurrah snapshotting some ongoing maintenance work (and
possibly some research?) before officially shutting down.

At one point, I had a copy of a bootable exabyte tape with 4.4-encumbered
installation and source images for SPARC, specifically sun4c machines, that
I had liberated from somewhere. My understanding was that the reference
hardware at Berkeley was 68030- and 68040-based HP 9000 machines, and the
SPARC bits were a contribution from Chris Torek. I got -Lite running on an
older SPARCstation 1, but it wasn't particularly reliable (the compiler
would segfault, and it panic'ed once a day or so), so we put SunOS back on
it pretty quickly.

Hope that helps.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[emanuel stiebler]

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On 2017-10-22 10:51, Dan Cross wrote:

> At one point, I had a copy of a bootable exabyte tape with 
> 4.4-encumbered installation and source images for SPARC, specifically 
> sun4c machines, that I had liberated from somewhere. My understanding 
> was that the reference hardware at Berkeley was 68030- and 68040-based 
> HP 9000 machines, 

Which models exactly?

> and the SPARC bits were a contribution from Chris 
> Torek. I got -Lite running on an older SPARCstation 1, but it wasn't 
> particularly reliable (the compiler would segfault, and it panic'ed once 
> a day or so), so we put SunOS back on it pretty quickly.
> 
> Hope that helps.
> 
>          - Dan C.
> 
> 
> 

[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Henry Bent]

On 22 October 2017 at 13:00, emanuel stiebler <emu at e-bbes.com> wrote:

> On 2017-10-22 10:51, Dan Cross wrote:
>
> At one point, I had a copy of a bootable exabyte tape with 4.4-encumbered
>> installation and source images for SPARC, specifically sun4c machines, that
>> I had liberated from somewhere. My understanding was that the reference
>> hardware at Berkeley was 68030- and 68040-based HP 9000 machines,
>>
>
> Which models exactly?
>
>
4.4BSD hp300 DOC/Options mentions the following:

HP320
        Support for old hp320 machines: 16mhz 68020, HP MMU, 16mhz 68881
        and VAC.  Compiles in support for a VAC, HP MMU, and the 98620A
        16-bit DMA channel.  Forces the definition of HAVEVAC.

HP350
        Support for old hp350 machines: 25mhz 68020, HP MMU, 20mhz 68881
        and VAC.  Compiles in support for a VAC and the HP MMU.  Differs
        from HP320 in that it has no support for 16-bit DMA controller.
        Forces the definition of HAVEVAC.

HP330
        Support for old hp330 (and 318/319) machines: 16mhz 68020, 68551
PMMU
        and 16mhz 68881.  Compiles in support for PMMU.

HP360
        Support for old hp360 (and 340) machines: 25mhz 68030+MMU and 25mhz
        68882.  Compiles in support for PMMU and 68030.  Differs from HP330
        in support for 68030 on-chip data cache.

HP370
        Support for old hp370 (and current 345/375/400) machines: 33 (50)
mhz
        68030+MMU and 33 (50) mhz 68882.  Compiles in support for PMMU,
68030
        and off-chip physically addressed cache.  Differs from 360 in only
one
        place, in dealing with flushing the external cache.

HP380
        Support for "current" hp380/425 (and 433) machines: 25 (33) mhz
68040
        with MMU/FPU.  Compiles in support for 68040.

-Henry
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[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Cory Smelosky]

There is a binary 4.4BSD distro from Keith Bostic on the CSRG CD set from McKusick that is built for hp300 - including kernel last I saw.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 24, 2017, at 11:53, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 22 October 2017 at 13:00, emanuel stiebler <emu at e-bbes.com> wrote:
>> On 2017-10-22 10:51, Dan Cross wrote:
>> 
>>> At one point, I had a copy of a bootable exabyte tape with 4.4-encumbered installation and source images for SPARC, specifically sun4c machines, that I had liberated from somewhere. My understanding was that the reference hardware at Berkeley was 68030- and 68040-based HP 9000 machines, 
>> 
>> Which models exactly?
>> 
> 
> 4.4BSD hp300 DOC/Options mentions the following:
> 
> HP320
>         Support for old hp320 machines: 16mhz 68020, HP MMU, 16mhz 68881
>         and VAC.  Compiles in support for a VAC, HP MMU, and the 98620A
>         16-bit DMA channel.  Forces the definition of HAVEVAC.
> 
> HP350
>         Support for old hp350 machines: 25mhz 68020, HP MMU, 20mhz 68881
>         and VAC.  Compiles in support for a VAC and the HP MMU.  Differs
>         from HP320 in that it has no support for 16-bit DMA controller.
>         Forces the definition of HAVEVAC.
> 
> HP330
>         Support for old hp330 (and 318/319) machines: 16mhz 68020, 68551 PMMU
>         and 16mhz 68881.  Compiles in support for PMMU.
> 
> HP360
>         Support for old hp360 (and 340) machines: 25mhz 68030+MMU and 25mhz
>         68882.  Compiles in support for PMMU and 68030.  Differs from HP330
>         in support for 68030 on-chip data cache.
> 
> HP370
>         Support for old hp370 (and current 345/375/400) machines: 33 (50) mhz
>         68030+MMU and 33 (50) mhz 68882.  Compiles in support for PMMU, 68030
>         and off-chip physically addressed cache.  Differs from 360 in only one
>         place, in dealing with flushing the external cache.
> 
> HP380
>         Support for "current" hp380/425 (and 433) machines: 25 (33) mhz 68040
>         with MMU/FPU.  Compiles in support for 68040.
> 
> -Henry
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[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Clem Cole]

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On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 6:51 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Oct 22, 2017 1:39 AM, "Will Senn" <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
> What is the last bootable and installable media, officially distributed by
> Berkeley?
>
> Is that image currently publicly accessible?
>
> What is the closest version, that is currently available, that would match
> the os described in "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating
> System"?
>
>
> Probably one of the best ways to get questions about installation media
> answered is to simply email Kirk McKusick. He's a really nice guy and will
> probably give you an answer pretty quickly.
>
> That said, of the three distributions you mentioned, bootable/installable
> media only existed for 4.4BSD (also called the "encumbered" distribution).
> -Lite and -Lite2 were "reference distributions."
>
​Right.....​





> It didn't take *too* much work to get -Lite working, but it wasn't
> something that ran out of the box (or more properly, off of the tape).
>
​Pretty much, the idea was that if you have 4.3tahoe or reno system
somewhere, it could build 4.4lite assuming you supplied the few missing
files (which were generally available/findable/reasonably easy to intuit.​




> The original idea was to release 4.4BSD-encumbered to Unix source
> licensees, and at the same time publish 4.4BSD-Lite sans the redacted bits
> as an open source distribution.
>
​Exactly....​  And *lite* would fork off the Academic oriented NetBSD
releases with the academic community doing the support for each system.

My understanding was that the reference hardware at Berkeley was 68030- and
> 68040-based HP 9000 machines,
>
​Sounds right... I thought the encumbered bits worked on CCI, Vaxen (and
possibly SUN1s with the *10 upgrade boards), although might not have been
tested as thoroughly as earlier CSRG releases.


​The 386 bits were the sources of a great deal of issue between CSRG and
Jolitiz.  I was friends with all of the protagonists in that drama so I'm
going to try to be careful what I say here.

There was an 'encumbered' 386 distribution on the ftp site for a long time
although installation was definitely experts only (as I said, I helped with
the original disk support if you read the DDJ articles).  And the spurce of
my previous comments on this mailing list that if you knew about it, you
could get it

These bits are basically the pre-FreeBSD starting point.  FWIW: back in the
day, I had it the running on a Wyse 32:16 for a number of years, and might
still have a backup of it on 1/4" QIC tape; but the HW started to get flaky
and FreeBSD superseded it on other HW and it was not supported.​ I had kept
the boot image around as a reference for a book I was working on at the
time; but eventually just switched to using FreeBSD as the 4.4 'definition'
as it was good enough for what we were doing then.
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[TUHS] Last officially distributed and currently available BSD version

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com>

    > Hope that helps.

I don't have anything to add to this discussion, but may I point out that this
is _exactly_ the kind of thing we'd like to make available at the Computer
History Wiki:

  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Main_Page

I'm too busy with other tasks to add it all myself, but I hope you all will be
able to add your pearls there, where it will be available in an organized way,
rather than having to hope Google/Bing/etc can find it in the list archives
among the megatons of other dross on the Internet.

If anyone would like an account there (due to spam issues, anon editing has
been disabled), please let me know, and I'll get you set up right away - just
send me the account name you like (a lot of us use our old time-sharing system
account names :-), and the email address you'd like associated with it.

	Noel