[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Noel Chiappa]

    > I wonder if >pdd ... was in any way any inspiration for /proc?

That may have been a bit too cryptic. "pdd" ('process directory directory')
was a top-level directory in the Multics filesystem which contained a
directory for each process active in the system; each directory contained data
(in segments - roughly, 'files', but Multics didn't have files because it was
a single-level store system) associated with the process, such as its kernel-
and user-mode (effectively - technically, ring-0 and ring-4) stacks, etc.

So if a process was sitting in a system call, you could go into the right
directory in >pdd and look at its kernel stack and see the sequence of
procedure calls (with arguments) that had led it to the point where it
blocked. Etc, etc.

   Noel

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Charles Anthony]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:07 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > I wonder if >pdd ... was in any way any inspiration for /proc?
>
> That may have been a bit too cryptic. "pdd" ('process directory directory')
> was a top-level directory in the Multics filesystem which contained a
> directory for each process active in the system; each directory contained
> data
> (in segments - roughly, 'files', but Multics didn't have files because it
> was
> a single-level store system) associated with the process, such as its
> kernel-
> and user-mode (effectively - technically, ring-0 and ring-4) stacks, etc.
>
> So if a process was sitting in a system call, you could go into the right
> directory in >pdd and look at its kernel stack and see the sequence of
> procedure calls (with arguments) that had led it to the point where it
> blocked. Etc, etc.
>
>
'pdd' also contained temporary segments, ala mktemp:

r 11:33 0.092 1

cwd [pd]

r 11:33 0.086 3

ls
Segments = 21, Lengths = 0.
       0  !BBBKLDJkqPKWqL.area.linker
       0  stack_1
r w    0  archive_temp_.archive
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqGGBMh.temp.0346
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqGFKDc.temp.0345
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqGDWMn.temp.0344
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqGCfXX.temp.0343
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqGBpDB.temp.0342
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqGBCwg.temp.0341
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqFzFDz.temp.0340
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkqFxMcW.temp.0337
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkpmxKqH.temp.0332
rew    0  !BBBKLDJkpmwMfz.temp.0331
r w    0  process_search_segment_.4
rew    0  !BBBKLDJknDXFNp.temp.0304
rew    0  !BBBKLDJknCfjfK.area.linker
rew    0  stack_4
re     0  pit
       0  pds
       0  kst
       0  dseg

r 11:33 0.214 0



-- Charles
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Chet Ramey

    > /proc was done by Roger at AT&T (maybe USL). I recall him telling me
    > that he was not the original author though and that it came from PWB.
    > The original implementation was done by Tom Killian for 8th Edition.

I wonder if >pdd (which dates to somewhere in the mid-60's, I'm too lazy to
look the exact date up) was in any way any inspiration for /proc?

	Noel

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Berny Goodheart

    > From BSD:
    > Process groups and job Control

The intermediate between V6 and V7 which ran on several MIT machines (I think
it was an early PWB - I should retrieve it and make it available to the Unix
archive, it's an interesting system) had 'process groups', but I don't know if
the concept was the same as BSD process groups.

    Noel

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Berny Goodheart]

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 I have been trolling these many threads lately of interest. So thought I should chip in.

"SVr4 was not based on SunOS, although it incorporated
many of the best features of SunOS 4.x”.

IMHO this statement is almost true (there were many great features from BSD too!).
SunOS 5.0 was ported from SVR4 in early 1991 and released as Solaris 2.0 in 1992 for desktop only.
Back in the late 80s, Sun and AT&T partnered development efforts so it’s no surprise that SunOS morphed into SVR4. Indeed it was Sun and AT&T who were the founding members of Unix International…with an aim to provide direction and unification of SVR4.
I remember when I went to work for Sun (much later in 2003), and found that the code base was remarkably similar to the SVR4 code (if not exact in many areas).

Here’s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[arnold]

Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:

> From BSD:
> COFF

COFF came from System V. IIRC SVR2, but maybe even SVR1.

Everything else looks correct to me. :-)

Thanks,

Arnold

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 03:12:19PM +0000, Berny Goodheart wrote:
> From SunOS:
> /proc

Pretty sure /proc was not a SunOS thing.

> From SVR3:
> .so libs

If you mean shared libraries, SunOS had those.  If it's more nuanced
than that, I'd defer to Gingell.

--lm

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 03:12:19PM +0000, Berny Goodheart wrote:
> > From SunOS:
> > /proc
>
> Pretty sure /proc was not a SunOS thing.

and I believe that Roger Faulkner did come from AT&T

> > From SVR3:
> > .so libs
>
> If you mean shared libraries, SunOS had those.  If it's more nuanced
> than that, I'd defer to Gingell.

.so is a name introduced by SunOS-4

What Svr3 had, was shared libraries that have been installed in the kernel 
during boot up into multi-user mode using a special program. In order to 
manage this, you needed to have a global library manager that defined start
addresses for the load addresses of the libraries.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Berny Goodheart]

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> On 10 Jan 2017, at 16:24, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> 
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 03:12:19PM +0000, Berny Goodheart wrote:
>>> From SunOS:
>>> /proc
>> 
>> Pretty sure /proc was not a SunOS thing.
> 
> and I believe that Roger Faulkner did come from AT&T

Yes. And I should know this as I communicated and met with him on several occasions when I was developing /proc for Janus (Linux binary emulation) on Solaris x86.
So, I was defo wrong on this. /proc was done by Roger at AT&T (maybe USL). I recall him telling me that he was not the original author though and that it came from PWB.


> 
>>> From SVR3:
>>> .so libs
>> 
>> If you mean shared libraries, SunOS had those.  If it's more nuanced
>> than that, I'd defer to Gingell.
> 
> .so is a name introduced by SunOS-4
> 
> What Svr3 had, was shared libraries that have been installed in the kernel 
> during boot up into multi-user mode using a special program. In order to 
> manage this, you needed to have a global library manager that defined start
> addresses for the load addresses of the libraries.

My bad again….there will probably be many more. It’s old age you see ;) I meant shared libraries.
> 
> Jörg
> 
> -- 
> EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
>       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
> URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/10/17 11:32 AM, Berny Goodheart wrote:
> 
>> On 10 Jan 2017, at 16:24, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
>>
>> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 03:12:19PM +0000, Berny Goodheart wrote:
>>>> From SunOS:
>>>> /proc
>>>
>>> Pretty sure /proc was not a SunOS thing.
>>
>> and I believe that Roger Faulkner did come from AT&T
> 
> Yes. And I should know this as I communicated and met with him on several occasions when I was developing /proc for Janus (Linux binary emulation) on Solaris x86.
> So, I was defo wrong on this. 


/proc was done by Roger at AT&T (maybe USL). I recall him telling me that
he was not the original author though and that it came from PWB.

The original implementation was done by Tom Killian for 8th Edition. I
think Roger used that as inspiration, not sure about the code.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:

> >> Pretty sure /proc was not a SunOS thing.
> > 
> > and I believe that Roger Faulkner did come from AT&T
>
> Yes. And I should know this as I communicated and met with him on several occasions when I was developing /proc for Janus (Linux binary emulation) on Solaris x86.
> So, I was defo wrong on this. /proc was done by Roger at AT&T (maybe USL). I recall him telling me that he was not the original author though and that it came from PWB.

AFAIK, Roger was the original author for ProcFS-II that was introduced later in 
SunOS-5 (I believe it was Solaris-2.6) and introduced subdirectories.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:

> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>
> From BSD:
> TCP/IP			<=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
> C Shell
> Sockets			<=== NO, BSD has sockets in kernel, SVr4 in
					userland
> Process groups and job Control
> Some signals
> FFS in UFS guise		<=== NO, rather taken from SunOS-4
> Multi groups/file ownership
> Some system calls
> COFF				<=== NO, COFF was from SysV and deprecated in Svr4
>
> From SunOS:
> vnodes
> VFS
> VM
> mmap
> LWP and kernel threads
> /proc				<=== NO, /proc did not exist in SunOS-4
> Dynamic linking extensions
> NFS
> RPC
> XDR
>
> From SVR3:
> .so libs			<=== What should this be?
					I am not even sure whether SVr4 included
					backwards compatibility for the SVr3
					"installed" shared libraries.

> revamped signals and trampoline code +++++sigset() was not in SVr2, I believe 
						it was not available in svr3 as 
						well and rather invented for 
						Svr4
> VFSSW				<=== NO, this is from SunOS-4
> RFS
> STREAMS and TLI		<=== SVr3 did not have STREAMS
> IPC (Shared memory, Message queues, semaphores) <=== Already in SunOS-4

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Clem cole]

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The old saw that I wish I had said "great men stand on the shoulders of greater men, computer scientist like to step on their toes."

The problem I have with this sort of accounting is it leaves out where different groups took these ideas and integrated them.  Others that come later loss that history.  For instance ip/tcp came from bbn, /proc came from research, job control    came from MIT, fsck from CMU etc.   

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Jan 10, 2017, at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> 
> Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> 
>> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>> 
>> From BSD:
>> TCP/IP            <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
>> C Shell
>> Sockets            <=== NO, BSD has sockets in kernel, SVr4 in
>                    userland
>> Process groups and job Control
>> Some signals
>> FFS in UFS guise        <=== NO, rather taken from SunOS-4
>> Multi groups/file ownership
>> Some system calls
>> COFF                <=== NO, COFF was from SysV and deprecated in Svr4
>> 
>> From SunOS:
>> vnodes
>> VFS
>> VM
>> mmap
>> LWP and kernel threads
>> /proc                <=== NO, /proc did not exist in SunOS-4
>> Dynamic linking extensions
>> NFS
>> RPC
>> XDR
>> 
>> From SVR3:
>> .so libs            <=== What should this be?
>                    I am not even sure whether SVr4 included
>                    backwards compatibility for the SVr3
>                    "installed" shared libraries.
> 
>> revamped signals and trampoline code +++++sigset() was not in SVr2, I believe 
>                        it was not available in svr3 as 
>                        well and rather invented for 
>                        Svr4
>> VFSSW                <=== NO, this is from SunOS-4
>> RFS
>> STREAMS and TLI        <=== SVr3 did not have STREAMS
>> IPC (Shared memory, Message queues, semaphores) <=== Already in SunOS-4
> 
> Jörg
> 
> -- 
> EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
>       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
> URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/10/17 11:34 AM, Clem cole wrote:

> job control    came from MIT

The original concepts might have, but the BSD implementation was done by
Jim Kulp at IIASA before it was folded into 4.1 BSD.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Berny Goodheart]

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> On 10 Jan 2017, at 16:20, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> 
> Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> 
>> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>> 
>> From BSD:
>> TCP/IP			<=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack

Correct. Sort of. in SVR4 it was defo STREAMS based. But in earlier SVRx versions it was the BSD stuff.
>> C Shell
>> Sockets			<=== NO, BSD has sockets in kernel, SVr4 in
> 					userland
But I dont recall seeing sockets in SVRx until SVR4.

>> Process groups and job Control
>> Some signals
>> FFS in UFS guise		<=== NO, rather taken from SunOS-4
I am not sure on this so I will agree ;)

>> Multi groups/file ownership
>> Some system calls
>> COFF				<=== NO, COFF was from SysV and deprecated in Svr4
I defo have this one wrong. You are correct.

>> 
>> From SunOS:
>> vnodes
>> VFS
>> VM
>> mmap
>> LWP and kernel threads
>> /proc				<=== NO, /proc did not exist in SunOS-4
Yes, it came from Roger at AT&T

>> Dynamic linking extensions
>> NFS
>> RPC
>> XDR
>> 
>> From SVR3:
>> .so libs			<=== What should this be?
> 					I am not even sure whether SVr4 included
> 					backwards compatibility for the SVr3
> 					"installed" shared libraries.
> 
>> revamped signals and trampoline code +++++sigset() was not in SVr2, I believe 
> 						it was not available in svr3 as 
> 						well and rather invented for 
> 						Svr4
Hmm… I am not sure this is totally correct. I was working on the trampoline code myself in SVR2 which was released as SVR3 but sigset and relatives didnt come until SVR4 and the trampoline code was again revamped in SVR4 by guess who….Sun.

>> VFSSW				<=== NO, this is from SunOS-4
I am prety sure this was from AT&T albeit, it was probably Sun developed.

>> RFS
>> STREAMS and TLI		<=== SVr3 did not have STREAMS
SVR3 defo had STREAMS. 

>> IPC (Shared memory, Message queues, semaphores) <=== Already in SunOS-4
But it was in SysV before SunOS-4. Much of Solaris IPC came from the SysV code together with POSIX IPC and some extras….doors.
> 
> Jörg
> 
> -- 
> EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
>       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
> URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:

> >> IPC (Shared memory, Message queues, semaphores) <=== Already in SunOS-4
> But it was in SysV before SunOS-4. Much of Solaris IPC came from the SysV code together with POSIX IPC and some extras?.doors.

Doors are a backport from the "Spring" operating system from Bill Joy that he 
developed in Colorado after the SVr4 task was finished around 1992.

Spring was send to universities and research institutes in 1996 and then shut 
down, but doors were backported to Solaris for "nscd" the name service cache 
daemon.



Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
>
>> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>>
>> From BSD:
>> TCP/IP                        <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack

svr4's stack is derived from BSD with a STREAMS packaging. These files
were listed as "in AT&T's code w/o BSD headers" in the countersuit for
the infamous AT&T lawsuit.

Warner

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 09:47:28AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> > Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
> >>
> >> From BSD:
> >> TCP/IP                        <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
> 
> svr4's stack is derived from BSD with a STREAMS packaging. These files
> were listed as "in AT&T's code w/o BSD headers" in the countersuit for
> the infamous AT&T lawsuit.

Yeah, I think Convergent did the STREAMS packaging, then Lachman bought
the stack, I ported it twice (ETA & SCO), then I believe it was Bill
Coleman (not positive on the name, it was the VP of networking) at Sun
that bought rights to the stack from Lachman under pretty unfavorable
terms, then Sun got unhappy with the terms (and the performance),
contracted with Mentat to do a new stack and I think that stack is what
remains in Solaris.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 09:47:28AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
>> > Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>> >>
>> >> From BSD:
>> >> TCP/IP                        <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
>>
>> svr4's stack is derived from BSD with a STREAMS packaging. These files
>> were listed as "in AT&T's code w/o BSD headers" in the countersuit for
>> the infamous AT&T lawsuit.
>
> Yeah, I think Convergent did the STREAMS packaging, then Lachman bought
> the stack, I ported it twice (ETA & SCO), then I believe it was Bill
> Coleman (not positive on the name, it was the VP of networking) at Sun
> that bought rights to the stack from Lachman under pretty unfavorable
> terms, then Sun got unhappy with the terms (and the performance),
> contracted with Mentat to do a new stack and I think that stack is what
> remains in Solaris.

I did some work on the Lachman stack for sysvr4 machines at Wollongong
in 89 or so as well... It was very BSDish code that had been involved
in a horrific traffic accident and rebuilt in a STREAMS framework. I'm
not at all surprised that it didn't scale, because at the time it
barely worked...

Warner

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:33:59AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 09:47:28AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> >> > Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
> >> >>
> >> >> From BSD:
> >> >> TCP/IP                        <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
> >>
> >> svr4's stack is derived from BSD with a STREAMS packaging. These files
> >> were listed as "in AT&T's code w/o BSD headers" in the countersuit for
> >> the infamous AT&T lawsuit.
> >
> > Yeah, I think Convergent did the STREAMS packaging, then Lachman bought
> > the stack, I ported it twice (ETA & SCO), then I believe it was Bill
> > Coleman (not positive on the name, it was the VP of networking) at Sun
> > that bought rights to the stack from Lachman under pretty unfavorable
> > terms, then Sun got unhappy with the terms (and the performance),
> > contracted with Mentat to do a new stack and I think that stack is what
> > remains in Solaris.
> 
> I did some work on the Lachman stack for sysvr4 machines at Wollongong
> in 89 or so as well... It was very BSDish code that had been involved
> in a horrific traffic accident and rebuilt in a STREAMS framework. I'm
> not at all surprised that it didn't scale, because at the time it
> barely worked...

Yup, been there, lived that.  Until Mentat came along it was the only game
in town.  I don't normally tell people I'm the guy that gave SCO networking
because it "barely worked" as you say.

I did get SCO to ship sw (STREAMS watch) that was sort of like a top for
STREAMS - it was useful to run this while beating on the stack and then
go tune the internal limits for better performance.  I can't imagine
anyone wants this any more, or if it even runs, but it's my copyright
and I stuck a copy in http://mcvoy.com/lm/sw.shar

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Clem cole]

Correct- that was the path as I know it.  i.e.  ITS gave Unix more and job control.  


Which is my point.    When some one starts pontificating about how SYS/BSD/Linux this that or the other thing - often the idea came elsewhere.   Wide distribution and use was supplied by the XXX Channel but there were many many fathers and mothers 

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Jan 10, 2017, at 10:42 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:33:59AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 09:47:28AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
>>>>> Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> From BSD:
>>>>>> TCP/IP                        <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
>>>> 
>>>> svr4's stack is derived from BSD with a STREAMS packaging. These files
>>>> were listed as "in AT&T's code w/o BSD headers" in the countersuit for
>>>> the infamous AT&T lawsuit.
>>> 
>>> Yeah, I think Convergent did the STREAMS packaging, then Lachman bought
>>> the stack, I ported it twice (ETA & SCO), then I believe it was Bill
>>> Coleman (not positive on the name, it was the VP of networking) at Sun
>>> that bought rights to the stack from Lachman under pretty unfavorable
>>> terms, then Sun got unhappy with the terms (and the performance),
>>> contracted with Mentat to do a new stack and I think that stack is what
>>> remains in Solaris.
>> 
>> I did some work on the Lachman stack for sysvr4 machines at Wollongong
>> in 89 or so as well... It was very BSDish code that had been involved
>> in a horrific traffic accident and rebuilt in a STREAMS framework. I'm
>> not at all surprised that it didn't scale, because at the time it
>> barely worked...
> 
> Yup, been there, lived that.  Until Mentat came along it was the only game
> in town.  I don't normally tell people I'm the guy that gave SCO networking
> because it "barely worked" as you say.
> 
> I did get SCO to ship sw (STREAMS watch) that was sort of like a top for
> STREAMS - it was useful to run this while beating on the stack and then
> go tune the internal limits for better performance.  I can't imagine
> anyone wants this any more, or if it even runs, but it's my copyright
> and I stuck a copy in http://mcvoy.com/lm/sw.shar
> 

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Clem cole]

Looks like apples mail screwed up the repl.   That was supported to be directed at Chet's comment about noting Jim Kulp great work implementing ITS style  job control that joy took into BSD 

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Jan 10, 2017, at 11:21 AM, Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> Correct- that was the path as I know it.  i.e.  ITS gave Unix more and job control.  
> 
> 
> Which is my point.    When some one starts pontificating about how SYS/BSD/Linux this that or the other thing - often the idea came elsewhere.   Wide distribution and use was supplied by the XXX Channel but there were many many fathers and mothers 
> 
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 
> 
>>> On Jan 10, 2017, at 10:42 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:33:59AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 09:47:28AM -0800, Warner Losh wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
>>>>>> Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Here???s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> From BSD:
>>>>>>> TCP/IP                        <=== NO, Svr4 uses a STREAMS based TCP/IP stack
>>>>> 
>>>>> svr4's stack is derived from BSD with a STREAMS packaging. These files
>>>>> were listed as "in AT&T's code w/o BSD headers" in the countersuit for
>>>>> the infamous AT&T lawsuit.
>>>> 
>>>> Yeah, I think Convergent did the STREAMS packaging, then Lachman bought
>>>> the stack, I ported it twice (ETA & SCO), then I believe it was Bill
>>>> Coleman (not positive on the name, it was the VP of networking) at Sun
>>>> that bought rights to the stack from Lachman under pretty unfavorable
>>>> terms, then Sun got unhappy with the terms (and the performance),
>>>> contracted with Mentat to do a new stack and I think that stack is what
>>>> remains in Solaris.
>>> 
>>> I did some work on the Lachman stack for sysvr4 machines at Wollongong
>>> in 89 or so as well... It was very BSDish code that had been involved
>>> in a horrific traffic accident and rebuilt in a STREAMS framework. I'm
>>> not at all surprised that it didn't scale, because at the time it
>>> barely worked...
>> 
>> Yup, been there, lived that.  Until Mentat came along it was the only game
>> in town.  I don't normally tell people I'm the guy that gave SCO networking
>> because it "barely worked" as you say.
>> 
>> I did get SCO to ship sw (STREAMS watch) that was sort of like a top for
>> STREAMS - it was useful to run this while beating on the stack and then
>> go tune the internal limits for better performance.  I can't imagine
>> anyone wants this any more, or if it even runs, but it's my copyright
>> and I stuck a copy in http://mcvoy.com/lm/sw.shar
>> 

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dan Cross]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 2:21 PM, Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> Correct- that was the path as I know it.  i.e.  ITS gave Unix more and job
> control.
>
>
> Which is my point.    When some one starts pontificating about how
> SYS/BSD/Linux this that or the other thing - often the idea came
> elsewhere.   Wide distribution and use was supplied by the XXX Channel but
> there were many many fathers and mothers


To that end, someone once suggested to me that the inspiration for the
swapping implementation in early Unix came fro MTS, but I found that
dubious; the dates just don't line up.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dan Cross]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:

> Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > VFSSW                         <=== NO, this is from SunOS-4
>

Surely Berny meant the file system switch here, which could have come from
early system V, but originated in research Unix (8th edition?). Note that
this list is very similar to that in the early part of his book on System V
internals.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
>
> > Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > VFSSW                         <=== NO, this is from SunOS-4
> >
>
> Surely Berny meant the file system switch here, which could have come from
> early system V, but originated in research Unix (8th edition?). Note that
> this list is very similar to that in the early part of his book on System V
> internals.

It is rather a part of the VFS interface that has first been completed with 
SunOS-3.0 in late 1985.

There are small changes introduced into the VFS switch for SVr4 to permit to 
mount special filesystems without the need of root permissions. They cause the 
major differences between SunOS-4 and Svr4.

VFS uses two interface parts: 

-	the VFS switch with the vfs interface functions to mount a filesystem
	and to stat it

-	the VFS vnode interface with the vnode interface functions to hold the
	interfaces like open(),	mmap(), ...

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 11:57:51PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com> wrote:
> > > [snip]
> > > > VFSSW                         <=== NO, this is from SunOS-4
> > >
> >
> > Surely Berny meant the file system switch here, which could have come from
> > early system V, but originated in research Unix (8th edition?). Note that
> > this list is very similar to that in the early part of his book on System V
> > internals.
> 
> It is rather a part of the VFS interface that has first been completed with 
> SunOS-3.0 in late 1985.

I think you are once again confused.  System Vr3 had something called the
file system switch which is what Berny is talking about.  SunOS had 
virtual file system layer (VFS) and that would be one of things ported
to SVr4.

The history on wikipedia matches my memory and contradicts much of what
you've been claiming.  For what it is worth, I didn't write a word of
that wikipedia page so others remember much as I do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_V

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > It is rather a part of the VFS interface that has first been completed with 
> > SunOS-3.0 in late 1985.
>
> I think you are once again confused.  System Vr3 had something called the
> file system switch which is what Berny is talking about.  SunOS had 
> virtual file system layer (VFS) and that would be one of things ported
> to SVr4.

But that SVr3 beast is not in Svr4.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 12:52:22AM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > > It is rather a part of the VFS interface that has first been completed with 
> > > SunOS-3.0 in late 1985.
> >
> > I think you are once again confused.  System Vr3 had something called the
> > file system switch which is what Berny is talking about.  SunOS had 
> > virtual file system layer (VFS) and that would be one of things ported
> > to SVr4.
> 
> But that SVr3 beast is not in Svr4.

Correct, it got dumped in favor of the VFS layer from SunOS, which I
said already.

My point is that you were telling Berny that the FSS wasn't from
SV but it was.

You should go read that wikipedia page, so far as I can tell it's pretty
accurate and has a better version of the history that you do.  

I suspect you've fallen victim to various people claiming stuff that
wasn't really accurate.  Like Bill Joy being responsible for SVr4.
If by "responsible" you mean he worked on the code, I'm sure that's
not true.  If by "responsible" you mean he talked to AT&T about it,
sure, that's pretty likely.  You made it sound like the former which
just isn't plausible.  For lots of reasons.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > But that SVr3 beast is not in Svr4.
>
> Correct, it got dumped in favor of the VFS layer from SunOS, which I
> said already.
>
> My point is that you were telling Berny that the FSS wasn't from
> SV but it was.

Please refresh your memory and have a look at the sources...

The first of the two SunOS tables I am referring to is called "vfssw". I 
thought this was what he referred to. I thought that he knows that what Svr3 
used to have, did not make it into Svr4.


And BTW: Wikipedia is of low quality and unusable when something may be related 
to religion. Check e.g. how long it took to name Konrad Zuse as the inventor of 
the first usable computer. When I look at Wikipedia, I check whether the 
references are trustworthy before I believe the claims.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 01:07:17AM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > > But that SVr3 beast is not in Svr4.
> >
> > Correct, it got dumped in favor of the VFS layer from SunOS, which I
> > said already.
> >
> > My point is that you were telling Berny that the FSS wasn't from
> > SV but it was.
> 
> Please refresh your memory and have a look at the sources...

So far you haven't mentioned a source base where I have not worked.
And you keep dropping names, which is fun, but I know all the names
you have dropped personally.  John Pope came to my house after stopping
by at Matt Jacob's house.  Matt was my neighbor in Noe Valley and he 
was the guy who checked in my work on UFS (I was too chicken to do it,
I had been to some SunOS 4.x staff meetings where Gingell ripped people
a new asshole for doing something wrong.  Matt checked in my UFS work
with the comment "this is the only thing we have that makes performance
better, it's going in".)

I don't know where you are getting your information from but the time
period you are talking about was when I was a pretty good engineer,
I lived in the Unix source code, mcvoy.com is internally known as
slovax, slovax was the 11/750 that had the 4.2 BSD source on it, 
I spent a boatload of time reading that code.  Kernel and userland.

Same for System III, same for the PWB release, same for System V,
I love this stuff.  I'm a total nerd for this stuff, it's why I'm
on this list, the people I look up to are here.

I really wonder where you got your information from because it's a
little bit wrong.

--lm

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> I really wonder where you got your information from because it's a
> little bit wrong.

Do you really believe I invented all these people? You already confirmed that 
they exist. How do you believe, I could get the names without being in contact 
with them?

I got my information from working on Solaris and in this special case, you seem 
to forget that you definitely made a mistake. Maybe you now like to refresh 
your memory....

From Solaris sys/vfs.h:

/*
 * Filesystem type switch table.
 */

typedef struct vfssw {
        char            *vsw_name;      /* type name -- max len _ST_FSTYPSZ */
        int             (*vsw_init) (int, char *);
                                /* init routine (for non-loadable fs only) */
        int             vsw_flag;       /* flags */
        mntopts_t       vsw_optproto;   /* mount options table prototype */
        uint_t          vsw_count;      /* count of references */
        kmutex_t        vsw_lock;       /* lock to protect vsw_count */
        vfsops_t        vsw_vfsops;     /* filesystem operations vector */
} vfssw_t;

I however have to admit that I did also a mistake as struct vfssw just 
contains the structure vfsops_t and is not the structure I had in mind itself.

But it is based on struct vfssw from SunOS-4 sys/vfs.h which looks this way:

/*
 * Filesystem type switch table
 */
struct vfssw {
        char            *vsw_name;      /* type name string */
        struct vfsops   *vsw_ops;       /* filesystem operations vector */
};


It seems that "porting" it to Svr4 caused a dot to be appended to the 
comment ;-) 

BTW: in 1990 with SunOS-4.0, I could already modload my "wofs" as I added a few
nulled entries to the struct vfssw in os/vfs_conf.c, pretended that wofs was a 
device driver and let it then install itself into one of the empty entries in
struct vfssw.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Berny Goodheart]

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> On 10 Jan 2017, at 16:16, pechter at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> Wasn't msg SVR4... It was in the Xelos sources @Concurrent Computer which was an SVR2 port.  Xelos didn't do paging but the source in 87 or 88 or so had ksh in it. 
> 
> I. built it for SVR4 on my Xelos 3230 back in the day. 

msgs goes back as far as SVR2.

> 
> Bill
> 
> Sent from my android device.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Berny Goodheart <berny at berwynlodge.com>
> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
> Sent: Tue, 10 Jan 2017 10:12
> Subject: [TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines
> 
> I have been trolling these many threads lately of interest. So thought I should chip in.
> 
> "SVr4 was not based on SunOS, although it incorporated
> many of the best features of SunOS 4.x”.
> 
> IMHO this statement is almost true (there were many great features from BSD too!).
> SunOS 5.0 was ported from SVR4 in early 1991 and released as Solaris 2.0 in 1992 for desktop only.
> Back in the late 80s, Sun and AT&T partnered development efforts so it’s no surprise that SunOS morphed into SVR4. Indeed it was Sun and AT&T who were the founding members of Unix International…with an aim to provide direction and unification of SVR4.
> I remember when I went to work for Sun (much later in 2003), and found that the code base was remarkably similar to the SVR4 code (if not exact in many areas).
> 
> Here’s the breakdown of SVR4 kernel lineage as I recall it. I am pretty sure this is correct. But I am sure many of you will put me right if I am wrong ;)
> 
> From BSD:
> TCP/IP
> C Shell
> Sockets
> Process groups and job Control
> Some signals
> FFS in UFS guise
> Multi groups/file ownership
> Some system calls
> COFF
> 
> From SunOS:
> vnodes
> VFS
> VM
> mmap
> LWP and kernel threads
> /proc
> Dynamic linking extensions
> NFS
> RPC
> XDR
> 
> From SVR3:
> .so libs
> revamped signals and trampoline code
> VFSSW
> RFS
> STREAMS and TLI
> IPC (Shared memory, Message queues, semaphores)
> 
> Additional features in SVR4 from USL:
> new boot process.
> ksh
> real time extensions
> Service access facility
> Enhancements to STREAMS
> ELF
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

I was in building 5 at Sun when they were switching to SVr4 which became
Solaris 2.0 (I think).  Building 5 housed the kernel people at Sun.
John Pope was the poor bastard who got stuck with doing the bring up.
Everyone hated him for doing it, we all wanted it to fail.

I was busting my ass on something in SunOS 4.x and I was there late into
the night, frequently to around midnight or beyond.  So was John.

We became close friends.  We both moved to San Francisco and ended up
commuting to Mountain View together (and hit the bars together).  

John was just at my place, here's a few pictures for those who might
be interested.  He's a great guy, got stuck with a shitty job.

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/2016-pope/

--lm

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 7:41 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> I was in building 5 at Sun when they were switching to SVr4 which became
> Solaris 2.0 (I think).

Solaris 2.0 was the first SVr4 version of Solaris. 4.1.{1,2,3} were
still BSD based, and Solaris 2.0 was SunOS 5.0 and OpenWindows.

I recently came across a CD ROM that was labeled Solaris 2.0 Preview
and Solbourne's name written in Magic Marker on it. I have no clue how
I came to have it, but it was mixed in my ancient CDROM disc
collection...

Warner

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dan Cross]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 10:00 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 7:41 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > I was in building 5 at Sun when they were switching to SVr4 which became
> > Solaris 2.0 (I think).
>
> Solaris 2.0 was the first SVr4 version of Solaris. 4.1.{1,2,3} were
> still BSD based, and Solaris 2.0 was SunOS 5.0 and OpenWindows.
>

My favorite version number was SunOS 4.1.4U1: I was told that the ``U1''
meant, "you won", as in "you won. Here's another BSD-based release."
Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.

I recently came across a CD ROM that was labeled Solaris 2.0 Preview
> and Solbourne's name written in Magic Marker on it. I have no clue how
> I came to have it, but it was mixed in my ancient CDROM disc
> collection...
>

Wow. Solbourne; that's a name I haven't heard in a while.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 10:23:28PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 10:00 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 7:41 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > I was in building 5 at Sun when they were switching to SVr4 which became
> > > Solaris 2.0 (I think).
> >
> > Solaris 2.0 was the first SVr4 version of Solaris. 4.1.{1,2,3} were
> > still BSD based, and Solaris 2.0 was SunOS 5.0 and OpenWindows.
> >
> 
> My favorite version number was SunOS 4.1.4U1: I was told that the ``U1''
> meant, "you won", as in "you won. Here's another BSD-based release."

That might have been the Greg Limes release.  I may be all wrong but
someone, I think it was Greg, busted their ass to try and make SunOS
4.x scale up on SMP machines.  There were a lot of us at the time that
hated the SVr4 thing, it was such a huge step backwards.

I dunno how much you care about Sun history, but SunOS, the BSD based
stuff before 5.0, the engineers and the customers *loved* it.  I was 
not the first guy who worked until midnight on that OS, I wasn't even
on the radar screen.  Guy Harris worked on it, tons of people worked 
on it, tons of people poured their heart and soul into it.  It crushed
us when they went to SVr4, that shit sucked.

My boss, Ken Okin, paid me for 6 months to go fight management to stop
the switch to SVr4.  It was more than a decade later that I learned
that the reason for the switch was that Sun was out of money and AT&T
bought $200M of Sun stock at 35% over market but the deal was no more
SunOS, it had to be SVr4.

I really wonder what the world would look like right now if Sun had 
open sourced SunOS 4.x and put energy behind it.  I wrote a paper 
about it, I still wonder.

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/srcos.html

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Ed Carp]

That's a good question. I was working for Sun at the time, and no one
I know was in favor of the switch - all we knew was that Scott McNealy
was cramming it down the throats of both Sun and Suns customers (or
that was the perception, anyway). I think they lost a lot of customers
because of that.

On 1/3/17, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 10:23:28PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 10:00 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 7:41 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>> > > I was in building 5 at Sun when they were switching to SVr4 which
>> > > became
>> > > Solaris 2.0 (I think).
>> >
>> > Solaris 2.0 was the first SVr4 version of Solaris. 4.1.{1,2,3} were
>> > still BSD based, and Solaris 2.0 was SunOS 5.0 and OpenWindows.
>> >
>>
>> My favorite version number was SunOS 4.1.4U1: I was told that the ``U1''
>> meant, "you won", as in "you won. Here's another BSD-based release."
>
> That might have been the Greg Limes release.  I may be all wrong but
> someone, I think it was Greg, busted their ass to try and make SunOS
> 4.x scale up on SMP machines.  There were a lot of us at the time that
> hated the SVr4 thing, it was such a huge step backwards.
>
> I dunno how much you care about Sun history, but SunOS, the BSD based
> stuff before 5.0, the engineers and the customers *loved* it.  I was
> not the first guy who worked until midnight on that OS, I wasn't even
> on the radar screen.  Guy Harris worked on it, tons of people worked
> on it, tons of people poured their heart and soul into it.  It crushed
> us when they went to SVr4, that shit sucked.
>
> My boss, Ken Okin, paid me for 6 months to go fight management to stop
> the switch to SVr4.  It was more than a decade later that I learned
> that the reason for the switch was that Sun was out of money and AT&T
> bought $200M of Sun stock at 35% over market but the deal was no more
> SunOS, it had to be SVr4.
>
> I really wonder what the world would look like right now if Sun had
> open sourced SunOS 4.x and put energy behind it.  I wrote a paper
> about it, I still wonder.
>
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/srcos.html
>

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[ron minnich]

Larry, had Sun open sourced SunOS, as you fought so hard to make happen,
Linux might not have happened as it did. SunOS was really good. Chalk up
another win for ATT!

OTOH, I bet Sun would have done a CDL type license, which would have made
it all pointless. To this day, I run into problems talking ZFS to people,
entirely because of the CDL.

ron
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> Larry, had Sun open sourced SunOS, as you fought so hard to make happen,
> Linux might not have happened as it did. SunOS was really good. Chalk up
> another win for ATT!

Well, Sun opensourced Solaris and Solaris is based on the SunOS sources.

Note that the Svr4 kernel was derived from the SunOS-4.0 kernel.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[ron minnich]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 8:31 AM Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:

>
>
> Well, Sun opensourced Solaris and Solaris is based on the SunOS sources.
>
>
>
too little, years  too late, with a license few (including me) really felt
comfortable with. Larry IIRC was pushing for a basic BSD license. I don't
know if any of us really understood the full implications of the GPL for
kernels back then -- both positive and negative.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> too little, years  too late, with a license few (including me) really felt
> comfortable with. Larry IIRC was pushing for a basic BSD license. I don't
> know if any of us really understood the full implications of the GPL for
> kernels back then -- both positive and negative.

The Sun employees have been asked whether they would support the BSD license 
and many of then said that they will terminate their contract if Sun uses BSD.

The GPL cannot be used as it is far too limiting.

I am happy with the license - the problem you may have is FUD against the CDDL
spread by the FSF...

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 05:57:33PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > too little, years  too late, with a license few (including me) really felt
> > comfortable with. Larry IIRC was pushing for a basic BSD license. I don't
> > know if any of us really understood the full implications of the GPL for
> > kernels back then -- both positive and negative.
> 
> The Sun employees have been asked whether they would support the BSD license 
> and many of then said that they will terminate their contract if Sun uses BSD.

Huh?  First of all, Sun employees don't have a contract, they are (or were)
at will employees.  So I think you mean they would quit if it were BSD
licensed.

Second, I've _never_ heard a single Sun person say they would quit if Sun
open sourced something under the BSD license.  I'm sure I've heard someone
say they didn't like that license but never heard anyone giving up their
job over it.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > The Sun employees have been asked whether they would support the BSD license 
> > and many of then said that they will terminate their contract if Sun uses BSD.
>
> Huh?  First of all, Sun employees don't have a contract, they are (or were)
> at will employees.  So I think you mean they would quit if it were BSD
> licensed.
>
> Second, I've _never_ heard a single Sun person say they would quit if Sun
> open sourced something under the BSD license.  I'm sure I've heard someone
> say they didn't like that license but never heard anyone giving up their
> job over it.

I discussed the possible options for an OpenSolaris license with Andrew Tucker 
in September 2004 during a dinner. Andrew Tucker was "distinguished engineer" 
and the chief architect for the OpenSolaris creation.

BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very sure about it.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:11:20PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > > The Sun employees have been asked whether they would support the BSD license 
> > > and many of then said that they will terminate their contract if Sun uses BSD.
> >
> > Huh?  First of all, Sun employees don't have a contract, they are (or were)
> > at will employees.  So I think you mean they would quit if it were BSD
> > licensed.
> >
> > Second, I've _never_ heard a single Sun person say they would quit if Sun
> > open sourced something under the BSD license.  I'm sure I've heard someone
> > say they didn't like that license but never heard anyone giving up their
> > job over it.
> 
> I discussed the possible options for an OpenSolaris license with Andrew Tucker 
> in September 2004 during a dinner. Andrew Tucker was "distinguished engineer" 
> and the chief architect for the OpenSolaris creation.
> 
> BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very sure about it.

"this fact" being that "many" Sun employees were prepared to quit if
Solaris was BSD licensed?  I'd like to see a list of those people,
I find it extremely hard to believe, but data will change my opinion.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very sure about it.
>
> "this fact" being that "many" Sun employees were prepared to quit if
> Solaris was BSD licensed?  I'd like to see a list of those people,
> I find it extremely hard to believe, but data will change my opinion.

Try to ask Simon.....

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:40:07PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > > BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very sure about it.
> >
> > "this fact" being that "many" Sun employees were prepared to quit if
> > Solaris was BSD licensed?  I'd like to see a list of those people,
> > I find it extremely hard to believe, but data will change my opinion.
> 
> Try to ask Simon.....
> 
> J?rg

You're the guy making the claim, onus is on you to back it up.  That's
how things work.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:40:07PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > > BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very sure about it.
> > >
> > > "this fact" being that "many" Sun employees were prepared to quit if
> > > Solaris was BSD licensed?  I'd like to see a list of those people,
> > > I find it extremely hard to believe, but data will change my opinion.
> > 
> > Try to ask Simon.....
> > 
> > J?rg
>
> You're the guy making the claim, onus is on you to back it up.  That's
> how things work.

Well, I thought using google should be simple:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License

Check the video mentioned there as this just lists what Simon did say.

BTW: Danese Cooper was (from what I know) not involved in the CDDL at all.

I had a 2 hour telephone conference with Andrew Tucker, a Sun lawyer and 
a lady from Sun (I do no longer remember her name but it was definitely not 
Danese). The reason for the telephone confernce was to discuss the changes for
the final CDDL license text.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:48:06PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:40:07PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > > Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very sure about it.
> > > >
> > > > "this fact" being that "many" Sun employees were prepared to quit if
> > > > Solaris was BSD licensed?  I'd like to see a list of those people,
> > > > I find it extremely hard to believe, but data will change my opinion.
> > > 
> > > Try to ask Simon.....
> > > 
> > > J?rg
> >
> > You're the guy making the claim, onus is on you to back it up.  That's
> > how things work.
> 
> Well, I thought using google should be simple:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License

Yeah, read the whole thing.  Still looking for a list of Sun employees
who were willing to quit if Sun chose the BSD license.

> Check the video mentioned there as this just lists what Simon did say.

What video?

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dan Cross]

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On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 12:57 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:48:06PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:40:07PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > > > Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > > BTW: this fact has been confirmed by Simon Phipps, so I am very
> sure about it.
> > > > >
> > > > > "this fact" being that "many" Sun employees were prepared to quit
> if
> > > > > Solaris was BSD licensed?  I'd like to see a list of those people,
> > > > > I find it extremely hard to believe, but data will change my
> opinion.
> > > >
> > > > Try to ask Simon.....
> > > >
> > > > J?rg
> > >
> > > You're the guy making the claim, onus is on you to back it up.  That's
> > > how things work.
> >
> > Well, I thought using google should be simple:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_
> Distribution_License
>
> Yeah, read the whole thing.  Still looking for a list of Sun employees
> who were willing to quit if Sun chose the BSD license.
>
> > Check the video mentioned there as this just lists what Simon did say.
>
> What video?
>

Larry,

    There are links to a recording of a presentation at DebConf 2016 in the
"References" section of the Wikipedia page: numbers 19 and 20. I haven't
watched it myself because I've literally got a sleeping baby on my shoulder
and often painful experience has taught me to not mess with such things.
However, the section of the Wikipedia CDDL article on GPL compatibility
mentions this:

'Simon Phipps (Sun's Chief Open Source Officer at the time), who had
introduced Ms. Cooper as "the one who actually wrote the CDDL",[19] did not
immediately comment, but later in the same video, he says, referring back
to the license issue, "I actually disagree with Danese to some degree",[20]
while describing the strong preference among the engineers who wrote the
code for a BSD-like license, which was in conflict with Sun's preference
for something copyleft, and that waiting for legal clearance to release
some parts of the code under the then unreleased GNU GPL v3 would have
taken several years, and would probably also have involved massed
resignations from engineers (unhappy with either the delay, the GPL, or
both—this is not clear from the video).'


This implies to me that the attitude among employees at Sun was that a
BSD-style license was *preferred*, and licensing under the *GPL* was the
thing that would (potentially) have brought about a mass exodus of unhappy
engineers. That is, it seems to be the inverse of what Joerg is suggesting.

But I think two things are being conflated: Solaris 2.0 was open-sourced
over a period of several years starting in the mid-2000s, and extending
through the end of the decade (2008, I guess). But your earlier proposal
for SunOS 4 (retroactively renamed Solaris 1.x...) dates from 1993, more
than a decade prior. It was my sense in the early 90s that licenses weren't
given nearly as much thought or consideration by individual engineers as
they are now. While I wasn't there, I imagine that at the time, folks were
probably more of the attitude, "open up SunOS? Yeah, that'd be
cool...License? Uh, I think my buddy from Berkeley has something about
this...." Anyway, I don't think one can directly compare the two because a
*lot* changed in that decade in between.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dan Cross]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 1:24 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> [snip    There are links to a recording of a presentation at DebConf 2016
> in the "References" section of the Wikipedia page: numbers 19 and 20. [snip]
>

Oops, I'm sorry, I meant Debconf 20*0*6, not 2016.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License
>
> Yeah, read the whole thing.  Still looking for a list of Sun employees
> who were willing to quit if Sun chose the BSD license.
>
> > Check the video mentioned there as this just lists what Simon did say.
>
> What video?

See reference 19 and 20.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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schily at schily.net (Joerg Schilling) wrote:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License
>
> Check the video mentioned there as this just lists what Simon did say.
>
> BTW: Danese Cooper was (from what I know) not involved in the CDDL at all.
>
> I had a 2 hour telephone conference with Andrew Tucker, a Sun lawyer and 
> a lady from Sun (I do no longer remember her name but it was definitely not 
> Danese). The reason for the telephone confernce was to discuss the changes for
> the final CDDL license text.

I just discovered the name again: The lady that was in the teleconference has 
been Claire Giordano.

Jörg

-- 
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 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dan Cross]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:

> schily at schily.net (Joerg Schilling) wrote:
>
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_
> Distribution_License
> >
> > Check the video mentioned there as this just lists what Simon did say.
> >
> > BTW: Danese Cooper was (from what I know) not involved in the CDDL at
> all.
> >
> > I had a 2 hour telephone conference with Andrew Tucker, a Sun lawyer and
> > a lady from Sun (I do no longer remember her name but it was definitely
> not
> > Danese). The reason for the telephone confernce was to discuss the
> changes for
> > the final CDDL license text.
>
> I just discovered the name again: The lady that was in the teleconference
> has
> been Claire Giordano.
>

FYI, I watched the video you referred to (my daughter having woken up) and
Simon's comments seem to be in direct contradiction of your earlier
statement. The relevant comments start at around 35:30, and he says that
the Sun engineering community pretty clearly favored a BSD-style license.
He mentions that trying to use the GPL would have pushed out their timeline
by several years. The ``you do that and we quit'' comment (around the 38
minute park) was quite clearly in response to using GPL for OpenSolaris.

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> FYI, I watched the video you referred to (my daughter having woken up) and
> Simon's comments seem to be in direct contradiction of your earlier
> statement. The relevant comments start at around 35:30, and he says that
> the Sun engineering community pretty clearly favored a BSD-style license.
> He mentions that trying to use the GPL would have pushed out their timeline
> by several years. The ``you do that and we quit'' comment (around the 38
> minute park) was quite clearly in response to using GPL for OpenSolaris.

This is strange, I have in mind that Simon said BSD was not wanted by the 
programmers and GPL was not practical because Sun then could not give away
binaries from Closed Source parts from other code owners that are in Sun 
Solaris but could not be in OpenSolaris.

IIRC, the only thing I did get from that video is the confirmation that Simon
was extremely unhappy with Danese claiming that Sun did like to have something 
that is deliberately incompatible to the GPL.

My discussion with Andrew Tucker resulted in getting to know that while there 
have been _some_ people inside Sun that would like to go this way, it was not 
what Sun as a whole intended.

I also remember that I got my recollection on the BSD thing from a face to face 
discssion with Simon and not from this video. So one of the statements from 
Simon may have been mistaken.

What I definitely remember from a private discussion with Simon is that Danese 
was very unhappy that Sun did not chose GPL and she did never understand why 
this was not possible for a product like Sun Solaris that should have allowed 
to be combined with closed source parts from other vendors as done before. She
left Sun soon after the CDDL was chosen and started to spread her view in a 
way that unfortunately harmed OpenSolaris.

Jörg

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 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 12:18:45PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> This is strange, I have in mind that Simon said BSD was not wanted by the 
> programmers and GPL was not practical because Sun then could not give away
> binaries from Closed Source parts from other code owners that are in Sun 
> Solaris but could not be in OpenSolaris.

There's just no way that there were, as you claimed, programmers who were
willing to quit if it was BSD.  BSD was fine, there are other good choices
but BSD was fine.  What the video showed is there were programmers who were
willing to quit if was the GPL, which is the opposite of what you have so
stridently claimed.

> IIRC, the only thing I did get from that video is the confirmation that Simon
> was extremely unhappy with Danese claiming that Sun did like to have something 
> that is deliberately incompatible to the GPL.

That makes sense to me, the GPL was hated inside of Sun, it was considered 
a virus.  The idea that you used a tiny bit of GPLed code and then everything
else is GPLed was viewed as highway robbery.  

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Steve Nickolas]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:

> That makes sense to me, the GPL was hated inside of Sun, it was 
> considered a virus.  The idea that you used a tiny bit of GPLed code and 
> then everything else is GPLed was viewed as highway robbery.

"GPL: Free like VD"

Personally, I'm fine with LGPL 2.1, but I rather quickly soured on the GPL 
proper, and what little code I've done recently has been under a modified 
BSD licence (UIUC licence).

-uso.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 12:18:45PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> This is strange, I have in mind that Simon said BSD was not wanted by the
>> programmers and GPL was not practical because Sun then could not give away
>> binaries from Closed Source parts from other code owners that are in Sun
>> Solaris but could not be in OpenSolaris.
>
> There's just no way that there were, as you claimed, programmers who were
> willing to quit if it was BSD.  BSD was fine, there are other good choices
> but BSD was fine.  What the video showed is there were programmers who were
> willing to quit if was the GPL, which is the opposite of what you have so
> stridently claimed.
>
>> IIRC, the only thing I did get from that video is the confirmation that Simon
>> was extremely unhappy with Danese claiming that Sun did like to have something
>> that is deliberately incompatible to the GPL.
>
> That makes sense to me, the GPL was hated inside of Sun, it was considered
> a virus.  The idea that you used a tiny bit of GPLed code and then everything
> else is GPLed was viewed as highway robbery.

Not to get in the middle of this, but I've know several Sun Kernel
engineers personally over the years (mostly in the 1990's when this is
relevant). The overwhelming majority view is what Larry has said.
Granted, these were engineers that were at the Sun office in
Broomfield Colorado for the most part, but I think they were
representative. I've also talked with several people in senior
management at Sun who helped make sure that things got released under
CDDL and they've told me they'd rather have gone with BSD, but it had
issues the CDDL addressed.

So can we please just get on with things and stop this silly back and forth.

Warner

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[ron minnich]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 8:57 AM Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:

>
>
> I am happy with the license - the problem you may have is FUD against the
> CDDL
> spread by the FSF...
>
>
>
I am glad you are happy with the license. Somebody had to be :-)
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 8:57 AM Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
> > I am happy with the license - the problem you may have is FUD against the
> > CDDL
> > spread by the FSF...
> >
> I am glad you are happy with the license. Somebody had to be :-)

Well, the final CDDL text has been changed on my request after the first 
published draft in order to make me happy ;-)

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 05:31:09PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Larry, had Sun open sourced SunOS, as you fought so hard to make happen,
> > Linux might not have happened as it did. SunOS was really good. Chalk up
> > another win for ATT!
> 
> Well, Sun opensourced Solaris and Solaris is based on the SunOS sources.
> 
> Note that the Svr4 kernel was derived from the SunOS-4.0 kernel.

I was in the kernel group at Sun at the time.  The pictures I posted
are of the guy that did the bring up.

In no way was SVr4 even remotely derived from the SunOS 4.0 kernel.

The only relation the two had was that both were derived from the 
original Unix sources but by this time they had diverged so much
there was very little in common.  Very little.

There was good reason for all the SunOS people being butt hurt, 
Scooter threw out a lot of very hard work that he wasn't smart
enough to value.  I get the $200M part, he didn't get the value
part.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > Note that the Svr4 kernel was derived from the SunOS-4.0 kernel.
>
> I was in the kernel group at Sun at the time.  The pictures I posted
> are of the guy that did the bring up.
>
> In no way was SVr4 even remotely derived from the SunOS 4.0 kernel.

I cannot confirm this at all.

I have access to both SunOS-4.x and Solaris sources and it is obvious that the 
SVr4 and Solaris kernel code is very similar. You could e.g. convert device 
drivers easily from SunOS-4.x to Solaris and I did this for my drivers.

I remember one notable difference between SunOS-4.x and Svr4/Solaris:

	The kernel function as_hole() has been renamed to as_gap() on request 
	from AT&T ;-)

On the other side, the kernels SVr3 and SVr4 are very different and it is close 
to impossible to port a SVr3 device driver to SVr4.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:02:51PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > > Note that the Svr4 kernel was derived from the SunOS-4.0 kernel.
> >
> > I was in the kernel group at Sun at the time.  The pictures I posted
> > are of the guy that did the bring up.
> >
> > In no way was SVr4 even remotely derived from the SunOS 4.0 kernel.
> 
> I cannot confirm this at all.
> 
> I have access to both SunOS-4.x and Solaris sources and it is obvious that the 

I'm not sure how you have legal access to the SunOS 4.x code.  I'd love a
copy of that source but so far as I know it's locked up.

> SVr4 and Solaris kernel code is very similar. 

Sure it's similar.  The process was:

	untar the SVr4 code
	take anything useful from the SunOS code
	try and make it compat

If you want to call that derived from that's your call.  In my mind "derived
from" would mean start with the SunOS code and make it SVr4 compat.  That
is *not* what AT&T paid $200M to have happen.  They knew that System V was
a non-starter and they wanted all the SunOS goodness in System V.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > I cannot confirm this at all.
> > 
> > I have access to both SunOS-4.x and Solaris sources and it is obvious that the 
>
> I'm not sure how you have legal access to the SunOS 4.x code.  I'd love a
> copy of that source but so far as I know it's locked up.

You did not make a backup while you worked at Sun?

Well, I am working in a governmental owned research unit and we did buy the 
SunOS-4.x sources for 100$ via the university access program.

Before, I was working at H.Berthold AG, the first OEM customer for Sun equipment.
Given that H.Berthold AG sold aprox. 25% of all Suns made in the 1980s, I had 
partial source access since 1986 and in 1988, I received a SunOS-4.0 kernel 
source tape from Bill Joy after the Sun Europe CEO asked him whether Bill could 
help me with with SunOS sources for my Dimploma thesis that is a Copy on Write
filesystem for optical media (WOFS).

While I cannot OSS this filesystem for SunOS-4.x, I am still planning to port 
it to OpenSolaris as this would permit me to OSS it. Hint: I have been told 
from Sun employees that the Sun ZFS group did read my diploma thesis before 
they started with ZFS even though it is written in German ;-)

My dimploma thesis was also used as the VFS documentation for people who 
intended to write a new filesystem.

> > SVr4 and Solaris kernel code is very similar. 
>
> Sure it's similar.  The process was:
>
> 	untar the SVr4 code

But the SVr4 code has been created from modifying the SunOS-4.0 sources.

BTW: AFAIK, Solaris 2 has been derived from SunOS-4.1.4 by adding the few 
parts of the SVr4 code that really differ from SunOS-4.x.

There seems to be a general missunderstandings:

I do not call SunOS-4.x a "BSD based OS" as SunOS-4.0 introduced a new memory 
management subsystem in the kernel. AT&T was very interested in this feature 
and because of this subsystem, the SVr4 kernel had to derived from the 
SunOS-4.0 kernel. This has been mentioned in talks on the Sun User group 
meeting in December 1987. I am not sure whether this was a talk from Bill Joy 
or from other people from the SunOS kernel group.

The userland code from SVr4 however is fully derived from SVr3, ignoring all
enhancements and fixes that appeared in BSD and SunOS before.

What I have been told about why people believed that Solaris is slow was mainly 
caused by the fact that there was a "dd" based benchmark that did a lot 512 
byte block transfers and since AT&T did not understand that an OS with virtual 
memory needs to use page aligned tranfser buffers, the AT&T "dd" until 1994
used "malloc()" instead of "valloc()" and this usually caused a 512 byte 
tansfer in "dd" to be split into two kernel transfers.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:39:25PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > > I cannot confirm this at all.
> > > 
> > > I have access to both SunOS-4.x and Solaris sources and it is obvious that the 
> >
> > I'm not sure how you have legal access to the SunOS 4.x code.  I'd love a
> > copy of that source but so far as I know it's locked up.
> 
> You did not make a backup while you worked at Sun?

Apparently your ethics and my ethics differ.  It was Sun's property, not mine.

> Hint: I have been told 
> from Sun employees that the Sun ZFS group did read my diploma thesis before 
> they started with ZFS even though it is written in German ;-)

Huh, interesting.  I'll check that out.  Both Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore
have worked for me.  Bonwick was one of my students at Stanford and I 
hired him into the kernel group.  Bill worked for me on BitKeeper.
I'll let you know what they say.

> There seems to be a general missunderstandings:
> 
> I do not call SunOS-4.x a "BSD based OS" as SunOS-4.0 introduced a new memory 
> management subsystem in the kernel. 

I think we can stop here.  The rest of the world at the time described
SunOS as "a bug fixed BSD".  The mmap() interface was designed by Bill
Joy while at UCB and was documented but not implemented in 4.2 BSD [*]

To say that SunOS 4.x wasn't BSD based is ludicrous.  And that's coming
from the guy who made it conform to POSIX and in the process wrote lint
libraries for SunOS, BSD, Posix, and System V.  

You're arguing with someone who was in the kernel group at Sun at the time
and is close friends with the guy who did the bringup.  I'm not sure you
could get a better source but if you want to keep pushing your version of
history I'll be here to point out where you get it wrong.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmap

Though that wiki page is suspect, did 4.3BSD-Reno really have the Mach
VM system?

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > You did not make a backup while you worked at Sun?
>
> Apparently your ethics and my ethics differ.  It was Sun's property, not mine.

You do not understand jokes?


> > Hint: I have been told 
> > from Sun employees that the Sun ZFS group did read my diploma thesis before 
> > they started with ZFS even though it is written in German ;-)
>
> Huh, interesting.  I'll check that out.  Both Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore
> have worked for me.  Bonwick was one of my students at Stanford and I 
> hired him into the kernel group.  Bill worked for me on BitKeeper.
> I'll let you know what they say.

I had a long discussion about this background in September 2004 with Jeff in 
his office while we discussed how a new secure interface that does not need 
root privileges could be added to support readin hole lists for files. This 
resulted in the design of SEEK_HOLE/SEEK_DATA.

Before (around 1992) I had a really long meeting with Wolfgang Thaler (he is 
the designer and author of DDI/DKI) and after he mentioned that there are many 
people inside Sun that understand German, mentioned that my dimploma thesis

	http://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/WoFS.pdf

is used by many Sun kernel engineers as there was no similar paper from Sun.


> > There seems to be a general missunderstandings:
> > 
> > I do not call SunOS-4.x a "BSD based OS" as SunOS-4.0 introduced a new memory 
> > management subsystem in the kernel. 
>
> I think we can stop here.  The rest of the world at the time described
> SunOS as "a bug fixed BSD".  The mmap() interface was designed by Bill
> Joy while at UCB and was documented but not implemented in 4.2 BSD [*]

This is definitely a missunderstanding:

Bill did create a mmap() interface for BSD while in UCB, but this was already 
around 1984 and hard to use as there was no universal address space description
inside the kernel.

What you could do with the old interface that was also available in e.g. 
SunOS-3.5 is to map user space addresses to VME addresses, but you first had to 
valloc() the space before, to get a mmap() target address. After you then 
called mmap(), you did waste all the swap space that was needed to hold the 
address space description. We used this method at H.Berthold AG in 1986 for the 
Berthold image processor to get direct access to the 256 MB of image memory in 
the image proessor. We needed to waste a whole disk for swap to get the 
initial mapping into the address space descriptor for the related userland 
process. 

For SunOS-4.0, Bill did a complete rewrite of the whole virtual memory 
subsystem. This rewrite includes the filesystem and since SunOS-4.0, all file 
access is done via mmap(). Even read() based file I/O basically maps the 
related parts of a file into a transient kernel area from where a copyout() is 
done. With SunOS-4.x, mmap() has been much easier to use as there now was an 
object oriented linked list of address space descriptions.

If you like to know why Sun could not donate the new virtual memory 
implementation to BSD, this is because of the contract signed with AT&T in late 
1987 - even before SunOS-4.0 was send to customers. AT&T did know from the 
memory subsystem from a talk at USENIX in spring 1987.

What I had to do when the Sparcstation came up was to write a segment driver to 
support the MMU in our VME<->S-Bus adaptor in order to come around the 32 MByte 
limitation for the addresses in an S-Bus slot.

BTW: in order to avoid more missunderstandings, could you mention when you have 
been in the Sun kernel group and what kind of things you did with the kernel?

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 07:23:12PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > I think we can stop here.  The rest of the world at the time described
> > SunOS as "a bug fixed BSD".  The mmap() interface was designed by Bill
> > Joy while at UCB and was documented but not implemented in 4.2 BSD [*]
> 
> This is definitely a missunderstanding:

You got that right.

> For SunOS-4.0, Bill did a complete rewrite of the whole virtual memory 
> subsystem. 

Bill did no such thing.  The rewrite was by Joe Moran.  You're spouting
a lot of misinformation and it's getting old.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > This is definitely a missunderstanding:
>
> You got that right.
>
> > For SunOS-4.0, Bill did a complete rewrite of the whole virtual memory 
> > subsystem. 
>
> Bill did no such thing.  The rewrite was by Joe Moran.  You're spouting
> a lot of misinformation and it's getting old.

OK, I may be mistaken with the author but what you write is mainly wrong, so 
please explain when you have been in the Sun kernel group and what kind of work 
you did in the kernel.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 07:23:12PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> BTW: in order to avoid more missunderstandings, could you mention when you have 
> been in the Sun kernel group and what kind of things you did with the kernel?

Sure.  Here's some notes I put together for Eli Lamb when I was thinking
about moving to Dec (to work for Jim Gray).  The date on the file is 
1992 so I had been there about 4 years.  I was in the kernel group from
1988 to about 1992, then moved over to hardware where I did a cluster
based NFS server and LMbench.  Then I went to SGI and did a new name
server that could serve all of California on a 200 mhz server, made
NFS deliver serve up files at 60MB/sec per file (we could do as many
streams in parallel as we had network cards).  

--lm

I showed up in October 1988.  This is what I can remember that I've done
since I've been here.  When I interviewed at DEC, their HR people thought 
I was lieing and I went through two more interviews before they finally
believed me.

* Doubled file system throughput.  Publication.  Generated sales.  Talk to
  Steve Kleiman for confirmation.

* Single handly implemented POSIX conformance in the 4.x OS.  Bullet item
  on lots of sales.  Talk to Don Cragun for confirmation.

* Implemented smoosh - basis for Avocet and nselite.  Talk to Shannon for
  confirmation.

* Implemented nselite - almost *all* kernel devlopment on 5.0 and 4.x 
  is currently under nselite.  Nselite has saved manyears of time (see
  Karl Danz and Larry Bassel for mgmt confirmation; Len Brown & Roger
  Faulkner for engineering confirmation; I also have statistics of
  usage:  nselite is more widely used than the NSE or Avocet).

* VM, swap, tmpfs performance.  I improved tmpfs write rates from 300KB to
  7MB / second.  Talk to Howard Chartok, Steve Kleiman, Peter Snyder for
  confirmation.

* STREAMS, tty enhancements.  Done under POSIX but had nothing to do
  with POSIX.

* Porting tools for SunOS 4.x to any known Unix implementation.  Talk to
  Rob Gingell for confirmation.

* More fires in the kernel than I care to think about.  I can run through
  bug traq to find these, many are boring, but all consumed substantial 
  time.  I have somewhat of a reputation of a kernel hack largely because
  of these firedrills.

* Designed and built the first Sun clustered system, Sunbox.  Hired and
  managed a team.

* Taught two Quarters of Graduate level OS at Stanford while working full
  time at Sun.  TA-ed the same course before that, Stanford ask me to teach
  it when Bob Hagmann retired.

* Extensive consulting with other groups:

  - Lisp people, VM issues, Cris Perdue.
  - Fortran crowd, I/O issues, Robert Corbett.
  - SWSMON - kernel tuning, Anh Nuygun.
  - Dragon crowd I/O issues, SCSI performance, Jean-Marc Frailong.
  - Pluto people picked up many of the ideas in the SCSI card proposal,
    Dave Banks.
  - Avocet crowd is picking up all the positive ideas in nselite due to
    my team player efforts with them.  Talk to Marla and Giordano for
    confirmation.
  - Okins group, SunBox, Okin for confirmation.
  - Mike Scott, HA NFS.
  - Disk performance, Rich Clewett.
  - Performance benchmarking, etc, Nhan Chu & group.
  - Big memory systems, Bill Peterson.
  - NFS group, performance, cache consistency, John Corbin.
  - UFS crowd, delayed I/O, quickcheck, Tom Wong, Blake Lewis.
  - SMCC, presto, omni, SCSI.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 07:23:12PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > BTW: in order to avoid more missunderstandings, could you mention when you have 
> > been in the Sun kernel group and what kind of things you did with the kernel?
>
> Sure.  Here's some notes I put together for Eli Lamb when I was thinking
> about moving to Dec (to work for Jim Gray).  The date on the file is 
> 1992 so I had been there about 4 years.  I was in the kernel group from
> 1988 to about 1992, then moved over to hardware where I did a cluster
> based NFS server and LMbench.  Then I went to SGI and did a new name
> server that could serve all of California on a 200 mhz server, made
> NFS deliver serve up files at 60MB/sec per file (we could do as many
> streams in parallel as we had network cards).  

Thank you for the list!

> I showed up in October 1988.  This is what I can remember that I've done
> since I've been here.  When I interviewed at DEC, their HR people thought 
> I was lieing and I went through two more interviews before they finally
> believed me.
>
> * Doubled file system throughput.  Publication.  Generated sales.  Talk to
>   Steve Kleiman for confirmation.

So it seems that you worked on code for SunOS-4.x but not on code for SunOS-5.x.

With that background I could understand your view.

Please note that I had access to the BSD-4.3 sources and SVr2/SVr3 in the 
university. 

In addition, I am the author for the Joliet and ISO-9660:1999 support in both
UnixWare 7 and Solaris, so I know about the differences between SunOS-5.x and 
the AT&T based SVr4 as well as I had legal access to the SCO UNIX sources
for this and another project. I warned SCO about their filesystem code that 
would need a lot of attention to work correctly on a 64 bit platform.

I have a good overview on the differences and common elements of BSD, SunOS and 
AT&T based UNIX versions.

I worked on code for the SunOS-4.x kernel and for the SunOS-5.x kernel and I 
ported drivers from SunOS-4.x to SunOS.5-x, so I am pretty sure about what I 
write and you may have gotten your impression because you did not compare the 
code we are talking about now.

Because you worked on filesystem throughput, you should know the new memory 
subsystem from SunOS-4.x well....This is a big part of the SunOS-4.x kernel and 
if you check the OpenSolaris kernel sources with your knowledge of the 
SunOS-4.x kernel, you should be able to confirm my statements.

> * Single handly implemented POSIX conformance in the 4.x OS.  Bullet item
>   on lots of sales.  Talk to Don Cragun for confirmation.

Good hint, I'll ask him ;-) Today is the next POSIX teleconference call and he 
is still in the goup of core people.

> * Implemented smoosh - basis for Avocet and nselite.  Talk to Shannon for
>   confirmation.

Interesting: Do you mean "Bill Shannon"? Was he involved in SCCS or smoosh
as well? I know Bill as the author of "cstyle" and I pushed him to make it OSS
in 2001 already, before it appeared in OpenSolaris.

In January 2015, I talked with Glenn Skinner about SCCS and smoosh and he 
pointed me to his smoosh patent:

	http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US5481722.pdf

that has been expired in late 2014. I received a lisp prototype implementation 
for Glenns idea. Did you write the C implementation? Have you been involved in 
the .ml protytype as well?

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 12:50:18PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> So it seems that you worked on code for SunOS-4.x but not on code for SunOS-5.x.

That's not true, Sunbox was all 5.x code.  I spent about 3 years in the
5.x source base.

> I worked on code for the SunOS-4.x kernel and for the SunOS-5.x kernel and I 
> ported drivers from SunOS-4.x to SunOS.5-x, so I am pretty sure about what I 
> write and you may have gotten your impression because you did not compare the 
> code we are talking about now.

You've been arguing with a guy who was in the kernel group and I've tried to
set you straight and you just keep coming back with misinformation.

> Because you worked on filesystem throughput, you should know the new memory 
> subsystem from SunOS-4.x well....This is a big part of the SunOS-4.x kernel and 
> if you check the OpenSolaris kernel sources with your knowledge of the 
> SunOS-4.x kernel, you should be able to confirm my statements.

The VM system was ported from SunOS 4.x to System 5.  Your statements that
SVr4 is based on SunOS are flat out wrong.  SVr4 got a lot of SunOS goodness
but the starting point was ATT System V.

> > * Implemented smoosh - basis for Avocet and nselite.  Talk to Shannon for
> >   confirmation.
> 
> Interesting: Do you mean "Bill Shannon"? Was he involved in SCCS or smoosh
> as well? I know Bill as the author of "cstyle" and I pushed him to make it OSS
> in 2001 already, before it appeared in OpenSolaris.

Yup, that Shannon.

> In January 2015, I talked with Glenn Skinner about SCCS and smoosh and he 
> pointed me to his smoosh patent:
> 
> 	http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US5481722.pdf
> 
> that has been expired in late 2014. 

The fact that Glenn didn't put me on that patent is a sore point.  Yes,
he wrote the lisp code that showed it could be done.  I wrote the C code
that did that in one pass (his stuff was N+M where N was how many deltas
were on the local side and M was how deltas were on the remote side).

--lm

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Joerg Schilling]

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Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> The VM system was ported from SunOS 4.x to System 5.  Your statements that
> SVr4 is based on SunOS are flat out wrong.  SVr4 got a lot of SunOS goodness
> but the starting point was ATT System V.

This looks like a response made from gut.

Let us check things that are verifiable, by looking at the basic elements
of the OS kernel that together cover the majority of the kernel.

		SVr3		SunOS-4		SVr4
		=======================================
TTY driver	V7/Svr0		STREAMS		STREAMS

Networking	if: BSD		BSD		STREAMS
				Networktap	New code written
				allows STREAMS	by Lachman
				testing

Driver		Svr0		BSD based	SunOS-4 based
interface

Kernel virtual	V7/Svr0		SunOS-4		SunOS-4
memory

VFS		-		SunOS-4		SunOS-4 based


There are few things in SVr4 that are not the same as in SunOS-4,
e.g. the way parameters to ioctl() are copied to/from the kernel
but this are minor parts.

So why should someone start with the AT&T sources when the expected result
is > 70% identical with SunOS-4?

Even the TTY streams implementation is the one seen in SunOS4, and not
a possible AT&T internal implementation, as this contains a design flaw
that caused switching from/to coocked mode to loose data. This is not
permitted by the UNIX definitions for the TTY driver and has been fixed
by an enhencement that occured in SunOS-4 and is in Svr4 as well.

BTW: My statements are from a talk from Bill Joy from the Sun User Group 
meetings. Bill claimed that he was responsible for the Svr4 kernel and did this 
on a new location in Denver Colorado that was as a joint venture from Sun and 
AT&T.

The SunOS-5 kernel and the Svr4 kernel still differ, but they are more close 
together than Svr4 and Svr3. Note that I did not only write Joliet and 
ISO9660:1999 support code for SunOS and SCO UnixWare but also for SCO 
OpenServer that is based on Svr3. So I had legal access to SunOS, Svr4 and Svr3 
based code. Did you have access to this code? Did you compare?


> > Interesting: Do you mean "Bill Shannon"? Was he involved in SCCS or smoosh
> > as well? I know Bill as the author of "cstyle" and I pushed him to make it OSS
> > in 2001 already, before it appeared in OpenSolaris.
>
> Yup, that Shannon.

OK, so he was also working on SCCS?

> > In January 2015, I talked with Glenn Skinner about SCCS and smoosh and he 
> > pointed me to his smoosh patent:
> > 
> > 	http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US5481722.pdf
> > 
> > that has been expired in late 2014. 
>
> The fact that Glenn didn't put me on that patent is a sore point.  Yes,
> he wrote the lisp code that showed it could be done.  I wrote the C code
> that did that in one pass (his stuff was N+M where N was how many deltas
> were on the local side and M was how deltas were on the remote side).

I have been told that a patent can be void if it does not list the right 
inventors.

I would guess that this was a decision made by the lawyer that helped to file 
the patent.

Are you responsible for the original idea?

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 02:40:08PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > The VM system was ported from SunOS 4.x to System 5.  Your statements that
> > SVr4 is based on SunOS are flat out wrong.  SVr4 got a lot of SunOS goodness
> > but the starting point was ATT System V.
> 
> This looks like a response made from gut.

Oh, brother.  Let it go.  I talked to the guy who did the bringup, did I 
not post that?  It starts "SVr4 was not based on SunOS, although it incorporated
many of the best features of SunOS 4.x".

I'm dealing with trees down and landslides, I'll post the rest later, but
Joerg you are just wrong about this.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 02:40:08PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > The VM system was ported from SunOS 4.x to System 5.  Your statements that
> > SVr4 is based on SunOS are flat out wrong.  SVr4 got a lot of SunOS goodness
> > but the starting point was ATT System V.
> 
> This looks like a response made from gut.

OK, I'll try again.  Before I start let me tell you that I've ported the
Lachman TCP/IP stack into the ETA 10 Unix os as well as the the SCO os
(which was as about as pure an ATT Unix as you can find).  I worked for
Lachman as my first job out of school.  BTW, they didn't write that stack,
they bought it, I think from Convergent.

> Let us check things that are verifiable, by looking at the basic elements
> of the OS kernel that together cover the majority of the kernel.
> 
> 		SVr3		SunOS-4		SVr4
> 		=======================================
> TTY driver	V7/Svr0		STREAMS		STREAMS

SunOS supported STREAMS but their tty drivers where not STREAMS based except
where they had to be for some contract.  STREAMS sucks ass and that's what
dmr said.  STREAMS != streams.  Miserable system.

> So why should someone start with the AT&T sources when the expected result
> is > 70% identical with SunOS-4?

Um because data?  I dunno what will convince you, dmr rising from the grave
and saying so?  How about this from the guy that did the bring up, a guy that
is a close friend, we were car pooling to mountain view daily during this time,
his office was across the hall from me.

	SVr4 was not based on SunOS, although it
	incorporated many of the best features of SunOS
	4.x (VM management, filesystem architecture,
	shared libraries, etc). Those features
	and interfaces were merged (after extensive
	discussions, involving, on the Sun side, Bill
	Shannon, Rob Gingell, Don Cragun and others) into
	a pre-release version of System V by AT&T. The
	reference hardware platform was AT&T???s 3b2.

	Sun would receive periodic ???loads??? from AT&T
	of that 3b2 based code, which we then merged
	on top of the machine-dependent code from SunOS
	4.x. Let???s just say it was an adventure. After
	the first port, I think, Joe Kowalski came on to 
	head the userland effort, and the team gradually
	built up from there. That merged code was Sun
	proprietary stuff; AFAIK it never went back
	to AT&T.

> BTW: My statements are from a talk from Bill Joy from the Sun User Group 
> meetings. Bill claimed that he was responsible for the Svr4 kernel and did this 
> on a new location in Denver Colorado that was as a joint venture from Sun and 
> AT&T.

So I have Bill's home number on my cell phone.  We're not close and I'm not
going to use up a silver bullet to win this argument but your claim here is
complete nonsense.  I know the people in the Colorado site and they didn't
have anything to do with SVr4.  The Rocky Mountain group was working on 
file systems (and produced CVS).  Bill was checked out at this point, he
was living in Aspen and had very little to do with Sun.  The idea that he,
Mr BSD, would have been "responsible for the Svr4 kernel" is a joke.  BSD
and SunOS were so much better, there is no way he would have been for SVr4.

> The SunOS-5 kernel and the Svr4 kernel still differ, but they are more close 
> together than Svr4 and Svr3. Note that I did not only write Joliet and 
> ISO9660:1999 support code for SunOS and SCO UnixWare but also for SCO 
> OpenServer that is based on Svr3. So I had legal access to SunOS, Svr4 and Svr3 
> based code. Did you have access to this code? Did you compare?

I've had legal access to SunOS 4/5, SCO, SVr3, SVr4, and a pile of other 
variants.  And I've been a kernel engineer in all of those.  As in spent
years as a paid engineer in all of them.  Yeah, I know which is which.
I've run diff on tons of that code.

> > > Interesting: Do you mean "Bill Shannon"? Was he involved in SCCS or smoosh
> > > as well? I know Bill as the author of "cstyle" and I pushed him to make it OSS
> > > in 2001 already, before it appeared in OpenSolaris.
> >
> > Yup, that Shannon.
> 
> OK, so he was also working on SCCS?

No, he was a DE and as such he oversaw pretty much everything, including my
work.  We worked closely together.

> > > In January 2015, I talked with Glenn Skinner about SCCS and smoosh and he 
> > > pointed me to his smoosh patent:
> > > 
> > > 	http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US5481722.pdf
> > > 
> > > that has been expired in late 2014. 
> >
> > The fact that Glenn didn't put me on that patent is a sore point.  Yes,
> > he wrote the lisp code that showed it could be done.  I wrote the C code
> > that did that in one pass (his stuff was N+M where N was how many deltas
> > were on the local side and M was how deltas were on the remote side).
> 
> I have been told that a patent can be void if it does not list the right 
> inventors.
> 
> I would guess that this was a decision made by the lawyer that helped to file 
> the patent.
> 
> Are you responsible for the original idea?

Nope, I give credit to Glenn for that.  It was his idea.  The one pass version
of it, which is what gave Sun Teamware, that's 100% me.  That's not quite fair,
Glenn and I talked about it a lot, we knew we needed that for performance, so
the desire for a one pass version includes Glenn.  But the code that did it?
That's 100% me.  I designed it, I wrote it.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Warner Losh]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 7:58 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 02:40:08PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> BTW: My statements are from a talk from Bill Joy from the Sun User Group
>> meetings. Bill claimed that he was responsible for the Svr4 kernel and did this
>> on a new location in Denver Colorado that was as a joint venture from Sun and
>> AT&T.
>
> So I have Bill's home number on my cell phone.  We're not close and I'm not
> going to use up a silver bullet to win this argument but your claim here is
> complete nonsense.  I know the people in the Colorado site and they didn't
> have anything to do with SVr4.  The Rocky Mountain group was working on
> file systems (and produced CVS).  Bill was checked out at this point, he
> was living in Aspen and had very little to do with Sun.  The idea that he,
> Mr BSD, would have been "responsible for the Svr4 kernel" is a joke.  BSD
> and SunOS were so much better, there is no way he would have been for SVr4.

All the Sun guys I knew at Solbourne went on to work at the Broomfield
location at Interlocken. They mostly worked on file system things.
There was a Boulder office that did a port to the Sun Roadrunner, a
386 box that ran SunOS 4.0 and friends. They did other stuff there too
before they were moved to the Broomfield office in a consolidation of
different groups at sun. I'm pretty sure that it would be a huge
stretch to say that the sysvr4 porting was done here, but it was a big
office and maybe a few people were tangentially related to that
effort. There were also some guys in Colorado Springs as well that
moved up to Broomfield. The only big AT&T presence in town at the time
was the buildings that would be spun off into Lucent a few years
later... I'd have to agree with Larry on this point: I doubt that it
was done in the Denver metro area.

Btw, I've lived in Denver since I graduated college and went to work
for Solbourne Computer in 1990. For a while, Sun was making Solbourne
compatible computers...

>> The SunOS-5 kernel and the Svr4 kernel still differ, but they are more close
>> together than Svr4 and Svr3. Note that I did not only write Joliet and
>> ISO9660:1999 support code for SunOS and SCO UnixWare but also for SCO
>> OpenServer that is based on Svr3. So I had legal access to SunOS, Svr4 and Svr3
>> based code. Did you have access to this code? Did you compare?
>
> I've had legal access to SunOS 4/5, SCO, SVr3, SVr4, and a pile of other
> variants.  And I've been a kernel engineer in all of those.  As in spent
> years as a paid engineer in all of them.  Yeah, I know which is which.
> I've run diff on tons of that code.

That's got me beat. I just had access to SunOS and Solaris... Plus
various Solaris driver works over the years. And it was clear that
Solaris had huge influx of code from SunOS, but it was equally clear
that it was still old-school AT&T Unix from the layout of the sources.
It didn't adopt many of the BSDish things, but opted for the older
file placement and such. SunOS was quite a bit similar to 4.3 net2 BSD
that FreeBSD started out on in lots of ways. Not so Solaris. But I've
only been a FreeBSD committer for the past 25 years or so, so what do
I know. I will admit that the last time I looked at the SunOS sources
was in the early 1990's though. ZFS adopted to the SysVr4 layout, and
so its port to FreeBSD also has the funky layout that had to be
preserved and carefully hacked into place in FreeBSD...

Warner

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 07:23:12PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > Hint: I have been told 
> > > from Sun employees that the Sun ZFS group did read my diploma thesis before 
> > > they started with ZFS even though it is written in German ;-)
> >
> > Huh, interesting.  I'll check that out.  Both Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore
> > have worked for me.  Bonwick was one of my students at Stanford and I 
> > hired him into the kernel group.  Bill worked for me on BitKeeper.
> > I'll let you know what they say.

So I've asked around and I can't find anyone who has read that thesis.
The ZFS guys started on ZFS long before any of them had heard of you.

As for your claims that SVr4 is based on SunOS, here's what the guy who
did the bring up had to say (spoiler, it's exactly what I told you):

    SVr4 was not based on SunOS, although it incorporated many of the best
    features of SunOS 4.x (VM management, filesystem architecture, shared
    libraries, etc). Those features and interfaces were merged (after extensive
    discussions, involving, on the Sun side, Bill Shannon, Rob Gingell, Don
    Cragun and others) into a pre-release version of System V by AT&T. The
    reference hardware platform was AT&T's 3b2.

    Sun would receive periodic "loads" from AT&T of that 3b2 based code,
    which we then merged on top of the machine-dependent code from SunOS 4.x.
    Let's just say it was an adventure. After the first port, I think, Joe
    Kowalski came on to head the userland effort, and the team gradually built
    up from there. That merged code was Sun proprietary stuff; AFAIK it never
    went back to AT&T.

I could go into your comments about Bill Joy implementing mmap but I cracked
open the 4.2BSD release notes and it said that it was unimplemented.

Let's move on to more productive conversations.  I love the history that is
in this group.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Wesley Parish]

Quoting Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>:

> On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:02:51PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
<snip>
> > I have access to both SunOS-4.x and Solaris sources and it is obvious
> that the 
> 
> I'm not sure how you have legal access to the SunOS 4.x code. I'd love
> a
> copy of that source but so far as I know it's locked up.
> 
<snip>

Seconded. I'd love to get my hands on it as well.

When I let my fascination with computers derail my BA(Classics) in 1991, I was told the OS choices 
included Unix - BSD naturally - but only if I could pony up a king's ransom to pay for an unused AT&T 
license. I wanted Sun because of the cool factor, but couldn't afford a workstation so I went with a PC, 
and the cost of downloading Linux or 386BSD correlated to the cost of floppies, and Linux was 
marginally cheaper, so Linux won. My copy of SLS is now on the Bochs images page.

I found a Sun 68000 pizza box at a computer recycling place in 2002, but the cool had evaporated by 
then. But I'd still like to get my hands on the SunOS source. Who should we contact?

Wesley Parish



"I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor,
Method for Guitar

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Nevin Liber]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 9:35 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 10:23:28PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> > My favorite version number was SunOS 4.1.4U1: I was told that the ``U1''
> > meant, "you won", as in "you won. Here's another BSD-based release."
>
> That might have been the Greg Limes release.  I may be all wrong but
> someone, I think it was Greg, busted their ass to try and make SunOS
> 4.x scale up on SMP machines.  There were a lot of us at the time that
> hated the SVr4 thing, it was such a huge step backwards.
>

Greg Limes says:

Larry has it very nearly right, or at least very nearly matches my
memories. The few exceptions are only important in light of this being an
attempt to record history as accurately as possible. Yeah, I was the naive
kid who pushed and pushed and pushed until it happened. I had and still
probably have absolutely *NO* idea how many other people were pushing along
with me, but I do know that I had the full support of at least three layers
of management, and I do know that many of the changes were only possible
thanks to the hard work of the other engineers that worked on the Sun-4M
(4/600 series) port. While there was heroic effort involved, it was not the
result of the effort of a lone hero.

The release was (or was supposed to be, and I remember it as) "SunOS 4.1.3
u1" because we were told on no uncertain terms that there would be no
release called "SunOS 4.1.4" but it was OK to send out an update release
rolling up patches previously sent. I was *never* told why, which only made
me (and my management chain) push harder. There were enough changes to
warrant U1, U2, and U3 releases; I know U1 went out the door, and I know
that U3 was ready for release when I departed, I don't recall whether U2
made it out the door or not. I do not recall the method we used to triage
the changes into three releases.

There was really no explicit "try to make SunOS 4 scale up on SMP machines"
in this code -- in fact, for many common workloads, things scaled
surprisingly well. The NFS crew in particular indicated they were quite
happy with our scaling, but I would defer to Neal Nuckolls on that score.
The purpose of U1 and subsequent updates was to bring a number of kernel
bug fixes back into the mainline sources (um, maybe some of these fixes
improved scaling, but it was not the basis for the release).

Non-historical observation ... the interesting thing about the paper Larry
linked, for me, is that it exactly describes the huge sucking black hole
that made Linux (or something very much like it) inevitable. It is no
coincidence that the same passion we       found at Sun working on SunOS,
we also find in the community of developers working on the Linux kernel. I
always wondered how many of Sun's Kernel Hackers found their path there.
-- 
 Nevin ":-)" Liber  <mailto:nevin at eviloverlord.com>  +1-847-691-1404
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 11:56 AM, Nevin Liber <nevin at eviloverlord.com> wrote:
> The release was (or was supposed to be, and I remember it as) "SunOS 4.1.3
> u1" because we were told on no uncertain terms that there would be no
> release called "SunOS 4.1.4" but it was OK to send out an update release
> rolling up patches previously sent. I was *never* told why, which only made
> me (and my management chain) push harder. There were enough changes to
> warrant U1, U2, and U3 releases; I know U1 went out the door, and I know
> that U3 was ready for release when I departed, I don't recall whether U2
> made it out the door or not. I do not recall the method we used to triage
> the changes into three releases.

I don't think so. Solbourne had a OS/MP based on 4.1.3 (I think OS/MP
4.1C) and another based on 4.1.3u1 (OS/MP 4.1D), but there was never
an OS/MP 4.1E.

> There was really no explicit "try to make SunOS 4 scale up on SMP machines"
> in this code -- in fact, for many common workloads, things scaled
> surprisingly well. The NFS crew in particular indicated they were quite
> happy with our scaling, but I would defer to Neal Nuckolls on that score.
> The purpose of U1 and subsequent updates was to bring a number of kernel bug
> fixes back into the mainline sources (um, maybe some of these fixes improved
> scaling, but it was not the basis for the release).

This only group I'm aware of was the Solbourne Kernel team that
produced a ASMP version based on 4.0 and hired David Barak to make it
SMP for the OS/MP 4.1 based on SunOS 4.1. It scaled to about 16 CPUs,
IIRC, based on Solbourne's own MP designs. I worked at Solbourne at
the time in the other interesting technology to come out of Solbourne
(the OI GUI toolkit, which has become at best a historical footnote).

Warner

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Clem Cole]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1095 bytes --]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 1:56 PM, Nevin Liber <nevin at eviloverlord.com> wrote:

> Non-historical observation ... the interesting thing about the paper Larry
> linked, for me, is that it exactly describes the huge sucking black hole
> that made Linux (or something very much like it) inevitable.

Brother, I think you have that right, although I believe it that can be
said of a number of the better early OS teams from those days.




> It is no coincidence that the same passion we       found at Sun working
> on SunOS, we also find in the community of developers working on the Linux
> kernel.

​+1 for Masscomp, SGI and Apollo​




> I always wondered how many of Sun's Kernel Hackers found their path there.

​From my alumni lists of the teams I was part, many of us are happily
hacking away in the FOSS community although, as other responsibilities have
come to my life - less and less time for some of it.

Clem​
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Brad Spencer]

Nevin Liber <nevin at eviloverlord.com> writes:

[snip]

> The release was (or was supposed to be, and I remember it as) "SunOS 4.1.3
> u1" because we were told on no uncertain terms that there would be no
> release called "SunOS 4.1.4" but it was OK to send out an update release
> rolling up patches previously sent. I was *never* told why, which only made
> me (and my management chain) push harder. There were enough changes to
> warrant U1, U2, and U3 releases; I know U1 went out the door, and I know
> that U3 was ready for release when I departed, I don't recall whether U2
> made it out the door or not. I do not recall the method we used to triage
> the changes into three releases.

[snip]

A small addition..  there was a 4.1.4, a.k.a. Solaris 1.1.2 [I think]
that made it out the door [Google around for references].  I remember
having the cd and installing it.  I also remember 4.1.3_U1, but not U2
or U3, but I wouldn't be suprised that they existed.  I was at AT&T at
the time and the group I was in resisted going to Solaris 2.x for as
long as we could.  We were mostly interested in desktop and small server
stuff, so SMP need not apply and Solaris 2.x where x <= 4 was painful.
I remember the Sparc 5 Model 170 with SunOS 4.x which ran, for us, just
as well as the Ultra 1.  Fun times....



-- 
Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS
http://anduin.eldar.org  - & -  http://anduin.ipv6.eldar.org [IPv6 only]

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[William Pechter]

Brad Spencer wrote:
> Nevin Liber <nevin at eviloverlord.com> writes:
>
> [snip]
>
>> The release was (or was supposed to be, and I remember it as) "SunOS 4.1.3
>> u1" because we were told on no uncertain terms that there would be no
>> release called "SunOS 4.1.4" but it was OK to send out an update release
>> rolling up patches previously sent. I was *never* told why, which only made
>> me (and my management chain) push harder. There were enough changes to
>> warrant U1, U2, and U3 releases; I know U1 went out the door, and I know
>> that U3 was ready for release when I departed, I don't recall whether U2
>> made it out the door or not. I do not recall the method we used to triage
>> the changes into three releases.
> [snip]
>
> A small addition..  there was a 4.1.4, a.k.a. Solaris 1.1.2 [I think]
> that made it out the door [Google around for references].  I remember
> having the cd and installing it.  I also remember 4.1.3_U1, but not U2
> or U3, but I wouldn't be suprised that they existed.  I was at AT&T at
> the time and the group I was in resisted going to Solaris 2.x for as
> long as we could.  We were mostly interested in desktop and small server
> stuff, so SMP need not apply and Solaris 2.x where x <= 4 was painful.
> I remember the Sparc 5 Model 170 with SunOS 4.x which ran, for us, just
> as well as the Ultra 1.  Fun times....

I was keeping a group at Lucent running on some creaky Sparcstation2's
used as the department servers (we probably had the worst collection of
hardware in Lucent, but it was paid for and fully depreciated...) I had
to do the Y2k patches on the boxes and the corporate types were pushing
us to do weekly updates.  Patches dribbled out over a couple of months
requiring repeated passes over the hardware in a maintenance window.  Ugh.

I wrote a patch script and update cd and tape and applied the tar to all
the Sun machines the night before y2k -- avoiding the repeated patching
they (corporate IT) were requiring.  Of course most departments just
dumped the old hardware and  updated to  non-antiques.
The windows boxes were another nightmare.

After doing all of this I heard from an AT&T Manager that Lucent had a
product update tape they sold to AT&T that did all
the Y2k patches for one of their Sparcstation2 products.  Too bad this
wasn't available in-house.

Anyone archive the y2k patches for SunOS 4.1.3_U1 and 4.1.4.  I lost my
fixes in a move and I'd like to bring a couple of the
Sparcstations up again for fun.  I really liked that OS and hated
patching the libc for the resolver+ fixes. 

I think the main patches were for the date command, ms macros and some
stuff like diag reporting.  Realistically the Unix boxes
were the easiest to deal with.  Most y2k stuff was in application
programs.  If I still have the Sparc2 booting in 2038 it will be
interesting.

Bill

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[William Pechter]

Brad Spencer wrote:
> Nevin Liber <nevin at eviloverlord.com> writes:
>
> [snip]
>
>> The release was (or was supposed to be, and I remember it as) "SunOS 4.1.3
>> u1" because we were told on no uncertain terms that there would be no
>> release called "SunOS 4.1.4" but it was OK to send out an update release
>> rolling up patches previously sent. I was *never* told why, which only made
>> me (and my management chain) push harder. There were enough changes to
>> warrant U1, U2, and U3 releases; I know U1 went out the door, and I know
>> that U3 was ready for release when I departed, I don't recall whether U2
>> made it out the door or not. I do not recall the method we used to triage
>> the changes into three releases.
> [snip]
>
> A small addition..  there was a 4.1.4, a.k.a. Solaris 1.1.2 [I think]
> that made it out the door [Google around for references].  I remember
> having the cd and installing it.  I also remember 4.1.3_U1, but not U2
> or U3, but I wouldn't be suprised that they existed.  I was at AT&T at
> the time and the group I was in resisted going to Solaris 2.x for as
> long as we could.  We were mostly interested in desktop and small server
> stuff, so SMP need not apply and Solaris 2.x where x <= 4 was painful.
> I remember the Sparc 5 Model 170 with SunOS 4.x which ran, for us, just
> as well as the Ultra 1.  Fun times....

I was keeping a group at Lucent running on some creaky Sparcstation2's
used as the department servers (we probably had the worst collection of
hardware in Lucent, but it was paid for and fully depreciated...) I had
to do the Y2k patches on the boxes and the corporate types were pushing
us to do weekly updates.  Patches dribbled out over a couple of months
requiring repeated passes over the hardware in a maintenance window.  Ugh.

I wrote a patch script and update cd and tape and applied the tar to all
the Sun machines the night before y2k -- avoiding the repeated patching
they (corporate IT) were requiring.  Of course most departments just
dumped the old hardware and  updated to  non-antiques.
The windows boxes were another nightmare.

After doing all of this I heard from an AT&T Manager that Lucent had a
product update tape they sold to AT&T that did all
the Y2k patches for one of their Sparcstation2 products.  Too bad this
wasn't available in-house.

Anyone archive the y2k patches for SunOS 4.1.3_U1 and 4.1.4.  I lost my
fixes in a move and I'd like to bring a couple of the
Sparcstations up again for fun.  I really liked that OS and hated
patching the libc for the resolver+ fixes. 

I think the main patches were for the date command, ms macros and some
stuff like diag reporting.  Realistically the Unix boxes
were the easiest to deal with.  Most y2k stuff was in application
programs.  If I still have the Sparc2 booting in 2038 it will be
interesting.

Bill

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:

> I really wonder what the world would look like right now if Sun had open 
> sourced SunOS 4.x and put energy behind it. [...]

My guess is it would be a lot like FreeBSD.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 11:36:27AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> > I really wonder what the world would look like right now if Sun had open 
> > sourced SunOS 4.x and put energy behind it. [...]
> 
> My guess is it would be a lot like FreeBSD.

Not really.  FreeBSD is open source and was way way behind SunOS.  That's
why so many Sun engineers were hugely butthurt when they were forced onto
a far inferior System V source base.  Scooter just didn't understand
how much polish had gone into SunOS 4.x.  It was a very talented group
of engineers, many of whom had no social life (he says looking in the
mirror :) so they poured all their energy into making SunOS great.

I'm biased because I worked there, but I've run code on all of the major
Unix offerings (AIX, IRIX, Ultrex, HP-UX and SunOS) and SunOS was hands
down a better experience, inside the kernel, as a user of the syscalls,
and in user space.  It's what a geeky engineer would want with the polish
needed to allow customers to have a good experience.

I think a free SunOS would have had a cult following.  I'd still be working
on it.  Sun's management just didn't realize what they were throwing away.

Whimper.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[William Pechter]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 11:36:27AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
>>
>>> I really wonder what the world would look like right now if Sun had open 
>>> sourced SunOS 4.x and put energy behind it. [...]
>> My guess is it would be a lot like FreeBSD.
> Not really.  FreeBSD is open source and was way way behind SunOS.  That's
> why so many Sun engineers were hugely butthurt when they were forced onto
> a far inferior System V source base.  Scooter just didn't understand
> how much polish had gone into SunOS 4.x.  It was a very talented group
> of engineers, many of whom had no social life (he says looking in the
> mirror :) so they poured all their energy into making SunOS great.
>
> I'm biased because I worked there, but I've run code on all of the major
> Unix offerings (AIX, IRIX, Ultrex, HP-UX and SunOS) and SunOS was hands
> down a better experience, inside the kernel, as a user of the syscalls,
> and in user space.  It's what a geeky engineer would want with the polish
> needed to allow customers to have a good experience.
>
> I think a free SunOS would have had a cult following.  I'd still be working
> on it.  Sun's management just didn't realize what they were throwing away.
>
> Whimper.
Where would the current FreeBSD be if you compared it with SunOS4?

Bill

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 07:50:27PM -0500, William Pechter wrote:
> Where would the current FreeBSD be if you compared it with SunOS4?

That's a good, and hard question.  One of the nice things about SunOS4
was the VM system and the VFS layer and the VNODE layer.  Those were 
really well thought out.  They all, so far as I know, were Bill Joy
dreams, but Steve Kleiman was the primary driver of the vnode design
but I think Joe Moran was the main coder of all of that.  It's one of
those things that people copy but don't get right.  I think Linux got
closer than FreeBSD did.

I haven't dug into the FreeBSD kernel in years so who knows, maybe
it is fantastic.  When I last looked it was lagging way behind SunOS
(which isn't fair, Sun was a business and as such had buildings full of
motivated people who were making it better.  There was a building with
just networking people in, we're talking a two story building with I
dunno, ~100 offices).  They threw more resources at it that FreeBSD has
ever had.

If you took the ~1992 SunOS and stacked it up against the 2016 FreeBSD,
well I would hope that FreeBSD would be better but I wouldn't bet on it
across the board.  It would certainly have more drivers (and if we're
being honest, that's 99% of the work, all this generic kernel stuff
is super fun to talk about but all the real coding is in the drivers).

I think the more interesting question is would {Free,Net,Open}BSD even
exist if there had been a Free SunOS.  I'm 100% convinced the answer 
to that is a resounding no.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Wesley Parish]

Quoting Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>:

> On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 07:50:27PM -0500, William Pechter wrote:
> > Where would the current FreeBSD be if you compared it with SunOS4?
> 
> That's a good, and hard question. One of the nice things about SunOS4
> was the VM system and the VFS layer and the VNODE layer. Those were 
> really well thought out. They all, so far as I know, were Bill Joy
> dreams, but Steve Kleiman was the primary driver of the vnode design
> but I think Joe Moran was the main coder of all of that. It's one of
> those things that people copy but don't get right. I think Linux got
> closer than FreeBSD did.
> 
> I haven't dug into the FreeBSD kernel in years so who knows, maybe
> it is fantastic. When I last looked it was lagging way behind SunOS
> (which isn't fair, Sun was a business and as such had buildings full of
> motivated people who were making it better. There was a building with
> just networking people in, we're talking a two story building with I
> dunno, ~100 offices). They threw more resources at it that FreeBSD has
> ever had.
> 
> If you took the ~1992 SunOS and stacked it up against the 2016 FreeBSD,
> well I would hope that FreeBSD would be better but I wouldn't bet on it
> across the board. It would certainly have more drivers (and if we're
> being honest, that's 99% of the work, all this generic kernel stuff
> is super fun to talk about but all the real coding is in the drivers).
> 
> I think the more interesting question is would {Free,Net,Open}BSD even
> exist if there had been a Free SunOS. I'm 100% convinced the answer 
> to that is a resounding no.
>  

My understanding which was that of an interested layman in 1991 and just bitten by the bug, and based 
upon the comments of some of the computer science staff of the U of Canterbury, NZ, at that time, is 
that 386BSD held everybody's attention. (I mentioned in 1992 reading about Linux in a computer mag 
to one of them and he told me 386BSD was where the action was.) i80386 PCs were relatively cheap, 
BSD was (relatively) free from AT&T's legal claims, and 386BSD was even freer and targeted that cheap 
powerhorse. My guess is that if Sun had spun off a Free SunOS, it would've been ported to the 386. 
What would've happened then is anyone's guess.

Wesley Parish


"I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor,
Method for Guitar

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 04:00:06PM +1300, Wesley Parish wrote:
> My understanding which was that of an interested layman in 1991 and just
> bitten by the bug, and based upon the comments of some of the computer
> science staff of the U of Canterbury, NZ, at that time, is that 386BSD
> held everybody's attention. (I mentioned in 1992 reading about Linux in
> a computer mag to one of them and he told me 386BSD was where the action
> was.) i80386 PCs were relatively cheap, BSD was (relatively) free from
> AT&T's legal claims, and 386BSD was even freer and targeted that cheap
> powerhorse. My guess is that if Sun had spun off a Free SunOS, it would've
> been ported to the 386.  What would've happened then is anyone's guess.

So I know the 386BSD guy, Bill Jolitz.  He worked for me at Sun, I hired 
him because of, well some Usenix details that are best left untold.  He
was unfairly hurt by Usenix, that's as much as I'll say.

He's a good guy, a little weird, but so am I.  He did some great work
in 386BSD, it was ahead of Linux.  I remember going into Fry's and 
sticking a 386BSD floppy in to see if it would boot.  It usually did.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Andy Kosela]

On Wednesday, January 4, 2017, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 04:00:06PM +1300, Wesley Parish wrote:
> > My understanding which was that of an interested layman in 1991 and just
> > bitten by the bug, and based upon the comments of some of the computer
> > science staff of the U of Canterbury, NZ, at that time, is that 386BSD
> > held everybody's attention. (I mentioned in 1992 reading about Linux in
> > a computer mag to one of them and he told me 386BSD was where the action
> > was.) i80386 PCs were relatively cheap, BSD was (relatively) free from
> > AT&T's legal claims, and 386BSD was even freer and targeted that cheap
> > powerhorse. My guess is that if Sun had spun off a Free SunOS, it
> would've
> > been ported to the 386.  What would've happened then is anyone's guess.
>
> So I know the 386BSD guy, Bill Jolitz.  He worked for me at Sun, I hired
> him because of, well some Usenix details that are best left untold.  He
> was unfairly hurt by Usenix, that's as much as I'll say.
>
> He's a good guy, a little weird, but so am I.  He did some great work
> in 386BSD, it was ahead of Linux.  I remember going into Fry's and
> sticking a 386BSD floppy in to see if it would boot.  It usually did.
>

It had tons of bugs though.  That is why Jordan Hubbard and Rod Grimes
started unofficial 386BSD patchkit which transformed into FreeBSD;
"unofficial" because Bill Jolitz was very hard to work with, to say the
least...

--Andy
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[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 02:12:19AM -0600, Andy Kosela wrote:
> > He's a good guy, a little weird, but so am I.  He did some great work
> > in 386BSD, it was ahead of Linux.  I remember going into Fry's and
> > sticking a 386BSD floppy in to see if it would boot.  It usually did.
> 
> It had tons of bugs though.  That is why Jordan Hubbard and Rod Grimes
> started unofficial 386BSD patchkit which transformed into FreeBSD;
> "unofficial" because Bill Jolitz was very hard to work with, to say the
> least...

He was smart but sensitive.  And pretty butt hurt over how he had been
treated by the "in crowd" at Usenix.  I got past that and found him a
pleasure to work with, but I had to get past all that first.  We were
working together in person, I can imagine that working with him through
email would be more than "very hard" unfortunately.

[TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

[Clem Cole]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 905 bytes --]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 11:23 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> found him a
> ​ ​
> pleasure to work with,
>
​Same here....​  I never fully understood what happened. I was friends with
all of them at the time and tried to stay out of the fight. BTW: I didn't
think it was USENIX as much as a couple members of the CSRG/BSDi crew.   I
know of couple of the folks that he did battle, but not the details nor did
I want to know.

​From a historical perspective, Bill & I wrote the original AT disk
interface code for 386BSD - I was consulting the chief arch if NCR who was
doing their first x86 systems at the time.  For those interested in early
UNIX ports, particularly to the 386 check out the DDJ articles.

Clem
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