[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Noel Chiappa]

So, in a fit of brain-fade, I originally sent this to the Classic Computers
list, when it was probably really more appropriate for this one. (Apologies to
those who are subscribed to both, and are thus seeing this again.)


So, I'm trying to do what VTServer was invented for - load Unix into an actual
PDP-11, over its serial line, when one doesn't have machine-readable Unix on
any mass storage for the machine.

However, all the initial code that VTServer loads ('mkfs', etc) is V7-specific
(V6 has a slightly different file system format) - and I want to install V6.

Has anyone ever tweaked the programs which VTServer loads to do V6-format
filesystems? I did a quick Google, but didn't see anything.

Another option is to do something more V6-like, and copy a small bootable V6
file-system image over the serial line; that may be an easier way to go.

No biggie if not, it won't be much work to adapt things, but I figured I'd try
to avoid re-inventing the wheel...


Note that the installation procedures for V6 and V7 are wholly different,
something which confused a number of people on CCTalk.

The 'Setting up Unix' documents are more checklists, they don't go into a lot
of detail as to what is actually happening, so I have prepared two pages on the
Computer History wiki:

  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Sixth_Edition
  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Seventh_Edition

which go into more detail on what is actually happening.

      Noel

[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Wolfgang Helbig]

hi
in my courseware 

http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/index.html

i tried to explain installing v6.

greetings
wolfgang

[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Jason Stevens]

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These were the closest things I could find to official documentation on doing an install...  If anyone has anything better, I'm all ears.

I'll email Tore again about ID's I haven't forgotten..

On October 23, 2016 11:02:57 PM GMT+08:00, jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu wrote:
>So, in a fit of brain-fade, I originally sent this to the Classic
>Computers
>list, when it was probably really more appropriate for this one.
>(Apologies to
>those who are subscribed to both, and are thus seeing this again.)
>
>
>So, I'm trying to do what VTServer was invented for - load Unix into an
>actual
>PDP-11, over its serial line, when one doesn't have machine-readable
>Unix on
>any mass storage for the machine.
>
>However, all the initial code that VTServer loads ('mkfs', etc) is
>V7-specific
>(V6 has a slightly different file system format) - and I want to
>install V6.
>
>Has anyone ever tweaked the programs which VTServer loads to do
>V6-format
>filesystems? I did a quick Google, but didn't see anything.
>
>Another option is to do something more V6-like, and copy a small
>bootable V6
>file-system image over the serial line; that may be an easier way to
>go.
>
>No biggie if not, it won't be much work to adapt things, but I figured
>I'd try
>to avoid re-inventing the wheel...
>
>
>Note that the installation procedures for V6 and V7 are wholly
>different,
>something which confused a number of people on CCTalk.
>
>The 'Setting up Unix' documents are more checklists, they don't go into
>a lot
>of detail as to what is actually happening, so I have prepared two
>pages on the
>Computer History wiki:
>
>  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Sixth_Edition
>  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Seventh_Edition
>
>which go into more detail on what is actually happening.
>
>      Noel

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Jacob Goense]

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On 2016-10-24 02:33, Jason Stevens wrote:
> These were the closest things I could find to official documentation
> on doing an install... If anyone has anything better, I'm all ears.

SETTING UP UNIX − Sixth Edition is as official as it gets. There is
the issue with the non-existing man command. What are other things
you are missing? I'll gladly flesh out a simh EXPECT/SEND .ini with
comments and more things than just the bare install it currently
does.

I initially wrote it to demo V6&BSD, running in simh, in linux,
in jor1k, in javascript, in your browser. Unfortunately, anno 2016,
it is too slow for prime time. The great thing about the builtin
EXPECT/SEND is that it is easy to test if cookbook actually works.

[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Jacob Goense <dugo at xs4all.nl>

    > There is the issue with the non-existing man command. 

My page on "Bringing up V6 Unix on the Ersatz-11 PDP-11 Emulator" has a
section on man:

 http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/V6Unix.html#man

It's pretty straight-forward.

	Noel

[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 10:16 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

> Is there any interest in all this? If so, I can put together a web page
> with
> the V6-verion VTServer source, along with the modified V6 serial line stuff
> (including a short description of the extended stty/gtty interface), etc.
>
​Yes please....​




>
> So I guess my next step, if I don't hear shortly from someone who has
> previously used VTServer to install V6, is to start on actually getting
> a V6 file system created.
>
​I think there are rk05 images in bit savers, check out uv6swre​


>
> I'm still vacillating over whether it would be better to go V6-style (and
> just transfer a complete, small existing V6 filesystem),
>
​The issue is even at 9600 baud, you do need to download 2.4Mbytes which
will take​ a few minutes.  So you would need to create a very small root FS
and then you get into how much is enough.




> or V7-style (and
> get stand-alone 'mkfs', etc running with V6-format file systems). Anyone
> have an opinion?
>
​Basically it depends how many commands you need.   Clearly, you need to
V6-afy the V7 standalone system and then for each app you need, you have to
both v6-afy and add the #ifdef STANDALONE hacks.   Clearly you need mkfs,
and probably need a one or more other programs in the key of restor, tar,
tp, dd or the like to copy things.
That's going to be a bit a work - although once you have done it, it will
be handy I suspect.

Clem​
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[TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Noel Chiappa]

    > I'll start with getting VTServer to run under V6 (my only Unix, don't
    > have anything later :-)

So, I just got VTServer runnin under V6: it successfully loaded a memory
diagnostic from the 'server', into the 'client', using 'vtboot' on the
latter. (Both running on emulated machines, for the moment - I thought I'd
take all the hardware-related variables out of the equation, until I have the
software all running OK.)

It didn't require as much work on VTServer as I thought it might: I had to
convert the C to the V6 dialect (no '+=', etc), and some other small things
(e.g. convert the TTY setup code), but in general, it was pretty smooth and
painless.


Note that it won't run under vanilla V6, which does not provide 8-bit input
and output on serial lines. I had previously added 'LITIN' and 'LITOUT' modes
(8-bit input and output) to my V6; since the mode word in stty/gtty was
already full, I had to extend the device interface to support them. I didn't
add ioctl() or anything later, I did an upward-compatible extension to
stty/gtty. (I'm a real NIH guy. :-)

My only real problem in getting VTServer running was with LITIN; I did it
some while back, but had never actually tested it (I was only using LITOUT,
for my custom program to talk to PDP-11 consoles, which also did downloads,
so needed 8-bit output). So when I went to use it, it didn't work, and it was
a real stumper! But I did eventually figure out what the problem was (after
writing a custom program to reach into the kernel and dump the entire state
of a serial line), and get it working.

(I had taken the shortcut of not fully understanding how the kernel serial
line code worked, just tried to install point fixes. This turned out not to
work, because of a side-effect elsewhere in the code. Moral of the story: you
can't change the operation of a piece of software without complete
understanding of how it works...)


Is there any interest in all this? If so, I can put together a web page with
the V6-verion VTServer source, along with the modified V6 serial line stuff
(including a short description of the extended stty/gtty interface), etc.


    > so if you turn up whatever you used to boot V6, it would probably still
    > be useful.

So I guess my next step, if I don't hear shortly from someone who has
previously used VTServer to install V6, is to start on actually getting
a V6 file system created.

I'm still vacillating over whether it would be better to go V6-style (and
just transfer a complete, small existing V6 filesystem), or V7-style (and
get stand-alone 'mkfs', etc running with V6-format file systems). Anyone
have an opinion?

	Noel