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* [TUHS] Some notes on running UNIX v6 in 2015, using SimH and a healthy dose of documentation
@ 2015-12-03 15:21 Noel Chiappa
  2015-12-03 17:27 ` Random832
  2015-12-03 18:46 ` Will Senn
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2015-12-03 15:21 UTC (permalink / raw)


    > From: Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com>

    > I am studying Unix v6 using SimH and I am documenting the process

I did a very similar exercise using the Ersatz11 simulator; I have a lot
of stuff about the process here:

  http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/tech/V6Unix.html
  
It contains a number of items that you might find useful, e.g.: "V6 as
distributed is strictly a 20th Century operating system. Literally. You can't
set the date to anytime in the 21st century, for two reasons. First, the
'date' command only take a 2-digit year number. Second, even if you fix that,
the ctime() library routine has a bug in it that makes it stop working in the
closing months of 1999."

    > the PDP architecture

Technically, a PDP-11 - there were a number of different PDP architectures:

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

is a decent listing of them; several (PDP-8, PDP-10, etc) were very popular
and successful.


A few things I noted in your first post:

    > I am using the Ken Wellsch tape because it boots and is stated to be
    > identical to Dennis Ritchie's tape other than being bootable and having
    > a different timestamp on root. 

The only differences I could discover between the two are that in the Wellsch
versions i) a Western Electric rights notice (which prints on booting) has
been added to ken/main.c, and the Unix bootable images; and ii) the RK pack
images do have, as you noted, the bootstrap in block 0.

    > Note: sh is critically important, don't muck it up :). The issue is
    > that if you do, there really isn't an easy way to recover. 

One should _never_ install a new shell version as '/bin/sh' until it has been
run and tested for a while (for the exact reason you mention). Happily, in
Unix, as far as the OS is concerned, the command interpreter is just another
program, so it's trivial to name a new binary of the shell 'nsh' or
something, and run that for a while to make sure it's working OK, before
installing it as '/bin/sh'.

    > a special file (whatever that is)

Special files are UNIXisms for 'devices'. _All_ devices in Unix appear as
'special files' in the file system, usually (but not necessarily) in /dev -
that location is a convention, not a requirment of the OS.

	Noel



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Some notes on running UNIX v6 in 2015, using SimH and a healthy dose of documentation
@ 2015-12-03 15:42 Noel Chiappa
  2015-12-03 18:54 ` Will Senn
  2015-12-04  0:52 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 23+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2015-12-03 15:42 UTC (permalink / raw)


    > From: Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com>

    > a deeper read will require the reader to have knowledge beyond what is
    > required of most modern software developers (PDP-11 architecture,
    > assembly language, and UNIX are prerequisite).

Well, for pretty much any _operating system_ (as opposed to applications),
one will need to know something about the details of the machine it is
intended to run on; depending on which part of the OS one is looking at, it
will be more or less. E.g. switching processes probably requires a fair
amount, since one needs to know about internal CPU registers, etc; whereas
working on the file system, one probably doesn't need to know very much about
the machine.

    > It will also require access to a lab where the ideas covered can be
    > experimented with. 

Actually, Lions/V6 was used in operating systems courses using simulated
machines; one at MIT, 6.828 "Operating Systems Engineering":

  https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/

used it for a while before the students started complaining about being
forced to learn an obsolete machine. They thereupon wrote a V6 clone for the
x86 architecture, 'XV6' (see the top of that page), which is apparently now
used for similar courses at quite a few other universities.

    > The v6 kernel ... packs in features that were either unavailable in
    > larger more established systems or may have been present in some form,
    > but were orders of magnitude more lines of code and attendant
    > complexity. It was and remains an amazing operating system and worthy
    > of contemporary study.

I don't think you will find too many people here who disagree! ;-)

    > So, I was thinking that next up, I would write up notes to help the
    > modern reader engage with v6 more easily in order to follow works like
    > Lyons.

Check around online to see what exists, first; there has been stuff written
since Lions! ;-)

	Noel



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Some notes on running UNIX v6 in 2015, using SimH and a healthy dose of documentation
@ 2015-12-02 21:37 Will Senn
  2015-12-03  0:20 ` Warren Toomey
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread
From: Will Senn @ 2015-12-02 21:37 UTC (permalink / raw)


All,

I am studying Unix v6 using SimH and I am documenting the process, as I 
go, as part of my own learning process. I have much to learn about Unix, 
Unix v6 in particular, the PDP architecture and its relationship with 
v6, and SimH's emulation of the PDP, so, I am taking notes... I thought 
that I would share the notes in raw form as occasional blog posts in the 
hope that the knowledge that I work to obtain, might be made available 
and useful to others. I also believe that these forms of communication, 
as insignificant as they may seem individually are part of helping to 
preserve the knowledge of our computing history, in the aggregate. Here 
is a link to the first post, a run at an installation walk-through:

http://decuser.blogspot.com/2015/11/installing-and-using-research-unix.html

I am open to feedback and criticism, but please keep in mind that I am a 
relative newbie to v6 and PDP land, some of my assumptions are 
probably/undoubtedly wrong, but definitely fixable :).

Regards,

Will



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2015-12-04 22:36 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 23+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2015-12-03 15:21 [TUHS] Some notes on running UNIX v6 in 2015, using SimH and a healthy dose of documentation Noel Chiappa
2015-12-03 17:27 ` Random832
2015-12-03 18:46 ` Will Senn
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2015-12-03 15:42 Noel Chiappa
2015-12-03 18:54 ` Will Senn
2015-12-04  0:52 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2015-12-04 21:33   ` Win Treese
2015-12-04 22:00     ` John Cowan
2015-12-02 21:37 Will Senn
2015-12-03  0:20 ` Warren Toomey
2015-12-03  2:37   ` Will Senn
2015-12-03  4:11     ` Dave Horsfall
2015-12-03  4:18       ` Will Senn
2015-12-03  6:05         ` Peter Jeremy
2015-12-03 12:59           ` John Cowan
2015-12-04  6:22           ` Dave Horsfall
2015-12-04  6:38             ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2015-12-04 14:52               ` John Cowan
2015-12-04 18:17                 ` Ronald Natalie
2015-12-04 18:33                   ` Gregg Levine
2015-12-04 22:36                   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
     [not found]                 ` <CAKt831GfmmKQ75TRy1tCmmbnx4CGLmjy12zns6-c+_oJB+h2dA@mail.gmail.com>
2015-12-04 19:13                   ` SZIGETI Szabolcs
2015-12-04 12:41             ` Peter Jeremy

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