From esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar Thu Apr 11 11:58:45 2013 From: esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar (Eduardo A. =?iso-8859-1?b?U3XhcmV6?=) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:58:45 -0300 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Hi, this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of the root account in unix? Thanks, Eduardo.- -- Eduardo A. Suarez Facultad de Ciencias Astron?micas y Geof?sicas - UNLP FCAG: (0221)-4236593 int. 172/Cel: (0221)-15-4557542/Casa: (0221)-4526589 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Apr 11 14:02:25 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:02:25 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of > the root account in unix? It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early days. Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no credentials whatever in the area and all I say is based on an accretion of hearsay, the result of working one, with, and for computers and networks of several kinds for several years in several "environments". Every computer (or more precisely, every operating system instance) with an "account structure" has to have a place to start. On EXEC 8 systems, the first accesses via the construction of the boot tape, fleshed out via the (presumed) physically secure console. From those come the first accounts and their "permissions" and from there the construction of additional accounts and file structures expands. MS-DOS systems presumed the only accesses were via the (presumed) physically secure console and were presumed to be be single-user and there was not much in the way of control or constraint on the file-system structure. MS-WINDOWS (I have not forgotten the original question--I'll arrive back there momentarily) introduced the notions of (at first, serial) multi-user and installed itself with an "admin" account (with either a publicly known, or no password) that the authority to establish file-system structures and to construct "accounts" with some subset of its "permissions" (the most common subset was "all of them", I think). I think unix (and multics, from which it sprouted*) was designed to support multiple users from the outset, and since that first or starter account (also accessible initially only via the (presumed) physically secure console) had to have permissions on the "root" directory it no doubt seemed natural to the GE, MIT and Bell Labs people to call it the "root" account. Obviously, MS had to use another symbol for the root directory and another name for the starter account with access to it. I have not mentioned any of the myriad IBM "OS"s, nor any other because I don't know anything about them, and don't (as I did here) pretend to. *http://www.multicians.org/unix.html -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Thu Apr 11 16:27:38 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:27:38 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> Message-ID: <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > >> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >> the root account in unix? > > It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little > weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix > had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the > operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early days. Do I recall correctly that at least one of the early "reference implementations" was written for Unix, with portions of it remaining in BSD Unix to this day? -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Thu Apr 11 16:47:45 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:47:45 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <51674BA1.7010809@meetinghouse.net> Miles Fidelman wrote: > Larry Sheldon wrote: >> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >> >>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >>> the root account in unix? >> >> It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little >> weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix >> had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the >> operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early days. > > Do I recall correctly that at least one of the early "reference > implementations" was written for Unix, with portions of it remaining > in BSD Unix to this day? Well, I did have to go and do a little research, found a great source: http://rfc-ref.org/RFC-TEXTS/801/chapter13.html Among the early TCP/IP implementations listed: BBN C70 and VAX Unix (by Rob Gurwitz) - the VAX version was for 4.1BSD BBN PDP-11 Unix (by Jack Haverty) There were other implementations (Multics, TOPS20, TENEX, ....) but yes, TCP/IP on Unix had a lot to do with growth of the Internet. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Apr 11 17:06:16 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:06:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412000616.6CBE118C14C@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Miles Fidelman > Do I recall correctly that at least one of the early "reference > implementations" was written for Unix Not sure we had the concept of "reference implementations" back then. Yes, we did look at other implementations some when we went to do new ones, but none we hallowed above others. > with portions of it remaining in BSD Unix to this day? Not the earliest Unix implementations; they were all for V6 PDP-11 Unix. The two earliest were one from U Illinois (or some place like - John Day did it, IIRC), and slightly later, one from BBN (Jack Haverty wrote that one). After that, MIT did one (Liza Martin did much of the code, but it was broken up in an odd way - only the demux was in the kernel, and the TCP was with the application in a user process, and different apps could (and in some cases did) have different TCPs. (Really!) So User Telnet used a shift register for an output buffer (which made sense for that application), but FTP didn't. Noel From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Thu Apr 11 17:27:21 2013 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:27:21 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <51674BA1.7010809@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net>, <51674BA1.7010809@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <516754E9.31878.2E18AC0@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 11 Apr 2013 at 19:47, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Well, I did have to go and do a little research, found a great source: > http://rfc-ref.org/RFC-TEXTS/801/chapter13.html > > Among the early TCP/IP implementations listed: > BBN C70 and VAX Unix (by Rob Gurwitz) - the VAX version was for 4.1BSD > BBN PDP-11 Unix (by Jack Haverty) For those who don't know, the C70 ran Unix [almost as close to natively as you could get: "C" was the assembly language for the thing] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Apr 11 17:44:28 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:44:28 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> Message-ID: <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> On 4/11/2013 4:02 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > >> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >> the root account in unix? > > It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little weak > since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix had much > to do with the development of the Internet except as the operating > system on some hosts that were reachable in the early days. The thread seems to have veered sharply off the topic on what I intended to be a throw-away intro. Like veering off-topic never happened before. For sure I think Unix was a major component of the early layers of the snowball that is The Internet--but I thought the initial development was done on IBMish and special purpose hardware--did the IMP's have an OS? And don't VAXen speak VMS (everyone I ever met did). > Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no credentials > whatever in the area and all I say is based on an accretion of hearsay, > the result of working one, with, and for computers and networks of > several kinds for several years in several "environments". -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Thu Apr 11 18:15:55 2013 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:15:55 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> Message-ID: <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 11 Apr 2013 at 19:44, Larry Sheldon wrote: > For sure I think Unix was a major component of the early layers of the > snowball that is The Internet--but I thought the initial development was > done on IBMish and special purpose hardware--did the IMP's have an OS? > And don't VAXen speak VMS (everyone I ever met did). Oh boy, are you going to get a lot of replies to this. In the sense that you're using the term, the IMP did *not* have an OS. It was a special-purpose real-time system that acted as the switching nodes for the ARPAnet and the interface for the Host systems. One of the early plans was to get as many *DIFFERENT* Host systems connected up to the ARPAnet and, of course, talking to one another. I think the Sigma-7 at UCLA talking to SAIL at Stanford. I think the only IBM system on the early net was a 360/67 at Rand (??). MIT had ITS and Multics. BBN had all sorts of systems: BSD's, TENEX's, assorted PDP-11 systems. Even the PDP-1 Exec III was an ARPAnet host..:o) The VAXen on the early network were running BSD [Unix]. When did someone build a TCP/IP stack for VMS? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From wayne at playaholic.com Thu Apr 11 18:56:30 2013 From: wayne at playaholic.com (Wayne Hathaway) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:56:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] =?utf-8?q?What_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F?= In-Reply-To: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> Message-ID: <20130412015630.89F2E22F6@alexander.concentric.com> > One of the early plans was to get as many *DIFFERENT* Host systems > connected up to the ARPAnet and, of course, talking to one another. > I think the Sigma-7 at UCLA talking to SAIL at Stanford. I think > the only IBM system on the early net was a 360/67 at Rand (??). There were at least two that predated it (UCLA and UCSB I know about), but as far as I know the first 360/67 on the net was mine at NASA Ames (host ames-67, number 16). It ran TSS/360, definitely the oddball among IBM operating systems! wayne From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Apr 11 19:02:56 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:02:56 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> Message-ID: <51676B50.9070702@dcrocker.net> On 4/11/2013 5:44 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > r sure I think Unix was a major component of the early layers of the > snowball that is The Internet--but I thought the initial development was > done on IBMish and special purpose hardware--did the IMP's have an OS? > And don't VAXen speak VMS (everyone I ever met did). Larry: 1. Arpanet = IMPs. Internet = routers running on various hardware including unices. Yes, IMPS had their own "o/s" but that doesn't matter for this thread. 2. Within the computer science community, the originally-popular network-friendly platform was a DEC-10, running BBN's Tenex (which eventually became DEC's Tops-20 o/s. Then came Unix on DEC hardware (initially PDP-11s and then Vaxen.[*] 3. Within the Arpanet community, DEC hardware running DEC's o/s was close to non-existent, I believe. Within the early Internet I believe is was quite rare. DEC didn't offer a TCP/IP stack until somewhere close to 1990. Before that the stack for VMS came from third-parties, mostly the one I managed for awhile at Wollongong. d/ [*] DEC was willing to sell raw hardware, of course, but they didn't like missing out on the o/s sale. But they had a group for writing unix device drivers, in support of Unix sales, although the Unix sofware and license came from AT&T. User kept asking whether they could do one-stop shopping for hardware and software and the lead DEC guy, Armando Stettner, got really frustrated at constantly having to say that DEC did not offer a Unix license. Finally came the first sizable Usenix meeting, in Santa Monica. A few hundred folk. Armando gets up to give his usual status update but begins by saying that DEC finally can offer a Unix license. He reached down and brought up an automobile license place that said Unix (and Live Free or Die, since that's where the group lived.) They had one for each person in the room. The next year DEC Marketing wanted to repeat the game and the Unix group refused; so Marketing repeated but with a different license color. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Apr 11 19:05:59 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:05:59 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: <51676C07.1050002@dcrocker.net> On 4/11/2013 6:15 PM, Bernie Cosell wrote: > One of the early plans was to get as many*DIFFERENT* Host systems > connected up to the ARPAnet and, of course, talking to one another. I > think the Sigma-7 at UCLA talking to SAIL at Stanford. I think the only > IBM system on the early net was a 360/67 at Rand (??). MIT had ITS and > Multics. BBN had all sorts of systems: BSD's, TENEX's, assorted PDP-11 > systems. Even the PDP-1 Exec III was an ARPAnet host..:o) There were more IBM systems on the Arpanet. No doubt some were at the military sites, especially during the National Software Works effort. But from early on there was the 360/91 at UCLA, and I think it was a 360/70 at UCSB. In fact I was told that Jim White at Santa Barbara got his NCP kernel running before anyone else on the Arpanet... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Thu Apr 11 19:08:36 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:08:36 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: <51676CA4.3080804@meetinghouse.net> Bernie Cosell wrote: > On 11 Apr 2013 at 19:44, Larry Sheldon wrote: > >> For sure I think Unix was a major component of the early layers of the >> snowball that is The Internet--but I thought the initial development was >> done on IBMish and special purpose hardware--did the IMP's have an OS? >> And don't VAXen speak VMS (everyone I ever met did). > Oh boy, are you going to get a lot of replies to this. In the sense that > you're using the term, the IMP did *not* have an OS. It was a > special-purpose real-time system that acted as the switching nodes for > the ARPAnet and the interface for the Host systems. > > One of the early plans was to get as many *DIFFERENT* Host systems > connected up to the ARPAnet and, of course, talking to one another. I > think the Sigma-7 at UCLA talking to SAIL at Stanford. I think the only > IBM system on the early net was a 360/67 at Rand (??). MIT had ITS and > Multics. BBN had all sorts of systems: BSD's, TENEX's, assorted PDP-11 > systems. Even the PDP-1 Exec III was an ARPAnet host..:o) > > The VAXen on the early network were running BSD [Unix]. When did > someone build a TCP/IP stack for VMS? Hey Bernie! According to http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc801.txt (NCP/TCP Transition Plan) - dated 1981 - Gary Grossman @ DTI had a VAX/VMS implementation - Bob Braden had UCLA's "360 or 370" talking TCP/IP under OS/MVS and OS/MVT -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Thu Apr 11 19:11:07 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:11:07 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: To my thinking, there were no VAX on the *early* Net. They came later. ;-) At 9:15 PM -0400 4/11/13, Bernie Cosell wrote: >On 11 Apr 2013 at 19:44, Larry Sheldon wrote: > >> For sure I think Unix was a major component of the early layers of the >> snowball that is The Internet--but I thought the initial development was >> done on IBMish and special purpose hardware--did the IMP's have an OS? >> And don't VAXen speak VMS (everyone I ever met did). > >Oh boy, are you going to get a lot of replies to this. In the sense that >you're using the term, the IMP did *not* have an OS. It was a >special-purpose real-time system that acted as the switching nodes for >the ARPAnet and the interface for the Host systems. > >One of the early plans was to get as many *DIFFERENT* Host systems >connected up to the ARPAnet and, of course, talking to one another. I >think the Sigma-7 at UCLA talking to SAIL at Stanford. I think the only >IBM system on the early net was a 360/67 at Rand (??). MIT had ITS and >Multics. BBN had all sorts of systems: BSD's, TENEX's, assorted PDP-11 >systems. Even the PDP-1 Exec III was an ARPAnet host..:o) > >The VAXen on the early network were running BSD [Unix]. When did >someone build a TCP/IP stack for VMS? > > /Bernie\ > >-- >Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers >mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA > --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From jeanjour at comcast.net Thu Apr 11 19:16:28 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:16:28 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412000616.6CBE118C14C@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412000616.6CBE118C14C@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: At 8:06 PM -0400 4/11/13, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Miles Fidelman > > > Do I recall correctly that at least one of the early "reference > > implementations" was written for Unix > >Not sure we had the concept of "reference implementations" back then. Yes, we >did look at other implementations some when we went to do new ones, but none >we hallowed above others. > > > with portions of it remaining in BSD Unix to this day? > >Not the earliest Unix implementations; they were all for V6 PDP-11 Unix. > >The two earliest were one from U Illinois (or some place like - John Day did >it, IIRC), and slightly later, one from BBN (Jack Haverty wrote that one). It was at Illinois but it wasn't me. Mainly Gary Grossman, Steve Bunch and John Mullen. Our group I just didn't work on that code. They did that in the Summer of 1975. Then Bunch stripped down V6 Unix to run on an LSI-11 as an "intelligent terminal" with a plasma screen and touch. (think of an X-terminal before X). I am sorry. The first UNIX we put on the Net was NCP only. That was in 75. We probably had TCP up in the early 77 time frame. John > >After that, MIT did one (Liza Martin did much of the code, but it was broken >up in an odd way - only the demux was in the kernel, and the TCP was with the >application in a user process, and different apps could (and in some cases >did) have different TCPs. (Really!) So User Telnet used a shift register for >an output buffer (which made sense for that application), but FTP didn't. > > Noel From jeanjour at comcast.net Thu Apr 11 19:48:46 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:48:46 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <51676CA4.3080804@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> <51676CA4.3080804@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: > >Hey Bernie! > >According to http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc801.txt (NCP/TCP Transition >Plan) - dated 1981 >- Gary Grossman @ DTI had a VAX/VMS implementation Yes, but there were earlier ones on an 11/45 and an 11/70. At least 2 on the 11/70. The VAX was pretty late. >- Bob Braden had UCLA's "360 or 370" talking TCP/IP under OS/MVS and OS/MVT > > > > >-- >In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From bill.n1vux at gmail.com Thu Apr 11 20:07:09 2013 From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:07:09 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> Message-ID: On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > > this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >> the root account in unix? >> > Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 account is called username='root' because that's the special userid that owns the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed is the root of the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in having *all* files in a single-rooted tree, not a forest of separate directory trees named by devices. -- Bill @n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul at redbarn.org Thu Apr 11 20:23:22 2013 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:23:22 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> Message-ID: <51677E2A.6050109@redbarn.org> Bill Ricker wrote: > > Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 account > is called username='root' because that's the special userid that owns > the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed is the root of > the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in having *all* files in a > single-rooted tree, not a forest of separate directory trees named by > devices. i've always harbored the same suspicion, which is what made it funny when it became inconvenient to have "/" be the root user's home directory (too much trash was accumulating) thus causing that trash to move to (wait for it) "/root". paul From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Apr 11 21:58:40 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:58:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Larry Sheldon First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development (both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. > I thought the initial development was done on IBMish and special > purpose hardware The very earliest Internet development was done, AFAIK, on PDP-11/40's (running ELF, I think?), PDP-10's running TENEX, Jim Mathis' MOS stuff from SRI - LSI-11's (only), I think? (I think MOS ran on other kinds of 11 too, I'd have to go check the source; but IIRC Jim's focus was LSI-11's.) (I wasn't around for that phase, so someone please correct me if I'm confused.) Pretty soon after (I'm talking circa 1978 or so here), more PDP-11's showed up: Dave Mills' Fuzzballs. Somewhere in there Bob Braden did a TCP for an IBM mainframe at UCLA, and there was also a Multics implementation (although I don't think it actualy ran until bit later). > did the IMP's have an OS? The ARPANet was only used as a long-haul service to connect together TCP/IP sites. The IMP's had no software for doing TCP/IP, they were not IP routers. > And don't VAXen speak VMS Vaxes didn't exist at the time of the earliest Internet work. The first Vaxen (11/780's) did show up shortly thereafter, circa 1979 or so. But they weren't significant until later on in the process (after the 11/750's showed up). All the early Vaxen ran VMS. Unix wasn't brought up on the Vax until they'd been around for a couple of years. Noel From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Apr 11 22:51:14 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:51:14 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> On 4/11/2013 11:58 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development > (both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate > efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. Please forgive me for that--the difference is indeed important. However, as a non-combatant (nor participant, if you rather) in the flow of history I think of one leading to the other and I'm not sure even now, where the tic on the time-line belongs. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Apr 11 23:15:44 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 01:15:44 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> Message-ID: <5167A690.5070605@cox.net> On 4/12/2013 12:51 AM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 4/11/2013 11:58 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development >> (both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate >> efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. > > Please forgive me for that--the difference is indeed important. However, > as a non-combatant (nor participant, if you rather) in the flow of as a non-combatant (or participant, if you rather) in the flow of > history I think of one leading to the other and I'm not sure even now, > where the tic on the time-line belongs. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From marty at martylyons.com Fri Apr 12 00:01:57 2013 From: marty at martylyons.com (Marty Lyons) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:01:57 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <51676B50.9070702@dcrocker.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <51676B50.9070702@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <194B4B2B-F02A-4EA4-83E1-DF6363422DAC@martylyons.com> On Apr 11, 2013, at 7:02 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > 3. Within the Arpanet community, DEC hardware running DEC's o/s was close to non-existent, I believe. Within the early Internet I believe is was quite rare. DEC didn't offer a TCP/IP stack until somewhere close to 1990. Before that the stack for VMS came from third-parties, mostly the one I managed for awhile at Wollongong. Woolongong had the first commercial stack for VMS if I recall. But soon thereafter (I think 1991), TGV had their own version known as Multinet, which included more features (I wish I could remember the capabilities, as it was pretty neat stuff). The most interesting part of that story was TGV was the acronym for the "official" company name, which should win some prize for creativity. Three Guys and a Vax. They were based in Santa Cruz. Somewhere I have one of their t-shirts from the 1990 Interop. DEC at the time (80/90s) really wanted everyone to run DECNET. There was a lot of politics both internally and selling to customers to steer them away from both TCP and Unix. Ultimately DEC shipped Ultrix, which was better than nothing. But anyone who had capable hardware was running BSD. One novel thing about Ultrix was you could have it act as a gateway between TCP and DECNET which allowed some interesting things. From marty at martylyons.com Fri Apr 12 01:07:49 2013 From: marty at martylyons.com (Marty Lyons) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 01:07:49 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <068461B1-1ACF-4B29-8931-4AEBBB5794A7@martylyons.com> On Apr 11, 2013, at 9:58 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > Pretty soon after (I'm talking circa 1978 or so here), more PDP-11's showed > up: Dave Mills' Fuzzballs. Somewhere in there Bob Braden did a TCP for an IBM > mainframe at UCLA, Some of this stuff is before my time but there is a lot of good reading particularly on MULTICS development and its influences. The IBM products which evolved going back to the Project MAC era are significant. Definitely read the Multicians site: http://multicians.org One of the fascinating parts of the story involves MIT's needs for Project MAC, and how IBM actually lost the project. But instead of just giving up, CP-40 evolved out of that effort, which later became the IBM VM operating system (also known as CP/CMS). And the IBM folks worked right in MIT's Tech Square while MAC development was going on, just a few floors away from what would later become MULTICS. The best paper on VM development is Melinda Varian's "VM and the VM Community": 1997 version: http://leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/25paper.pdf The 1991 version has photos and more detail: http://leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.pdf It wasn't until 1989 (and the early days of the "Internet" era) that IBM officially sold a TCP/IP implementation for their mainframes. The actual device was the 8232 LAN channel station, which was a microchannel architecture PC in a washing machine size frame. It ran some microcode to drive a IBM channel adapter (bus/tag) to talk to the host, with a (3com?) Ethernet card in the PC. List price was $40k for the hardware. The host software was written by Barry Appelman's group at IBM Yorktown (product number 5798-FAL). Jeff Kravitz wrote the 8232 code. It wasn't until a few years later that TCP was available for MVS, with 3745 communication controllers getting appropriate support. Also, around 1990, a competitor piece of hardware to the 8232 was developed and sold by Bus-Tech, Inc ("BTI")... widely known as "the BTI box". It used the same IBM software on the host, but the BTI hardware was significantly cheaper, and faster, too! David Lippke, then at UT Dallas, wrote a device driver for that unit which became the standard. From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Apr 12 01:34:16 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 01:34:16 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Do I recall correctly that at least one of the early "reference > implementations" was written for Unix, with portions of it remaining in BSD > Unix to this day? > Yes, and no. I know because I wrote, debugged, and made functional the first implementation of TCP for Unix, as part of the projects which Vint had BBN doing at the time. It was based on the TCP which Jim Mathis at SRI had recently written for the MOS environment, whose only relationship to Unix was that they both ran on PDP-11 processors. I still have a listing of my TCP code, dated March 30, 1979 and recording the important fact that at the time the moon was at New Moon plus 2 days, 11 hours, 27 minutes, and 40 seconds. The TCP was written in Macro-11, and running on a sadly underpowered PDP-11/40. It was used in the first "TCP Bakeoff", battling with other implementations - Bob Braden's on the 360, Dave Clark's on Multics, Bill Plummer's PDP-10, etc. I know there were other people involved at different sites, but I can only remember (some of the) ones who came to the meeting. There must be some old IEN that documented that. However, none of that first Unix TCP code could possibly be in BSD today, unless BSD is somehow running PDP-11 assembly code. Al Nemeth and Mike Wingfield were involved in subsequently writing TCP for the 11/70 Unix environment, and Rob Gurwitz for the Vax. Rob's code might have survived in some form in BSD, but you'd probably need some fancy digital DNA testing to determine that. John Sax did TCP for the HP-3000 - but I can't recall if that was Unix or not. That Unix TCP was my first assignment as a new employee at BBN. I had not heard of TCP. I had seen someone at MIT using Unix, and watched for a few minutes, but I was unable to decipher the gibberish on the screen or understand the arcane commands being typed. I had never used a PDP-11/40. I had never heard of MOS. And I didn't know a lot about networking below the layers of email and such. So of course I was perfectly qualified for the job! /Jack Haverty From AMaitland at Commerco.Com Fri Apr 12 01:59:56 2013 From: AMaitland at Commerco.Com (Alan Maitland) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:59:56 -0600 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <5167CD0C.8070905@Commerco.Com> On 4/12/2013 2:34 AM, Jack Haverty wrote: > However, none of that first Unix TCP code could possibly be in BSD > today, unless BSD is somehow running PDP-11 assembly code. Al Nemeth > and Mike Wingfield were involved in subsequently writing TCP for the > 11/70 Unix environment, and Rob Gurwitz for the Vax. Rob's code > might have survived in some form in BSD, but you'd probably need some > fancy digital DNA testing to determine that. John Sax did TCP for the > HP-3000 - but I can't recall if that was Unix or not. > As my dimming memory recalls... The HP3000 used DS/3000 (Distributed Systems) as their first real entree into interactive system to system communications (as a way to reach and connect both HP3000 systems together as well as HP1000 [RTE] systems). DS/3000 was proprietary and introduced circa 1981. NS/3000 offered the TCP/IP implementation (released around 1984-1985?) supported over thick and thin Ethernet. NS/3000 replaced DS/3000 on the HP3000 platforms. The HP3000 ran MPE on the 16 bit platforms and later MPE/XL on 32 bit RISC based platforms, first MPE was introduced around 1972-1974. Both were proprietary (and upwardly compatible) OS platforms. Neither OS was UNIX based. Alan From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Apr 12 03:32:48 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 06:32:48 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <51677E2A.6050109@redbarn.org> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <51677E2A.6050109@redbarn.org> Message-ID: At 8:23 PM -0700 4/11/13, Paul Vixie wrote: >Bill Ricker wrote: >> >> Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 account >> is called username='root' because that's the special userid that owns >> the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed is the root of >> the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in having *all* files in a >> single-rooted tree, not a forest of separate directory trees named by >> devices. Nothing funny about it. Unix followed Multics lead. Since file and application names were suppose to be location independent, i.e. you didn't have to know where they were to use them, having the device name (or an extension) on the file name was considered poor (or legacy) design. Files may have attributes but there is no reason for them to be part of the name. After all your name doesn't include your location or your type. ;-) >i've always harbored the same suspicion, which is what made it funny >when it became inconvenient to have "/" be the root user's home >directory (too much trash was accumulating) thus causing that trash to >move to (wait for it) "/root". > >paul From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Apr 12 04:09:43 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:09:43 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: At 12:58 AM -0400 4/12/13, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Larry Sheldon > >First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development >(both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate >efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. > > > I thought the initial development was done on IBMish and special > > purpose hardware > >The very earliest Internet development was done, AFAIK, on PDP-11/40's >(running ELF, I think?), PDP-10's running TENEX, Jim Mathis' MOS stuff from >SRI - LSI-11's (only), I think? (I think MOS ran on other kinds of 11 too, >I'd have to go check the source; but IIRC Jim's focus was LSI-11's.) Our first PDP-11 was later called an 11/20. We had an 11/40, /45, /70 and a VAX It ran our home grown OS, ANTS. > >(I wasn't around for that phase, so someone please correct me if I'm >confused.) > >Pretty soon after (I'm talking circa 1978 or so here), more PDP-11's showed >up: Dave Mills' Fuzzballs. Somewhere in there Bob Braden did a TCP for an IBM >mainframe at UCLA, and there was also a Multics implementation (although I >don't think it actualy ran until bit later). > > > did the IMP's have an OS? > >The ARPANet was only used as a long-haul service to connect together TCP/IP >sites. The IMP's had no software for doing TCP/IP, they were not IP routers. > > > And don't VAXen speak VMS > >Vaxes didn't exist at the time of the earliest Internet work. The first Vaxen >(11/780's) did show up shortly thereafter, circa 1979 or so. But they weren't >significant until later on in the process (after the 11/750's showed up). > >All the early Vaxen ran VMS. Unix wasn't brought up on the Vax until they'd >been around for a couple of years. > > Noel From craig at aland.bbn.com Fri Apr 12 04:14:30 2013 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:14:30 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412111430.BF9F928E137@aland.bbn.com> > However, none of that first Unix TCP code could possibly be in BSD > today, unless BSD is somehow running PDP-11 assembly code. Al Nemeth > and Mike Wingfield were involved in subsequently writing TCP for the > 11/70 Unix environment, and Rob Gurwitz for the Vax. Rob's code > might have survived in some form in BSD, but you'd probably need some > fancy digital DNA testing to determine that. I can add a tiny bit of information here (I managed the DARPA BBN TCP support project after Rob Gurwitz left BBN -- it ran in various forms through about 1989 and several people were trained in how to write TCP code by that project). Rob Gurwitz's VAX implementation of BBN TCP, which I understand was a port and reworking of Jack's code [Jack, correct me if wrong], was the TCP in 4.1BSD. It was used by Bill Joy as the reference implementation for the 4.1cBSD TCP using sockets. While I say "reference implementation" it has been unclear to me how much code Joy wrote and how much Joy took BBN code and reworked/repackaged it. The BSD TCP used a state matrix, where the inbound segment type was cross referenced with the current connection state, to call little sub-routines to handle the inbound TCP segment. Joy's TCP used long flat routines with few sub-routine calls (cf. tcp_input()). There's some reason to believe that Joy started by simply stuffing code from the BBN sub-routines into the right spots in his larger routines. I say this because, in the late 1980s, the Berkeley TCP team would periodically partially disclaim responsibility for a bug in TCP by saying "that's from the original BBN TCP" -- which suggested they still understood the genealogy of code from the BBN TCP to the Berkeley TCP implementation. Thanks! Craig From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Apr 12 04:38:16 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:38:16 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <516724E1.7000408@cox.net>, <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <5167604B.13454.30E0212@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: <5167F228.8020000@meetinghouse.net> Original question/comment as about Unix on the early INTERNET, leading to discussion of TCP/IP. Now if we want to go back to 1969 and the early ARPANET, I seem to recall that the first VAXen didn't even exist until around 1975. :-) Miles John Day wrote: > To my thinking, there were no VAX on the *early* Net. They came > later. ;-) > > At 9:15 PM -0400 4/11/13, Bernie Cosell wrote: >> On 11 Apr 2013 at 19:44, Larry Sheldon wrote: >> >>> For sure I think Unix was a major component of the early layers of the >>> snowball that is The Internet--but I thought the initial >>> development was >>> done on IBMish and special purpose hardware--did the IMP's have an OS? >>> And don't VAXen speak VMS (everyone I ever met did). >> >> Oh boy, are you going to get a lot of replies to this. In the sense >> that >> you're using the term, the IMP did *not* have an OS. It was a >> special-purpose real-time system that acted as the switching nodes for >> the ARPAnet and the interface for the Host systems. >> >> One of the early plans was to get as many *DIFFERENT* Host systems >> connected up to the ARPAnet and, of course, talking to one another. I >> think the Sigma-7 at UCLA talking to SAIL at Stanford. I think the only >> IBM system on the early net was a 360/67 at Rand (??). MIT had ITS and >> Multics. BBN had all sorts of systems: BSD's, TENEX's, assorted PDP-11 >> systems. Even the PDP-1 Exec III was an ARPAnet host..:o) >> >> The VAXen on the early network were running BSD [Unix]. When did >> someone build a TCP/IP stack for VMS? >> >> /Bernie\ >> >> -- >> Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers >> mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA >> --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Apr 12 04:45:17 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:45:17 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <5167F3CD.4060000@meetinghouse.net> Noel Chiappa wrote: > The very earliest Internet development was done, AFAIK, on PDP-11/40's > (running ELF, I think?), PDP-10's running TENEX, Jim Mathis' MOS stuff from > SRI - LSI-11's (only), I think? (I think MOS ran on other kinds of 11 too, > I'd have to go check the source; but IIRC Jim's focus was LSI-11's.) Hey... don't forget ITS! Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Apr 12 04:53:29 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:53:29 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> Message-ID: <5167F5B9.2090405@meetinghouse.net> > On 4/11/2013 11:58 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ >> development >> (both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate >> efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. Well I'm not sure about the "different people part." I do seem to recall that Kahn and Cerf were both ARPANET program managers before their TCP/IP work - and an awful lot of folks in this discussion were involved in both. > > Please forgive me for that--the difference is indeed important. > However, as a non-combatant (nor participant, if you rather) in the > flow of history I think of one leading to the other and I'm not sure > even now, where the tic on the time-line belongs. Might want to start here: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Apr 12 04:54:07 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:54:07 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516746EA.5000100@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: At 1:34 AM -0700 4/12/13, Jack Haverty wrote: >On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Miles Fidelman > wrote: > >> Do I recall correctly that at least one of the early "reference >> implementations" was written for Unix, with portions of it remaining in BSD >> Unix to this day? >> > >Yes, and no. I know because I wrote, debugged, and made functional >the first implementation of TCP for Unix, as part of the projects >which Vint had BBN doing at the time. Let me check on that later today. The Illinois TCP on Unix may have actually been earlier but only by at most a year. Does it matter that DCA was paying for it rather than DARPA? John >It was based on the TCP which >Jim Mathis at SRI had recently written for the MOS environment, whose >only relationship to Unix was that they both ran on PDP-11 processors. > I still have a listing of my TCP code, dated March 30, 1979 and >recording the important fact that at the time the moon was at New Moon > plus 2 days, 11 hours, 27 minutes, and 40 seconds. The TCP was >written in Macro-11, and running on a sadly underpowered PDP-11/40. >It was used in the first "TCP Bakeoff", battling with other >implementations - Bob Braden's on the 360, Dave Clark's on Multics, >Bill Plummer's PDP-10, etc. I know there were other people involved >at different sites, but I can only remember (some of the) ones who >came to the meeting. There must be some old IEN that documented that. > >However, none of that first Unix TCP code could possibly be in BSD >today, unless BSD is somehow running PDP-11 assembly code. Al Nemeth >and Mike Wingfield were involved in subsequently writing TCP for the >11/70 Unix environment, and Rob Gurwitz for the Vax. Rob's code >might have survived in some form in BSD, but you'd probably need some >fancy digital DNA testing to determine that. John Sax did TCP for the >HP-3000 - but I can't recall if that was Unix or not. > >That Unix TCP was my first assignment as a new employee at BBN. I had >not heard of TCP. I had seen someone at MIT using Unix, and watched >for a few minutes, but I was unable to decipher the gibberish on the >screen or understand the arcane commands being typed. I had never >used a PDP-11/40. I had never heard of MOS. And I didn't know a lot >about networking below the layers of email and such. > >So of course I was perfectly qualified for the job! > >/Jack Haverty From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Fri Apr 12 05:32:14 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:32:14 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <194B4B2B-F02A-4EA4-83E1-DF6363422DAC@martylyons.com> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516724E1.7000408@cox.net> <516758EC.4090108@cox.net> <51676B50.9070702@dcrocker.net> <194B4B2B-F02A-4EA4-83E1-DF6363422DAC@martylyons.com> Message-ID: <5167FECE.1070605@dcrocker.net> On 4/12/2013 12:01 AM, Marty Lyons wrote: > On Apr 11, 2013, at 7:02 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > >> 3. Within the Arpanet community, DEC hardware running DEC's o/s was >> close to non-existent, I believe. Within the early Internet I >> believe is was quite rare. DEC didn't offer a TCP/IP stack until >> somewhere close to 1990. Before that the stack for VMS came from >> third-parties, mostly the one I managed for awhile at Wollongong. > > Woolongong had the first commercial stack for VMS if I recall. But > soon thereafter (I think 1991), TGV had their own version known as > Multinet, which included more features (I wish I could remember the Well, ummm, mumble, not quite "soon". Somewhere in the 5-7 year range. Dave Kashtan did the core of both products. He originally did the work at SRI in the earlier 80s and Wollongong licensed it, somewhere around 84/85. The original Wollongong stack was extremely buggy. It was fixed up just before I got hired. While I was there, we tried to bring Dave inhouse and signed a contract with him for this. But he simply failed to appear on his scheduled first day and, instead, announced he was forming TGV. > DEC at the time (80/90s) really wanted everyone to run DECNET. There > was a lot of politics both internally and selling to customers to > steer them away from both TCP and Unix. Ultimately DEC shipped > Ultrix, which was better than nothing. It was, finally, DEC offering a Unix license... And, of course, with its spin on the packaging. But VMS remained the corporate emphasis. DEC even killed its original risc-based product because it couldn't run VMS. And when it finally shipped a work-station that was risc-based (and ran Unix), it was intentionally crippled in its packaging, so that the VMS guys would not realize that it was the most powerful computer DEC was shipping... d/ d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Apr 12 05:46:02 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:46:02 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167F5B9.2090405@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> <5167F5B9.2090405@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: Yes, Miles, you are right a lot of the same people were involved, but Noel is right as well. As the 70s wore on, and those who had been hands-on participants in the ARPANET and done great things tended to move toward management and less direct involvement. At 7:53 AM -0400 4/12/13, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>On 4/11/2013 11:58 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> >>>First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development >>>(both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate >>>efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. > >Well I'm not sure about the "different people part." I do seem to >recall that Kahn and Cerf were both ARPANET program managers before >their TCP/IP work - and an awful lot of folks in this discussion >were involved in both. >> >>Please forgive me for that--the difference is indeed important. >>However, as a non-combatant (nor participant, if you rather) in the >>flow of history I think of one leading to the other and I'm not >>sure even now, where the tic on the time-line belongs. >Might want to start here: >http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ >http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/ >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet > >-- >In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Fri Apr 12 06:18:45 2013 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 06:18:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5167F5B9.2090405@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130412045840.2D63318C150@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5167A0D2.6080005@cox.net> <5167F5B9.2090405@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <1365772725.47106.YahooMailNeo@web142406.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Bob Kahn was an ARPA program manager.? Vint Cerf was a professor (I don't know what adjectives preceded "Professor") at Stanford with an ARPA contract. Alex ________________________________ From: Miles Fidelman To: Cc: internet-history at postel.org Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 7:53 AM Subject: Re: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? > On 4/11/2013 11:58 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development >> (both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate >> efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc. Well I'm not sure about the "different people part."? I do seem to recall that Kahn and Cerf were both ARPANET program managers before their TCP/IP work - and an awful lot of folks in this discussion were involved in both. > > Please forgive me for that--the difference is indeed important. However, as a non-combatant (nor participant, if you rather) in the flow of history I think of one leading to the other and I'm not sure even now, where the tic on the time-line belongs. Might want to start here: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.? .... Yogi Berra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Apr 12 07:29:50 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:29:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412142950.4AFD718C181@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jack Haverty > I wrote, debugged, and made functional the first implementation of TCP > for Unix I'd have to check, but my memory also says the one from Illinois may have been earlier. (Not that it matters much!) > The TCP was written in Macro-11 Really? Wow, I thought it was in C! That goes to show you you memories can be unreliable. I remember coming over to BBN to talk to you about it (I can vaguely recollect the meeting - I think we were in a machine room), and I think we even got a copy of your code, but we never did anything with it. > It was used in the first "TCP Bakeoff", battling with other > implementations This was definitely at ISI (I remember being there over the weekend, doing it - the lights in the hallways were out, IIRC), and I _think_ (from looking at a list of meetings) that it was the Jan 25-29, 1979 meetings. > There must be some old IEN that documented that. IEN-77. It lists the implementations tested together: - Wingfield, Unix "C" (this must have been the Illinois one?) - Havery, Unix Macro - Braden, IBM - Plummer, TENEX - Clark, Multics - Mathis, LSI-11 Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Apr 12 07:38:05 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:38:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412143805.1AFA518C181@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Miles Fidelman > Hey... don't forget ITS! ITS was a non-factor. The ITS TCP was much later (around the time of the cutover), and KLH (who wrote it) wasn't a key player in the early TCP/IP work. > I do seem to recall that Kahn and Cerf were both ARPANET program > managers before their TCP/IP work I'm not so sure about that - IIRC Vint was always an academic type (UCLA, and then Stanford) until he came to DARPA to run the TCP/IP project. > an awful lot of folks in this discussion were involved in both. Except in the very earliest days (any maybe not even then), there wasn't much overlap. Try reading the attendee lists in the Internet and TCP Working Group minutes from the late 70s (available in IENs); there are not a lot of names there which figure in the ARPANet work. Certainly, by the time I joined the project in ~ '78 (i.e. fairly early), there weren't a lot of ARPANET people left. > I seem to recall that the first VAXen didn't even exist until around > 1975. :-) Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an early one, but that was around 1978. Noel From craig at aland.bbn.com Fri Apr 12 08:05:28 2013 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:05:28 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412150528.6D49028E137@aland.bbn.com> > > an awful lot of folks in this discussion were involved in both. > > Except in the very earliest days (any maybe not even then), there wasn't much > overlap. > > Try reading the attendee lists in the Internet and TCP Working Group minutes > from the late 70s (available in IENs); there are not a lot of names there > which figure in the ARPANet work. Certainly, by the time I joined the project > in ~ '78 (i.e. fairly early), there weren't a lot of ARPANET people left. A footnote -- this was also true within BBN. The IMP guys weren't the folks who won the TCP contract -- it was the OS (TENEX) guys. Craig From vint at google.com Fri Apr 12 11:57:45 2013 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:57:45 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412150528.6D49028E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20130412150528.6D49028E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: Bob Kahn was at MIT faculty then BBN and joined ARPA in late 1972 after managing the ARPANET demonstration at ICCC 92 in Washington, DC. I joined Stanford as an assistant professor in later 1972 after 5 years at UCLA working on MS/Ph.D. in computer science. I joined bob at arpa in mid1976. Bob never managed the ARPANET project but was a key architect of the IMP while at BBN. and initiated the Internet project at ARPA in early 1973. The earliest TCP implementations were at Stanford in BCPL for a PDP11/20 written in 1975 by Richard Karp and on the PDP-10 running under TENEX by Bill Plummer and Ray Tomlinson. A third was written at UCL in 1975 on a PDP-9 in Peter Kirstein's lab (don't recall the name of the programmer there... peter higginson? andrew hinchley? christopher bennett? ... vint On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > > > an awful lot of folks in this discussion were involved in both. > > > > Except in the very earliest days (any maybe not even then), there wasn't > much > > overlap. > > > > Try reading the attendee lists in the Internet and TCP Working Group > minutes > > from the late 70s (available in IENs); there are not a lot of names there > > which figure in the ARPANet work. Certainly, by the time I joined the > project > > in ~ '78 (i.e. fairly early), there weren't a lot of ARPANET people > left. > > A footnote -- this was also true within BBN. The IMP guys weren't the > folks who won the TCP contract -- it was the OS (TENEX) guys. > > Craig > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Apr 12 12:32:12 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:32:12 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412150528.6D49028E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20130412150528.6D49028E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:05 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > A footnote -- this was also true within BBN. The IMP guys weren't the > folks who won the TCP contract -- it was the OS (TENEX) guys. Sorry...not true. To get the history straight...while I still remember... The work I did, which included that Unix TCP associated with the ISI Bakeoff, was done in Frank Heart's division, which also contained "the IMP guys". That's where the ARPANET was developed and operated beginning back in 1969 or so. The IMP guys at the time (1978 or so) -- Heart, Walden, Cosell, Barker, McKenzie, Robinson, Roberts, Malis, (Jim) Herman, etc., all had offices just down the hall. Heart's group also included Gurwitz (Vax TCP), Wingfield (11/70 Unix TCP), Nemeth, Hinden(TAC TCP), Rosen, McQuillan, Malis, and many others that did both ARPANET stuff and/or Internet stuff. I'm afraid I'm missing a lot of names. The "OS/Tenex Guys" were in another BBN division, which included Bill Plummer's TCP work (Tenex TCP) as well as a number of other ARPA "Internet" projects such as Packet Radio, but no IMP-related work that I recall. Again, many more names were involved. The "gateway" work began in the "OS/Tenex" division (Ginny Strazisar, and I think maybe Ray Tomlinson) to interconnect Packet Radio nets with the Arpanet. That work was subsequently moved from the "OS/Tenex" division to "the IMP guys" division by Vint as we focused on bringing up the Internet as an operational service (i.e., keep the gateways/routers running 24x7 like the IMPs were). In retrospect, I think that the proximity of "the IMP guys" to "the Internet guys" (Hinden, Brescia, Sheltzer and others over time) was crucial to getting the Internet to become a "public utility", by the osmosis of the ARPANET experience into the Internet machinery being created. In those early days, the Network Operations Center ran both the ARPANET (all the IMPs) and the neonatal Internet (all the "core gateways") on a 7x24 basis, and the NOC was literally around the corner from both "the IMP guys" and "the Internet guys". Some of the history was captured in the quarterly reports that had to be submitted for each contract. Here's one from November 1981 -- http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a108783.pdf -- that covers some of the TCP development, i.e., the Vax and HP3000 TCPs, and also the "Internet operations and maintenance" work. I'm pretty sure I wrote that one -- Bob Bressler had gotten tired of doing them himself. Writing the quarterly report ("QTR") was one of those things I had to do for a lot of the Internet-associated work, at least until I found someone else to do it. The customers were never satisfied and always seemed to want another just a few months later .... we just wanted to write code... You can trace a lot of history by googling for the QTRs associated with a contract. Everybody had to write them, not just BBN. They often contain much more information about projects and milestones than things like RFCs and IENs that might have been published later down the road. It was always somewhat amusing that our contracts hardly ever required us to actually deliver much of anything tangible - like an actual TCP implementation. They often only required us to deliver Quarterly Technical Reports - that's what we were being paid to do. Deliver a few pieces of paper every few months, and we'll send you a boatload of cash. To answer another question from this thread... I don't believe anyone had "an ARPA contract". As I recall, ARPA never entered into a contract, but got someone else to do it - like DCA or the Army, Navy, Air Force, etc. See page 2 of that 1981 QTR for the contracts under which several of those "reference" TCPs and the Internet Operations were done. However, regardless of whose name was on the contract, the *funds* might have come from different sources within the government, e.g., ARPA's budget in the early stages when the work was "researchy" and DCA's budget in later stages, when the work was "operational", or the Navy's budget if they really really wanted to use the results on a ship, etc. So any specific contract might have had funds from many sources, changing over time. We had contracts through DCA as well as the Army, Navy, and others. Of course we techies couldn't really tell the difference. But for years I was the "Program Manager" and/or "Principal Investigator" of some of these contracts, and had to deal with the bizarre world of contracts and its bureaucratic flora and fauna. And you think networks are complicated! if you somehow didn't send the QTR to the right place, they simply didn't send the check. Literally. Didn't even ask why they didn't get the QTR. Been there, done that. Could have put BBN under. As the saying goes... Follow the money. /Jack Haverty From dave.walden.family at gmail.com Fri Apr 12 13:38:27 2013 From: dave.walden.family at gmail.com (Dave Walden) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:38:27 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130412150528.6D49028E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <51686fbd.cd5c340a.04dd.40c2@mx.google.com> >The "gateway" work began in the "OS/Tenex" division (Ginny Strazisar I think the gateway stuff was happening in both BBN computer divisions from pretty much the beginning. There were lots of aspects to be worked on, e.g., systems in the satellite earth stations, thinking about what gateways should do, packet radio connection via internetting, other demos of internetting using, etc. Fairly early in gateway thinking (1976) there was a joint AFIPS presentation with authors from both divisions. There was at least one BBN paper thinking about gateways a year earlier, not from the "OS division". >Some of this BBN part of this history is covered in chapter 17 of the book at http://walden-family.com/bbn/bbn-print2.pdf Until about 1982 there certainly were two somewhat competing divisions within BBN (both wanted money from ARPA), but both got money for various things, and fairly often those things had intersections or overlap and there was cooperation (even if not always completely happily). (After that the divisions were merged, which further improved intra-company cooperation.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From LarrySheldon at cox.net Fri Apr 12 14:24:45 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:24:45 -0500 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of > the root account in unix? > > Thanks, Eduardo.- My first reply to your question derailed the thread irreparably but I would like for you to know that there were at least two attempts at answering your question. I have copied below two messages (that contain other replies) that I think contain all the material on your question. > At 1602 on 4.11 I said: > > On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > >> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin >> of the root account in unix? > > It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little > weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix > had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the > operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early > days. > > Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no > credentials whatever in the area and all I say is based on an > accretion of hearsay, the result of working one, with, and for > computers and networks of several kinds for several years in several > "environments". > > Every computer (or more precisely, every operating system instance) > with an "account structure" has to have a place to start. > > On EXEC 8 systems, the first accesses via the construction of the > boot tape, fleshed out via the (presumed) physically secure console. > From those come the first accounts and their "permissions" and from > there the construction of additional accounts and file structures > expands. > > MS-DOS systems presumed the only accesses were via the (presumed) > physically secure console and were presumed to be be single-user and > there was not much in the way of control or constraint on the > file-system structure. > > MS-WINDOWS (I have not forgotten the original question--I'll arrive > back there momentarily) introduced the notions of (at first, serial) > multi-user and installed itself with an "admin" account (with either > a publicly known, or no password) that the authority to establish > file-system structures and to construct "accounts" with some subset > of its "permissions" (the most common subset was "all of them", I > think). > > I think unix (and multics, from which it sprouted*) was designed to > support multiple users from the outset, and since that first or > starter account (also accessible initially only via the (presumed) > physically secure console) had to have permissions on the "root" > directory it no doubt seemed natural to the GE, MIT and Bell Labs > people to call it the "root" account. > > Obviously, MS had to use another symbol for the root directory and > another name for the starter account with access to it. > > I have not mentioned any of the myriad IBM "OS"s, nor any other > because I don't know anything about them, and don't (as I did here) > pretend to. > > *http://www.multicians.org/unix.html > > At 2256 on 4/11 I said: > > On 4/11/2013 10:07 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: >> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>> >>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the >>> origin of >>>> the root account in unix? >>>> >>> >> Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 >> account is called username='root' because that's the special userid >> that owns the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed >> is the root of the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in >> having *all* files in a single-rooted tree, not a forest of >> separate directory trees named by devices. > > That is what I was trying to say when I derailed the train. I think > that this is exactly right sub environment in which it occurred. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar Fri Apr 12 14:43:44 2013 From: esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar (Eduardo A. =?iso-8859-1?b?U3XhcmV6?=) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:43:44 -0300 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=09is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> Message-ID: <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Hi Larry, thanks for all your contributions, it's nice to read old stories. I was reviewing a large number of documents on the origins of Unix, and the different versions that I found on this site http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ and the only manual that calls the super user "root" is SunOS 1.1 manual from 1984. Since SunOS it's based on 4.1BSD and the manual of that version and the latter (4.3BSD, etc.) does not refer to a "root" account, I could imagine that "root" is the brainchild of Sun. But it's just my intuition because I have no internal document from Sun to support this assumption. Thanks, Eduardo.- Quoting Larry Sheldon : > On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > >> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >> the root account in unix? >> >> Thanks, Eduardo.- > > My first reply to your question derailed the thread irreparably but I > would like for you to know that there were at least two attempts at > answering your question. > > I have copied below two messages (that contain other replies) that I > think contain all the material on your question. > > >> At 1602 on 4.11 I said: >> >> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >> >>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin >>> of the root account in unix? >> >> It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little >> weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix >> had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the >> operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early >> days. >> >> Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no >> credentials whatever in the area and all I say is based on an >> accretion of hearsay, the result of working one, with, and for >> computers and networks of several kinds for several years in several >> "environments". >> >> Every computer (or more precisely, every operating system instance) >> with an "account structure" has to have a place to start. >> >> On EXEC 8 systems, the first accesses via the construction of the >> boot tape, fleshed out via the (presumed) physically secure console. >> From those come the first accounts and their "permissions" and from >> there the construction of additional accounts and file structures >> expands. >> >> MS-DOS systems presumed the only accesses were via the (presumed) >> physically secure console and were presumed to be be single-user and >> there was not much in the way of control or constraint on the >> file-system structure. >> >> MS-WINDOWS (I have not forgotten the original question--I'll arrive >> back there momentarily) introduced the notions of (at first, serial) >> multi-user and installed itself with an "admin" account (with either >> a publicly known, or no password) that the authority to establish >> file-system structures and to construct "accounts" with some subset >> of its "permissions" (the most common subset was "all of them", I >> think). >> >> I think unix (and multics, from which it sprouted*) was designed to >> support multiple users from the outset, and since that first or >> starter account (also accessible initially only via the (presumed) >> physically secure console) had to have permissions on the "root" >> directory it no doubt seemed natural to the GE, MIT and Bell Labs >> people to call it the "root" account. >> >> Obviously, MS had to use another symbol for the root directory and >> another name for the starter account with access to it. >> >> I have not mentioned any of the myriad IBM "OS"s, nor any other >> because I don't know anything about them, and don't (as I did here) >> pretend to. >> >> *http://www.multicians.org/unix.html >> >> At 2256 on 4/11 I said: >> >> On 4/11/2013 10:07 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: >>> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>>> >>>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the >>>> origin of >>>>> the root account in unix? >>>>> >>>> >>> Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 >>> account is called username='root' because that's the special userid >>> that owns the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed >>> is the root of the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in >>> having *all* files in a single-rooted tree, not a forest of >>> separate directory trees named by devices. >> >> That is what I was trying to say when I derailed the train. I think >> that this is exactly right sub environment in which it occurred. > > > > > -- > Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics > of System Administrators: > Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to > learn from their mistakes. > (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) -- Eduardo A. Suarez Facultad de Ciencias Astron?micas y Geof?sicas - UNLP FCAG: (0221)-4236593 int. 172/Cel: (0221)-15-4557542/Casa: (0221)-4526589 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From LarrySheldon at cox.net Fri Apr 12 15:23:42 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:23:42 -0500 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: <5168896E.1000807@cox.net> On 4/12/2013 4:43 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > Hi Larry, > > thanks for all your contributions, it's nice to read old stories. > > I was reviewing a large number of documents on the origins of Unix, and > the different versions that I found on this site > http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ and the only manual that > calls the super user "root" is SunOS 1.1 manual from 1984. Since SunOS > it's based on 4.1BSD and the manual of that version and the latter > (4.3BSD, etc.) does not refer to a "root" account, I could imagine that > "root" is the brainchild of Sun. > > But it's just my intuition because I have no internal document from Sun > to support this assumption. That is really interesting. I did not discover the unix world until the late 1980's but I thought the name "root" was ubiquitous. (I don't remember ever seeing the subject in writing, but it just now occurs to me that on the systems I know anything about, the default prompt is the user's "home" directory which often named after the account name--and the "home" directory for the superuser is "/" -- "root".) -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Apr 12 15:32:14 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:32:14 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412143805.1AFA518C181@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412143805.1AFA518C181@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <51688B6E.70004@meetinghouse.net> Noel Chiappa wrote: > > > I seem to recall that the first VAXen didn't even exist until around > > 1975. :-) > > Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an early one, but > that was around 1978. A little earlier than that. I graduated in 1975, and remember one arriving a couple of years earlier. I was taking a lab course, and it showed up one day in the prof's lab. I think it was Joel Moses, and I seem to recall we were playing with some of those computer driven pogo sticks that were all the rage - though most of what we did in that course had to do with wire wrapping DEC logic boards together (remember when DEC still was in the module business? :-) Miles From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Apr 12 15:46:13 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:46:13 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?___is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> Message-ID: I am surprised someone hasn't chimed in. Isn't the origin of root account Multics? I always defined Unix as how much of Multics you could get on a PDP-11/45. It has been a long time since I looked at my MPM but there had to be a root account in Multics At 4:24 PM -0500 4/12/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > >>this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >> the root account in unix? >> >>Thanks, Eduardo.- > >My first reply to your question derailed the thread irreparably but I >would like for you to know that there were at least two attempts at >answering your question. > >I have copied below two messages (that contain other replies) that I >think contain all the material on your question. > >>At 1602 on 4.11 I said: >> >>On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >> >>>this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin >>>of the root account in unix? >> >>It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little >>weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix >>had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the >>operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early >>days. >> >>Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no >>credentials whatever in the area and all I say is based on an >>accretion of hearsay, the result of working one, with, and for >>computers and networks of several kinds for several years in several >>"environments". >> >>Every computer (or more precisely, every operating system instance) >>with an "account structure" has to have a place to start. >> >>On EXEC 8 systems, the first accesses via the construction of the >>boot tape, fleshed out via the (presumed) physically secure console. >>From those come the first accounts and their "permissions" and from >>there the construction of additional accounts and file structures >>expands. >> >>MS-DOS systems presumed the only accesses were via the (presumed) >>physically secure console and were presumed to be be single-user and >>there was not much in the way of control or constraint on the >>file-system structure. >> >>MS-WINDOWS (I have not forgotten the original question--I'll arrive >>back there momentarily) introduced the notions of (at first, serial) >>multi-user and installed itself with an "admin" account (with either >>a publicly known, or no password) that the authority to establish >>file-system structures and to construct "accounts" with some subset >>of its "permissions" (the most common subset was "all of them", I >>think). >> >>I think unix (and multics, from which it sprouted*) was designed to >>support multiple users from the outset, and since that first or >>starter account (also accessible initially only via the (presumed) >>physically secure console) had to have permissions on the "root" >>directory it no doubt seemed natural to the GE, MIT and Bell Labs >>people to call it the "root" account. >> >>Obviously, MS had to use another symbol for the root directory and >>another name for the starter account with access to it. >> >>I have not mentioned any of the myriad IBM "OS"s, nor any other >>because I don't know anything about them, and don't (as I did here) >>pretend to. >> >>*http://www.multicians.org/unix.html >> >>At 2256 on 4/11 I said: >> >>On 4/11/2013 10:07 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: >>>On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>>> >>>>this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the >>>>origin of >>>>>the root account in unix? >>>>> >>>> >>>Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 >>>account is called username='root' because that's the special userid >>>that owns the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed >>>is the root of the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in >>>having *all* files in a single-rooted tree, not a forest of >>>separate directory trees named by devices. >> >>That is what I was trying to say when I derailed the train. I think >>that this is exactly right sub environment in which it occurred. > > > > >-- >Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics > of System Administrators: >Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to > learn from their mistakes. > (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Apr 12 15:53:26 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:53:26 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <51688B6E.70004@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130412143805.1AFA518C181@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51688B6E.70004@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: Sorry, according to the Wikipedia, The first VAX was sold on October 25, 1977. Which sounds about right. We went through most of the line: a PDP-11 in 1970 later called the /20, a /40 for a short time, then a /45 and an LSI-11 about 1975, /70 and then a VAX. At 6:32 PM -0400 4/12/13, Miles Fidelman wrote: >Noel Chiappa wrote: >> >> > I seem to recall that the first VAXen didn't even exist until around >> > 1975. :-) >> >>Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an early one, but >>that was around 1978. > >A little earlier than that. I graduated in 1975, and remember one >arriving a couple of years earlier. I was taking a lab course, and >it showed up one day in the prof's lab. I think it was Joel Moses, >and I seem to recall we were playing with some of those computer >driven pogo sticks that were all the rage - though most of what we >did in that course had to do with wire wrapping DEC logic boards >together (remember when DEC still was in the module business? :-) > >Miles From LarrySheldon at cox.net Fri Apr 12 16:06:19 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:06:19 -0500 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez__=28was_Re=3A__Wha?= =?iso-8859-1?q?t___is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> Message-ID: <5168936B.4090907@cox.net> On 4/12/2013 5:46 PM, John Day wrote: > I am surprised someone hasn't chimed in. Isn't the origin of root > account Multics? I kinda sorta hinted at it. Near as I can tell most of unix "came from" Multics (and hence a lot of stuff we are saddled with today), one way or another. (I cited http://www.multicians.org/unix.html but so far I have not uncovered the word "root" in any context. I did enjoy learning where ".rc" came from.) -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Apr 12 16:09:30 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:09:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412230930.7FBBA18C13B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: > I could imagine that "root" is the brainchild of Sun. Ah, no. >From my old hardcopy of "Setting Up Unix - Sixth Edition", on page 3, we find: "The only valid user names are 'root' and 'bin'. The root is the super-user" My copy is not dated, but I imagine it's circa 1976 or so. But my guess is the name goes back much further than than (in terms of Unix versions) - probably to when the added accounts (not sure which version of Unix that was at). Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Apr 12 16:15:06 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:15:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? Message-ID: <20130412231506.10B0518C140@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Miles Fidelman >> Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an early one, >> but that was around 1978. > A little earlier than that. I graduated in 1975, and remember one > arriving a couple of years earlier. This too seems unlikely. The VAX 11/780 was "introduced on 25 October 1977 at DEC's Annual Meeting of Shareholders". See: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/digital/timeline/1977.htm for corroboration of the year. Noel From esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar Fri Apr 12 16:30:46 2013 From: esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar (Eduardo A. =?iso-8859-1?b?U3XhcmV6?=) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:30:46 -0300 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=09_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> Message-ID: <20130412203046.74tb2ni2kgsg8o4o@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Multics has an admin mode for the operator and has a root directory and a root card, but not a root account. Quoting John Day : > I am surprised someone hasn't chimed in. Isn't the origin of root > account Multics? > > I always defined Unix as how much of Multics you could get on a PDP-11/45. > > It has been a long time since I looked at my MPM but there had to be a > root account in Multics > > At 4:24 PM -0500 4/12/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >> >>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >>> the root account in unix? >>> >>> Thanks, Eduardo.- >> >> My first reply to your question derailed the thread irreparably but I >> would like for you to know that there were at least two attempts at >> answering your question. >> >> I have copied below two messages (that contain other replies) that I >> think contain all the material on your question. >> >>> At 1602 on 4.11 I said: >>> >>> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>> >>>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin >>>> of the root account in unix? >>> >>> It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little >>> weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix >>> had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the >>> operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early >>> days. >>> >>> Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no >>> credentials whatever in the area and all I say is based on an >>> accretion of hearsay, the result of working one, with, and for >>> computers and networks of several kinds for several years in several >>> "environments". >>> >>> Every computer (or more precisely, every operating system instance) >>> with an "account structure" has to have a place to start. >>> >>> On EXEC 8 systems, the first accesses via the construction of the >>> boot tape, fleshed out via the (presumed) physically secure console. >>> From those come the first accounts and their "permissions" and from >>> there the construction of additional accounts and file structures >>> expands. >>> >>> MS-DOS systems presumed the only accesses were via the (presumed) >>> physically secure console and were presumed to be be single-user and >>> there was not much in the way of control or constraint on the >>> file-system structure. >>> >>> MS-WINDOWS (I have not forgotten the original question--I'll arrive >>> back there momentarily) introduced the notions of (at first, serial) >>> multi-user and installed itself with an "admin" account (with either >>> a publicly known, or no password) that the authority to establish >>> file-system structures and to construct "accounts" with some subset >>> of its "permissions" (the most common subset was "all of them", I >>> think). >>> >>> I think unix (and multics, from which it sprouted*) was designed to >>> support multiple users from the outset, and since that first or >>> starter account (also accessible initially only via the (presumed) >>> physically secure console) had to have permissions on the "root" >>> directory it no doubt seemed natural to the GE, MIT and Bell Labs >>> people to call it the "root" account. >>> >>> Obviously, MS had to use another symbol for the root directory and >>> another name for the starter account with access to it. >>> >>> I have not mentioned any of the myriad IBM "OS"s, nor any other >>> because I don't know anything about them, and don't (as I did here) >>> pretend to. >>> >>> *http://www.multicians.org/unix.html >>> >>> At 2256 on 4/11 I said: >>> >>> On 4/11/2013 10:07 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: >>>> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>>>> >>>>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the >>>>> origin of >>>>>> the root account in unix? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 >>>> account is called username='root' because that's the special userid >>>> that owns the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed >>>> is the root of the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in >>>> having *all* files in a single-rooted tree, not a forest of >>>> separate directory trees named by devices. >>> >>> That is what I was trying to say when I derailed the train. I think >>> that this is exactly right sub environment in which it occurred. >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics >> of System Administrators: >> Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to >> learn from their mistakes. >> (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) -- Eduardo A. Suarez Facultad de Ciencias Astron?micas y Geof?sicas - UNLP FCAG: (0221)-4236593 int. 172/Cel: (0221)-15-4557542/Casa: (0221)-4526589 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Apr 12 16:31:17 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:31:17 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: In the early days of Unix, AT&T was the major force. Unix was a by-product of AT&T's Bell Laboratories. There were a lot of licensing and legal issues at the time. For example, there was a question of the Unix code (the kernel itself) being legally constrained, as a trade secret of AT&T or something. In order to look at the source code, you had to sign an agreement (some kind of non-disclosure). Many people, especially students and recent graduates, were concerned that signing such an agreement would hurt their careers, by making corporations afraid to hire them for fear of AT&T's lawyers. So there were many people using Unix, but not so many who knew its innards, except at Bell Labs. What can I say ... I drank the Kool Aid, and dove into the task of writing TCP for Unix on the PDP-11/40. Figuring out the Unix internals was not easy. The fear of the legal system also seemed to have prevented anyone from documenting anything. No "Unix -- The Missing Manual". I remember searching through the kernel listing, simply trying to find the Scheduler, since every time-sharing system had to have one. Finally I found it -- only about 20 lines of code hidden in the bowels. Unix was very compact inside. It had to be, to fit in a PDP-11/40 with its 32K of address space. (The 11/45 and /70 had twice that, and the Vax was huge) The only document about Unix internals I recall finding (in 1978) was from the University of Wollongong (Australia), where someone had written up a nice description of the architecture of the kernel and the software structure, data, etc. Very, very helpful in getting that TCP running. I guess Wollongong was far enough away from AT&T to not be worried. I also remember that we (Al Nemeth and I) visited Bell Labs in New Jersey at least once, to get some answers and guidance from Kernighan/Ritchie. Sadly, I can't recall if there was a "root" then. But I'd suggest two sources - the University of Wollongong (and the company with the same name), and the Bell Labs, which might have made some of their internal documents public by now. Look for PDP-11 Unix documentation. Sun came into the picture much later. Good luck, /Jack Haverty On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: > Hi Larry, > > thanks for all your contributions, it's nice to read old stories. > > I was reviewing a large number of documents on the origins of Unix, and the > different versions that I found on this site > http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ and the only manual that calls > the super user "root" is SunOS 1.1 manual from 1984. Since SunOS it's based > on 4.1BSD and the manual of that version and the latter (4.3BSD, etc.) does > not refer to a "root" account, I could imagine that "root" is the brainchild > of Sun. > > But it's just my intuition because I have no internal document from Sun to > support this assumption. > > Thanks, Eduardo.- > > > Quoting Larry Sheldon : > >> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >> >>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin of >>> the root account in unix? >>> >>> Thanks, Eduardo.- >> >> >> My first reply to your question derailed the thread irreparably but I >> would like for you to know that there were at least two attempts at >> answering your question. >> >> I have copied below two messages (that contain other replies) that I >> think contain all the material on your question. >> >> >>> At 1602 on 4.11 I said: >>> >>> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>> >>>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the origin >>>> of the root account in unix? >>> >>> >>> It certainly is "history" although the "internet" part is a little >>> weak since unix existed before the Internet did, I don't think unix >>> had much to do with the development of the Internet except as the >>> operating system on some hosts that were reachable in the early >>> days. >>> >>> Be fore I continue let me confirm for you all that I have no >>> credentials whatever in the area and all I say is based on an >>> accretion of hearsay, the result of working one, with, and for >>> computers and networks of several kinds for several years in several >>> "environments". >>> >>> Every computer (or more precisely, every operating system instance) >>> with an "account structure" has to have a place to start. >>> >>> On EXEC 8 systems, the first accesses via the construction of the >>> boot tape, fleshed out via the (presumed) physically secure console. >>> From those come the first accounts and their "permissions" and from >>> there the construction of additional accounts and file structures >>> expands. >>> >>> MS-DOS systems presumed the only accesses were via the (presumed) >>> physically secure console and were presumed to be be single-user and >>> there was not much in the way of control or constraint on the >>> file-system structure. >>> >>> MS-WINDOWS (I have not forgotten the original question--I'll arrive >>> back there momentarily) introduced the notions of (at first, serial) >>> multi-user and installed itself with an "admin" account (with either >>> a publicly known, or no password) that the authority to establish >>> file-system structures and to construct "accounts" with some subset >>> of its "permissions" (the most common subset was "all of them", I >>> think). >>> >>> I think unix (and multics, from which it sprouted*) was designed to >>> support multiple users from the outset, and since that first or >>> starter account (also accessible initially only via the (presumed) >>> physically secure console) had to have permissions on the "root" >>> directory it no doubt seemed natural to the GE, MIT and Bell Labs >>> people to call it the "root" account. >>> >>> Obviously, MS had to use another symbol for the root directory and >>> another name for the starter account with access to it. >>> >>> I have not mentioned any of the myriad IBM "OS"s, nor any other >>> because I don't know anything about them, and don't (as I did here) >>> pretend to. >>> >>> *http://www.multicians.org/unix.html >>> >>> At 2256 on 4/11 I said: >>> >>> On 4/11/2013 10:07 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: >>>> >>>> On 4/11/2013 1:58 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> this is off-topic, but perhaps anyone can help. What is the >>>>> origin of >>>>>> >>>>>> the root account in unix? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> Etymologically, i have always //suspected// that the userid=0 >>>> account is called username='root' because that's the special userid >>>> that owns the root directory '/' also called 'Root', which indeed >>>> is the root of the singular file-system. Unix was peculiar in >>>> having *all* files in a single-rooted tree, not a forest of >>>> separate directory trees named by devices. >>> >>> >>> That is what I was trying to say when I derailed the train. I think >>> that this is exactly right sub environment in which it occurred. >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics >> of System Administrators: >> Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to >> learn from their mistakes. >> (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) > > > > > -- > Eduardo A. Suarez > Facultad de Ciencias Astron?micas y Geof?sicas - UNLP > FCAG: (0221)-4236593 int. 172/Cel: (0221)-15-4557542/Casa: (0221)-4526589 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. > > From esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar Fri Apr 12 16:35:54 2013 From: esuarez at fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar (Eduardo A. =?iso-8859-1?b?U3XhcmV6?=) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:35:54 -0300 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412230930.7FBBA18C13B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412230930.7FBBA18C13B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <20130412203554.36891pa52ckooskc@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> the manuals I have read refers to super-user not to root, but you are right! http://minnie.tuhs.org/PUPS/Setup/v6_setup.html Quoting Noel Chiappa : > > From: > > > I could imagine that "root" is the brainchild of Sun. > > Ah, no. > >> From my old hardcopy of "Setting Up Unix - Sixth Edition", on page >> 3, we find: > > "The only valid user names are 'root' and 'bin'. The root is the > super-user" > > My copy is not dated, but I imagine it's circa 1976 or so. > > But my guess is the name goes back much further than than (in terms of Unix > versions) - probably to when the added accounts (not sure which version of > Unix that was at). > > Noel > -- Eduardo A. Suarez Facultad de Ciencias Astron?micas y Geof?sicas - UNLP FCAG: (0221)-4236593 int. 172/Cel: (0221)-15-4557542/Casa: (0221)-4526589 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From amyzing at talsever.com Fri Apr 12 17:10:15 2013 From: amyzing at talsever.com (Amelia A Lewis) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:10:15 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <5168896E.1000807@cox.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <5168896E.1000807@cox.net> Message-ID: <20130412201015603298.32d1276a@talsever.com> On Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:23:42 -0500, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 4/12/2013 4:43 PM, Eduardo A. Su?rez wrote: >> I was reviewing a large number of documents on the origins of Unix, and >> the different versions that I found on this site >> http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ and the only manual that >> calls the super user "root" is SunOS 1.1 manual from 1984. Since SunOS >> it's based on 4.1BSD and the manual of that version and the latter >> (4.3BSD, etc.) does not refer to a "root" account, I could imagine that >> "root" is the brainchild of Sun. >> >> But it's just my intuition because I have no internal document from Sun >> to support this assumption. > > That is really interesting. I did not discover the unix world until > the late 1980's but I thought the name "root" was ubiquitous. http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl The website is "the unix tree"; a lot of the early materials are contributions from Dennis Ritchie (r.i.p.). Unfortunately, I'm hopelessly incapable of handling the assembler in first to third editions. Fourth edition has the kernel in (pre-K&R) C that doesn't help me figure anything out (though others might do better, certainly). Fifth edition has the /etc dir, containing /etc/passwd, which is quite short: root::0:1::/: daemon::1:1::/bin: bin::3:1::/bin: (I posted /etc/passwd to a public mailing list! I'm a 1337 h4xx0rz!) (ahem!) This is dated June 1974 on the website. That's ten years before the Sun documentation mentioned above. Others might be able to find more information in the source trees. FWIW, there are 12 occurrences of 'root' in the v6 source tree, nine of them in pwd.c. None refer to the user. There are 30 occurrences in Lions Commentary, and again, none refer to the root user. But the root user does appear in /etc/passwd for v6 as well (the trio above were clearly established conventions at this point). If you can find a working first edition (heh ... and a working pdp-7?), you could check for root there. Once verified, you'd presumably look to unix's roots (errr ... sorry), most likely multics, as others have already suggested. Amy! -- Amelia A. Lewis amyzing {at} talsever.com Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. -- Edsger Dijkstra From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Fri Apr 12 17:32:52 2013 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:32:52 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412230930.7FBBA18C13B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412230930.7FBBA18C13B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <5168A7B4.18877.80CF4C4@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 12 Apr 2013 at 19:09, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >From my old hardcopy of "Setting Up Unix - Sixth Edition", on page 3, > we find: > > "The only valid user names are 'root' and 'bin'. The root is the > super-user" > > My copy is not dated, but I imagine it's circa 1976 or so. In 1978 there were two issues of the BSTJ devoted to Unix [I actually have both squirreled away somewhere, but with the wonders of the Internet I found it online without having to go find my copies...:o)]. In the section on the file system it says: "The system maintains several directories for its own use. One of these is the root directory. ... BUT in the section on "protections" it says: The system recognizes one particular user ID (that of the "superuser") as exempt from the usual constraints on file access... There is not mention of a "root" user anywhere in the paper. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From amyzing at talsever.com Fri Apr 12 17:40:04 2013 From: amyzing at talsever.com (Amelia A Lewis) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:40:04 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A__What?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <20130412201015603298.32d1276a@talsever.com> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <5168896E.1000807@cox.net> <20130412201015603298.32d1276a@talsever.com> Message-ID: <20130412204004688165.73c0265e@talsever.com> A quick followup. On Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:10:15 -0400, Amelia A Lewis wrote: > Fourth edition has the kernel in (pre-K&R) C that doesn't > help me figure anything out (though others might do better, certainly). su(8) in 4th edition (man page dated October 1973) contains this sentence: The password demanded is that of the entry ``root'' in the system's password file. First edition used /etc/uids. By third edition, /etc/uids seems to be deprecated (manx), and passwd(5) appears in its place (but both must be updated, indicating that there must still be programs relying on the older uids(5) format from e1). Third edition su(8) does not mention the name of the super-user. Amy! -- Amelia A. Lewis amyzing {at} talsever.com There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD Unix. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Apr 12 20:25:27 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:25:27 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130412231506.10B0518C140@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130412231506.10B0518C140@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <5168D027.7000300@meetinghouse.net> Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Miles Fidelman > > >> Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an early one, > >> but that was around 1978. > > > A little earlier than that. I graduated in 1975, and remember one > > arriving a couple of years earlier. > > This too seems unlikely. The VAX 11/780 was "introduced on 25 October 1977 at > DEC's Annual Meeting of Shareholders". See: > > http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/digital/timeline/1977.htm > > for corroboration of the year. > That's very odd - my memory must be failing me, but I could have sworn we had a VAX to play with, and I wasn't around MIT after 195. Then again, Gorden Bell provides pretty much the definitive rebuttal to my memory: "So on April 1, 1975 I pulled a group together we called the VAX A group. VAX A was the mailing list and there were 6 of us. We took moved together on the 3^rd floor of Building 12, almost at the same spot I had when I came to DEC in 1960. My main office was on the first floor with Ken." (from http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/bell.htm#VAX) Guess it couldn't have been around before 1975 - given that work on the VAX hadn't started yet. Wonder what it was we were playing with. Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From johnl at iecc.com Fri Apr 12 21:00:26 2013 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 13 Apr 2013 04:00:26 -0000 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5168A7B4.18877.80CF4C4@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> >There is not mention of a "root" user anywhere in the paper. Every version of Unix I ever saw, at least as far back as 1974, had a root account called "root". R's, John From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Apr 13 00:01:20 2013 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 08:01:20 +0100 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5168D027.7000300@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130412231506.10B0518C140@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5168D027.7000300@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <516902C0.5090709@gmail.com> On 13/04/2013 04:25, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Noel Chiappa wrote: >> > From: Miles Fidelman >> >> >> Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an >> early one, >> >> but that was around 1978. >> >> > A little earlier than that. I graduated in 1975, and remember one >> > arriving a couple of years earlier. >> >> This too seems unlikely. The VAX 11/780 was "introduced on 25 October >> 1977 at >> DEC's Annual Meeting of Shareholders". See: >> >> >> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/digital/timeline/1977.htm >> >> >> for corroboration of the year. >> > > That's very odd - my memory must be failing me, but I could have sworn > we had a VAX to play with, and I wasn't around MIT after 195. I'd guess you're remembering a PDP11/45, which was top of the range around 1973, but nobody could mistake it for a 32-bit machine. My PDP11/45 processor handbook is (C)1973. Of course, at that time, DEC couldn't even spell u-n-i-x. Brian > > Then again, Gorden Bell provides pretty much the definitive rebuttal to > my memory: > > "So on April 1, 1975 I pulled a group together we called the VAX A > group. VAX A was the mailing list and there were 6 of us. We took moved > together on the 3^rd floor of Building 12, almost at the same spot I had > when I came to DEC in 1960. My main office was on the first floor with > Ken." (from http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/bell.htm#VAX) > > Guess it couldn't have been around before 1975 - given that work on the > VAX hadn't started yet. > > Wonder what it was we were playing with. > > Miles > > > From jeanjour at comcast.net Sat Apr 13 04:28:32 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:28:32 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> References: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> Message-ID: I think you are getting close to what we are discovering: There was a root, and there was an account built-in that gave one access to the root, and it was natural to refer to it as the "root account," but the documentation didn't call it that. ;-) Common usage created the concept (phrase) in the community and it becomes so used it seems it should be there. This is not uncommon. Take care, John At 4:00 AM +0000 4/13/13, John Levine wrote: > >There is not mention of a "root" user anywhere in the paper. > >Every version of Unix I ever saw, at least as far back as 1974, had a >root account called "root". > >R's, >John From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sat Apr 13 04:40:44 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 04:40:44 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516902C0.5090709@gmail.com> References: <20130412231506.10B0518C140@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5168D027.7000300@meetinghouse.net> <516902C0.5090709@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5169443C.7060103@dcrocker.net> On 4/13/2013 12:01 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > My > PDP11/45 processor handbook is (C)1973. Of course, at that time, DEC > couldn't even spell u-n-i-x. Let's be fair: That early, almost no one outside the Labs could (and I suspect precious could, even within the Labs...) I was at Rand in 76 and it had had the first 'commercial' license for Unix, for only a year or so. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Apr 13 07:24:11 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:24:11 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516902C0.5090709@gmail.com> References: <20130412231506.10B0518C140@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <5168D027.7000300@meetinghouse.net> <516902C0.5090709@gmail.com> Message-ID: <51696A8B.20009@meetinghouse.net> Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > That's very odd - my memory must be failing me, but I could have sworn > we had a VAX to play with, and I wasn't around MIT after 1975. > I'd guess you're remembering a PDP11/45, which was top of the range > around 1973, but nobody could mistake it for a 32-bit machine. My > PDP11/45 processor handbook is (C)1973. Of course, at that time, DEC > couldn't even spell u-n-i-x. That must be it. Thanks! -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From lyndon at orthanc.ca Sat Apr 13 09:03:57 2013 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:03:57 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> Message-ID: <194838D5-05A8-49E8-8D5E-A653E5EF1BEF@orthanc.ca> The documentation's use of "super user" rather than "root" isn't surprising. The kernel's concept of "super user" was tied to having an (effective) uid of 0. The kernel had no knowledge of a password file, let alone a convention of having a uid=0 account named root. The original UNIX manpages were not only accurate and concise, they were pedantically correct to a fault. It's a model and style of documentation writing that, sadly, vanished by the early 1990s. --lyndon From jabley at hopcount.ca Sat Apr 13 09:14:36 2013 From: jabley at hopcount.ca (Joe Abley) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:14:36 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <194838D5-05A8-49E8-8D5E-A653E5EF1BEF@orthanc.ca> References: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> <194838D5-05A8-49E8-8D5E-A653E5EF1BEF@orthanc.ca> Message-ID: <-7101127401601810990@unknownmsgid> On 2013-04-13, at 12:06, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > The original UNIX manpages were not only accurate and concise, they were pedantically correct to a fault. It's a model and style of documentation writing that, sadly, vanished by the early 1990s. Harder to find, but not completely gone. I find that manual pages are still maintained with a high degree of pedantry in {Free, Open, Net}BSD, for example, while the more GNU-infested projects long abandoned that approach in favour of inconsistent -h, --help, --whatever command-line switches, info pages and endless inaccurate web forums dedicated to the spread of rumour and half-understood shell script recipes. Joe From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Apr 13 17:15:15 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:15:15 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <51696B36.1000106@meetinghouse.net> References: <51696B36.1000106@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 4/13/2013 12:01 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> My >> PDP11/45 processor handbook is (C)1973. Of course, at that time, DEC >> couldn't even spell u-n-i-x. > > > Let's be fair: That early, almost no one outside the Labs could (and > I suspect precious could, even within the Labs...) > which does bring this to mind: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-11-09/ -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Sat Apr 13 17:34:07 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:34:07 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> References: <51696B36.1000106@meetinghouse.net> <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: a) I thought that was the origin of the name with respect to Multics, and b) that *is* what we called the stripped down version 6 we put on an LSI-11 in 1976. (The one I mentioned earlier that had a plasma screen and touch). At 8:15 PM -0400 4/13/13, Miles Fidelman wrote: >Dave Crocker wrote: >> >>On 4/13/2013 12:01 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>>My >>>PDP11/45 processor handbook is (C)1973. Of course, at that time, DEC >>>couldn't even spell u-n-i-x. >> >> >>Let's be fair: That early, almost no one outside the Labs could (and >>I suspect precious could, even within the Labs...) >> > >which does bring this to mind: >http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-11-09/ > >-- >In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sat Apr 13 18:15:15 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:15:15 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> References: <51696B36.1000106@meetinghouse.net> <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <516A0323.7080200@dcrocker.net> On 4/13/2013 5:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > which does bring this to mind: > http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-11-09/ which, in turn, forces me to relate the following bit of Arpanet history... At UCLA, the local computer science dept. operating system was home-grown and ran on an XDS Sigma-7. In capabilities it was roughly competitive with BBN's Tenex. Developed by Vint Cerf, Jon Postel, my brother Steve and some others. They called it the Sigma Executive. When I started working at the department, one of my jobs was to assemble and develop documentation for users. You won't be surprised that the short name for the o/s was the SEX system. Nor that the user guide was called the SEX Manual. But unlike BBN, the UCLA system was a one-off. No one else ran it, and it was memory-starved. Eventually, the guys located some additional, used memory for a good price and lobbied Arpa for the funds to buy it. Arpa saw that the o/s was a dead end and said we should instead switch over to a terminal access system for using computation over the Arpanet. The system we finally got was a PDP-11 running Unix. So they took our SEX away and made us Unix. The original root password was, inevitably, eunuchs. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From johnl at iecc.com Sun Apr 14 00:47:51 2013 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 14 Apr 2013 07:47:51 -0000 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <5169443C.7060103@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <20130414074751.35243.qmail@joyce.lan> >I was at Rand in 76 and it had had the first 'commercial' license for >Unix, for only a year or so. Gee, so was I, working for Peter Weiner. Peter always claimed the the Unix license he got at Interactive Systems after he and his group left RAND was the first commercial one. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly From jeanjour at comcast.net Sun Apr 14 06:40:56 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:40:56 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516A0323.7080200@dcrocker.net> References: <51696B36.1000106@meetinghouse.net> <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> <516A0323.7080200@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: You left out Ari Ollikainen. ;-) Remember it well. (Well reasonably well) ;-) The XDS-940 was a nice machine. Although, I had not heard the story of its loss. I am not all surprised, knowing the sense of humor around that group. BTW, does anyone have one of those early one page teletype printed ARPANET maps that NMC created? They showed which hosts were up and down. The application that generated the map was on a well known socket and was far too popular. It was terminated once the map wouldn't fit on one page. It probably disappeared by 73 or so. One of those should be ensconced in one of the collections some place. At 6:15 PM -0700 4/13/13, Dave Crocker wrote: >On 4/13/2013 5:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>which does bring this to mind: >>http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-11-09/ > > >which, in turn, forces me to relate the following bit of Arpanet history... > >At UCLA, the local computer science dept. operating system was >home-grown and ran on an XDS Sigma-7. In capabilities it was >roughly competitive with BBN's Tenex. Developed by Vint Cerf, Jon >Postel, my brother Steve and some others. They called it the Sigma >Executive. When I started working at the department, one of my jobs >was to assemble and develop documentation for users. > >You won't be surprised that the short name for the o/s was the SEX >system. Nor that the user guide was called the SEX Manual. > >But unlike BBN, the UCLA system was a one-off. No one else ran it, >and it was memory-starved. Eventually, the guys located some >additional, used memory for a good price and lobbied Arpa for the >funds to buy it. Arpa saw that the o/s was a dead end and said we >should instead switch over to a terminal access system for using >computation over the Arpanet. > >The system we finally got was a PDP-11 running Unix. > >So they took our SEX away and made us Unix. > >The original root password was, inevitably, eunuchs. > >d/ > > >-- > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sun Apr 14 11:14:34 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:14:34 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <20130414074751.35243.qmail@joyce.lan> References: <20130414074751.35243.qmail@joyce.lan> Message-ID: <516AF20A.8040508@dcrocker.net> On 4/14/2013 12:47 AM, John Levine wrote: > Peter always claimed the the Unix license he got at Interactive > Systems after he and his group left RAND was the first commercial one. Interactive offered the first commercial Unix /product/. That's different from the software /license/ than Rand got from the Labs. I've no idea what the legal differences were in the license to Rand, versus to those to academic institutions at the time. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sun Apr 14 11:22:39 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:22:39 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <51696B36.1000106@meetinghouse.net> <5169F513.4000407@meetinghouse.net> <516A0323.7080200@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <516AF3EF.7080307@dcrocker.net> On 4/14/2013 6:40 AM, John Day wrote: > You left out Ari Ollikainen. ;-) Ari did ops, and I don't recall his doing o/s design or development. (BTW, neither did I.) But yeah, I left out quite a few people. > Remember it well. (Well reasonably well) ;-) The XDS-940 was a nice I'm told the 940 was wonderful. (FWIW, it was also the system the first Engelbart SRI system ran on, I believe.) And the purchase of the (originally XDS) Sigma-7 was based on that prior success, but the Sigma hardware was flakier. > machine. Although, I had not heard the story of its loss. I am not all > surprised, knowing the sense of humor around that group. Before I worked for the group, I remember that one day my father was about to drive me somewhere and paused while my brother came up to the car and asked whether my father might help resolve an issue. He described the o/s project and said that they were naming components after an urban model, including calling the mechanism for retrieving memory the 'garbage collector'. But he said they weren't sure what to call the mechanism that allocated time to processes, and switched to the next process when the first had run out of time. With no hesitation, my father said "that's the Madam". Also, I'm told one of the project members became quite upset as the pattern of naming and declared that the names should be simpler and that the team should just call a spade a spade. Hence forth, this was now called the Spade Project. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From LarrySheldon at cox.net Sun Apr 14 13:11:09 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:11:09 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> Message-ID: <516B0D5D.5000007@cox.net> On 4/13/2013 6:28 AM, John Day wrote: > I think you are getting close to what we are discovering: There was a > root, and there was an account built-in that gave one access to the > root, and it was natural to refer to it as the "root account," but the > documentation didn't call it that. ;-) That is where I started, pretty much. > Common usage created the concept (phrase) in the community and it > becomes so used it seems it should be there. This is not uncommon. Indeed--I believe that a lot of things get an explanation for their name (and for their very existence) long after the existence and usage is long part of the innate lore of what ever environment we are looking at. I think there is a (semi?) formal name for the process in some circles--"back formation". -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From jeanjour at comcast.net Sun Apr 14 15:01:49 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:01:49 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516B0D5D.5000007@cox.net> References: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> <516B0D5D.5000007@cox.net> Message-ID: At 3:11 PM -0500 4/14/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >On 4/13/2013 6:28 AM, John Day wrote: >>I think you are getting close to what we are discovering: There was a >>root, and there was an account built-in that gave one access to the >>root, and it was natural to refer to it as the "root account," but the >>documentation didn't call it that. ;-) > >That is where I started, pretty much. ;-) Funny how that works! > >>Common usage created the concept (phrase) in the community and it >>becomes so used it seems it should be there. This is not uncommon. > >Indeed--I believe that a lot of things get an explanation for their >name (and for their very existence) long after the existence and >usage is long part of the innate lore of what ever environment we >are looking at. > >I think there is a (semi?) formal name for the process in some >circles--"back formation". Indeed. >-- >Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics > of System Administrators: >Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to > learn from their mistakes. > (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Sun Apr 14 18:21:02 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 20:21:02 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: References: <20130413040026.3874.qmail@joyce.lan> <516B0D5D.5000007@cox.net> Message-ID: <516B55FE.4080507@cox.net> On 4/14/2013 5:01 PM, John Day wrote: > At 3:11 PM -0500 4/14/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >> On 4/13/2013 6:28 AM, John Day wrote: >>> I think you are getting close to what we are discovering: There was a >>> root, and there was an account built-in that gave one access to the >>> root, and it was natural to refer to it as the "root account," but the >>> documentation didn't call it that. ;-) >> >> That is where I started, pretty much. > > ;-) Funny how that works! > >>> Common usage created the concept (phrase) in the community and it >>> becomes so used it seems it should be there. This is not uncommon. >> >> Indeed--I believe that a lot of things get an explanation for their >> name (and for their very existence) long after the existence and usage >> is long part of the innate lore of what ever environment we are >> looking at. >> >> I think there is a (semi?) formal name for the process in some >> circles--"back formation". > > Indeed. The thing here that might be useful to engineers and other managers that an awful lot of the detail that should be recorded in the as-builts (but almost never is) never saw light of day in a design document--the front-line people actually making it work apply the necessary reality. (Ask somebody that knows, about "front (or "first) line veto".) -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From Michael.Urban at jpl.nasa.gov Mon Apr 15 07:43:38 2013 From: Michael.Urban at jpl.nasa.gov (Michael.Urban at jpl.nasa.gov) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:43:38 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:22:39 -0700." <516AF3EF.7080307@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> Dave Crocker writes: > > Also, I'm told one of the project members became quite upset as the > pattern of naming and declared that the names should be simpler and that > the team should just call a spade a spade. > > Hence forth, this was now called the Spade Project. > And if memory serves, the privileged account on SEX was 'SPDE' or some similar four-letter abbreviation of 'spade'; and I believe that the dubiously tasteful term 'super-spade' was applied to that login? Just to provide some thematic unity with the root topic. Hm. Somewhere in the back of my mind some neuron is nagging me that 'spade' and 'super-spade' were two, differently privileged, logins, but I can no longer recall the details. I don't know if Sigma-7 hardware was flakey as Dave said, or whether it was just UCLA's machine, which had some absurdly low serial number like '9', bristling with field-applied hardware patches. MIKE at UCLA-NMC -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 229 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Apr 15 10:31:57 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:31:57 -0400 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> References: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> Message-ID: As long as we are on this sort of topic: In the Burroughs 5500 and 6500, which of course were stack machines, the MCP (the OS) was written in an extension of Algol, called Espol. The schedule of jobs to run was an array called the "sheet." So of course there were variables related to it called, stackofsheet and pileofsheet. User jobs were forked off the main OS stack as a cactus stack. When a job ended it was no different than any other procedure exit only it returned to the OS. The procedure to create a new process was called motherforker. There was also something called godzillasphonenumber. Not sure I ever did figure out what it was for. ;-) When they re-did the file system, it had a wide range of file attributes that were accessible from a program by just writing filename. as if it were a variable of the proper type. For example, to change the name of a file from a program one merely wrote Replace file.title by "some string" Title was a pointer attribute. Open was a boolean. Setting it to True opened the file. etc. The attributes were in an array and the attribute names were macros for the array index. (We knew this because we had access to the pre-release version 0.2 of the MCP for the B6700. Illiac IV was a peripheral processor to B6700). There were a *lot* of file attributes, some only available to the MCP. The Cleary attribute (the name of one the guys on the OS team) was a pointer attribute that returned "I am not a pleasure unit." ;-) (A line from a James Coburn In Like Flint movie, a spoof on James Bond.) I will let you guess what its index was. ;-) Take care, John At 7:43 AM -0700 4/15/13, Michael.Urban at jpl.nasa.gov wrote: >Dave Crocker writes: >> >> Also, I'm told one of the project members became quite upset as the >> pattern of naming and declared that the names should be simpler and that >> the team should just call a spade a spade. >> >> Hence forth, this was now called the Spade Project. >> > >And if memory serves, the privileged account on SEX was 'SPDE' or some >similar four-letter abbreviation of 'spade'; and I believe that the >dubiously tasteful term 'super-spade' was applied to that login? Just >to provide some thematic unity with the root topic. Hm. Somewhere >in the back of my mind some neuron is nagging me that 'spade' and >'super-spade' were two, differently privileged, logins, but I >can no longer recall the details. > >I don't know if Sigma-7 hardware was flakey as Dave said, or whether >it was just UCLA's machine, which had some absurdly low serial number >like '9', bristling with field-applied hardware patches. > > MIKE at UCLA-NMC > > > >Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:Untitled ( / ) (00BB6526) From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Apr 15 10:36:50 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:36:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> References: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> Message-ID: <516C3AB2.1030407@dcrocker.net> On 4/15/2013 7:43 AM, Michael.Urban at jpl.nasa.gov wrote: > I don't know if Sigma-7 hardware was flakey as Dave said, or whether > it was just UCLA's machine, which had some absurdly low serial number > like '9', bristling with field-applied hardware patches. Hi Mike. Thanks for chiming in. The system was functional by the time I joined the project. I merely developed some user and system documentation. (Learned a lot about o/s design from the exercise.) I'd heard that the hardware had general problems, not just at UCLA, but that UCLA uncovered them sooner than most places, due to the way the o/s stressed the hardware. Probably had to do with the paging (or was it mapping or was it...? ) mechanism. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From LarrySheldon at cox.net Mon Apr 15 13:44:43 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:44:43 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516C3AB2.1030407@dcrocker.net> References: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> <516C3AB2.1030407@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <516C66BB.9070800@cox.net> On 4/15/2013 12:36 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 4/15/2013 7:43 AM, Michael.Urban at jpl.nasa.gov wrote: >> I don't know if Sigma-7 hardware was flakey as Dave said, or whether >> it was just UCLA's machine, which had some absurdly low serial number >> like '9', bristling with field-applied hardware patches. > > > Hi Mike. Thanks for chiming in. The system was functional by the time > I joined the project. I merely developed some user and system > documentation. (Learned a lot about o/s design from the exercise.) > > I'd heard that the hardware had general problems, not just at UCLA, but > that UCLA uncovered them sooner than most places, due to the way the o/s > stressed the hardware. Probably had to do with the paging (or was it > mapping or was it...? ) mechanism. Going farther adrift from the topic...this reminded me of one of my favored war stories--it involved UNIVAC (or maybe it was Sperry or Sperry-UNIVAC that week--pre-Burroughs/NEWCO/Unisys, for sure) 1100 (probably the 1110) hardware. I have forgotten details but the thing involved EXEC 8's notion of "fixed" and "removable" discs (either of which could be physically removable, or not). The problem involved something th4 wizards had found in the documentation the provided a needed facility for the wizards on managing our application files and providing for back up and security. What ever it was (I did know in detail because I was the Exec internals specialist, but I have forgotten them*) didn't work reliable and there were quite a few system stops and other tragedies involving it and finally the Roseville (UNIVAC) wizards cried "foul" and complained that nobody else had ever tried to do what we were trying to do. We pointed out that the documentation said we could and we wanted it fixed. It was eventually fixed, as I recall it, but the code was fragile and easily broken. The ultimate fix was that the next issue of the documentation no longer said you could do what ever it was that we had done. (Remember when vendors provided documentation, and we expected it to be correct and useable?) *The missing details will probably surface at ohdarkthirty some time soon, by which time I will have forgotten why I cared.) -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Mon Apr 15 14:07:52 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:07:52 -0500 Subject: [ih] What is the origin of the root account? In-Reply-To: <516C66BB.9070800@cox.net> References: <201304151443.r3FEhdHZ029487@sreca.jpl.nasa.gov> <516C3AB2.1030407@dcrocker.net> <516C66BB.9070800@cox.net> Message-ID: <516C6C28.9090209@cox.net> On 4/15/2013 3:44 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > *The missing details will probably surface at ohdarkthirty some time > soon, by which time I will have forgotten why I cared.) I did remember something that also got us some notoriety, but this did not have anything to do to the problem. Among the attributes you could set on an EXEC 8 file was a bit, which when set, made the file "Read Only" and the operating system would not write to file, for anybody. Another bit could be set that made the file "write only", which seems odd until you think about it a bit. But odder yet, you could set them both at the same time. And we did. There were traps set so that it was not possible to release the exclusive-use locks without setting both bits, and we had a tightly secured program that could unlock the files (for the data base) and assign them to a run. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From dot at dotat.at Wed Apr 17 03:37:56 2013 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:37:56 +0100 Subject: [ih] =?utf-8?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=C3=A1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_is?= =?utf-8?q?_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: Jack Haverty wrote: > > The only document about Unix internals I recall finding (in 1978) was > from the University of Wollongong (Australia), where someone had > written up a nice description of the architecture of the kernel and > the software structure, data, etc. Very, very helpful in getting that > TCP running. I guess Wollongong was far enough away from AT&T to not > be worried. Are you referring to the Lions book? http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/ Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first. Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or good, occasionally poor at first. From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Apr 17 19:30:55 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:30:55 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: Tony, Thanks for that link! I downloaded the book and it appears to be the kind of content I remember (level of detail about kernel innards). That plus the source code was enough to start the project to create a TCP implementation back in 1977. What I recall using wasn't a book, but more like a set of notes for a class or tutorial. That correlates with the book, which says in the introduction that the book is the descendant of class notes for an operating system course taught in 1976-77. I probably had a copy of those notes, which ARPA had somehow obtained. I don't remember that Australia was on the ARPANET for FTPing. The Unix kernel code came from ATT of course, through ARPA. But it pretty much matched the code described in Lions material. I thought it was "University of Wollongong", but University of New South Wales is probably the right source. Hey, at least I remembered the right continent..... Ahah, a little googling reveals that University of Woolongong is in New South Wales, Australia and seems to be a subsidiary of University of NSW. /Jack PS - Since this is the "internet history" mailing list, perhaps I should capture a bit of the history of the Internet and Unix, since I was there when the two came together. So, while I still remember, here's some more details in case someone's ever interested in the collision of Unix and TCP at the start of The Internet. As I said in an earlier message, I got the assignment to create a TCP running on a PDP-11/40 under Unix, sometime in the second half of 1977. That TCP was a "version 2.5" TCP, which I implemented on that 11/40 and subsequently evolved to TCP4. The work was done under one of Vint's contracts at ARPA, as I believe were most or maybe all of the other implementations. Postel's report on the first "TCP Bakeoff" is a good reference to identify the set of early implementations that first managed to talk with each other rather than just themselves. The PDP-11/40 ran a variant of Unix V6 -- e.g., it had the "Rand ports" extensions. That particular model PDP11 was very memory constrained - 32K of address space. So the whole kernel, instructions and data, had to fit in 32K. Other models, e.g., PDP11/45 and PDP11/70, had twice the memory address space, by "i/d separation" which put instructions and data into separate address spaces. But the PDP11/40 had no "elbow room". Definitely coach class networking. Randy Rettberg and I, both at BBN, took the TCP/Unix challenge. We were both Unix neophytes. After figuring out what we could (Lion's notes were a great help), we still didn't see any clean way to construct the common kinds of network programs inside the Unix environment. In particular, it didn't seem possible to write a program that could serve a duplex information flow, where you couldn't predict from which direction the next piece of data would come. I.E., when the program was ready to go into an idle state and wait for more work to do, you could issue a "read" call to the kernel, specifying a file descriptor, and it would hang until data was available from that "file". But if you picked the "wrong" fd to wait on for input, your program would wait forever. How would a "telnet" program, for example, know whether its local human user would type another character next, or its remote partner across the net would send the next character for output to that user terminal. There may have been a way to do this in Unix of the era, but we neophytes couldn't see it. Networking didn't seem to fit the Unix "concatenation of pipes" paradigm where input flows unidirectionally to output. We invented a very, very simple mechanism to enable a process to wait on any of several file descriptors, and to also determine how much could be read or written without causing the system call to hang waiting for more data than what was already in the kernel buffers. Those were the AWAIT and CAPAC system calls, which we added to the kernel. There was actually a paper about this in 1978 -- J. F. Haverty, R. D. Rettberg, ?Inter-process Communication for a Server in UNIX," Proceedings Compcon 78, September 1978, pp. 312-315. With AWAIT and CAPAC added to the kernel, it was possible to then write networking software. Later primitives, e.g., "sockets", provided similar mechanisms but with richer functionality. Adding those primitives to the kernel was a real challenge. The kernel memory was full, at least with the 32K limitation of the 11/40. Adding any new functionality meant you had to remove something else to make room, or find some place to optimize and squeeze out a few words of space. The guys at Bell Labs were very good coders -- not much fat to trim. I recall poring through the kernel listing, searching for places to optimize, and mostly finding space by taking out some "panic" code --- code that checked something and halted the processor if things were bad. You did what you had to do....and this is why the AWAIT/CAPAC primitives were so primitive -- absolute minimum new kernel code. After struggling with AWAIT and CAPAC, which had to be in the kernel, it was pretty clear that there was no way to shoehorn a TCP implementation in there too. So the TCP itself also had to be in user space - a separate user process that communicated with the kernel to interact with the ARPANET/1822 hardware in a full-duplex fashion, and communicated full-duplex with TCP user's processes (e.g., a Telnet program) by using multiple Rand ports. I started with Jim Mathis' TCP implementation for MOS that was in use on LSI11 systems. It was written in Macro-11, so it was compatible with the PDP11/40, and "simply" had to be restructured to fit in the Unix world and then changed as we changed the TCP definition. That's what I did. This all happened in the late 1977 timeframe, while others were also working on TCPs -- Bill Plummer, Bob Braden, Dave Clark, et al. We were also simultaneously changing the definition of TCP, e.g., splitting into TCP and IP, changing header formats and state diagrams, etc., as part of going from TCP2 to TCP4 through many intermediate stages. Life was not wonderful though. I recall getting the 11/40 TCP finally to the state that it could open a connection, to itself, and send data. So I rigged up a quick performance test, sending a large convenient text file (probably the source code) through a TCP connection, looking at my watch, and then dividing to compute the throughput. That first TCP was blazing away at an average of 11 bits/second .... yes, bits. I did the math twice. Embarassing. It couldn't keep a model 33 teletype busy. I could write good code, or so I thought. More diving into the system to see where the time was going. Profiling indicated that more than 95% of the time was spent inside system calls involving I/O through pipes/ports. Making my code infinitely efficient could only hope to get a 5% improvement. So it was back into the Unix kernel listing to see what was happening. After much poking around, I remember finding the offending code. I can't recall whether it was pipes or ports or both, but the implementation of that mechanism was basically a tiny wrapper around the general file I/O code. A pipe/port was essentially a standard file, with a "read pointer" and a "write pointer" showing where the input and output was stopped at the moment. A bit of code made sure the reader never got in front of the writer, and another bit of code held both sides up when the file hit a certain length (4096 bytes IIRC); when the reader caught the writer at that position, the file was truncated back to 0 length and I/O resumed from there. It was basically just a 4K FIFO, with a file descriptor attached to each end and "control" that every 4K stopped the writer to wait for the reader to catch up and then clear the FIFO. The problem was that, since it was built on top of the regular file system, the rest of the system didn't know that the underlying file was about to be truncated. There was no notion of "truncating" a file. So the kernel viewed that 4K of file data as being "dirty" and in need of writing out to the physical disk before allowing any further activity on that file. So all network traffic had to be written to disk as well. With the limited physical memory it was maybe even taking detours to the swap file. We had a slow "cartridge" disk. Result -- 11 bits per second TCP performance. Some more kernel hacking and "panic removal" made some space to make the pipe/port mechanism somewhat more efficient, and got the TCP to the point that we could use it in the projects which needed it. Subsequently we argued, successfully, that a PDP11/40 wasn't a good choice for this kind of thing, and the newer /45 and /70 were better. In those machines, there was a lot more space - a whole additional 32K for instructions and data, so it was feasible to put the TCP implementation into the kernel. As I recall Mike Wingfield and Al Nemeth subsequently worked on that for the PDP-11/70, and Rob Gurwitz for the Vax, all at BBN under various ARPA or DCA contracts. The Macro-11 user-space TCP that I wrote for Unix on the 11/40 was thankfully and quickly abandoned. And that's the way it was, circa 1977-78 in the early days of The Internet and the Unix system... Hope this helps some Internet and Unix historians, /Jack Haverty April 17, 2013 On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 3:37 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > Jack Haverty wrote: >> >> The only document about Unix internals I recall finding (in 1978) was >> from the University of Wollongong (Australia), where someone had >> written up a nice description of the architecture of the kernel and >> the software structure, data, etc. Very, very helpful in getting that >> TCP running. I guess Wollongong was far enough away from AT&T to not >> be worried. > > Are you referring to the Lions book? > http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/ > > Tony. > -- > f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ > Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first. > Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or good, > occasionally poor at first. From bill.n1vux at gmail.com Wed Apr 17 20:06:42 2013 From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:06:42 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: Yes, Unix was inspired by Multics, and borrowed much -- Dennis Ritchie was Bell's person at MIT MAC until they withdrew (and Mike Padlipsky's officemate iirc); originally spelled Unics, meaning "One of whatever Multics is many of" (or a castrated Multics). (The shell having syntax that made pipes scriptable rather than only being compiled as in Multics was the major advance in Bell Unix; other differences from were scaling back.) ( Multics directly influenced VMS and PR1MOS as well; most other OS's were indirectly influenced. ) -- Bill On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 10:30 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > Tony, > > Thanks for that link! I downloaded the book and it appears to be the > kind of content I remember (level of detail about kernel innards). > That plus the source code was enough to start the project to create a > TCP implementation back in 1977. > > What I recall using wasn't a book, but more like a set of notes for a > class or tutorial. That correlates with the book, which says in the > introduction that the book is the descendant of class notes for an > operating system course taught in 1976-77. I probably had a copy of > those notes, which ARPA had somehow obtained. I don't remember that > Australia was on the ARPANET for FTPing. The Unix kernel code came > from ATT of course, through ARPA. But it pretty much matched the code > described in Lions material. > > I thought it was "University of Wollongong", but University of New > South Wales is probably the right source. Hey, at least I remembered > the right continent..... Ahah, a little googling reveals that > University of Woolongong is in New South Wales, Australia and seems to > be a subsidiary of University of NSW. > > /Jack > > PS - Since this is the "internet history" mailing list, perhaps I > should capture a bit of the history of the Internet and Unix, since I > was there when the two came together. So, while I still remember, > here's some more details in case someone's ever interested in the > collision of Unix and TCP at the start of The Internet. > > As I said in an earlier message, I got the assignment to create a TCP > running on a PDP-11/40 under Unix, sometime in the second half of > 1977. That TCP was a "version 2.5" TCP, which I implemented on that > 11/40 and subsequently evolved to TCP4. The work was done under one > of Vint's contracts at ARPA, as I believe were most or maybe all of > the other implementations. Postel's report on the first "TCP > Bakeoff" is a good reference to identify the set of early > implementations that first managed to talk with each other rather than > just themselves. > > The PDP-11/40 ran a variant of Unix V6 -- e.g., it had the "Rand > ports" extensions. That particular model PDP11 was very memory > constrained - 32K of address space. So the whole kernel, instructions > and data, had to fit in 32K. Other models, e.g., PDP11/45 and > PDP11/70, had twice the memory address space, by "i/d separation" > which put instructions and data into separate address spaces. But the > PDP11/40 had no "elbow room". Definitely coach class networking. > > Randy Rettberg and I, both at BBN, took the TCP/Unix challenge. We > were both Unix neophytes. After figuring out what we could (Lion's > notes were a great help), we still didn't see any clean way to > construct the common kinds of network programs inside the Unix > environment. In particular, it didn't seem possible to write a > program that could serve a duplex information flow, where you couldn't > predict from which direction the next piece of data would come. I.E., > when the program was ready to go into an idle state and wait for more > work to do, you could issue a "read" call to the kernel, specifying a > file descriptor, and it would hang until data was available from that > "file". But if you picked the "wrong" fd to wait on for input, your > program would wait forever. How would a "telnet" program, for > example, know whether its local human user would type another > character next, or its remote partner across the net would send the > next character for output to that user terminal. There may have been > a way to do this in Unix of the era, but we neophytes couldn't see it. > Networking didn't seem to fit the Unix "concatenation of pipes" > paradigm where input flows unidirectionally to output. > > We invented a very, very simple mechanism to enable a process to wait > on any of several file descriptors, and to also determine how much > could be read or written without causing the system call to hang > waiting for more data than what was already in the kernel buffers. > Those were the AWAIT and CAPAC system calls, which we added to the > kernel. There was actually a paper about this in 1978 -- J. F. > Haverty, R. D. Rettberg, ?Inter-process Communication for a Server in > UNIX," Proceedings Compcon 78, September 1978, pp. 312-315. With > AWAIT and CAPAC added to the kernel, it was possible to then write > networking software. Later primitives, e.g., "sockets", provided > similar mechanisms but with richer functionality. > > Adding those primitives to the kernel was a real challenge. The > kernel memory was full, at least with the 32K limitation of the 11/40. > Adding any new functionality meant you had to remove something else > to make room, or find some place to optimize and squeeze out a few > words of space. The guys at Bell Labs were very good coders -- not > much fat to trim. I recall poring through the kernel listing, > searching for places to optimize, and mostly finding space by taking > out some "panic" code --- code that checked something and halted the > processor if things were bad. You did what you had to do....and this > is why the AWAIT/CAPAC primitives were so primitive -- absolute > minimum new kernel code. > > After struggling with AWAIT and CAPAC, which had to be in the kernel, > it was pretty clear that there was no way to shoehorn a TCP > implementation in there too. So the TCP itself also had to be in user > space - a separate user process that communicated with the kernel to > interact with the ARPANET/1822 hardware in a full-duplex fashion, and > communicated full-duplex with TCP user's processes (e.g., a Telnet > program) by using multiple Rand ports. > > I started with Jim Mathis' TCP implementation for MOS that was in use > on LSI11 systems. It was written in Macro-11, so it was compatible > with the PDP11/40, and "simply" had to be restructured to fit in the > Unix world and then changed as we changed the TCP definition. That's > what I did. This all happened in the late 1977 timeframe, while > others were also working on TCPs -- Bill Plummer, Bob Braden, Dave > Clark, et al. We were also simultaneously changing the definition of > TCP, e.g., splitting into TCP and IP, changing header formats and > state diagrams, etc., as part of going from TCP2 to TCP4 through many > intermediate stages. > > Life was not wonderful though. I recall getting the 11/40 TCP finally > to the state that it could open a connection, to itself, and send > data. So I rigged up a quick performance test, sending a large > convenient text file (probably the source code) through a TCP > connection, looking at my watch, and then dividing to compute the > throughput. > > That first TCP was blazing away at an average of 11 bits/second .... > yes, bits. I did the math twice. Embarassing. It couldn't keep a > model 33 teletype busy. I could write good code, or so I thought. > > More diving into the system to see where the time was going. > Profiling indicated that more than 95% of the time was spent inside > system calls involving I/O through pipes/ports. Making my code > infinitely efficient could only hope to get a 5% improvement. So it > was back into the Unix kernel listing to see what was happening. > > After much poking around, I remember finding the offending code. I > can't recall whether it was pipes or ports or both, but the > implementation of that mechanism was basically a tiny wrapper around > the general file I/O code. A pipe/port was essentially a standard > file, with a "read pointer" and a "write pointer" showing where the > input and output was stopped at the moment. A bit of code made sure > the reader never got in front of the writer, and another bit of code > held both sides up when the file hit a certain length (4096 bytes > IIRC); when the reader caught the writer at that position, the file > was truncated back to 0 length and I/O resumed from there. It was > basically just a 4K FIFO, with a file descriptor attached to each end > and "control" that every 4K stopped the writer to wait for the reader > to catch up and then clear the FIFO. > > The problem was that, since it was built on top of the regular file > system, the rest of the system didn't know that the underlying file > was about to be truncated. There was no notion of "truncating" a > file. So the kernel viewed that 4K of file data as being "dirty" and > in need of writing out to the physical disk before allowing any > further activity on that file. So all network traffic had to be > written to disk as well. With the limited physical memory it was > maybe even taking detours to the swap file. We had a slow "cartridge" > disk. > > Result -- 11 bits per second TCP performance. > > Some more kernel hacking and "panic removal" made some space to make > the pipe/port mechanism somewhat more efficient, and got the TCP to > the point that we could use it in the projects which needed it. > > Subsequently we argued, successfully, that a PDP11/40 wasn't a good > choice for this kind of thing, and the newer /45 and /70 were better. > In those machines, there was a lot more space - a whole additional 32K > for instructions and data, so it was feasible to put the TCP > implementation into the kernel. As I recall Mike Wingfield and Al > Nemeth subsequently worked on that for the PDP-11/70, and Rob Gurwitz > for the Vax, all at BBN under various ARPA or DCA contracts. The > Macro-11 user-space TCP that I wrote for Unix on the 11/40 was > thankfully and quickly abandoned. > > And that's the way it was, circa 1977-78 in the early days of The > Internet and the Unix system... > > Hope this helps some Internet and Unix historians, > /Jack Haverty > April 17, 2013 > > > > > > > On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 3:37 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > > Jack Haverty wrote: > >> > >> The only document about Unix internals I recall finding (in 1978) was > >> from the University of Wollongong (Australia), where someone had > >> written up a nice description of the architecture of the kernel and > >> the software structure, data, etc. Very, very helpful in getting that > >> TCP running. I guess Wollongong was far enough away from AT&T to not > >> be worried. > > > > Are you referring to the Lions book? > > http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/ > > > > Tony. > > -- > > f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ > > Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at > first. > > Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or > good, > > occasionally poor at first. > > -- Bill @n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Apr 17 21:10:22 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:10:22 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: Yep. My undergrad work was on Multics, writing the code generator part of a compiler. Yes, that experience helped with understanding Unix to do the TCP work.. However, Ritchie also said: "In fact. a good case can be made that it (Unix) is in essence a modern implementation of M.I.T.'s CTSS system." See D.M.Ritchie, "A Retrospective", Bell System Technical Journal July-August 1978. I worked on CTSS too, so that also probably helped me understand the innards of Unix. As I recall though, CTSS preceded Multics. I think. It's been a long time. Multics was on the computer floor at MAC, adjacent to our PDP-10 (running ITS). Multics generated so much heat that the air conditioning system always overcooled our PDP-10 area. Sometimes we expected snow. After a day in that room pulling memory bus cables, I got pneumonia. When the Multics machine moved out, the room temperature rose to more comfortable levels. I guess one major advance of Unix over Multics was that Unix required far less air conditioning :-J /Jack Haverty On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: > Yes, Unix was inspired by Multics, and borrowed much -- Dennis Ritchie was > Bell's person at MIT MAC until they withdrew (and Mike Padlipsky's > officemate iirc); originally spelled Unics, meaning "One of whatever Multics > is many of" (or a castrated Multics). > > (The shell having syntax that made pipes scriptable rather than only being > compiled as in Multics was the major advance in Bell Unix; other differences > from were scaling back.) > > ( Multics directly influenced VMS and PR1MOS as well; most other OS's were > indirectly influenced. ) > > -- Bill > > From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Apr 17 21:27:55 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:27:55 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?windows-1252?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_Wha?= =?windows-1252?q?t_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: <516F764B.1090607@dcrocker.net> On 4/17/2013 8:06 PM, Bill Ricker wrote: > (The shell having syntax that made pipes scriptable rather than only > being compiled as in Multics was the major advance in Bell Unix; other > differences from were scaling back.) I've heard claims that setuid was also an innovation in unix. No idea of the construct's history. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From dot at dotat.at Wed Apr 17 22:56:57 2013 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 06:56:57 +0100 Subject: [ih] =?utf-8?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=C3=A1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_is?= =?utf-8?q?_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: <8B9AC783-53A6-4372-A5ED-C579F6CA642A@dotat.at> On 18 Apr 2013, at 03:30, Jack Haverty wrote: > > Randy Rettberg and I, both at BBN, took the TCP/Unix challenge. We > were both Unix neophytes. After figuring out what we could (Lion's > notes were a great help), we still didn't see any clean way to > construct the common kinds of network programs inside the Unix > environment. In particular, it didn't seem possible to write a > program that could serve a duplex information flow, where you couldn't > predict from which direction the next piece of data would come. I.E., > when the program was ready to go into an idle state and wait for more > work to do, you could issue a "read" call to the kernel, specifying a > file descriptor, and it would hang until data was available from that > "file". But if you picked the "wrong" fd to wait on for input, your > program would wait forever. How would a "telnet" program, for > example, know whether its local human user would type another > character next, or its remote partner across the net would send the > next character for output to that user terminal. There may have been > a way to do this in Unix of the era, but we neophytes couldn't see it. > Networking didn't seem to fit the Unix "concatenation of pipes" > paradigm where input flows unidirectionally to output. Thanks for the interesting memories. The bit I quoted above reminded me of a bit of folklore from that era: for full-duplex comms, fork a child, and do opposing unidirectional comms in the parent and child processes. For example, http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=pdp11v/usr/src/cmd/net/net.c I can't remember now what was the usual example of a program that did this; "tip" perhaps, or is that too recent? I also don't know how much the trick was still used as networking became popular. Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jaap at NLnetLabs.nl Thu Apr 18 06:47:53 2013 From: jaap at NLnetLabs.nl (Jaap Akkerhuis) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:47:53 +0200 Subject: [ih] =?windows-1252?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_Wha?= =?windows-1252?q?t_is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <516F764B.1090607@dcrocker.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516F764B.1090607@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <201304181347.r3IDlr15039784@bela.nlnetlabs.nl> I've heard claims that setuid was also an innovation in unix. No idea of the construct's history. It was. As far as I know it was also one of the first software patents although there was a hardware implementation as well (just for good measuers). The patent was put in the pubic domain. Checking wikipedia, there is a page about it: jaap From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Apr 18 08:53:30 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:30 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> Message-ID: <517016FA.7060808@dcrocker.net> On 4/17/2013 9:10 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > After a day in that room pulling memory bus cables, I > got pneumonia. So Multics really did make people sick. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From jack at 3kitty.org Thu Apr 18 10:17:32 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:17:32 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <8B9AC783-53A6-4372-A5ED-C579F6CA642A@dotat.at> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <8B9AC783-53A6-4372-A5ED-C579F6CA642A@dotat.at> Message-ID: I think "networking" is probably more complex than the "forking process" paradigm can handle. We (Randy and I) looked at the "forking" approach back in 1977 and still hit a roadblock. Although you could implement "full-duplex" behavior, networking seems to require a bit more -- perhaps called "coordinated full-duplex" behavior. By that I mean that the flow in one direction had to be able to be influenced by the contents of the flow in the other direction. No matter what level you were at, your program can't always determine what will happen next, and thus faces the dilemma of what event to wait for. The V6 Unix OS primitives didn't provide any way to do such a "wait for one of many" action, or even to implement a very inefficient polling scheme. The only way to tell if there was more data to read was to read it, and if there wasn't, your process was blocked until there was. There was no "non-blocking I/O". Not so much a problem if you're waiting for data from your disk, but if that data was coming from a human at the other side of the country who had just left his terminal and gone to lunch, you'd be waiting a long time. If you "forked" a child process, it could operate independently but there was no way for the parent and child to communicate, except by the child exiting with a result code. Perhaps we could have done something like fork a separate child process to handle each individual packet and then die, or something along those lines, but the thought of so much context switching seemed too unwieldy. Also, we tried that elsewhere, as part of porting the "upper layer" functions of the system we were building from an existing PDP-10 implementation to the Unix environment. One piece was a server-type program that was ported from Tenex to become a whole bunch of forking and plumbed Unix processes (by Ray Tomlinson, IIRC). It worked, but its performance results were as atrocious as my 11 bits/second TCP. Doing this kind of networking stuff inside V6 Unix wasn't obvious or easy..... "Coordinated full-duplex" is what you need for a TCP implementation to receive a packet from its remote counterpart, send the contents to its user program/process, and also send a packet back in the other direction, at least with an ACK, and very preferably also with any data queued to be sent in that direction. One could imagine designing a networking program (TCP, Telnet, FTP, etc.) into multiple processes, but there didn't seem to be any good way to do the coordination, given the V6 OS primitives of the day. At least we, as Unix neophytes, didn't see any. Inside a real-time communications system of the day (e.g., the ARPANET IMP code), this situation was easily handled by use of interrupt-driven software. When there's nothing more to do, go into your "idle loop" and twiddle your electronic thumbs, with interrupts enabled on all channels that you expect might give you the next thing to do, whatever happens next. Inside the IMP code (circa 1970) there was a multi-process software structure similar to the Unix parent/child/fork technique. One set of code (and interrupts) handled incoming traffic on a single port, another handled output traffic on that same port, repeat for each physical port, etc. They ran whenever the appropriate hardware interrupt fired, and were all coordinated through sharing of common memory. Those handlers also had the ability to issue a "software interrupt" -- i.e., to make sure that the "other process" also ran soon (depended on his priority), as if the hardware interrupt on which he was waiting had triggered. That plus clock interrupts created the environment in which you could implement things like an IMP. If you look at other such real-time communications systems (Port Expanders, TIUs, TIPs, Packet Radios, Gateways, etc.) you'll probably find a similar substrate. If there had been space inside the PDP11/40 kernel, we would probably have written TCP as a kernel module, and tweaked the existing interrupt handlers of the kernel as needed to deal with the network interface. Still, that wouldn't have solved the problem for "higher level" functions that you'd like to implement outside the kernel like Telnet/FTP/etc. AWAIT and CAPAC made such user processes feasible, even on the 11/40 processor. The subsequent 11/70 and Vax implementations were able to be much more "native" with all that elbow room that allowed code to be added to the kernel. Of course, as I said earlier, we were all Unix neophytes -- so we may have totally missed something that was obvious to the Unix veteran at the time. I suspect everyone who implemented TCP in those days faced similar issues inside their machines. Networking is really just a variant of the "distributed multiprocessor" configuration, which was just beginning to appear in computing in general. It would be fascinating to hear any other experiences from those early TCP (or even NCP) implementations in other OSes. What obstacles did each present and how were they overcome? I've never seen much written about the internal issues and how they were handled within the different early TCP implementations - Tenex, Multics, 360/91, etc. I believe there was NCP for Unix systems on the ARPANET, but I don't recall the timing. In any event, the "factory stock" V6 code we were given to build that first TCP from didn't have any NCP code in it. Thinking about this now, it's possible that Unix had some effect on Networking, but perhaps Networking had a much more significant effect on Unix, forcing the addition of primitives (sockets, etc.) needed for distributed multiprocessing....i.e., creating that "substrate" for that kind of software system. Sounds like a decent PhD topic - "OS Primitives Needed for Distributed Multiprocessing" - wonder if anybody's written that in the last 40 years of networking. /Jack Haverty On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 10:56 PM, Tony Finch wrote: > On 18 Apr 2013, at 03:30, Jack Haverty wrote: > > > Randy Rettberg and I, both at BBN, took the TCP/Unix challenge. We > were both Unix neophytes. After figuring out what we could (Lion's > notes were a great help), we still didn't see any clean way to > construct the common kinds of network programs inside the Unix > environment. In particular, it didn't seem possible to write a > program that could serve a duplex information flow, where you couldn't > predict from which direction the next piece of data would come. I.E., > when the program was ready to go into an idle state and wait for more > work to do, you could issue a "read" call to the kernel, specifying a > file descriptor, and it would hang until data was available from that > "file". But if you picked the "wrong" fd to wait on for input, your > program would wait forever. How would a "telnet" program, for > example, know whether its local human user would type another > character next, or its remote partner across the net would send the > next character for output to that user terminal. There may have been > a way to do this in Unix of the era, but we neophytes couldn't see it. > Networking didn't seem to fit the Unix "concatenation of pipes" > paradigm where input flows unidirectionally to output. > > > Thanks for the interesting memories. > > The bit I quoted above reminded me of a bit of folklore from that era: for > full-duplex comms, fork a child, and do opposing unidirectional comms in the > parent and child processes. For example, > http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=pdp11v/usr/src/cmd/net/net.c > I can't remember now what was the usual example of a program that did this; > "tip" perhaps, or is that too recent? I also don't know how much the trick > was still used as networking became popular. > > Tony. > -- > f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ > From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Apr 18 11:13:38 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:13:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= Message-ID: <20130418181338.B70AC18C0F0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jack Haverty > The V6 Unix OS primitives didn't provide any way to do such a "wait for > one of many" action .. The only way to tell if there was more data to > read was to read it, and if there wasn't, your process was blocked > until there was. There was no "non-blocking I/O". > ... > If you "forked" a child process, it could operate independently but > there was no way for the parent and child to communicate, except by the > child exiting with a result code. Err, not quite true. There were signals. We used signals in the asynchronous I/O that we added to V6 to run our ring LAN interfaces. One queued a read or write using the normal read/write routines, and it returned instantly, uncompleted. Once it completed, it sent the owning process the signal, and it then used the stty() and gtty() special routines (theoretically 'character' devices only, but hey, you do what you gotta do) to get the transfer completion information (count, status, etc). It wasn't pretty, admittedly, but it worked. As an example of what you could do with signals, someone at MIT came up with a multi-player online word game called something like 'Perquakey' (I think it's based on a real game - I recall it was sort of like a cross between Scrabble and something else), which had a separate process reading each player's keyboard - they coordinated (IIRC) with signals. People could join and leave the game asynchronously. None of it involved any kernel mods, IIRC. > It would be fascinating to hear any other experiences from those early > TCP (or even NCP) implementations in other OSes. What obstacles did each > present and how were they overcome? I've never seen much written about > the internal issues and how they were handled within the different early > TCP implementations - .. Multics I know a bit about the Multics one. Multics of course had very powerful software structuring tools (e.g. the ability to do a procedure call to code in 'another process'), which made doing TCP 'easy' in some ways. The Multics code was (IIRC) structured as a daemon process, and a database (who had which ports, un-acked transmit packet lists, etc) which was shared via the medium of a group of routines which were notionally part of the daemon, but which were called directly by applications running in the user's process (e.g. TELNET, FTP). Initially it all ran unprotected (i.e. ring 4, with world RW), but later on it was moved to a lower ring (not sure what else they changed) - SUID would have come in useful there! IIRC Multics' biggest challenge was that a Multics process was a rather heavy-weight thingy, and waking up two of them in a row, as would be needed for your typical incoming TCP packet (one to do the demux, and TCP; the other to process the data) was rather expensive. Noel From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Thu Apr 18 11:54:46 2013 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:54:46 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar>, <8B9AC783-53A6-4372-A5ED-C579F6CA642A@dotat.at>, Message-ID: <51704176.14417.25BD66E3@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 18 Apr 2013 at 10:17, Jack Haverty wrote: > Although you could implement "full-duplex" behavior, networking seems > to require a bit more -- perhaps called "coordinated full-duplex" > behavior. By that I mean that the flow in one direction had to be > able to be influenced by the contents of the flow in the other > direction. No matter what level you were at, your program can't > always determine what will happen next, and thus faces the dilemma of > what event to wait for. > > The V6 Unix OS primitives didn't provide any way to do such a "wait > for one of many" action, or even to implement a very inefficient > polling scheme. The only way to tell if there was more data to read > was to read it, and if there wasn't, your process was blocked until > there was. There was no "non-blocking I/O". This isn't internet history, but I've implemented stuff that did that on "traditional" Unix'. It wasn't hard, just clumsy: you forked two children, one for each direction, piped back to the parent and each had a different signal: so whichever child had something could signal the parent and the parent could do whatever appropriately. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From jeanjour at comcast.net Thu Apr 18 12:14:05 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:14:05 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_=09is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <20130418181338.B70AC18C0F0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130418181338.B70AC18C0F0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: For an early look at the problems, Postel wrote a little known report called "A Survey of ARPANET NCPs" I know reading it, it was obvious (but not pointed out in the report) that small implementations were on systems with good IPC and large ones were on systems with lousy IPC. You are right that all Unix V6 had was pipes. (It has always been amazing to me how OSs have ignored IPC). The IPC subsystem was added to Multics (or was it revised) much later than I would have expected, i.e. was it part of the initial versions? To do the first NCP in UNIX, the NCP was put in the kernel (it was a tight fit), but Telnet was two user processes: One, inbound and one, outbound. As Noel says, then stty() and gtty() were used to coordinate the two. As soon as we did that we set out (like they did at MIT) putting some real IPC into the OS. There is also a 1972 article by Bob Metcalfe about the problems of writing an NCP. But I can't lay my hands on the reference right now. Seems to me it was conference proceedings. Take care, John At 2:13 PM -0400 4/18/13, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Jack Haverty > > > The V6 Unix OS primitives didn't provide any way to do such a "wait for > > one of many" action .. The only way to tell if there was more data to > > read was to read it, and if there wasn't, your process was blocked > > until there was. There was no "non-blocking I/O". > > ... > > If you "forked" a child process, it could operate independently but > > there was no way for the parent and child to communicate, except by the > > child exiting with a result code. > >Err, not quite true. There were signals. > >We used signals in the asynchronous I/O that we added to V6 to run our ring >LAN interfaces. One queued a read or write using the normal read/write >routines, and it returned instantly, uncompleted. Once it completed, it sent >the owning process the signal, and it then used the stty() and gtty() special >routines (theoretically 'character' devices only, but hey, you do what you >gotta do) to get the transfer completion information (count, status, etc). It >wasn't pretty, admittedly, but it worked. > >As an example of what you could do with signals, someone at MIT came up with a >multi-player online word game called something like 'Perquakey' (I think it's >based on a real game - I recall it was sort of like a cross between Scrabble >and something else), which had a separate process reading each player's >keyboard - they coordinated (IIRC) with signals. People could join and leave >the game asynchronously. None of it involved any kernel mods, IIRC. > > > > It would be fascinating to hear any other experiences from those early > > TCP (or even NCP) implementations in other OSes. What obstacles did each > > present and how were they overcome? I've never seen much written about > > the internal issues and how they were handled within the different early > > TCP implementations - .. Multics > >I know a bit about the Multics one. Multics of course had very powerful >software structuring tools (e.g. the ability to do a procedure call to code in >'another process'), which made doing TCP 'easy' in some ways. > >The Multics code was (IIRC) structured as a daemon process, and a database >(who had which ports, un-acked transmit packet lists, etc) which was shared >via the medium of a group of routines which were notionally part of the >daemon, but which were called directly by applications running in the user's >process (e.g. TELNET, FTP). Initially it all ran unprotected (i.e. ring 4, >with world RW), but later on it was moved to a lower ring (not sure what else >they changed) - SUID would have come in useful there! > >IIRC Multics' biggest challenge was that a Multics process was a rather >heavy-weight thingy, and waking up two of them in a row, as would be needed >for your typical incoming TCP packet (one to do the demux, and TCP; the other >to process the data) was rather expensive. > > Noel From bill.n1vux at gmail.com Thu Apr 18 19:25:19 2013 From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:25:19 -0400 Subject: [ih] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ping_Eduardo_A=2E_Su=E1rez_=28was_Re=3A_What_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?is_the_origin_of_the_root_account=3F=29?= In-Reply-To: <516F764B.1090607@dcrocker.net> References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516F764B.1090607@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Dave Crocker wrote: > I've heard claims that setuid was also an innovation in unix. No idea of > the construct's history. > quite possibly. (Unix security was otherwise a simplification of Multics's, until the re-discovery of ACL's - from Multicians again.) -- Bill @n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lyndon at orthanc.ca Thu Apr 18 19:50:30 2013 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:50:30 -0700 Subject: [ih] Invention of setuid In-Reply-To: References: <20130411155845.4zo8fxoqecs4gs80@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <51687B9D.2080703@cox.net> <20130412184344.d422t1gtdcoo8wsg@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar> <516F764B.1090607@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <477BAF20-69D3-467D-96FA-4A701851288E@orthanc.ca> > On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Dave Crocker wrote: > I've heard claims that setuid was also an innovation in unix. No idea of the construct's history. DMR/Bell Labs hold the patent (US4135240) on setuid: http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=4135240&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP --lyndon From braden at isi.edu Mon Apr 22 12:44:26 2013 From: braden at isi.edu (Bob Braden) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:44:26 -0700 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation Message-ID: <5175931A.9000003@isi.edu> In a recent message to this list (Vol 73 Issue 15), Jack Haverty described his experience with implementing TCP/IP for a PDP-11/40 at BBN, one of the six "reference" implementations commissioned by Vint at ARPA . Jack suggested that we geezers who were responsible for the reference implementations should do memory dumps while we still can ;-( Herewith is my contribution. My TCP/IP implementation was for an IBM 360 Model 91 in the UCLA computer center, communicating with the UCLA IMP as host 1/1. It ran under OS/MVT and later OS/MVS with virtual memory. The 360/91 might be called a maxi-computer, the top of IBM's 360 line. Furthermore, UCLA had stretched to buy 4 MB of main memory, the only other machine of that power having disappeared into some bunker in the Washington DC area. I believe that Vint chose the UCLA IBM system for a reference implementation because he wanted a real-world implementation ("real world" meant IBM 360 and OS/MVT in 1978) to convince skeptics in the DoD that TCP/IP was real. Our TCP/IP implementation had several attributes that distinguished it from the other five reference implementations. First, it was written in IBM assembly language, not in C.At every TCP bakeoff, I had to put up with kidding from the other participants over the size of my program listing. I would come with a stack of IBM printer paper maybe 2" thick, while their C code fitted on 10 pages. (Which was not actually fair; my protocol implementations of TCP and IP took only 100 pages of heavily commented assembly language. The rest was a real time OS environment and interfaces to IBM software components.)Another difference was that the TCP/IP code replaced NCP on a production facility serving serious computational customers, especially the climate dynamics group at Rand. It had to work; the US government (under Nixon, if I recall) had slashed the government subsidy of university computing centers, and the ARPA-funded climate group supplied the dollars to keep the UCLA computing center alive. When I launched into implementing TCP/IP, the UCLA 360/91 had been an ARPAnet host since 1971. We had an IMP interface (IBM *hated* having a 3^rd part device on their channel!), a driver, and an implementation of the host-host protocol NCP. It supported User and Server Telnet, User and Server FTP, and a remote batch job entry program called NETRJS (RFC88, RFC740). Our FTP Server was undoubtedly the most complete implementation of the RFC 959 protocol ever, as we tried to support many of the features of IBM's very baroque file system. Initially, our Telnet server did not do anything very interesting because IBM's OS/MVT did not support time sharing. When IBM released OS/MVS with virtual memory and a primitive but useful time sharing system called TSO, we upgraded the ARPAnet code to run on the new hardware and OS and to couple the Server Telnet to TSO. The package of code to support the ARPAnet with NCP, and later TCP/IP, wascalled theACP (ARPAnet Control Program. The ACP ran as a privileged job in an 80 KB memory partition.We began development of the ACP by constructing a general IPC mechanism that we called the Exchange, in the OS/MVT kernel. We were pretty na?ve then, so we designed the IPC facility by analogy to a telephone crossbar switch. This is illustrated in the paper "A Server Host System on the ARPANET" , Fifth Data Comm Symp, 1977. Then we built a real time OS that ran as a system-level process ("task" in IBMese) within the ACP. This real time OS created pseudo tasks with non-preemptive scheduling (co-routines to Knuthians) and had all the usual OS primitives. Context switching among pseudo tasks was relatively light weight, so we used separate pseudo tasks for the IMP driver, the NCP, and the applications mentioned above. With this general environment, it was straightforward to insert TCP and IP modules in place of the NCP module. For several years, in fact, the 360/91 supported both NCP in production and my experimental TCP/IP. So Jan 1, 1983 was a non-event on the UCLA 360. The NCP and applications were written by members of the very talented system programming staff * in the UCLA computer center (ah, the good old mainframe days!). I was wise enough to keep my fingers out of the code.But implementing the TCP/IP protocols looked like a really fun task, so I took it on myself. Like the others, I began with version 2.5 of the TCP spec, the last version before the famous split. I recall taking a programming scalpel to the version 2.5 code to create distinct IP and TCP layers; thanks to a lucky modularity, it was quite straightforward. I note with some chagrin that, according to RFC 1025, my code had the lowest score in the bakeoffs.I don't recall why we lost points. I believe that the UCLA TCP/IP code was written with care for efficiency, although we did not think of VJ's header prediction idea. It implemented the Push bit and the Urgent pointer correctly according to the intent of the TCP spec. The Push bit was important for record-oriented systems like IBM's. Come to think of it, it might be easier to implement the record-oriented SCTP than TCP on an IBM mainframe. Someone mentioned the early problems with getting the check sums right. Another issue that took some time to resolve was sequence number comparisons. It turned out to be surprisingly subtle. Strangely, the simplest most obvious algorithm turned out to be the right one. Why did I use assembly language? Because there was no reasonable alternative. IBM refused to release their PL/C system programming language, and PL/I was hopelessly heavy weight and baroque. In 1983, I found an open-source C compiler for a 360 from AT&T, and I adapted it to compile code to run in the ACP envornment. Using the AT&T C compiler, I implemented SMTP User and Server code as well as RFC 822 in C. Had I stayed at UCLA I would probably converted other parts of the ACP into C, but in 1986 I moved from UCLA to ISI. Those were truly fun times. Jack and Vint, is there an authoritative list of the six reference implementations? Bob Braden *Especially Steve Wolfe, Stu Feigin, Lou Rivas, Neil Ludlam, and Denis DeLaRoca for the ARPAnet/Internet code. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Mon Apr 22 13:34:57 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:34:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation Message-ID: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Bob Braden > Herewith is my contribution. Very interesting! One minor observation: > First, it was written in IBM assembly language, not in C. Actually, many of the other early implementations were in assembler. The one Jim Mathis did for the LSI-11 (under MOS) was definitely entirely in PDP-11 assembler (MACRO-11, to the precise - it's possible I still have listings somewhere... :-). Based on his recent post, this is the one that Jack Haverty ported to Unix at BBN, too. (I had thought it was in C, but he said otherwise.) I'm pretty sure the TENEX one was in PDP-10 assembler (I took a quick look online, and found no definite statement on the subject, but I did find some pieces that were in PDP-10 assembler, making it likely the whole thing was). The other possibility is BLISS (I think some of the ELF code for the first routers may have been in BLISS), but I would doubt that. The Multics one was in a higher-level language, but PL/I, not C. I think the Illinois one was the only one (of the very earliest ones) in C. Noel From louie at transsys.com Mon Apr 22 13:58:35 2013 From: louie at transsys.com (Louis Mamakos) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:58:35 -0400 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation In-Reply-To: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Apr 22, 2013, at 4:34 PM, jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote: >> From: Bob Braden > >> Herewith is my contribution. > > Very interesting! One minor observation: > >> First, it was written in IBM assembly language, not in C. > > Actually, many of the other early implementations were in assembler. Maybe not "early" by some standards, but the IP implementation I did in 1981 for the UNIVAC 1108 and 1100/40 was also written in assembly code. A couple of years later, it got re-written and extending in PLUS, a high-level systems programming language for the 1100 systems, once that compiler was more generally suitable for "customer" use. The original implementation was done as for a "special topics" class taught by Dave Mills that I had as a senior at the University of Maryland. It was tested against Mills' fuzzballs, and of course, did the HELLO protocol over a dial-up 1200bps modem to one of his zoo. Later, when I joined the staff at the computer center, it eventually became a production service, offering SMTP, TELNET, FTP and even RJE services to the users at the University, over a few different campuses. That stack eventually found its way to a few other sites; at least the NOSC in San Diego that I personally know of. At some point, connectivity extended beyond point-to-point async and sync serial links to a channel attached ethernet controller. Sadly, I don't think I have the original assembly source version around any longer, though the "last" version of the stack in PLUS has managed to survive. Louis Mamakos From braden at isi.edu Mon Apr 22 14:07:26 2013 From: braden at isi.edu (Bob Braden) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:07:26 -0700 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation In-Reply-To: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <5175A68E.7010507@isi.edu> Thanks for correcting my error, Noel. Bob On 4/22/2013 1:34 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Bob Braden > > > Herewith is my contribution. > > Very interesting! One minor observation: > > > First, it was written in IBM assembly language, not in C. > > Actually, many of the other early implementations were in assembler. From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Apr 22 14:09:25 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:09:25 -0400 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation In-Reply-To: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130422203457.BCBEA18C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: Yes, the Illinois implementation was in C. We never used assembler on the PDP-11 even on the LSI-11. Take care, John At 4:34 PM -0400 4/22/13, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Bob Braden > > > Herewith is my contribution. > >Very interesting! One minor observation: > > > First, it was written in IBM assembly language, not in C. > >Actually, many of the other early implementations were in assembler. > >The one Jim Mathis did for the LSI-11 (under MOS) was definitely entirely in >PDP-11 assembler (MACRO-11, to the precise - it's possible I still have >listings somewhere... :-). > >Based on his recent post, this is the one that Jack Haverty ported to Unix at >BBN, too. (I had thought it was in C, but he said otherwise.) > >I'm pretty sure the TENEX one was in PDP-10 assembler (I took a quick look >online, and found no definite statement on the subject, but I did find some >pieces that were in PDP-10 assembler, making it likely the whole thing >was). The other possibility is BLISS (I think some of the ELF code for the >first routers may have been in BLISS), but I would doubt that. > >The Multics one was in a higher-level language, but PL/I, not C. I think the >Illinois one was the only one (of the very earliest ones) in C. > > Noel From jack at 3kitty.org Mon Apr 22 16:21:22 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:21:22 -0700 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation In-Reply-To: <5175931A.9000003@isi.edu> References: <5175931A.9000003@isi.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Bob Braden wrote: Those were truly fun times. Jack and Vint, is there an authoritative list of the six reference implementations? ======================================= Hi Bob! Yes, fun times. I'm not sure what makes an implementation a "reference implementation". I did find my old manila folder labelled "TCP Meeting Bakeoff 1/27-29/1979", which has documents on the "scoring"of the "TCP Testing Session" with schedule for Saturday, 27 January 1979 10:00 - Discussion of Procedures; 10:30 - Testing Begins" Since that session was where lots of things like checksums were hammered out to achieve NxN interoperability, perhaps those are the "reference" implementations? I remember we subsequently documented what the test TCPs actually did to create the next TCP spec. Anyway, the regular TCP Meeting was the following Monday, and the printed list of attendees includes Haverty, Plummer, Tomlinson, Wingfield, Cerf, Cain, McFarland, Grossman, Abramovitz, Biba. Cohen, Postel, Chiappa, Clark, Stensby, Sunshine, Davie, Masterman, Mathis, Poggio, Cringle, Meyne, and Braden. I assume that list includes the people who were at the prior Saturday Bakeoff, so the TCPs involved were likely: Haverty - PDP11 Unix Plummer - PDP10 Tenex (or TOPS20?) Wingfield - PDP11 Unix (11/70) Clark - Multics Mathis - LSI11 Braden - 360 TCP implementations had been around for over a year prior to this. Also, this was the time when the TCP3 spec was being hammered out. I found a bunch of notes about that, as well as a copy of the January 1978 "Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control Program TCP Version 3" by Cerf and Postel, along with a "Transmittal Letter" listing 2 pages of issues to be resolved in the next edition. As I recall, the "next edition" was TCP 4. There were other TCP implementations going on, but I think the "Bakeoff" was where the nitty gritty details got ironed out and nailed down -- like exactly how the various pieces of the headers got calculated in the checksum -- and that led to interoperability. But there were also implementations in progress at Ford, DTI, BBN (HP3000, Vax, TIP), and elsewhere (UCL?) Also found a piece of paper -- "The First Traditional TCP Bakeoff Special Award Jack Haverty" signed (in ink, no printed signatures here!) by Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. I can't recall what the award was for though. Must be a collectors' item... Jon must have written up a report on the results of the tests. Still digging around in the garage.... /Jack PS - was someone looking for an official TCP version 3 spec? From vint at google.com Tue Apr 23 02:57:35 2013 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:57:35 -0400 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation In-Reply-To: References: <5175931A.9000003@isi.edu> Message-ID: These reminiscences are wonderful. I do not have an official list of reference implementations and I am not sure such a list was made. as to the award - I do recall acquiring bottles of champagne to give out as prizes in Postel's bakeoffs. vint On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 7:21 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Bob Braden wrote: > > Those were truly fun times. Jack and Vint, is there an authoritative > list of the six reference implementations? > > ======================================= > > Hi Bob! Yes, fun times. > > I'm not sure what makes an implementation a "reference > implementation". I did find my old manila folder labelled "TCP > Meeting Bakeoff 1/27-29/1979", which has documents on the "scoring"of > the "TCP Testing Session" with schedule for Saturday, 27 January 1979 > 10:00 - Discussion of Procedures; 10:30 - Testing Begins" Since > that session was where lots of things like checksums were hammered out > to achieve NxN interoperability, perhaps those are the "reference" > implementations? I remember we subsequently documented what the test > TCPs actually did to create the next TCP spec. > > Anyway, the regular TCP Meeting was the following Monday, and the > printed list of attendees includes Haverty, Plummer, Tomlinson, > Wingfield, Cerf, Cain, McFarland, Grossman, Abramovitz, Biba. Cohen, > Postel, Chiappa, Clark, Stensby, Sunshine, Davie, Masterman, Mathis, > Poggio, Cringle, Meyne, and Braden. > > I assume that list includes the people who were at the prior Saturday > Bakeoff, so the TCPs involved were likely: > > Haverty - PDP11 Unix > Plummer - PDP10 Tenex (or TOPS20?) > Wingfield - PDP11 Unix (11/70) > Clark - Multics > Mathis - LSI11 > Braden - 360 > > TCP implementations had been around for over a year prior to this. > Also, this was the time when the TCP3 spec was being hammered out. I > found a bunch of notes about that, as well as a copy of the January > 1978 "Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control Program TCP > Version 3" by Cerf and Postel, along with a "Transmittal Letter" > listing 2 pages of issues to be resolved in the next edition. As I > recall, the "next edition" was TCP 4. > > There were other TCP implementations going on, but I think the > "Bakeoff" was where the nitty gritty details got ironed out and nailed > down -- like exactly how the various pieces of the headers got > calculated in the checksum -- and that led to interoperability. But > there were also implementations in progress at Ford, DTI, BBN (HP3000, > Vax, TIP), and elsewhere (UCL?) > > Also found a piece of paper -- "The First Traditional TCP Bakeoff > Special Award Jack Haverty" signed (in ink, no printed signatures > here!) by Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. I can't recall what the award was for > though. Must be a collectors' item... > > Jon must have written up a report on the results of the tests. Still > digging around in the garage.... > > /Jack > > PS - was someone looking for an official TCP version 3 spec? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From LarrySheldon at cox.net Tue Apr 23 12:48:52 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:48:52 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another TCP Reference Implementation In-Reply-To: References: <5175931A.9000003@isi.edu> Message-ID: <5176E5A4.8040503@cox.net> On 4/23/2013 4:57 AM, Vint Cerf wrote: > These reminiscences are wonderful. > > I do not have an official list of reference implementations and I am not > sure such a list was made. > > as to the award - I do recall acquiring bottles of champagne to give out as > prizes in Postel's bakeoffs. > > vint As a non-participant, increasingly forgetful and fundamentally uninformed to begin with--a question that intrigues me now..... Is there a publication that notes the differences among the candidates? Are the differences incremental in nature, or vastly different approaches to the question. (Buttercream icing contrasted with fondant, or pound-cake vs pecan pie?) -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Tue Apr 30 20:10:03 2013 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 15:10:03 +1200 Subject: [ih] fwiw Message-ID: <5180878B.6000806@gmail.com> My book is out: http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4 (Cheaper from your usual on-line bookstore.) Regards Brian Carpenter From LarrySheldon at cox.net Tue Apr 30 20:39:53 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:39:53 -0500 Subject: [ih] fwiw In-Reply-To: <5180878B.6000806@gmail.com> References: <5180878B.6000806@gmail.com> Message-ID: <51808E89.4060406@cox.net> On 4/30/2013 10:10 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > My book is out: > http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4 > (Cheaper from your usual on-line bookstore.) And Kindle-available. (I'm not allowed to buy books that need shelf-space anymore.) Thanks--electric copy in hand. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From johnl at iecc.com Tue Apr 30 20:49:53 2013 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 1 May 2013 03:49:53 -0000 Subject: [ih] MX and A records Message-ID: <20130501034953.26164.qmail@joyce.lan> MX records were invented in 1986 in RFCS 973 and 974, replacing MD and MF and as far as I can tell obsoleting MB, MG, and MR. It looks like there wasn't a rule to fall back to A if there were no MD and MF, or if there was it didn't make it into the RFC. RFC 974 does describe fallback from MX to A. Was that expected to be a transitional thing until MX was more widely implemented, or was it expected to be permanent? Or didn't anybody think about it either way? R's, John From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Tue Apr 30 21:13:05 2013 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 16:13:05 +1200 Subject: [ih] fwiw In-Reply-To: <51808E89.4060406@cox.net> References: <5180878B.6000806@gmail.com> <51808E89.4060406@cox.net> Message-ID: <51809651.5030301@gmail.com> On 01/05/2013 15:39, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 4/30/2013 10:10 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> My book is out: >> http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4 >> (Cheaper from your usual on-line bookstore.) > > > And Kindle-available. (I'm not allowed to buy books that need > shelf-space anymore.) > > Thanks--electric copy in hand. Needless to say: comments welcome (although a second edition is scarcely likely) and apologies for all the mistakes and omissions. I was especially sad that I could only mention a handful of the people who deserved it. Brian From paul at redbarn.org Tue Apr 30 21:42:55 2013 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:42:55 -0700 Subject: [ih] MX and A records In-Reply-To: <20130501034953.26164.qmail@joyce.lan> References: <20130501034953.26164.qmail@joyce.lan> Message-ID: <51809D4F.7000708@redbarn.org> John Levine wrote: > MX records were invented in 1986 in RFCS 973 and 974, replacing MD and > MF and as far as I can tell obsoleting MB, MG, and MR. > > It looks like there wasn't a rule to fall back to A if there were no > MD and MF, or if there was it didn't make it into the RFC. RFC 974 > does describe fallback from MX to A. > > Was that expected to be a transitional thing until MX was more widely > implemented, or was it expected to be permanent? Or didn't anybody > think about it either way? my memories say, MX was designed to draw email traffic away from your A RR, and if you didn't need to do that, you didn't need an MX RR, either then or for all time. From LarrySheldon at cox.net Tue Apr 30 22:22:49 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 00:22:49 -0500 Subject: [ih] MX and A records In-Reply-To: <51809D4F.7000708@redbarn.org> References: <20130501034953.26164.qmail@joyce.lan> <51809D4F.7000708@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <5180A6A9.70700@cox.net> On 4/30/2013 11:42 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > > > John Levine wrote: >> MX records were invented in 1986 in RFCS 973 and 974, replacing MD and >> MF and as far as I can tell obsoleting MB, MG, and MR. >> >> It looks like there wasn't a rule to fall back to A if there were no >> MD and MF, or if there was it didn't make it into the RFC. RFC 974 >> does describe fallback from MX to A. >> >> Was that expected to be a transitional thing until MX was more widely >> implemented, or was it expected to be permanent? Or didn't anybody >> think about it either way? > > my memories say, MX was designed to draw email traffic away from your A > RR, and if you didn't need to do that, you didn't need an MX RR, either > then or for all time. They used to be useful for entertaining the folks on NANAE for weeks at a stretch. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From joly at punkcast.com Tue Apr 30 22:38:47 2013 From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie) Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 01:38:47 -0400 Subject: [ih] fwiw In-Reply-To: <51808E89.4060406@cox.net> References: <5180878B.6000806@gmail.com> <51808E89.4060406@cox.net> Message-ID: Plugged! http://isoc-ny.org/p2/5500 On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:39 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 4/30/2013 10:10 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> >> My book is out: >> http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4 >> (Cheaper from your usual on-line bookstore.) > > > > And Kindle-available. (I'm not allowed to buy books that need shelf-space > anymore.) > > Thanks--electric copy in hand. > > > > -- > Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics > of System Administrators: > Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to > learn from their mistakes. > (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -