UNIX: A Personal History · 2012. 7. 11. · Apollo Domain UNIX • “Diane, you’re the only one...

UNIX: A Personal History UNIXes I have known S. Diane Smith,PhD

Sun SparcClassic (early 1990’s) Ultra60, Dell PC

• LINKSYS wireless router

• PowerPC Apples

• NAS backup storage

• JAILBROKE IPOD

• NOOK (as Android….)

• Dish network

• Droid

• Raspberry Pi • http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

• “Junior”, 2 quadcore INTEL Servers • http://robots.stanford.edu/papers/junior08.pdf

MULTICS: Bell Labs, MIT, and GE

•1963+; GE-635 delivered in 1965 •Written in PL/I •Prof. Jack Dennis: my swimming partner at many a Parallel Processing Conference •PhD student Prof. Peter Denning: My Operating Systems professor 1976

UNICS:

• 1969 • Space Travel: written for MULTICS, $75

in computing time to play it • Disused PDP-7 port • Eventually spelled the way it’s

pronounced….

Hardware: PDP-11, $65K

• http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/firstport.html

Purdue University: June 1976

PDP 11/70: performance tests against DEC operating system

Connect to other PDP 11’s in research groups

New faculty from Princeton, Illinois want to continue to use UNIX for their research

Dual CPU VAX • http://hampage.hu/vax/e_

1981.html • George Goble, sys

admin, first Indiana plate “UNIX”

More importantly, 1996 Ig Noble prize in chemistry - LOX http://www.bkinzel.de/misc/ghg/index.html

nroff - the text editor

• New faculty - needed to finish writing PhD’s

• PhD students learn it’s cheaper (FREE!) than paying someone to type it for you

• Some drawbacks - the library doesn’t know what to do with even margins

The Berkeley Connection

• 1976, Ken Thompson sabbatical • CSRG joins in • Berkeley Sockets API • Database research • Visual Editor - vi (Bill Joy) “replaces” ed

University of Wisconsin - Madison

• CS Department runs VAX with Berkeley UNIX

• Department head pushes for all email, “paperless” communications

• Sends out emails, admin prints it out and puts it in all mailboxes…..

• Randy Katz goes back to Berkeley and works on RAID

LLNL - CRG and UC Davis at Livermore

• VAX, BSD research • Data Flow Languages - SISAL • Performance measurements • Dr. Art Sorkin: “What’s with ls? Who

would call a command ls instead of dir?” • Me: “ If you don’t like it, make an alias.”

SUN workstations

• S1 Computer group at LLNL early users • 68000 based, Berkeley UNIX, SUNOS • RISC SPARC architecture • “The network is the computer” • SUN Network File System (NFS) • Java…….

POSIX - 1988

• By late 80’s, EVERYONE had their “own” UNIX

• HP/UX • Data General (Motorola 88000) DG/UX • IBM AIX • Apple AUX • Apollo Computer (who?)

Integrated Cmos Systems

• Gate Array design software • Originally written in PL/I for IBM

mainframe (fiber optic out the back door, down the alley to the timeshare service down the street - gardener mowed over the cable)

• Fall 1988 took delivery of ~20 Apollo workstations

Apollo Domain UNIX • “Diane, you’re the only one here who knows

UNIX - you’re the system administrator. Run over to Fry’s and get some coax and tools and string the ethernet around the building.”

• First release of the Apollo UNIX, including X Windows

• Tech writer, “What do you mean there’s a difference between /usr and /user? Obviously, it’s a typo.”

• Bought by HP shortly thereafter in 1989. HP COULD have had 26% of the entire workstation market in 1990….

1993 UC Santa Cruz: Operating Systems

• Teaching trend away from just theory

• More practical examples • 1987: Minix - a minimal

UNIX for teaching and research

• http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/�

Linux

• Student Linus Torvalds takes Operating Systems, gets interested in MINIX

• No “pure” open source UNIX available • GNU UNIX promised but not there yet • BSD for cheap PC hardware not yet

released • Decides to write one, just for fun • First release August 1991

The Tanenbaum - Torvalds Debate

• Tanenbaum sees that comp.os.minix has a lot of talk about linux

• Joining in, he declares linux obsolete before it starts, because it’s structure bears no relationship to where ”modern” operating system theory is going

• http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/appa.html

From there to…

• MySql • Apache • Internet applications - web site hosting • LAMP LINUX, Apache, MySQL,

PHP/PERL

Interesting References:

• MULTICS: http://www.multicians.org • History of UNIX: http://www.bell-

labs.com/history/unix/