Berkeley Odyssey
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BERKELEY ODYSSEY Ten years of BSD history by Marshall Kirk McKusick Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie presented the first UNIX paper at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles at Pur due University in November, 1973. Professor Bob Fabry was in attendance and immediately became interested in obtaining a f copy of the system to experiment with at Berkeley. - At the time, Berkeley had only large mainframe computer systems doing batch processing, so the first order of business was to get a PDP-11/45 suitable for running the then current Version 4 of UNIX. The Computer Science Department, together with the Mathematics Department and the Statistics Department were able to jointly purchase a PDP-11/45. In January, 1974, a Version 4 tape was delivered and UNIX was installed by graduate student ¥<~ Keith Standiford. Although Ken Thompson was not involved in the installation — as he had been for most systems up to that time — his exper tise was soon needed to determine the cause of several strange system crashes. Because Berkeley had only a 300 baud acoustic- coupled modem without auto answer capability, Thompson would call Standiford in the machine room and have him insert the phone into the modem; in this way Thompson was able to remote ly debug crash dumps from New Jersey. 9mm £££ SK wmmMm&?<%?+•*>' '-•fy&Z j?m gis£^t - WMm ^ssg®mmm m^f, ?*S£ SP mm? r^^^m^^S?^^ :%%&m. ':•! '-^SS&^i * Jfjfe BERKELEY ODYSSEY Many of the crashes were project became the first group in immediate interest in the new caused by the disk controller's the Computer Science department system. Initially they began work inability to reliably do overlapped to distribute its software. Several ing on a Pascal system that seeks, contrary to the documenta hundred Ingres tapes were Thompson had hacked together tion. Berkeley's 11/45 was among shipped over the next six years, while hanging around the 11/70 the first systems that Thompson helping to establish Berkeley's machine room. They expanded had encountered that had two reputation for designing and and improved the interpreter disks on the same controller! building real systems. system to the point that it became Thompson's remote debugging Even with the departure of the programming system of was the first example of the the Ingres project from the 11/45, choice for students because of its cooperation that sprang up be there was still insufficient time excellent error recovery scheme tween Berkeley and Bell Labs. The and fast compile and execute willingness of the researchers at time. the Labs to share their work with With the replacement of Berkeley was instrumental in the Model 33 teletypes by ADM-3 r rapid improvement of the softw are Arriving in the Fall screen terminals, Joy and Haley available at Berkeley. began to feel stymied by the con Though UNIX was soon of 1975 were two straints of the ed editor. Working reliably up and running, the coa from an editor named em that lition of Computer Science, unnoticed graduate they had obtained from Professor Mathematics, and Statistics began George Coulouris at Queen Mary's to run into problems: Math and students, Bill Joy College in London, they worked to Statistics wanted to run DEC's produce the line-at-a-time editor RSTS system. After much debate, and Chuck Haley. ex. a compromise was reached in With Ken Thompson's depar which each department would get ture at the end of the Summer of an eight-hour shift: UNIX would 1976, Joy and Haley begin to take run for eight hours followed by 16 an interest in exploring the inter hours of RSTS. To promote available for the remaining stu nals of the UNIX kernel. Under fairness, the time slices were dents. To alleviate the shortage, Schriebman's watchful eye, they rotated each day. Thus UNIX ran Professors Michael Stonebraker first installed the fixes and im 8 am to 4 pm one day, 4 pm to and Bob Fabry set out in June, provements provided on the "fif midnight the next day, and mid 1974. to get two instructional ty changes" tape from Bell Labs. night to 8 am the third day. 1 l/45s for the Computer Science Having learned to maneuver Despite the bizarre schedule, department's own use. Early in through the source code, they sug students taking the Operating 1975. the money was obtained. At gested several small enhance Systems course preferred to do nearly the same time DEC an ments to streamline certain kernel their projects on UNIX rather than nounced the 11/70, a machine bottlenecks. on the batch machine. that appeared to be much superior Professors Eugene Wong and to the 11/45. Money for the two FIRST DISTRIBUTIOM Michael Stonebraker were both 1 l/45s was pooled to buy a single Meanwhile, interest in the er stymied by the confinements of 11/70 that arrived in the Fall of ror recovery work in the Pascal the batch environment, so their 1975. Coincident with the arrival compiler brought in requests for Ingres database project was of the 11/70, Ken Thompson copies of the system. Early in among the first groups to move decided to take a one-year sab 1977, Joy put together the from the batch machines to the in batical as a visiting professor at "Berkeley Software Distribution". teractive environment provided his alma mater. Thompson, This first distribution included the by UNIX. They quickly found the together with Jeff Schriebman Pascal system and — in an shortage of machine time and the and Bob Kridle, brought up the obscure subdirectory of the Pascal odd hours on the 11/45 in latest UNIX, Version 6, on the source — the editor ex. Over the tolerable, so in the Spring of 1974, newly installed 11/70. next year, Joy, acting in J.he they purchased an 11/40 running Also arriving in the Fall of capacity of distributiojijsecretary, the newly available Version 5. 1975, were two unnoticed sent out about 30 free copies of the With their first distribution of In graduate students. Bill Joy and system. gres in the Fall of 1974, the Ingres Chuck Haley; they both took an With the arrival of some 32 UNIX REVIEW JANUARY 1985 BERKELEY ODYSSEY ADM-3a terminals offering screen- Fateman and 13 other faculty having his group write a virtual addressable cursors, Joy was members put together an NSF memory system for UNIX. Ozalp finally able to write vi, bringing proposal that they combined with Babaoglu, one of Ferrari's stu screen-based editing to Berkeley. some departmental funds to pur dents, set about to find some way He soon found himself in a quan chase a VAX. of implementing a working set dary. As is frequently the case in Initially the VAX ran DEC's paging system on the VAX; his universities strapped for money, operating system VMS, but the task was complicated because the old equipment is never replaced department had gotten used to the VAX lacked reference bits. all at once. Rather than support UNIX environment and wanted to As Babaoglu neared the com code for optimizing the updating continue using it. So, shortly after pletion of his first cut at an im of several different terminals, he plementation, he approached Bill decided to consolidate the screen Joy for some help in understand management by using a small ing the intricacies of the UNIX interpreter to redraw the screen. Initially the VAX kernel. Intrigued by Babaoglu's This interpreter was driven by a approach, Joy joined in helping to description of the terminal char ran DEC'S integrate the code into 32/V and acteristics, thus spawning the then with the ensuing debugging. now famous termcap. operating system Unfortunately, Berkeley had By mid-1978, the software only a single VAX for both system distribution clearly needed to be VMS, but the development and general produc updated. The Pascal system had tion use. Thus for several weeks, been made markedly more robjast department had the tolerant user community alter through feedback from its expand nately found themselves logging ing us^_conimjunity, and had gotten used to the into 32/V and "Virtual VAX/ been split intojtwo passes so that UNIX". Often their work on the IF could be run on PDP"-ll/34s. UNIX environment latter system would come to an The result of the update was the abrupt halt, followed several "Second Berkeley Software and wanted to minutes later by a 32/V login Distribution" that was quickly prompt. By January of 1979, most shortened to 2 BSD. Along with continue using it. of the bugs had been worked out, the enhanced Pascal system, vi and 32/V had been relegated to and termcap for several terminals history. was included. Once again, Bill Joy Joy saw that the 32-bit VAX single-handedly put together the arrival of the VAX, Fateman would soon obsolete the 16-bit distributions, answered the obtained a copy of the 32/V port of PDP-11 and began to port the 2 phone, and incorporated user UNIX to the VAX by John Reiser BSD software to the VAX. While feedback into the system. Over the and Tom London of Bell Labs. Peter Kessler and I ported the next year, nearly 75 tapes were Although 32/V provided a Pascal system, Joy ported the shipped. Though Joy moved on to Version 7 UNIX environment on editors ex and vi, the C shell, and other projects the following year, the VAX, it did not take advantage the myriad other smaller pro the 2 BSD distribution continued of the virtual memory capability of grams on 2 BSD.