From bjones@weber.ucsd.edu Wed Oct 17 11:02 PDT 1990 Date: Wed, 17 Oct 90 10:51:56 pdt From: bjones@weber.ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones) To: usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: More info X-IMAPbase: 1230225501 11 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 Gene Spafford made a couple of files of old mail available to the list. One file is a set of mail messages from a mailist on UsenetII from 1985. They make for interesting reading in light of the changes that have happened since the discussion took place. Gene's intro message has also given rise to some thought about what this mailist is all about as well. More on that later. The other file is called "rename" and it shows some of the very early discussions about The Great Renaming, a subject near and dear to all of us around here at present. The files are in the ftp login directory I mentioned yesterday. Drop by and take a look. bj - From stargate!mark@cis.ohio-state.edu Wed Oct 17 13:45 PDT 1990 To: usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: research/vax135 Date: 17 Oct 90 16:17:11 EDT (Wed) From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton) Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2 vax135 was definitely an early player (there were very good relations between the vax135 folks who put out UNIX/32V and the ucbvax folks who got the first beta tape) and I could believe that the Netnews link was duke<->vax135<->ucbvax. But the email link was definitely via research. Somewhere I have on magtape a map or two from the spring of 1981, back when there were only 30 or so machines on the net. The oldest map I have (paper, 1/1/82) shows research as a leaf, vax135 as a minor hub (links to cornell, ihnss and harpo.) This map shows every machine that got Netnews one one sheet and was only photo-reduced from about 11x17. I do have a 9/21/81 map made by Phil Karn, Mr. ihnss (forerunner of ihnp4), which is not entirely accurate for the time. It shows chico, ihnss, and mhtsa as the major hubs, with chico migrating into harpo. The backbone is first mentioned in the July 1983 map - it was not mentioned on the Jan 1983 map. In July 1983 there were both logical maps (showing all hosts) and geographic maps (showing the biggest host in each city on a US map.) We did a geographic map only in 1/84, and in 6/84 the only map was a machine-readable 4 page logical map done by Bill and Karen Shannon - I had given up on trying to show it on paper, and did the last geographic map in 6/84. Bill and Karen continued to put out their machine readable one on the net periodically. Now, of course, Brian Reid puts out his Postscript stuff. The first links to Canada appeared on the 1/1/82 map (watmath, utzoo, and 2 machines behind each.) In 1/83 philabs bridged the atlantic to connect to mcvax, dutesta, and ukc. By 7/83 a second link from ukc to vax135 (non-backbone) existed, and a link from sdchema in San Diego to basservax in Australia (by magtape once a week!) appeared. I have this stuff on paper, and can send it to one person who is the keeper of all this. Mark From spaf@cs.purdue.edu Wed Oct 17 14:10 PDT 1990 To: usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: Usenet backbone Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Date: Wed, 17 Oct 90 16:04:11 EST From: Gene Spafford Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3 There were two "backbones" -- the physical backbone, and the "political" backbone. Mark was indeed the ancestor of the physical backbone, and I was the originator of the "political" (i.e., decision-making) backbone. I guess my earlier mail didn't make that distinction clear. Enclosed are some machine-readable maps I got from either Mark or Steve Bellovin. Once, when my life was considerably simpler than it is now, I volunteered to help write a definitive history paper on the Usenet. Mark & Steve had both started this paper, but had other things come up. I started revisions, lost them in a machine crash, redid some of them, then had the tide of events sweep away whatever free time I had available to work on it. I may get back to it someday, but not this week. :-) Anyhow: This is labelled as April 5, 1981 reed phs \ / \ decvax---duke----unc | / \ | mhtsa--research mh135a ucbopt---+ | | \ | | | | eagle ihnss vax135 ucbcory--\ | | | / / >----ucbvax------+-------+-------------\ ucbarpa--/ | | | \ | sdcarl sdcsvax menlo70--hao ucsfcgl ucbonyx--+ \ / | phonlab sytek This is labelled as April 15, 1981: pdp | decvax sii reed phs--unc--grumpy duke34 | | | | | | | | +--+----+-----+-+--+-------------+ | | | duke | | | +------+---+----------------+------+-------+ | | | | | | ucbopt | mhtsa research mh135a hocsr chico---harpo | | | | | ucbcory | | eagle ihnss vax135 (Bell Labs Sites) | | | | | | ucbvax---+----------+--+--+-----+--+------+--------+ | | | | ucbarpa sdcsvax | menlo70--hao | sdcattb-----+ | | ucbonyx +-----ucsfcgl sytek phonlab-----+ sdcarl And this labelled as June 1, 1981 !- Uucp links : Berknet links @ Arpanet links pdp (Misc) ! (NC) (Misc) decvax sii reed phs--unc--grumpy duke34 utzoo cincy teklabs ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! +--+----+-----+-+--+-------------+-------+------+ ! ! ! ! ! duke ! ! ! ! ! +------+---+-----------------------+--------+ ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ucbopt ! hocsr--mhtsa----research mh135a harpo-----chico : ! ! ! ! ucbcory ! ! eagle ihnss vax135 (Bell Labs) (UCB) : ! ! ! ! ! ucbvax--++----------+--+--+-----+--+------+--------+ : @ ! ! ! (Silicon Valley) ucbarpa @ (UCSD) sdcsvax ! menlo70--hao : @ sdcattb-----+ ! ! ! ucbonyx @ +-----ucsfcgl sytek sri-unix @ phonlab-----+ cca-unix sdcarl From spaf@cs.purdue.edu Wed Oct 17 14:20 PDT 1990 To: usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: More from the archives... Date: Wed, 17 Oct 90 16:07:49 EST From: Gene Spafford Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 4 >From ulysses!smb Mon Oct 26 17:20:45 1987 From: ulysses!smb Date: Mon, 26 Oct 87 15:42:21 EST To: cbosgd!mark, spaf@gatech.gatech.edu Subject: early netnews >From moss!rutgers!mcnc!rti!trt Mon Oct 26 15:39:01 1987 Date: Mon, 26 Oct 87 13:52:51 EST >From: Thomas Truscott To: cbpavo!mark, moss!ulysses!smb Subject: Early Usenet info Cyrus Rahman, Duke physics grad student, recently sent me some early Usenet data on the disks of the old Duke CS PDP 11/70. (Physics dept. -- where old computers go to die.) I am including two interesting files. The first describes the 'duke' site on Mar 11 1981, the other is a collection of interesting early net articles. Amongst the articles is the announcement of decvax. One interesting thing about those articles is their brevity-- some are only two lines long. Of course, this was probably a sample of only the most interesting/useful articles. Also on the tape was a Usenet Invitation paper, not the original but fairly old (Mar 1981) . You have probably seen this excerpt, but in case you haven't: QUESTIONS ANSWERED .IP 1. Isn't this expensive? .br Not at all. Night time phone costs are about $0.50/3 minutes, in which time uucp can transfer about 3000 bytes of data (300 baud). Daily polling then costs $15/Month, which is half what Duke pays just for an office phone. .IP 2. Can Duke really handle all the phone calls? .br Sure. We have two call-out lines: at five minutes/call, we can handle 24 calls/hour. Other systems can also perform the call-out function. Remember this when reading the decvax article. DUKE.INFO >From swd Wed Mar 11 12:30:45 1981 remote from duke Here is the current state of the duke system. contact: Steve Danial (swd), 919-684-3048 CPS Dept, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706 path: we reach ucbvax both through decvax and mhtsa news: 147 local users of which 24 subscribe to NET news about: We are a research machine for the Computer Science Department. Current research includes natural language processing, VLSI design, and operating systems simulation. calling: a) Anyone can call us. We give systems individual logins for accounting, so we don't publish a uucp name and password. Interested nodes should contact swd. b) Typically we will call other sites if they reimburse us for the phone charges. This is cleared through swd. uucp connections: Local nodes: phs - 11/44 and 11/60 cleps - 11/23 duke34 - 11/34 BTL nodes: research, vax135, epsvax, topes, chico, mhtsa Universities: unc - U of North Carolina uok - U of Oklahoma reed - Reed College Others: nybca - Ny Blood Center decvax - DEC news.articles >From jte Sat Apr 26 22:02:50 1980 at-bugs : NET.general "at" cannot schedule execution on March 1 during leap years. Fix: />59/s//>=59/ "at" cannot schedule an event during the following year if requested by month and date. Fix: Unknown If the shell script produced by "at" includes the assignment of exported variables with special characters (e.g. $IFS) the script can fail. Fix: A fairly good fix is /fprintf(file, "%s.n", .ep++);/c ++ix; fprintf(file, "%.*s'%s'\n", ix-*ep, *ep, ix); *ep++; . A better fix would scan *ep to take care of single qoute marks in a shell variable. >From jte Mon Apr 28 23:16:57 1980 ac-bugs : NET.general "ac" as distributed with V7 has several problems. 1) General terminal names are not supported. All terminals except the console must be named "ttynn". This causes serious accounting problems as logins on all other terminals are mapped into the console. 2) Ac looks for "}" to indicate a new date instead of the correct "{". 3) "Midnight" (-d option) is not always computed correctly. 4) Diagnostic messages are incomplete. Duke has rewritten ac and fixed these problems. The new version is available from "duke!~uucp/duke/cmd/ac.c". >From swd Sun May 4 20:47:16 1980 look bugs : NET.general look(1) expects /usr/dict/words to be sorted with -d and -f options. As distributed (on version 7) the wordlist is not correctly sorted. As a result, "look ba" yields nothing. Fix: sort -d -f /usr/dict/words -o /usr/dict/words >From research!dmr Tue May 13 03:27:25 1980 Floating-point bug in V7 Unix: NET.general J. W. Stevenson of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam has discovered and diagnosed a most interesting bug in V7 Unix. The problem is that the floating-point registers and status are sometimes not saved across memory expansion via sbreak() or stack growth or (less importantly) forks. The problem only occurs when a swap is needed to accomplish the expansion. What happens is that the swap output IO is begun, and then the registers are saved when the process calls swtch() from sleep(). It is possible for the image to be written out before the saving of the registers. For reasons I do not fully understand situations can occur in which the bug manifests itself consistently. It seems to me that the register-saving should be finished within a few hundred microseconds at most after initiation of IO while the actual transfer (with ordinary moving-head disks) will not begin for several milliseconds at least. Nevertheless we have demonstrated the bug quite consistently; by the usual sort of coincidence, one of our machines began showing floating-point problems the very same week that Stevenson's letter arrived. (If the controller prefetches a significant amount of data or if the disk is very fast then the consistency is not surprising.) At any rate, as suggested by Stevenson, the problem can be fixed by adding the following code if (u.u_fpsaved == 0) { savfp(&u.u_fps); u.u_fpsaved = 1; } to the following places in sys/slp.c: before original line 507, "a2 = malloc(coremap, n);", in newproc(); and, after original line 564, "if(a2 == NULL) {", in expand(). >From vax135!ucbvax!mark Tue May 27 23:39:00 1980 uux bug : NET.v7bugs A bug in uux prevents the - option from working with binary files. To fix it, in uux.c, search for "fputs". (It's in an if (pipein) {.) replace the fgets/fputs loop by while ((c = getc(stdin)) != EOF) putc(c, fpd); and declare c somewhere to be an int. (I put the line register int c; right after the if (pipein).) Fixing this bug will allow the new uusend program, which will be released shortly, to work, allowing the transfer of binary files across indirect uucp links. >From unc!smb Thu May 29 19:44:57 1980 at bug : NET.general The 'at' command insists on creating the spool file in mode 644, regardless of your umask setting. Thus one is unable to create confidential requests. >From swd Thu Jun 26 10:58:16 1980 uucp bug : NET.general In distributed v7 uucp, if the USERFILE grows to over 15 lines, uucico will die. Fix: in chkpth.c chg line 14 from struct userpath Upt[15]; to struct userpath Upt[MAXUSERS]; As distributed, MAXUSERS is 20. Chkpth will check and complain if USERFILE has more lines than MAXUSERS. >From swd Thu Jul 10 10:42:51 1980 mkconf bug : NET.v7bugs Some time ago a bug was reported in scanf relating to scanning the format string "%d%c". (This bug is fixed in the duke version of stdio.) It seems that mkconf.c REQUIRES this bug in order to work. Thus we suggest the following fix to mkconf.c: diff mkconf.c.good mkconf.c.original 107c107 < " trap; br7+10. / 11/70 parity\n", > " trap; br7+7. / 11/70 parity\n", 739,740d738 < if (n == 0) < n = sscanf(line, "%s%s%ld", keyw, dev, &num); >From sid!cf Thu Jul 10 22:33:51 1980 Unix alive on P-E 3240: NET.general Wollongong Unix has just been installed on a Perkin Elmer 3240 at the University of Melbourne. It is alive and well running two users. Those tired of VAX delivery times or Unibus Adapter troubles can take heart. More info later. >From vax135!ucbvax!cory:optvax:horton Fri Jul 11 01:11:04 1980 ucbopt lives : NET.general The optvax at UCB, on the Berknet, has been added to the news network. This vax is a private vax with a few research projects going on on it. It is connected off the ucbcory machine, corresponding to the physical configuration of the Berknet. Mark Horton >From trt Wed Aug 13 09:48:33 1980 col : NET.v7bugs The buffer-flush bug in col(1) that was mentioned in previous news is due to using an automatic (local) variable for buffering stdout: char fbuff[BUFSIZ]; should be changed to static char fbuff[BUFSIZ]; (exit() also works since main() will not return before flushing.) Col(1) is just one of several V7 programs with this flaw. In the Duke version of stdio one can bypass the problem with setbuf(stdout, SYSBUF); where SYSBUF is a flag indicating buffering is desired. >From vax135!ucbvax!cory:optvax:jimbo Mon Sep 29 20:40:00 1980 Spice & Splice mail aliases: NET.general We are creating mail aliases for distribution of occasional messages of interest and reporting of bugs for both the Spice and Splice circuit simulation programs. This is not really for user consulting but to make it easier to report bugs or find out what has been fixed already. Interested parties who would like to put a name on one or both should send a note to: esvax.spice@berkeley (over ARPA-Net) ucbopt!spice (over "uucp") or esvax.splice@berkeley (over ARPA-Net) ucbopt!splice (over "uucp") These aliases should be used for all incoming messages. Jim >From decvax!shannon Tue Nov 11 17:26:58 1980 DEC on Usenet : NET.general DEC now has a Unix system on the Usenet uucp network. Anyone with questions about or problems with DEC hardware and it's relationship (interaction) with Unix, feel free to contact us. We are members of the Telecommunications Industry Group (TIG or Telco) of DEC and are actively involved with Unix on current and new DEC hardware. Currently, we are routing all Usenet traffic through duke. If necessary or desirable, we could poll other systems as well. For now, mail duke!decvax!person. Our network names, etc. are below, feel free to contact us. decvax!shannon - Bill Shannon (formerly of Case Western Reserve Univ.) decvax!aps - Armando Stettner From stargate!mark@cis.ohio-state.edu Thu Oct 18 08:43 PDT 1990 To: usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: Re: Usenet backbone Date: 18 Oct 90 11:05:51 EDT (Thu) From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton) Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 5 > There were two "backbones" -- the physical backbone, and the > "political" backbone. Mark was indeed the ancestor of the physical > backbone, and I was the originator of the "political" (i.e., > decision-making) backbone. I guess my earlier mail didn't make that > distinction clear. This is news to me. At some point I handed off the backbone to Spaf to keep an official list and ceased to worry about it myself. I don't think there were ever two separate backbones. (Of course, the proposals I made for a jawbone and funnybone notwithstanding.) Mark From spaf@cs.purdue.edu Thu Oct 18 10:50 PDT 1990 To: mark@stargate.com (Mark Horton) Cc: usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: Re: Usenet backbone <9010181105.AA10961@stargate.COM> Date: Thu, 18 Oct 90 12:43:49 EST From: Gene Spafford Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 6 The two backbones were the same, after a while, but I was the one who started using the the "backbone" as a group to talk about naming, directions, etc. I guess I'm not explaining this very well....or maybe our recollections are really different.... --spaf From werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu Thu Oct 18 12:48 PDT 1990 Posted-Date: Thu, 18 Oct 1990 14:14:05 CDT Date: Thu, 18 Oct 1990 14:14:05 CDT From: Werner Uhrig To: Gene Spafford Cc: mark@stargate.com (Mark Horton), usenet.hist@weber.ucsd.edu Mailer: MM v0.88 Subject: Re: Usenet backbone Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 7 > I don't think there were ever two separate backbones. Gene did not say "2 separate" ... I guess what it all means is that wereas you were "physical" (had a spine? banged your head against the wall? :-) Gene turned it into a political exercise (no backbone?)... thus 2 "kind of" backbones existed, one after the other ... today? bone-meal .... :-) From henry@zoo.toronto.edu Sat Oct 20 21:03 PDT 1990 From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Sat, 20 Oct 90 23:55:51 EDT To: Usenet history list Subject: Re: Usenet History Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 8 Bruce Jones suggested I might want to join this, and pointed me at the list archives. Herewith some brief comments on random points... > (BT) Net goes international (Canada) (Spencer, Templeton) Actually, if we are being picky, the first (I think) international Usenet site was a machine whose name I can't even remember: the Unix system that Ron Gomes ran at BNR Ottawa. The reason you've never heard of it is that I don't think anything was ever posted from it; it was a read-only system for all practical purposes. It faded and died later, when Ron left BNR. Utzoo was second by a couple of months. I can date that quite precisely if people are interested: I've still got our archive tapes. > idea originally at our "backbone" meeting at the Atlanta Usenix. > (Present were Horton, Pleasant, Adams, Auton, Heiby, Fair, Woods, > Beals, Spencer?, Jackson (Curtis), and me... Yup, I was there, although I don't think I said much. > Here is some old mail about renaming the mod groups to mainstream. Incidentally, a major reason offered at the time for merging the "mod" and mainstream name spaces was that it would make it easier for other groups to "go moderated", something that was expected to be frequent. I was against the merger and predicted that "going moderated" would essentially never happen. I think I can claim victory on this one. > ... Talk was the only top-level domain > added specifically to allow admins to not carry groups -- the pariah groups. > This was done (if I remember correctly) because it was a lot easier than > simply trying to make them go away. An interesting side note on this is that almost everyone agreed that talk.suicide -- whatever it was called in its previous life -- was dumb and should go away during the renaming... but it was known to be the plaything of people who were considered dangerous if hassled, so leaving it in was the better part of valor. > ...to do this on a Friday night before leaving for San Francisco > Usenix 2 days later, so I didn't even know I had all that mail until > I'd been gone a week. Actually, this is a good example of Natalie's Law, which Ron N. enunciated for us in Atlanta when we were scheduling the Great Renaming: "never set major cutover dates on or near major holidays". You want to make big changes when everybody's at work, ready to deal with the consequences. So the original schedule, which proposed change days on July 1 (Canadian holiday, and too close to the US holiday) and Sept 1 (right in the middle of the World Science Fiction Convention) was delayed two weeks. > Yes - I remember Armando's announcement of $250k/yr but can't recall > which conference it was... San Diego, 1983. Here's what my old notes say about it: Speaking of Usenet bills, \fIdecvax\fR's phone bill last year was $250\|000! They average 13 hours a day of long-distance calls. The main problem was characterized as ``Armando is too soft-hearted about letting new sites connect...''. I can't complain too much, since we were among said sites... initially with manual dialing at 300 baud! These soft youngsters :-) have no concept of the joy with which we greeted our first 1200-baud modem -- it had an **AUTODIALER**. By common consent, getting it installed and working took priority over everything else... Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry From stargate!mark@cis.ohio-state.edu Sun Oct 21 19:54 PDT 1990 To: usenet.hist@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: Usenet History Date: 21 Oct 90 22:35:13 EDT (Sun) From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton) Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 9 > > (BT) Net goes international (Canada) (Spencer, Templeton) > Actually, if we are being picky, the first (I think) international Usenet > site was a machine whose name I can't even remember: the Unix system that I can't remember this either. utzoo appears on the 1/1/82 map along with watmath and both look well established, but they aren't on the 6/81 map. By the way, the 7/82 map does indeed show the backbone (with heavy lines), I just missed it before. It's certainly possible that Spaf and I had different ideas about what was going on with the backbone. Perhaps he felt he was creating something else from scratch. I remember telling people who asked what the responsibilities of a backbone host were, and I gave them the usual set about 2-3 links to other backbone sites (if possible), responsive SA, latest software, able to fund the link, etc. Then I remember Spaf adding people to the list who met these criterea, and feeling surprised. Perhaps he considered it a separate backbone, but I thought it was the same one. In any case, I didn't see any problem and I considered the backbone to be in his hands from then on. Mark From henry@zoo.toronto.edu Sun Oct 21 22:07 PDT 1990 From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Mon, 22 Oct 90 01:01:32 EDT To: usenet.hist@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: Usenet History Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 10 > ... utzoo appears on the 1/1/82 map along with > watmath and both look well established, but they aren't on the 6/81 map. Look more closely: utzoo is on the 1 June 1981 map. (Copy on request.) My records say we joined the net on 13 May 1981. I think that is the date of our new-site posting, although I'd have to dig in the archive tapes to be sure of that. The oldest article I have handy -- my report on the V7 ldiv/lrem bug -- is dated 21 May. I'm certainly willing to have utzoo considered the first international site; just thought I'd mention that the BNR site has a weak claim on the title. Its feed, like our initial one, was from duke. If anyone cares, I can probably dig up date and site name. Given that it never announced itself and never posted anything, one could argue about whether it really counts. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry From stargate!mark@cis.ohio-state.edu Mon Oct 22 06:40 PDT 1990 To: usenet.hist@ucsd.edu Subject: Re: Usenet History Date: 22 Oct 90 09:28:34 EDT (Mon) From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton) Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 11 > > ... utzoo appears on the 1/1/82 map along with > > watmath and both look well established, but they aren't on the 6/81 map. > > Look more closely: utzoo is on the 1 June 1981 map. (Copy on request.) So it is - connected to duke, not decvax as I'd originally thought. My mistake. Mark