V9 Availability

[Naim Abdullah]

There has been some discussion here about how to get V9. Here
is a note on it that was posted in comp.os.research. Also, sometime
ago Doug Gwyn discussed some of the goodies available in V9. Send me
mail if you want a copy of his article.

		      Naim Abdullah
		      Dept. of EECS,
		      Northwestern University

		      Internet: naim at eecs.nwu.edu
		      Uucp: {oddjob, chinet, att}!nucsrl!naim
==========================Cut Here=========================================
From: reggie at pdnbah.uucp (George Leach)
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 87 11:43:07 CDT
Subject: BTL research UNIXes

In article <4125 at sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> you write:
>School has started  at  most  universities,  so  all  researchers
>should   be   back   and   available.    It  is  time  to  revive
>comp.os.research.
>

[DL raving ...]

>...  Certainly as
>researchers we can't be content with the  state  of  things:  4.4
>will  be  the  last  BSD,  Bell  Labs  isn't releasing any of its
>research UNIXes -- I'd like to hear from the  (MACH  |  Sprite  |
>DASH | Clouds) folks about this.
>

       Regarding BTL releasing any of its research UNIXes:  Until 
about the middle of September I was employed by Bell Communications
Research in good old New Jersey.  Since the later half of 1983 I
had been working with 8th Edition UNIX on a VAX 11/750 which we
had kept under divestiture grandfather clauses.  I doubt we have
much claim to 9th Edition and beyond.  I was also teaching at the
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in lovely Newark, NJ at
the same time.  Someone there once asked me about obtaining 8th Ed
for use by NJIT.  So I sent the following e-mail message to Brian
Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie to get the details.  Their responses
also follow:

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    I have been working with a pre-divestiture version of the 8th
Edition UNIX and I understand that it has been supplanted by the 9th
Edition (Gerard Holzmann refers to it in his article "PICO - A Picture
Editor", AT&T Technical Journal).  I was recently asked by a colleague
of mine at the New Jersey Institute of Technology about the availability
of the 9th Edition for university use.  I understand that the 8th Edition
was in use at some universities.


    So my question is in three parts.  First, is the 9th Edition of
UNIX available to universities?  Second, on what hardware configurations
is it currently supported?  And third, given that the answer to the
first question is yes, how would university representatives go about
requesting a copy of the 9th Edition UNIX?


    Thank you for any information that you could provide to me regarding
the 9th Edition UNIX.  I realize your time is valuable and I don't wish
to take up too much of it.


                                    George W. Leach

                                    Bell Communications Research
                                    Piscataway, New Jersey


PS:  The machine indra was moved to a new building some time ago and
the return connection may not be updated, so you can try routing the
return mail thru "bellcore!indra!reggie".



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>From bellcore!research!bwk  Sat Aug 15 19:19:47 1987
Received: by bellcore.bellcore.com (smail2.5)
	id AA21407; 15 Aug 87 19:19:47 EDT (Sat)

The 9th edition is really just a clean up of the 8th edition,
with a much nicer manual.  it runs only on vaxes, and there
is a fairly convoluted booting process that requires some
antique version of bsd if i understand it right.

there are maybe a dozen universities that have it -- each licence
requires a fair song and dance here, and some reason why we should
go through the effort, since it is not automatic.  i guess the
right person to ask if there is a serious interest at NJIT is
dennis ritchie, or perhaps doug mcilroy, who handled most of
the shepherding through the release labrynth originally.


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>From bellcore!research!dmr  Tue Aug 11 02:16:04 1987
Received: by bellcore.bellcore.com (smail2.5)
	id AA27583; 11 Aug 87 02:16:04 EDT (Tue)
Subject: 9th edition

The system we currently use is indeed called the Ninth Edition
(because we have made a new edition of the manual).  However, we
haven't gathered the energy to create a new distribution, for
universities or anyone else.  There are about 10 university
licenses for the 8th edition; only about half use it actively.

The 8th edition, as we have it, works only on the VAX.  There
has been some work done toward making it go on the Sun, but
the people who did it seem far from wanting to let it escape,
at least so far.

In principle, it is quite possible for NJIT to get a V8 license.
However, they should be warned that it takes a reasonably large
amount of work to get it going (the bootstrapping procedures
are pretty horrendous) and also a certain amount of dedication
to keep it going.  Although it will communicate with other systems
over ethernet, etc., the mere fact that it is neither BSD nor System V
means extra work to understand it and care for it.

If I haven't frightened your colleague away, the formal license
request should be sent to my director, Al Aho (rm 2C560,
AT&T-BL, 600 Mountain Ave, Murray Hill NJ 07974).  However,
it is probably better if you have him or her get in touch with
me first, so we can talk about what they want from the system.

	Dennis Ritchie


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      I passed this information on to the appropriate people at NJIT,
but I have no idea if they ever took it any further or not.  For a little
more info on the Research UNIX see World UNIX & C, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1987,
page 7.


George W. Leach					Paradyne Corporation
{gatech,codas,ucf-cs}!usfvax2!pdn!reggie	Mail stop LF-207
Phone: (813) 530-2376				P.O. Box 2826
						Largo, FL  34649-2826