On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 1:14 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > http://ftp.fibranet.cat/UnixArchive/Distributions/DEC/Fred-Ultrix3/setup-3.1.txt > > > > I've installed older versions of UNIX where you had to explicitly set > > up disks and partitions (where you _could_ resize partitions). Prior > > to restoring the contents from tape. That didn't appear to be as easy > > with this installer script. > > I think the intent of the Ultrix-11 3,x install is to make it as > simple as possible to get a system up and running on the hardware > available in the day and then with time and experience one could > create more advanced systems.
Yes. I was around in this era and learning to do a from-scratch install was an ordeal. DEC did package things up with a set of questions (vs knowing which lines of which files had to be hand-edited) and incorporated all the supported disks and tapes and serial muxes, etc. All DEC, of course, so if you had 3rd-party hardware you were out in the wilderness (we provide such a 3rd-party intelligent serial device into this environment so I know how hard it could be). If you had a standard DEC box, it was fairly push-button. That was part of their magic. It mostly worked. > I hope, eventually, to make a system > with four RA81 disks with root and usr occupying entire RA81's and > two more for User files. Wow! That's way bigger than our biggest machine at work in 1993. We had that 11/750 (that I upgraded to 8MB including adding the extra memory address line on the backplane) and it pinged back and forth between VMS 4.5 most of the time and Ultrix-32 3.something as needed for customers. It had a dedicated Fuji 160MB drive that mapped as two RM03s and a Fuji Eagle that used the RM05 device entry but patched for full capacity (400MB) plus that $26,000 RA81 - Total of just under 1GB on 3 spindles and two controllers (Unibus and CMI bus). When this box was running UNIX, I was the only user so I usually did that off-hours so everyone else could use VMS for workday tasks. > sadly, using an RA81 still only gives you: > /dev/ra01 9598 2849 6749 30% /usr Tiny! > Those were the days. Sadly, most people in the business today know > nothing about them. The forgetting of this environment is why recently there's a push to collapse all UNIX system binaries into one place because "kids today" have never been on a system where the operating system is spread across multiple spindles for space/cost/performance reasons. Everyone is used to massive drives where the OS takes up 1% or less of the entire disk and you only really worry about space for logfiles or /var/tmp so that userland programs that leave big messes don't crush the boot volume with endless spewage. With variable-zone disks (1990s tech) people stopped bothering to try to tweak performance on cylinder boundaries because you used to have 14 heads and track-to-track switching was 10X faster than stepping. Some parts of the old UNIX dance I do not miss. ;-) -ethan
