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Unix v6 Install Scripts

This directory contains tools that install Unix v6 from images of the original distribution tapes. All operations are normally controlled by the top-level Makefile.

Requirements

In order to build this repository, you will need:

  • Bob Supnik's excellent SIMH simulator for the PDP-11 (and many other interesting architectures). Your distribution probably has appropriate binaries, but you can find it at http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ as well.
  • curl
  • expect

Notes and Lessons Learned

The doc/ subdirectory of this repository contains some notes on the porting process and lessons that I have learned during porting. Some of this is well-documented elsewhere, but some of it appears to be lore that perhaps remains only in the minds of Unix hackers from a bygone era or digital archaeologists like myself.

Pristine-RK

To install a "pristine" v6 image from the original distribution tape onto virtual RK05 disks, run make pristine-rk. This will create three RK05 images in images/, containing the root, source, and documentation images. The only difference between these images and the data taken directly from the tape image is the creation of some necessary device nodes in /dev, creation of the directory /usr/doc, and a modification to /etc/rc to automatically mount rk1 on /usr/source and rk2 on /usr/doc.

To boot the pristine install after its creation, run pdp11 configs/pristine-rk.ini. At the sim> prompt, type boot rk0 to load the Unix boot loader. It will prompt you with @, which is waiting for the name of a kernel. Type rkunix to boot the distribution kernel. From there, you can log in as root with no password. A sample interaction follows.

$ pdp11 configs/pristine-rk.ini

PDP-11 simulator V3.8-1
Disabling XQ
sim> boot rk0
@rkunix

login: root
#

RL/RK

To create an RK05 image from the pristine distribution install that is capable of booting on an 11/40-family machine and can mount an RL disk, run make rlrk. This will create a new RK05 image in images/ called rlrk_root.rk05 that has a kernel rlrkunix with RL01 support (RL02 is currently broken). To boot this kernel after its creation, run pdp11, then set cpu 11/34 256k (or 11/40, if you prefer), attach rk0 images/rlrk_root.rk05 and then attach an RL01 image of your choice on rl0. After booting, you can use /etc/mount /dev/rl0 /mnt to mount the image on /mnt.

This image is otherwise the same as the pristine images. The only difference is the new kernel (and related artifacts) and RL device nodes for rl0 in /dev.

The RL driver in this image is taken from the "Tim Shoppa" 11/23 RL02 images from the TUHS archive. Because it will not compile on the base v6 distribution, the file scripts/rl.ed modifies the driver for the older C syntax. The file scripts/mkconf.ed augments the mkconf kernel configuration program to understand RL configuration options.

Pristine-RL

To create an RL01 image from a pristine distribution install that is capable for booting on an 11/40-family machine with an RL01 drive on RL0 as its boot and root volume, run make pristine-rl. This will create a new RL01 image in images/ called pristine_root.rl01 that has a kernel rlunix with RL01 support.

Like the Pristine-RK and RL/RK images, this image is as close to a pristine image as possible. It contains the sources for the RL driver, the newly compiled RL-capable kernel, the appropriate device nodes in /dev, and very little else.

This uses the same RL driver as RL/RK.

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