UNIX CHANGES
(Differences between Bell UNIX & Standard Ver. 6)
compiled by Mike O'Brien

1)

Space allocation for buf, file, inode, proc, text, and u split out into separate files (see notes).

2)

New "aging" parameter in block I/O puts a freshly written-out DELWRI block on the tail of the av-list (see notes).

3)

spl5's have been changed to spl6's in mch.s.

4)

Location 0 traps to "trap()" in case of hardware glitch (trap type 15).

5)

On 45's: kernel text is write-protected; stuff above "_end" is removed from kernel address space (presumably to catch accidents).

6)

"sysfix" has been changed to use long ints and lseek(); should work on systems >32K.

7)

In bio.c, several things sleep at pri+1 instead of pri...see notes.

8)

There are now two swap buffer buf structs instead of one, indexed by register.

9)

dh.c has special checks for 15cps, for what looks like machine-machine communications.

10)

RAW mode now permits 8-bit transmissions, at the expense of delays.

11)

Instead of using the control tty for propagating QUIT and KILL signals, a "process group" is created for the purpose of propagating such signals. See notes.

12)

20 files may now be open per process, but files FCLFILE (=15 currently) onward are closed on an "exec".

13)

The internal "printf" routine now saves its last batch of characters output in an internal message buffer for examination.

14)

User and system times, and most other 2-word quantities, are now "longs".

15)

There is a sort of disk instrumentation installed. It keeps track (in each driver) of which disks are currently busy, total number of accesses, and total words transferred for each controller. "clock.c" then sorts these into 32 cartesian bins (4 controllers vs. 4 machine states) on the basis of who's busy, and what the machine state is.

16)

A "ttyoutput('\n')" is done upon receipt of a KILL keypress. Also, a constant DLDELAY is added to timeouts for DL stuff to allow for double-buffering in the DL hardware.

17)

File system superblocks now contain a file system name and pack name.

18)

Some sort of process accounting into a disk file has been added. Turned on/off by the super-user via a special sys call, every process that runs gets times, id's, and other stuff recorded.

19)

Unimplemented, but present (see notes): some sort of sorting routine to permute each group of 24 blocks to be interleaved by about 3. Don't use it-- see notes.

20)

Scheduler priority shuffling is now different, and "lbolt" gets woken up every second. Timeout table overflow now causes a panic.

21)

Logic error fixes in iget.c: have to do with freeing blocks from a truncated inode. Also, an iput(u.u_pdir) gets done if inode allocation fails.

22)

"Estabur" now takes a 4th arg, RW or RO (for read-only text segment).

23)

"Sureg" is rather shorter, and rather different.

24)

The scheduler gets woken up when core is freed. It sleeps when there isn't enough core for the selected swapped process. It gets woken up once every second in any event.

25)

Signals are now kept as bits in a word, and several have been eliminated. Several can therefore be pending at once. Only 16 signals can therefore be defined.

26)

Writing user I-space is now allowed, if the text is being used exclusively.

27)

pri=0 can't be disturbed by signals any more.

28)

Everybody SLEEPs now - WAIT state has been abandoned.

29)

The process table is now linked-list, though some searches are still done linearly through the table. New panic: "running a dead proc".

30)

Bug fix in "setpri()": p>curpri should be p<curpri.

31)

The scheduler now looks for the oldest process to toss it out, or for one that's been in 2 sec when the current one has been out 3 sec.

32)

u.u_segflg now differentiates between user I&D spaces.

33)

"Exec()" args are now kept in a pseudo-file in swap space. Hence, there is no limit on simultaneous EXEC's. It still panics when it runs out of swap, though, so arg lengths are still limited (to 10 blocks' worth presently).

34)

There is a "type 405" file which when exec'ed overlays only the text portion. The exec fails if: not separated and text sizes aren't exactly the same, or if there are arguments in the exec.

35)

First 10 bytes (instead of 8) are now read in. Includes an "entry location" word, which if non-zero really works: proc starts up there.

36)

Lets you know if init proc dies.

37)

The "u" struct no longer gets swapped on exit(). Instead, relevant stuff is saved in the zombie's proc table entry instead, as an overlay.

38)

On fork(), sys makes sure there's enough swap space to swap max size core image, to lessen chances of running out.

39)

Inodes are locked up during actual reads and writes (sys2.c).

40)

Some later V6's apparently required inode mode to allow writing even on "creat()". Early ones didn't have that. Anyway, it's fixed back.

41)

Overseek can now give "file too large" error.

42)

"Swap I/O error" panic has been moved to bio.c.

43)

Super-user can now exec a file regardless of its execute permissions.

44)

There is a "tell()" sys call which returns the file offset pointer for the argument file descriptor.

45)

The "access()" system call checks access permissions on the real id's of the process regardless of the effective ones. Doesn't return stats, just does an internal "access()" to set u.u_error. .ne 4

46)

Changes to "unlink()" in sys4.c:

a)

panic("unlink") removed.

b)

Mounted-on files can't be unlinked.

c)

"BUSY" shared-text files can't be unlinked.

47)

"smdate" call has been removed entirely.

48)

"alarm()" and "pause()" system calls are in to provide a user-mode timeout capability.

49)

"out of text" is no longer a panic: the process gets killed and a printf() happens.

50)

A pure text segment is no longer swapped out on initial execution, if there is core around for separate text allocation. If not, an "xswap()" is done.

51)

To do this, there are new routines analogous to plock() and prelse(), called xlock() and xunlock(), for text segments. Text segments now have flags for locked and unlocked, and writable/written into, etc.

52)

11/70 memory parity errors are reported via printf() and a recovery attempted. Parity on any other machine causes a panic.

NOTES

by Ken Thompson

1)

Separate definition and declarations of tables: a more portable C will require that there be only one space definition in a group of programs. This has to do with loader restrictions that are on some notable big blue machines.

2)

Aging: an old bug on delayed writes. A buffer will age normally until it hits the end of the av-list. At that time it is turned into an asynchronous write. The bug is that when the asynch-write finishes, the buffer is put back on the head of the av-list; thus spending double time in the cache.

3)

bio sleep on pri+1: another old bug. When 2 processes are waiting on the same thing (buffer in one case and swap block in another), and one is waiting completion while another is waiting to use the thing, a single wakeup will cause both to be scheduled at the same pri. If the one waiting on completion wakes up first, everything is fine, but if the one waiting to use the block comes up first then there are 3 context switches where one would do.

4)

Process groups: the process groups are now a more dynamic notion; mainly they do not need to be tied to a tty structure. The only new use of this is in my network code where a "listener" needs to create a new process group. There is no current way to set up a new group. The reserved sys call is for this purpose. You can lose the control of your teletype if a process without a controlling teletype (daemon or something) opens your teletype.

5)

Children times: the times in the system are now declared long so some explicit code is taken out. Times is different in that the parent times are now 32 bits rather than 16. This causes some trouble with "time" and "sh".

6)

In the code in closef, the wakeups on pipes need to be a little farther down to prevent rare race conditions between reading a pipe just as it is being closed.

7)

The sorting of the disk blocks by the shell sort routine is commented out. It's so elegant that I hated to delete it outright, but in fact, it's quite a loser. I meant to delete it from the diff so that no one would be led astray.