20 Aug
2021
20 Aug
'21
2:02 p.m.
On Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 2:26 PM Peter Allan via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
The idea of using an RA81 drive as it is bigger sounds
like a simple
solution, but does it actually give a larger /usr partition? Even though an
RD54 drive is not huge, most of it is not taken up by the root partition
plus the /usr partition, but is available for use as (on the video at
least) /user1.
I will give it a try after the weekend and see what happens.
I was going to try tonight. The dksizes.c table suggests that it is 10MB
instead of 8.5MB on the RD54. Yet someone else said it was smaller, so I
wanted to check....
Warner
Cheers
Peter Allan
On Fri, 20 Aug 2021 at 17:38, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
http://ftp.fibranet.cat/UnixArchive/Distributions/DEC/Fred-Ultrix3/setup-3.…
On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 11:50 AM Peter Allan via
cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
be
I just installed Ultrix-11 3.1 using the
ultrix31.tap file from
https://pdp-11.org.ru/files.pl?lang=en
which is the location from the comments in Stephen's Machine Room video
on
YouTube that I think started this thread.
It installed just fine, but just like the video, I ran out of space on
/usr.
/usr was usually tight back in the day.
> How can I make a larger /usr partition? Is it possible to do this at
> installation time? There did not seem to be an option for this. Can it > done by using an additional disk? That would
seem likely, but not what
a
> system manager back in the 70's or
80's would expect to need to do,
> especially as there is a relatively large amount of space left to
create
/user1.
In the 70s and early 80s, it was not at all uncommon to have multiple
disk drives mounted to add up to enough space, especially to put user
files on their own device to keep them from competing with free space
in the system areas. Also, older, smaller disks were often cheaper
than the newest/largest disk drives, or systems would be put together
from repurposed hardware rather than purchasing new. For a single
data point, my employer bought a new RA81 in 1984. For 424MB it was
$24,000. Most machines had a _lot_ less disk in those days. Our main
UNIX machine was an old 11/750 (2MB RAM) with 2x RK07 (28MB each). It
was quite a jump when I put Ultrix 1.1 on an 11/730 w/RB80. The CPU
was 30% slower, but it had 5MB of RAM and a 121MB disk, so as a
machine that spent most of its time with a single user (me), it was
fine.
When disks were routinely 1-30MB (RK05... RK07 or RP03), it was
totally common to have 2-3 disks on a machine.
All that said, I looked over this install write-up and it seems to
assume you have one disk and it slices and dices with default sizes...
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 noted the options for installing software using
soft links to other
locations. Was that the preferred method when installing additional
software?
That was done, as was mounting an entire second disk for /usr. One of
the challenges is making sure you have enough tools accessible on the
boot device to bring the machine up far enough to mount the additional
devices. This is part of why there are system tools in /bin,
/usr/bin, etc. You could depend on the contents of /bin being there
before /usr was mounted. Also, traditionally, programs in /bin were
statically linked so that you didn't have to have specific libraries
available at the time.
The simplest solution, of course, is just get a bigger disk, but where
that wasn't possible (which was most of the time), people did use soft
links or multiple spindles to aggregate enough space to get by.
Back in the day, I struggled to get enough disk space to install
2.9BSD on an 11/24. Two RK07s would have been a luxury. I had an
RL02 (10MB) and I think maybe an RL01. I could get the initial
restore to work but I didn't have enough space to rebuild my kernel.
-ethan