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"The seminal operating system Multics has been reborn," writes Slashdot reader doon386: The last native Multics system was shut down in 2000. After more than a dozen years in hibernation a simulator for the Honeywell DPS-8/M CPU was finally realized and, consequently, Multics found new life... Along with the simulator an accompanying new release of Multics -- MR12.6 -- has been created and made available. MR12.6 contains many bug and Y2K fixes and allows Multics to run in a post-Y2K, internet-enabled world.
Besides supporting dates in the 21st century, it offers mail and send_message functionality, and can even simulate tape and disk I/O. (And yes, someone has already installed Multics on a Raspberry Pi.) Version 1.0 of the simulator was released Saturday, and Multicians.org is offering a complete QuickStart installation package with software, compilers, install scripts, and several initial projects (including SysDaemon, SysAdmin, and Daemon). Plus there's also useful Wiki documents about how to get started, noting that Multics emulation runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Raspian systems.

The original submission points out that "This revival of Multics allows hobbyists, researchers and students the chance to experience first hand the system that inspired UNIX."

New submitter MikeatWired writes "If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. So who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn't, writes Bob McMillan. Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT in the early '60s, came clean about the earliest documented case of password theft. In the spring of 1962, Scherr was looking for a way to bump up his usage time on CTSS. He had been allotted four hours per week, but it wasn't nearly enough time to run the detailed performance simulations he'd designed for the new computer system. So he simply printed out all of the passwords stored on the system. 'There was a way to request files to be printed offline by submitting a punched card,' he remembered in a pamphlet (PDF) written last year to commemorate the invention of the CTSS. 'Late one Friday night, I submitted a request to print the password files and very early Saturday morning went to the file cabinet where printouts were placed and took the listing.' To spread the guilt around, Scherr then handed the passwords over to other users. One of them — J.C.R. Licklieder — promptly started logging into the account of the computer lab's director Robert Fano, and leaving 'taunting messages' behind."

davecb writes: "Louis Pouzin, the inventor of datagrams, just contributed an article to Multicians.org on the creation of the first shell, "runcom," on CTSS and later Multics." Multicians is one of the coolest sites I've seen -- if you think the odd Atari 2600 is retro, look out. They also provided information on the Multics scheduler a little while ago.

davecb writes: "Louis Pouzin, the inventor of datagrams, just contributed an article to Multicians.org on the creation of the first shell, "runcom," on CTSS and later Multics." Multicians is one of the coolest sites I've seen -- if you think the odd Atari 2600 is retro, look out. They also provided information on the Multics scheduler a little while ago.

Martin Pomije writes "This is a really interesting story illustrating how a shared resource can also be a communication channel. If you have any interest in software design or operating systems, the Multics web site is worth your time. Tom Van Vleck has obviously put a lot of time into this and deserves credit for making all of this information available. " It's like 10 years old, but it's really interesting.

Martin Pomije writes "This is a really interesting story illustrating how a shared resource can also be a communication channel. If you have any interest in software design or operating systems, the Multics web site is worth your time. Tom Van Vleck has obviously put a lot of time into this and deserves credit for making all of this information available. " It's like 10 years old, but it's really interesting.

davecb wrote to us with a short description of three of the Multics schedulers. The piece has some background information and history as well, which adds another element to the reading.