After 22 Years, 386BSD Gets An Update (386bsd.org)

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After 22 Years, 386BSD Gets An Update (386bsd.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday October 8, 2016 @07:34PM from the jumpstarting-Jolix dept.

386BSD was last released back in 1994 with a series of articles in Dr. Dobb's Journal -- but then developers for this BSD-based operating system started migrating to both FreeBSD and NetBSD. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The last known public release was version 0.1. Until Wednesday, when Lynne Jolitz, one of the co-authors of 386BSD, released the source code to version 1.0 as well as 2.0 on Github.

386BSD takes us back to the days when you could count every file in your Unix distribution and more importantly, read and understand all of your OS source code. 386BSD is also the missing link between BSD and Linux. One can find fragments of Linus Torvalds's math emulation code in the source code of 386BSD. To quote Linus: "If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."
Though it was designed for Intel 80386 microprocessors, there's already instructions for launching it on the hosted hardware virtualization service Qemu.

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No Trump? Climate change? Why the techie stuff? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 19:58 · Score: 1, Funny

Where's the news that matters?
Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 20:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

... What? Somebody makes 386BSD and releases version 0.1... and then works not only on a full, shiny 1.0, but also on a whole new generation (2.0)... and don't release the two latter ones? Just develop them and sit on them? What?! That's the real news. Not even an attempt to explain it, of course, so one is left with a hundred questions instead of learning anything.
1. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by freeze128 · 2016-10-08 20:49 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe now it runs on a 386SX....
2. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 21:58 · Score: 0
  
  IIRC it worked fine on my 386SX. I also ran Everex's ESIX Sys V and later SVR4 on that box. Slow, but it worked.
3. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by bkmoore · 2016-10-08 22:04 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe now it runs on a 386SX....
  Wasn't it possible with some 386 SX chips to drill a tiny hole in the CPU, and make it into a DX? Or was that an urban myth, like drilling a headphone jack into your new iPhone?
4. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:08 · Score: 0
  
  I guess they did make a 1.0 release with Dr. Dobb's Journal - and it has been lost in history. But I am glad it's back now.
5. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by hairyfeet · 2016-10-08 22:12 · Score: 2
  
  Considering the SX had a 16 bit bus compared to the DX's 32 bit I really do not see how drilling a hole would magically change that.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
6. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:12 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You'd be surprised at how much code is out there that haven't been released just because there is a minor bug to be fixed or some strange problem to be solved.
  A lot of the people I know have hundreds of projects that have been on hold or abandoned for things more interesting.
  Also, the difference between 0.1 and 1.0 might not be as big as the numbers hint at, they are just arbitrary version numbers after all.
  As we know from software like Windows, Foxit Reader and PSP it even happens that the best version isn't the one with the highest version number.
7. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by TheRaven64 · 2016-10-08 22:20 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  He's probably thinking of the 486DX. The original 486 had an FPU, but the yields were low so Intel split the line into the 486SX (no FPU) and the 486DX (with FPU). Some motherboards let you plug in a 487 as an external FPU, but this was often really just a 486DX that took over completely. The 486SX was identical to the DX, but had the FPU disabled. It was possible to reenable it, and it would typically work most of the time. For gaming, this was fine (the occasional floating point error probably didn't make a difference) and was a cheap way of getting much more performance.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
8. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:46 · Score: 1
  
  Kiddo, I am really serious concerned of your reading ability. SERIOUSLY. It clearly reads "The last known public release was version 0.1" It should be so easy to understand that 1.0 and 2.0 are versions that were not released to public until today ?? Finish your school before comment.
9. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 02:19 · Score: 0
  
  The question is "why", idiot.
10. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 02:32 · Score: 0
  
  How can this get a +5, Informative, when there are two huge errors in this post that make it completely misleading?
  1) The line wasn't split because of low yields. It was a marketing decision. By disabling the FPU (and later not including it at all) in one of the lines, Intel was able to sell part of 486 chips at a lower price but still profitably to people who wouldn't have been willing to buy the DX at full price. Alternatively phrased, the DX could be sold at a higher price than if the SX had not existed. Car analogies are overdone, so let's go for a coffee analogy. Your coffee shop around the corner sells an espresso for €1, extra sugar for 15, chocolate chips for 20, milk or whipped cream for 40 and hazelnut sprinkles for 50 not because the coffee sometimes doesn't taste of anything or the sugar sometimes just isn't sweet, but because it allows them to charge every customer the full price he's willing to pay. (And yes, sometimes the (normally disabled) FPU on an SX was bugged. But that wasn't because Intel turned 486s with a bugged FPU into SXs but because at least near the end of the 486's life the FPU of SXs simply wasn't tested. And interestingly, SXs actually cost more to produce than DXs.)
  2) The 487 was always a sightly modified DX. Motherboards switched off the SX completely so a bare FPU could never have worked.
11. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Jesus_666 · 2016-10-09 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  386BSD got a 1.0 release in 1994. It's possible that that release didn't contain the full source code or that TFS is wrong.
  
  --
  USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
12. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Rockoon · 2016-10-09 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  I guess they did make a 1.0 release with Dr. Dobb's Journal - and it has been lost in history. But I am glad it's back now.
  Now to bring back Dr Dobb's....
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
13. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  I have the 1.0 ISO, it comes with enough source code to rebuild the installed system.
14. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 04:37 · Score: 2
  
  1.0 was released as CD-ROM, but by that time everyone was running NetBSD, FreeBSD or Linux on their x86 boxen. In the circle of maybe 10 people that actually care about historical stuff like this it was known there was a 2.0, but unknown where and if it was ever released by the Jolitzes.
15. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  1.0 isn't lost. Just that the number of people actually caring and running it (in emulation) is about 10. The source and binaries in the original distribution should be freely distributable, the full ISO probably isn't. Hence the reluctance to host it publicly. If you know the right people you can get it through a coughing man in a raincoat together with the wiped first distribution of NetBSD,
16. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Bing+Tsher+E · 2016-10-09 04:52 · Score: 2
  
  I think there's an InfoMagic CD-ROM set with this 386BSD version and also a pre 1.0 NetBSD on it. It's over there somewhere in that pile against the wall here.
  The Jolitzes also wrote a book on the codebase that appears to still be available.
17. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 06:57 · Score: 0
  
  The 486SX was released to put the hurt on AMD's 386s. IIRC Intel sold the early 486SX at a loss with a disabled math co just to try to undercut AMD.
18. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by citizenr · 2016-10-09 08:51 · Score: 1
  
  >It was possible to reenable it
  no, it was not. 486SX were made using different mask set and had no FPU inside. Im guessing you are to young to ever own real hardware, and read about reenabling fpu on some random website :(
  
  --
  Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
19. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 10:19 · Score: 0
  
  Yes it was. Initially. Only later runs had the entire FPU removed.
20. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by fisted · 2016-10-09 12:10 · Score: 1
  
  That was an April fool's joke in a German computer magazine, all including a drilling mask.
  
  --
  CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
21. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 16:03 · Score: 0
  
  The Jolitzes also wrote a book on the codebase that appears to still be available.
  Five books, actually!
  Volume 1: The Basic Kernel
  Volume 2: The Virtual Memory System
  Volume 3: Sockets Operating System
  Volume 4: TCP/IP Networking Protocol
  Volume 5: 386BSD: From the Inside Out
22. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by unixisc · 2016-10-09 16:58 · Score: 1
  
  So how different/better/worse is this than the spinoff distros - FreeBSD, NetBSD and everything since?
23. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-10 05:31 · Score: 0
  
  Better because simpler, worse because obsolete.
  Lacks features of FreeBSD, security of OpenBSD and portability of NetBSD. But it should be good for learning, like Minix.
24. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by hairyfeet · 2016-10-11 10:48 · Score: 1
  
  Were there any Intel processors you could re-enable features on? The only chips I can recall that you could do that were the old AMD Barton core Durons were you could roll the dice and re-enable the cache with a pencil trace and of course the socket AM2/AM2+ Athlon and Phenom X2/X3s that you could re-enable the disabled core and see if they were any good or not.
  I'm not saying that there wasn't ever any Intel chips that were moddable but I honestly can't remember any.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
25. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by raremediumwelldone · 2016-10-11 11:25 · Score: 1
  
  All I can think of is this http://www.notebookreview.com/...
26. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by hairyfeet · 2016-10-12 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  Well that was one I never heard of and I thought I'd heard of most, hmm learn something new every day. the only thing I could think of WRT Intel isn't really a "chip mod" so much as a socket swap.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
27. Re:Bizarre and nonsensical summary as usual. by raremediumwelldone · 2016-10-12 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  I don't imagine it was terribly popular (the Pentium-M pin mod/overclock). I only knew about it because a co-worker (successfully) tried it on an old notebook his dad had given him. He couldn't get anyone to take it on craigslist and basically figured "If it dies oh well".
Finally by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 20:07 · Score: 0

That's what we need to start migrating to, after the Linux 4.8 bug fiasco.
1. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 20:12 · Score: 0
  
  Finally a BSD that can't possibly run systemd.
2. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:45 · Score: 1
  
  At least it doesn't run sysvinit either.
3. Re:Finally by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  ..and none of that "shared libraries" crap.
4. Re: Finally by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 11:57 · Score: 0
  
  If you're interested, have a look at how NetBSD does init with rc.d.
5. Re:Finally by unixisc · 2016-10-09 17:01 · Score: 1
  
  Uh, what's wrong w/ any of the other BSD distros - FreeBSD, NetBSD, et al?
Re: No Trump? Climate change? Why the techie stuf by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 21:10 · Score: 0, Insightful

I'm getting ads for things I can't use. Like vote for something in Mountain View, or a US bank thing, even though I'm in Australia. I thought ads were supposed to be targeted these days!
Re: No Trump? Climate change? Why the techie stu by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 21:13 · Score: 0

I also meant to add that the ad was covering the summary! Good going there...
Quote Bug by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 21:59 · Score: 0

Quote patch:
--- linus-quote.txt.orig 2016-10-09 03:00:00 -0700
+++ linus-quote.txt.new 2016-10-09 03:01:00 -0700
@@ -1 +1 @@
-If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened.
+If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux probably never would have happened.
1. Re:Quote Bug by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 01:50 · Score: 0
  
  386BSD predates Linux for a good couple of months.
2. Re:Quote Bug by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 02:24 · Score: 0
  
  ...what's your point?
3. Re:Quote Bug by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 03:01 · Score: 0
  
  Linus didn't just wake up one day and decide to fart out Linux in a week or two. If you connect the dots, Linus was working on it for a fairly long time before he released, and the Jolitzs were working on 386BSD for a long time; and then they released within a few weeks of each other.
  There was a fair amount of uptake of both of them in the early days. And if Bill and Lynn Jolitz hadn't gone MIA for over a year and otherwise been fairly anti-community building, the Free Operating System landscape might look very different today.
  I don't give Linus credit for writing a decent kernel, but I do give him credit for building a community around it.
4. Re:Quote Bug by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 06:19 · Score: 0
  
  Let's see your kernel. Oh, that's right...you don't have one!
5. Re:Quote Bug by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 08:09 · Score: 0
  
  Oh, but I have written a kernel. And a whole BSD-based distribution around it. I'm just not sharing it with you. Dumbass.
6. Re:Quote Bug by erik.opnemer · 2016-10-16 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  I'm just not sharing it with you. Dumbass.
  BSD in a nutshell.
Why bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:01 · Score: 0

ROTFLMAO.
Someone needs to do a recursive diff between 0.1 and 1.0. I wonder if they took any of the patches that were sent to them before everyone gave up and forked NetBSD and FreeBSD?
1. Re: Why bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:48 · Score: 0
  
  Forked? afaik non of them are forks of 386bsd but of sysv unix, hence the lawsuit from att
2. Re: Why bother? by augustw · 2016-10-08 23:36 · Score: 1
  
  Not forks of System V Unix, but of the various NET BSD releases Berkley made, at the end of the CSRG.
3. Re: Why bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 02:53 · Score: 0
  
  What you "know" is incorrect.
  NetBSD and FreeBSD absolutely were forks of 386BSD, which itself was largely derived from the Berkeley Net 2 code base – Bill Jolitz just filled in the missing pieces.
  (FWIW, I actually ran 386BSD, and later FreeBSD, on my home machine.)
4. Re: Why bother? by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  For various legal reasons FreeBSD pretended it was based on 4.4BSD-Lite for a long time. The NetBSD guys went as far as settling out of court and deleting 386BSD stuff from their cvs history. See eg. http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdwe...
5. Re:Why bother? by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  From what I remember when I got 1.0 to boot in emulation they went their own way. There were a few very essential bits I had to pull from the 0.1 patch kits to get the 1.0 kernel running somewhat stable.
6. Re: Why bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 07:37 · Score: 0
  
  There's a radio interview with the Jolitzes in which they describe how they got involved with BSD.
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:11 · Score: 0

Other essentials:
- contact number for a good psychiatrist
- friends that aren't True Believers who can give you a sense of perspective
- a hobby without "survival" in the description
- a cat (however you think life's shit should be dealt with, the cat can teach you better)
- a history textbook
- popcorn
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 22:29 · Score: 0

-condoms, I plan on stretching your mom's anus to previously unknown proportions and I don't want any burnt mule in my peepee hole.
Hope for Hurd yet? by Mostly+a+lurker · 2016-10-08 22:52 · Score: 3, Funny

Hurd comes from the same era. I think some people are still tinkering with it.
1. Re:Hope for Hurd yet? by tengwar · 2016-10-09 12:00 · Score: 1
  
  Still going, and you can get a Debian distro. They've got rid of that 2 Gb limit on disk (originally it was linked to the addressable RAM), but it's still 32 bit and things like USB don't seem to be there yet. Most people seem to be running it in emulation rather than on the metal..
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 23:34 · Score: 0

- Lockpicks
- Alcohol still (for fuel and barter)
- Slingshot
- Archery equipment
- Fish antibiotics
- Opium poppies
- Hand tools (maddock, axe, shovels, etc.)
- Mechanic's tools (socket wrenches, spanner wrenches, etc.)
- A winch on the front of the ATV and 4x4
- Board games
Internet's early days by Neo-Rio-101 · 2016-10-08 23:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

Interesting. An ISP I worked at used BSDi in it's formative years.... the proprietary version of BSD from which 386BSD originated.
The ISP runs FreeBSD now, of course.
Speaking of which.... FreeBSD 11 is due for release any day now....

--
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
1. Re:Internet's early days by augustw · 2016-10-08 23:44 · Score: 2
  
  386BSD and BSDi both originated, independently, from the NET & NET/2 releases of BSD from the CSRG.
  Neither was a derivative of the other.
  NetBSD and FreeBSD are descendents of 386BSD.
2. Re:Internet's early days by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 09:11 · Score: 0
  
  Well, somewhat independently. Bill Jolitz worked at BSDi before starting 386BSD, and they both used some of his 386 porting code.
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-08 23:43 · Score: 0

Field telephones
A well with hand-operated pump
Radiation monitoring gear
Bio-diesel production equipment
Seeds
Chickens
Goats
Maybe micro-hydro to supplement the solar setup
Wow, it is actually small enough to read by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 00:26 · Score: 0

I thought this was one of those gimmick posts, but I was actually able to understand the whole thing after reading like 15 files or so.
Man, how much they bloat our OSes these days with feature creep.
Re:Now is the time to prepare by ananamouse · 2016-10-09 00:47 · Score: 0

Learn to play a musical instrument well enough to earn supper.
learn to repair sails
dead tree books on edible wild plants
old Encyclopedia Britannicas - anyone know how many it will take to stop a 50 cal round? I once determined empirically that a 150 grain bronze point 30-06 will penetrate 2.5 color (tube type) television sets.
It's just a tribute to a 90's star! by aglider · 2016-10-09 01:03 · Score: 1

You all insensitive GUI clods!

--
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
1. Re:It's just a tribute to a 90's star! by 0dugo0 · 2016-10-09 05:42 · Score: 1
  
  Hey, 1.0 and 2.0 come with X386, you insensitive CLI clod!
  https://github.com/386bsd/386b...
2. Re:It's just a tribute to a 90's star! by aglider · 2016-10-09 07:59 · Score: 1
  
  I have got into graphics only after 2001, you pixelated insensitive clod!
  
  --
  Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Re: Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 02:36 · Score: 0

Donald?
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 03:32 · Score: 0

It's easier just to move to another country. That's what I did when that war criminal GWB became president.
congratulations by jmccue · 2016-10-09 03:35 · Score: 1

I think this is pretty cool, will keep an eye on it.
I poked around /usr/include, maybe time to change _TIME_T_ to at least "unsigned long" due to 2038 ?
1. Re:congratulations by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 05:13 · Score: 0
  
  Comgratulations, parent is still a virgin!!
2. Re:congratulations by Gornkleschnitzer · 2016-10-11 06:32 · Score: 1
  
  Parent is a virgin!? How did that happen?
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Etcetera · 2016-10-09 04:45 · Score: 0

Extensive first aid kit (at minimum, take a Red Cross first aid and CPR class)
... Also, take care of any medical and dental issues NOW. Doctors will be in high demand when TSHTF.
If you want something effective after TSHTF -- and also effective in virtually any other large scale disaster (the "earthquake or other emergency" of EBS fame) -- go beyond this and take a Wilderness First Responder class and get certified. If you have spare time and can find a convenient class, take an EMT class (~128 hours) and then take an EMT-to-Wilderness EMT upgrade instead.
Wilderness protocols go into effect when you're more than 2 hours away from "definitive care" -- that is, what most of the time think of as a local, functioning hospital in a city. Rather than just maintaining the stability of the patient for transport, in the wilderness/backcountry/whatever you have to worry about possible issues coming ahead (hypothermia, decompensated shock, etc.), and improvising equipment from whatever might happen to be around you. In short: it's about problem solving.
A problem solving medic who can improvise as needed in the field is a valuable asset to any group that needs to cope with unexpected events. They're not a doctor, or a combat surgeon, but you can bet they'll be wanted.

--
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Re:Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 05:50 · Score: 0

Thank you for leaving, we are better for it.
This just in... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 06:26 · Score: 0

Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is living
Re: Now is the time to prepare by Anonymous Coward · 2016-10-09 07:35 · Score: 0

Daffy!
386BSD 0.1 2016 remix by RLiegh · 2016-10-09 08:45 · Score: 1

So you know those albums that were recorded in the 60's and 70's that the bands or record companies suddenly re-release with shitty mixes or that now include "lost tapes" of the engineer belching or other detritus? You know ..the stuff that's released for no other reason than to extend the copyright.
Something about this release brings that phenomenon to mind for some reason...