From: gossamer@glasswings.com.au (Bek Oberin) Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery Subject: Re: SysAdmin's Dream OS (Was: It's just NOT FAIR...) Date: 21 Feb 1996 22:33:43 GMT Organization: Computing Message-ID: References: <4e0j5v$hss@poseidon.tcp.co.uk> <4fh3gj$oua@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <4flr4k$k9v@Tandem1.opennet.net.au> <4fm4tk$k9m@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <4fo2j2$9r6@lace.colorado.edu> <4g1732$4di@suba01.suba.com> <4gdsuq$18f@osceola.cs.ucf.edu> In article <4gdsuq$18f@osceola.cs.ucf.edu>, Ethan Frolich wrote: >petro (petro@suba.com) wrote: >: Ok, to begin the cannonical list of all OS's that suck: >: VMS sucks. >: Solaris sucks. >: SunOS sucks. >: MS-DOS doesn't qualify, but sucks. [...] >: Windows 95 doesn't suck, it blows. >: Plan 9 sucks on lots of machines at once. >: Oberon is considered harmful, and sucks. >Okay. So what would you people consider to be a non-sucking OS? I'd like to submit Penix as the cannonical example of a non-sucking OS, I happen to have a stack of man pages from it sitting just here[1], but here's the development document for inspection: === Okay, here are some general notes on Penix, compiled from a stack of notes left over by the Penix Development team just before they all went to lunch about two months ago and never returned. if anyone out there has seen them, or may know of their whereabouts, or knows what happened to the payroll, or even if you'd like to join the Penix Development team, please mail me at arifel@melbourne.dialix.oz.au. Please note: there is no social stigma attached to joining the Penix Development Team, and i don't want to hear any more lame jokes about guys who need their Penixes developed. right? right. selected MAN entries: cfts completely fuck the system rcatpar randomly change all the passwords at random wi whatyouseeisprettypathetic interactiveEditor edmond page-oriented editor. a step down from a line-editor, this one treats text as page-sized chunks. rofl roll on floor laughing. not so much a system function as what the support staff do when you ask them if they still have last week's backups on tape somewhere. ispi shows some of the processes running, some of the users on the other lines, and sometimes even gives statistics on CPU usage. it's very context-sensitive. sssl suddenly swap serial lines with another user banan display a banana on the screen. taken from uselss/lib/ansi_art. crp crap filter - removes tildes from your SerIOus stream bollx `bollocks!' - ignore ctrl-x, -y and -z `break' flags stuffio use LZH compression for inter-task message packets (to save space) drump dump the rump file clrump clear the rump file flrump flub the rump file doobrie Do Operational bisynchronous reads (input) extended (we're not sure about this one ourselves) ftang find textfile and negative-gouge it gouge remove all the carriage returns from a file ported from MS-DOS pong let the other machines on the net know that you're there brap break all processes - send a ctrl-z to all active daemons, nyemphs and maenads. this isn't so much a `terminate the process' function, but rather a method of signalling to processes that aren't actually attached to serIOus lines, just to let them know that we are keeping an eye on them. exorcise terminate a process completely and utterly. kill it off, every last trace. we're not kidding here. finito. General Penix terms: walnut the heart of the Penix OS. at compilation, it is approximately 71 megabytes in size (depending on whether you have the development system or not), but this figure regularly oscillates between 67 and 83 meg, as the system `breathes'. It was written in interpreted BASIC, for ease of modification. daemon a process that detaches itself from your console session. unless you redirect the output from this daemon into a specified file, any output produced will appear out of various serIOus lines on the system at the daemon's discretion. aengel like a daemon, except a bit more polite. an aengel process will ask before it directs output to your serIOus line. it will generally do it anyway, but at least it asks first. nyemph a daemon process that can migrate from one file system to another, and will do so if its output has filled the filesystem that it started on. slippery little buggers. maenad like a nyemph task, but a little bit more attractive. sprite a very simple background task that does menial things like flash the cursor colours, play the sampled `beep' sound when you press control-g on the keyboard, and make that annoying click on the floppy drive as the OS checks to see if you have put in a disk yet. goelem a very powerful background task. also very stupid. they are usually started by the system itself, when the need arises to do something labour-intensive and boring - so boring, in fact, than none of the usual background tasks will touch it. you occasionally find goelem tasks wandering around after they have finished their task, too stupid to realise that they HAVE finished; pretty much all you can do about it is allocate them a very low time-slice (see the `motu' command) and hope that they don't get into any trouble, or try to kill them with the exorcise function. ogre like goelems, but nastier, harder to kill, a bit more intelligent and, like nyemphs, able to migrate to different filesystems as required. caenobites this is something we aren't particularly proud of here at Sunburne, but we think that you should know about, in the interests of safety. we will admit that the circumstances that led us to developing Penix are slightly unusual, and that there is quite a bit about this system that was, er, inherited. We're not saying that we stole it. but there are large areas of this system that we know nothing about, but which, when we remove them, the system stops. we don't know exactly what caenobite tasks do, but we have found that you can't kill them; you can't stop them; you can't even slow them down. whenever we use the motu command to alter their timeslice, they completely ignore it (this may be due to the fact that we think motu's orders are passed to the rest of the system by a caenobite task). they can be incited to remove other tasks by passing them a BOX_OPEN message packet, but they are best left alone. thank god there are usually only about four of them. networks: the Penix network philosphy is based on a `Master/Slave' relationship. Systems can be linked into networks that include hundred of machines, but generally, inter-machine communication is dominant/submissive. One machine makes a begging, whimpering request for a file from its `Dom', which must then establish which of its `Subs' has the file. It then issues a spank_IO order for the file; if the data packet isn't sent within the system default timeout period, the Dom issues a whip_IO. If THAT doesn't work, the Dom grabs the nearest (by address) Sub by its bus, shakes it silly, and applies the logical equivalent of nipple-clips. address format: denotes that the machine is a Dom Server. / Dom:Rhonda>>Galoot_Cologne \ \ \ Net-clique name \ machine ID serviette: a server with less than 300 meg of hard disk space. drooler: printing is controlled by the drooler daemon, who dribbles text out of the assigned printer ports when it feels like it. if the drooling process is going too slow for your liking, it can be prompted by invoking any of the currently running caenobites. LNCs: Logical Nipple Clips. This is actually a variety of Worm process specifically designed to chase between machines on the net, prompting Subs to complete the most recently issued Spank_IO or Whip_IO command. Booting: one does not re-BOOT a Penix system; it is `re-shoed'. If you boot a Penix system, it will fall apart. Reshoe-ing involves locating the sock partition, socking it, then looking about for something that resembles a shoe-block (a disk-block with startup information on it). once located, the shoe-block is overlaid onto the sock partition and is `laced'. At the request of our user, we have incorporated dual shoe partitions, to enable disk mirroring. the System must always be re-shoed from the same partition; if you get the left-shoe and the right-shoe partition mixed up, then after re-shoeing, the system will take a few tottering steps and will then fall over. be extremely careful about modifying the lacing procedure, as it is quite easy to lace the two partitions together... as you can imagine, this can be VERY dangerous, and any system with its shoes laced together won't run very well. scanning the sock partition for a shoe block can be a time- consuming process; if the entire hard disk had to be examined, it could take days. an algorithm has been implemented that scans disk blocks at random, on the assumption that there will be more than one shoe block on the disk (this is a standard security feature - in fact, more than half of the disk's blocks are usually allocated as shoe-blocks, to save time when looking for one to shoe from). example of console messages on booting: Penix v37.019a ROMrev 76:e_beta (development) shoe in progress locating sock partition scanning SCSI bus ******* scanning st506 devices ** getting desperate scanning floppy drives ** getting really desperate scanning tape drive * sock located on tape drive *** CLEAN SOCK LOCATED *** scanning SCSI bus again ****** loading SCSI device driver scanning for shoe block at RANDOM .................................... .................................... .................................... .................... bingo left shoe located at cyl:00.head:15.sec:16 loading shoe block processing ...................................... ............. ignoring checksum errror overlaying sock partition lacing **** shoe partition LACED, Booting -------------------------------------------------------------------- walnut located, processing ..... done system boot, 17:29:04 25 March 1992 system ID: Dom:Rhonda>>Galoot_Cologne do you want to inhibit DAEMON processes at this time (default=n)? n do you want to inhibit AENGEL processes at this time (default=n)? n do you want to inhibit NYEMPH processes at this time (default=n)? n do you want to inhibit MAENAD processes at this time (default=n)? n do you want to inhibit SPRITE processes at this time (default=n)? n do you want to inhibit GOELEM processes at this time (default=n)? n do you want to inhibit CAENOBITE processes at this time (default=y)? y too bad. you can't. starting Daemons: spon spoo furph wrack wruin hobble castrate whats_all_this_then drooler starting Aengels: moroni goliad mikayel cefiar lucifuge_rofocale starting Nyemphs: dom_net_prep dom_net_enquire TOPY_server neubauten_server spk_server DVA_server NIN_server skinny_pup_server starting Maenads: *** Maenad table is empty starting Sprites: cursor_flash keyboard_click annoying_floppy_drive_noise starting Goelems: lif_dat_wait tote_dat_bail get_a_little_drunk starting Caenobites: pinhead butterball chatterer face atkins balberith channard this is a DOM net_device: initialising SpankIO WhipIO locating LNCs... done. locating sPURs... done. locating CONT... done. establishing cat_o_nine_tails netlink... done. locating subs: Sub:Harry_as_a_boy>>Galoot_Cologne Sub:Noxiuma_tapioca>>Galoot_Cologne Sub:Algonquin_Jane_Cowhoon>>Galoot_Cologne Sub:Obdullah_X>>Galoot_Cologne *** SpankIO Warning: no response from Sub:Harry_as_a_boy>>Galoot_Cologne *** Console Message from Caenobite Process ::pinhead:: :: the system... you booted it... we initialised, now you must :: work with us, taste OUR pleasure! :: :: we have such sights to show you! initialising serIOus lines 000 001 002 003 ...and so on. Penix directories: /typical <- defaults for various things like shell initialisation, flags to say if the system is a DOM or a SUB, and various other oddities like the penix_kickoff script file. /keymaps /keymaps /keymaps /keymaps <- system default keymap for wi /lib <- library files here, strangely enough /executeables <- executeables /uselss /der <- text files/notices here /executeables <- additional executeables live here /mungle <- not sure what this directory is for, but the system won't run without it. /whoops_a_daisy <- unallocated blocks here /ho_hum <- logfiles here /trash <- schedule tables for backgrounders /ephemeral <- temporary files /drooler /dribble <- temp dribble files from drooler process live here /help_files <- the man entries would be here, but our user thinks that `man' is sexist, so we called it help_files. Sunburne Computer, Inc. 25th March 1992 === gossamer. [1] This documentation was dreamed up by a friend of mine (several friends, actually) who go under the name of Nikolai. It's Not My Fault. -- : Bek Oberin - gossamer@glasswings.com.au : http://glasswings.com.au/gossamer/ : I can't say I've ever been lost, but I was bewildered once : for three days. -- Daniel Boone