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From: hwh@cup.portal.com (Harold W Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: A book on the design of the UNIX operating system
Message-ID: <15428@cup.portal.com>
Date: 5 Mar 89 20:41:35 GMT
References: <302@ge1cbx.UUCP> <1335@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk>
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Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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In article <302@ge1cbx.UUCP> gerald@ge1cbx.UUCP (Gerald Aden) writes:
>A co-worker mentioned a book on the design of the UNIX operating system
>that puts Bach's book to shame.  He didn't know the name of the author or
>the exact title of the book but thought that it was written by some guy in
>Australia.  Does anyone know of such a book and whether or not it is still
>available?

jim@strath-cs.uucp writes :
>The "book" you mention is actually two volumes. One is a complete
>listing of the V6 kernel source code and the other is a commentary on
>the code. There are also chapters on the PDP11 architecture and its
>instruction set. This was produced by John Lions of the University of
>News South Wales in Australia. It is based on his course notes from
>an advanced operating systems course he used to teach in the (pre V7?)
>days that AT&T/Western Electric allowed universities to teach UNIX
>internals.
>
>It was only distributed with the release tapes by Bell Labs to sites
>with V6 and maybe V7 source licencees. Since it contains proprietary
>information (kernel source), the volumes are not for sale and never were
>generally available. As far as I'm aware, no publisher has had the two
>books for sale. You had to have a source licence to get a copy through
>Bell Labs and that was the only legal source (excuse the pun!) of copies.

One of our employees who went to Cal-State Northridge around 4 years ago
had a copy, so they were still being used there at the time.

Hank Hankins				hwh@cup.portal.com
Point of Sales Systems
Camarillo, CA