Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 01:28:57 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au> Cc: wkt@tuhs.org, Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Caldera and the Ancient UNIX license Message-ID: <3C1DBAD9.67104EFA@mindspring.com> References: <20011216115556.A62493@monorchid.lemis.com> <200112160618.fBG6IcK23973@minnie.tuhs.org> <20011217072904.P73243@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Peter Jeremy wrote: > I'm specifically looking at 2.11BSD - which is architecturally UFS but > various sizes and constants are different (eg fewer direct/indirect > blocks in the inode). In some ways this simplifies things (it may be > possible to re-use much or all of the FreeBSD UFS code) but it also > confuses things (eg having two different struct dinode's defined, and > there will probably be be global variable/function name clashes). From memory, use of negative numbers to indicate indirect blocks and thus double the fields was also a recent addition by BSD 4.x. > In any case, I'm more interested in how to go about porting a new FS > into FreeBSD, rather than having Terry actually do the port for me. I'll write it up as the result of doing a port. I'd prefer something non-trivial. I could do BFS fairly easily, right now, since I have some disk images of BFS disks, and some SCO documentation. The SCO documentation on the S51K is not online since the Caldera takeover, it seems, though I have a number of installation disks for drivers for Interactive UNIX that I could use for the reference. The JFS is annoying, in that the minimal image size is 16M for a FS, since this is the smallest partition container for an aggregate, but it is also a possibility (though I will not be pulling down 16M disk images over my modem, and the need to run a local JFS, and thus risk claims of contamination is too great to cause me to pursue it now). The Trade Secret areguments are moot, for independent developement, or for redisclosure of a disclosure, though illegal, which was already made public (in fact, it is a First Ammendement right, which may be abbridged only by as a result of dire National Security interests, according to a recent Apellate Court ruling in the DeCSS case). The BSD 2.x UFS is attractive because it would be useful, as well as being close to another FS, and having (almost) the right license. I would be interested to know how it stacks up against the Net/1 and Net/2 UFS distributions (Net/2 was withdrawn by UCB as part of the USL/UCB settlement, but is still legally available elsewhere). > Last time I tried, I could mount a Tru64 UFS CD-ROM on FreeBSD, but > the box would panic fairly quickly when I tried to access the FS (I > didn't keep a close record and this was some time ago). This has potential, if you can physically give me a copy of a CDROM with one of these FS's on it, and some idea of the layout from an academic or other published source (for the purposes of reverse engineering, header files are considered published sources, for the most part, but check your license -- not the notice in the header files -- to be sure. Compaq has been rather more cooperative, in any case. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3C1DBAD9.67104EFA>