Talk:ITS Internals Manual - Revision history

Jnc: /* ITS 1.4 SYSJOB */ That does bring up some questions, though

2023-11-30T15:01:00Z

‎ITS 1.4 SYSJOB: That does bring up some questions, though

Larsbrinkhoff: System job description in 1.4 manual.

2023-11-30T09:30:04Z

System job description in 1.4 manual.

Larsbrinkhoff: /* Daemon questions */ Demonic answers.

2023-09-13T16:51:01Z

‎Daemon questions: Demonic answers.

Jnc: /* Daemon questions */ Some questions I have after the recent update

2023-09-13T15:29:49Z

‎Daemon questions: Some questions I have after the recent update

Larsbrinkhoff: /* External docs */ Don't know really.

2023-09-12T18:21:00Z

‎External docs: Don't know really.

Jnc: /* External docs */ Another minor puzzle

2023-09-12T17:59:59Z

‎External docs: Another minor puzzle

Larsbrinkhoff: A maze of twisty notes, all different.

2023-09-12T14:51:10Z

A maze of twisty notes, all different.

Larsbrinkhoff: /* External docs */ Yes, ITS files are split between doc and src.

2023-09-12T05:24:24Z

‎External docs: Yes, ITS files are split between doc and src.

Jnc: /* External docs */ Light begins to dawn over Marblehead, as we used to say

2023-09-12T04:35:39Z

‎External docs: Light begins to dawn over Marblehead, as we used to say

Jnc: /* External docs */ Thanks for the explanation

2023-09-12T03:18:05Z

‎External docs: Thanks for the explanation

@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
      directly due to the procedure originated orientation of almost all
      system routines.  Because of this a procedure was synthesized that
-     is actually a apart of the monitor and always runs in executive
+     is actually a part of the monitor and always runs in executive
      mode.  Known as the system job, it is scheduled [Sec 5.4] with
      lower priority than other procedures.  To aid in debugging ITS a
@@ Line 58: / Line 58: @@
      of user variables or for the system job's copy of constant parts
      of ITS.

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:30, 30 November 2023
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	: I don't think SYSJOB is a dragon because it's a job running exec mode. I avoid the term 'process' since I don't want to Unixify the ITS documentation when it already has the term 'job' which is used in the in-band documentation and source code.		: I don't think SYSJOB is a dragon because it's a job running exec mode. I avoid the term 'process' since I don't want to Unixify the ITS documentation when it already has the term 'job' which is used in the in-band documentation and source code.
	: Yes, it's a bit confusing that there is ''the'' 'system job' (SYSJOB), and other 'system jobs' that are normal user space jobs which are only different from having been started by the system rather than a user. I think by generic 'system job' I mean dragons + demons. (The spelling 'deamon' is used alongside 'demon' in ITS, but I think I can make a case the latter is official.) [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 18:50, 13 September 2023 (CEST)		: Yes, it's a bit confusing that there is ''the'' 'system job' (SYSJOB), and other 'system jobs' that are normal user space jobs which are only different from having been started by the system rather than a user. I think by generic 'system job' I mean dragons + demons. (The spelling 'deamon' is used alongside 'demon' in ITS, but I think I can make a case the latter is official.) [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 18:50, 13 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	==ITS 1.4 SYSJOB==
		+
		+	We have discussed the system job before. Here is what the 1.4 manual says (there is some more I didn't type). So far I only see the .CORE thing (labels SCOR and SCOREX) in ITS 138.
		+
		+	There are various tasks ITS would like to perform, most of which
		+	include input-output, which would be inconvenient to implement
		+	directly due to the procedure originated orientation of almost all
		+	system routines. Because of this a procedure was synthesized that
		+	is actually a apart of the monitor and always runs in executive
		+	mode. Known as the system job, it is scheduled [Sec 5.4] with
		+	lower priority than other procedures. To aid in debugging ITS a
		+	feature was added to the system job so that when it had no other
		+	tasks to perform it would compare constant parts of ITS against a
		+	copy it makes initially [Sec 7.5.1]. The following are some of
		+	the tasks the system job performs:
		+
		+	(1) Does .CORE's [Sec 5.3.1] for ITS to make room for more blocks
		+	of user variables or for the system job's copy of constant parts
		+	of ITS.

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:51, 13 September 2023
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	Does ATSIGN DRAGON just fork off subsidiary daemons, and then exit? I didn't see it shown on the PEEK output of a running ITS. If not, does it run in the SYS JOB?		Does ATSIGN DRAGON just fork off subsidiary daemons, and then exit? I didn't see it shown on the PEEK output of a running ITS. If not, does it run in the SYS JOB?
		+
		+	: You're right about that, I'll have to check... After all CHANNA; RAKASH programs have started, it just goes away. The most canonical dragon is "Puff the Magic Dragon" which does accounting and runs periodic programs (hourly, daily, weekly, etc). Another one is the Name Dragon, but it was historically only running on AI.
		+	: Nothing except ITS (monitor) code runs in the SYSJOB. Looks like it's exec mode too. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 18:50, 13 September 2023 (CEST)

	Speaking of which, is the latter a 'dragon'? If not, the ITS dragon/demon terminology has a hole? That's why I prefer the 'system process'/daemon terms; they are more carefully defined, with major functional differences between the two. (Demons seem to be daemons that are created on demand; while dragon and daemon seem to mean about the same thing.) And there seems to be some confusion over whether it runs in user or exec mode - or does it use both? [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 17:29, 13 September 2023 (CEST)		Speaking of which, is the latter a 'dragon'? If not, the ITS dragon/demon terminology has a hole? That's why I prefer the 'system process'/daemon terms; they are more carefully defined, with major functional differences between the two. (Demons seem to be daemons that are created on demand; while dragon and daemon seem to mean about the same thing.) And there seems to be some confusion over whether it runs in user or exec mode - or does it use both? [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 17:29, 13 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	: I don't think SYSJOB is a dragon because it's a job running exec mode. I avoid the term 'process' since I don't want to Unixify the ITS documentation when it already has the term 'job' which is used in the in-band documentation and source code.
		+	: Yes, it's a bit confusing that there is ''the'' 'system job' (SYSJOB), and other 'system jobs' that are normal user space jobs which are only different from having been started by the system rather than a user. I think by generic 'system job' I mean dragons + demons. (The spelling 'deamon' is used alongside 'demon' in ITS, but I think I can make a case the latter is official.) [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 18:50, 13 September 2023 (CEST)

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:29, 13 September 2023
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	FYI, the ITS repository issue tracker is full of random notes. Every program that has been added comes with an issue that usually has some notes about it, and issues are classified with various labels. There are also pure notes about random topics: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues?q=label%3Anote Now, this is very haphazard and often rambling, but chances are, if you search for some keywords something interesting may pop up. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 16:50, 12 September 2023 (CEST)		FYI, the ITS repository issue tracker is full of random notes. Every program that has been added comes with an issue that usually has some notes about it, and issues are classified with various labels. There are also pure notes about random topics: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues?q=label%3Anote Now, this is very haphazard and often rambling, but chances are, if you search for some keywords something interesting may pop up. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 16:50, 12 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	: I will look through them when I get a chance, to look for things to put in the outline. [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 17:29, 13 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	==Daemon questions==
		+
		+	Does ATSIGN DRAGON just fork off subsidiary daemons, and then exit? I didn't see it shown on the PEEK output of a running ITS. If not, does it run in the SYS JOB?
		+
		+	Speaking of which, is the latter a 'dragon'? If not, the ITS dragon/demon terminology has a hole? That's why I prefer the 'system process'/daemon terms; they are more carefully defined, with major functional differences between the two. (Demons seem to be daemons that are created on demand; while dragon and daemon seem to mean about the same thing.) And there seems to be some confusion over whether it runs in user or exec mode - or does it use both? [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 17:29, 13 September 2023 (CEST)

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 So I started to convert external links to use, wherever possible, the its/tree/master/src|obj versions, and discovered another minor puzzle. I dutifully inserted a reference to  [https://github.com/PDP-10/its/tree/master/doc/sysdoc/usr.102 a file in its/tree/master/doc/], and when I clicked on it, to make sure I had gotten it right, the page that turned up had been forwarded to [https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/usr.102 blob/master/doc]. So what is 'blob', and what is its relationship to 'tree'? (If this is some Githubism, you can see I know little of Github!) [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 19:59, 12 September 2023 (CEST)
 ==Random notes==
 FYI, the ITS repository issue tracker is full of random notes.  Every program that has been added comes with an issue that usually has some notes about it, and issues are classified with various labels.  There are also pure notes about random topics: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues?q=label%3Anote  Now, this is very haphazard and often rambling, but chances are, if you search for some keywords something interesting may pop up. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff|talk]]) 16:50, 12 September 2023 (CEST)

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:51, 12 September 2023
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	:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)		:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	==Random notes==
		+
		+	FYI, the ITS repository issue tracker is full of random notes. Every program that has been added comes with an issue that usually has some notes about it, and issues are classified with various labels. There are also pure notes about random topics: https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues?q=label%3Anote Now, this is very haphazard and often rambling, but chances are, if you search for some keywords something interesting may pop up. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 16:50, 12 September 2023 (CEST)

← Older revision		Revision as of 05:24, 12 September 2023
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	::: In trying to clean up places where I had used 'its-vault', I discovered that 'its/tree/master/src' contains program sources, and 'its/tree/master/doc' contains documentation! Makes sense, but ''initially'' slightly confusing to those of use who were historically used to having them all thrown in together, especially as directory names are repeated in both! Although I do appreciate not having to look through AI:, MC:, etc to find what I am looking for! [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 06:34, 12 September 2023 (CEST)		::: In trying to clean up places where I had used 'its-vault', I discovered that 'its/tree/master/src' contains program sources, and 'its/tree/master/doc' contains documentation! Makes sense, but ''initially'' slightly confusing to those of use who were historically used to having them all thrown in together, especially as directory names are repeated in both! Although I do appreciate not having to look through AI:, MC:, etc to find what I am looking for! [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 06:34, 12 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	:::: That's right. 'doc' also contains PDFs and other documentation. In retrospect the division between ITS in-system source and documentation has not been of great value, but sometimes it's convenient to grep either doc or src for the kind of information you're after. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 07:24, 12 September 2023 (CEST)

	:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)		:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:35, 12 September 2023
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	:: Thanks for explaining that. I'll make sure to prefer the 'its/tree/master/src' branch. (In trying to find it, I got slightly confused by the 'its/tree/master/doc' branch, which appears to contain many of the same directories!)		:: Thanks for explaining that. I'll make sure to prefer the 'its/tree/master/src' branch. (In trying to find it, I got slightly confused by the 'its/tree/master/doc' branch, which appears to contain many of the same directories!)
		+
		+	::: In trying to clean up places where I had used 'its-vault', I discovered that 'its/tree/master/src' contains program sources, and 'its/tree/master/doc' contains documentation! Makes sense, but ''initially'' slightly confusing to those of use who were historically used to having them all thrown in together, especially as directory names are repeated in both! Although I do appreciate not having to look through AI:, MC:, etc to find what I am looking for! [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 06:34, 12 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
	:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)		:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)

← Older revision		Revision as of 03:18, 12 September 2023
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	: The "its-vault" repository holds a raw unsorted dump of files that were released from CSAIL archives during an early period of the restoration project. That is why it has many duplicates and several versions of files. From this, a curated selection is put in the main "its" repository. And sometimes bug fixes and updates are made to the "its" files, so they may not be the pristine historical data. If you can see it, it's not private. If you can find it in "its" that's the preferred location, but sometimes older versions are useful and can be linked from the "its-vault" repository. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 08:44, 11 September 2023 (CEST)		: The "its-vault" repository holds a raw unsorted dump of files that were released from CSAIL archives during an early period of the restoration project. That is why it has many duplicates and several versions of files. From this, a curated selection is put in the main "its" repository. And sometimes bug fixes and updates are made to the "its" files, so they may not be the pristine historical data. If you can see it, it's not private. If you can find it in "its" that's the preferred location, but sometimes older versions are useful and can be linked from the "its-vault" repository. [[User:Larsbrinkhoff\|Larsbrinkhoff]] ([[User talk:Larsbrinkhoff\|talk]]) 08:44, 11 September 2023 (CEST)
		+
		+	:: Thanks for explaining that. I'll make sure to prefer the 'its/tree/master/src' branch. (In trying to find it, I got slightly confused by the 'its/tree/master/doc' branch, which appears to contain many of the same directories!)
		+	:: Off to get a nap, and hope my brain refreshes enough to do a good job out the framework. (And I have to reclaim material from [[Talk:Daemon]] too.) [[User:Jnc\|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc\|talk]]) 05:17, 12 September 2023 (CEST)