Installing 4.3 BSD NFS Wisconsin Unix

Requirements

You will need the following materials to put together a 4.3 BSD+NFS Wisconsin Unix installation:

• A working perl interpeter to make the tape images.
  
• A copy of gzip.
  
• A method of extracting the boot file from either the binaries (tar/gzip) or uudecode to extract it from here.
  
• A compiled binary of vax780 from SIMH, along with the vmb.exe again from SIMH.
• The Mkdisttap.pl program, you can take the settings from Quasijarus as the names & block sizes match up.

You will need the following files from any 4 BSD archive from the 4.3BSD directory. I have used the files from mirror.cc.vt.edu. You can use whatever method you like to download them, wget, a web browser etc..

stand.gz
miniroot.gz
rootdump.gz
usr.tar.gz
srcsys.tar.gz
src.tar.gz

Preparing for installation

With the files downloaded you will need to uncompress them all and then create the tape file.

The following command will decompress the tape files.

gzip -d *.gz

The tape needs to be created with the mkdisttap.pl program. Simply run the program and redirect it into a file called uwisc.tap .

% ./mkdisttap.pl > uwisc.tap
% ls -l uwisc.tap
-rw-r--r--  1 Neozeed  None  74337572 Apr  7 19:40 uwisc.tap

Next you will need the boot program. The boot program from 4.2 BSD works with 4.3 BSD. I have uploaded a copy onto this wiki in uuencoded format. To decode it, simply access the article, and copy the contents of the quoted text (the begin/end part INCLUDING the begin & end segments) and save it to a text file. Then you will need to run the uudecode file as follows:

% ls -l boot42.uue
-rw-r--r--  1 Neozeed  None  9117 Apr  7 19:42 boot42.uue
% uudecode boot42.uue
% ls -l boot42
-rw-------  1 Neozeed  None  6600 Apr  7 19:42 boot42
% file boot42
boot42: data

Boot 1.

We are going to use the following config file to start the first phase of the installation. Save the following configuration into a file such as 'install.ini'. Since we are going to boot directly into the miniroot the rq1 disk will hold the installation target. Since the 'normal' way to install is to install from tape onto the first disk, we will have to add a device file uppon boot for the second disk, and be sure to point the xtr program to the second disk.

install.ini

set rq0 ra81
at rq0 miniroot
set rq1 ra81
at rq1 rq.dsk
set rq2 dis
set rq3 dis
set rp dis
set lpt dis
set rl dis
set tq dis
set tu dis
att ts uwisc.tap
set tti 7b
set tto 7b
load -o boot42 0
d r10 9
d r11 0
run 2

Booting the emulator

You then simply run the emulator and pass it the config file.

% ./vax780  install.ini

VAX780 simulator V3.8-1
RQ: creating new file
loading ra(0,0)boot
Boot
: ra(0,0)vmunix
290188+89696+102928 start 0x12f8
4.3 BSD UNIX #3: Mon Dec 29 11:54:56 CST 1986
    tadl@brie:/usr/src/bsd/4.3/sys/GENERIC
real mem  = 8388608
SYSPTSIZE limits number of buffers to 134
avail mem = 7136256
using 134 buffers containing 524288 bytes of memory
mcr0 at tr1
mcr1 at tr2
uba0 at tr3
hk0 at uba0 csr 177440 vec 210, ipl 15
rk0 at hk0 slave 0
rk1 at hk0 slave 1
rk2 at hk0 slave 2
rk3 at hk0 slave 3
uda0 at uba0 csr 172150 vec 774, ipl 15
ra0 at uda0 slave 0
ra1 at uda0 slave 1
zs0 at uba0 csr 172520 vec 224, ipl 15
ts0 at zs0 slave 0
dz0 at uba0 csr 160100 vec 300, ipl 15
dz1 at uba0 csr 160110 vec 310, ipl 15
dz2 at uba0 csr 160120 vec 320, ipl 15
dz3 at uba0 csr 160130 vec 330, ipl 15
Changing root device to ra0a
WARNING: clock gained 81 days -- CHECK AND RESET THE DATE!
erase ^?, kill ^U, intr ^C
#

---

Life interrupts again... I'll have to finish later.. but it's just like a 4.3 BSD install.