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SDF Public Access Unix System

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Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#61

Post by zie »

mghackerlady wrote: post #55
hanslub42 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody needs or wants a unix shell account in this day and age I do. But I do not need just any Unix shell account, I need old and weird ones! I develop and maintain a portable utility (rlwrap) that is aimed at users of older software, who are often also using older or even obsolete systems. For years, I used Polarhome ( http://www.polarhome.com/ ) as a "dinosaur zoo" of obsolete systems (thans, Zoltan!) For every…

one of these days, I want to buy: a powerpc xserve (running OSX server) a sparc box (on solaris) an alpha box (on either VMS or Digital Unix) a pa-risc box (hp-ux) a modern power box (Rocky or AIX) an itanium box (running either VMS or NT depending on what the alpha is running) a pi cluster (plan 9) and a commodity x86 server (running OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Debian, Hurd, Redox, Serenity, reactos, and AROS). and make a MOA…

I have had many of these machines at various points in time, some even running on the public internet. They are a giant PITA to keep running and alive. This is why they don't usually last very long if they ever even get to public access(most don't).

Unless it's a super fun hobby for you, I wouldn't plan on this being very fun after the first dozen random crashes.

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#62

Post by mghackerlady »

avhception wrote: post #25
kristopolous wrote: post #15

Finally got to log into a vms system! I was looking to do that over 20 years ago but never could find one. Somehow I still remembered most of the shell syntax in a book I read about it probably in 2001. Don't ask me ... I don't know how either. Got bored in about 10 minutes but still, another box checked off!

I've only ever read about VMS in an historic context, like Wikipedia articles and blog posts. DEC and VMS are not well known. That's a shame, considering how much influence they had, especially on WinNT.

I don't know about VMS specifically (more people will just know it as the thing the VAX runs), but DEC is very well known to anyone in the computer space.

The PDP series brought us Unix and GNU, and the VAX was the only mainframe capable of competing with IBM. DEC was the largest terminal manufacturer (they made the vt100 and vt220. if you've ever run a terminal emulator, chances are it's emulating one of those or a machine that did). They created CP/M (and by extension DOS). DEC is very well known

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#63

Post by mghackerlady »

zie wrote: post #61
mghackerlady wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of these days, I want to buy: a powerpc xserve (running OSX server) a sparc box (on solaris) an alpha box (on either VMS or Digital Unix) a pa-risc box (hp-ux) a modern power box (Rocky or AIX) an itanium box (running either VMS or NT depending on what the alpha is running) a pi cluster (plan 9) and a commodity x86 server (running OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Debian, Hurd, Redox, Serenity, reactos, and AROS). and make a MOA…

I have had many of these machines at various points in time, some even running on the public internet. They are a giant PITA to keep running and alive. This is why they don't usually last very long if they ever even get to public access(most don't). Unless it's a super fun hobby for you, I wouldn't plan on this being very fun after the first dozen random crashes.

I'm mainly doing it for selfish reasons, I want build farms for these platforms. The pubnix is just a way of giving back to this wonderful community

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#67

Post by hanslub42 »

electroly wrote: post #58
hanslub42 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody needs or wants a unix shell account in this day and age I do. But I do not need just any Unix shell account, I need old and weird ones! I develop and maintain a portable utility (rlwrap) that is aimed at users of older software, who are often also using older or even obsolete systems. For years, I used Polarhome ( http://www.polarhome.com/ ) as a "dinosaur zoo" of obsolete systems (thans, Zoltan!) For every…

I'm curious, do you know which virtual machines (i.e. what emulator and what OS) you would want? Does the software exist and it's just a matter of the time to set it up? Or is it harder to get ahold of all the necessary old software (even if you have the emulator)? Maybe in the modern age someone could make a "polarhome in a box" that offers a similar gamut of systems, but via preconfigured emulators that you can sim…

On Polarhome, I used QNX, SunOS/Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and OSX. Having those running under qemu would be quite the challenge.

Until now, I have used qemu (or rather qemu-system-aarch64 in combination with binfmt-misc) on Linux to emulate e.g a Raspberry pi running on arm64. This works very well, but for e.g. Solaris or HP-UX there is the extra hurdle of getting hold of bootable media that will not freak out in the unfamiliar surroundings of a qemu virtual machine.

I have never tried, and it is possible that I overestimate the difficulty...

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#68

Post by fleeno »

Suzuran wrote: post #54
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, the only place the VAX 380 exists is in a writing sample by Pearson Education. Otherwise, there is no evidence of DEC ever producing something called "VAX 380". https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/2/0/5...

It looks entirely made up because the procedure described is also entirely alien to me, and I had professional experience with both VMS and Ultrix when they were still supported by DEC. (And it's certainly not BSD...)

I know I just made it up! I have an 11/23+ and I'm guessing I was thinking of that 3!

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#69

Post by kstrauser »

mghackerlady wrote: post #59
kristopolous wrote: post #15

Finally got to log into a vms system! I was looking to do that over 20 years ago but never could find one. Somehow I still remembered most of the shell syntax in a book I read about it probably in 2001. Don't ask me ... I don't know how either. Got bored in about 10 minutes but still, another box checked off!

the VMS shell had so many good ideas. If i ever write a shell, I'm including VMS style abbreviations. If there is any modern POSIX shell that implements such a feature, let me know, because if there isn't I have to write one

Not quite the same, but fish shell has programmable abbreviations. I type “tf” and it expands that inline to “opentofu”. It use to say “terraform” before we upgraded; I didn’t even have to change the commands I type.

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#70

Post by pratyahava »

seblon wrote: post #7

I found a way to escape their shell (so you can run whatever you want), if you're not verified, it involves multiple steps to archive this. I mailed them 2x to their membership address, but since today no reaction. I asked also in their IRC. Just a question to HN: should I wait more, try again? Or should I simply publish the vulnerabilities somewhere? If yes, where? It's my first time that I found a vulnerability at…

maybe try to fix it for them as soon as you have the root access?
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