Source Code 1992 March/Source_Code_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_March_1992.iso/usenet/altsrcs/3/3299/OFILES.hist

Text File | 1991-05-07 | 6.0 KB | 129 lines

A history of ofiles
Dan Bernstein
4/6/91


1. Contributors to ofiles/fstat/pff

C. Spencer <??? at BBN> was the original author of ofiles.

Vic Abell <[e-mail]>
Dan Bernstein <[e-mail]>
Will Crowder <[e-mail]>
Tom Christiansen <[e-mail]>
Michael Ditto <???>
Viktor Dukhovni <[e-mail]>
Tom Dunigan <[e-mail]>
Alexander Dupuy <[e-mail]>
Vik Lall <???>
Craig Leres <[e-mail]>
Ray Moody <[e-mail]>
Gary Nebbett <[e-mail] last known address>
Tim Rosmus <[e-mail]>
Mike Spitzer <???>
Richard Tobin <[e-mail]>

Particular thanks to Vic Abell, Alexander Dupuy, and Craig Leres for a
lot of the information contained here. Thanks also to Eduardo Krell
<[e-mail]> for bringing the Dupuy version of ofiles to my
attention.


2. The ofiles/fstat/pff tree

  original ofiles
     |
  modified original ofiles  find-fs   BSD 4.3-Tahoe fstat
     |             \     |                 |
  Abell ofiles      Dupuy ofiles        Abell fstat
     |                   |                 |
  modified Abell ofiles      |        Christiansen fstat
          \          |         /
           ---------pff--------

The lines here trace ideas, not just code. pff does not use any fstat
code, but it borrows heavily from the fstat output format, for example.


3. Who, what, when

C. Spencer <??? at BBN> wrote the original ofiles for BSD 4.2, around
May 1985. This is the ``original ofiles'' node above.

Alexander Dupuy <[e-mail]> maintained ofiles in September
and October 1988. He integrated a vnode version with DYNIX support from
Tom Dunigan <[e-mail]>, modified it to work with remote
files and filesystems, added support for examining the descriptor tables
of selected processes, added text segment support, merged enhancements
to the vnode version with the inode version, added socket-printing
options done in August 1988 by Craig Leres <[e-mail]>,
and ported ofiles to Ultrix 2.0.

At some point (viz., ``modified original ofiles''), another version of
ofiles---the ``Abell ofiles'', maintained by Vic Abell
<[e-mail]>---split off the above branch. See below for
further details.

In July 1990 Dupuy eliminated the DYNIX support but integrated several
further versions, including an initial SunOS 4.0 port by Gary Nebbett
<last known address [e-mail]> and socket-searching enhancements
by Viktor Dukhovni <[e-mail]>. He then ported ofiles to a VAX
running 4.3+NFS and finished integrating Dukhovni's May 1990 SunOS 4.1
port. This version was distributed. In late June 1990 Dupuy integrated a
patch from Tim Rosmus <[e-mail]> to distinguish between
NFS4 vnodes and SunOS 4's NFS, to handle Mt. XINU systems. That version
is the ``Dupuy ofiles'' node in the tree.

The Abell ofiles gives credit to Dunigan, Dupuy, Nebbett, Michael Ditto
<???>, and Richard Tobin <[e-mail]>.  It is not clear when
this version split off; it may have been directly from the original
ofiles, as it does not support NFS. Abell tracked down the above names;
they did not (necessarily) contribute to that version. (In fact, Tobin
apparently did not work on ofiles; Dupuy took the text segment search
code from Tobin's find-fs, which he posted to Sun-Spots at some point.)

At the Purdue University Computer Center, Mike Spitzer <???> ported
ofiles to BSD 4.3 and DYNIX 3.0.1[24], Ray Moody <[e-mail]>
added code to report on shared and exclusive locks, Vik Lall <???>
apparently did some ports, somebody ported it to SunOS 4.0 and Ultrix
2.2, and Abell added an option to look up network connections by
protocol control block address. This became the Abell ofiles, which
appeared on comp.sources.unix in volume 18. Will Crowder
<[e-mail]> patched the Abell ofiles for SunOS 4.1; this, and
any other modifications to that version after the comp.sources.unix
release, appear at the ``modified Abell ofiles'' node.

In the meantime, an independent fstat program appeared in BSD 4.3-Tahoe
(when?). fstat performs much of the same function as ofiles in a
somewhat different way. The 4.3-Tahoe version does not support NFS.
Abell ported fstat to various systems and sent it to comp.sources.unix
volume 18. Tom Christiansen <[e-mail]> ported it to the Convex
and added partial NFS support (his version didn't decode the filesystem
from /etc/mtab as the Dupuy ofiles does); note that source to this
version is not available because Convex is, well, um, stingy.

In March and April 1991, Dan Bernstein <[e-mail]---that's me>
integrated the various versions of ofiles, stole some ideas (though not
code) from fstat, and rewrote most of the program (the easy parts) from
scratch. ``pff'' (process-file-file) has getuser() and various other
pieces of the Abell ofiles, mmap and text segment support from the Dupuy
ofiles, Convex support as in the Christiansen fstat, offset reporting as
in fstat, controlling ttys, open file flags (like rwa for read, write,
append), vnode and device printing mostly from the Dupuy ofiles, NFS
support as in the Dupuy ofiles and the Christiansen fstat, socket
searching similar to the Dupuy ofiles, and several output formats
imitating the output formats of the older programs. pff can also report
process status, including resource usage and signal handling.

pff does *not* support the DYNIX core file reading from the Abell ofiles,
any sort of debugging output, file size reporting as in fstat, various
name lookups (e.g., hostnames, services), and socket searches by
protocol. It's also rather shoddy on error-checking. Other than this, pff
appears to provide all the features of its ancestors. It works so far
under Ultrix 4.1, SunOS 4.0.3, SunOS 4.1, and Convex UNIX 9.0.

I do not know what interest Spencer, Ditto, Dunigan, Lall, Nebbett,
Rosmus, or Spitzer currently have in the code, so as noted in README
certain parts of pff might not be freely distributable. The code I wrote
for this package is all public-domain.