[CentOS] Question about storage for virtualisation

William L. Maltby CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com
Tue Jul 3 11:57:14 UTC 2012


On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 15:48 +0200, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
> Am 01.07.2012 07:40, schrieb Les Mikesell:
> [distinction between /bin and /usr/bin]
> > The concept really comes from the original unix, which back in the
> > day, often had really tiny boot disks and might mount everything else
> > over the network or use different drive types to hold the larger /usr
> > space.
> 
> The separation predates Unix networking. IIRC /usr/bin was
> already there on Unix Version 7 on the PDP-11, before Ethernet
> was even invented.
> 

You are correct. I used to create and mail the tapes out with the
software releases to the government and colleges. Ran V6/V7 on Dec
PDP-11, early PC-compatible stuff (maybe System II used? Can't recall
for sure), 5B5/3B20 (AT&T designed hardware used when System III & V
came available, IIRC) ... when a big HD was 10MB (or even 5MB) and
memory was 64K and processors where 8086, 80186, 80286, ...

Everything was small, highly unreliable compared to today. HDs were
sliced up to try and ensure minimal damage when the inevitable crash
occurred. Backup process recommended was "Tower of Hanoi" strategy on
tape (which were also limited in size). A thing called "speed" was
non-existent compared to today. So another reason for slicing was to
reduce fsck times.

The internet was not yet invented, but uucp and related provided
"networking" capability.

I gave a one day class to some *very* smart folks at DARPA and you know
what happened next - "internet".

Bill




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