Unix & Shell Programming-CSL620

Introduction to Unix
 Unix

• UNIX is an operating system developed in the Bell Laboratories of AT&T and is

• Unix has a longer history than any other popular operating system.
• Though school have contribute to its development, the initial contribute by the Bell
Laboratory of AT&T and the University if California, Berkley(UCB) are notable.
• Bell laboratory contribution
• In 1965, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), General Electric, and Bell
Laboratories of AT&T worked on joint venture project called Multics (Multiplexed
information & Computing system) which intended to develop a multi-user operating
system.
• As progress was not satisfactory, AT&T withdrew itself from the Multics project in
early 1969.
• On the basic on idea acquired while working of Multics, Ken Thompson, a
researcher started working on a different project.
• He can across an abandoned PDP-7 machine on which he and Dennis Ritchie
developed an operating system called UNICS (Uniplexed Inforamtion and
Computing System) during the later part of 1969.
• UNICS was developed in the assembly language of PDP-7 and so it was not
portable.
• To achieve portability, Thompson considered implementing the system in a higher
language.
• He worked of the development of higher level language called B, an off shoot of
an earlier language called BPCL.
• As B language did not yield the expected result, Ritchie developed a higher level
called C in 1973.
• As the same time many researcher in AT&T showed interest in the Unix project
(around 1970 UNICS became Unix).
• During those days many text-processing utilities along with a text editor called ed
editor and a simple command interpreter called the shell were developed.
• The ed editor was a line editor and the then developed shell became the Bourn
shell(sh), the grandfather of almost all the currently available shells.
• The result of the research and the development made at the Bell laboratory were first
published in the form of the Unix Programmer’s Manual in the late 1971.
• Since then, there have been a total of 10 edition of this manuals.
• Each of these manuals correspond to a version of the Unix relreased by AT&T
• The third edition published in early 1973 included the details of a C compiler.
• Ritchie completely rewrote the entire Unix system during the same year using C.
• Actually around 95% of this Unix system was written in C and the remaining was
written in the assembly language.
• The platform used was a PDP-11 machine.
• The details of the Unix implementation in C was made public through a paper
published in 1974.
• This paper was quite popular and its authors, Thompson and Ritchie were later
awarded with the prestigious ACM Turing award.
• This paper was attracted attention of a large number of people from inside as well as
outside of the AT&T laboratory.
• A system called Unix System V was announced in 1983. with this
release AT&T assured the upward compatibility of all its future
releases.
• System V has since then undergone many revisions and release.
• The most important of the releases is the System V release 4 (SVR4)
in 1991.
• AT&T made the Unix system available to universities, commercial
firms and defense laboratories either free of cost or at a nominal price.
• UCB’ Contribution - University of California at Berkeley
 History & Timeline
1969 The Beginning The history of UNIX starts back in 1969, when Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others
started working on the "little-used PDP-7 in a corner" at Bell Labs and what was to
become UNIX.`
1971 First Edition It had a assembler for a PDP-11/20, file system, fork(), roff and ed. It was used for text
processing of patent documents.

1973 Fourth Edition It was rewritten in C. This made it portable and changed the history of OS's.

1975 Sixth Edition UNIX leaves home. Also widely known as Version 6, this is the first to be widely
available out side of Bell Labs. The first BSD version (1.x) was derived from V6.

1979 Seventh It was a "improvement over all preceding and following Unices" [Bourne]. It had C,
Edition UUCP and the Bourne shell. It was ported to the VAX and the kernel was more than 40
Kilobytes (K).
1980 Xenix Microsoft introduces Xenix. 32V and 4BSD introduced.
1982 System III AT&T's UNIX System Group (USG) release System III, the first public release outside
Bell Laboratories. SunOS 1.0 ships. HP-UX introduced. Ultrix-11 Introduced.

1983 System V Computer Research Group (CRG), UNIX System Group (USG) and a third group merge
to become UNIX System Development Lab. AT&T announces UNIX System V, the first
supported release. Installed base 45,000.
1984 4.2BSD University of California at Berkeley releases 4.2BSD, includes TCP/IP, new signals and
much more. X/Open formed.

1984 SVR2 System V Release 2 introduced. At this time there are 100,000 UNIX installations around
the world.

1986 4.3BSD 4.3BSD released, including internet name server. SVID introduced. NFS shipped. AIX
announced. Installed base 250,000.

1987 SVR3 System V Release 3 including STREAMS, TLI, RFS. At this time there are 750,000
UNIX installations around the world. IRIX introduced.
1988 POSIX.1 published. Open Software Foundation (OSF) and UNIX International (UI)
formed. Ultrix 4.2 ships.

1989 AT&T UNIX Software Operation formed in preparation for spinoff of USL. Motif 1.0
ships.

1989 SVR4 UNIX System V Release 4 ships, unifying System V, BSD and Xenix. Installed base 1.2
million.

1990 XPG3 X/Open launches XPG3 Brand. OSF/1 debuts. Plan 9 from Bell Labs ships.

1991 UNIX System Laboratories (USL) becomes a company - majority-owned by AT&T.

1992 SVR4.2 USL releases UNIX System V Release 4.2 (Destiny). October - XPG4 Brand launched
by X/Open. December 22nd Novell announces intent to acquire USL. Solaris 2.0 ships.
1993 4.4BSD 4.4BSD the final release from Berkeley. June 16 Novell acquires USL
Late 1993 SVR4.2MP Novell transfers rights to the "UNIX" trademark and the Single UNIX
Specification to X/Open. COSE initiative delivers "Spec 1170" to X/Open for
fasttrack. In December Novell ships SVR4.2MP , the final USL OEM release of
System V
1994 Single UNIX Specification BSD 4.4-Lite eliminated all code claimed to infringe on USL/Novell. As the new
owner of the UNIX trademark, X/Open introduces the Single UNIX Specification
(formerly Spec 1170), separating the UNIX trademark from any actual code
stream.
1995 UNIX 95 X/Open introduces the UNIX 95 branding programme for implementations of the
Single UNIX Specification. Novell sells UnixWare business line to SCO. Digital
UNIX introduced. UnixWare 2.0 ships. OpenServer 5.0 debuts.
1996 The Open Group forms as a merger of OSF and X/Open.
1997 Single UNIX Specification, The Open Group introduces Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification,
Version 2 including support for realtime, threads and 64-bit and larger processors. The
specification is made freely available on the web. IRIX 6.4, AIX 4.3 and HP-UX
11 ship.
1998 UNIX 98 The Open Group introduces the UNIX 98 family of brands, including Base, Workstation
and Server. First UNIX 98 registered products shipped by Sun, IBM and NCR. The Open
Source movement starts to take off with announcements from Netscape and IBM.
UnixWare 7 and IRIX 6.5 ship.
1999 UNIX at 30 The UNIX system reaches its 30th anniversary. Linux 2.2 kernel released. The Open
Group and the IEEE commence joint development of a revision to POSIX and the Single
UNIX Specification. First LinuxWorld conferences. Dot com fever on the stock markets.
Tru64 UNIX ships.
2001 Single UNIX Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification unites IEEE POSIX, The Open Group and
Specification, the industry efforts. Linux 2.4 kernel released. IT stocks face a hard time at the markets.
Version 3 The value of procurements for the UNIX brand exceeds $25 billion. AIX 5L ships.
2003 ISO/IEC The core volumes of Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification are approved as an
9945:2003 international standard. The "Westwood" test suite ship for the UNIX 03 brand. Solaris
9.0 E ships. Linux 2.6 kernel released.
2007 Apple Mac OS X certified to UNIX 03.
2008 ISO/IEC Latest revision of the UNIX API set formally standardized at ISO/IEC, IEEE and The
9945:2008 Open Group. Adds further APIs

2009 UNIX at 40 IDC on UNIX market -- says UNIX $69 billion in 2008, predicts UNIX $74 billion in
2013

2010 UNIX on the Apple reports 50 million desktops and growing -- these are Certified UNIX systems.
Desktop