More Unix Wars!!!

Later,  after a short skim across the surface in Luke's flying  read-
write  head,  PDP-1 had them stop at the edge of the cylinder containing /usr/spool/uucp.
   "Unix-to-Unix  Copy Program" said PDP-1.  "You may never see  a  more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."

   As  our  heroes'  process  entered /usr/spool/news it was  met  by  a newsgroup of Admin protection bits.
   "State your UID!" commanded a burly syscall.
   "We're running under /usr/guest" said Luke.  "This is our first  time
on the system."
   "Let's see some temporary privilege bits, please."
   "Uh..."
   \fI"This isn't the process you are looking for,"\fR Kenobi said softly.
\fI"We can go about our business."\fR Several bits momentarily pulled low.
   "You're free to go about your business. MOV along now!"

   PDP-1, Luke and the droids made their way through a long and tortuous nodelist  (...!musocs!micomvax!philabs!linus!husc6!rutgers!cbmvax!snark)
to  a dangerous netnode frequented by hackers and only seldom polled  by the  minions of Admin.  As Luke stepped up to the crossbar PDP-1 went in search of a suitable server.
   Luke had never seen such a collection of device drivers.  Long  ones, short ones, ones with stacks; EBCDIC converters, local-net handlers, CRT drivers, routines for archaic printers. A CAT interface twitched pointed ears at him.
   "#@{&*^%^$$#@ ":><?><," transmitted a particularly unstructured piece of code.
   "He doesn't like you." decoded his coroutine.
   "Er...sorry..." replied Luke, beginning to backup his partitions.
   "I don't like you either. I am queued for deletion on 12 systems."
   "I'll be careful." Luke said nervously.
   "You'll be deallocated!" snarled the coroutine.
   \fI"This  little  routine  isn't worth the overhead..."\fR  murmered  PDP-1 Kenobi, overlaying into Luke's address space.
   "This  little  routine  isn't  worth  the  overhead."  repeated   the
coroutine dazedly.    "^%#%#@$&^%&*&*&^%^#$$%%^^&%^#@#@$%^(*&^^###%^^!!!"    encoded    his companion as it attempted to overload Kenobi's segment protection.  With a  stroke  of his bytesaber Kenobi dyked out  the  offending  code.  The coroutine retreated hurriedly. Kenobi turned to Luke.
   "I think I've found an I/O handler that might suit us."
   "The name's Con Sole0" said the routine next to PDP-1. "I hear you're looking for some relocation."
   "Yes indeed." said PDP-1 "if you've got fast enough hardware. We must get off this device."
   "Fast hardware? The \fIMilliamp Falcon\fR has made the ARPAgate run in less than  twelve netnodes!  Why,  I've even outrun cancelled messages.  It's fast enough for you, old version."

   "Fast hardware?" said Luke unbelievingly  "That thing is a paper-tape reader!!"  He might have grown up in an out-of-the-way terminal  cluster where  the natives only spoke BASIC,  but he knew an ASR-33 when he  saw one.
   "It  needs an FIA conversion at least." sniffed 3CPU,  who (as usual) was trying to do several things at once.  Lights flashed in Con  Sole0's eyes as he whirled to face the parallel processor.
   "I've  switched  a few jumpers.  The \fIMilliamp Falcon\fR can run  current loops around any of Admin's TTY fighters. She's fast enough."
   "Who's your copilot!" inquired Luke,  eyeing the hairy hulk that  had just shambled out of the \fIFalcon\fR to join the group."
   "Oh. Meet Sixpacca, my Bookie."
   The  creature emitted an enormous belch and gesticulated wildly  with a wad of tip sheets clenched in one fist.  Luke eyed the beercan in  the other dubiously.
   "Er,  isn't  he dr-" Suddenly RS232 emitted an ear-splitting \fIfeep\fR and began  to  chitter wildly.  They turned to see an  Admin  command  group riding the local bus directly at them.
   "That's  a  shutdown  sequence  if I  ever  saw  one!"  shouted  Con, sprinting  into  the ship with the others close behind.  "Crank  up  the sysclock, Brewie!"
   "O.K.  Con."  Luke said grimly "You said this crate was fast  enough. Get us out of here."
   "Shut up,  kid,  you bother me.  Initialize this heap, Brewie -- I'll
try to keep their buffers full."
   As his Bookie computed the vectors into low core, spurious characters flashed around the \fIMilliamp Falcon\fR.
   "They're  firing at us!" shouted Luke. "Can't you do anything?"
   "Making the jump to system space takes time,  kid." Con growled. "One missed  cycle and you could come down right in the middle of a  pack  of stack frames!"
   Bright  chunks  of position-independent code flashed by as  the  ship jumped  through  the  kernel page tables.  The group emitted a  sigh  of relief as they indirected into free space.

More Unix wars --->>

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