"A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years," reports The Register. And the software librarian at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, Al Kossow of Bitsavers, believes the tape "has a pretty good chance of being recoverable." Long-time Slashdot reader bobdevine says the tape will be analyzed at the Computer History Museum. More from The Register: The news was posted to Mastodon by Professor Robert Ricci of the University of Utah's Kahlert School of Computing [along with a picture. "While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973..." Ricci posted on Mastodon. "We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum."] The nine-track tape reel bears a handwritten label reading: UNIX Original From Bell Labs V4 (See Manual for format)...

If it's what it says on the label, this is a notable discovery because little of UNIX V4 remains. That's unfortunate as this specific version is especially interesting: it's the first version of UNIX in which the kernel and some of the core utilities were rewritten in the new C programming language. Until now, the only surviving parts known were the source code to a slightly older version of the kernel and a few man pages — plus the Programmer's Manual [PDF], from November 1973.
The Unix Heritage Society hosts those surviving parts — and apparently some other items of interest, according to a comment posted on Mastodon. "While going through the tapes from Dennis Ritchie earlier this year, I found some UNIX V4 distribution documents," posted Mastodon user "Broken Pipe," linking to tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/Gao_Analysis/v4_dist/.

There's a file called license ("The program and information transmitted herewith is and shall remain the property of Bell Lab%oratories...") and coldboot ("Mount good tape on drive 0..."), plus a six-page "Setup" document that ends with these words...

We expect to have a UNIX seminar early in 1974.

Good luck.
Ken Thompson
Dennis Ritchie
Bell Telephone Labs
Murray Hill, NJ 07974

Saint Aardvark writes If, like me, you administer FreeBSD systems, you know that (like Linux) there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to filesystems. GEOM, UFS, soft updates, encryption, disklabels — there is a *lot* going on here. And if, like me, you're coming from the Linux world your experience won't be directly applicable, and you'll be scaling Mount Learning Curve. Even if you *are* familiar with the BSDs, there is a lot to take in. Where do you start? You start here, with Michael W. Lucas' latest book, FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials. You've heard his name before; he's written Sudo Mastery (which I reviewed previously), along with books on PGP/GnuPGP, Cisco Routers and OpenBSD. This book clocks in at 204 pages of goodness, and it's an excellent introduction to managing storage on FreeBSD. From filesystem choice to partition layout to disk encryption, with sidelong glances at ZFS along the way, he does his usual excellent job of laying out the details you need to know without every veering into dry or boring. Keep reading for the rest of Saint Aardvark's review.

brothke writes "If there ever was a book that should not be judged by its title, Defense against the Black Arts: How Hackers Do What They Do and How to Protect against It, is that book. Even if one uses the definition in The New Hackers Dictionary of 'a collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area', that really does not describe this book. The truth is that hacking is none of the above. If anything, it is a process that is far from mysterious, but rather aether to describe. With that, the book does a good job of providing the reader with the information needed to run a large set of hacking tools." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

PL/SQL Guy writes "A Wisconsin appeals court ruled Thursday that police can attach GPS trackers to cars to secretly track anybody's movements without obtaining search warrants. As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren't suspects. Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, wrote Madison Judge Paul Lundsten."

Today we have Part 2 in our exciting 2 part series about the infrastructure that powers Slashdot. Last week Uriah told us all about the hardware powering the system. This week, Jamie McCarthy picks up the story and tells us about the software... from pound to memcached to mysql and more. Hit that link and read on.

As part of our 10-Year anniversary coverage, we intend to update our insanely dated FAQ entry that describes our system setup. Today is Part 1 where we talk mostly about the hardware that powers Slashdot. Next week we'll run Part 2 where we'll talk mostly about Software. Read on to learn about our routers, our databases, our webservers and more. And as a reminder, don't forget to bid on our charity auction for the EFF and if you are in Ann Arbor, our anniversary party is tomorrow night.

An anonymous reader writes "After years of promises and fan hype, Sigil Games Online and SOE has released Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I've been playing the pre-release the last few days and I've been really enjoying it. I scoffed at the idea of diplomacy in a MMOG, but Sigil has done something with it I've never seen before. They made it a card game...within a game. MMORPG.com has a preview of the Beta game, and Gamespy offers up out of the box impressions of the game on Launch day. GameTrailers has a launch day trailer and dragon mount video to give you an idea of what it looks like in action. Whether the game turns out well or not, the fans are happy that it is finally on the shelves."

Taran Rampersad writes "Every now and then, someone comes up with a fun title. 'Linux Annoyances for Geeks' is a definitely fun - and accurate - title for this book. While some people have been fiddling with Linux since it first came out, the majority of Linux users haven't been. I started using Linux in the late 90s, and my work schedule didn't allow me to go to meetings, or track down people who knew things. And the first time you do an install on a machine, you may be disconnected from the very information that gets you connected. Been there, done that. So this book attracted me because despite being an advocate of Free Software and Open Source, there are times when I still type very naughty things on the command line. Read the rest of Taran's review.

Ravi writes "There is commercial grade software like VMware (which does full virtualization) as opposed to open source approaches like Xen which do partial virtualization. But besides these two, there is a very interesting piece of software called User Mode Linux (UML), which can be used to create virtual Linux machines within a Linux computer. Unique to UML is that support for it has been incorporated into the mainstream Linux kernel tree and it is now a fully supported part of the official Linux kernel. On this note, UML gains a lot of significance. UML has been created and maintained by Jeff Dike, who is known throughout the Linux technical community. And when someone who has created a popular software decides to author a book on the subject, then that book is sure to hold a lot of promise. So when I came across the book titled User Mode Linux, authored by Dike under Bruce Perens' Open Source Series, I just couldn't resist getting my hands on it." Read on for the rest of Ravi's review.

whawk640 writes "I came across this book via the author's website www.camerahacker.com. I was interested in making a pinhole lens at the time so I picked up the book. Disclaimer: I'm NOT a hacker by nature. I only did a hack on a lens cover. Most of the hacks in here are for those with a better relationship with screwdrivers, drills and soldering irons than I have. I don't think this book was intended for me, so keep that in mind when reading my review." Read the rest of Daniel's review.

norburym (Mary Norbury-Glaser )writes "Carla Schroder's Linux Cookbook (O'Reilly) is an extremely dense volume packed with valuable information. The author writes with precision and detail and with a conversational style that handles the topic with a wry humor making this book a pleasure to read. The Linux Cookbook is command-line based so some familiarity with a Linux system, the inherent power of using the command-line and the dangers of using root are necessary." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "The back cover of Game Creation and Careers says "Reading this book is like being at a round-table discussion with more than 150 of the video game industry's most successful designers, developers and publishers." In fact, it's exactly like that, for better and for worse. Mostly worse." Read on for the rest of Fiegel's lengthy review.

sympleko (Matthew Leingang) writes with his review of Running Mac OS X Panther, by James Duncan Davidson. "The Macintosh has come a long way in twenty-plus years. Much has been said of Mac OS X being the perfect union of a rock-solid operating system with a beautiful and functional user interface. Since the iMac, Apple's market share has been steadily increasing, and since OS X, Unix users have been making the switch. My last computer was a dual-boot box that I kept finding excuses to keep from booting to Windows. My PowerBook is literally the best of both worlds. I can run the older unix-based apps I need to for work, and use Microsoft programs and play fancy games when I want. It's also essentially two different computers. This book is about using that second computer, the workhorse behind the scenes." Read on for the rest.

emmastory writes "When I mentioned this book to some of my friends, the response was usually either 'Doesn't the iPod come with a manual?' or 'Does the iPod even need a manual?' There is, in fact, a little CD-sized booklet that comes with the iPod, and it's true that you probably don't need much more than that if all you need to know is how to turn the thing on and play a song. But one of the great things about the Missing Manuals series is that while they tell you everything a manual ought to, they also tell you an awful lot that a manual never would." Read on for the rest of emmastory's review of iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Second Edition.

Two strongly contrary claims describe the usability of Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Roughly, these claims go like this: 1) "Unix is easy! With a few simple commands you can navigate the filesystem and manipulate text; for the rest, just read the fine manual." That's the viewpoint (painting with a broad brush) of technically literate technojunkies. 2) "Unix is a pain. Cryptic commands, confusing explanations -- when I can get them -- from my smug cousin Jim. And where is this so-called manual?" That's the viewpoint (same broad brush) of a lot of people who -- let's say -- aren't the ones rushing to upgrade their heatsink and overclock their RAM, but have given things Unixy a spin. Linux for Dummies has been around long enough to reach its recently published 5th edition (written by Dee-Ann LeBlanc); it aims to bridge the 'Way too Hard!' and 'All Perfectly Easy' schools of thought. Read on for my review of the book.

PHPee (Rob Maeder) writes "Scott Fullam's Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks is an excellent book outlining all you need to know to get started in the wonderful world of hardware hacking. With step-by-step guides to fifteen useful, amusing and off the wall projects, even a novice hacker can be up and running with some basic hacks in a few hours. The book demonstrates various ways consumer electronics can be modified to do things they were never intended to do, and shows you just how much fun voiding your warranty can be." (We mentioned this book yesterday, too.) Read on for PHPee's review.

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Remember those 'how-to' and 'home improvement' books that you enjoyed reading as a little kid? In the first half of the last century there was a variety of books, with names like 'Boy Mechanic' or '1,000 Projects for a Boy,' which would give a teenager a variety of projects to work on productively. Building bird houses, creatively reusing helmets from World War I, and later different projects that had to do with radio and transistors - in the pre-television age all that guaranteed some creative time for geeks (whether kids or adults) and allowed them pick up skills, necessary perhaps in real life." Alex reviews below a book that fills a similar niche for the present day, outlining all 13 projects in Linux Toys: 13 Cool Projects for Home, Office and Entertainment. Whether you'd consider all of the projects toys is up to you.

adamba writes: "Why are manhole covers round?" "How many gas stations are there in the United States?" "How would you design a remote control for venetian blinds?" "What company is famous for interview questions like those?" You might not know the answer to the first three questions, but you probably know the last one. The notion of asking "Microsoft interview questions," quick logic puzzles and brainteasers, has become accepted wisdom for many technology companies. In comparison, the questions asked during traditional interviews, such as "Describe your typical day" and "What is your greatest weakness?" seem too simplistic, too easy to handle with a prepared answer, too prone to allowing weak candidates to slip through: they simply don't reveal enough about the person. While the Microsoft questions appear to be a better way to evaluate people, the issue has never really been seriously examined. Microsoft's success would seem to make the argument pointless: Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?" Read on for an interesting look at the details and justifications for this kind of interview.

dvdweyer writes "This book deals with administration of UNIX (one wonders why the book doesn't bear the title "Essential UNIX Administration"), all major UNIX platforms are covered, most of them in their almost latest version when the book went to press (Linux: Red Hat 7.3 and SuSE 8.0, Solaris 8 and 9, FreeBSD 4.6, AIX 5, HP-UX 11/11i, Tru64 5.1), SCO and IRIX were dropped for this edition, FreeBSD was added. Other UNIXes (e.g. Debian Linux) are not mentioned, but this makes the book only a little bit less useful on those, with some imagination the information can be used, except for special topics (e.g. package management). This book is on system administration and not targeted on desktop users, as such it doesn't cover KDE, Gnome or any desktop application." Dvddwyer's section-by-section review continues below.

To all but a handful of a handful, a perfect filesystem would be boring: files would be where you expect them to be, corrupt files would never be an issue, and a power outage would result in nothing more than a few moments of darkness rather than minutes or hours of lost work. Even so -- perhaps a clue that the perfect example is far, far away -- the news on the Linux filesystem front is pretty exciting of late. In a low-key technical session Friday morning at ALS, kernel hacker Daniel Philips announced to the world the minor revolution he's planning -- which could end up replacing Linux's old standby ext2fs (and it's coming replacement ext3fs) with his Tux2 filesystem. Though Tux2 is an ext2 cousin in many ways, it carries at least one crucial improvement: according to Philips, you can literally pull the plug on a system running Tux2 and expect not to lose files or spend minutes watching fsck crawl by.