Re: Operator, Information, give me geom.ctl on the line

> On Tue, Jul 28, 2026 at 3:37?PM Bob Bishop <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > > On 28 Jul 2026, at 20:57, Poul-Henning Kamp <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >
> > > [?]
> > > All the way back to 386BSD's /etc/MAKEDEV script, and probably prior to
> > > that, group operator  [etc]
> >
> > I suspect this may originate with UTS on IBM mainframes in the early 80s.
> >
> 
> The operator stuff entered BSD in 4.3BSD. It wasn't in 4.2BSD or earlier
> MAKEDEV or similar scripts.

Though it may not of appeared in MAKEDEV I am pretty sure the operator
concept predates 4.3 and possibly even 4.2.  The basic concept when
it first came out is by having the raw disks devices and raw tape
devices owned by a special group that group of users could run
dump/rdump to backup machines to mag tape.

> Unsurprisingly, it's not in 7th edition, nor System III nor 32V.

I believe it would work on 7th edition if you had dump(8).  The
concept itself would defanitly work and one could use dd to
image a disk :-)

> 
> It appears to have been added in
> 
> Revision *18173*
> <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg?view=revision&revision=18173> - (view
> <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/etc/etc.vax/MAKEDEV?revision=18173&view=markup>)
> (download
> <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/etc/etc.vax/MAKEDEV?revision=18173&view=co>)
> (annotate
> <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/etc/etc.vax/MAKEDEV?annotate=18173>) - [select
> for diffs]
> <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/etc/etc.vax/MAKEDEV?view=log&r1=18173&log_pagestart=0>
> Modified *Fri Mar 1 16:43:33 1985 UTC* (41 years, 5 months ago) by *ralph*
> File length: 6627 byte(s)
> Diff to previous 14082
> <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/etc/etc.vax/MAKEDEV?r1=14082&r2=18173>

MAKEDEV was always way behind what was actually being used by people
in the wild.

> 
> added klog in standard. changed disks to be mode 640 root operator.
> 
> 
> between 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD. There's no indication where it came from, or if
> it was inspired
> by something else. I don't have good access to UTS sources or systems to
> check on other
> than the V7 port.

Possibly inspired by many things, just about every OS in popular use
in the early 80's had a concept of system operators, and those people
had usually physical access to the equipment and needed logical access
to be able to do things like  backups, restores, account creation, etc.

Giving them root or system (VMS) access was considered to risky.
> 
> Warner
> 
> 
> > > Poul-Henning
> > >
> > > (Who makes absolutely no apologies for the Subject line.)
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > > --
> > > Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> > > [email protected]         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> > > FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> > > Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by
> > incompetence.
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Bob Bishop       t: +44 (0)118 940 1243
> > [email protected]     m: +44 (0)783 626 4518
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 [email protected]