BSD on Home windows: Issues I want I knew existed

It’s 1995 and I’ve been practically two years within the skilled workspace. OS/2 is the dominant workstation product, Netware servers rule the world, and the 12 months of the Linux desktop goes to occur any second now. When you weren’t operating OS/2, you have been most likely operating Home windows 3.1, solely only a few folks have been utilizing that Linux factor. What would have been the prefect OS on the time would have been NT with a reliable POSIX subsystem, however since we have been denied that, enter Hiroshi Oota with BSD on Home windows.

It was a late evening searching yahoo auctions Japan as one does, laughing on the absurd Famicom/Tremendous Famicom video games, and I went forward and regarded for BSD CD-ROMS, the place I first got here throughout BSD on Home windows. After which I’d forgotten about it and went to work on some Darwin initiatives.

Quick ahead 3 weeks, and vic485 had purchased it, had it shipped, and uploaded on archive.org. So a giant tremendous due to vic485 for making this all doable!

So what’s it? It’s not fairly BSD, its a bunch of 16bit DLL’s that broke the kernel down into subsystems, that every depend on winmem32.dll to offer entry to flat/32bit handle house. BSD on Home windows (BOW) being a hybrid 16/32bit app is initially for Home windows 3.1, with the later 1.5 replace for Home windows 95, which incorporates help for lengthy filenames. I’m unsure if it’ll run on Home windows NT or OS/2, as I don’t assume

So what do you get?

The important thing media contents are the set up floppy and the CD-ROM. Sure the setup program IS solely on the floppy. Hope you get that disk picture. I’m not sure what the handbook is like, apart from after all it’s in Japanese.

It’s very a lot a single consumer mode BSD like atmosphere full with vi/gcc/csh/perl simply to call just a few. I’ve been in a position to check job management, and constructing some easy applications like Hack 1.03. I discovered just a few points nonetheless.

I haven’t examined sufficient with FreeBSD 1/2 however I can confirm that from my ‘Ancient Linux on Windows‘ packages, the article format is similar, which is that early period when every part was a.out, though all totally different the reliance on GNU GAS & LD did make the article format the identical. And it was good to compile a hi there world from my Linux cross compiler, hyperlink it on BOW, and get a operating executable.

The reminiscence is bizarre, in which you could add a whole bunch of megabytes to Home windows and BOW will all the time run exhausted. Within the bow.ini file you may set the heap for every program, and I came upon from some foolish trial and error that the utmost heap you may successfully give is 13 megabytes. Evidently winmem32 has a single chunk of reminiscence the place all processes run out of, therefore the sub 16mb ram zone. Perhaps there’s a solution to allocate it, however I’m not sure, perhaps it’s within the guide. CC1 was regularly having points, so setting it’s heap to 13M certain helped, the linker ‘ld’ after all was operating out of reminiscence as nicely so setting it to 8M acquired me linking.

Filenames, particularly on Home windows 3.1 are an enormous drawback. All of the LFN TSR’s I attempted to load simply resulted in a full crash. I needed to level the linker to the CD-ROM stay filesystem, which perhaps could be tedious on an actual machine, however beneath emulation it’s superb.

BOW does NOT like Qemu. In any respect. It gained’t beneath otvdm both. I believe NT is a no go however I haven’t tried. Oddly sufficient it’s not a timing concern, because it does run beneath VMware. There is a bonus to operating it beneath Home windows 95, is that it helps lengthy filenames. 86Box works as nicely, I even was utilizing the Pentium II Xeon at 400Mhz and that ran superb.

In all probability probably the most annoying and foolish factor is that the GCC C compiler doesn’t have C++ type feedback turned on. Not with the ability to use ‘//’ is kind of annoying.

Hack ran superb, which was a pleasing shock!.

Had I identified about this, it might have been an unimaginable bridge product. To not point out cross compiling to even Win32, or Linux. To not point out on the time with the ability to run BSD with no actual ache, simply set up and go

There may be generic TCP/IP Winsock help in BOW 1.5 because it merely calls winsock. This additionally contains the power to run daemons, nonetheless limitations in BOW are rapidly uncovered, similar to lacking setuid/setgid sno there is no such thing as a potential to impersonate decrease privileged customers. MMAP stuff additionally doesn’t appear to work, though I used to be in a position to construct a brilliant easy port of Apache 1.3.1 to BSD on Home windows (BOW). 

Whereas BOW might look like very BSD like, there’s a lack of a the mmap Apache wants, together with consumer mapping & impersonation.  I ended up utilizing the EMX – OS/2 system code, because it’s very POSIX like with out counting on the Unix like OS truly working.

I’ve been in a position to serve pages to myself, nonetheless BOW crashing out many emulators and hypervisors form of stops me from placing it on the web. BOW fanatics can download it from archive.org

Immediately, there may be actually no level to BOW, it’s an fascinating oddity, however again within the day, for a jr community administrator with the ability to run the Unix model of the snmp instruments, even when it’s solely consumer facet would have been nice. If tftpd might be constructed to run this is able to have been past wonderful, as you not solely get BSD, however full Home windows apps on the identical time, very similar to MachTen.

It’s a disgrace I by no means knew this was a factor, I definitely would have been evangelizing BOW! Who is aware of what different treasures are within the parallel societies of Japan/Asia/Europe?