Comments on blog.borud: Ancient history, Part 1: early years.

it was really fun reading your ancient history ent...

2008-02-29T18:16:00.000+01:00

it was really fun reading your ancient history entries... this was around the time we met, so it brought back some good memories. although i wasn't a part of pvv, some of these names sound very familiar (finnag, stig) since i met up with lots of you on irc. geez... those were the days.

i specifically remembering you not having money then, but somehow scraping up enough to come see me in bergen. what fun!

Mikkel,

Ah, ok. The patch you are referrin...

2008-01-31T11:33:00.000+01:00

Mikkel,

Ah, ok. The patch you are referring to was probably something he did in the late 90s (if it was while at IDI/IDT). I remember discussing the issue with Tegge some time after PVV moved to SB-II and occasionally at FAST when we were located at the pier.

The one I am talking about was early 90s. Probably around 92, but no later than 93.

To be more specific, I think there was a bug in a ...

2008-01-31T05:13:00.000+01:00

To be more specific, I think there was a bug in a SCSI card manufacturer's firmware or driver (not sure which) that was only revealed when putting enough load, i.e. trying to power a large web search engine...

I also vaguely remember someone trying to run disk stress tests before putting machines in production, only to find that the search software would reveal errors that the dedicated stress test software didn't. :)

Mikkel,

Perhaps. Wouldn't surprise me.
2008-01-29T23:54:00.000+01:00
Mikkel,

Perhaps. Wouldn't surprise me.

Tegge had a habit of patching a lot of systems. If I remember correctly the one in the blog posting was a DEC (not sure if it was the somewhat exotic OSF/1 on MIPS, or an Ultrix).

I do know for sure that he disassembled and modified the DolphinOS kernel quite a bit. Mostly to extend and fix the NFS implementation. Among other things I remember him fixing an NFS security problem I discovered. (Fixing the problem was done quickly -- rebooting the machine took forever). The DolphinOS box (flipper) ran a kernel that was so heavily modified that people jokingly called it Tegglix :-).

The most impressive hack I saw him do was to write a boot-loader with a menu system for Endre Angelvik's PC. Endre was trying out a bunch of different operating systems, but couldn't get any available boot loader to let him choose between them. (Endre had the x86 version of NeXTSTep on it among other things, and boy was I jealous!). So Tegge just sat down, booted DOS, fired up debug.com, wrote a boot-loader on the fly, wrote it to the boot sector (probably after moving things around a bit) and after a bit of fiddling, it worked.

I think Tegge's vendor patch was for a SCSI card m...

2008-01-29T23:14:00.000+01:00

I think Tegge's vendor patch was for a SCSI card manufacturer.

Come to think of it, I can't actually remember whe...

2008-01-15T15:23:00.000+01:00

Come to think of it, I can't actually remember when the plan to make a hardened Linux kernel became The Plan. I always thought that "The Customer" was a short-lived side-track which went away after a few weeks of hushed meetings, but you might be right.

But I do remember that they had a brilliant chicken sandwhich at the cafe where we used to meet the representative for The Customer :-).

The original business idea

Have you ...

2008-01-15T15:17:00.000+01:00

The original business idea

Have you forgot all about our original business idea? We were going to make software for internet banks using 128 bits encryption, which would be at least 4000 billion billion times more secure than the puny 56 bit DES encryption everyone else used!

I distinctly remember walking around NTH talking hushedly about "the customer" (DNB I think?) who would buy this and make us insanely rich, as long as no one else heard about it first and stole the brilliant idea from us...