A report on Multics

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Multics Commands reference manual

Influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.

- Multics
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47 related topics with Alpha

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OS/360 was used on most IBM mainframe computers beginning in 1966, including computers used by the Apollo program.

Operating system

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System software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.

System software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.

OS/360 was used on most IBM mainframe computers beginning in 1966, including computers used by the Apollo program.
PC DOS was an early personal computer OS that featured a command-line interface.
Mac OS by Apple Computer became the first widespread OS to feature a graphical user interface. Many of its features such as windows and icons would later become commonplace in GUIs.
The first server for the World Wide Web ran on NeXTSTEP, based on BSD.
Ubuntu, desktop Linux distribution
Linux, a unix-like operating system was first time released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Picture of Tux the penguin, mascot of Linux.
A kernel connects the application software to the hardware of a computer.
Privilege rings for the x86 microprocessor architecture available in protected mode. Operating systems determine which processes run in each mode.
Many operating systems can "trick" programs into using memory scattered around the hard disk and RAM as if it is one continuous chunk of memory, called virtual memory.
File systems allow users and programs to organize and sort files on a computer, often through the use of directories (or "folders").
A screenshot of the Bash command line. Each command is typed out after the 'prompt', and then its output appears below, working its way down the screen. The current command prompt is at the bottom.
A screenshot of the KDE Plasma 5 graphical user interface. Programs take the form of images on the screen, and the files, folders (directories), and applications take the form of icons and symbols. A mouse is used to navigate the computer.

Bell Labs, General Electric and MIT developed Multiplexed Information and Computing Service (Multics), which introduced the concept of ringed security privilege levels.

Unix System III running on a PDP-11 simulator

Unix

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Family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

Family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

Unix System III running on a PDP-11 simulator
Unix System III running on a PDP-11 simulator
Version 7 Unix, the Research Unix ancestor of all modern Unix systems
Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie working together at a PDP-11
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE), part of the COSE initiative
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, principal developers of Research Unix
Photo from USENIX 1984, including Dennis Ritchie (center)
Plan 9 from Bell Labs extends Unix design principles and was developed as a successor to Unix.
Promotional license plate by Digital Equipment Corporation
HP9000 workstation running HP-UX, a certified Unix operating system

The origins of Unix date back to the mid-1960s when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bell Labs, and General Electric were developing Multics, a time-sharing operating system for the GE-645 mainframe computer.

General Electric

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American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston.

American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston.

General Electric in Schenectady, New York, aerial view, 1896
Plan of Schenectady plant, 1896
General Electric Building at 570 Lexington Avenue, New York
Carmen Miranda in a 1945 advertisement for a General Electric FM radio in The Saturday Evening Post
GE Global Operations Center in Downtown Cincinnati, Ohio
A General Electric neon sign.
GE gauges to control a railway locomotive at a museum near Saskatoon, Canada
GE facility in Schenectady, New York
A General Electric EV charging station in North America
Linear GE stock price graph 1962–2013
GE trading volume graph

From 1964 to 1969, GE and Bell Laboratories (which soon dropped out) joined with MIT to develop the Multics operating system on the GE 645 mainframe computer.

Unix time-sharing at the University of Wisconsin, 1978

Time-sharing

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Sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.

Sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.

Unix time-sharing at the University of Wisconsin, 1978

Beginning in 1964, the Multics operating system was designed as a computing utility, modeled on the electrical or telephone utilities.

An example of slack space, demonstrated with 4,096-byte NTFS clusters: 100,000 files, each five bytes per file, which equal to 500,000 bytes of actual data but require 409,600,000 bytes of disk space to store

File system

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Method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved.

Method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved.

An example of slack space, demonstrated with 4,096-byte NTFS clusters: 100,000 files, each five bytes per file, which equal to 500,000 bytes of actual data but require 409,600,000 bytes of disk space to store
File systems may become fragmented
Directory listing in a Windows command shell

The first file system to support arbitrary hierarchies of directories was used in the Multics operating system.

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

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Research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab).

Research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab).

One of the early focuses of Project MAC would be the development of a successor to CTSS, Multics, which was to be the first high availability computer system, developed as a part of an industry consortium including General Electric and Bell Laboratories.

Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie

Ken Thompson

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American pioneer of computer science.

American pioneer of computer science.

Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie
DEC PDP-7, as used for initial work on Unix
Thompson (sitting) and Ritchie working together at a PDP-11
Version 6 Unix running on the SIMH PDP-11 simulator, with "/usr/ken" still present
Plan 9 from Bell Labs, running the acme text editor, and the rc shell

In the 1960s at Bell Labs, Thompson and Dennis Ritchie worked on the Multics operating system.

Screenshot of a sample Bash session in GNOME Terminal 3, Fedora 15

Command-line interface

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A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text.

A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text.

Screenshot of a sample Bash session in GNOME Terminal 3, Fedora 15
Screenshot of Windows PowerShell 1.0, running on Windows Vista
A graphical user interface with icons and windows (GEM 1.1 Desktop)
Apple Computer's CommandShell in A/UX 3.0.1
GNU Octave's GUI with command-line interface
Bourne shell interaction on Version 7 Unix
Prompt of a BBC Micro after switch-on or hard reset
An MS-DOS command line, illustrating parsing into command and arguments
The end of the HELP command output from RT-11SJ displayed on a VT100
A Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter keyboard with punched tape reader and punch
DEC VT52 terminal

The first implementation of the shell as a replaceable component was part of the Multics time-sharing operating system.

Access-control list

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Access-control list is a list of permissions associated with a system resource (object).

Access-control list is a list of permissions associated with a system resource (object).

Many kinds of operating systems implement ACLs or have a historical implementation; the first implementation of ACLs was in the filesystem of Multics in 1965.

PL/I

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Procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM.

Procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM.

These manuals were used by the Multics group and other early implementers.