| Columbus UNIX / CB UNIX | |
| Developer: | Bell Labs |
| Family: | Unix |
| Working State: | Discontinued |
| Programmed In: | C |
| Language: | English |
| Ui: | Command-line interface |
Columbus UNIX, or CB UNIX, is a discontinued variant of the UNIX operating system used internally at Bell Labs[1] for administrative databases and transaction processing. It was developed at the Columbus, Ohio branch, based on V6, V7 and PWB Unix.[2] It was little-known outside the company.
CB UNIX was developed to address deficiencies inherent in Research Unix, notably the lack of interprocess communication (IPC) and file locking, considered essential for a database management system. Several Bell System operation support system products were based on CB UNIX such as Switching Control Center System. The primary innovations were power-fail restart, line disciplines, terminal types, and IPC features.[3]
The interprocess communication features developed for CB UNIX were message queues, semaphores and shared memory support. These eventually appeared in mainstream Unix systems starting with System V in 1983, and are now collectively known as System V IPC.[4]
. Marc Rochkind . Advanced UNIX Programming . registration . Prentice Hall . 1985 . 156–157 . 0-13-011800-1.