156 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
156 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
To: Linux-Activists@BLOOM-PICAYUNE.MIT.EDU
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From: zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc)
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Subject: MCC 'interim' version of Linux (was Re: two questions)
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Date: 23 Apr 92 13:21:07 GMT
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In article <1992Apr22.195030.8492@muddcs.claremont.edu> jwinstea@jarthur.claremont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:
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>In article <EdxN7bq00awDMEveIn@andrew.cmu.edu> aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alex R.N. Wetmore) writes:
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>>2) What is the MCC release of Linux?
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>
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>It's the Manchester Computing Center (?) release, which serves as a
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>sort of extended-release, as I see it. It includes many more
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>utilities than the basic release from Linus and myself, and as a
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>result comes on three (four?) floppies.
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It comes on two floppies, but there are a few others available.
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The Manchester ComputING CentRE was once Manchester University Regional
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Computer Centre (pronounced 'murk') and later UMRCC. The change from
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'computer' to 'computing' was made (supposedly) to mark a shift in
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emphasis from supporting machines to supporting the people who use
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them. (Some of the people who use them complain that the shift in
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emphasis has not yet been implemented.) The University of Manchester
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has been known to claim that computers were invented here, which they
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were if you define 'computer' properly. We are a Centre, not a
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Center, because (as someone pointed out in a recent note) that is
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how it is spelled in 'proper' English (English + Irish + Australian +
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Indian + Canadian + ...) as opposed to the American dialects. I try
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to mention MCC from time to time, since they pay me and supply me
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with equipment. I am in fact supposed to be doing other things for
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MCC, and, also in fact, I do.
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The MCC 'interim' releases of Linux are unofficial experiments.
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They vary depending on my whims and on the time I have to give them,
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usually not enough, I am afraid. The latest so far, 0.95c+,
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had (or has?) the following goals:
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(a) To provide a simple installation procedure.
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(b) To provide a more complete installation procedure.
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(c) To provide a backup/recovery service.
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(d) To backup my (then) current system!
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When I first put Linux on a PC, back at 0.11, I got the standard
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boot and root floppies, found there was no working fdisk, tried
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edpart, which made a mess of my partition table by sorting it,
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used the MINIX fdisk, and finally got a system going. Then I
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started trying to get other bits to it. I decided this was a
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bit awkward, and hoped someone would do something about it.
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I also hate having to search through 3 ftp sites for useful bits,
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the fragmented nature of a system which, I believe, was one of
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the serious problems with MINIX, and having to compile everything
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again and again because it was originally linked with some
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defective version of the library, as happens often enough even
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with 'mature' commercial Unixes.
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Theodore Ts'o wrote the ramdisk code in the Linux kernel. As he
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remarked, it was originally designed to make it possible to store
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some files on the ramdisk, and so free the disk drive for other
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purposes, for example, for creating or modifying a boot floppy
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so that it boots using a hard disk partition as the root device.
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Both Ted and Linus warned me that the ramdisk code was inefficient,
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but I thought this was no problem for an installation/backup/
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recovery system. Both also pointed out that the ramdisk uses
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much more memory than it should, and this has in fact proven to
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be a problem on systems with only 2mb of RAM.
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Nevertheless, the latest 'interim' release from MCC does manage to
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squeeze quite a lot onto TWO disks: one of which combines the boot
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and root disk, and one of which I called the 'utilities' disk.
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The boot disk boots, loads its root device from the same disk, and
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then starts executing /etc/rc. This runs a little script which
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asks for the drive size, and mounts the utilities disk (which you
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will of course have placed in the drive when you were instructed to).
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The commands available on the combined boot/util combination are
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approximately equivalent to those on Jim Winstead's root disk.
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Of course, I have a lot more space than he does -- about 500k more --
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so I use a lot of this space for tar.Z files which contain all the
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usual Unix commands I can find, excluding 'man' and the compilers,
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but including, for example, awk (gawk), all of the GNU shell/file/text
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utilities, grep and its cousins, sed, vi, more, less, tar, compress,
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uuencoding/decoding, the mtools package for reading/writing DOS
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files, and make. I also added the joe editor, for those who find
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vi too alien. The format was a bit to cramped to try to include
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emacs or tex or any other monster utilities, and almost everything
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I wanted fit except Kermit, shoelace (which is awful, I admit, but
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works if you know how to do it), and man pages.
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All of this fit on two disks, the boot disk and the utilities disk,
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as I have said before. Now I tried this out on some of my unsuspecting
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friends, who made interesting suggestions and complaints. One in
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particular asked if I could add a disk containing the C compiler.
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So my first additional disk (comp) contains gcc 2.1 plus the include
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files and the libraries. I couldn't fit g++ on the same disk, so I
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added shoelace and a bit of g++. (I supplied a new README file for
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shoelace, explaining how to test it out from a floppy before you
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overwrite your primary boot sector). Later I added another disk
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(comp2) containing the rest of g++ (include files, binaries, libraries)
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and Kermit, which is too big to fit on the utilities disk. When
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I released this version (which did not include Kermit at first),
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I received some favourable comments, but most people felt that
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man pages should be included. I therefore project another disk,
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which should include groff, man, and man pages. Note that these
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additional disks (comp, comp2, and man) are not really part of the
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'interim' version proper, though it is convenient to lump them
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together. Not also that the man disk does not yet exist, though
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the binaries and patches for groff are in fact available; the
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binaries are not really usable, since they include only unlinked
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executables, not the groff library stuff. When the man disk comes
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out, it will probably include only preformatted man pages, with the
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unformatted pages available for ftp in another format. The pages
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are collected from the GNU sources and from elsewhere, including,
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of course, those from the excellent Linux-man contributors.
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The man-1.0 program does not do QUITE what I would like, and so I
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am messing with it -- I hate distributing things that don't do what
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they should.
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Contrary to my expectations, I did in fact create a sixth image,
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which is called xdisk, and which -- in an awkward way -- allows
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people with less than 4mb of RAM to install the 'interim' version
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without using the ramdisk; they don't need my boot disk, but they
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do need a standard 0.95c+ boot disk and my xdisk.
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I hope this clarifies what the MCC 'interim' version of Linux 0.95c+
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is, and why, when it consists of SIX disks, of which one does not
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exists, while two come in two versions (US and UK keyboards), etc.,
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I would still say that, properly speaking, it consists of TWO disks,
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together with a number of optional extra disks.
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The latest 'interim' version, while put together by me, is deeply
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indebted to many other people, including Linus himself and Ted Ts'o,
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who put up with a lot of hassle while I was working it up, and
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Jim Winstead, some of whose bits are included. Also included are
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poe-igl-1.2, lots of GNU code, HLU's C, C++, and libraries, all GNU
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in origin, but with an awful lot of work involved in porting them,
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the UU-, XX- and AtoB encoding/decoding utilities by Konrad Bernloehr,
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and all the people who helped with testing and by reporting bugs
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and even those who just said 'Thanks'.
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I would hope that the 'interim' version would influence other
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versions, from which I will of course get new ideas and code.
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But it would be very awkward to do the standard distribution this
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way. First of all, it is a pain producing a boot disk. If you want
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to change a letter in a text file, you have to mount, edit, unmount,
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copy the disk to a file, copy the file and the image to another disk,
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and then reboot. The present system, with Linus providing boot disks
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and Jim providing root disks, is more convenient in many respects --
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but much harder for the end user. Perhaps it will change eventually
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when Linux becomes stable -- but can you ever believe it will stop
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changing?
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-- Owen
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LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
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[ The MCC "interim" release can be found in ~ftp/pub/linux/mirrors/mcc-interim
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on TSX-11.MIT.EDU. --- Ted]
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