From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jun 6 05:28:27 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id FAA17770 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 6 Jun 1995 05:28:27 -0700 Received: from localhost.cdrom.com (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id FAA17751 ; Tue, 6 Jun 1995 05:28:19 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: freefall.cdrom.com: Host localhost.cdrom.com didn't use HELO protocol To: announce@freefall.cdrom.com cc: hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Ok, *now* it's End-Of-ALPHA Release Candidate time! Reply-To: hackers@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 06 Jun 1995 05:28:18 -0700 Message-ID: <17750.802441698@freefall.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Hey folks, OK, so maybe you heard me say this a few days ago too, but that was before I spent 4 solid days and nights beating on the thing! :-) What is now on ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-ALPHA and ftp://freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-ALPHA is pretty much 2.0.5-BETA in all but name. I suppose a few words on our current status are also in order, provided that I can manage to form any coherent thoughts at the moment, that is (boy, am I _tired!_).. I'm going to re-roll 2.0.5A tonite/this morning and release it as 2.0.5B later in the day, the only real difference being the version string. The tree will NOT be tagged for BETA! You CVS sup'ers can breathe again now.. :-) This is also basically it for sysinstall and 2.0.5R. I'm done and I do not plan to write any additional docs or implement any new functionality. Finito! I will, of course, fix any sufficiently severe last-minute bugs in code or doc, but this part of the tree is now essentially frozen with the rest of 2.0.5B. At this point, all known problems with the installation have been fixed or documented. I know it's still not perfect, but it works quite a bit better than the last one in enough significant ways and it's good enough for me (for now). We do have a few reports of systems falling over with strange cache-related problems, and which David and Poul are looking into. Some other posters reported random Sig-11s, but it is unclear as to whether or not this might have been caused by the "truncated bindist problem" we suffered from for a short time during the ALPHA. The keyboard lock-ups seem to have gone away with the temporary disabling (sorry, Joerg!) of the serial console code. It's also important to note that there are several new pieces of technology at work in this installation process; techniques which will most likely not directly affect you but are nevertheless worth knowing about. The First trick is "kzip", or the compressed (gzip'd) kernel image. Those familiar with Linux already know all about compressing kernels to save space on boot floppies, and we're doing it now too. A kzip'd kernel has a small bootstrap which loads it at 3MB and expands it. This is why 4MB machines briefly stopped working a few days back; we'd allowed the kernel to get larger than 1MB, and naturally there wasn't much room left up there! :-) Needless to say, this trick is only good for medium sized kernels.. The second trick is "kernmfs", which is a kernel that contains a large pre-allocated array inside and into which a second utility has copied a small root filesystem. This means that the kernel is now essentially carrying its own root filesystem around with it and is entirely self-contained, given some memory to run in. When this kernel is booted it creates an MFS (Memory File System) that overlays the internal "filesystem", and presto! A kernel and filesystem all running in memory and without any dependencies on things like the floppy drive, which might actually want to get used for something like loading distributions later. It doesn't matter if the kernmfs image _booted_ from a floppy, once it's up all the way then it's running from memory and no longer interested in where it came from (except as media). Though this solves a lot of problems inherent in the old scheme (some of which were basically impossible to solve before), it is not without its potential quirks.. We're using some new tools here, and while they may work just fine with all the equipment we have lying around it's always possible that there's some combination of hardware out there which we just haven't taken into account. In such cases, your feedback is invaluable in determining whether or not a fix is merited or possible. If you see any unusual behavior while booting the boot floppy, please write it down and let us know! This installation set now fully supports the following installation media types: CDROM Floppy DOS FTP NFS TAPE I've tested all of them and they seem to work quite well. The occasional crash is still possible, but you have to do something pretty creative or be having a really bad day on the Internet (this assumes you're not loading from CD, which is quite a bit simpler to deal with). The distribution menus have also been revamped and are now quite a bit more usable. If you haven't yet jumped on the 2.0.5 testing bandwagon then I strongly urge you to do so while there's still time to make a difference! I've no interest in pushing out a low-quality 2.0.5R release that embarasses us all, but at the same time I can't hold the CD up forever and I'm working on it in parallel now. Ideally, I'd like to hear from as many new installations as possible in the next day or so and thus be able to do a rough head-count of "it worked!" and "it didn't work!" messages so that I can gauge overall stability. I can say that 2.0.5 works very well for wcarchive, my machine, David's machine, Poul's machine, Gary's machine, etc. - many machines, I just need to know right now how well it works on *your* machine! :-) So please, download the floppies/boot.flp file today and test it on something! If you're doing anything but a tape or floppy installation then you don't even need to grab the "root.flp" image and the installation will get it automatically. Do please also try to read through all the documentation before filing a bug report. The documentation files are now available both inside and outside the boot floppy and are easily accessible from your local FTP mirror site. Most installation problems generally fall into a few known categories which, believe it or not, are documented in the Hardware guide and the Disk selection screen this time. Don't be afraid to type "F1" and read everything you see! :-) I know that some of you have felt more than a little rushed by the hectic 2.0.5A schedule and for that I apologise. What can I say? We were late.. :-( For an ALPHA cycle as short as this one, however, I do have to say that we have made some amazingly rapid progress! Perhaps giving up on all that wasteful sleep did the trick.. :-) I don't know how long I can prolong the BETA (a few days, maybe less?), but I'll try to make up for the severe time constraints by being as responsive as humanly possible during the interval. If you have real problems with the installation then I *will* try to get back to you within the hour with some sort of response to any question you send me! If you're really stumped, my phone numbers are in my finger entry on freefall (finger jkh@freefall.cdrom.com). I REALLY WANT TO HEAR YOUR FEEDBACK! If it works, let me know! If it doesn't work, also let me know! I need some feeling for our success rate on installations and this is the only way to get it. Thanks, everyone! And thanks for putting up with my new-floppies-every-20-minutes work model during the ALPHA and an installation I basically had to write from scratch. I suppose this is called "rapid prototyping" in the industry (or perhaps just another way of saying "I didn't really know where I wanted to go when I started, so I just started running." :-) Jordan