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From: grog@lemis.uucp (Greg Lehey)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: "386bsd 1.0" - more information
Keywords: bsd unix jolitz jesus flame cdrom
Message-ID: <3117@adagio.lemis.uucp>
Date: 11 Jun 94 15:55:07 GMT
Organization: LEMIS, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany
Lines: 71
I've just received the July issue of the German magazine c't, in which
I find a small article by Juergen Fey. Juergen is a friend of Bill
Jolitz and was responsible for the translation of Bill's 386bsd
articles into German and their printing in UNIXMagazin, of which he
was the editor. UNIXMagazin is now dead, and Juergen seems to work for
the erstwhile competitor, iX.
I can't translate the article without permission, but here's the gist
of it:
1. 386BSD Release 1.0 is about to be released, two years after the
completion (German "Fertigstellung") of 386BSD 0.1, which will put
an end to the plethora of "wild" BSD versions (NetBSD, FreeBSD and
so on). In cooperation with Dr. Dobbs, a bootable "Reference
CD-ROM" is currently being completed.
My thoughts:
a. this looks as if Mr. Fey has either got his time scale wrong, or
the CD-ROM is still not complete. This issue of c't is hot off
the press, which means that the information in it should be no
older than, say, May 20.
b. What other "wild" BSD versions do you know?
2. The CD-ROM will include a large quantity (German "Fuelle") of
additional documentation in MS Windows Help format (what's that?)
The authors Bill and Lynne Jolitz, who say that they intend it to
be as comprehensive a learning tool and research object rather than
a commercial system, have placed particular importance on detailed
descriptions.
The documentation is linked by hyperlinks and includes the original
articles of the Dr.Dobbs 386bsd series, detailed comments and
explanations about the current implementation and excerpts from the
still incomplete book "386BSD: From the Inside Out". The authors
place particular importance on comments. The System Handbooks
(whatever they may be) are present in PostScript format.
3. The operating system can be booted directly from the DOS level from
the CD-ROM (Mitsumi or SCSI), but it can also reside in its own
partition. He goes on to say how much space the system requires,
and then: if you reserve a second disk just for 386BSD, you will
need to boot via DOS.
This gives me the feeling that this is not really a boot from
CD-ROM at all--you first need to boot DOS, and then you can use a
DOS bootstrap to boot from the CD-ROM. Nice idea, but not nearly as
clever as what we have so far been led to believe.
4. Apart from the "official" version on CD-ROM, a system without most
of the documentation, consisting of sources and binaries, will be
offered on the Internet.
In summary, this looks to me like a lot less than I had been led to
believe. As I have posted on a previous occasion, I have ordered one
anyway, mainly for the documentation. If the reason it hasn't been
delivered yet is because the CD-ROM isn't ready yet, I feel rather
cheated. It also is beginning to look as if the boot from the CD-ROM
isn't really a first-level boot at all, which makes it less attractive
then the idea of a general boot disk: booting DOS takes *much* longer
than booting a first-level bootstrap.
Greg
--
---------------------------------------------
Greg Lehey | Tel: +49-6637-1488
LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, | Fax: +49-6637-1489
36325 Feldatal, Germany | Mail: grog@lemis.de