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From: awb@ed.ac.uk (Alan W Black)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: CDROM for 386bsd (Re: ftp software inc, their address is...)
Message-ID: <AWB.92Nov12101926@otter.uk.ac.ed.aisb>
Date: 12 Nov 92 10:19:26 GMT
References: <2X13TB1w165w@student.business.uwo.ca>
Sender: news@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Network News Administrator)
Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK
Lines: 73
In-Reply-To: mark@student.business.uwo.ca's message of 11 Nov 92 15:59:36 GMT
In article <2X13TB1w165w@student.business.uwo.ca> mark@student.business.uwo.ca (Mark Bramwell CS STAFF) writes:
> For those of you who wanted to know where I got the CD-rom with
> 386bsd on it,
> here is the address of the company....
>
> ftp software, inc.
> 2 High street, North Andover, MA
> 01845-2620
>
> Main phone: 508-685-4000
> fax: 508-794-4488
> sales: 508-685-3300
> the cd-rom was handed out at the NetWorld Conference in Dallas, Texas.
I believe that this cd-rom is actually the one sold by Infomagic. It
contains the 386bsd (0.1) distribution (packed srcs and bin) as well
as most of the GNU stuff, X11R5 (to fix8), BSD Net2, the RFCs, a fair
amount of MSDOS freeware and some mac stuff (it's dated August 92---it
has GNU stuff from early Auguest). Infomagic's address is
Infomagic
PO Box 338
Pennington
New Jersey 08534-0338
USA
tel: 609-683-5501
It costs 75$ plus shipping (10$ overseas)---is it cheaper from FTP ?.
I phoned in an order to Infomagic and received it 4 days later (which
isn't bad considering how far I am away from New Jersey).
Although this CD does mean I don't need to keep so many floppy disks
around I'd still like to see a cdrom with 386bsd *unpacked* on it, so
I don't need to keep the srcs on-line (or as I do now unpack on
demand).
My ideal CD would contain unpacked versions (and maybe packed as well)
of
386bsd (both binaries and sources)
GNU stuff
TeX
X11R5 and maybe some contrib stuff
XFree86 bins (and patched X11R5 server ??)
Of course with Linux binaries and sources on the CD the potential
customers would increase.
The main problem I see with such a CDROM is that because of the
ISO9660 format, filename length (and format) is restricted. Short
names are not really acceptable as a change in name would invalidate
most of the srcs (changing Makefiles isn't practical etc). You can
ignore the filename limits (as Sun does on their demo cdrom) and still
have things working but it wouldn't then work under DOS, which isn't
much of a problem as long as the boot images were accessible under
MSDOS.
Also because the 386bsd sources are set up to put compiled files
in obj/ which is a symbolic link, a read only file system with the
sources on is quite practical. However as ISO9660 doesn't support
symbolic links some extension would need to be used.
I suppose the whole question comes down to whether there are enough
people out there that would be willing to buy a CDROM set up for
(almost exclusive) use on 386bsd (and Linux). I suppose
eventually this will be the case but I'll just have to wait for
the time being.
Alan
Alan W Black 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, UK
Centre for Cognitive Science tel: (+44) -31 650 4627
University of Edinburgh email: awb@ed.ac.uk