Subject: linux-0.12 is available Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1992 02:13:40 +0200 From: Linus Benedict Torvalds <torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi> To: Linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Ok, the subject says it all. The kernel source and the disk-images are available on nic.funet.fi, and I'm assuming they will migrate to other places in a couple of days. There is a RELNOTES-0.12, but installation is similar to 0.11, so the installinfo in relnotes is pretty minimal. Note that even users of 0.11 should boot up from floppy first and copy all the binaries to their proper places on the harddisk partition: fsck, ls etc have changed with symlinks, and bash (/bin/sh) due to job control. Also note that I've decided to change the copyright to have the same set of rules as the GNU copyleft - I got some mail asking about it, and I agree. The old copyright still holds for now - I want to make sure none of the "co-authors" would mind, but I'm pretty sure they won't. It won't actually change the copyright very much: it's the handling-costs extra etc. I'll send some additional files (the complete fileutils, the new library and libc.a etc) tomorrow. Linus
Subject: Re: linux-0.12 is available Date: Wed, 15 Jan 92 00:22:14 -0500 From: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) To: Linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi In-Reply-To: [398] Reply-To: tytso@athena.mit.edu Linux 0.12 is available from TSX-11.MIT.EDU. For most U.S. sites, it will be much faster if you grab the distribution from TSX-11 than from nic.funet.fi. I will grab the 0.12 libc.a sources and include file, and any other ancilliary files as soon as they become available on nic.funet.fi. - Ted
Subject: 0.12 available on tupac-amaru.informatik.rwth-aachen.de Date: Wed, 15 Jan 92 08:55:50 +0100 From: blum@cip-s01.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Robert Blum) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi As the subject says, the new boot/rootimages are installed on tupac-amaru. The library stuff will follow as soon as it appears on nic.funet.fi BTW: This means amaru is up and running again.... C U l8r Robert Blum
Subject: the rest of the linux-0.12 distribution Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1992 19:49:55 +0200 From: Linus Benedict Torvalds < torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi> To: Linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Ok, I have uploaded the rest of the linux distribution to nic.funet.fi. They aren't visible yet, but I guess they'll show up tomorrow or so. The new files are: - fileutil.tar.Z, which contains most of the GNU fileutils. It's not the latest release, so if you want that, you'll have to compile it for linux. No source changes, but a lot of -DSTPCPY_MISSING etc in the makefiles. - hd.c. I have gotten one problem report already about hd-handling in 0.12. This is a correction to kernel/blk_drv/hd.c, and should hopefully correct the problem. There was also a problem with a second harddisk not working although the first one did: I think I found the problem, and fixed it. If you cannot get linux operating at all (but the bug wasn't that severe, I think), and are thus unable to recompile it, mail me. - include.tar.Z. Yes. Yet another include.tar.Z. I don't save old versions, so I don't do cdiffs :(. I still expect patches to be cdiffs. Bastard, ain't I? - lib.tar.Z. The library sources. - libc.a.Z. Compiled libc.a - mkswap. This should have been on the root-diskette, but was forgotten. See description in RELNOTES. - system.tar.Z. The latest sources to the system files: mkswap, mkfs, fsck and fdisk. - utils.tar.Z. Contains a new tar (you can use the old one to untar this, but this should understand about symbolic links etc), make, uemacs and some minor programs (sed and basename I think). The old utilbin.tar.Z file should be replaced by 'fileutil' and 'utils'. The old include.tar.Z, libc.a library.tar.Z should be replaces by their newer versions. The old uemacs.Z, bash.Z can also be removed from the archives. There is some overlapping between these files and the root-diskette (and older versions of linux). And over to other things: Someone asked on comp.os.minix how to move non-tar files to a linux partition: the INSTALL-0.11 told about tar-files, but not about things like libc.a. The easiest answer is to tar the single file into a tar-file, and then the problem is reduced to something we can handle. Another possibility is to use the mtools package, but there were so many questions about it the last time that I'm not even going to mention it this time around. A third possibility is to just write the file to a floppy using rawrite.exe or NU or something, and then reading the floppy and truncating at the filelength. This means you have to remember how long the file was. Truncation can be done by 'dd' or by 'head -c'. And one warning... There are easy ways to make fsck report errors on your harddisk that were introduced with the demand-loading in 0.11. It's not a bug, but I thought I'd warn everyone: While a program is running, it's inode is marked in use. Thus if you delete a running command, it seems to be gone, but the file is still there (standard unix practice). Sync a thousand times, and the file will still not be really deleted until the inode no longer is in use: This may not happen if the file was /bin/update or /bin/sh. The result is that if you reboot with a deleted file in use, fsck will wanr about a lot of unused blocks that are marked in use. No problem, 'fsck -a' repairs it, and it /really/ isn't a bug, it's just that we haven't got something like shutdown yet that sees to these kinds of problems. Linus
Subject: policy for accepting patches to 0.12 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1992 22:09:37 +0200 From: Linus Benedict Torvalds < torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi> To: Linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Ok, I forgot to mention this in my last post, but I'm afraid I'll have to warn all of you that want to implement a new feature: I will not accept big non-localized patches to 0.12. This doesn't mean you cannot implement something neat, but it does mean that it probably won't be in 0.13 unless it's so neat I cannot live without it. There are good reasons for this: I'll have to do some studuing that I missed the last semester due to working on linux, and the courses start tomorrow. That was one of the reasons for the fixed release-date of the current version. Also, VFS support (which is missing in 0.12, although there were alpha-patches for it) will probably be implemented for 0.13, and I need a relatively clean kernel for that: as pmacdona found out, the patches that get in put after other patches have to be extensively edited to fit. This does NOT mean that I won't accept bug-reports and patches. Also, it doesn't mean I won't accept the init/login package: I assume that won't touch the kernel very much. I hope this won't be a big problem: most of the things people wanted are in 0.12. And with VFS we'll eventually get the longer filenames that was also high on the list of wanted things. Linus
Subject: All V0.12 stuff is now available on tupac-amaru Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 03:09:24 +0100 From: blum@cip-s01.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Robert Blum) To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi The subject says it all... And my apologies to all who downloaded the corrupted (0 Byte) bootimage of 0.12 This is corrected now C U l8r Robert Blum
Subject: Availability of additional 0.12 files at tsx-11 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 92 22:53:18 est From: Teresa Selling < tselling@natasha.iusb.indiana.edu> To: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi Does anyone know when the fileutil.tar.Z utils.tar.Z ... new include and library files for ver 0.12 will be available at tsx-11?
Subject: Re: Availability of additional 0.12 files at tsx-11 Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 00:26:51 -0500 From: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) To: Teresa Selling <tselling@natasha.iusb.indiana.edu> Cc: linux-activists@joker.cs.hut.fi In-Reply-To: Teresa Selling's message of Wed, 15 Jan 92 22:53:18 est, Reply-To: tytso@athena.mit.edu Date: Wed, 15 Jan 92 22:53:18 est From: Teresa Selling <tselling@natasha.iusb.indiana.edu> Does anyone know when the fileutil.tar.Z utils.tar.Z ... new include and library files for ver 0.12 will be available at tsx-11? They're there now. My apologies for the delay. First it took a while because I couldn't log into nic.funet.fi (because too foreign users were logged in), and then I was away at a wine tasting class (we did white wines tonight; yum! :-) Also, someone (qpliu@phoenix.prinnceton.edu from the source files) has uploaded to TSX-11 a quick and dirty implementation of init/login. I've placed it in ~ftp/pub/linux/sources/sbin on TSX-11, and I've also forwarded a copy to nic.funet.fi. It looks pretty minimal and bare-bones (it doesn't appear to support run levels), but it appears to be functional. Perhaps this and the other init development efforts can be merged together, with the best code being taken from each. The README file for the qpl init/login follows: ------------------------------------------------------------------ Although there are other people working on init/getty/login, I couldn't wait. Being dumped into root is not so nice. There is no getty here. I put /bin/login in the getty field of /etc/ttytab. What is here: a patch to init/main.c that makes it exec /etc/init. init.c getttyent.c getttynam.c ttyent.h (from BSD) login.c init.c: written based on sunos init(8) manpage. differences are that the -sb switches are ignored, the window="command" in /etc/ttytab is ignored, runs only /etc/rc and ignores the result code, utmp and wtmp are not updated, SIGTERM is ignored, does not create /etc/ttys, and any undiscovered bugs. since the manpage doesn't say how the getty entry in /etc/ttytab is parsed, using strtok seems reasonable. works for /dev/tty0 in 0.11. should be able to hang terminals off the serial ports, but i can't test it without terminals or cables. getttyent.c, getttynam.c, ttyent.h: functions to read /etc/ttytab. login.c: does the basic login stuff. accepts and ignores -p switch. uses stuff in getttyent.o and getttynam.o to set TERM. makes a better filler in /etc/ttytab than /bin/sh, making it easier to avoid being root.