From: zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: New 'interim' release of Linux
Date: 16 Apr 92 13:23:28 GMT
I am pleased to be able to announce, only a week after the last
release, a new 'interim' version of Linux. The kernel supplied with
this version is 0.95c+, including line printer support, and the four
disks supply binaries for just about everything, including the C and
C++ compilers. I was unable to include Kermit or any of the big
packages (TeX, emacs, etc.), but just about everything else should be
there, I hope.
In addition to upgrading from 0.95c to 0.95c+, I have managed, I think,
to fix the bugs in make, which has now been used to recompile everything
else (including bash) without problems. I have dropped encrypt, now that
passwd is available, and I have added encode, decode, and su. Encode
and decode do UU- XX- and atob encoding and decoding. I have not
included the new chsh program, which does not work quite as I would
wish, though the same thing could be said of su; I thought su was just
too useful to omit. I am also including binaries for installing shoelace,
as well as a new version of bash, this time with job control, which just
won't work properly on my installation disk.
The software fits on four floppies. As before there are two versions
of the first two floppies (for UK and US keyboards). The file sizes
are
boot-UK.Z 368827
boot-US.Z 368799
util-UK.Z 1123877
util-US.Z 1126306
comp.image 1228800
comp2.image 1218560
I have not compressed the comp images because the compressed versions
are bigger than the uncompressed, as happens frequently with images
which contain compressed material.
Many thanks to all who helped out with comments on the last version
and on its (limited) documentation. Now maybe I'll have a chance
to improve the documentation (what little there is) and get the
diffs out.
Files are available by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcc.ac.uk (and from
its mirror at banjo.concert.net) in /pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c+/images,
and the five README files in the directory /pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c+.
For those who lack rawrite.exe or (un)compress.exe for DOS, they are
available in /pub/linux/mcc-interim/dos-utils.
A more detailed description of this version follows shortly.
-- Owen
LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
From: zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: New 'interim' release of Linux (long and detailed)
Date: 16 Apr 92 14:47:36 GMT
The following is the README file for the latest 'interim' version
of Linux 0.95c+:
This is the current version of my MCC (Manchester Computing Centre)
interim release of Linux. This is intended to double as an
installation/recovery system for a version of Linux 0.95c+.
It installs a system using shared libraries based on gcc-2.1.
WARNING: this is experimental software. It is fairly stable, but
please be sure to back up any valuable files.
You need to get from the images directory the files *-UK.Z
(for UK keyboards) or *-US.Z (for US keyboards). If you wish,
you should also get comp.image (the gcc 2.1 compiler, but WITHOUT
C++) and the comp2.image(C++).
If you are creating the disks on a DOS system, you will also need
rawrite.exe and uncomp.exe or something similar; copies of these
and of their documentation are available in the directory
/pub/linux/mcc-interim/dos-utils.
Assuming you have transferred (in binary mode) the files rawrite.exe,
uncomp.exe, boot-xx.Z, and root-xx.Z to your DOS system, type
C:\>uncomp boot-xx
C:\>uncomp util-xx
C:\>rawrite
Enter source file name: util-xx
Enter destination drive: a:
Please insert a formatted diskette into drive A: and press -ENTER- :
At this point put a high density disk which has been formatted at
least once into your A drive. After rawrite has finished, then
remove the disk and continue. Assuming (for the sake of simplicity)
that you wish to install only the minimum system, continue as follows:
C:\>rawrite
Enter source file name: boot-xx
Enter destination drive: a:
Please insert a formatted diskette into drive A: and press -ENTER- :
Once rawrite has finished, you may reboot your system, leaving the boot
disk in the A drive (assuming you want to install Linux on this system).
After the initial boot, you should see something like this:
Loading................................
Press <RETURN> to see SVGA-modes available or any other key to continue.
After pressing anything but <RETURN>, you should get information about
your system, ending with this:
Now you may take the boot disk out of your 0 (A) drive and
put the utilities disk in instead.
After you have done this, tell me whether your 0 (A) disk is
a 3.5 inch disk (3) or a 5.25 inch disk (5): _
Assuming you have no problems, and that your system is Linux-compatible,
you should now see this after giving the correct answer:
/dev/ram /
/dev/fd0xxxxx /mnt
Further instructions can be found in the file /mnt/README.
Type 'more /mnt/README' to look at it.
#
If you follow instructions, you should see this:
# more /mnt/README
This is the root disk for installing the MCC (Manchester Computing
Centre) interim version of Linux. If you have followed the
instructions so far, and if nothing has gone wrong, you must now
set up your hard disk:
Use fdisk to create a primary partition for Linux. You may also
wish to set up other partitions for Linux, and/or a partition of
at least 5 megabytes for swap space. Give the command V (verify)
before writing your partition table.
Note: The fdisk supplied is my fdisk, version 0.92, which should
be able to read and create extended partitions correctly (I hope).
My fdisk deals with only one device at a time. The default is
/dev/hda. If you wish to repartition your second hard disk using
fdisk, you must type 'fdisk /dev/hdab'. Please note and believe
the following warning:
AFTER USING fdisk, REBOOT AND REMOUNT THIS DISK ON /mnt.
The warning means that if you change your partition table, the
operating system (Linux) does not know about the changes until
after you reboot. Naturally, you will type 'sync' a couple of times,
remove the utilities disk, and replace the boot disk before rebooting.
The message continues:
Then use mkfs and mkswap to initialise the partitions you created
above. If you do not remember their bloksize, use fdisk with the
command p to display it (and then q to exit). mkfs and mkswap
have this syntax:
mkxxx [-c] /dev/hdxxx nnnnn
where [-c] optionally checks the partition, hdxxx is the partition's
device as reported by fdisk, and nnnnn is the partition's size in
blocks as reported by fdisk.
Use the command 'swapon /dev/hdxxx' to activate swap space made by
mkswap.
Mount the new partition on /root and type install_root.
Note that to mount the partition, you will type 'mount /dev/hda1 /root'
or something similar. If you do type 'install_root', you will be asked
(among other messages)
Do you wish to install Linux now? Type 'no' to stop.
Yes (y) or no (n): _
At this point, since it is possible that you are installing Linux on
a partition which you have earlier used as a Linux file system,
or you may have aborted a previous installation attempt, the
program says:
If you wish, we can delete any files and directories already
on your new root disk. Do you wish to clean your new root disk?
Type 'no' to leave any files which may already be there.
yes (y) or no (n): _
If you continue, you will have a final chance to exit:
This is your last chance to stop before installing Linux.
Do you want to continue installing? Type 'no' to stop.
Yes (y) or no (n): _
If you type 'y' ( or 'yes'), you will have a long list of things
being installed (I hope). At the end of this list, you will see
the following message:
Linux has now been installed. You may now give the umount
command to unmount the utilities disk. Type 'mount' to see
the device name of the utilities disk. After giving the
appropriate command 'umount /dev/fd0xxxx', give the command
'hash -r' to avoid trying to access the utilities disk.
Then you can set up a boot disk for your new hard disk
root partition:
cd /root/etc
rdev Image /dev/hda3
replacing ^ with your root device
cp Image /dev/fd0H1440
replacing ^ with fd0h1200 if your 0 (A) drive is 5.25 inches.
sync
If you obey these instructions you can reboot from the floppy you have
just written. Note that this floppy must have been formatted at some
time.
The installed system takes up about 2.8 Mbytes of disk space.
It contains no source whatever (except for shell scripts).
In addition to Linux-0.95c+, it contains nearly all binaries from:
ps-2.1 (from hlu) find-3.5 mtools-2.0.5
bash-1.12 gawk-2.13.2 patch-2.0.12u6
compress-4.01 grep-1.5 sed-1.08
diff-1.15 joe-0.1.4 shellutils-1.6
elvis-1.5 less-1.77 tar-1.10
fgrep-1.1 make-3.62 textutils-1.3
fileutils-3.2
as well as programs from BSD and various things posted on the
*.os.linux lists. The installed system (though not the boot/utilities
disks) contains (modified) versions of the poe-igl init as well as
the following commands in binary form:
awk basename cat chgrp chmod chown
clear cmp comm compress cp csplit
ctags cut date dd df diff
diff3 dir dirname doshell du echo
egrep elvis elvprsv elvrec env ex
expand expr false fdisk fgrep
find fmt fold free fsck gawk
getty grep groups head hexdump hostname
id install joe join kill last
less lesskey ll ln login logname
ls lsf make mattrib mcd mcopy
mdel mdir mformat mkdir mkfifo mkfs
mknod mkswap mlabel mmd more mount
mrd mread mren mtype mv mwrite
nice nl nohup od paste patch
pathchk pr printenv printf ps rdev
ref rm rmdir sed setterm sh
sleep sort split strings stty sum
swapon sync tac tail tar tee
test top touch tr true tty
umount uname uncompress unexpand uniq
update users vdir vi virec wc
whereis who whoami write xargs yes
encode decode passwd su
It also contains the help files for joe, less, and more. The
installation disks actually contain the following commands, which
are intended to be useful for recovering from messes:
cat chgrp chmod chown compress cp
dir doshell du fdisk fsck install_root
ll ln ls lsf mkdir mkfs
mknod mkswap more mount mv rdev
rm rmdir setterm sh stty swapon
sync tar umount uncompress vdir
The disk 'comp.image' is provided for installing the GNU C compiler.
As the binaries are statically loaded, there is not room for C++
on this disk. It contains a complete set of include files and
libraries, together with the following commands:
ar as as86 cc cpp gcc
ld ld86 nm objdump ranlib size
strip
The files on this disk come from the distributed archives
2.1misc.tar.Z, 2.1lib.tar.Z, and the most recent binutils.tar.Z.
Some of the include files come from linux-0.95c+.tar.Z.
This disk also contains the binaries for shoelace, as well as
an brief new README file.
To load this disk, you must mount it on /mnt and go to your
root directory, i.e., 'cd /root' if you do this after booting from
the boot-xx diskette, or 'cd /' if you do this after booting with your
primary hard disk partition as root. Then type /mnt/install_comp.
The disk 'comp2.image' contains the parts of GNU C++ that did not
fit on the disk comp.image. It also contains an alternative version
of bash which has job control, but which has problems on some systems.
If you install this bash (as /bin/sh), it saves the former sh as
/tmp/sh.old. (I now think it would have been a better idea to save
it is /bin/sh.old, but give me time!) This bash gets error messages
from tcsetattr and tcgetattr and does not allow interactive input
on some systems; on others it works perfectly. Don't ask why; tell me.
This disk, like comp.image, should be mounted on /mnt; then go to
/root or / as appropriate, and type /mnt/install_comp2.
There is virtually no documentation yet other than the installation
instructions. I shall be putting the source to this in
/pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c+ and its subdirectories over the next
few days. Please let me know of any improvements which could be
made to this release.
-- Owen
A. V. Le Blanc
Computing Centre
University of Manchester
LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
From: aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alex R.N. Wetmore)
Subject: two questions
Date: 22 Apr 92 16:18:47 GMT
I have two questions.
1) Is there a man written yet? I was going to write my own and port
over man pages for all of the stuff that I don't have them for yet, but
I figured I would ask first.
2) What is the MCC release of Linux?
3) When is the ABC release coming out.
Okay, that was three questions.
alex
From: jwinstea@jarthur.claremont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.)
Subject: Re: two questions
Date: 22 Apr 92 19:50:30 GMT
In article <EdxN7bq00awDMEveIn@andrew.cmu.edu>
aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alex R.N. Wetmore) writes:
>1) Is there a man written yet? I was going to write my own and port
>over man pages for all of the stuff that I don't have them for yet, but
>I figured I would ask first.
I found a package a while back labelled man-1.0.tar.Z, which
identified itself as the GNU 'man' package. It's not on
prep.ai.mit.edu, so I think the GNU Folks may have dropped it in favor
of TeXinfo, but I've been using it on my system for some time with
good luck. I believe it can be found on tsx-11.mit.edu, possibly
compiled. Either that, or try looking it up with archie.
>2) What is the MCC release of Linux?
It's the Manchester Computing Center (?) release, which serves as a
sort of extended-release, as I see it. It includes many more
utilities than the basic release from Linus and myself, and as a
result comes on three (four?) floppies.
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
jwinstea@jarthur.Claremont.EDU | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992
From: zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: MCC 'interim' version of Linux (was Re: two questions)
Date: 23 Apr 92 13:21:07 GMT
In article <1992Apr22.195030.8492@muddcs.claremont.edu>
jwinstea@jarthur.claremont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:
>In article <EdxN7bq00awDMEveIn@andrew.cmu.edu>
aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Alex R.N. Wetmore) writes:
>>2) What is the MCC release of Linux?
>
>It's the Manchester Computing Center (?) release, which serves as a
>sort of extended-release, as I see it. It includes many more
>utilities than the basic release from Linus and myself, and as a
>result comes on three (four?) floppies.
It comes on two floppies, but there are a few others available.
The Manchester ComputING CentRE was once Manchester University Regional
Computer Centre (pronounced 'murk') and later UMRCC. The change from
'computer' to 'computing' was made (supposedly) to mark a shift in
emphasis from supporting machines to supporting the people who use
them. (Some of the people who use them complain that the shift in
emphasis has not yet been implemented.) The University of Manchester
has been known to claim that computers were invented here, which they
were if you define 'computer' properly. We are a Centre, not a
Center, because (as someone pointed out in a recent note) that is
how it is spelled in 'proper' English (English + Irish + Australian +
Indian + Canadian + ...) as opposed to the American dialects. I try
to mention MCC from time to time, since they pay me and supply me
with equipment. I am in fact supposed to be doing other things for
MCC, and, also in fact, I do.
The MCC 'interim' releases of Linux are unofficial experiments.
They vary depending on my whims and on the time I have to give them,
usually not enough, I am afraid. The latest so far, 0.95c+,
had (or has?) the following goals:
(a) To provide a simple installation procedure.
(b) To provide a more complete installation procedure.
(c) To provide a backup/recovery service.
(d) To backup my (then) current system!
When I first put Linux on a PC, back at 0.11, I got the standard
boot and root floppies, found there was no working fdisk, tried
edpart, which made a mess of my partition table by sorting it,
used the MINIX fdisk, and finally got a system going. Then I
started trying to get other bits to it. I decided this was a
bit awkward, and hoped someone would do something about it.
I also hate having to search through 3 ftp sites for useful bits,
the fragmented nature of a system which, I believe, was one of
the serious problems with MINIX, and having to compile everything
again and again because it was originally linked with some
defective version of the library, as happens often enough even
with 'mature' commercial Unixes.
Theodore Ts'o wrote the ramdisk code in the Linux kernel. As he
remarked, it was originally designed to make it possible to store
some files on the ramdisk, and so free the disk drive for other
purposes, for example, for creating or modifying a boot floppy
so that it boots using a hard disk partition as the root device.
Both Ted and Linus warned me that the ramdisk code was inefficient,
but I thought this was no problem for an installation/backup/
recovery system. Both also pointed out that the ramdisk uses
much more memory than it should, and this has in fact proven to
be a problem on systems with only 2mb of RAM.
Nevertheless, the latest 'interim' release from MCC does manage to
squeeze quite a lot onto TWO disks: one of which combines the boot
and root disk, and one of which I called the 'utilities' disk.
The boot disk boots, loads its root device from the same disk, and
then starts executing /etc/rc. This runs a little script which
asks for the drive size, and mounts the utilities disk (which you
will of course have placed in the drive when you were instructed to).
The commands available on the combined boot/util combination are
approximately equivalent to those on Jim Winstead's root disk.
Of course, I have a lot more space than he does -- about 500k more --
so I use a lot of this space for tar.Z files which contain all the
usual Unix commands I can find, excluding 'man' and the compilers,
but including, for example, awk (gawk), all of the GNU shell/file/text
utilities, grep and its cousins, sed, vi, more, less, tar, compress,
uuencoding/decoding, the mtools package for reading/writing DOS
files, and make. I also added the joe editor, for those who find
vi too alien. The format was a bit to cramped to try to include
emacs or tex or any other monster utilities, and almost everything
I wanted fit except Kermit, shoelace (which is awful, I admit, but
works if you know how to do it), and man pages.
All of this fit on two disks, the boot disk and the utilities disk,
as I have said before. Now I tried this out on some of my unsuspecting
friends, who made interesting suggestions and complaints. One in
particular asked if I could add a disk containing the C compiler.
So my first additional disk (comp) contains gcc 2.1 plus the include
files and the libraries. I couldn't fit g++ on the same disk, so I
added shoelace and a bit of g++. (I supplied a new README file for
shoelace, explaining how to test it out from a floppy before you
overwrite your primary boot sector). Later I added another disk
(comp2) containing the rest of g++ (include files, binaries, libraries)
and Kermit, which is too big to fit on the utilities disk. When
I released this version (which did not include Kermit at first),
I received some favourable comments, but most people felt that
man pages should be included. I therefore project another disk,
which should include groff, man, and man pages. Note that these
additional disks (comp, comp2, and man) are not really part of the
'interim' version proper, though it is convenient to lump them
together. Not also that the man disk does not yet exist, though
the binaries and patches for groff are in fact available; the
binaries are not really usable, since they include only unlinked
executables, not the groff library stuff. When the man disk comes
out, it will probably include only preformatted man pages, with the
unformatted pages available for ftp in another format. The pages
are collected from the GNU sources and from elsewhere, including,
of course, those from the excellent Linux-man contributors.
The man-1.0 program does not do QUITE what I would like, and so I
am messing with it -- I hate distributing things that don't do what
they should.
Contrary to my expectations, I did in fact create a sixth image,
which is called xdisk, and which -- in an awkward way -- allows
people with less than 4mb of RAM to install the 'interim' version
without using the ramdisk; they don't need my boot disk, but they
do need a standard 0.95c+ boot disk and my xdisk.
I hope this clarifies what the MCC 'interim' version of Linux 0.95c+
is, and why, when it consists of SIX disks, of which one does not
exists, while two come in two versions (US and UK keyboards), etc.,
I would still say that, properly speaking, it consists of TWO disks,
together with a number of optional extra disks.
The latest 'interim' version, while put together by me, is deeply
indebted to many other people, including Linus himself and Ted Ts'o,
who put up with a lot of hassle while I was working it up, and
Jim Winstead, some of whose bits are included. Also included are
poe-igl-1.2, lots of GNU code, HLU's C, C++, and libraries, all GNU
in origin, but with an awful lot of work involved in porting them,
the UU-, XX- and AtoB encoding/decoding utilities by Konrad Bernloehr,
and all the people who helped with testing and by reporting bugs
and even those who just said 'Thanks'.
I would hope that the 'interim' version would influence other
versions, from which I will of course get new ideas and code.
But it would be very awkward to do the standard distribution this
way. First of all, it is a pain producing a boot disk. If you want
to change a letter in a text file, you have to mount, edit, unmount,
copy the disk to a file, copy the file and the image to another disk,
and then reboot. The present system, with Linus providing boot disks
and Jim providing root disks, is more convenient in many respects --
but much harder for the end user. Perhaps it will change eventually
when Linux becomes stable -- but can you ever believe it will stop
changing?
-- Owen
LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
From: rick@ee.uwm.edu
Subject: How 'bout that interim releas?
Date: 12 May 92 20:58:31 GMT
Just wondering... any idea when the MCC interim release of Linux 0.96
will be ready? I was really impressed with
the ease with which the 0.95c+ installed.
From: zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: Re: How 'bout that interim releas?
Date: 13 May 92 08:02:11 GMT
In article < 1992May12.205831.22128@uwm.edu> rick@ee.uwm.edu writes:
>Just wondering... any idea when the MCC interim release of Linux 0.96
> will be ready? I was really impressed with
> the ease with which the 0.95c+ installed.
There does seem to be quite a lot of interest! The situation is
complicated by my going away for two weeks on this Friday, and by my
wishing to include the new release of 2.1, with all its corrections
and new features. So, I am sorry to say, the next 'interim' release
will probably not be out until early June.
The ABC release should probably be out soon as well, and I hope it
will be at least as easy to install as mine -- probably better, since
others have been able to learn from my mistakes. I'll try to learn
too, thanks to the many people who have spotted and reported problems
and made suggestions. I'll try to improve my documentation as well.
Quite a few people have written asking questions whose answers ought
to be in my README files (and some have had questions whose answers
are already in my README files).
I have enjoyed hearing from so many people, and have tried to write
back to all of them, but I'm afraid one or two letters have got
lost. One thing I'd like to do for the next 'interim' version is
to have an acknowledgments file, giving the names of all of the
people who have helped in one way or another. I should mention
especially Linus Torvalds, Theodore T'so, and Alan Clegg in
particular for putting up with a lot of e-mail and questions.
-- Owen
LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
From: zlsiial@uts.mcc.ac.uk (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: MCC interim 0.96c released
Date: 6 Jul 92 14:52:53 GMT
Reply-To: LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
I know you're not going to believe this, but it's here!
About a month after I hoped to have it out, the MCC interim
release of Linux 0.96c is available. I still need to do a
little work on the README's, but most of the things are there
waiting to be transferred!
For those who don't know, the MCC interim releases of Linux
are designed to make installing Linux easy. Get copies of the
README files, together with the five disk images, uncompress
where necessary (only the boot disk compresses this time, I'm
afraid), rawrite to high density disks of any size, and you're
away. Problems might occur if you have only 2mb of memory, but
I successfully installed Linux on a 2mb machine yesterday using
these disks, so I know what I'm talking about.
What do you get? Besides what is usually on the root disks --
we don't use separate root disks at MCC! -- you get all of the
usual GNU utilities, plus file, man, man pages (YES!), GCC, G++,
kermit, shoelace, groff, ... Words fail me, but you can read all
about it in the README file!
Among the things that you might call good news: this release includes
several new features: man with man pages (preformatted, but with source
available), bison (which I forgot last time), file, fdformat, and
groff. A new version of fdisk (0.93) displays sizes by cylinder
in addition to by sector (indeed, cylinder is now the default), and
lets you specify end-of-partition as a size in cylinders, kilobytes,
or megabytes; it also should handle disks with more than 1024 cylinders
more sensibly. Of course it still creates extended partitions better
than any other fdisk, but if you have SCSI drives this won't interest
you yet. If you already have Linux installed, this MCC release will
delete only the bits it replaces, unless you ask it to delete everything,
and saves your old configuration files from /etc (renaming, for example,
/etc/passwd to /etc/passwd.old, /etc/rc to /etc/rc.old, /etc/mtools to
/etc/mtools.old) and from the root, bin, and user login directories.
After you install, or if you reboot using the boot/utility pair as a
recovery system, the editors 'vi' and 'joe' now work, as well as the
'man' command. And if you wish, after a single 'ln -s /root/etc/mtools
/etc' you can run mtools! A list of Acknowledgements tries to name
all the sources of software, but doesn't mention how grateful I am
to Linus, Ted Ts'o, and H J Lu, particulary Ted, who helped me find a
bug in the ramdisk code at the last minute before going on vacation.
Among the things that you might call bad news: I didn't include locate
(as requested by several people) because the data-base-builder doesn't
work, or ldd, which will probably be coming out in a new version soon,
or a few other requests. One bit of groff -- the PostScript utilities --
wouldn't fit on the five disks, and is provided as a compressed tar file.
There are bugs in stty, in decode, and with serial connections. There
are a lot of things I wanted to add but couldn't get -- like a working
'script' -- or couldn't squeeze in.
The installation can be regarded as a group of 'packages' with the following
sizes (in kilobytes):
size disk package
2373 util main install
1829 comp1 GCC 2.2.2 binaries and include files
576 comp2 GCC 2.2.2 main libraries
75 comp1 GCC 2.2.2 libcurses.a and libdbm.a
2198 comp3 G++ 2.2.2 everything
976 comp2 main groff utilities
133 comp2 groff's DVI utilities
140 comp3 groff's bibliographical utilities
251 comp2 Kermit
107 comp2 shoelace (but you can delete 58 of this after installing)
5658 --- total (but you can delete 58 after installing shoelace)
You don't need the comp3 disk unless you want g++ or the utilities
gindxbib, glookbib, grefer, or lkbib; with just the other 4 you can
recompile the kernel and all of the stuff on the disks except groff.
(Note that the source and all patches is available for anonymous ftp,
but that source does not come on the 5 disks.)
I am very sorry for the length of time this took, but I have been
very busy lately, and only free to work on Linux on weekends and
early in the morning. Please feel free to send me comments and
suggestions, and (especially) bug fixes.
I shall post the main README file later.
-- Owen
LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk