by I have now released the latest 'interim' version of Linux.
Let me remind anyone who might misunderstand, that this version
has no 'official' character. It is an experiment and, I hope, a
convenience ofor others, and it may provoke some interesting
discussion. To install it you will require the following files,
available by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcc.ac.uk (hpb.mcc.ac.uk),
130.88.200.7, in /pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c:
boot-xx.Z
util-xx.Z
where 'xx' is either 'UK' (for UK keyboards) or 'US' (for US keyboards).
If you use DOS to get these files onto floppies, you will also require
rawrite.exe
uncomp.exe
available from the same site in the directory
/pub/linux/mcc-interim/dos-utils. The 0.95c directory contains two
README files, one for the version of fdisk contained in this release,
and one describing the release in general, which follows:
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 an experimental release of a beta test version of
software compiled with a beta test compiler. There are some
problems with the kernel, and others with some of the utilities,
'make' in particular.
You need to get from the images directory the files *-UK.Z
(for UK keyboards) or *-US.Z (for US keyboards).
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:
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 if 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. 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 encrypt 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
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
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
LeBl...@mcc.ac.uk