Subject: new snapshot: pre 1.3-ALPHA
To: None <port-pmax@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
List: port-pmax
Date: 10/26/1997 01:53:23
I've put a new snapshot in the usual place on ftp.netbsd.org.
This snapshot should be very very  close to an official 1.3-ALPHA
release.

There are a number of signficant  changes:

To steal some text from an earlier message:

>First, I've reworked the label code for the rz disk driver to make
>labelling disks easier. There are two significant changes:
>
>    1) The rz disk driver looks for a label that matches the diskimage
>       label, and if it sees one, automagically alters the `total
>       sectors' and raw-partition size to match the size reported by
>       the drive (.e., what's printed at boot time.)

This means that you should be able to just do a `disklabel -e' after
setting your terminal type.  Scripts or the `sysinst' may or may
not be available for the real 1.3 release.

>    2) The `writable label' code has been updated so that issing
>	'disklabel -W' *really* makes the  label area writable.
>	that should make it easier to upgrade or to install onto
>	a single disk using another pmax as a `helper' machine.

This makes it easier to dd a diskimage over an existing disk and
disklabel. You no longer need to use the workarond of starting a `dd'
off the raw partition. suspending it, and *then* doing `diskabel -W'
while the suspended `dd' process holds the disk open.

Also, the new snapshot should include X11R6 clients (built with shared
libraries, of course) from the standard NetBSD Xfree86-derived X
source tree. (read: you can rebuild them all yourself if you wish.)

>From my perspective, the more people who upgrade to this snapshot (or
alternatively the 1.3-ALPHA release, which i'll announce RSN) the
better.  Especially those of you who've recently reported glitches
with the install process: it'd be nice to hear whether these changes
actually help or not.


--Jonathan