Folks,

I've uploaded a NetBSD 1.4.2 ALPHA snapshot to:

  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/pmax/snapshot/1.4.2_ALPHA/

The main pmax changes are:

 + IOASIC DMA alignment fix.  Stops panics during dump(8).
 + Improved keyboard handling after X, inside DDB.

There are numerous MI changes as well, including an update to bind for
a security fix.  All changes are listed in the CHANGES-1.4.2 file.

I'm using a an almost month old version of this on my ftp RAIDframe NFS
server at work, and this particular snapshot has rebuilt itself twice
and X four times.

I've included Havard's initial announcement for some ports below.

As always, if you have any problems please either send-pr or report them
to the port-pmax list.

Regards,
Simon.
--

> From: Havard.Eidnes@runit.sintef.no
> To: announce@netbsd.org
> Cc: port-i386@netbsd.org, port-sparc@netbsd.org, port-hp300@netbsd.org,
> 	port-alpha@netbsd.org
> Subject: NetBSD-1.4.2_ALPHA ready for testing
> Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 19:02:34 +0100
> Lines: 51

Hi,

NetBSD-1.4.2_ALPHA is currently ready for testing.  I have built
binaries for

	i386
	alpha
	sparc
	hp300

and have uploaded these binaries to ftp.netbsd.org.  They are
available from

  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/i386/snapshot/1.4.2_ALPHA/i386/
  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/alpha/1.4.2_ALPHA/alpha/
  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/sparc/1.4.2_ALPHA/sparc/
  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/hp300/snapshot/1.4.2_ALPHA/hp300/

These directories should contain a copy of the CHANGES-1.4.2 file,
which documents the changes done to this source base since the
previous release (1.4.1).

Please note that this prerelease is an upgrade on the "1.4" release
branch, i.e. it's an upgrade from the 1.4 and 1.4.1 releases.  It
is, however, not directly comparable to the "current" development
versions, which have names of the form 1.4A, ..., 1.4P etc.  It's a
mistake thinking that 1.4.2_ALPHA is an upgrade from e.g. 1.4P;
doing so can cause you lots of problems, so don't go there...

I'll have to excuse that (especially) the hp300 and sparc snapshots
were rather hurriedly put together, so some of the install tools are
missing from these snapshots.  The directories also do not contain
any README files, and even some files probably do not have a
matching checksum (ENOTIME... -- hopefully someone else can fix
that).

In the "sister" directory for each of the above directories, there's
a "source" directory -- the "i386" tree contains the source, while
the other archs have symlinks in to the shared source used to
produce this snapshot.

So... the purpose of this ALPHA release is to make the code more
easily available for testing, so that any remaining bugs can be
fixed (hopefully) before the final release.  I expect to process
still more fixes to this release during at least the first part of
January.


Best regards,

- H=E5vard (who's now off to Christmas/New Year vacation)