[luau] [aurora-sparc-devel] [ANNOUNCE] Build 1.0 (Ansel) releases

bhoward at hale.org bhoward at hale.org
Sun Jan 19 18:16:00 PST 2003


The following announcement may be of interest to any here running or
interested in running linux on a SPARC processor.

I've been running with out problem one of the earlier releases on an
old multiprocessor SPARC 20 for some time now.

					   Cheers,
					   Bruce

--- clip here ---
From: "Tom 'spot' Callaway" <tcallawa at redhat.com>
To: aurora-sparc-announce at linuxpower.org
Cc: aurora-sparc-devel at linuxpower.org,
	<aurora-sparc-user at linuxpower.org>, <lwn at lwn.net>
Subject: [aurora-sparc-devel] [ANNOUNCE] Build 1.0 (Ansel) releases
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 12:41:51 -0500 (EST)

The Aurora SPARC Linux Project is proud to announce Build 1.0 (Ansel) to 
the world. This is the first "STABLE" build of Aurora. Nevertheless, its 
very much a work in progress. If you run this on your production server, 
you do so at your own risk.

Download links are at the bottom of this email message, but please, 
please, please read the whole message before installing.

New features in this release include:

Too many security & bugfix updates to count.
Lots and lots of installer fixes (including the parted bug)
The sparc64 kernel has O(1) and lowlatency patches applied to it.
The sparc64 kernel also now has Firewire support.
Cipe has been enabled in both sparc and sparc64.

You should be aware of the following items:

- When the installer detects the video card, it doesn't really probe the video ram. You need 
to manually select the proper amount.

- The USB mouse is never detected by the installer. Select the Generic 3 Button Mouse from 
the list, and the installer will continue into GUI mode.

_ Some hardware seems to have a difficult time being detected by anaconda. Specifically, the 
esp driver on the Sparcstation 2, the sungem & sunhme network drivers, and the qlogicisp, 
qlogicfc, and sym53c8xx scsi/fc drivers. I've added a lot of fixes that should make it all 
work properly, but be prepared to load these modules manually when prompted (if you're not 
prompted, boot with linux expert, and it WILL prompt you).

- The Quad Happy Meal card seems unhappy in general. It may not like tftp, using all ports, 
or working at all.

- In some situations, the installer will not create a boot alias. Usually, this is when it 
sees Solaris present (and not replaced by Aurora) and doesn't want to step on it.

- KDE seems to want to use /dev/dsp, and this doesn't seem to work. I don't use KDE much,
so this is low priority. If you fix it, and send me the patch, and it looks sane, I'll apply
it. I suspect this is an issue on the kernel level, with the audio drivers. /dev/audio works.
The quick fix is to rmmod soundcore.

- Swapon segfaults on sparc32 SMP. *shrug* Accepting patches.
The first swap partition will still load.

- Floppy installs probably don't work on sparc64. I wouldn't waste much time trying.
This is a hardware issue, not a software issue.

- SPARCs don't generally like ISOs burned at high speeds. I had the most 
success burning at 12X or lower. Your mileage may vary. If you are getting 
screens full of DMA timeout messages, try reburning at a lower speed.
Also, they don't seem to like low grade media very much. If in doubt, passing -vvv to 
cdrecord will tell you the grade of your media. If its worse than A- grade, don't use 
it. Again, this is a hardware issue, not so much of a software issue.

- Some of the language translations are probably really really off. If you catch 
something mistranslated or wrong, please please please send me a fix.

- Large disks (e.g. 40+ GB) may lock up the GUI installer when it tries to format the 
partitions. If this happens to you, try it in text mode.

- SparcStation 20s (and maybe 10s) with a VSIMM installed may have X issues. Some work has 
been done to try to make them play nicely, but if it doesn't work, switch to text mode 
(or remove the VSIMM).

- Sun4d machines simply do not work. The 2.4 kernel needs a lot of sun4d 
cleanups and fixes before it will work, and none of the Aurora hackers 
have sun4d hardware.

- KDE has the wrong startup logo. Whoops. Just pretend it says "Aurora" 
instead of Red Hat Linux. Aurora is not a Red Hat product.

- The iso label identifies them as 0.51 instead of 1.0. Again, whoops. 
0.51 was the internal number for this build.

Tested machines:

Ultra 2, Ultra 10, Sun Blade 100, Sun Blade 2000, SparcStation 20, SparcStation 4

Install methods:

Serial (works)
Network (FTP works, HTTP works, TFTP works)
HD (not tested, no idea if it works or not)
Text (works)
Graphical (works)
Floppy (works (at least for sparc32))

Full downloads are available at the following locations:

ftp://auroralinux.org/pub/aurora/build-1.0/
http://www.auroralinux.org/pub/aurora/build-1.0/
ftp://ultra.linux.cz/MIRRORS/zenIII.uk.linux.org/pub/distributions/aurora/build-1.0/
ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/aurora/build-1.0/
ftp://angus.ind.wpi.edu/pub/mirrors/aurora/build-1.0/
ftp://ftp.rdsor.ro/pub/Linux/Distributions/Aurora/build-1.0/

This download site is ISO only (it was too full to hold the rest of the 
tree):

ftp://zenIII.uk.linux.org/pub/distributions/aurora/build-1.0/en/iso

This site should be sync'd up in the next several days:
ftp://aurora.markab.net/build-1.0/

Wanna be a mirror? Found a bug in the tree? Something missing/corrupt?  
Email the mailing list (you may even want to join): 
aurora-sparc-devel at linuxpower.org or email me: tcallawa at redhat.com.

Aurora is seeking qualified individuals to perform the following roles:
- errata manager/coordinator
- contrib manager/coordinator
- bugzilla administrator
- kernel hacker
- userspace hacker

The jobs are unpaid, but the community is friendly, and the rewards of 
seeing Linux run well on SPARC are endless. ;)

Thank yous go out to: 

Peter Jones, without whom, there would be no 1.0.
Ed Halley, for doing all the art in the installer (that you actually get to see now!).
Jeremy Katz, for not killing me when i asked installer questions after taking over the work.
Ingo T. Storm, for tireless devotion to Aurora, and missed trains.
Robr, for carrying that heavy box.
Jakub Jelinek, for multi-lib.
Dave Miller, for fixing the UltraSPARC III+ (again).
David Andrew and Uzi, for supporting the community within Sun.
Hunter Matthews, for access to the SB2000
Tom Duffy, for doing the initial O(1)+ll work on sparc64
All of the mirror admins, thanks for the disk and pipe.
Everyone on aurora-sparc-devel & aurora-sparc-user.

the Aurora SPARC Project lives at:

http://auroralinux.org

~tom "spot" callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com>, January 19th, 2003


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