Re: [ANNOUNCE] Aurora SPARC Linux Build 2.99 (Beta 2 for 3.0)

Has the update shown up in the YUM repositories?  I know I did an update
a little while back, and got a lot of files pulled down.  Is that the
equivalent of the Beta release, if I was already running 2.9x?


On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 15:28 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:

> The Aurora SPARC Linux project is proud to finally drag Build 2.99 
> kicking and screaming into the light.
> 
> Took us long enough, huh? Beta 1 was in April. Barring some sort of miracle,
> Aurora 3.0 will be the last sparc32 supporting release. So, if you're still
> clinging to your sparc32 systems, please test this beta out. After 3.0, 
> we're not even going to think about sparc32 (unless well bribed).
> 
> This is a BETA release, for what will become 3.0. In fact, we're going to 
> give this release a short period of time to uncover any really nasty bugs,
> and then we're going to call it 3.0.
> 
> Here are some of the key features in this release:
> 
> - Fedora Core 6 based tree of packages (some things are newer)
> - Support for Niagara hardware (Sun T1000, T2000)
> - gcc-4.1.1
> - gnome 2.16
> - KDE 3.5.5
> - kernel 2.6.23.1 (with patches!)
> - Full support for LVM at installtime (no more crashes!)
> 
> Like all BETAs, this one has some bugs. Here are the ones we know about:
> 
> - Installs on sparc32 hardware usually work, but they're very touchy.
> If you're installing to a sparc32 system, use text mode. If it fails to find
> the cdrom, try: linux expert text
> - Smartd seems to make systems using the esp.ko SCSI driver very very
> unhappy. If your system is esp based, we highly recommend that you
> disable the smartd service in single-user before fully booting after
> install.
> - cpuspeed seems to hardlock some sparc64 systems (the V120 is an
> example). Again, if your system locks up at cpuspeed, we suggest that
> you disable the cpuspeed service in single-user mode.
> - Parted was doing incorrect things in previous Aurora releases. This is
> the source of the odd cylinder-head error messages that have popped up
> in the past. Sometimes these error messages are harmless, sometimes they
> are not. Either way, you can get rid of them by booting to rescue mode,
> then, at the shell prompt, run:
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DRIVE bs=1M count=1
> 
> Where $DRIVE is your harddrive, likely sda or hda.
> 
> Then, reinstall. The errors will vanish (for good!). Be aware that
> running this command will wipe out all the data and partitions on that
> disk.
> 
> - E10000 systems are not yet supported. :/
> - Most IDE based SPARC systems need to boot with ide=nodma.
> Specifically, Ultra 5/10 and Sun Blade 100s need this for sure.
> - Systems that boot off qlogic attached disks are not supported, because 
> there is no working firmware loader in anaconda, and the qlogic driver 
> needs firmware.
> - The graphical installer on some sparc32 systems doesn't enable the mouse.
> Post installation, the mouse works fine in X.
> - We haven't spun the security updates into this yet. We'll do this before 
> 3.0 final.
> - Upgrades from 2.98 might not work. We found more errors in how we were
> handling partitions at installtime, and unfortunately, the best way to fix
> them is to destroy the partition tables entirely and reinstall from scratch.
> 
> If you find other bugs, please report them at
> http://bugzilla.auroralinux.org/
> 
> If you install 2.99 on a system, success or fail, we wanna know! Please
> take a moment and add your system to the table on our wiki:
> http://wiki.auroralinux.net/wiki/Build2.99TestMatrix
> 
> You can download the files from our primary location:
> ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/aurora/build-2.99
> http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/aurora/build-2.99
> 
> The mirror sites should pick it up in a few hours/days, depending on
> whether they still remember that we exist. :)
> 
> Many thanks to the folks in #aurora on freenode for their help in
> getting this release out.
> 
> ~spot
> 
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> Aurora FAQ: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~mas01r/aurorafaq.html

--
   Your Servant,                     <><
   B. Baggins                       [email protected] |
http://www.bbaggins.net/
_________________________________________________________________________
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                                 -- Samwise Gamgee

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