Aurora SPARC Linux Project

The Aurora SPARC Linux Project is proud to announce Build 0.32 
(Nashville) to the world. This is the first release with a fully 
functional installer for both sparc32 (sun4c/sun4m) and sparc64 (sun4u).

Aside from the installer, the code base has changed little, with the 
exception of the added patches to support UltraSPARC III+ based machines.
The installer has been significantly improved, so if you installed 0.31, 
please strongly consider installing 0.32 instead.

The ISO images are multi-boot enabled, aka, you can use the same iso set 
for sparc32 & sparc64.

This build is to be considered BETA. Like all the other Aurora builds.

This release has some known bugs:

- mouseconfig fails at the end of the install. this is broken in kudzu.
The first thing you probably want to do post-install is run mouseconfig as
root. That should resolve it.

- sun4d machines probably won't work. The last several reports I received 
stated that the 2.4 kernel is in a bad state on these machines, and I have 
no sun4d machines to test on.

- 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 just fine.

- Swapon segfauls on sparc32 SMP, yet still seems to work. *shrug* 
Accepting patches.

- The floppy image (boot64.img/boot32.img) is waaay too big for a floppy
disk. Most SPARCs don't have working floppy drives anyway. Its included
mostly for reference. There is a way to get around this, basically by
splitting the floppy image into "boot64/32.img" and "initrd64/32.img", so
that its a two disk process, but again, thats for a later release.

- There might still be sections of the installer, especially Text and 
Serial that refer to Aurora as (C) Red Hat, Inc. Aurora is NOT a product of Red
Hat, Inc. If you find one of these lingering references let me know.

- 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.

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

Downloads are available at the usual locations:

ftp://zenIII.uk.linux.org/pub/distributions/aurora/build-0.32/
ftp://auroralinux.org/pub/aurora/build-0.32/

Wanna be a mirror? Found a bug in the tree? Something missing/corrupt?  
Email me: tcallawa@redhat.com

Tested machines:

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

Install methods:  Serial (works) 
Network (works) 
HD (not tested, no idea if it works or not) 
Text (works) 
Graphical (works)
Floppy (does not work, floppy image too large)

Thank yous go out to:

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.
Robr, for carrying that heavy box.
Jakub Jelinek, for multi-lib.
Dave Miller, for fixing the UltraSPARC III+.
Uzi, for supporting the community within Sun.
Tom Duffy, for reminding me about UFS at the last minute.
Everyone on aurora-sparc-devel & aurora-sparc-user.

the Aurora SPARC Project lives at:

http://auroralinux.org

~spot
---
Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> Red Hat Sales Engineer
Sair Linux and GNU Certified Administrator (LCA)
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
GPG: D786 8B22 D9DB 1F8B 4AB7  448E 3C5E 99AD 9305 4260

The words and opinions reflected in this message do not necessarily
reflect those of my employer, Red Hat, and belong solely to me.

"Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal." --- T. S. Eliot