Re: Can I get a CD?
On Sun, Feb 21, 1999 at 11:03:49PM -0500, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 21, 1999 at 08:59:45PM -0600, Christopher Palmer wrote:
>
> > To the best of my knowledge, there is as yet no CD-ROM distribution of the
> > GNU HURD. Is this correct?
> >
> > I have tried many times to download the 71MB tarball on the GNU FTP site,
> > but the connection drops consistently, making things very difficult. I
> > have tried both at work and at home.
>
> Hm. Out of curiosity, where exactly is this, and what does it comprise? I'm
> interested in trying out a GNU/HURD system on a box here, and I'm wondering
> if this seventy-meg tarball is a snapshot of a live filesystem or something?
First, let me say that the 71 MB tar file is pretty much obsolete.
We now work from the Debian ftp archive, which contains the same software
packages as the tar file, but in later versions, and is much more stable.
There is a 9.5 MB tar file on alpha.gnu.org, but it is not necessary if you
use cross-install, the script which I used to create this. You only need to
get certain packages to start from. Then you can upgrade incrementally
using Debians packaging system.
This is not pressed on CD ROM yet, because it is changing rapidly, and a CDD
ROM does not make sense currently. However, anybody with a decent net
connection and a CD burner can offer you a snapshot. (as I have neither, I
won't :)
> What's the most direct way to get a HURD system up and running from scratch,
> assuming a clean hard disk with no OS installed, and assuming the existence
> of another machine that can make boot disks from image files? (We can also
> assume the availability of passive-mode FTP and of an NFS server, as needed.)
If you have no OS installed, you should install a minimal Linux system. We
don't have boot disks to bootstrap the installation yet (Gordon didn't want
them at thi stage, and he is right. There is more important stuff). Either
boot from a Linux rescue disk, or install Linux, so you can install from
there.
You need packages, and cross-install, native-install, dpkg-hurd, and use
them as described in the Idiot's guide on the web page.
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
> PS: Is it the case that without X, a GNU/HURD box contains nothing that
> isn't copyrighted by the GNU project? That would be quite neat...
Debian GNU/Hurd does contain dpkg, which is copyrighted by Ian Jackson and
others. The GNU Mach microkernel is copyrighted by university of Utah.
Other Debian stuff is copyrighted by Software in the Publnic Interest, the
umbrella of debian.
bsdutils is copyrighted by University of California. Many of these bsd
programs do not work at the moment.
CVS is copyrighted by Brian Berliner. Other stuff by Joey Hess, James Troup,
etc etc etc
Although most of the core system is copyrighted by Free Software Foundation,
some stuff isn't. But almost everything is GPL'ed. And each and everything
is free software.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org finger brinkmd@
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org master.debian.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de for public PGP Key
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
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