The latest MCC interim version of Linux is now available
by anonymous ftp from ftp.mcc.ac.uk in /pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.97p2.

The various README files are all in the process of being revised,
and will be going through a fairly continuous editing, and I have
not yet loaded all of the sources, links, and .a files, but they
will be there in a few days, perhaps by tomorrow (Saturday).

Among the changes which have taken place:

   The full source of the kernel used in this version is included.
   Just type 'make' and you'll recompile the kernel (with a UK
   keyboard, of course).  Among the changes already made are that
   include/linux/config.site.h is used instead of config.dist.h,
   so that it is easy to edit out the SCSI drivers if you have no
   SCSI card; this speeds up performance a bit on small machines.

   The GNU debugger gdb is included.

   Since the two maths libraries are now compatible, the hard maths
   libraries are included as well as the soft.

   A number of small utilities and missing man pages are included:
   ldd, w, ctrlaltdel, setfdprm, todos, fromdos, and locate come
   to mind.

   The extended file system utilities mkefs and efsck are provided,
   but as a separate 'package' on the comp2 disk, and with the
   warning that this is still experimental.

   The boot disk is now getting so large that I imagine people with
   2 Mb of memory will have problems.  I have managed during testing
   to install this system on a machine with only 2 Mb of memory, but
   the initial boot/init sequence halted part way through, and I
   had to kill the shell on Virtual Console 2 (those on VC 3 and 4
   just never appeared).  I could then run fdisk, mkswap, and swapon.

   The mount command accepts extended file systems and dos file system
   types, as well as all of the options supported by the smount command
   from the dos file system release; therefore that command is not
   included.

Among the changes which have not taken place:

   I have been working on a menu-driven, screen oriented installation
   program.  It is not ready to go yet.

   I have been looking into several programs suggested for taking
   checksums and such for the entire release.  These are of some
   interest, and may help to warn people that things are not
   quite right.  Unfortunately there are a considerable number of
   files whose checksums must change during installation
   (for example, the kernel, /etc/Image); any sensible procedure
   must try to do something sensible with these, but I'm not sure
   what.


WARNING:

Read the instructions before using.  Many people have contributed
suggestions and patches since the last release.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk