Subject: Alternative, generic A1 SLS boot disk, alpha version
From: Bill C. Riemers <[email-masked]>
Date: 2 May 1993 10:53:32 +0300
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce

Generic.A1 0.40  Copyright Bill C. Riemers 1993.  Freely distribute, don't
restrict.  This is an ALPHA release.

USE: SLS installation, emergency recovery, and booting.

This is the first public release of the Generic.A1 boot disk.  As the
name implies, this is intended to be an alternative to SLS's A1.3 or
A1.5.  Generic.A1 0.00 was the Software Landing's A1.test, so don't
be surprised at the similarities.  Peter did a lot of work in making
his boot disks, and I happily took 100% to improve on.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Features:
- All of A1.5 features except tape installations support...
- Full MSLOSS compatibility  ... In other-words I have a short
     script that will reboot to MSDOS, run a batch and then return.
     Obviously, this kills all processes...
- The option to automatically transfer SLS from a MSDOS only device
     (such as an unsupported CD-ROM drive) to Linux with MSLOSS for
     installation.
- Friendly "csh" instead of user hostile "sh".
- Lots of helpful aliases.
- A reasonable set of emergency commands including "ed".
- The same disk works for 5.25" and 3.5" drives.
- A small set of man pages to help new users.
- Slightly more flexibility in the install scripts.
- The ability to automatically raw-write and mount old A2 disks
  from SLS 1.0
- xroaches... Not exactly, but I'm sure there are bugs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A note about ed:
   "ed" is the generic Unix editor normally used by other programs
   such as "vi", but it can be used by the user directly.  This
   editor is sufficiently sophisticated that I was able to do the
   last stages of development used the Generic.A1 boot disk with-
   out mounting my hard-drive.
   (I actually did manage to make a 5.25 version with "vi", but
    I found that "vi" would complain about not being able to
    write the tmp file, and in the end the file I was editing
    ended up trashed.  So I decided to use the disk space for
    other things.)

Where to find Generic.A1:

  I uploaded Generic.A1 and a documentation file to both tsx-11.mit.edu
  and sunsite.unc.edu Friday.  I expect that the files will be
  moved to /pub/linux/image, but until I receive a reply, I can't be
  sure.  I was under pressure of trying to get this ready in time
  for the next issue of CD-ROM News, so please try not to be to critical.
  The main idea that this way, people won't have to copy 31 floppies
  off the CD just to install linux.  However, I'm sure this will be
  useful for others that are doing things like using a MSDOS network
  for installation.

Future releases:

  We'll have to see.  Peter is pretty ambitious and will probably incorporate
  and/or improve on my ideas, so a futer release might not be needed.

Have fun!

                                        Bill ([email-masked],
                                              [email-masked])