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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: how do I undo 386BSD boot blocks?
Message-ID: <1993Feb13.011253.16335@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
References: <1993Feb12.010335.26398@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> <1993Feb12.024645.20918@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1993Feb12.184310.27616@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 01:12:53 GMT
Lines: 93
In article <1993Feb12.184310.27616@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> kaleb@seaview (Kaleb Keithley) writes:
>In article terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>> 1) low-level format the disk.
>
>Yeah, I could throw my 486 into the Pacific too! Get a grip Mr. Wizard of
>Earth C. That's like saying "The operation was a success, even though
>the patient died." I've got 150 megabytes in my OS/2 partition. My idea
>of a good time isn't to spend 45 minutes low level formatting my disk,
>then another hour to reinstall OS/2, then another half hour to restore
>from backups. Oh, and by the way, I'd still need DOS to low-level format
>my disk!
No, you don't need DOS; in any case, you didn't state that maintaining
other partitions was a priority.
>> 2) boot dist.fs or fixit.fs and type dd if=/386bsd of=/dev/wd0a
>
>And where does that leave me? Do I still need a DOS disk after doing
>that to fix up my now invalidated master boot record? I bet I do!
One wonders how your OS/2 booted before 386BSD was installed, what with
no master boot record and all. The fact is, I didn't say you need to
replace the newly invalidated master boot record with a DOS master boot,
did I? The OS/2 master boot record will do just fine. If you installed
386BSD as the first thing on the drive, you're fine; if it's *after* the
OS/2 partition, you will have to make sure your dd is given a bs and a
count so that *only* the master boot record is affected.
Since you were basically claiming a "de facto" standard for the boot record,
this should be easy for you.
>>1) Frankly, you are lucky that the people doing research using 386BSD
>> are willing to share it with you before it's commercial quality,
>> assuming that that will ever be the case.
>
>What kind of @#$%^& is that. I don't run around saying "You're lucky
>I did this", for the things I've placed in the freely redistributable
>domain.
Looking at this now, I can see that it was a wee bit less than tactful
than I could have been.
What I should have said:
There any reason to complain when something which is free doesn't meet
your expectations, or when something designed as a tool for the research
and educational communities doesn't meet commercial release standards;
*this* is what set me off. The expectation expressed was one which
would require commercial-level release management or technical support
to resolve, and it is an unreasonable expectation to place on 386BSD.
I am sure 0.2 will be more to your liking in this area, but I'd like
to point out the distinction between "defacto standard" and "documented
and usable standard" with respect to PC partitioning/booting/etc..
>I hope you're not using Xaw3d! You're name isn't Jolitz, or
>Torvalds, or even Stallman; just where do you get off telling me I'm
>lucky?
I don't go complaining about deficiencies in Xaw3d that make it less than
a commercial product, either, when I know damn well that it was not
intended as such. It's users are lucky Xaw3d it was released and that
it's relatively painless for a non-X-guru to build, install, and use.
I have done a lot of things personally, but, being a Novell employee with
non-disclosure and non-competition agreements combined with the work I do
at Novell and the upcoming state of things with regards to USL, my hands
are rather tied as to what I can or can not release. I have a couple of
projects in the wings that I will be able to release shortly, and several
others which will probably never see the light of day.
I have done work on some of the boot code to make it work on AT&T, Compaq,
and HP Vectra machines, and I did write the patchkit software, and I have
posted several patches of my own. Where my obligations do not prevent me
from contributing, I do so.
>Now that I have that off my chest... I apologize to the rest of the world
>for venting my spleen in public like this.
I appologize to the rest of the group for the same infraction. It did look
pretty condescending in retrospect.
Terry Lambert
terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
--
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