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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!think.com!ames!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!yorkohm!rog From: rog@ohm.york.ac.uk (Roger Peppe) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: BSDI/sparc (Rob's Talk) [Was: Any truth to BSDI doing a port to Sparc?] Keywords: bsd4.4 Message-ID: <1992Nov16.183129.18304@ohm.york.ac.uk> Date: 16 Nov 92 18:31:29 GMT Sender: rog@ohm.york.ac.uk (Roger Peppe) Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK Lines: 47 In article <1992Nov14.015225.13368@tgivan.wimsey.bc.ca> mak@tgivan.wimsey.bc.ca (Bob Makowski) writes: > In article <kzin.721536140@cc.gatech.edu> kzin@terminus.gatech.edu (John Rudd) writes: > > > >I was just curious if there was any truth to the claim that > >I've heard about BSDI doing a port of BSD to the Sparc line, > >so that BSD lovers can avoid Solaris 2? If so, when? > > > > I've watched the appropriate groups for a week. Noone's seemed to pick up > on Rob Kolstad's keynote at the SUG Conference. So I've excerpted last > week's post in postscript herein. Note, the tantilizing noun used was > "BSD" and not "BSDI". But hey, ... where else is BSD really alive anymore? ;-) I don't know whether this is old news (as I don't manage to read _all_ the traffic passing through this newsgroup), but a friend of mine sent me this quotation (without permission) from SunExpert magazine : | Attention all you university types, government researchers, kernel hackers | and wannabees: BSD 4.4 for SPARC has arrived. The latest version of the OS, | developed almost single-handedly by Chris Torek at LBL is in alpha test. | "We haven't got a SS2 port working yet." Says tTorek. The OS was ported to a | SS1. | Included in the release are the gcc compiler, kernel debugging tools, a | "usable" console, stable and accurate clocks and, according to Torek, "some | pretty fast TCP/IP code". | | In January 1991, LBL received six months of DARPA funding to do the port. By | October, Torek had a rudimentary system up and running. While he received | help from members of the SPRITE development project at Berkeley, Torek says | that LBL got no help from Sun whatsoever. He attributes this lack to a lack | of understanding on Sun's part. "Sun thought we wanted to compete with SunOS", | Torek says. He sees the two systems a fulfilling different needs. | | What's new in 4.4? "Almost everything," Torek says. The sustem is ANSI-C | compatible, and POSIX 1003.1 and 1003.2 compliant. It includes a new filesystem | layout, full NFS support, a complete OSI protocol stack, a new networking | architecture (which unifies sockets and Ritchie's "bstreams" [sic] I/O system), | a new virtual memory system (derived from Mach 2.5) and a redo of the OS' | process data structures. | | There's no date yet on when beta and production releases of 4.4. for SPARC will | be available. But Torek says he has more than enough alpha volunteers | already. Does anyone know anything more about this ? rog.