Subject: Titan VI (released)

From: Rod Stewart <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 00:56:06 -0500 (EST)

Well it's out the door, on the mirror, all ready to go.  A bit late
(something around 6 months if anyone else was counting), but most of the
edges should be rounded now.

For the brave, for the few who want to do what is right and not simply
convenient, for those with too much time on their hands or too much free
bandwidth, or maybe just for you.  For you we have Titan VI.

Titan VI is an ARMv4l distribution which is completely rpm based.  All
source and binary rpms are  provided.    (Note:  It will not work on a
Risc PC).  The nice thing about Titan is it has a versioned libc.

WARNING: these rpms are compiled with versioning enabled
	in libc.  Blindly installing them WILL break your system, if you
	do not already have a versioned system.
	Make certain you understand what you are doing.

	Installing on an extra partition is highly recommended to begin
	with.

Now that that is over with.  Titan VI is based off Red Hat 6.0, with all
the security updates up to October 31, 1999, excluding XFree86 (which is
an old version which does have some known buffer overflows).  A number of
other key updates include:
	kernel 2.2.12 rmk1 CVS-19991026
	glibc 2.1.2
	GCC 2.95.1
	binutils 2.9.5.0.14
	gdb 4.18

Those are the really big ones.  I'll generate a list of all the
differences, and what is missing later this week and put it on the ftp
site.  In short includes most of the good things in Red Hat 6.0, but does
not come with Netscape, or KDE.  It does have GNOME.

Titan VI is frozen, as such baring any great booboos, there will be no
changes to what is in the titan-VI/RPMS and titan-VI/SRPMS directories.
Any security updates will be put in an updates directory.

Well there is a short intro, now for where to get it from.  Titan VI is
available with all the RPMS and SRPMS from:
Primary site (courtesy The Nexus Project http://www.nexus.carleton.ca):
	ftp://ftp.nw.carleton.ca/winder/titan-VI/
Nightly mirror: (courtesy NetWinder.org/Rebel.com)
	ftp://ftp.netwinder.org:/pub/mirrors/carleton/winder/titan-VI

There is also a small tarball available:
Note:  This tarball should also work as an nfs root without any real
	problems (use kernel-BOOT for the kernel you need).
Remember the "p" option when untarring.
	ftp://ftp.nw.carleton.ca/winder/images/
	ftp://ftp.netwinder.org:/pub/mirrors/carleton/winder/images
		titan-VI.tar.bz2   22.4 MB (uncompresses to 96MB)
		listing.rpms.txt (the rpms which are in it)
		modified.txt (list of modifications made before taring)

[bzip2 brought the size down by 6 megs, for those on slow connections]

If this is your first time installing, it might be easier to use the above
image on a spare partition.  Afterwards adding in the rpms which you want.

If you want to be adventurous you can give something similar to the
following a try.  Assuming  /mnt is a mount point, say /dev/hda3

	mkdir -p /mnt/var/lib/rpm
	rpm --initdb --root=/mnt
	cd [location where you have downloaded the rpms]
	find -name \*.rpm |sort > list
	rpm --root=/mnt -ihv `cat list`

Resolve any complaints, ie. remove the following two from "list", as their
dependencies cannot be satisfied.
	Xconfigurator-4.2.3-1.titan.a.armv4l.rpm
	gcc-java-2.95.1-0.titan.g.armv4l.rpm
Resolve any complaints from rpm, either add or remove packages.  You
really do not want to use --nodeps or --force, as rpm will not do it's
magic when these options are used.  If you must use one of them, install
the package after the first set has been installed.

Now you've installed it, why doesn't it work?  Did you remember to create
an /etc/fstab file (or if you used the tar did you remember to uncomment
the lines for your root partitions?

Having trouble loging in?  You most likely need to have shadow passwords,
try something similar to the following before you umount /mnt
	chroot /mnt
	setup  
		enable shadow passwords
	pwconv
	exit
Note: netcfg does not work, so you will have to write your neworking files
by hand, or copy and modify them from another system.

A note on kernels.  
	--you need at least NeTTrom 2.1.7, but I would use at least 2.1.16
	--The kernel rpm is currently very much NetWinder specific, as I
	  did not know what other options are popular.
		Let me know what other options you need, and I'll try to
		add them in future kernels.
	--Most things are modularized, including the ne2k-pci and tulip
	  drivers.
	--The NWFPE is compiled in the kernel
	--The kernel is called /boot/Image (well it is a symlink)
	--If you want to nfs boot, use the kernel-BOOT rpm, which has
	  the ne2k-pci compiled in the kernel, and is setup for nfsroot
	  boots.

I'm certain I've forgotten a few things, but if you've read this far,
thank you.  I'll put some better instructions on the ftp site later this
week.

There is a mailing list for dealing with Titan specific bugs/issues:
	[email-masked]
to subscribe send mail to:
	[email-masked]
	with "subscribe" in the body of the message
Something similar to the following:
	echo subscribe [email-masked]

I would like to thank the following for their work on ARM Linux (in
alphabetical order).  All I really did was package this, these are the
people who did a large portion of the work.  Sorry for anybody I missed.
	Scott Bambrough
	Philip Blundell
	Alex Holden
	Russell King
	Andrew E. Mileski
	Douglas Paul
	Jim Pick
	Ralph Siemsen
	Woody Suwalski

-Rms
Rod m. Stewart <[email-masked]>

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