[2752] in SIPB_Linux_Development
RedHat-Athena
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Salvatore Valente)
Mon Jul 12 21:44:00 1999
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 21:43:52 -0400
To: linux-dev@MIT.EDU
From: Salvatore Valente <svalente@MIT.EDU>
Recently, someone was going to make some copies of the Installing
RedHat-Athena one-sheet. This led to some discussion (on zephyr)
about what version of RedHat people should install. So, let me try to
clear some things up.
The one-sheet does not mention a particular version of RedHat-Athena.
It mentions /mit/linux/redhat/current, which has pointed to 5.2 since
the "public beta test" was announced on Feb 18.
I think it's way, way past time to end the "public beta test". By
now, RedHat-Athena 5.2 is significantly better than 4.2. (Glibc is
basically a good thing, and Athena 8.2 is a very good thing.)
Sure, the RedHat-Athena 5.2 documentation isn't great, but then again,
neither is the 4.2 documentation.
So, unless someone can give a good reason not to (in the next couple
of days), I'll announce the end of the beta test period. That won't
mean much, but it should clear up any confusion about which version of
RedHat-Athena people should install.
I've reviewed both the one-sheet and iLinux-Athena. They both may be
lacking a bit, but neither of them contain anything that is actually
wrong with regards to 5.2.
---
Now, for some notes about RedHat 6.0.
I'm basically in favor of going to glibc 2.1. It's supposed to be a
bug-fix release, and it's supposed to have lots of big ugly bugs
fixed. There shouldn't be any problems for systems with 2.1 to run
programs built on systems with 2.0, and there shouldn't be very many
problems for 2.0 systems to run 2.1 programs. (In other words, I
don't think going to glibc2.1 would require a new @sys value or
anything annoying like that.)
I'm a little scared of the 2.2 kernel, because it crashes the NFS
server on sipb-nfs (and I've had also bad experiences with the 2.2 NFS
client at work).
As for the rest of the RedHat 6.0 distribution, I'd describe it as
"big and ugly". RedHat is really adding the kitchen sink.
In summary, I think RedHat 5.2 serves us well for now, and I don't see
any reason to try to support 6.0 in the near future. It would be
interesting, however, to try to drop the new glibc into a 5.2 system.
Have a nice day,
Sal.
