Dear Alphaphiles,
Looks like my preannouncement in November was a bit premature, but my
unofficial and unsupported port of SME 5.5 to the Alpha (aka DEC Alpha,
Compaq Alpha, AXP) architecture is now ready to be released.
I want to thank Chaloner Hale for all the time and effort he put in to
help me test the distribution and troubleshoot the problems that we found.
I'm working with Mitel to get the iso to them. If you don't have the
bandwidth to download the iso, or if you just can't wait for the iso to
show up in my contrib area, contact me off-list for a CD-ROM. Others
should keep an eye on http://www.robert2.dds.nl/ (currently empty), where
I'll post links to the iso and md5sum when they're available. I'll also
post future updates there and maybe a FAQ list (which with our userbase
will probably be an AQ list).
Cheers,
Robert
Here are the release notes:
------------------------------------------------------------
SME/Alpha Server and Gateway V5.5
Release notes - January 24, 2003
------------------------------------------------------------
Below you'll find a few notes about the differences between
this unofficial and unsupported Alpha port and Mitel's
official, original release for intel-compatible systems, as
well as a brief summary of Alpha-specific changes.
------------------------------------------------------------
Differences from the original i386 release
------------------------------------------------------------
For a quick overview of differences between this release and
the original i386 release, have a look at the file
RedHat/base/comps on this CD-ROM.
The comps file is the file that tells the installer what
software packages to install. For this release I've kept the
original comps file from the i386 release intact, with the
addition of flags where there's a difference between i386
and Alpha. These flags are 'i386:' for any packages that
only exist for or should only be installed on
intel-compatible systems; 'alpha:' for those packages that
are specific to this release; and '!alpha:' (which means
'not on Alpha') for packages that can be installed on Alpha
systems, but were excluded from this release for reasons
that I'll explain below.
------------------------------------------------------------
First the 'i386' packages. I suppose it's fairly obvious why
they are i386-only.
------------------------------------------------------------
i386: e-smith-boot-image
i386: e-smith-lilo
i386: e-smith-reinstall-floppy
i386: kernel-pcmcia-cs
i386: lilo
i386: mkbootdisk
i386: syslinux
------------------------------------------------------------
Next are the Alpha-only packages:
------------------------------------------------------------
alpha: @ SMEAlphaBase
alpha: @ SMEAlphaExtras
which expands to:
SMEAlphaBase:
aboot
curl
make
mgetty
obtuse-smtpd-qmail
e-smith-obtuse-smtpd
SMEAlphaExtras:
links
ncftp
apache-manual
maildrop-man
man-pages
python2-docs
The most surprising packages in this set are probably
obtuse-smtpd-qmail and e-smith-obtuse-smtpd. I had to revert
to using obtuse-smtpd because mailfront didn't function
properly on Alpha: mailfront was accessible from the
localhost (tested with mconnect, pine, fetchmail and IMP),
but not from any host on the network. Connections with
tcpclient from network hosts to port 25 were allowed and
idented, but mailfront would not then take over.
Because of the return to obtuse-smtpd I put the (empty)
template for /var/qmail/control/rcpthosts, which had been
moved to e-smith-mailfront, back into e-smith-email. The
original e-smith-email package is included on this CD-ROM
under RedHat/test-packages, along with mailfront and
e-smith-mailfront packages, to allow you to help diagnose
the problem.
------------------------------------------------------------
Packages included in the i386 release but excluded from this
release:
------------------------------------------------------------
!alpha: SMEServer
!alpha: apmd
!alpha: db31
!alpha: e-smith-blades
!alpha: e-smith-keys
!alpha: e-smith-mailfront
!alpha: e-smith-rpm
!alpha: mailfront
!alpha: megaide
!alpha: php-pgsql
* The exclusion of mailfront and e-smith-mailfront is
explained above.
* The packages SMEServer, e-smith-blades, e-smith-keys and
e-smith-rpm all have to do with the 'blades' update system
and I don't have a blade server.
* apmd is the advanced power management daemon for laptops.
An Alpha binary does exist for this package, but the RH 7.0
installer that we use for SME/Alpha won't install it because
of "circular dependencies".
* A binary for db31 does not exist for Alpha. Apparently all
the required routines are in db3.
* Megaide was excluded because it wouldn't compile and I
can't test it anyway.
* The RH 7.0 installer wouldn't install php-pgsql without
postgresql and it's not much use without postgresql anyway.
------------------------------------------------------------
SME/Alpha-specific changes
------------------------------------------------------------
* The installation and upgrade floppies now give you a
choice of installation methods. Available methods are
CD-ROM, ftp, http, nfs, and harddisk.
* The installation instructions now contain more detailed
instructions for SRM installations.
* Configuration of dhcpcd has been slightly modified to work
with newer versions of dhcpcd, which we use for their
Alpha-specific bugfixes. With this modification the external
interface of systems running a fairly recent dhcpcd will no
longer be completely dead to the outside world. It's much
nicer that way.
* Initial configuration in private server-and-gateway mode
is done more correctly. Ports are closed from first boot
now.
* Diald-top has been updated to a version that actually
works on Alpha.
* An update to mm-1.1.3-11 and a patch to e-smith-base seem
to have solved the problems with password-protected ibays,
but don't ask me why.
* Netatalk has been updated to 1.5.3.1-4, compared to
1.5.2-2 in the original SME 5.5 for i386. This has
necessitated a small patch to e-smith-netatalk. Take this
into account if you should want to update e-smith-netatalk.
* Xinetd has been updated to 2.3.7-4.7x, compared to 2.3.3-1
in the original SME 5.5 for i386. This has necessitated a
minor patch to e-smith-base. Take this into account if you
should want to update e-smith-base.
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