helen@cup.portal.com (Helen C OBoyle) (03/23/89)
Hello netlanders...
Sorry to post here, but I was trying to reach 2.10BSD people, and this
seemed like the best place to find them.
Summary: HOW CAN A SCHOOL GET A COPY OF 2.9BSD (for which it already is
licensed and just no longer has a good tape) OR IDEALLY 2.10BSD
(Usenix has the order, but due to "problems with the tape-splitting
program" can't send the tape for at least a few weeks) QUICKLY ????
Traditionally, the second semester of the graduate operating systems class at
Virginia Commonwealth University has been taught on PDP's running some version
of UNIX. Lately, this has been 2.9BSD. During the move to a new building
last spring, we lost 2.9BSD (disk went bad, etc.). The Academic Computing
Center, who at one time had the CSC department's 2.9 tape, had reused the
media for something else last year, figuring that they no longer needed to
keep 2.9BSD. The obvious solution was to order 2.10, and that is what
VCU started to do a couple months ago, in preparation for class this Spring.
The order was held up once or twice as it wound its way through the standard
academic bureaucracy before being sent off to Usenix, who received it
recently. According to the prof, the VCU person handling the order was told
by Usenix that there would be a delay in shipping the tape because of a
problem with the software used to put the distribution on tape. This means
that school will get the tape in mid-April or later.
The problem is that the last of the class' projects is scheduled to start in
very early April (and last until the end of the month, approximately). If
we don't have 2.x by this time, we could end up using MS-LOSS for yet another
operating systems project. Yes, the first two projects this semester involved
using MS-LOSS, quite a surprise for a ten CSC people looking forward to
working with UNIX.
PLEASE, if anyone has any ideas on how to save the class from this terrible
fate, let me know. Is there any way we can get 2.10 or even 2.9 within a
couple weeks (or sooner?). Any hoops I can jump through that would help?
(volunteer more time in the terminal room next Usenix, etc. ????) Having
waited four years to take this class, I *really* would like to get some sort
of useful learning experience out of it.
Thanks.....
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Helen C. O'Boyle
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