[e-smith-devinfo] Coming soon: Unofficial SME 5.5 for Alpha

[Robert van den Aker]

Dear Alphaphiles,

I'm sure it's not as eagerly awaited as SME 5.6 for x86, and the announcement is a bit premature, because some final testing remains to be done, but I'd like to inform anyone interested in the unofficial Alpha port of SME that I'm currently running what I believe will be the as-official-as-it-gets unofficial SME 5.5 for Alpha.
I'll keep you posted on how the tests are going and when to expect the iso.

In the meantime here are the release-notes, which will probably not change between now and the actual release:

------------------------------------------------------------
SME/Alpha Server and Gateway V5.5
Release notes - November 18, 2002
------------------------------------------------------------

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
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.
* Diald-top has been updated to a version that actually
works on alpha.
* An update to mm-1.1.3-8 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 2.3.9-0.72, 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.

[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Cheers,
Robert

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