From: almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch (Werner Almesberger)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: LILO 0.8 released
Followup-To: comp.os.linux
Keywords: LILO, boot loader, new version
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 10:42:02 GMT

LILO 0.8 is on sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/Incoming and it will be soon
on tsx-11.mit.edu in /pub/linux/packages/lilo. The files are

    lilo.8.tar.Z    source and documentation
    lilo.8.ps.Z     documentation in PostScript format

Highlights of this version: quick installation script, password protection
of boot images, remote operation over a serial line, full support of disk
parameter detection for SCSI disks (supported by 0.99 kernels for all but
the Seagate and Ultrastor adapters).

There are a lot more minor fixes and improvements. The relevant section of
the CHANGES file is at the end of this posting.

The quick installation script should help avoiding some common mistakes
made during installation. It's not perfect and a bit on the restrictive
side, but it should be good enough to help getting a solid base configura-
tion. For the more advanced features, there's of course no way around the
documentation.

Future plans: 0.9 shall be mostly a maintenance release without any major
new features. It will be quickly followed by 1.0, which will be identical
but won't have any backwards-compatibility code and the documentation
won't mention older versions of LILO or pre-1.0 kernel versions anymore.

- Werner

---------------------------------- cut here -----------------------------------

Changes from version 7 to 8
---------------------------

  Boot sector
  -----------

    - now supports password protection for boot images.
    - fixed occasional omission of delays.
    - passes the name of the boot image to the kernel, which stores
      it in the environment variable BOOT_IMAGE.
    - parameters are now preserved when trying to boot the same
      image again after a media error.
    - the command line is preserved on error.
    - can be operated from a serial line.
    - made timeout handling interrupt-driven to fix time-wrap problems
      at midnight.
    - now clears all bytes after text and data of traditional boot
      images booted from a file.

  Map installer
  -------------

    - added detection of missing HDIO_REQ support.
    - added sanity checking for disk parameters.
    - fixed BIOS code computation for SCSI disks.
    - command-line settings can now override /etc/lilo/config
    - defaults for ROOT, VGA, RAMDISK, PASSWORD and OPTIONAL can be set
      in the options section.
    - new option PROMPT to unconditionally enter the boot prompt.
    - new option TIMEOUT to specify an input timeout.
    - new flag OPTIONAL to specify that an image can be omitted if it
      isn't present.
    - new value CURRENT for ROOT to specify the "current" root device.
    - special characters are now correctly escaped in dumps.
    - temporary files are now removed on error.
    - updated the usage output to reflect the changes since 0.6.
    - added a missing closedir to device.c

  Documentation and installation
  ------------------------------

    - wrote a quick installation script.
    - fixed many small documentation errors.
    - wrote a README for the doc directory.
    - added descriptions of the configuration parameters passed in
      the boot sector and of the kernel's command-line interface.
    - Makefile now explicitly uses /bin/sh
    - changed echo \c to echo -n in the Makefile
    - added ability to print the name of the active partition to
      activate.

-- 
   _________________________________________________________________________
  / Werner Almesberger, ETH Zuerich, CH      almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch /
 /_IFW_A44__Tel._+41_1_254_7213___________________________________________/
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux