This is FreeMiNT 1.15.12, official release ========================================== Fourth release of FreeMiNT 1.15 ------------------------------- This is an improved and bugfixed version of the 1.15.5 release. Thanks to all betatesters who tested intensivly the beta versions and helped me and all other FreeMiNT contributors with suggestions and constructive critic or interesting discussions. This FreeMiNT version is dedicated to the MiNT community. Without the contributions of the community members there would be nothing todo. The most important changes: - new system calls: Pvalidate()/Maccess()/Ptrace()/Psysctl()/Fpoll()/ Fseek64()/emulation() - improvements in the memory management - improvements in the module handling and kernel interface - bugfixes of some bad bugs - finalized cvs integration of all kernel modules - updates and enhancements of the kernel modules Very important: The kernel modules are no longer maintained seperatly! This implies too that there are no seperate packages for each of the modules. If you ever maintained/packed/shipped 10 modules and the FreeMiNT kernel and lot of kernel related tools you understand that this is a pure waste of time. With CVS it's possible to reduce this overhead dramatically. I'm sure you understand this. The archives are a little bit bigger but all modules are consistent to the kernel version. See in ChangeLog.#1.15.12 for more details. Contributors: - Thomas Binder - Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz - Guido Flohr - Michael Schwingen - Ralph Lowinski - Jens Heitmann - Odd Skancke - and me Frank Naumann 2000-07-31, Magdeburg ============================================================================== ****************************************************************************** ============================================================================== This is FreeMiNT 1.15.5, official release ========================================= Third public release of the new FreeMiNT 1.15 --------------------------------------------- This is an improved and bugfixed version of the 1.15.1 release. Thanks to all betatesters who tested intensivly the beta versions and helped me and all other FreeMiNT contributors with suggestions and constructive critic or interesting discussions. This FreeMiNT version is dedicated to the MiNT community. Without the contributions of the community members there would be nothing todo. The most important changes: - new system calls: Ffchown(), Ffchmod(), Dchroot(), Fstat64() - optional native UTC mode for filesystems - better shutdown, FreeMiNT never returns to TOS now - new INITIALMEM configuration option (config file/run time) - support MagiC style shared libraries - support program header flag F_SMALLTPA (introduced by MagiC) - and lot of bugfixes and other improvements See in ChangeLog.#1.13-1.15.9 for more details. Contributors: - Thomas Binder - Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz - Guido Flohr - Andreas Baer - Michael Schwingen - Ralph Lowinski - Joerg Westheide - and I Frank Naumann Magdeburg, 16.11.1999 ============================================================================== ****************************************************************************** ============================================================================== This is FreeMiNT 1.15.1, official release ========================================= Second public release of the new FreeMiNT 1.15. ---------------------------------------------- This is mostly a bugfixed and speed optimized version of the 1.15.0 release. Thanks to all betatesters who tested intensivly the beta versions and helped me and all other FreeMiNT contributors with suggestions and constructive critic or interesting discussions. This FreeMiNT version is dedicated to the MiNT community. Without the contributions of the community members there would be nothing todo. The most important changes: - 040/060 MMU (memory protection) support - fix bug in 030 memory protection code (working now) - complete new and much faster kernel internal memory management - efficient 3 way algorithm - new Ssystem information and configuration options - processor cache information & handling - extended kernel informations - extended debug settings - new Dcntl supported (DP_VOLNAMEMAX) - fixes and improvements in the NEWFATFS: - software configurable writeprotect mode on filesystem level - more sanity checks and verifications - enhanced FAT32 support - better shell support, x-bit emulation - complete working lookup - fix some other minor bugs related to directory handling, - fix floppy disk bug - pseudo permission support - fixes and improvements in the buffer cache: - resident caching (interface enhancement) - remove redundant code - large read caching - writeback optimziation - signed - unsigned bugfixes - bugfixes in mapping routines - rewritten syscall entry strategie - lot of speed optimizations in periodically tasks - complete new enhanced CNF parser - rewritten Psigintr(), working now much better - own processor detection - automatic cpush adaption - updates for the TOSFS - fix 14 partition problem - fix for CENTEK II users (TOS version detection) - better Milan support - and lot of other minor fixes and cleanups See in ChangeLog.#1.13-1.15.9 for more details. Contributors: - Thomas Binder - Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz - Guido Flohr - Michael Schwingen - Julian F. Reschke - Ralph Lowinski - Katherine L. Ellis - Christian Felsch - Rainer Seitel - and I Frank Naumann Magdeburg, 08.05.1999 ============================================================================== ****************************************************************************** ============================================================================== This is FreeMiNT 1.15.0, official release ========================================= First public release of the new FreeMiNT 1.15. ---------------------------------------------- Thanks to all the people who've helped me, all betatesters and all who've send patches, bug reports or suggestions. Special thanks to Katherine L. Ellis for her great MiNT-Setter and the permission to include this program in the distribution. It's freeware, copyright by Kellis. Also Katherine L. Ellis checked my english documentation. Special thanks to Christian Felsch for his great FSetter and the permission to include this program also in the distribution. Also freeware, copyright by Christian. Thanks to Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz, Rainer Seitel, Thomas Binder, Julian F. Reschke, Mikko Larjava, Daniel Petersson, Petr Strehlik and Jo Even Jarkstein for betatests, suggestions and patches. Thanks to all betatesters that I'm not mentionning here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's a list of extensions relative to FreeMiNT 1.14.7: 1) new FAT filesystem has been added. You can activate it for selected disks using MINT.CNF command NEWFATFS followed by a list of drives. For example: NEWFATFS=D,E,F,H will activate the new FAT filesystem on drives D:, E:, F and H: respectively. The rest of FAT filesystems will be handled by the old TOS filesystem. NOTICE: it is planned for the future to remove the old TOS FS from the MiNT kernel; all FAT drives will be handled by the MiNT FAT filesystem driver. This time the keyword NEWFATFS will also be removed as it won't be necessary anymore. The new filesystem features VFAT extension supporting long filenames. The FAT extension may be activated using VFAT cnf keyword: VFAT=D,F,H will activate VFAT extension for drives D:, F: and H: respectively. It is NOT recommended to use VFAT extension for your BOOT drive. The new FAT/FAT32/VFAT filesystem makes now possible to have long filenames and large partitions under MultiTOS without the Minix filesystem driver (MINIX.XFS). However, we still recommend using Minix XFS to run multiuser environments and Unix software. There are no limits in the new FAT/FAT32/VFAT filesystem. It can handle large DOS partitions and GEM/BGM partitions of any size. For FAT32 you need at least HDDriver 7.55 (older version doesn't handle the different partition ID). The new partition ID 'F32' (like GEM, BGM) is for ATARI compatible partitions reserved and also featured by HDDriver 7.55. A tool to create FAT32 partitions has been created (mkfatfs 0.2 beta). It's included in this distribution in util\. 2) filesystem caching is now handled internally by the kernel. The size of the cache may be controlled using CACHE keyword in MINT.CNF, for example: CACHE=500 allocates 500 kilobytes for disk caches. The cache supports the write-back feature that can be enabled or disabled for each drive. The write-back feature is disabled on all drives as default. On startup you can enable it using WB_ENABLE keyword in the MINT.CNF file: WB_ENABLE=D,E,F,H enables the write-back cache for drives D:, E:, F and H: respectively. With the nice tool MiNTSetter by Katherine L. Ellis you can change a lot of options from 1) and 2) on the fly. The latest version of MiNTSetter is on: http://www.primenet.com/~kellis/ With FSetter from Christian Felsch you can control all settings of NEWFATFS on the fly. The latest version from FSetter is on: http://www.tu-harburg.de/~smcf1605/ 3) fastload mode can be now forced for all programs using FASTLOAD=YES command in the CNF file. 4) VM extension has been disabled. 5) The kernel has now a new time package. Please refer to the file doc/minttime.doc and doc/timezone.doc for details and use. 6) The XBIOS is now fully protected from an unprivileged access. All XBIOS functions need root euid at SECURELEVEL > 0. Supexec() needs root euid at SECURELEVEL > 1. Only Random() and Cursconf() are accessible for users at any security level. 7) Behaviour of the protection code is changed once more (I hope this was the last time). When a program calls what it should not, the call is ignored and EACCDN (-36) is returned. For Super() and Supexec() this means that the calling program will most likely die very soon due to bus error or privilege violation. Id est: no kills are made when a program is calling a protected function, but it is expected that the forbidden action will later raise a signal, that will most probably kill the faulty program. If the returned value (-36) confused the calling application (because it expected a pointer as a response, for example), it can go vegetables. In this case the usual hardware protection as well as the memory protection mechanism should prevent it from destroying the system. NOTICE: the protection means, that you probably will not be able to run common GEM software or GEM itself without root privileges at SECURELEVEL > 0 ! 8) DSP related XBIOS functions on Falcon should work OK now. It mainly refers to the Dsp_LodToBinary() and Dsp_LoadProg(). 9) add some provisional MILAN support 10) new MiNT.CNF keyword 'HIDE_B=' to disable completly drive B: Contributors: - the new time keeping functions have been developed and applied, as well as a bunch of doc files, manpages and other supplementary files have been written, and collected by Guido Flohr . - ST ESCC support has been developed by Harald Denker and applied to the kernel with all necessary modifications by Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz - new FAT/FAT32/VFAT filesystem and new global buffer cache management by me. - other changes, bugfixes and supplementary programs have been contributed by: - Thomas Binder - Katherine L. Ellis - Christian Felsch - Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz - Mikko Larjava , 68060 cache patch (once more) - Daniel Petersson - Julian F. Reschke - Rainer Seitel Refer to the ChangeLog.#1.13-1.15.9 for the detailed list of changes. Frank Naumann Magdeburg, 08.10.1998