g4u-announce

[Hubert F. <hu...@fe...>]

Again much more time has passed than I expected, but over the past few 
days I've made sure that g4u compiles against the latest NetBSD-current 
sources, and so I'm making g4u 2.4alpha4 available for resting.

What is g4u? ``g4u ("ghosting for unix") is a NetBSD-based 
bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a 
common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two 
functions. The first is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk 
to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it 
and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As 
the harddisk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system 
can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as 
partitions is also supported.''

Get it now:
     * ISO: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4.iso
     * compressed ISO: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4.iso.zip
     * First floppy: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4-1.fs
     * 2nd floppy: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4-2.fs
     * 3rd floppy: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4-3.fs
     * all 3 floppies: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4.fs.zip
     * sources: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.4alpha4.tgz

What's new in g4u 2.4alpha4:

     * Make this build with NetBSD-current as of 2009-08-30
     * Trim kernel some more (NFS server, quotas)
     * Put only on the CD what's really needed (31MB->5MB)
     * Drivers for:
           o Marvell Hercules-I/II SATA controller
           o SiI SteelVine SATA controllers
           o Attansic/Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet cards
           o Attansic/Atheros L1E Ethernet cards & PHY
           o SD/MMC cards as media - feedback highly appreciated!

Again, I'd like to hear any reports if this version works better or worse 
than any previous alpha version or release, esp. under the light that this 
version is (another...) attempt to switch to ACPI, which is on by default 
in NetBSD now. Also, I'd appreciate any reports if using SD/MMC cards on 
internal card readers work as media - I do not have any hardware to test 
this. Let me hear if it works for you! If things go well, I want to put 
this out as 2.5 before it gets old again. ;-)

Enjoy!


  - Hubert