🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Mar19.175301.28224@unixg.ubc.ca> twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) writes:
>I was reading up on 386bsd in comp.unix.bsd when I came across several
>warning messages that is very important even before you try booting
>from the 386bsd floppy which I think everyone better know about before
>trying it. In fact, I'm just going to grab the warning straight from 
>the FAQ posting....

[ various warnings about 386BSD being "dangerous" ]

I can appreciate your concern, but there's no need to hit the panic
button.  Almost identical warnings to those you posted can be
found in the top level README files for the 386BSD distribution
(at cs.ubc.ca in /ftp/archive/unix/386BSD in case you just tuned in).
If anyone were to actually grab the files and install 386BSD
and lose all their data, they'd have to do it not with their
eyes closed but with their eyes very selectively open in order
to get the stuff but miss the warnings.

Sorry to waste bandwidth with this post, but I don't want people
getting the idea that I've laid some sort of disguised trap
in the form of free software on cs.ubc.ca.  Obviously you should
always be wary of software, especially system software and especially
binary distributions.  But if you get burned by software that has
warnings in the documentation, I suggest you not keep bleach in
your house as soon or later you'll take a great swig of it while
expecting koolaid.

Just for fun, here's some warning excerpts.  Too bad ASCII does
have some special character that indicates the speaker is
REALLY SERIOUS so that we don't have to resort to UPPER CASE
all the time when WE'RE SAYING SOMETHING IMPORTANT.


From the README file:

>     Currently, the system does not coexist with MS-DOS, but
>requires the entire machine. SINCE IT IS STILL  EXPERIMENTAL
>SOFTWARE,  YOU  SHOULD  BE  PREPARED AT ANYTIME TO LOSE DISK
>DRIVE CONTENTS, so you had better save backup dumps  offline
>of any information you wish to be preserved (1 in 100 of you
>will do this, of course, but you were warned).

And from README.WARNING:

>THIS IS NOT CURRENTLY A STABLE SYSTEM, AND IS DEFINITELY FOR
>EXPERIMENTERS ONLY, AT THIS POINT.
>
>Some of the dangers of using it are outlined here:
>
>(1) It does not co-exist with DOS -- AT ALL.  It requires that you
>        destroy all data on the disk you're installing it on.
>
>(2) It currently works on about half of the machines tested.
>        (of course, it needs a 386/486 and math co...)
>        HOWEVER, IF IT DOES NOT WORK, IT WILL DUMP CORE ON TO YOUR
>        HARD DRIVE, THEREBY DESTROYING SOME, IF NOT ALL, OF THE
>        DATA ON IT.
>
>(3) It tends to panic often, and has a good number of known (fatal) bugs.
>        (I've had it panic about 11 times in the last 24 hours, but
>        those were 24 hours of reasonably heavy use...)
>        Therefore, it currently cannot be considered 'safe' to store
>        important data on the system.
>
>THIS IS BY NO MEANS A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF THE PROBLEMS THAT
>THE SYSTEM CURRENTLY HAS.  IT IS MEANT AS A REPRESENTATIVE
>WARNING OF POSSIBLY GREATER PROBLEMS.