I am pleased to announce version 0.2 of the GNU Hurd, available via
anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.159.0.42] in the file
/pub/gnu/hurd-0.2.tar.gz (about 1.37 MB compressed).  

(The GNU Hurd, plus Mach, is a kernel, not an operating system.  The
GNU operating system, like the Unix operating system, consists of many
components, including kernel, libraries, compilers, assembler, shell,
parser generators, utilities, window system, editors, text formatters,
and so on.  The GNU project set out a decade ago to develop this
system, and we've been writing various components of it ever since.)

This release contains many bug fixes from version 0.1.  Many thanks to
all the people who are helping find bugs!  

The best way you can help find bugs is to try and compile and use on
the Hurd as many programs as you can find and find out where bugs
still exist.  There are also unimplemented features, and your reports
will help us to prioritize which things we work on.

The system is vastly more reliable than it has been in the past.

One important addition:

  New programs addauth, rmauth, unsu, su, and setauth modify the uid
  sets of running programs.  Using addauth you can add root to your
  emacs, write a file, and then use rmauth to take the uid back.  (Of
  course, passwords are required when necessary.)  New program `ids'
  will tell you what all the user ids are that a program has.  Note
  that in the Hurd a program can have several user ids all at once,
  just like Unix supports having several group ids.  Now that you can
  dynamically change the ids of running programs, system
  administration (among other things) becomes much easier.

For more detailed news, see the NEWS file in the distribution.

This release contains complete source code for the following:

Hurd servers: 
 
 auth, crash, devport, exec, ext2fs, fifo, fwd, ifsock, init,
 magic, new-fifo, nfs, null, pfinet, pflocal, proc, symlink, term,
 ufs, storeio, firmlink.

Hurd libraries: 
 
 diskfs, fshelp, ihash, iohelp, netfs, pager, pipe, ports, ps,
 shouldbeinlibc, store, threads, trivfs, hurdbugaddr, ftpconn

Hurd utilities and other programs: 

 boot, shd, ps, settrans, showtrans, sync, su, mount, fsysopts,
 storeinfo, login, w, uptime, ids, sush, vmstat, portinfo, devprobe,
 reboot, halt, fsck, fsck.ufs, mkfs.ufs, clri.ufs, stati.ufs, getty,
 rc, e2os, vminfo, nfsd, mail.local, serverboot, MAKEDEV, loginpr,
 addauth, rmauth, unsu, setauth, ftpcp, ftpdir.

We are also making a complete GNU 0.2 binary release, which will
include Hurd 0.2, glibc 2.0.4, gnumach 1.1.2, and many other
programs.  This binary release is announced separately.


Thomas Bushnell, n/BSG
