386BSD

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386 BSD
Logging into a 386 BSD system
Type:	Multitasking, multiuser
Creator:	CSRG, University of California, Berkeley
Architecture:	i386 theoretically portable
This Version:	0.1 (1992)
Date Released:	1991

386 BSD was the first time that the Net/2 project was put into a functional release onto commodity hardware, and into the public under the BSD license. As the project eventually stalled, it became the starting point for both NetBSD & FreeBSD, via the patchkits. While 386 BSD may be of historical significance, it's not up to the challenge of day to day usage, as it hasn't received any updates or patches in over 15 years.

Releases

There seems to have been four releases of 386 BSD, starting with it being freely available on the internet, then only available to those who purchased CD-ROMs.

0.0

The 0.0 announcement: 386BSD 0.0 announcement

Some more information to be found here:

• 386BSD 0.0

0.1

The 0.1 release was the most popular, as 0.0 proved to be very difficult to install, I'd think because it was more "VAX" like in how it treated the disks, and most people are not familiar with disklabels. There were 2 revisions to 0.1, with the patchkits, that eventually gave birth to both NetBSD and FreeBSD.

• 386 BSD 0.1
• 386 BSD 0.1 pl23
• 386 BSD 0.1 pl24

1.0

This was the CD-ROM / DrDobbs release

2.0

In an email with Lynne Jolitz, she has confirmed that there was a 2.0 release.

Where can I get a copy

At the moment the only known places to get copies are:

• oldlinux.org 0.0, 0.1 and the two patchkits.
• tuhs.org 0.0, 0.1 and the two patchkits.
• freebsd.org ISO with 0.0, 0.1, the patchkits in various states, a large number of other contributions to 0.0 and 0.1 and a USENET archive of comp.unix.bsd.

How do I get this to run?!

Right now the only version fully running in emulation is 0.1 The quickest way is to use 386BSD-0.1exe which is a ready to run package for Windows users that includes a preconfigured Qemu & disk image.

For those who want to install it themselves, there is an evolving guide to be found here: Installing 386BSD on BOCHS.

386 BSD is difficult to install on real hardware, and emulated hardware is difficult as well. As of now the only known emulator that can install 386 BSD is Bochs 2.4. I'm currently having some issues with it's disktab structure as it keeps placing the swap partition starting at 0 and overwriting itself. The error message I keep on getting is:

/386bsd: wd0a: overlaps open partition (b)

I've found out that upon getting that error, just keep on rebooting and eventually it'll magically go away. It seems to be tied to the VM crashing.

Once patchkit 023 is installed, 386BSD will then run under Qemu 0.11.x