Here is UMSDOS beta 0.3. It took a long time. Mostly the time
to track difficult bugs I could not reproduce. Thanks to the
few testers who worked hard trying to reproduce them.

Release 0.3 is fully compatible with 0.2.
It contains important bug fixes. Those having problems with
X in particular should be happy now :-)
This is a source only release. A binary one will follow later.
It patches agains linux kernel 1.1.12.

Please, test it out. Time has come for Umsdos to get into
the standard kernel distribution... Again, test it, send
me reports, etc (positive or negative). If all goes well,
I will email Linus about this.

It is available from sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/BETA/umsdos

Here is a small intro...

UMSDOS is a filesystem for LINUX. It is a full feature
unix-like filesystem running on top of a normal MsDOS FAT filesystem.

It has been written by Jacques Gelinas jacques@solucorp.qc.ca

Umsdos is a full-feature Unix like FS on top of a FAT MsDOS fs ?
Full-feature ???

    Long file name
        -Case sensitive
        -This.Is.An...Exemple
        -220 char max.
    Links (both hard and symbolics)
        Now I know why they are called "hard" links :-)
    Pipes and special device file.
    Permissions, owner, group
    Atime,Ctime and Mtime with full Unix semantics.

    Powerful enough to be a root fs for Linux.
    Yet CHKDSK won't see anything wrong with all this.

    testers have installed any kind of standard stuff. To
    name a few (Andrew, X, GCC, News).

Is Umsdos useful ?

    UMSDOS is perfect to test drive linux without trouble. No
    reformat, no new partition.

    It is also a good idea for those who need DOS and don't want
    to split the disk in two "too small" parts. Perfect also
    for those who need to share data with DOS on an ongoing basis.

    It is also a good idea for those who already splits the disk and
    need more space for Linux. It allows linux to slowly eat the
    DOS partition. UMSDOS will be an important part of the
    "LINUX invasion" :-)

    Because reformatting is a major concern to many, especially when
    you are unsure if you need linux, I believe Umsdos will be the
    most used FS for linux (not the best though).


    There are still missing pieces:

        Some performance enhancement of UMSDOS directory
            manipulation (A small directory cache).
        Some performance enhancement of the Linux MSDOS drivers.
            (not obvious but I have some idea...)