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To say it frankly, almost everything. The underlying concepts are the same, but
the software part has been completly redesigned to overcome the limitations
of previous versions and to make it easier to use. An highlight of the new
features :
- All functions (bpmenu, bpclean, bpunzip) are encompassed in a single
program.
- The program can run not only from the boot rom, but also under DOS,
Windows 95 and Linux.
- The program can now restore images of FAT16, FAT32 and EXT2FS
partitions. If someone want to write NTFS support, let me know...
For now, NT users still have to stick to FAT16.
- The program can not only restore disk images but also add and patch
individual files in order to customize the client behaviour.
- Disk images are not any more bound to 87 MB. They are now
file-system independant archives.
- We provide a mean for automatically downloading a disk image to
an arbitrary big number of clients at the same time (broadcast).
- You can now write your own secure boot script, that will determine
the behaviour of the machine before the real boot.
- You can now boot any Linux kernel, without
applying any patch. Its is also possible to provide a
command line and a ramdisk image.
- You can authenticate users at boot time using a Unix, NT or Radius
server and deny them any access to the machine.
- Full national language support is included.
- And many, many other new features...
- Is there a program for converting old archives to the new format ?
No, because the internal format is radically different. But you can easily
do the conversion by yourself:
- Boot an old image (unzip it to your disk)
- Remove calls to the old
unzipreg
utility and replace them
by the adequate patch
commands (it is very easy, see
the detailed instructions below)
- Run the new
mrzip
program to create a new-style disk image
Version 3.0 was the beta-release. A dozen of sites around the world have
tested it during a month and given much of their time to help us finding
bugs and to suggest enhancements. Thanks to all of them for their patience,
and in particular to Maciek Uhlig, Dick Velders and Jeff Teeters.
A few minor features have been added since 3.01, such as support for diskless
Linux boot (by disabling the cache).
Version 3.10 introduced compatibility with Intel's Wired for Management
1.1a NetPC standard. The tools now work with any PXE-compliant boot ROM
(as are most on-board boot ROMs) available today. Thanks to
InCom GmbH for giving us the PXE
bootprom that permitted this developpment. We also succesfully tested
the tools with the PXE Boot ROM that I found incidentally in my Dell
computer with onboard network card (called LanDesk Service Agent).
Version 3.11 to 3.12 added UNIX server-side tools (a PXE Proxy DHCP server
for Solaris and Linux, and an enhanced TFTP server for Linux), as well as
detailled informations on server-side setup and the PXE booting process.
Version 3.13 added Advanced Power Management support (PowerOff command).
Version 3.14 added minor enhancements and some corrections. We fixed a problem
with the terminal under RedHat 5.1, and another problem in the syntax of
the "if" command. We added some features suggested by the Laboratori de
Càlcul de la Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona (LCFIB) :
- A new APM variable let you know if your system support the Advanced
Power Management (i.e it supports the poweroff command).
- A "beep" command.
- A new parameter to DrawWindow, to include a title at the window
creation. You can now do DrawWindow 200 200 400 200 "Title".
Version 3.15 added full VESA support. BpBatch now support several video modes,
to accomodate old computers not being able to display 800x600 graphics. A new
parameter has been added to InitGraph to specify the video mode, and a list
of detected video mode can be retrieved from the new VESA-Modes variable.
Version 3.16 fixes the following bugs:
- "Malloc failed" during the Fullunzip process of a multiple fragments
image.
Many thanks to Christian Meyer for his collaboration.
- A bug which prevented the linux version of MrBatch to properly
fullunzip images. This bug was located in the low-level functions of
MrBatch, so it may fix other problems encountered in the linux version
of MrBatch.
Many thanks to Jeff Teeters for his collaboration.
- An error in the codepage translation tables. This bug was found by
the Laboratori de Càlcul de la Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona (LCFIB).
You can find the bug report in the BpBatch forum.
Version 3.17 adds some minor features and fixes bugs:
- Fullunzip was turning Extended Memory off
- Booting on the RedHat boot disk now works
- When extracting images with a large number of directories, the
resulting FAT file system was corrupted.
- We added retries to text TFTP transfers. BpBatch will now retry
three times before saying "Could not transfer the file".
- Timestamps are now correctly updated in FAT. (thank to Francis Chan)
Version 3.18 fixes a bug with the IncrUnzip function. Thanks to
Gary Pike for its collaboration.
Version 3.19 fixed a bug in the error handling of the delete
command
on ext2fs, as well as the inappropriate handling of names starting with
A: under Linux. The following new features were also added:
- A new
if valid disk:partition
syntax can be used to check
if a partition has been formatted
- FAT32 disk images are now fully functional (they now boot properly)
- Linux EXT2 partitions bigger than 2 GB are now supported
- Linux Swap partitions bigger than 128 MB are now supported (this
feature needs a recent kernel, at least 2.1.x)
- FullUnzip is now also possible without a cache partition, by
setting
CacheNever
to "ON"
. This might be
usefull for a unique installation, but is not recommended in
general is it results in a high network load.
Thanks to Ruben Schattevoy for its help and contributions to this release.
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