Installing 4.3-Tahoe on a VAX

[Jim Haynes - Computer Center]

This is not a bug report, but rather some ideas/experiences and a plea
for others to share experiences.  This just seemed like the best place
to post it.

What I've done so far:
1.  Made a directory to hold the stuff from the tahoe tape.  Wrote
a little 2-line program that does a chroot() to that directory so
I can play all I want to without killing the real system.  Copied
all of /bin, /dev, /etc, /lib, /usr/bin, /usr/ucb   from the outside
real system into this playground root directory so I would have a
working system after doing the chroot().

2.  Bring in the sources from the 4.3-Tahoe tape.  Also /usr/include.

3.  Discovered later that /usr/include/machine is linked to /usr/include
tahoe, so you need to change this before doing anything.

4.  Now an open question is what one should do next.  Perhaps go to
/usr/src/etc/tzone and do a make install there, so that the time zone
stuff starts working early in the game?  I thought it might be best
to remake libc before anything else, so go to /usr/src/lib/libc and
do a make and make install.  Then seems like it would be good to make
the new C compiler, so went to /usr/src/lib and made c2, pcc, and cpp.
Wonder if it would be a good idea to change the /usr/src/lib/Makefile
so it makes libc first?  I guess making /usr/lib should come before
making most of the stuff in bin and etc and usr/bin and all that.

5.  Being paranoid about security I've been going thru all the makefile
and changing modes from 755 to 711 for all the programs except shell
scripts.  Also changing the owner from bin to root - this is something
of a philosophical issue, but I'd rather try to protect root against
intrusion than root and bin both.

6.  I've had a couple of non-repeatable errors so far, cases where the
make reports an error in compilation and stops, but when I re-start
it doesn't have the error the second time.  This seems highly unusual.
Doesn't seem to be a case of flaky hardware, as the underlying real
system is working solidly.  (The underlying system, in this case,
is Mt.Xinu 4.3+NFS).

SO - anybody else out there have suggestions to pass along to all of us?