A Beta release of version 5.1 of the Prospero file system is now
available by anonymous FTP from PROSPERO.ISI.EDU in the file
pub/prospero/prospero.tar.Z.  It can also be obtained through Prospero
itself from /releases/prospero/prospero.tar.Z

A special stripped-down version of the Prospero server is now
available, for sites that want to publish their anonymous FTP archive
areas through Prospero and don't want to worry about the full gamut of
configuration options.  This can be retrieved by anonymous FTP from
PROSPERO.ISI.EDU in the file pub/prospero/prospero.ftp-only.tar.Z or
through Prospero itself from /releases/prospero/prospero.ftp-only.tar.Z

This release must be compiled with an ANSI C compiler.

Since Alpha 5.0, there have been the following substantial changes of
general interest.  See the release notes (in the top-level README file
in the distribution) for a full list of changes:

The user-level name format has been enhanced.  Special characters in
user-level names ('#', ':', '/', '(', ')', and now '\') can be quoted
by preceding them with a backslash ('\').  This change will be useful
as more new databases with unusual names are integrated into the
propero naming network.  Library routines have been added to help in
manipulating the new name format.

The code sending names across the network has been improved; Spaces in
file names sent across the network still occasionally caused problems
in the Alpha 5.0 release; they no longer do in Beta 5.1.

A new LOCAL access method has been added.  Along with it is a new
definition in pserver.h called SHARED_PREFIXES.  This definition,
among other things, makes it very easy to retrieve files through NFS
on systems that run an automount demon.