Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!skates.gsfc.nasa.gov!nasahq!lupine.nsi.nasa.gov!mnewell
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: To NetBSD or Not NetBSD
Message-ID: <1993Jun14.195650.444@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov>
From: mnewell@lupine.nsi.nasa.gov. (Mike Newell)
Date: 14 Jun 93 19:56:49 +0600
Reply-To: mnewell@lupine.nsi.nasa.gov.
References: <1993Jun11.084954.2099@yvax.byu.edu>
Distribution: world
Organization: Sun Microsystems
Nntp-Posting-Host: lupine.nsi.nasa.gov
Lines: 70
In article 2099@yvax.byu.edu, bkh@nephi-hbll.byu.edu (Brian K. Holman) writes:
>I have used every version of 386bsd from 0.0 to 0.1 with patch kits in between.
>A stable system that doesn't lock up and has a reasonable amount of connections
>is very important. I have compiled and used news servers, gopher servers,
>and other various stuff on my machine. However, 386bsd 0.1 has alot of bugs.
>However, the NetBSD group took all the good things in 386bsd 0.1 and tried
>to make a more stable system and in my estimation that is exactly what they
>did. However, if you pay attention to 386bsd news groups you'll know that
>Jolitz is going to be releasing 386bsd 0.2 later this summer which could be
>or could not be a viable contenter for a stable 386 UNIX. For now I would go
>with NetBSD and watch the net to see what people are saying about 386bsd 0.2.
>However you slice it 386BSD is a wonderful environment thanks to the work of
>many differing individuals like Bill Jolitz, Chris Demetriou, and others.
>--
I too tried NetBSD. Fortunately I have a Sydos 88Mb cartridge drive as my
boot device so I can swap OS's...
I am currently running an unpatched 386bsd. I decided to try NetBSD because
it had all the patches and seemed to have a more active group releasing
stuff. And because it's supposed to be 100% 386bsd compatable. After
several tries I was able to get the NetBSD distribution to load on the
disk.
Then I ran into a series of problems:
[1] The slattach program kept hanging up the modem. I had to go back
and get the slattach from 386bsd, which worked fine. (I understand
this has been fixed in the latest release.)
[2] The bus mouse driver, "mse", that I used on 386bsd wouldn't work
with XFree86 on NetBSD although it worked fine on 386bsd and
the test program worked OK under NetBSD. If you don't have a
mouse, X is kind of worthless...
[3] To install the bus mouse I had to rebuild the kernel. To do that I
had to install the source kit. Unfortunately the source kit didn't
come with all the ".h" files I needed [I got them from 386bsd] and
the installation procedure didn't create the "compile" directory.
[4] The "/bin/sh" shell kept doing core dumps. They appeared random; a
script that ran fine once would dump a couple of times and then run
fine again after a couple of tries.
After fighting [4] for a day or so I gave up and went back to 386bsd.
It's sufficiently stable for me to be able to patch around the problems
that I have (and I've had a few interesting ones...) I still haven't
installed the patch kit; unfortunately the patch utility is really
nice if you want to install all the patches, but it doesn't provide an
easy way of listing the purpose of each patch and selecting wether
or not you want it [it is POSSIBLE to do this, just not easy]. And since
NetBSD is supposed to be 386bsd with the patches, and since life was
hell under NetBSD, I decided I didn't really need them anyway...
Other people seem to have great success with NetBSD. I guess it depends
on what you are doing. Unfortunately there seems to be some sort of, uh,
personality conflict between the NetBSDers and 386bsders so it doesn't
look good for the products to remain compatable. That makes it harder
for end users like me to find out what works that I need from each package
and bring them together into one really stable system. Bummer.
And now I hear rumor of a couple of other systems on the horizon. Sigh...
But, as an old optimist I once knew used to say [*ALL*THE*TIME*], "At least
it's a good learning experience."
Mike Newell
NASA Advanced Network Applications Group