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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!rex!ben
From: ben@rex.uokhsc.edu (Benjamin Z. Goldsteen)
Subject: NetBSD questions
Message-ID: <CA1FBq.76q@rex.uokhsc.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1993 05:59:50 GMT
Reply-To: benjamin-goldsteen@uokhsc.edu
Organization: Health Sciences Center, University of Oklahoma
Lines: 75
Well this weekend I decided to dive on NetBSD -- completely
throwing away my DOS partition (you probably do not remember previous
questions concerning co-existence...which probably does not matter since
I really do not have enough disk space to coexist). This time the
installation worked much better. However, I have these following
questions:
-Why was tip/cu essentially dropped? Is it really expected that I
download everything onto DOS floppies and then read them back using
mread? I hesitate bring my PC into work to connect it to the network --
using the modem automates the process (I do it over night)? To get it
to work, I had to create /var, /var/spool, /var/spool/lock (or was it
uucp?) and copy "tip" to "cu" ( because there was no "ln"). To figure
out what I had to do, I had to extract base08 on my main UNIX machine
and browse through the man pages.
-After I was able to get the modem to function under NetBSD, I had a few
problems with rz. Is there a problem with using a newer version of RZ?
This one lacks crash recovery and multiple file receives (the latter can
be handled by a tedious shell loop).
-Why do I keep getting SILO overflows? I have a 386SX-20 with 16450
UARTS connected to an external Zoom VFX V.32bis/V.42bis modem. I have
to use software flow control due to a deficiency in our terminal server.
This setup generally works at 9600 baud (which I could not say for
386BSD-0.1), but occasionally it stalls.
-Are there any plans for virtual screens (ala Linux)? I found them
pretty handy when I tried Linux out a while back. One thing about Linux
is that the terminal drivers feels much faster. Most UNIX consoles have
pretty slow consoles (they expect you to scoot right on into X), but
Linux felt like direct writes to video RAM.
-Some commands seem to me missing -- like mfs. I wanted to try out
memory file systems, but I could not seem to get anything going. "mfs"
does not seem to exist -- the way I understand the man pages, I create a
memory-block device using mfs and than mount it. "adduser" does not
exist either. Some man pages seem to missing, too.
-Is there anyway to make it so that I can make my system think its on a
network even if I do not have an Ethernet card? I would like to route
traffic such that if I were to do "ping atom" (atom is my machine), it
would go through the loopback device (and making atom an alias for the
loopback address is not what I mean). I would also like to try out the
NFS through the loopback, too.
-Is there any plans to ship various programs like Top or Joe with
NetBSD? Linux SLS did that and I thought it was pretty good idea.
In order to keep things separate, perhaps somebody could just direct me
to an FTP site of pre-compiled packages? I usually wish to compile
packages myself, but I am not sure if I will have the space. I would
like to use NetBSD to orient myself with kernel programming, although, I
probably need a system upgrade (at least more HD space).
-How do I change the system's timezone? Do I just move the symbolic
link in /etc to point to the midwest rather than the pacific? On
UNIX systems at work, the timezone is an environment variable -- which
is preset in /etc/TIMEZONE and /etc/TIMEZONE.csh.
-Which Ethernet card is the best? I have heard good things about the
NE2000 in general, but it sounds like 386BSD/NetBSD's NE2000 device
driver has some problems. Does anybody plan to fix that or is there a
better card?
-How does NetBSD-0.8 differ from BSD4.4's networking and filesystem
code? BSD4.4 has been available in alpha and beta for some time now --
has any of it been borrowed for the 386BSD project? If not, when (if)
BSD4.4-lite becomes available, would upgrading those subsystems improve
performance a great deal? That is, would 386BSD require less CPU power
to push full Ethernet through TCP/IP or get greater throughput on the
filesystem by switching?
Thanks -- please answer between [0,10] of them as you can.
--
Benjamin Z. Goldsteen