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From: nickel@prz.tu-berlin.de (Juergen Nickelsen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.windows.x.i386unix
Subject: Yet another FreeBSD+XFree86 success story
Date: 02 Dec 1994 15:04:56 GMT
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
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Message-ID: <NICKEL.94Dec2160456@toftum.prz.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: nickel@cs.tu-berlin.de
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Although I know that it will be boring to hear about yet another
FreeBSD+XFree86 installation, I'd like to seize the opportunity to
express my *extremely* *grateful* feelings for those people who have
made this possible.
Last weekend I installed FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 on a 486DX33 ISA-bus machine
with 8 MB RAM, AHA1542 and a 180MB Fujitsu M2614S disk, and (at that
time) a '84 vintage MDA display. (Yes, the text-only 8-bit video card
from IBM. I cannibalized the ten-year-old IBM PC to have a display for
the 486 to begin with.)
IT WORKED INSTANTLY.
The installation instructions were excellent.
I didn't encounter any problems except one, but I have to blame myself
(*blush*):
At one point during the installation I thought it would be wise to set
a password for the root account (the only one at that time). *Then* I
installed the (non-US) securedist, which (I knew that!) replaced all
programs using crypt(3). *Then* I rebooted the machine. Of course, it
locked me out.
After trying lots of ways (including booting from the floppy several
times) I discovered after two or three hours how I could boot single
user mode from the boot prompt. When I then edited master.passwd with
vipw(1), I afterwards saw the message "rebuild password database" (or
the like). I then instantly new why all my attempts to install a new
root account with a floppy boot and a homespun shcat() (something that
needs neither a writable /tmp nor shared libraries) had failed. Oh
well.
Yesterday I installed XFree86; it is running on my new Hyundai
HGC-1280 monochrome card and the Hyundai HMM-1900E monitor. That was
easy: The XF86_MONO server complained very precisely about my config
file that I had it running within minutes.
However, I had a little problem with a freezing mouse pointer whenver
I clicked on something. I spent yesterday evening trying to fix this
problem, but to no avail.
Today in the morning, after a good sleep, I had the idea of watching
the mouse port from another terminal (a Mac actually, but who
cares). I noticed that every time I clicked on something, the port
speed was soon set to 57600 baud. Hey, that sounds familiar!, I
thought, and -- indeed, I had forgotten to disable the getty that
listened on the port where I had connected the modem initially, but
now the mouse. What a shame.
But then, both stories (crypt and getty) gave a good laugh when told
to my friends. :-}
Summary:
- Both FreeBSD and XFree86 are *great* pieces of software. Many
thanks to all who have participated in the effort to make them
available.
- The installation instructions are very good; FreeBSD worked
instantly. (OK, I have a bit of Unix experience.) I might be
useful, though, to include a word about the crypt problem. (I
don't know if this has already been done for 2.0.)
- Even someone with a certain familiarity with Unix can have some
(afterwards) amusing experiences with FreeBSD and XFree86.
- Murphy's law of software installation: The moment you have
installed the software, it is obsoleted by release 2.0. (I think
I'll wait for 2.1 now. :-)
Say it again: Thanks to you all for FreeBSD (and BSD in general, of
course) and XFree86!
_Disclaimer_: I am sure that everything written above could apply to
Linux and NetBSD as well. Since I know next to nothing about these,
choosing FreeBSD was just a matter of taste.
--
Juergen Nickelsen