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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!newspump.sol.net!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!news.dra.com!netaxs.com!grr From: grr@shandakor.tharsis.com (George Robbins) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc Subject: General Notes... Date: 14 Mar 1997 05:13:52 GMT Organization: George's Pet Unix System Lines: 50 Message-ID: <slrn5ihni1.a2.grr@robbins.jvnc.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: robbins.jvnc.net X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.1.1 BETA UNIX) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc:15 I just thought I'd mention that OpenBSD 2.0 really seems to be a stable, quality release, at least on a 486 based system. I just upgraded from NetBSD 1.0, which I've been runing for several years and 99% of the aggravation was in rooting out all changes I'd made to the installed system over the years, not with OpenBSD itself. My bug list is pretty darn short, and none of them show-stoppers: 1) occassional output freezes on the pcvt console (may be fixed by the pcvt from the current source, which requires only one tweak to retrofit) 2) some escapee from the SVR4 dementia masquerading as "tar", which thinks -b n is in bytes rather than blocks and has most fouled up end-of-file/end-of-tape handling I've seen yet (stupid interactive messages). It does work, it just defies about 15 years of expectations for a BSD tar. 3) spurious errors on the first access to 8MM tapes when the tape has just been inserted and leaving the door "locked" even after all the fd's referencing the tape are closed. No biggie, just need to do extra rewinds or retries when you first put in a tape. 4) the device names for the pcvt console changed, which upsets the old XFree86 server. Once the problem was obvious, adding some symlinks fixed it, but keyboard handling is apparently just a tad different and netscape shift-click's didn't work for multiple selection. Downloading the current XFree86 release takes forever, but solves the problems. As always, everything is a tad bit bigger, so make sure you have enough disk space. Still runs tolerably in 16MB with X. Someone asked about binary compatibility. It's supposed to run both OpenBSD and Linux binaries, if the option is compiled in the kernel, and the binaries don't feel compelled to poke at kernel values and you copy offer any dynamically linked libraries that the problems you're fooling with are linked against. Same general rules apply for SunOS compatibility, assuming you have a Sun platform... It also runs any normal NetBSD 1.0 (and probably other releases) binaries without any problems, though god forbid you try to compile any system oriented stuff, header files and make files seem to be changing more rapidly than features. 8-) -- George Robbins - not working for, work: to be avoided at all costs... but still emotionally attached to: web: http://www.netaxs.com/people/grr Commodore, Engineering Department domain: grr@tharsis.com