NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16

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Xref: sparky comp.unix.bsd:2832 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware:20260 Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!newsun!gateway.novell.com!terry From: terry@npd.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: 386BSD FAQ Summary: An unofficial FAQ Keywords: BSD 386BSD Message-ID: <1992Jul24.224936.18008@gateway.novell.com> Date: 24 Jul 92 22:49:36 GMT References: <dhuber.711965446@autmgr> Sender: news@gateway.novell.com (NetNews) Organization: Novell NPD -- Sandy, UT Lines: 975 Nntp-Posting-Host: thisbe.eng.sandy.novell.com In article <dhuber.711965446@autmgr> dhuber@autelca.ascom.ch (Daniel Huber) writes: >BTW. Is there a 386BSD FAQ? Here is something that I have thrown together over the past little while: Frequently Asked Questions 386BSD 0.1 EXTREMELY UNOFFICIAL Terry Lambert terry_lambert@gateway.novell.com terry@icarus.weber.edu Last Update: 24 Jul 92 0.0 Organization This FAQ consists of four parts: 0.* Organization. 1.* Overview. 2.* Questions list (with accompanying personally or net derived answers). 3.* Acknowledgement (but not naming -- sorry) of Contributors. 4.* Future of this FAQ 1.0 Overview The 386BSD 0.1 operating system is a derivitive of the Berkeley Net/2 release. The definitive "man without whom we would have nothing" in this effort has been William Jolitz. For more information, download the code. 2.0 Questions list Here is an incomplete questions list (incomplete, because I do not have answers for all of them). This will probably dissapoint my many fans, who no doubt consider me infallable 8-). Where can I find the distribution? Where can I get the distribution on CD ROM? Why shouldn't I download 386BSD from UUNET? How do I get 386bsd 0.1 installed with "real" partitoning? How do I get a second disk running under 0.1? How can I fix the "flashing multicolored characters and ptdi81061 prompt" error? What is the highest baud rate supported? SLIP is configured, but doesn't seem to work: what's wrong? The serial ports don't work on my machine; is it my UARTs? I can install; why won't it boot of my hard drive? How can I verify my checksums before I have 386bsd installed? How can I make my tty driver not lock up? Where are the commands "rpcinfo" and "rpcgen"? Why don't the man pages for "magic" and "file" work? Why is apropos broke? Where can I get a working "netstat"? How can I fix NFS to work with my NE2000 board? How do I add swap space? Where can I get a kernel with second drive and second swap in it? How do I make a device that can see my DOS partition? How can I get "ps" to work? How can I read tapes with multiple extents? How do I get around the NFS "Permission denied" error? Some of my SCSI devices (like a tape) dont work; why? The "mountd" hangs on exporting a file system subdirectory. Are EISA cards supported? Is microchannel (MCA, PS/2) supported? How much disk space do I need? How do I get rid of "startart" characters on my console? I'm having trouble installing the binaries... why is that? Where can I get X windows for 386BSD? Where can I get (FTP) info on how to configure a kernel? I get the error "isr 15 and error: isr 17" on an NE2000 card, OR I have some card on IRQ2 and it dosn't work; why? If I do a "pwd", my directory goes away. I can't unpack etc01 becuse of "too many files open". 2.01 Where can I find the distribution? The following host sites are listed in the file DISTRIBUTION.HOSTS in the 386/BSD distribution (bot name and address are provided): agate.berkeley.edu 128.32.136.1 gatekeeper.dec.com 16.1.0.2 MATH.ORST.EDU 128.193.16.60 UTKUX1.UTK.EDU 128.169.200.67 terminator.cc.umich.edu 141.211.164.8 nic.funet.fi 128.214.6.100 dsuvax.dsu.edu 138.247.32.2 altair.cis.ksu.edu 129.130.10.84 hpcsos.col.hp.com 15.255.240.16 * math.niu.edu 131.156.3.4 sune.stacken.kth.se 130.237.234.42 raquel.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.11.3 rusmv1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de 129.69.1.12 HELIUM.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU 128.2.55.10 banjo.concert.net 192.101.21.6 kirk.bu.oz.au 131.244.1.1 grand.central.org 192.54.226.100 pascal.math.fu-berlin.de 130.133.4.50 capella.eetech.mcgill.ca 132.206.1.17 ftp.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de 134.169.34.15 f.ms.uky.edu 128.163.128.6 azathoth.sura.net 128.167.254.184 Notes: *Internal HP sites only The code is also soon to be available, or perhaps already available, from both CompuServe and BIX. 2.02 Where can I get the distribution on CD ROM? A company called "Yggdrasil Computing Infrastructure Corporation" has posted (in the person of Adam J. Richter) the following: ----------------------------------------------------------------- I am considering selling the 386BSD 0.1 distribution on CDROM through my company, Yggdrasil. The distribution would run $100, with $60 per CD donated to Lynne and Bill Jolitz, and would include the following. o An ISO9660 level 2 CDROM with a copy of the 386BSD 0.1 distribution from agate and an unpacked directory tree of the distribution, o Bootable installation diskettes in both 3.5" (1.44MB) and 5.25" (1.2MB) formats. Each of these diskettes would have a kernel capable of mounting an ISO9660 file system and a script for installing from the CDROM. o Installation instructions. o An Yggdrasil "GNU World Order" T-shirt. At Bill Jolitz's suggestion, I plan to wait for the first patch for the early bugs, which should be out "very shortly." Please send me email if you have any comments or suggestions about this idea or if you're sure that you'd buy a CD. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The posted email address is richter@nic.cerf.net (Adam J. Richter); I would greatly encourage anyone interested in 386BSD who also has a CD ROM drive to purchase this when it becomes available, and to send Adam email so that he can get a distribution list going. If he's amenable to it, this distribution list should be used to email future items, such as "software catalogs", etc. 2.03 Why shouldn't I download 386BSD from UUNET? 1) William Jolitz, the author doesn't want you to. 2) UUNET has a policy against binaries, so you won't be able to boot it if you do download it. William F. Jolitz writes: -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Do *not* obtain 386BSD from uunet! BSDI is funded partially from UUNET coffers, and those idiots still see 386BSD as a rival to their hopes. As with other related situations, they have come up with 'plausibly deniable' reasons to not provide information that they feel affects their competitive advantages." -------------------------------------------------------------------- 'nuf said. 2.04 How do I get 386bsd 0.1 installed with "real" partitoning? This method also comes to us, as so much else does, by way of Chris G. Demetriou. The following is excerpted and edited from a post by him on the matter: -------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO GET 386bsd 0.1 INSTALLED WITH "REAL" PARTITONING: (remember, if things don't work, they might be in places that aren't normally looked in... things should work as below, but you might have to use explicit paths occasionally... the 'better' stuff -- mount, umount, cp, etc... is in /usr/distbin on the fixit floppy... even mknod is there, if the devices you need aren't on the fixit floppy...) (1) boot the fixit floppy (2) disklabel the disk as appropriate (3) newfs the partitions (4) mount the new root partition under /mnt (5) mkdir /mnt/usr (6) mount the new /usr partition under /mnt/usr (7) cpio directory-by-directory (recursively -- by hand!) the entire contents of the fixit floppy to the hard drive you'll do something like: cd / ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt cd /sbin ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt/sbin cd /usr ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt/usr cd /usr/bin ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt/usr/bin etc. yes, it's tiring. (8) copy /usr/distbin/mount and /usr/distbin/umount to /mnt (so that they'll be in the new root partition, so you can mount the new /usr partition...) (9) shutdown and the eject the floppy. (10) reboot off the hard drive, the fsck -p <root raw device> If there are any errors, after the fsck is done, hit ctl-alt-delete, and repeat this step. (11) fsck -p <usr raw device> (12) mount -u <root device> / (13) mount <usr device> /usr (14) insert 0.1 boot/install floppy (dist.fs) into floppy drive and "mount /dev/fd0a /mnt" (15) cd /mnt and then usr/bin/zcat etc/baselist.Z | usr/bin/cpio -pdalmu / (16) cd / and then /mnt/usr/bin/zcat /mnt/etc/baseutils.cpio.Z | /mnt/usr/bin/cpio -idalmu (17) umount /mnt then eject the floppy (18) umount /usr (19) shutdown (20) reboot off the hard drive, and get all of the various files (the bindist files, srcdist files, etc...). I put them into /usr/tmp, because there wasn't enough space in /tmp (because it was on a small root partition...). (21) cd / ; cat <all the binary files> | uncompress | cpio -idalmu (22) rm <all the binary files> (23) put your hostname into "/etc/myname" and put your ip addr/hostname into /etc/hosts. (24) make an fstab for yourself. specifically, you want something like: <root device name> / ufs rw 1 1 <usr device name> /usr ufs rw 1 2 congrats. you now have a working system! you can repeat step 21 for the srcdist and etcdist files, as well, if you wish... If they don't work for you, sorry... Chris -------------------------------------------------------------------- If it doesn't work, I'll be sorry too, if it'll help. 2.05 How do I get a second disk running under 0.1? This is the result of the boot disk not auto-recognizing multiple hard drives. A very good fix to this, if you can recompile your kernel without first needing a second drive, was posted in article 1863 in the news group comp.unix.bsd, by Christoph Robitschko (email at chmr@fstgds01.tu-graz.ac.at ... I suggest you pick this patch up from your favorite news archive, like wuarchive.wustl.edu, instead of asking him for it). In this article, he says: -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have hacked /sys/i386/isa/wd.c to support two (or any number) hard disks. It now prints the device description for each configured disk on boot time and even doesn't break if it cannot find a configured disk. Your configuration file should contain something like this: controller wd0 at isa? ... disk wd0 at wd0 disk0 disk wd1 at wd0 disk1 Enjoy ! (But at your own risk !) Christoph -------------------------------------------------------------------- The diffs for the hacked driver is in the article. If you can't get the article, or can't recompile due to a lack of disk space, or some other overriding reason, a compile that has at least second drive support, and second swap device support, is available from James Risner (email risner@ms.uky.edu) by anonymous FTP: f.ms.uky.edu:/pub2/386bsd-0.1/unofficial/second.drive.randy/*. I don't know if this work is based on Christoph's, or if it was independantly developed; I also do not know if the sources are available or not. 2.06 How can I fix the "flashing multicolored characters and ptdi81061 prompt" error? This error is a major error, as far as I'm concerned, as it effects the majority of the equipment that I have available to me. It is also present on the HP vectra. I have a soloution that works on AT&T 6386E/WGS, but I warn you, it's very dirty. The problem is that the code checking the return from the read of the CMOS RAM value falls through in the case of an invalid value. What really is needed is the non-existance "else" case for a bad CMOS setup, which goes and probes memory to see it's size. What currently happens is that the code falls through, the Maxmem is set to zero, and the maxmem and physmem are set to -1 (this is a bad thing). To solve this, I wrote a program in (forgive me!) Turbo C to read and write CMOS values, so that I could force the memory count to the correct value. For a machine with a base memory of 640K, the expected value in CMOS is 0280 (in bytes x16 and x15, respectively). What the AT&T boxes and the HP vectra have here is 027f, so it falls through to the default case and blows up. The quick and dirty workaround: If you download dist.fs from Chris G. Demetriou's upload on agate.berkeley.edu for the hard disk boot problem (this MUST be dist.fs, and not one of the other dist.fs files modified for Isolan or WD ethernet and named something else!), you can use uzap (available for anon ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu, located at mirrors2/unix-c/editors/uzap.tar-z) to binary edit the dist.fs at byte offset 946834; it should be changed from 81FE8002 to 81FE7F02. This is the compare for 640K in the bogus code. You can look for the pattern 81FE8002 in the other *.fs files, including fixit.fs, and change it there, if you MUST use one of them instead. I have uploaded a patched version of dist.fs, and maile Chris, but don't know how long this will take to become FTP'able. Realize that you *MUST* fix the sources if you are going to build a kernel which is bootable! It should be noted that, if you download uzap, you should "touch" uzap.c, as otherwise, make will try to use lex to create it, and will probably fail. This is due to the tar extraction order from the uzap tar archive. 2.07 What is the highest baud rate supported? The highes baud rate that is supported is 38400. This is somewhat a misnomer, however, since it implies that you will get "support" if 386BSD fails to perform at this baud rate. This is incorrect; if it doesn't perform at 38400, try a lower baud rate. No one is going to commit to "fix it" for you based on a complaint. If anyone wants to write a faster driver, the canonical method of running higher baud rates is to take one interrupt an poll like hell. This would probably impact performace pretty significantly. If you need more than 38400, you should consider an ehternet card. 2.08 SLIP is configured, but doesn't seem to work: what's wrong? Warren Toomey and Peter Cooper have together discovered the soloution for this one. Place a "nohup" on the command line in front of the "slattach", like so: nohup slattach /dev/com2 9600 The problem is apparently related to the idea of controlling tty. The slattach should have /dev/com2 as it's controlling tty after it has been run, and does not. This causes slattach to shut down. Understandably, this leads to another workaround: restart slattach once you're up. 2.09 The serial ports don't work on my machine; is it my UARTs? It doesn't matter if you have old (8250) or new (16450) UART's in your box. Most liekly, the problem is related to something living at IRQ4 (if you are trying to use com1/com3) or IRQ3 (if com2/com4). You should move the conflicting card to another interrupt, since, in general, you won't beable to move the com card. This is because interrupt sharing requires either the interrupt line not being current sinked (thus preventing other interrupts), or a *lot* of fancy footwork and some very explicit knowledge of the cards involved. The first condition is not going to be met by most AT bus (ISA) cards. The second would require a general change in the way com cards are made and nearly a driver per card. DOS doesn't have this problem because it'scom drivers in BIOS poll the cards for input rather than being interrupt driven. This is generally not a good idea in a multiprocessing (say 386BSD) environment. 2.10 I can install; why won't it boot of my hard drive? In general, this will show up as a "bad disk label" error, and can result in in not booting from the hard drive "most of the time". You may be able to partially (or even completely) work around this problem by making your machine run at a lower clock rate. This problem is the result of the kernel reading the wrong register waiting for the drive controller to come ready. On some controllers, this isn't a problem; on others, it's fatal. The correct soloution is to use a patched "dist.fs" or "fixit.fs" boot disk. These have been provided by Chris G. Demetriou, and are located on the machine agate.berkeley.edu in the directory pub/386BSD/386bsd-0.1/unofficial/newbootables.cgd. There are a number of other bootables ther for WD8003 and Isolan ethernet cards, since the probing for both can cause problems. 2.11 How can I verify my checksums before I have 386bsd installed? A "cksum" program for the 386BSD distribution which runs on SVR4, and which can probably be easily modified to run elsewhere, has been provided by Henry G. Juengst (whose email address is juengst@boss1.physik.uni-bonn.de). Henry states about his port: -------------------------------------------------------------------- I found cksum in srcdist and compiled it. Some definition problems had to be resolved (quick hack). DG/UX 5.4.1 is a System V R4. Now I can begin to verify all files here (first check done) and use 386BSD for education (for no money) in an astronomical observatory (SNH, Erkrath/Germany) which is open for everybody. I hope this modified cksum will help anybody just to verify the contributed files before moving them to anywhere. Use make.sh to compile it. But have a look before you start. May be you have to change _PROTO_ARGS in all *.c & *.h using sed 's/_PROTO_ARGS/YOUR_PROTOTYPE_MACRO/g' file.c >file.new.c (it was __P in the original source). If you are not sure you should have a look into your /usr/include/stdio.h (for example). THIS IS NO PATCH FOR 386BSD ! Henry Sorry, here should be the uuencoded .tar.Z file. But the nntp server fails because out of disk space; 40 kbytes - mmmh. You can get it via anonymous ftp from boss1.physik.uni-bonn.de:~ftp/pub/386bsd/cksum_dgux/cksum_dg.uue [131.220.221.30] for the next two month. You won't waste your time if you have a look into the other directories (e.g. ~ftp/pub/dcl) ! If you don't have ftp access you can mail me. I will send it to you. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm sure that Henry's work will soon find its way to agate and other canonical distribution sites. 2.12 How can I make my tty driver not lock up? 1) Don't use it (8-)). 2) Apply Mark Eichin's (eichin@athena.mit.edu) patch for the file tty_ring.c. Sorry, no binaries with this patch already installed. Hopefully, it will show up in the usual places soon. Currently, the patch is article 1930 of comp.unix.bsd. You can get it form your favorite news archive (mine is wuarchive.wustl.edu). 2.13 Where are the commands "rpcinfo" and "rpcgen"? Chris Flatters (cflatter@nrao.edu) informs us in the following posting except where we can find them: -------------------------------------------------------------------- The sources for the Sun OS 4.0 RPC are on titan.rice.edu (I don't have the inet number handy) in directory sun-sources. You will have to pick up all the shell archives and unpack them to get at rpcgen. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.14 Why don't the man pages for "magic" and "file" work? James Jegers (jimj@miller.cs.uwm.edu) enlightens us: -------------------------------------------------------------------- The manual page for magic and file all have two dots before the commands, eg. "..SH" it should be ".SH" just delete one of the double dots in the whole file and then it will work. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.15 Why is apropos broke? Also from James Jegers: -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Makefile in /usr/othersrc/share/man/Makefile creates the whatis.db. The problem is that it doesn't strip the backspaces in the title and apropos can't handle that. So add a "col -b" to strip those. exerpt from the makefile. makedb: for file in `find /usr/share/man -type f -name '*.0' -print`; do \ sed -n -f /usr/share/man/makewhatis.sed $$file; \ done | col -b | sort -u > whatis.db install -o ${BINOWN} -g ${BINGRP} -m 444 whatis.db \ ${DESTDIR}/usr/share/man -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.16 Where can I get a working "netstat"? Havard Eidnes (Havard.Eidnes@runit.sintef.no) has ported it for us: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, I've ported netstat from NET2 to 386bsd version 0.1. The changes are mostly involved with inserting #ifdefs for ISO, NS and IMP at the relevant places ("removing" that code, essentially), not compiling some of the modules (although the source remains together with comments in the Makefile) plus modifying the "unixpr()" routine in unix.c to traverse the open file table the new way. The "netstat -r" output looks a bit odd (although I guess this is the "new way"?), but gives the right information. The source and binary is available with anonymous ftp from ugle.unit.no (for lack of a better place) in the pub/unix/386bsd/ directory as netstat-bin.tar.Z and netstat-src.tar.Z. Unpack the source from /usr/src and the binary and formatted man page (as root) from /. Use binaries at own risk ;-) - Havard -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hopefully, this will find it's way into the regular distribution. 2.17 How can I fix NFS to work with my NE2000 board? Ken Raeburn (raeburn@cambridge.cygnus.com) has both identified the problem and provided us with a work around: -------------------------------------------------------------------- I reported previously that I was seeing problems reading files over NFS using the ne2000 driver; timeouts would eventually be reported, no data would be read. Listing files and directories (small ones anyways) were not a problem. After playing with etherfind and kernel printfs, I've come to this conclusion: Fragmented 8K UDP packets from the NFS server are not reaching the UDP layer in 386bsd. The Sun is sending them (according to another Sun spying on the network), but the UDP input routine is never called. I don't know if the bug here is on the 386bsd or Sun side, and won't have time to look into it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, mounting NFS file systems with "rsize=1024" does get rid of this problem. (It does nothing about TCP being slow, though.) Ken -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hopefully, the real soloution (a UDP fix) will be forthcoming so that the slow TCP problem is fixed as well. 2.18 How do I add swap space? William F. Jolitz fprovides the soloution to this problem himself, by way of a reply to Randy Suess' question on the matter: -------------------------------------------------------------------- >To add swap space, the device needs to be compiled into the kernel >in advance, even if you don't plan to use it. It reserves space in >it's swap space map for this (so eventually it can interleave them). Ok, that did it. Thanks. I am now able to have the swap partition on the second drive added with swapon. (at least the command completes with no errors. Any way to actually see if the system knows about the second swap partition?) in /sys/compile/YOUR_SYSTEM_NAME/swap386bsd.c, duplicate the makedev(0,1) line in the swdevt struct and change the 1 to a 9. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The swdevt struct fix is Randy's, the quoted material Bill's. 2.19 Where can I get a kernel with second drive and second swap in it? As mentioned elsewhere, James Risner (risner@ms.uky.edu) has provided at least binaries (I havent checked for sources yet): -------------------------------------------------------------------- A recompiled kernel with second drive support and second drive swap support is available on f.ms.uky.edu:/pub2/386bsd-0.1/unofficial/second.drive.randy/* -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.20 How do I make a device that can see my DOS partition? The correct answer to this problem is "one /dev/wdXX per partition and a DOSFS VFS module". Barring that, the soloution provided by Jim Paradis (paradis@sousa.ltn.dec.com) will have to do: -------------------------------------------------------------------- To build a devices.c file that lets you access the DOS partition, you need to know the byte offset of the DOS partition from the start of the hard disk. You would then add an entry to the devices[] array as follows: {'C', "/dev/wd0d", <byteoffset>L, 16, 0, (int (*) ()) 0, 0, 0, 0}, So, f'rinstance, if your DOS partition starts at the beginning of the disk, you'd have: {'C', "/dev/wd0d", 0L, 16, 0, (int (*) ()) 0, 0, 0, 0}, On the other hand, if your DOS partition starts 32Mb into the disk, you'd say something like: {'C', "/dev/wd0d", (32768L * 1024L), 16, 0, (int (*) ()) 0, 0, 0, 0}, -------------------------------------------------------------------- Once I have my machine a happy camper, the second soloution should be available shortly. 2.21 How can I get "ps" to work? Jim Paradis (paradis@sousa.ltn.dec.com) has given us a patch to ./src/lib/libutil/kvm.c in article 2115 of comp.unix.bsd. Get it from your usenet archive, or the usualt FTP sites when it becomes generally available. 2.22 How can I read tapes with multiple extents? With a no-rewind device. Tore Haraldsen (toreh@bootes.sds.no) has given us the information to make one: -------------------------------------------------------------------- It IS possible to read multiple file tapes, if you do the following modifications to i386/isa/as.c: 1) Change the definition of dev_rewind macro to use a mask outside the other fields used by the scsi driver. Using the partition field for no-rewind flags will not work, due to imprecise coding elsewhere in the driver. Use 0100 for instance. Make a new kernel. 2) Create a device with this capability: mknod /dev/nras2a c 13 80 The last number, 80 = 16 (=minor device number for as2) + 64 (decimal representation of 0100). 3) When using the tape device for the first time, do some sort of dummy access to it: tar a cpio tape or vice versa. There seems to be some sort of race condition otherwise that will otherwise give you the unwanted rewind. 4) Good luck. This is just a hack, somebody compentent will have to rewrite the whole damn thing... -- Tore Haraldsen -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.23 How do I get around the NFS "Permission denied" error? The problem is not the configuration of the server (unless there is no real requirement to run it in "secure" mode, and you happen to be running it that way anyway). The problem is the fact that, even though mount request are sent on a priveledged port, NFS connections are not. This is part of secure NFS, and is not supported in 386BSD. There is a patch to cause NFS to use a secure port in 386BSD 0.1 -- unfortunately, I don't have references for it. It did appear as a postisting, somewhere between article 1600 and 2100 (I know, big help). 2.24 Some of my SCSI devices (like a tape) dont work; why? Gary Ward (gpw10@phoenixcd.amdahl.com) has seemingly discovered that the SCSI driver likes devices to start at 0 and work their way up. That means that you should put your first device at LUN 0, the second at LUN 1, and so on. The typical arrangement of disks at 0 and 1, and a tape at 4 will cause the tape to not be recognized. Change this to disks at 0 and 1 ans the tape at 2, and voila! the tape is suddenly there. 2.25 The "mountd" hangs on exporting a file system subdirectory. This is because of a bug in mountd itself, as identified by Roe Peterson (roe@Unibase.SK.CA). As yet, there is not a fixed binary available, so you will have to make the change and compile it yourself. The change, as posted by Roe, is as follows: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Found a little bug in mountd: If /etc/exports contained: /usr/src -root=0 And /usr was not a file system unto itself, mountd went into an infinite loop and stayed there. The fix: in /usr/src/sbin/mountd/mountd.c, line 592 reads: while (*cp == '/' && cp > ep->ex_dirp) and should read: while (*(cp-1) == '/' && cp > ep->ex_dirp) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.26 Are EISA cards supported? No, EISA cards are not directly support; however several, especially Adaptek SCSI controllers will work in ISA mode. When and if EISA is directly supported, they will give a significant performance advantage to EISA bus machines. Until then, there is nothing that is intrinsically better about owning an EISA bus machine. 2.27 Is microchannel (MCA, PS/2) supported? No. Like EISA, this is unsupported currently; unlike EISA, it can't work anyway until it is supported, as it doesn't fall back to ISA operation. If you want to work on this problem, I'm sure that many people will appreciate it; you will probably need an ISA or EISA machine to do the work, however. 2.28 How much disk space do I need? The following is culled down from the INSTALL.NOTES file of the distribution: Binary only: 49 M (30 disk, 5 swap, 14 extraction) Source: 125 M (49 bin, 37 disk, +6 extraction, 25 recompile) User software: +51 M Everything plus files from recompilation is 176 M with no space left over. I personally recommend at least 20-60 M of empty space for room to grow, build your own software, keep patches, read news, etc. Call it around 200 M for a full distribution you can rebuild from scratch and as a general usable system. If you are binary only, call it 70-160 M, depending on the space you want left over, and whether you load the additional user software. Add more space for X windows, additional swap, or anything else you want to use disk for. I find that I'm comfortable in 300 M with the developement work I'm doing. NB: Given the recent proliferation of postings for "multiple drive" kernels, it's always possible to "start small" and expand later, if you need to. You can also NFS mount disk space from another machine if you have networking installed, in which case you only need the space required for the binary distribution, no mater what you want to do. 2.29 How do I get rid of "startart" characters on my console? This has been a rather highly reported problem. Ken Raeburn reports that simply rebuilding the kernel from the supplied sources will get rid of it. Others have reported that moving the ethernet card to another IRQ also seems to sovle the problem. 2.30 I'm having trouble installing the binaries... why is that? . 2.31 Where can I get X windows for 386BSD? There are a number of locations carrying X386 1.2E 1.0. The most recent announcement posting (by David E. Wexelblat, email address is dwex@cbnewsj.cb.att.com) states: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Source Patches based on X11R5 PL12, from MIT, are available via anonymous FTP from: export.lcs.mit.edu (under /pub/contrib) ftp.physics.su.oz.au (under /X386) ftp.win.tue.nl (under /pub/X386) in the file 'X386-1.2E-1.diff.Z'. For Linux, 386BSD, BSD/386 and Mach386, additional patch kits are (currently) required. Send mail to x386@physics.su.oz.au if you need these additional patch kits; we will try to make them generally available in the near future. Binaries are available via anonymous FTP from: ftp.physics.su.oz.au - SVR4 binaries under /X386/SVR4 ftp.win.tue.nl - SVR4 binaries under /pub/X386/SVR4 f.ms.uky.edu - SVR4 binaries under /pub2/Xwindows/X386 stasi.bradley.edu - SVR4 binaries under /pub/X386 banjo.concert.net - Linux binaries under /pub/Linux/X11 Each binary distribution will contain a README file that describes the compile-time option selections that were made. Systems X386 1.2E has been verified as working on Dell SVR4 2.1 Esix 4.0.3A and 4.0.4 Microport SVR4 3.1 and 4.1 UHC SVR4 Consensys SVR4 ISC SVR4 AT&T SVR4 MST SVR4 [We believe that it will work correctly on all Intel-based, ISA/EISA SVR4's - MicroChannel has not been tested] Interactive SVR3 2.2 Interactive SVR3 3.0 Linux BSD/386 386BSD <******************************* -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.32 Where can I get (FTP) info on how to configure a kernel? One of the more frequent questions asked recently is "how do I rebuild the kernel?" Another, only slightly less frequently asked, is "now that I've rebuilt the kernel, what do I do with it?" The answers to both questions have been provided by Richard Murphey (email address rich@Rice.edu). Thank you, Rich, for the following information: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ready-to-print PostScript files for each section of the net2 system maintainer's manual are on nova.cc.purdue.edu in pub/386bsd/submissions/bsd.manuals. smm.02.config.ps.Z describes kernel configuration for the vax, however some of it is relevant to 386BSD. There is no freely available rewrite for 386BSD that I know of. More specificly, for /dev/com2 you might look at the MAKEDEV script which is generated when you configure the kernel. Ideally, it should have a mknod command with the appropriate numbers for each device. Rich -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.33 I get the error "isr 15 and error: isr 17" on an NE2000 card, OR I have some card on IRQ2 and it dosn't work; why? James Van Artsdalen (email at james@bigtex.cactus.org) has given us the answer: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Some VGA cards use IRQ 2 for a vertical retrace interrupt. Even when the interrupt is not enabled in the VGA, some cards drive IRQ 2 inactive instead of leaving the signal tristate. If this is the problem, you can use Scotch tape to cover the IRQ 2 signal on the VGA's ISA connector. -------------------------------------------------------------------- There has been some discussion as to whether scoth tape is really appropriate inside a card slot. My answer would be "yes". This is because the alternate soloution of cutting the trace on the video board seems, to my mind, to reduce the value of the board. It is possible that, in the future, with a bi-partite driver, you would want to catch the retrace interrupt to get rid of "sparklies" or to implement a driver for a very high resoloution monitor for X. In this happens, given a choice between alcohol and solder, I vote for alcohol. An alternate soloution would be to remove your ethernet card until you have rebuilt the kernel so that it expects it at an interrupt other than 2, rejumper it, and reinstall it. This gets around both the tape and exacto knife soloutions, plus you don't have to know which pin is IRQ2 (something you need a techincal reference for the bus to find out). 2.34 If I do a "pwd", my directory goes away. There is a bug in "pwd". This problem also shows in other programs, but is seen most in "pwd". At the shell prompt, type a control-C (^C, interrput). This will make the shell "come back". Some people have suggested using bash (GNU's "Born Again SHell") as a replacement to fix this problem. *THIS DOES NOT WORK, AND WILL RESULT IN YOUR MACHINE HANGING IN BOOT OR AN "init failed" MESSAGE!*. Once you have your shell up, you can exec bash without a problem. Wait until the shell is up to do this, however. 2.35 I can't unpack etc01 becuse of "too many files open". The "too many files open" is a result of the "cat" command leaving files open after it has read a file. Hopefully, this will be fixed soon. In the mean time, Dwight E. Cass (email address at dec@lazarus.nrtc.northrop.com) has provided us with this enecdotal work around for his own experiences: -------------------------------------------------------------------- So - back to installation. This time, when I get to the etc01 partition, I am a bit more awake, so I run it from csh (with the open file limit at 256). Works pretty well - but complains at the end that it could not do the final configuration because it could not find the configuration file - I checked the MANIFEST and the file is not there, so I finally decided to ignore the message (but it was bothersome!) Once etc01 was done - source was easy ... and I am now up and running, and quite impressed!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------- The moral: Use csh! 8-). 3.0 Contributors I have tried to give credit to the contributors, where possible, in the text of this FAQ. Some of this was transcribed from memory from postings seen more than a week ago, so if I have used a soloution for which you feel you should have received credit, and didn't, I'm sorry. Most of this information has been culled over the last few weeks of postings to usenet, so it is by no means complete. 4.0 The future This is an unofficial FAQ. I have created and posted it as an interim soloution until an officially sanctioned FAQ can be arrived at by someone-better-equiped-but-currently-to-busy-to-do-anything-about-it. This FAQ does not represent an official position by William Jolitz or any of the other people quoted, without their permission, in it, and should not be considered as such. Any misrepresentations of attitudes or views of individual (and unwitting) contributors are due to my poor editorial skills. 5.0 END-OF-FAQ Terry Lambert terry_lambert@gateway.novell.com terry@icarus.weber.edu --- Disclaimer: Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.