Re: Review article for Amiga Unix Compendium

[Patryk Łogiewa <silverdr%inet.com.pl@localhost>]

Napisane 07-Sty-00 przez: Martin Steigerwald...

[...]

>- First one is the editor to use to change the config files. As it seems
>NetBSD basic installation only contains ed and vi, both are IMHO not what
>I ever call an usable software - this is my personal oppinion.

... and your personal problem... IMHO. 'vi' is there because it is EVERYwhere.
It is also small, fast and efficient if you know how to use it of course. If
you don't, then EVERY UN*X starter book has a chapter on it.

Learn it once and you (like me and many others) will ever wonder how could you
not understand it before... Learn it. Even if you will use something else
afterwards. It will help you in many cases not only with plain NetBSD setup.

>If nothing
>else helps I try to use ed, but I would like to use emacs on a terminal,

and I really wouldn't like to to download the base install set with 'emacs'
inside! This is of course my opinion but if you don't know how to use 'vi',
you shouldn't start any UN*X adventures.

>or such a simply thing like ae - that comes on a Debian m68k base
>installation and is merely a totally simply full screen editor where I can
>move a cursor with the cursor keys and type where the cursor is

If you can't move the cursor in 'vi' with the cursor keys then your terminal
is broken. The same if you can't type where the cursor is.

>and it has
>an easy to remember hotkey for saving the file and quitting the editor

Is ':wq' (w)rite and (q)uit or 'ZZ' so hard to remember? ;-)

>;-), thus all what I really need. But I had enough of vi and ed already...
>I already changed a line in fstab with ed... s/sd0f/sd0g/g... oh this is
>mad ;-). And then this "Amiga Unix Compendium" has a sentence on its
>cover:

True. The partition numbering scheme is sometimes somewhat misleading unless
you understand it. Here the Linux-style is more easy to understand.

>"Unix has never been so easy for Amigans"

>Oh well... I guess this sentence did not come from the NetBSD
>organisation, but if you really require the user who wants to look into
>NetBSD to use "vi" or "ed" you are IMHO not promoting NetBSD powerfully.
>"vi" is about "how to I make as much users as possible afraid of NetBSD"
>IMHO.

I'd rather call it "how do I keep as much lamers as possible away from digging
inside NetBSD and asking stupid questions then" ;-) No! Please don't take it
personally. It's only a joke!

Really IMHO NetBSD install sets are perfectly (well, almost) composed.

>Another solution would be: Using a Berkely Fast Filesystem on AmigaOS so
>that I can use GoldED on Amiga to change the config files for X11. I know
>there are some implementations on AmiNet, but I do not know whether there
>is one that is really compatible to NetBSD 1.4.1 and does allow writing of
>files. Since I do not want to destroy the NetBSD partitions again I am
>unsure about this. When you have a tip about this, I appreciate it.

Yes. that reminds me of what I sometimes do. I sometimes mount the windows
partition under NetBSD and use 'vim' to change things on it... ;-)

AFAIR all the BFFSs are compatible with... BFFS which is used on all NetBSD
systems so far. The last one allows writing to the filesystem but does not
make it 'clean' afterwards what means that you will have to 'fsck' the
partitions you messed on when you boot NetBSD.

>- Second problem: I cut&pasted a grfmodes file from the X11 installation
>description, the one with the IDEK monitor and a CV64... and I also
>created one with ReadCVMonitor that I didn't convert to 1.3+ yet... And
>there are probably other files to transfer from AmigaOS side to NetBSD. To
>do that I have created a Amiga FFS partition (DOS/1, no international mode,
no
>dircache) - I am using SmartFilesystem for my usual partition. But I can't
>get it mounted... I try

>mount -t ados /dev/sd0e /amiga

>But it doesn't work. Oh, it says it mounts it read-only, and there is no
>further error message, but then I do a "ls /amiga" I get nothing. Using
>"mount" to display mounted partition shows that the partition was not
>mounted, its not in the list. I was not quite sure about the partition
>naming but I also tried /dev/sd0f and other names, so I must have got it.

It is simple (and AFAIR stated in the docs/faqs) you should explicitly mount
it with '-oro' as it is still not writable.

>In my review I am not going to describe the installation process step by
>step, but before talking about NetBSD I want to have it running with X11
>and KDE anyway, cause I usually want to know about what I write a little
>bit.

That's great!

>So if you can tell me some links to an proper editor for terminal or some
>nice BFFS for Amiga, I appreciate it very much.

Did I mention 'Learn vi'? ;-) It really is not that difficult as it seems at
first glance. As for the BFFS I recall using 1.5b (?) with all success. But it
was in the stone ages when I wasn't able to understand how to use 'vi' to edit
files... ;-)

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