Yes! It's true -- RISC OS is dead in the Croft household! I haven't used
RISC OS for the past fortnight, only RiscBSD, and I'm considering changing
things so I have to hold down ALT to enter RISC OS!

I've been having great fun installing sets, compiling software, etc.
(and doing all my *real* work in Unix too!), and now it's time to ask
all the questions that have been bugging me...

Setup: ARM710, 3.2Gig IDE Quantum Fireball (600ish Mb for RiscBSD)
Cumana SCSI II with proTeus, 32+8+2Mb RAM.
Kernel bsd-4634-64MB. 1.2-beta sets (including cc2721)

1. Occasionally my current console goes berserk and starts inserting
loads of ^@ characters... and keeps on adding them until I hit another key.
Is this a known problem?

I don't seem to be able to tie down exactly what is causing it - it happens
both whilst I'm typing a command, and also when I'm at a prompt. It has
even happened whilst in a MORE session! (At least, I assume it happened.
I got the repeated bleeping of bad keypress even though I wasn't typing).

Speaking of which, is there anyway of turning down the bleep volume? :-)


2. Compiling Pine. I would assume this is a RiscBSD-specific problem
as I'm sure others would have noticed it if it wasn't...

I am trying to compile Pine 3.95 for NEB (NetBSD). It compiles
imapd, mtest, pico and pilot fine, then when it gets to compiling
pine...

134 root@hawk# make -f makefile.neb
cc -O  -g -DDEBUG  -DNETBSD  -DSYSTYPE=\"NEB\" -DMOUSE  -c mailview.c
mailview.c:In function `format_header_text':
mailview.c:1387:internal error-unrecognised insn
(insn 1078 1077 569 (set (reg:SI 3 r3)
        (smin:SI (reg:SI 3 r3)
            (const_int 1024))) -1 (nil)
    (nil))
cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 6
*** Error code 1

Stop.
135 root@hawk# 

(The Error code 1 might be an Error code 7; I can't read my writing).
ISTR the relevant source line is a } for end of function.

Has anybody else tried compiling pine? Do you get this error? Is there
a fix? Is it something I should report to the pine authors?


3. Will this new StrongARM kernel work on an ARM710? And does it fix
the pmap_enter problem?


4. What should my csh.login tset to? I'm currently using vt100, which
works fine for most things, but doesn't allow me to use the cursor keys
in things like More (which I can do under xterm).


5. I often get "Possible process deadlock due to shortage of L1 page tables".
And, indeed, the process I initiated locks. My typical setup is 5
console logins, 2 of them su'd, 1 run, 2 telnets, X, fvwm, xfm, xconsole, and a
Nedit sessions. This doesn't seem unreasonable for a 42MB machine, but if
I go beyond this, I get the aforementioned message. Is this a fixed limit
or can I increase something?


6. I configured a swap partition when I installed, but there is no
swap partition in /etc/fstab. Do I need to add it, or has it decided
I have enough memory to not require a swap partition?

On a related note, what are all the wd0a-wd0e letters? wd0a is my /
partition, wd0e is /etc. What are b, c, and d?


7. Correction to the (original) installation guide: the command to mount a
cdrom is mount -r -t cd9660 /dev/cd0a /cdrom


Hope someone can help with some of these. I've read a few Unix books
but they don't seem to go beyond the finger/ls/vi/mv/cp level, so aren't
very helpful. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd be most grateful.

Thanks again for your help. And, to whoever was asking about BST in
RISC OS, you can *Configure [No]DST to switch it [off]/on. I believe there
is also an option in Alarm.

David. (Pleased to report that I now know what an inode is.)

-- 
David Croft