On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Ib-Michael Martinsen wrote:

Hi,

> Hi there!
> 
> I finally managed to install RiscBSD v1.3alfa and get the news and
> mail connections to work again.
>
> First a big congratulation to the development-team with the release.
> It was a much easier job to install v1.3 compared to v1.2, I think
> the CDROM installation guide (INSTALL.CDROM) was well written and
> easy to follow. However I would like to comment it a little bit:

>From what I hear it's a good CD...
 
> Then to my questions and problems:
> 
> I have always found v1.2B pretty stable except that when I downloaded
> news using leafnode/fetch via a ppp-connection I almost always got a
> kernel dump. After installing v1.3alfa I am getting kernel dumps much
> more frequently and in much wider contexts. I have read that a 
> 'memory race condition' is suspected to cause this behaviour, so I have
> tried running RiscBSD with only 1 16MB DRAM SIMM installed, but this
> also gives dumps although not so often as when using 2 16MB DRAM SIMMs.

Have you tried swapping which simm is in which slot?  There is some
conditions where the faster simm must be in one slot, and the slower in
the other...

> Some of the sets from v1.2 (for instance xv, xosview and others) are missing
> in v1.3alfa. Is it possible to use the v1.2 sets under v1.3?

Only the statically linked ones (using the beta shared lib 1.2 files
probably won't work)

> I have not been able to use the UnixFs. Is this because I am using a
> 4.9GB only for RiscBSD and UnixFs can handle partitions of max 2GB?
> 
> The disk is connected as a slave disk on a Simtec 16 bit IDE i/f.
> When I run the RiscOS script WD2A which contains the following line:

> <Obey$Dir>.mountufs IDEFS wd2a

Does IDEFS start partion numbering at 0 or 4?  ATAFS starts at 0 (or later
versions do) if it does you need to hack the mountufs basic file to not
add 4 to the partition number...
 
> I get the error:
> 
> Unknown partition type
> Bombing out ...
> 10
> Unknown partition type
> 
> If the script WD2A contains
> 
> <Obey$Dir>.mountufs IDEFS WD2A

WD2A is not a valid drive...

and so no partition/drive number is decoded...

[snip popclient stuff which I don't know the answer to]

> Where is the most suitable place to put the sources I want to compile?
> I am using /usr/src, but will that collide with kernel sources,
> if I later want to try to remake a kernel?

The kernel source goes in /usr/src/sys

> Which user should be used to do the compiling?

Any will do, although you might want to keep things tidy and have a user
for just compiling with...

> I am using root, but is that necessary (except for the make install part)?

You'd be better off not useing root other than when needed, (it's very
easy to do something silly and remove files you need ;)

> ----------
> I have not been able to find any documentation of the Boot Options for the
> BootLoader. I have the option 'ehbug' in use. What does it mean?
> And are there any other useful option?

Not many, try using !Help on the boxes.  ehbug is to get around a problem
of some ethernet cards not reseting properly and hanging.

> ----------
> Once again a big applause to 'those who carry'.

Most definetly, the comments on this CD have all been good (and
constructive), so I can presume it's worth having, well done mark, neil,
scott, rob, and the others that help.

Cheers,
Chris