Re: NetBSD 5.0 and SPARCstation 5 not a lucky combination

[Jon Buller <jon%bullers.net@localhost>]

Michael wrote:
> On Jul 29, 2009, at 3:46 PM, Erik Fair wrote:
>
> > So, I'd like to see the wscons kernel configuration in -current 
> > GENERIC pulled up to the netbsd-5 release branch. Mr. Portmaster, 
> > can you please do the honors and make the necessary requests of our
> >  release engineering team?
>
> Not sure that makes all that much sense - we need a few more changes 
> for that ( mostly in /etc/ttys and such ) and 5.1 will be branched 
> pretty soon - since it's going to branch from -current it will just 
> inherit wscons.

Since when is a minor release branched off -current instead of the major
release it is following?

And while on the subject of problems with the console, I saw this
problem on my SS20s with either a cg6 or a cg14, and on my LX.  But
before I got that far I had to install a 4.0 system and upgrade it to 5
to see the wscons/video problem, as I couldn't get 5 on the machine any
other way.

It seems that 5_rc or -current from that time has some real difficulty with
starting up something.  It appeared the either /dev/kbd disappeared when
login finished, or login was unable to pass open file descriptors for
stdin and stdout to the shell it forked.

The only suggestion I got at the time was "It works for me on a serial
console"...  It may or not be related, but while you are testing new
kernels, you might want to try that.  As I remember, the install kernel
would get to the spot where it asks if you want to install, upgrade, get
a shell, or reboot.  It would accept the answer, print out the next bit
and then give you the shaft at the next request for input.

Jon