Hi!

I am writing a review article for "Amiga Unix Compendium" CD set - which
contains NetBSD/amiga, Linux m68k & ppc, AROS and GeekGadgets - for german
"Amiga-Magazin".

I installed NetBSD1.4.1 from the CD which worked quite good. Also the X11
packages were installed. But after this I fail. I am not able to setup X11
properly, and this does not seem due to lack of good instructions, cause I
guess I know how to configure X11, but there are other problems:

- 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. If nothing
else helps I try to use ed, but I would like to use emacs on a terminal,
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 and it has
an easy to remember hotkey for saving the file and quitting the editor
;-), 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:

"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.

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.

- 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.

Another solution would be: Using BFFS on AmigaOS again.

Third solution is: Getting Emacs for NetBSD which works on Terminal
and cut&pasting the grfmodes information via Emacs (not just X11 as it is
on the CD, I did only find nvi which fails on loading libcanna, another vi
clone which is also mad, and wily which needs X11 apparently on the CD)


I just want to install X11 to also test KDE that is in binary compiled
packages on the CD. One advantage to the RedHat m68k Linux distribution on
the other CD, cause it doesn't contain KDE and its gnome version is
stone-aged.

But then after installing RedHat m68k - which IMHO also was a little
easier due to the menu driven installation routine - I simply could say
"startx" and there it goes. Nothing left to do to install X11.


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. But then article deadline is quite near, so I appreciate some little
help by you to get me started. If nothing works out I will delay the
article or write quite generally about NetBSD.


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.


-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald  - http://helios.home.pages.de
PGP: http://home.pages.de/~helios/autor/wie-erreichen.html
ICQ: #34355756