On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:18:58 -0400, Christopher Schultz
<christopher.d.schultz@comcast.net> wrote:
> Thanks for the tip. But, now I can't get the serial console to do
> anything. I can see all the output from the bootup, but I can't type
> anything. I'm using 115200/N81/Hardware flow control. Weird. I don't
> remember having any problems like this in the past.

Hmm. That shouldn't have happened. My console is fine. Does the problem persist?

> Okay, thanks for the great tips. I've noticed that some pre-built
> packages are pretty out-of-date. For example, 'ap-php', which ostensibly
> adds PHP support to Apache httpd is linked exclusively to apache-1.3.x.
> I'd prefer to use Apache 2.x if possible.

I never figured out what the process is to build binary packages for
the ftp site. I don't know if someone has to volunteer to do this or
what.

I just use "make install" in pkgsrc. It works. When it doesn't work,
it's probably because we're using a (rather) oddball processor. You
can also use "make package". I do this and stash them away somewhere
for when I screw up and have to do something drastic.

> Am I better off compiling source packages myself, or using the package
> manager? I know very little about the NetBSD package manager --
> basically how to use pkg_add, pkg_info, and pkg_delete in their most
> basic forms (i.e., I'd prefer for packages to go into /usr/local or /opt
> instead of /usr/pkg/foo/bar, etc.).

Mostly you don't have a choice, you have to use pkgsrc to get anything
reasonably current.

As for 2.0, I've been running various stages of 2.0-release kernel and
userland. I think I'm on 2.0-RC4 now with no problems. I try to build
the userland once in a while, but it takes about 2 or 3 days or
something on the qube itself. I'm assuming most people have NetBSD
installed on some other more viable machine, for cross building. I do
this most of the time. Drop down to single user, install the new
kernel, reboot, drop into single user again, then install userland. No
biggie.

Andy