I've been running NetBSD (from 1.1 to current) for almost 8 months
now, and have been very happy with it.  However, during this time I've
had some problems, most of which I believe are related to pcvt, some
which have been there the whole way through, and others which have
recenly surfaced during sups.  I thought I'd point them out, and ask if
anybody had any suggestions or such, and if these are known bugs.


    Since the first NetBSD kernel I've built, I've been running pcvt. 
I've been using the HP-style configuration, mainly for the ability to
easily enable/disable beeping (to let my roommate sleep).  I have been
running it in 28 line mode, and recently bumped up to the 40 line mode. 
The whole time I've been running NetBSD, I've had problems with small
lockups.  Basically, for a period of about 10 or so seconds, input to a
tty doesn't work.  I can switch to other consoles and type without any
problems, and when I switch back to the frozen console, I still can't
type to it.  In a few seconds, it will start accepting input again.  It
seems to be completely random, and happens maybe two or three times a
day on my machine.  It only ever occurs locally, I've never had telnet
or xterm sessions lock like that, so I believe the cause to be pcvt.


    Within the past week or so, when I sup'ed up to 1.2_ALPHA (and it's
carried into 1.2_BETA, I've noticed two changes in the way my pcvt works.

    First off, the load average display on ttyv0 used to be updated
constantly.  Now, it only updates when input or output occurs (on any
console, it doesn't have to be console 0).  Similarly, if you switch to
any console, the cursor coordinates don't show until I/O occurs, and on
console 0 the load average line also doesn't display until there is I/O.
 It's minor, but especially with the load average I thought it was
better before it started behaving this way.  Was this intentional, or
did something break?

    Second (I don't know if this is directly related to pcvt, but it
only seems to apply to ttyv?), utmp doesn't seem to get updated
properly.  It always has been that programs I've compiled (i.e. GNU
fingerd) will only show the most recent login, regardless of the
terminal device, but w and who and such would properly display all the
logins.  With recent sources, even w and who only show the most recent
login.  For example, if I log in on ttyv0 and ttyv1 and do a w, it will
only show the ttyv1 login.  If I then log out of ttyv1, it will say no
users, and not show any logins.  I did a full sup, so it shouldn't be a
problem with my w or who.


    While I'm on a roll here, I thought I'd ask some questions I've been
hoping others might have answers to related to pcvt.

    First off, I have tried compiling several versions of GNU ncurses on
my system.  With every version, I have had much difficulty in getting
terminfo programs to work on pcvt.  Things have gotten worse since going
from 28 to 43 line mode.  For example, ncftp (2.3.0) runs in 25 line
mode even though there are 40 lines.  After quitting ncftp, the console
stays in 25 line mode until I toggle F3 ("FORCE24 ENABLE").  And unless
I hit F2 ("SOFT-RST TERMINAL"), programs like more get "stuck" in the
bottom line, which makes them rather useless.  Most of this is using the
"vt100-avo" terminal setting, which causes the least problems.  If I use
something like "pcvt37h", the screen gets garbled even easier.  And yes,
I compiled terminfo versions of these terminal settings, so terminfo is
using the same information termcap has.

    Also, is there any way to have pcvt actually use the video
attributes, so that bold text is intensified and underline test is
underlined, as opposed to changing background colors so much?  I'd much
rather have things be displayed the way they're intended to be.  But my
attempts to hack the support in simply caused garbled text (as was
warned in the pcvt sources).  Has anybody successfully done this???

    And finally, my video card is an STB PowerGraph 64 (the new one with
the Trio64V+ chip), with 2MB of video RAM.  I can do 1280x1024 in X, but
I can't seem to convince pcvt that I can do 132 columns (I'm restricted
to 80).  Is there something I can do to get around this?


    Thanks in advance.  I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions / help
people could provide.

BTW, I have a 486DX4/100, running 1.2_BETA, sup'ed and installed this
past Friday afternoon.

                                                          Will Ferry

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