Subject: Re: wsconsctl doesn't work for me
To: Stefan Witzgall <stefan.witzgall@online.de>
From: Scott Reynolds <scottr@clank.org>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 04/30/2002 00:21:01
Hi Stefan,

On Monday, April 29, 2002, at 11:58  PM, Stefan Witzgall wrote:

>> The unfortunate thing about keymaps is that they need to be compiled
>> into the kernel. Only the US mapping is currently available.
>
> That's a clear statement. No one on the list said that so short.

Well, technically, I lied. There is a way to modify the keymap, but it's 
not so straightforward as to actually be any less work than just 
building the keyboard map. The map is in the 
src/sys/arch/mac68k/dev/akbdsym.h file, and it uses contants from 
src/sys/dev/wscons/wsksymdef.h. This is a simple map from the keycodes 
sent by the keyboard to a wscons "keysym". It should be pretty simple to 
build for your keyboard, I would guess.

>> Regarding reboots, this is something I took a great deal of time to
>> rewrite a couple of years back. I'm rather surprised you're having this
>> problem. If possible, could you enter "t" at the debugger prompt and 
>> let
>> me know what the results are?
>
> Here the problem is that the keyboard is dead is the sense that I only 
> can
> reboot the machine with ctrl-cmd-Power. I tried the whole keyboard.

This suggests that your system isn't happy with the way the ROM space is 
mapped at reboot time. Fixing this may not be easy. :-(

>> Finally, if you are having trouble with the distribution sets, it is
>> most likely that you're running into a problem with the Installer. I
>
> I left the installer resting where it was and downloaded the concerned 
> sets
> myself. That worked. Hm, curious, some sets did fine some caused the
> "invalid format" (or so) error message from the installer.

It depends on how the data is compressed. For reasons that aren't 
entirely clear to me -- I've never researched the problem myself -- 
certain patterns seem to cause an overflow in the decompressor built 
into the Installer. As far as I am aware the problem has never occurred 
with the default compression level.

>> [...] The next release of NetBSD should
>> address that by eliminating the requirement for a Mac OS-based 
>> Installer
>> application.
>
> A new scenario, but some Mac programs must be involved at some stage I
> think. How else should one start? A floppy, a CD-drive. Both is not
> available for all users.

CD-ROM and network transfers would be used in this case. When using the 
network method to install, the end user is only required to download the 
a subset of the distribution files (e.g. an installation kernel and the 
Booter application). The installation process takes care of downloading 
the rest of the distribution after configuring the network.

I hope this helps a little.

--scott