On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 06:35:12AM +0200, Magnus Svantesson wrote:
> I have for quite some time now been trying to revive a  3X 90 MHz
> Hypersparc-equipped Sparc 20.
> CG6, 512 Mb and a whooping external 36 GB HD.


The default kernel probably only supports one processor. You can
change that kernel to a mp kernel later. 3 processors seems a bit
odd?


> I can ping with both URL- and TCP/IP, but when I try to FTP it tells me,
> well...rude things I think (ok, I am a Mac-man originally in case you havent
> noticed :-).


The exact response would be more helpful. Ftp from the machine or to?


> After running X -probeonly, it spews out massive amounts of lines, but when
> I run startx I get 3 hardly readable windows & everything on the screen
> tells 
> me I really dont know what I am doing (I do however get a swedish keyboard,
> which is nice).


NetBSD 3.0 uses Xsun, if I am not mistaken. Xsun produces a long
list of available options if you start it with -probeonly, merely
because it doesn't support -probeonly. Xsun doesn't use any
XF86Config file. This means it usually works out of the box. What
kind of monitor are you using? Xsun probably wants to use 1152x900,
does your monitor support that? You can check if you are using Xsun
by checking what the symbolic link /usr/X11R6/bin/X points to.


> I believe .xinitrc is a file which I modify so that the OS knows something
> about the graphical environment in which it is supposed to work.
> I have tried to locate the .xinitrc without success. 
> Is it in fact a empty file that I create with Vi, fill with stuff  & place
> in the users root catalog?


I think you have mixed up xinitrc with XF86Config. xinitrc, or
.xinitrc in your home directory, simply starts whatever you want
to have started when you issue startx. XF86Config OTOH is a settings
file, describing your display hardware. This file is not used by
Xsun, since Sun hardware is limited to a few easily detected frame
buffers.

The file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc _should_ exist and probably
does, as this is where the commands to launch the three xterms you
saw on your screen resides.

-- 
Christer O. Andersson
Odensbacken