[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> Hallo everyone,
> I found a few problems installing/using ELKS on an Amstrad PPC640 and I could
> not solve all of them. I also have some additional trouble in a xdos window
> (dosemu 0.98-8).
> Here is a description of what I did and which problems I encountered, I did not
> find the solution in the documentation.
> first of all, I downloaded ELKS and dev86 (did I download anything more? can't
> recall). anyhow, I compiled the kernel and put it on a floppy according to the
> documentation. This all worked very well. At this stage my PPC was asking for
> a root filesystem to mount but I could not execute all steps leading to a
> mountable one. after a few evenings trying, reading, thinking and retrying I
> settled for the solution already present in 'comb', included in the images
> zipfile. is there an easy way to produce it automagically here?
You can build these images semi-automatically from the elkscmd package.
You will need to download the latest elkscmd which is on the main ftp site
in ftp://ftp.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/elks/elkscmd. Upack it and build its
contents by doing a normal make. Then become root and type 'make comb' and
it will create a comb disc image. You may have to edit Make.defs and change
some of the top three lines so they point to the right place.
> Well, after downloading the images zipfile and copying the comb on a 720kb
> diskette, I was able to boot ELKS (but I call it Linuxino, a self explaining
> term to my friends) on my almost forgotten PPC640.
> now the problems:
> 1) I haven't got any electric memory in that system, so it always starts timing
> at 1970-01-01(0:00). Isn't this a common problem on such old systems? can a
> question be added into init so that if it sees that the date isn't set, it
> prompts for it? It should not take much more than 120 bytes, I guess.
The init process is far from complete. In a more complete system init would
run a script which sets up the system. The job of making sure the system
time is correct is this scripts.
> 2) as a user, I can't mount /dev/fd1. I have to do it as root.
This is a normal UNIX/Linux feature. User mounting of floppy drives is
achieved by having mount suid root, and adding features to mount so it can
work out whether a non-root user should be able to perform mounts.
> 3) how do I get rid of user[1-6]? I don't need them!!!
Open the passwd file with the editor (vi on the root disk) and delete the
lines.
> 4) I would like to have passwords, I compiled passwd for elks but the changes
> it makes to /etc/passwd make that file unusable to login. do I need a different
> login? if so, I'm back to the root filesystem problem.
You should by now be able to build individual programs and install them onto
your root disk from a Linux machine. Check the source to login
(elkscmd/sysutils/login.c) and see whether tho code to check passwords is
complete. The fault could be in passwd(1), login(1) or in the libc crypt()
functions. If you make any progress, please report back with your changes
and I will merge them into the next release. Does passwd corrupt the passwd
file, or is it just a case of login doesn't work once a password has been
set? (Note:- use the user? accounts to test this, this is what they are
for)
> 5) I compiled elvis and it does run. well, this is a bit of an exaggeration:
> undo doesn't work and sometimes I have to kill the process from my root
> session. after this, I get no more echo to the console where I was running
> elvis. I can do exit and login again.
elvis is stalled mid port. I got it to the stage where it kind of ran, then
released it. The problems could be because elvis is not yet fully ported,
or it could be bugs in ELKS. All the time I have is currently taken up with
working on the kernel, so I am not likely to make progress on this myself
anytime soon, but I will integrate any patches I get sent which work.
> 6) I can't use wildcards when removing files.
> this is specific to xdos (dosemu):
The default root shell (/bin/sash) does not have wildcard support. /bin/sh
is slightly less stable and bigger than sash, so it is not the defautl root
shell, but it has all the standard bourne shell features.
> 7) the cursor keeps blinking at one position on the screen, around (0,19). I
> can do whatever I want, everything works but the cursor stays there. [the
> console version of dosemu does better]. this problem is not present if I boot
> MSDOS.
Sounds as though this is a problem caused by some slight difference in the
Amstrad hardware. Anyone know why this might happen?
>
> I read that the problem with ever spinning drives was fixed. this might be a
> good reason to download the new version.
The new version will be available soon, but if you can't wait, here is the
patch which needs to be applied to arch/i86/kernel/irqtab.c.
--- irqtab.c 1998/11/11 15:46:44 1.2
+++ irqtab.c 1999/10/26 13:50:50 1.3
@@ -521,6 +521,7 @@
pop bx
pop es
pop ds
+ seg cs
mov ax, stashed_irq
or ax,ax
jz irq0_bios
Al
