Hi!
On Mon, 24 Sep 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 2. I partitioned the disk using atari-fdisk as follows:
>
> hda1 - QDOS 4Gb
> hda2 - Linux 4Gb
> hda3 - Linux swap 512Mb (yes, I discovered there is still a 128Mb
> limit
> afterwards, as /proc/meminfo clearly showed).
> hda4 - Linux 31Gb
>...
> I tried formatting the QDOS partition with qxltool, but it wanted me to
> run fix_geometry. Of course the leaflet I got with the disk has long
> since been filed away and I couldn't be bothered to pull the disk out
> to read the label on it, so I've not bothered with that yet. However,
> just to see what would happen, and in spite of warnings against, I
> tried formatting the QDOS partition from SMSQ. It worked and didn't
> seem to damage the Linux installation, but DIR will not report any size
> information - you just get 0/0. Anyway it was good enough to allow me
> to boot Linux from hard disk instead of floppy.
Maybe SMS is not capable of that big partitions? Haven't tried yet. My
biggest QLWA file system is 512 MB.
> 3. Booting Linux takes ages (from hard disk) - the part before the
> screen clears and the Linux penguin appears. After that initialization
Typical slave block problems. If you take the boot file it's OK, because
it wastes memory to avoid slaving.
> 5. Reading large files from diskettes is a lot quicker in Linux than in
> SMSQ.
Diskette access to MSDOS disks is annoyingly slow under SMS, QDOS disk
access is fast under SMS.
> 6. Normally, after installing a new version of Linux, I will build a
> custom kernel - perhaps not really relevant on Q40 as there are no
> extra bits of hardware to support. But anyway, I noticed the Linux
> source is 2.2.6.
2.2.6 sources are installed and available as RPM.
2.2.17 sources are also on CDR, but not as RPM, it's a tar/gzip archive in
cdistr/misc-sources/linux-2.2.17.tar.gz
> I ran through the usual build procedure: mrproper,
> menuconfig, dep, clean, zImage. Make modules stopped with an error,
> which I wrote down - I'll post it if anyone's interested. Even though
> I knew it wouldn't get very far without modules, I transferred the new
> kernel via diskette onto the QDOS partition (it was about 900k). The
> 2.2.6 kernel booted a lot quicker than 2.2.17, taking only a few
> seconds B.P. (Before Penguin). Initialization ended with a not
> unexpected kernel panic.
Weird, I don't see much difference in loading time between 2.2.6 and
2.2.17.
> So will I continue using Q40 Linux for projects? Too early to say yet,
> I will certainly experiment with it a bit more and I'd like to get the
> 2.2.17 kernel source.
See above.
> There are some clear advantages over SMSQ -
> better filesystem, faster file access without the slave blocks, mature
> CDROM support; but some disadvantages - it isn't a QL :O) no SBASIC
> (except with emulator), not as simple to use graphics, slower to boot.
> The speed of disk access is a limitation on the ISA bus compared to my
> 800MHz Pentium with 100MHz IDE, which would be a more practical
> proposition to base a 40Gb Linux system on.
For me Linux is not the OS of my ultimate dreams. It just helps me when
SMS/QDOS ceases to help me.
Claus
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powered by Q60 * Motorola 68060 / 80 MHz * 80 MB RAM * 30 GB Hard Disk
