Re: openbsd current?
Perhaps the better thing to say is that it takes know-how to run current *correctly and well*. If you're just dipping your toes into OpenBSD. Running -current might not be for you. On 3/22/07, STeve Andre' [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 22 March 2007 10:01:23 Nick ! wrote: On 3/22/07, Jay Jesus Amorin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: how do i know if im using openbsd current? If you have to ask you aren't. Current is installed by installing snapshots and compiling from CVS. The learning curve is very steep. -Nick Um, thats not true. I've now encountered three people who got snapshots and got their systems working, not realizing that they had -current. One of them even managed to get -current packages, so was by chance in sync, happy and didn't know what he was doing exactly. So there are ways of being on -current and not quite knowing that you are. --STeve Andre'
Re: HOTO Write bad documentation
On 11/27/05, David Ulevitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 27, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Jeremy David wrote: Right now, OpenBSD.org's layout and design relies on a lot of old hacks, which break down for many users. I find that unacceptable, just as I find the general attitude that something is good enough when it clearly could be better with a little effort to be unacceptable. You're giving a matter of opinion as fact. Some of us find the documentation, man pages and faq, to be refreshingly simple, clear and concise. No. It's actually fact. It works for you and that's great. It works for me too. But because the HTML code is admittedly non-standard, the web-pages simply don't work for some people on some systems. I find the content of openbsd.org to be superb. However, the way it is delivered could be made to be functional and accessible for everyone, including people using computer systems and browsers you've never heard of, and the blind. - Jeremy P.S. Most people think that the web-site could look more snazzy. The idea that it doesn't look sharp is somewhere between opinion and fact, but that's really not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about using valid XHTML and CSS to make valid code that can work for everyone. ( But would it really hurt so bad if it looked impressive too? )
Re: HOTO Write bad documentation
Here's an example of what I'm talking about. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fopenbsd.org%2Fcharset=%28dete ct+automatically%29doctype=Inli Openbsd.org is built on invalid, broken code. If you would like to know why web standards are important, you could read these http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/ http://www.webstandards.org/about/ On 11/28/05, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/27/05, David Ulevitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 27, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Jeremy David wrote: Right now, OpenBSD.org's layout and design relies on a lot of old hacks, which break down for many users. I find that unacceptable, just as I find the general attitude that something is good enough when it clearly could be better with a little effort to be unacceptable. You're giving a matter of opinion as fact. Some of us find the documentation, man pages and faq, to be refreshingly simple, clear and concise. No. It's actually fact. It works for you and that's great. It works for me too. But because the HTML code is admittedly non-standard, the web-pages simply don't work for some people on some systems. I find the content of openbsd.org to be superb. However, the way it is delivered could be made to be functional and accessible for everyone, including people using computer systems and browsers you've never heard of, and the blind. - Jeremy P.S. Most people think that the web-site could look more snazzy. The idea that it doesn't look sharp is somewhere between opinion and fact, but that's really not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about using valid XHTML and CSS to make valid code that can work for everyone. ( But would it really hurt so bad if it looked impressive too? )
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Jason Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I assume it's because Nick is a VOLUNTEER that spends an unlimited amount of time keeping the site updated with CONTENT. He knows that no matter what design changes he wishes to make will undoubtedly be shot down by Theo since the site is already FUNCTIONAL and meets the goals of the project. Well, simply as a matter of fact, it's actually untrue that the site is functional. Functional for you? Maybe. For everyone? Not exactly. Check this out: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.openbsd.orgcharset=%28det ect+automatically%29 There are 5 errors on the main page alone. That means that no matter how useful the content on the website is, the code breaks down for a lot of people. Standards are important. Where HTML is concerned, they're doubly so, because there are so many different clients (browsers) being used by so many different kinds of people. http://www.webstandards.org/about/ http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/ I'm really underwhelmed by comments like Why don't you cut the guy some slack and I don't speak for Nick, but I imagine he probably feels a unappreciated when folks feel like nitpicking his design Excusing errors in the interests of not hurting someone's feelings is a great way to end up with a third-rate product. The website is hacky, invalid, and broken. Not to mention the fact that most people think it's ugly. If that hurts someone's feelings then I'm sorry, but it does no one any favors to ignore errors and broken code. If no one is in charge of making sure that the site is good, then someone should be in charge of that. - Jeremy -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Eric Faurot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The website is hacky, invalid, and broken. broken? which page? which browser? Hi. Thanks for joining the conversation, Eric. I appreciate your question, but I believe to cite a particular page which doesn't work as intended on a particular browser would be to miss the point. What is means when the HTML code is invalid is that you're inviting unpredictability. Sure, it might look ok in this version of Firefox, but what about the next version of FIrefox? Or the 2007 edition of Konquerer? The only way to make sure that your HTML code will not cause an unpredictable fault in a browser now, or in the future is to make the code valid. Making the code valid now will save you a lot of trouble in the future when, hypothetically, Firefox 2 is released and it chokes and dies on this particular piece of invalid code. Why wait around until it breaks? The best way to handle the problem is to fix it now, so that you don't have to rush and fix it when it crashes and burns later. - Jeremy
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, J.C. Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:29:43 -0500, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are 5 errors on the main page alone. That means that no matter how useful the content on the website is, the code breaks down for a lot of people. Standards are important. Where HTML is concerned, they're doubly so, because there are so many different clients (browsers) being used by so many different kinds of people. Jeremy, I encourage you to do a bit more research before posting something like the above. Did you really think the compliance errors were never noticed before you pointed them out? Yes, you are right that the site is not perfectly W3C standards compliant. The point you missed is the overwhelming majority of clients (browsers) are *ALSO* not compliant with the standards. The supposed errors you pointed out are nothing more than work-arounds for non-compliant browsers. Contrary to your claims, those supposed errors do not break anything, instead they actually _FIX_ problems in buggy browsers. Hi. Thanks for your response, JCR. I understand that the errors were committed wilfully, but that doesn't make them any more desirable or good. As an experienced web coder, I can assure you that not only are there ways to code websites validly and correctly that work in buggy browsers (We're probably both talking about IE here) but that this is the preferred and best way to do it among people who spend a great deal of time working on problems such as this. The only way to make sure that HTML code will work for all web browsers now, a year from now, and 4 years from now, is to adhere to the accepted standards. Those standards will be around in 5 years, and will ensure that you don't have to do a redesign every couple years to un-hack and re-hack your old hacks. If you're using a browser that expects valid code, and your feed it invalid code, there is really no way to predict how the invalid code is going to affect your web browser. Sure, it might look cool in a buggy browser like IE, but what about lynx? Firefox? What about Konquerer? What about the next version of Konquerer? Buggy code opens up all sorts of unpredictability. Even if it happens to work now on a couple computers you checked, there's no way to be sure that it works correctly on every computer, or that it will continue to work on every computer in the future. Buggy code is no way to solve a problem. Correct valid code is the way to go. As for the web browsers that are buggy (and I use the term lightly because if a web browser doesn't adhere to the World Wide *Web* standards, then it's not really a *web* browser is it?), there are ways to make your code valid, *and* have them still work in the buggy browsers. That's they way I do it on my websites, and that's the right way to do it. - Jeremy
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Jonathan Glaschke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 08:15:00AM -0800, J.C. Roberts wrote: On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:29:43 -0500, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And that's exactly the problem. Creating good html code means to me to look at the stardards released by w3.org and then start coding. The result validates but it won't look the same anywhere. So, you have to fight div-wars and do things that aren't required by w3.org just to make things run. At that point one can see that the web is just broken. Good HTML is _not_ decided by browser, _not_ decided by your screen resolution, _not_ even decided by whether you use a computer or a toaster, it's just platform independend html. So please keep things as they are, there is no better solution. Hi. I appreciate your opinion, Jonathan, but I have to strongly disagree. It is a point of fact that there are better solutions. I implement better solutions all the time - solutions that work in every browser and can be depended upon to not break in the future, or on someone's computer that you hadn't considered, due to hacks that were stuck in the HTML code to hastily cover up some issue with a band-aid in the short-term. The web is not broken just because there are some buggy clients out there. The bugs can be worked around without releasing invalid hacks into the wild. I do it all the time. and it's not because I'm some computer genius. It's possible for openbsd.org to do it too. - Jeremy
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Eric Faurot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Eric Faurot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The website is hacky, invalid, and broken. broken? which page? which browser? Hi. Thanks for joining the conversation, Eric. I appreciate your question, but I believe to cite a particular page which doesn't work as intended on a particular browser would be to miss the point. I just wanted to point that your original argument was wrong. You said fix it because it is broken for people, which is not true. I would say that it is. Broken doesn't necessarily mean that it makes your browser crash. When you look at www.openbsd.org in lynx, every page has a bunch of links at the top that you have to scroll through endlessly in order to get to the content. It looks nice in Firefox, but not in browsers that a lot of people use, especially the kinds of people who want to use OpenBSD. For those people who use lynx, www.openbsd.org is a frustrating challenge to navigate. Similarly for the blind who use a text reader to read them the content on the web page, lists are not identified as such in the code, and therefore someone using an alternative way of getting information from the web can't find what they're looking for without a lot of frustration. Saying that it works for me OK right now is simply not good enough. I fully agree. When that happens, action will be taken by someone who decides it is then a priority. Well, I believe that fixing it right the first time will save you some panic and further problems in the future. The idea has been mentioned in this thread that it's too difficult to make websites work in multiple browsers and still be valid. That idea is simply incorrect. Here's an example. http://www.cerealport.com/?p=8 I believe that fixing it now will get the content of openbsd.org, which is superb, into the minds of everyone who is looking for it, now and in the future. - Jeremy
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: NAME ONE. Name one person. Name one browser. Name one problem. OR SHUT UP. I believe I've mentioned several problems in this thread which occur with several browsers. I suppose that I had hoped that the OpenBSD team would greet new ideas with respect when respectfully discussed. I didn't expect anyone to automatically agree with me, but I was hoping for a civil conversation, not from list members at large, but at least from the OpenBSD team. I guess that was too much to hope for. This conversation, at least on my end, is over. No wonder people hate OpenBSD nerds. Really. What were you expecting me to say? Your status as an OpenBSD team leader and your ALL CAPS have convinced me? I expected that kind of behavior from random list members, but if this is the kind of nonsensical, childing thinking and behavior that goes on in the OpenBSD team, I don't know what to think about the quality of the product right now. - Jeremy
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Eric Faurot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Jeremy David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The idea has been mentioned in this thread that it's too difficult to make websites work in multiple browsers and still be valid. That idea is simply incorrect. Here's an example. http://www.cerealport.com/?p=8 - the white text is difficult to read because of the lack of constrast with the image in background. Well, I was referring to the content of the website, which is one example of how to solve an inter-operability problem. However, your point about the look is valid and good. - why do I have to click on the menu entry to expand them? what about the accessibility? That website is accessible to a blind person using lynx and text to speech software. The expanding menus only work that way in browsers that support it. If you try to use it in another situation, it will degrade gracefully. I don't believe that it hinders anyone's accessibility, because the website behaves differently in different browsers without any hacks or any special software required. I believe that's one of the strengths of valid HTML/CSS coding. - the overal look is not much better than the openbsd site. Again, valid point. Maybe even a good one. I believe that fixing it now will get the content of openbsd.org, which is superb, into the minds of everyone who is looking for it, now and in the future. It also conforts people who think all that glitters is gold, instead of encouraging critical thinking. Perhaps I should clarify. My point has never been that all websites should be visually stunning. My point is that good design degrades gracefully for anyone using any browser, and makes the information easy to find, not difficult. Good design also will not rely on hacks which will cause unpredictable behavior now and in the future. I don't think any experienced programmer would want to rely on hacks in C code. Why should HTML be any different when it doesn't need to be? - Jeremy
Re: openbsd web site design proposals (from HOTO write bad docs)
On 11/28/05, Sime Ramov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 13:28 Mon 28 Nov, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: They welcome contributers. You are not a contributor. And it won't become one because of all the people on this mailing lists with such attitude. -- http://coastaldisturbance.com/ Neither will I. I was actually halfway through a html/css contribution until Nick, the maintainer to whom I would have submitted it, began a conversation and a relationship with me by telling me to SHUT UP. I'm not going to get involved in a working relationship with someone who behaves in such an infantile manner. If he's going to greet my ideas and work with SHUT UP why in the world would I take hours and hours to write code for him, only to be met with more of that? - Jeremy
Re: HOTO Write bad documentation
On 11/27/05, Simon Morgan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hackers like interesting problems. Pretty HTML and a nice website layout is not an interesting problem. Stop wasting peoples time with it. The website has its purpose and does a perfectly good job of serving it. I would have to disagree. I find that coming up with good visual layouts and good, solid web design is a large challenge. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. The OpenBSD website is functional for many people. However, it could be more functional, and work to maximum effect on all users across all platforms. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what CSS is for. It's not just about pretty pictures. CSS and solid XHTML, when used properly, make your websites look great on the newest Mac and it makes them look and work great on lynx running on a 386. That's what good web design is all about. Right now, OpenBSD.org's layout and design relies on a lot of old hacks, which break down for many users. I find that unacceptable, just as I find the general attitude that something is good enough when it clearly could be better with a little effort to be unacceptable.
Transplanted Hard Drive Won't Boot
Hi. Thanks for reading my post. I'm in the midst of a sticky situation. I had an OpenBSD web-server running on an older desktop computer. I decided to take the hard drives and move them into a newer computer, one with more processing power, RAM, etc, because the performance boost would be really handy. The old web-server was a real clunker. When it got too many hits, it rattled. No really, audible and visible rattling. Anyway, I read up on how to do this, and my plan was basically to plug the two hard drives into the new IDE slots in the newer box, reinstall the boot blocks, and go to town. Here's what happens when I try to boot the old hd0 (I removed the second hard drive for this to simplify matters) without any bootable media in the floppy or CD-ROM drive. Search for Boot Record fron CDROM..Not Found Searching for Boot Record from Floppy..Not Found Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..OK Using drive.0, partition 3. Loading... ERR M ERR M -- An invalid magic(5) number was read in the second-stage bootloader's header. This generally means whatever it was that was read in was NOT /boot, usually meaning installboot(8) was run incorrectly, the /boot file was altered, or you have exceeded your BIOS's ability to read a large disk. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html This is basically what I thought would happen. So, my plan was to reinstall the bootblocks on the hd0 by following these instructions: 14.8 - Installing Bootblocks - i386 specific Older versions of MS-DOS can only deal with disk geometries of 1024 cylinders or less. Since virtually all modern disks have more than 1024 cylinders, most SCSI BIOS chips (which come on the SCSI controller card) and IDE BIOS (which is part of the rest of the PC BIOS) have an option (sometimes the default) to translate the real disk geometry into something that fits within MS-DOS' ability. However, not all BIOS chips translate the geometry in the same way. If you change your BIOS (either with a new motherboard or a new SCSI controller), and the new one uses a different translated geometry, you will be unable to load the second-stage boot loader (and thus unable to load the kernel). (This is because the first-stage boot loader contains a list of the blocks that comprise /boot in terms of the original translated geometry). If you are using IDE disks, and you make changes to your BIOS settings, you can (unknowingly) change its translation also (most IDE BIOS offer 3 different translations). To fix your boot block so that you can boot normally, just put a boot floppy in your drive (or use a bootable CD-ROM) and at the boot prompt, type b hd0a:/bsd to force it to boot from the first hard disk (and not the floppy). Your machine should come up normally. You now need to update the first-stage boot Loader to see the new geometry (and re-write the boot block accordingly). Our example will assume your boot disk is sd0 (but for IDE it would be wd0, etc..): # cd /usr/mdec; ./installboot /boot biosboot sd0 http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#InstBoot Only, here's what happens when I try that: Searthing for Boot Record from CDROM..OK Loading.. probing pc0 com0 apm mem[365K 159M a20=on] disk fd0 fd1 hd0+ OpenBSD/i386 BOOT 2.10 bootb hd0a:/bsd booting hd0a:/bsd: open hd0a:/bsd: No such file or directory failed(2), will try /obsd What can I do to get my system to boot? Note, I *have* backed up the /var partition so I could just reinstall the entire OS, a few packages, and drop the /var partition back in, but that seems like cheating. I feel as if I can learn what's going on here, that I will have learned something useful. Maybe it's just something very simple that I'm overlooking. At any rate, do you have any advice? Tips? Easy answers? Difficult answers? Any ideas will be appreciated.
