Re: Installation on Yet Another Netbook
On 18 Jan 2009, at 06:31, Matthew Dillon wrote: For some reason bestserv couldn't digest Christopher Rawnsley's posting. I am forwarding it below. The mime might not decode but it should be human readable. Thanks for catching that. Sephe is currently trying to help solve the issues I'm having off list so no harm done. :) -- Chris
Re: Installation on Yet Another Netbook
On 15 Jan 2009, at 01:22, Christopher Rawnsley wrote: ... I tried a 'make img release' ... Just in case any one else falls in to this trap, Michael Neumann pointed out that it should be 'make img installer release' for the installer. I managed a manual install for now. I thought I'd run the disc layout past the lists as I would like to see what the consensus is: * My netbook has two flash drives internal to it. One is a ( fast ) 3.8GB and the other is a ( slower ) 7.7GB. * From what I have read, swap partitions on flash drives is bad news as it reduces the life of the disc. * Space is limited so I am thinking that having fewer partitions is a good idea. Using a pseudo disklabel structure my drive layout looks like: # Drive Mount Offset Size FS Type ad2s1a /0 * UFS ad3s1g /home0 * UFS+Softupdates where ad2 is the smaller but faster drive and ad3 the slower but bigger one. So my question is, could this drive structure be better? -- Chris
Re: ASUS Eee PC 1000H (age(4))
On 27 Dec 2008, at 19:12, nntp.dragonflybsd.org wrote: Anyone knows if there is a plan to port the Attansic age(4) driver to DragonFly (and the Ralink wireless)? If your laptop has the same ethernet chip as my Eee 901 then you'll need ale(4) IIRC. I said I'd try a port it from FreeBSD[1] but I don't have the time nor experience to achieve this at the moment. I'm surprised the wireless doesn't work... It's a RT2860 right? -- Chris [1] http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2008-11/msg00050.html (Message got garbled for some reason)
Re: Acer Aspire One (150)
On 14 Nov 2008, at 04:09, Justin C. Sherrill wrote: Could be; look at the dmesg if you can to see if it sees the device. It's possible that the network device is an ath(4) chipset, in which case you would have to boot a kernel with it compiled in? I'm guessing. It's an Atheros L2 Fast Ethernet (Sorry I couldn't find the chipset number). I'm fairly certain that it is supported by a recent driver added to FreeBSD head ( ale http://docs.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20081030040637.GA78796 ). Can you dmesg from the remote computer? -- Chris
Re: Acer Aspire One (150)
On 14 Nov 2008, at 12:09, Sepherosa Ziehau wrote: Would you be interested to port it from FreeBSD? My plate is kinda full at the moment. Please feel free to ask questions on kernel@ or users@, if you want to do it. I'll give it a go when I have a DF box up and running :) My driver development is nil. Are there any particular drivers in the tree that are general enough for me to see what system calls might need to be changed etc? What are the typical things that need changing? In fact... is it possible to compile this from the Live CD and have that PXE'd over to the netbook? -- Chris
Re: Acer Aspire One (150)
On 12 Nov 2008, at 23:21, Constantine A. Murenin wrote: What I do when I want to install OpenBSD is: download an appropriate bsd.rd [0] to an existing OpenBSD installation on a USB HDD, boot from the said USB HDD on the new hardware to which brand-new HDD we're about to install an OS, type boot bsd.rd (or whatever the name you've given to your copy of a bsd.rd for this specific installation), Ah thanks for pointing that out. I didn't come across that in my OS exploring but I'll keep that in mind for the future. For now, however, I would like to concentrate on DF :) [0] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#bsd.rd I referenced a [1]. How un-computer science-y of me. Tut. On 13 Nov 2008, at 01:06, Justin C. Sherrill wrote: Looking at the script, it appears to mount the ISO and then copy the files over to the USB drive. The nrelease process for building a LiveCD on DragonFly puts together the same set of system files in the process; you could probably use that process to create the USB drive. It'd even be able to clone an up-to-date system similar in spirit, if not in method, to what Constantine described. Thanks for the pointer. I've not used the nrelease yet so I'll see how it fairs. Also, if you're lacking a CDROM but have a workable network connection, the netboot facility on the DragonFly CD works very well; you just need a network connection and another device to boot the CD on. I was able to use it with a old desktop chassis that had only the CPU, RAM, and CDROM still installed. Up until recently I lacked a network that I could mess about on. I also lack a DragonFly box which means that I can't use nrelease (at least for initial setup). Prices of being away from home! I'll try some stuff tonight and see if I get anywhere... Thanks for the replies. -- Chris
Re: Website Improvement Ideas
On 15 Apr 2008, at 03:39, Justin C. Sherrill wrote: I'm currently using WordPress for the Digest, which is PHP-based. The software itself is nice, but that underlying language isn't likely to get run on dragonflybsd.org machines anytime soon. Perhaps using something like Movable Type (not PHP based, somewhat more robust) would be a more comfortable choice - it's what I used to start the Digest, and the reasons I had switched away are no longer present. It sounds as if this has already been discussed. Can you share why PHP is undesirable and Perl is more (for that is what I am lead to believe that Movable Type is written in)? Also, i am curious as to why you switched away from MT in the first place? That aside, I'd like to have the Digest on dragonflybsd.org and make it possible for others to add to it; it'd be even more interesting to have a developer talking about why they did what they did instead of just me linking to it. Would I then have to stay more on topic? I don't know, but I hope not. I think this is good direction to go. It should make it feel like a more accessible community if users get to hear the voice of developers. I've suggested turning the whole site into a wiki; everything on dragonflybsd.org can be produced the same way on a wiki but with less effort in terms of creation. Wikis tend to be messy, but with some organizational work, it could turn out very well for us, since adding files through CVS has turned out to be a rather high barrier for folks who don't already know it. I agree that setting up a wiki for the whole site does make things easier. I have done it in the past and it has worked well. I think the main gripe about the current wiki here is that it has no clear navigation. It is very much a wiki rather than a functional website. i don't know how flexible MoinMoin is but hopefully that can be changed easily so that all the good content on there can be found quicker. What parts of .dragonflybsd.org are there? Using NetCraft I found wiki and leaf (The naming for leaf confuses me) as well as www and nntp. crater was mentioned there as well though it seems out of action at the moment. Are there anymore? I mention this so that information avoids getting repeated in multiple locations. I have an idea about using man pages and a wiki together. I guess this may have been discussed before but just in case it hasn't... I think it would be great if we could some how integrate the man pages into a wiki like system in order to help keep are documentation as good as possible. But this shouldn't just be a one way thing and the documentation from the wiki should also be exportable back in to the offline man pages in the OS. Thoughts?
Re: Website Improvement Ideas
On 10 Apr 2008, at 22:42, James Frazer wrote: Okay I just want to summarise what would happen to existing content: 1. History and Team are combined and renamed About as they seem to go together, as the history page was rather short anyway -- certainly undeserving of a link unto itself. I think that putting the team information on the about is slightly unnecessary. A newcomer to the project doesn't really care about such things. I do think that maybe a link to further information on the about page which would give more in depth information on the project including team information. 2. The Goals page is moved to the top as I think it's somewhat important to newcomers who want a more detailed idea than the About page provides I think that this should be also worked in to the about page in a very brief form. There is a lot of information in there which is very technical that I think many newcomers would find overwhelming. However, if that person follows what is said on the about page they will search for more information they can be linked to from the about page. 3. The Mascot Images pages seemed without major value to me. I figure they can either be nuked, or any important info on them can be moved to the wiki. Totally agree. Maybe ol' Fred can make an appearance on the about page though. :) 4. The Download page has been promoted to a slot closer to the top. Something should be said about the page itself: If I was someone wanting to download DragonFly I'd have to do a lot of reading before finding a useful download link on that page... this page could use some tweaking. While I agree that the download page should be nearer the top in a more obvious location I don't think that it necessarily needs a mention on the about page as it is now in a prominent position on the navigation bar. 5. Bugs is combined with the page on the security officer PGP key as it seems that they go together, and the security page was too short to get a top-level link by itself. Agree. 6. It dawned on me that the Mail, News, and Archives links were somewhat of a holy trinity, and surely far too insanely complicated for any mere mortal to decipher... these all point to different ways of accessing the same information -- right? Well I would put them all under the same page Mail Lists Totally agree! 7. The Release link was removed as I think it can be quite easily confused with Download -- Furthermore it exists on the main content area and probably always will. However, I recognize the difference between Download and Release and think the only sane solution is link to a redesigned Download page that will in itself require some kind of sanity check so that it's actually possible to find something to download. I think you're right to have one link on the menu bar. On the download page, I think access to the ISO images should be in a more prominent position near the top. There should also be a link to release information close by. Many things could be done though and these are just a few quick ideas off the top of my head. 8. Wiki was renamed to Documentation, and it's my opinion that's where the documentation should go. In the past I've observed (exaggeration alert) a tendency to have 16 different versions of the same information available in 12 different places... This is too cluttered and becomes a maintenance nightmare. Agree. 9. I'm not sure what can be done with the Donations page -- does anyone actually donate? I think I'd shove it onto the wiki... with a link from the About page that can lead to the wiki entry. Agree. 10. The diary can be moved to the wiki -- I don't feel it's important enough to be on the main page for two reasons: 1. it's rarely updated -- the last update was 8 months ago; and 2. Most of the recent (and relevant) information is also on the Release page. Agree. 11. Digest is moved from status to Community as it seemed more fitting there, and since Bugs was already moved this allows for the Status section to go away. I would also suggest that it be on the mainsite rather than off site. But I guess it is Justin's baby so it is up to him. I would consider renaming it to news... I initiated a redesign of myself before writing this email. In my design and I have considered more about reducing the overall number of menu items. While this sometimes means that you have to use two clicks to get the same location I think that it may make things even easier. Interested to know other people's thoughts? I tried my hand at redesigning the overall page as well. I'll put up my work up in due course to allow for a comparison but we share many of the same ideas about content. I think that perhaps the website should go that one step further and have some form of CMS that could be edited by anyone who doesn't particularly want to get in to the details of learning HTML, CSS etc. -- Chris
Re: eINIT
On 21 Mar 2008, at 07:40, Robert Luciani wrote: Not that anyone reboots often nowadays (even with laptops you just suspend) but the init system has been discussed to death in Linux- land. Well I can understand that for some applications there is a need for the computer to stay on, in more desktop orientated situations you generally don't have that same need. It is a little wasteful leaving something on when it's not even in use. Now if the reason for leaving it on is because it takes too long to boot up then surely anything that alleviates the problem might convince a few more people that they don't mind waiting for the computer to boot. Most moderately fast computers have timeouts and disk latency as the bottleneck during boot, not CPU usage. In addition, if we were to replace the init system, it should be with something that is a bit sophisticated with features like: service dependency lists, automatic respawning, two way communication with running processes, supervision of children from parent processes, user services, and more... I'll take your word for this. :) OTOH, if booting faster is what you really want, one trick that Linux distros have been using, which seems to give moderate speed boosts on old computers, is to monitor file access during boot and then create one big file for it to cache before anything else. Another trick that some have used is to bring up the gui before anything else (a la Windows). IIRC there is a process called resident in DragonFly which caches frequently used programmes. But I am guessing that this process only makes a difference post-boot? -- Chris
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
Here is a little update for my problem... On 12 Mar 2008, at 02:48, YONETANI Tomokazu wrote: IIRC, you need to fiddle with ad5*. A better alternative I can think of is to partition (or maybe even disklabel it and newfs -O1) using FreeBSD installer first, then boot with DragonFly LiveCD, and continue the rest of procedure explained in /README . Formatting with FreeBSD worked fine. FreeBSD appeared to have formatted the disk differently by switching the slice order. So the 165 ID (DragonFly/Free BSD) slice came before my 175 ID (HFS+) slice even though the physical disk layout was the other way round (Significant at all?). I now had a properly sliced drive so I rebooted with DF which could now write to the disk :). Thank you for that, Yonetani. So I rebooted and this time booted from the hard drive. Boot loader came up! Unfortunately, it couldn't boot the DF slice. So I went back to the CD and (this is where I got a bit stupid...) fired up fdisk to check everything out. Nothing to odd. Had a look at gpt's output too. Which I found to be a little odd. The DF slice shared the same index (of 1) with my EFI slice with Mac OS X at index 2. Let me first explain that, from what I read, in order for a computer to comply with EFI they have to have an extra slice set aside for EFI. On my laptop that means that I have this in the form of a 200MB slice with the rest for whatever. Now I remember seeing when Mac OS X and Windows was installed, I booted into the DF live CD and ran gpt. The output that time around was EFI slice at 1, Mac OS X at 2 and Windows at 3. Even though I don't think boot0 can boot from the GPT, I wonder whether the FreeBSD installer changed something in a similar way to the MBR. Very speculative, I know but I can't check out anymore 'cause... Going on my hunch that something in the MBR was wrong and was causing boot0 to not read it properly I decided to open up fdisk and see if I could find anything that might be a cause. I checked each slice through using the -u option (IIRC) and when I got the the Mac OS X slice it complained about the head boundaries being all wrong. I rather stupidly thought that I'd let it automatically update this. This caused nothing to boot etc. Long story short I ended wiping everything in favour of it being quicker for me (I had deadlines to meet...). It was all backed up so hopefully that won't keep anyone awake at night! I think I will come back to DF in the not so distant future but I'm just going to let myself go on other things for now. Thanks a lot to all you guys who tried to help me. I really appreciate it :) -- Chris P.S. Would it be possible to by pass the MBR all together in favour of GPT by simply using another boot loader other than boot0 or would this also require changes in the kernel or elsewhere?
eINIT
I came across this today: eINIT is a replacement for /sbin/init -- the programme that is responsible for booting your computer -- that is all about not wasting resources; that's not wasting CPU cycles, but also not wasting RAM either, which should make eINIT very well suited for embedded applications. However, that's not to say eINIT wouldn't work fine (and swiftly) on regular desktops, laptops or servers. -- http://einit.org/node/63 Thought someone might be interested. It's licensed under the 3-clause BSD and could even make a good GSoC project. -- Chris
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 11 Mar 2008, at 07:49, Sascha Wildner wrote: Does it help if you do: % cd /dev % sh ./MAKEDEV /dev/ad4s3a This creates /dev/ad4s3[a-p] e.g. if i remember correctly. I tried something similar: % cd /dev % ./MAKEDEV ad4s4a It created the /dev/ad4s3[a-p] like you said. I had another go with disklabel but it still didn't like something :( Thanks for the tip though. I've been fiddling with gpt(8) to see if that would yield any results. It keeps telling me that my MBR is corrupt. Is there an automatic why to correct that using fdisk(8) or something else? -- Chris
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 10 Mar 2008, at 03:46, YONETANI Tomokazu wrote: Last time I tried, it seemed that I managed to smash the partition table when I manually issued the fdisk command. I don't remember if I specified the correct device, but I doubt our fdisk knows about EFI partitions. I'm hoping that it won't matter 'cause the Macbooks appear to preserve the MBR in some form. Anyway, the situation should be improved since then, thanks to sephe@ who has ported msk(4) driver. Yes... Network adapter detected and working correctly :)
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 9 Mar 2008, at 19:22, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote: I suppose this is the same problem I have seen in NetBSD. Basically, some firmware images reenable interrupts when the legacy support is turned off. Fix can be found in NetBSD's UHCI driver. That would wouldn't happen to be related to another problem I am having? When I boot the live disc I get a prompt asking which kernel options I want. Now the keyboard has always worked in this situation. When the live disc has booted, however, the keyboard occasionally works. I have to reboot again and cross my fingers... -- Chris
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
Another observation I have made; I am trying to install slice /dev/ ad4s3. Now if I run: ls /dev/ad4s* I'll get output for the additional lettered partitions for slices s0, s1 but not anything greater for slices s2 and s3, for instance. Could this be the reason that disklabel is throwing errors? -- Chris
Installation on Macbook Pro
Hey everyone, I'm having a few problems when trying to install 1.12 on a Macbook Pro. So it loads off the DVD (I didn't have any CDs spare but it seems to work fine) and, after a bit, a prompt comes up so I can choose what kernel I want. So here is the first problem. If I choose option 1 the boot hangs at this message: uhci4: UHCI (generic) USB controller port 0x6040-0x605f irq 9 a device 29.2 on pci 0 It doesn't look like anything went wrong on that line but I have listed it hoping it might be a clue to something else... OK, so I try door number 2 instead (without ACPI) which boots fine and I am invited to log in. I log in as installer and start the process. The first step is to partition the drive. I choose my hard drive which is detected as being 'ad4' (which struck me as odd. I thought they started at 0?). I have a 120GB drive of which I want to install DragonFly to a 15GB slice. The installer tells me that it format is successful and then asks how I would like to set up my partitions (or sub-partitions). I stuck with the default and continue. Then get: Execution of the command /sbin/disklabel-r ad4s3 /tmp/install.disklabel.ad4s3 FAILED with a return code of 4. If I skip I then get: Execution of the command /usr/bin/grep '^ c:' /tmp/install.disklabel.ad4s3 /tmp/install.disklabel.ad4s3 FAILED with a return code of 1. If I keep skipping I get more and more error messages... I hope I have given enough information for someone to help :) If things go well, I will write up my experiences in the wiki. Thank you in advance. -- Chris
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 9 Mar 2008, at 19:26, Justin C. Sherrill wrote: I recall Yonetani was working on Macbook support, but I don't think we ever reached an installable point. It just seems so close... It would be neat if we did. Of course it would :)
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 9 Mar 2008, at 19:55, Bill Hacker wrote: What else has had its fingers on that disk and its label prior to the attempt? Well I used the Boot Camp Assistant (basically a partitioner) from within Mac OS X which resized my disk for installing Windows. So it formatted it with FAT32 but I just tried overwriting it with DF. And/or - do you have a disk that nothing Apple-ish has yet touched? Not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean another internal disk? If so, then no. I just have a 120GB volume of which 15GB is reserved for DF the rest is an HFS+ volume for Mac OS X. I also have a 2GB USB flash drive. Do you think I should I try that?
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 9 Mar 2008, at 21:10, Bill Hacker wrote: I would actually recommend an external HDD on FW-800 or USB2. I don't have one of those handy at the moment so I think I'll keep on trying without for the moment. Apple marches to the beat of a whole different orchestra w/r disk layout labels, so I had to do that to get FreeBSD/PPC or OpenBSD/ PPC up on my G4 PowerBook 17. Ah maybe but I like to try none-the-less :) And I don't use hfs at all - not even for OS X. Mind me asking what you use and why? DFLY - or any *BSD - needs only a fraction of the resources even a cleand-up and stripped-down OS X consumes. Well I don't have any problems with it. Runs lovely and smooth. Of course, I would like to get DragonFly running like that too. -- Chris
Re: Installation on Macbook Pro
On 9 Mar 2008, at 23:18, Chris Turner wrote: Disclaimer: I don't have a macbook.. (or any intel mac) ad4 : I've seen this as the first HDD on an Acer notebook, a shuttle xPC, and a tyan server board - In my case it had to do with both the presence of a legacy parallel ATA controller (ad0-3), and a SATA controller (ad4-..) . If e.g. the CD-ROM/DVD/etc. is on PATA (which I suspect to be the case), it is likely the reason that the first HDD is showing up as ad4. In my case, it hasn't been any kind of problem. Ah thank you for shedding some light on this. I'll see if I can find any more information on it. For the disklabel problem: typically I haven't labelled individual slices, but on occasion, it seems like disklabel -r gets confused if there is some residual data there.. you might try a manual install (see /README on the CD) and zeroing out that portion of the disk Interesting... How would this residual data get there? Could it be caused by an odd partitioning table? I remember reading that Intel Macs use a hybrid GPT/MBR scheme. I've unfortunately had some problems with native mode SATA which may or may not be related here (was HT1000 specific) - haven't had a chance to track down the bug. If it's possible to force 'legacy parallel' mode in the apple machine, that might help things. I'm not sure if there is a way to explicitly do this but I think that it drops into this mode if I boot what the Apple boot loader thinks is a Windows disk. I have actually tried using rEFIt[1] to see if that yields any different results. Sorry you ran into problems good luck - and do let us know if you find something out We'll do and you don't need to apologise. I have been following DF a while now and really want to get it running :) -- Chris [1] http://refit.sourceforge.net/
