Hi all,

I've just sucessfully installed RiscBSD from the UniqueWay CD (I got
fed up with waiting for the 'official' CD release), and although
everything's gone surprisingly smoothly, I've got a few questions.

First some setup details:

  Kernel, SA110, 4740
  base.set     10/01/96 (or is that 01/10/96 ?)
  misc.set     10/01/96 (  "              "   )
  etc.set      26/10/96
  x11base.set  25/10/96
  xarm27.set   25/10/96

  BtRiscBSD v.2.87

  RPC700, 24+2, AKF85, SA, RO3.70
  850mb internal IDE
  Standard issue Acorn internal double speed ATAPI CDROM drive
  Cumana SCSI II, 1.2GB Quantum Fireball, SCSI ZIP drive.

  RiscBSD is installed on the Quantum,
    400MB RiscOS partition.
    800MB RiscBSD partition,
      /root+/var 30MB
      50MB swap
      /usr remainder

Right, now for the problems (you can probably guess that I'm a Unix
novice).

1.  After installing the kernel as /netbsd and booting native, ps
    gives sensible results, but vmstat gives me,

      vmstat: undefined symbols: _dk_ndrive _dk_xfer

    does this mean that the vmstat in the installed base set is
    incompatible with the kernel I'm using?

2.  Starting X applications gave me lots of 'Possible process deadlock
    due to shortage of L1 page tables' errors. Upping max processes
    from the default 32 to 64 seems to fix it, but is that a sensible
    thing to do?

3.  After starting X, whenever I run xmh I get,

      Error: Cannot perform realloc

    Is this a genuine lack of resources, or some other problem?

4.  Attempting to do a non-native with boot with the latest SA kernel
    (4958, unzipped with SparkFS) results in a blank screen (no
    startup text at all) and unnerving disc activity on the RiscOS
    IDE, rather than the SCSI disc the RiscBSD partition is on.

    Could this be a kernel that doesn't have Cumana support? Is my
    bootloader too old?

5.  The only way I could figure out to create a user who could su to
    root was to give it a uid of 'root', as well as a gid of 'wheel'.
    Trouble is, I have a sneaking suspicion that logging in as this
    user is just as dangerous as logging in as root. Is that right? If
    so, what's the right way of creating a user that can su root?

6.  I can use 1280x1024x8 F60 without any trouble, but I'd prefer to
    use F75, as I do under RiscOS. I think I need to set up something
    like a RiscBSD equivalent of a mode file, but I've no idea where
    to look ... can anyone give me any pointers?

7.  Which of the entries in /etc/passwd *must* be left in there? root,
    obviously, and any other users I create, but what about all the
    others with the silly names?

8.  How do I go about formatting ZIP discs for use with RiscBSD?

9.  Can anyone give me advice on setting up xdm?

10. Can anyone give me advice on configuring the network components:
    I've got a PPP, dynamic-ip dialup account, with POP3 mail?

Cheers,


Miles

-- 
Miles Sabin                               mailto:miles@mistral.co.uk
Cathexis                                  voice  01273 732338