On Fri, 7 Feb 1997, Miles Sabin wrote:

> Hi all,
hell,
[snip]
> 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?

did you install the patch sets from the ftp site?
 
> 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?

yup thats exactly the right 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?

there is a known incompaterbility between netbsd realloc and that used by
some other flavors of unix - neither of which is a bug due to the way
reallocs behavior is defined - I can't remember exactly what the problem is,
but it effects xfm too.

> 4.  Attempting to do a non-native with boot with the latest SA kernel
[don't know]

> 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?

from the su(1) manpage:

     Only users in group 0 (normally `wheel'') can su to `root''.

put yourself in group wheel in /etc/group - see man group

> 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?

/etc/monitor.conf should be the MDF for your monitor - setdisplay controls
it try just typing 'setdisplay' for details - it's not documented anywere
else.

> 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?

ingres and falken can probably go - however falken is probably part of the
games-being-only-accessible-at-certain-times-of-day mechinism which is
disabled by default.

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

http://quatermass.ivision.co.uk/RiscBSD/format.disc.html - this may help.

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