Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us> wrote:
>
>I'm wondering... How much memory does running X use? How much additional
>drive space? I've got an SE/30 with eight megs of RAM and twenty of swap,
>and if it's feasable, I'd like to start running X.

I wouldn't be too hopeful. I guess you could get X running with those resources,
but actual X applications tend to need lots of grunt. Would you be running the
clients over a network or locally? If you plan to do it with slirp, see below.

>/dev/sd0a      143055   107642    21107    84%    /
>/dev/sd1g       75194    19832    47842    29%    /icebox

Looks like plenty of HD to me.

>Next up, I've got my Mac Q610 connected to the SE/30 via a serial line, and
>I use SLiRP to talk. This setup generally works, except that I can't
>successfully ftp into my NetBSD box, which is a pain, and I can't ftp into
>many outside sites unless I set my client to "passive" mode, whatever that
>is. ftping out from the NetBSD machine works fine, however - it's just
>ftping over SLiRP that gives me problems. From my understanding, the way
>SLiRP works is much the same as the way IP-NAT works. Am I likely to see
>any benefit from switching to SLIP/IP-NAT? I'd almost rather use PPP, but I
>use that to connect to the outside world, and I haven't figured out how to
>do more than one PPP connection at a time.

Several points:
- PPP is generally much better than SLIP. Faster, more reliable, better++.
- If you read the man page for slirp it talks about port redirection. For
example
  I can run an http server on my mac by using.

A basic .slirprc might have:
----------
ppp
mtu 1500
mru 500
keepalive
baudrate 19200
redir tcp 4096 to 10.0.2.15:21
redir tcp 8000 to 10.0.2.15:80
redir tcp 2048 to 10.0.2.15:23
redir X start 100 3142 to 10.0.2.15:0.0
----------
this means that, supposing my slirp host was 128.250.6.196, you could connect
to my http server on
        http://128.250.6.196:8000/
and similarly
        telnet 128.250.6.196 2048
        ftp 128.250.6.196 4096

The port numbers listed are just semi-random ones I chose (except that they
are above 1000 and less than 64k).

In a similar fashion the X data can also be redirected - read the man page for
more info. Of course, you also have to set your DISPLAY variable, xhost
settings etc: setenv DISPLAY 128.250.6.196:100.0

 And finally, X over a modem is dog slow. Which is damn good real reason to
install NetBSD, so you can actually run the X program locally.

>Lastly, I've heard rumours of freeware Mac-side software that serves X.
>Does anyone have any information this way? What I *think* I'm looking for
>is something akin to eXodus or MacX. Another, related question:

Yes: this is called ..... something I have forgotten. But I did download
it, it is even
on one of the Power Macs at work... but it has a forgettable name.
Unfortunately,
it needs 256 colours, so you SE/30 prob can't run it. But search for it
anyway, it
seemed a good try - still fairly buggy of course, but it runs xterms quite
well, just
not things like Netscape or Rational Rose or any other ugly programs like those.

> Would
>running an X connection over a 19200 baud SLIP connection be too painful to
>consider? Or would it be okay?
Well, you can't run sgi doom over it, that is for sure :-) Realistically,
it is probably
only good for occasional things. But with a ~56k ADSL or cable modem it would
prob be ok.

>If I manage to get one of the jobs I'm pursuing, lots of this will be
>irrelevant, as my first monetary goal would be to pick up something with
>ethernet and lots of memory and drive space on which I can run NetBSD, but
>I'd like to consider the options available with my current setup, given
>that my resume hasn't pulled in any job offers yet. (If anyone out in the
>New England area hires mildly-experienced Unix admins, let's talk!)

If any of those people with a surplus of jobs even exist, I am willing to
travel to
them :-)

Good luck,
Andrew

--
Andrew Robbie
ajrobb@cs.mu.oz.au
Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.