Subject: NetBSD/SPARC 1.0Beta vs. X11 R5 - Battle of the Titans?
To: None <port-sparc@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu>
From: - Greg Earle <earle@isolar.Tujunga.CA.US>
List: port-sparc
Date: 08/11/1994 19:33:48
Some big changes (hardware arrangement-wise) are afoot at my work, and rather
coincidentally dovetail with the approximate release date of NetBSD 1.0.
I'll spare all of you the details, but the net result is that I end up with a
single machine on my desk - either a SPARCstation-2 + Weitek u-Power or my
existing IPC - and I'd like to commit to working with NetBSD/SPARC 1.0 on it.
Towards this end I loaded the most recent snapshot, built a new kernel with
up-to-date -current sources, and so far there have been very few problems.
However, I can't really commit to using it as my desktop box unless I can get
some release of X11 running reliably on it. My test mule IPC has got a CG3 in
it, just in case. I fetched the pre-built X11R5 binaries from somewhere; I
think maybe ftp.IAState.EDU. Those are the ones George in Oz built, I believe?
Anyway, I can't help but wonder - am I the only person trying to run X on their
NetBSD/SPARC box? Surely I can't be. If you are, could you report your
success/failure with running X? I am wondering if I'm the only person running
into these problems. Here is what I have found; none of these problems were
cured by upgrading to the latest binaries or a new kernel. (I apologize if
you've seen these same troubles reported before.)
- I am using a SunOS Xsun binary, after Chris T. and Theo fixed the CG3 driver,
it works great. So no server problems.
- I tried to use the supplied "twm" binary, but it doesn't work. If I run it
directly, it hangs. I never even get window borders. If I run it under
"ktrace", it gets a little further; it puts up window borders, but they're
the wrong colors. And it doesn't respond to mouse events. It claims to
have opened/read my .twmrc, but doesn't act on anything specified in it.
(e.g., I have two extra titlebar buttons specified in there; they don't show
up in the titlebar)
Oddly enough, if I run a SunOS-compiled "mwm" binary instead, it works fine.
- "xconsole" fails to grab the console, so anything going to /dev/console gets
blatted directly onto the framebuffer. Window says "Couldn't open console".
I also can't seem to Close that particular window from "mwm" (but I can close
others).
- "xman" doesn't seem to know about NetBSD's man page structure, and it also
can't find its app-defaults file and wants to quit.
- "xload" complains "can't get namelist from /vmunix". Just for fun, I made a
"/vmunix" symlink to "/netbsd", but that doesn't make it happy.
The permissions on "xload"/"xterm"/"xlock" etc. seem to be right:
netbsd4me# ls -lg xload xlock xterm
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root kmem 26904 Apr 21 10:58 xload*
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root wheel 62540 Apr 21 11:34 xlock*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root wheel 180568 Apr 21 10:59 xterm*
If anyone out there has solved any of these problems, I would greatly
appreciate hearing from you.
Thanks much in advance,
- Greg
P.S. Oh ... one other OS problem: I am an "amd" neophyte and just tried to get
it going. It does everything fine - catches references to the mount point
directories, knows to go look up the map entry in the NIS map (yes, I
have "ypbind" running as well, and it seems to work wonderfully so far).
But when it queries the NIS server, instead of asking for the key -
e.g., if I reference "/home/earle", it doesn't ask the NIS server for the
entry "earle" in the "auto.home" map - it asks for a "/defaults" entry:
19:29:20.48545 netbsd4me.jpl.nasa.gov -> nisserver.jpl.nasa.gov NIS C ORDER
map auto.home in nisdomain
19:29:20.48819 nisserver.jpl.nasa.gov -> netbsd4me.jpl.nasa.gov NIS R ORDER
OK order=776542748
19:29:20.49203 netbsd4me.jpl.nasa.gov -> nisserver.jpl.nasa.gov NIS C MATCH
/defaults in auto.home
19:29:20.49369 nisserver.jpl.nasa.gov -> netbsd4me.jpl.nasa.gov NIS R MATCH
No such key
What is this "/defaults" entry, and why is it trying that instead of the
proper map key?
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