From comp.unix.bsd Mon Mar 30 09:10:22 1992 Path: hcshh!unido!math.fu-berlin.de!iraun2!ira.uka.de!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!nuchat!sugar!karl From: karl@NeoSoft.com (Karl Lehenbauer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: FAQ for 386BSD (last updated 28-Mar-92) Message-ID: <1992Mar29.000151.20818@NeoSoft.com> Date: 29 Mar 92 00:01:51 GMT Expires: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMT Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900 Lines: 400 Contents: PURPOSE AUDIENCE DISCLAIMER WHAT IT IS WARNING * WARNING * WARNING CURRENT STATE OF THE SOFTWARE REQUIRED HARDWARE OPTIONAL HARDWARE FTP SITES (obsolete) PATCHES COMPATIBILITY BOOTING HINTS QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS BUGS JOB JAR PURPOSE ======= The purpose of this document is to collate some of the most important information about 386BSD in one place, creating a concise document containing the essential information, and make it widely available. The hyper-intense interest this software is generating is causing a lot of redundant requests for information to be posted, mailed, etc. AUDIENCE ======== The audience for this document is anyone who wants to work with 386BSD, a port of the free Net-2 release of the Berkeley 4.3 BSD operating system, with the missing pieces filled in by William and Lynne Jolitz, along with the contributions of hundreds of other people who, over the years, produced many of the utilities used to fill in for pieces of 4.3 BSD that were still proprietary to AT&T. This FAQ does not compete with another FAQ that contains info more generic to Berkeley Unix. DISCLAIMER ========== I am not involved in this project other than as yet another person interested in seeing it fly. (Thanks to NeoSoft for sparing me the time to work on this.) I have assembled this information from the same sources almost everyone else has access to, the comp.unix.bsd newsgroup, the 386BSD mailing list, and poking around the various FTP sites. I solicit updates for this posting, and will continue to produce it as long as there is a need and I have the time. If someone more officially involved would like to take over, please feel free to do so. If you have a problem with anything involving 386BSD other than *this* message, please do *not* contact me. Regards, Karl Lehenbauer karl@NeoSoft.com WHAT IT IS ========== (culled from Bill Jolitz's release notes) 386BSD Release 0.0, the first edition from the 386BSD project. It comprises an entire and complete UNIX-like operating system for the Intel 80386/486- based IBM PC, and is based almost entirely on the NET/2 release from the University of California, which contained much of the earlier freely redistributable and modifiable 386BSD source code done by William F. Jolitz and contributed to the University of California at Berkeley for distribution. 386BSD is freely redistributable and includes complete source code. CURRENT STATE OF THE SOFTWARE ============================= Release 0.0 is in a totally alpha state. Don't bother unless you know how, or want to learn how, to debug a kernel and work with a buggy, unreliable operating system. 386BSD is nonetheless a full 32-bit POSIX-compliant operating system and development environment, and we all have high hopes for its future. Although it is fairly easy to crash, an extraordinary range of software is included, and most of it actually works. Support for TCP/IP over ethernet and QIC-02 compatible tape drives is included, among other things. WARNING * WARNING * WARNING =========================== Do not even test-boot 386BSD from floppy with a hard disk present on the system if you do not want to risk trashing your hard disk! If 386BSD crashes, it may write a core dump on your hard disk! REQUIRED HARDWARE ================= You must currently have the following listed hardware to run 386BSD. Please do not post to the net or to the mailing list asking for compatibility with obviously desirable equipment such as SCSI devices, unlisted ethernet boards, floating point support without a coprocessor, and so forth -- if it's not in the release notes, it doesn't exist yet. Keep monitoring comp.unix.bsd for updates. Here is a quick list of things that you must have to run 386BSD right now: o ISA bus-based IBM PC or compatible with Intel 80386, 80386SX, 80486, 80486SX processor or equivalent. o 80387 Floating Point Coprocessor (386, 386SX or 486SX only) (some BIOSes have 387 emulation capabilities, and that might work, but it is untested.) o 3.5" (1.44 MB) or 5.25" (1.2 MB) high-density floppy disk drive o at least 2 MB RAM o ST-506, ESDI or IDE disk drive and controller of at least 70 megabytes (i.e., SCSI is *not* supported.) (Future releases will accomodate smaller drives.) o A disk drive *solely* for 386BSD (There is no support for disk partitioning in 386BSD.) o An MDA, CGA, VGA or HGC video card. OPTIONAL HARDWARE ================= Serial ports: The standard COM port, although it is apparently somewhat unreliable. Ethernet boards: Western Digital WD 8003EB, 8003EBT, 8003S, WD8003SBT, 8013EBT, and Novell NE2000. Tape drives: Tape drive support is available for QIC-02 controllers, allowing use of 3M cartridges of QIC-60 through QIC-150 format. DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATIONS ======================== Before downloading 20+ megabytes worth of stuff, only to find out that you can't use it, gather and read all of the documentation, the little README and INSTALLATION file(s) in the top-level directory and various subordinate ones, then download the boot floppy only and see if you can boot it on your machine. (Remember, even test-booting the floppy can trash your hard disk!) If it appears to work, go ahead and download everything else. Nothing is guaranteed. Even if you have all of the above, do not be surprised if it doesn't work. FTP SITES ========= The FTP SITES section of this document is being discontinued as others are maintaining more complete lists and posting them periodically. I have included my smaller list for now for people who may only have this document and not seen the others. Please try to find one of the more complete FTP lists and download from a site that is logically close to you. North America: gatekeeper.dec.com ~ftp/pub/micro/386bsd dsuvax.dsu.edu directory /pub/os. agate.berkeley.edu ~ftp/pub/386BSD banjo.concert.net ~ftp/pub/386BSD. United Kingdom: src.doc.ic.ac.uk unix/386bsd-public Finland: nic.funet.fi /pub/unix/4.3bsd/i386-jolitz Australia: ftp.ee.mu.OZ.AU [128.250.1.80] pub/386bsd Sweden: ftp.stacken.kth.se (130.237.237.3) ~ftp/pub/OS/386bsd. PATCHES ======= pub/386BSD/patches/0.0/1 This is a source code patch to the kernel to fix a bug in handling 387 contexts, so beware of floating point until fixed. Someone care to post a binary patch, please? COMPATIBILITY ============= cgd@agate.berkeley.edu (Chris Demetriou) Toshiba 5200/100 with WE8003 Ethernet card Bill Jolitz: Toshiba laptop clone, 386SX/387SX, 3MB RAM, VGA LCD(Cirrus), Megahertz T2LL Ethernet, Conners CP3100 IDE 100MB drive. Compaq DeskPro, 386/387, 9MB RAM, Compaq VGA, ESDI Maxtor 8380 drive(type 38), WD8003EBT Ethernet, Compaq QIC-150 cartridge drive. Karl Lehenbauer: GENE II clone motherboard with DTK BIOS, Conner 200 MB IDE drive, no-name VGA & IDE controller, WD8003. BOOTING HINTS ============= It can be quite depressing to download 386BSD and find that it will not work on your system. Anyone who has run PC Unix systems on clones, particularly a few years ago, is familiar with this problem -- just because a machine can run DOS doesn't mean it can run Unix. Although over time 386BSD is likely to support more and more different variants of PC clones, it will probably never support as many, or as many different kinds of hardware, as, say, Unix from SCO or Interactive. In any case, here are a few things to try if you can't get it to boot: 1. Get a 387. I know I just told you about ten times that you have to have a 387 unless you have a 486DX, but you tried it anyway, didn't you? Well, it doesn't work, so get a 387 or forget it (for now). 2. Remove all extraneous hardware. Since 386BSD doesn't have any built-in support for your whiz-bang fax modem, voicemail card, Soundblaster, and so forth, unplug them from your system. 3. Trouble has been reported with Hercules mono clone cards. Try a different card. 4. It has been reported that it is sometimes possible to boot by disconnecting (uncabling) the hard drive, booting off the floppy, then connecting the hard drive while the system is powered up. This operation may void your warranty. Don't do this unless you know what you're doing. 5. Substitute a different BIOS. If you can find one, we've seen this make some systems work that otherwise wouldn't. Remember to make sure you can boot and run DOS first. 6. Make absolutely certain you've gotten your disktab entry right. If you got one from someone else, it must match your drive -- don't guess, because if it's not perfect it about for sure will not work. 7. Try a different machine. 8. RTFM!!!!! Read the release notes with a fine-tooth comb. Print them out, write on them, and have them next to you while you're trying to install. A lot of the questions in the newsgroup are clearly answered in the release notes. Shame on those of you who are dinking with something clearly labelled "guru and apprentice guru only" and not even reading the release notes! Remember, don't just try booting 386BSD on a brand-new machine configuration. Eliminate unknowns by at least making sure you can install and boot DOS from your hard disk. Better yet if you know you can actually boot and run a commercial Unix on that system. If it won't run DOS, for sure it won't run 386BSD. If it won't run SCO or Interactive, about for sure it won't run 386BSD. If it will run DOS and SCO or Interactive, no guarantees, but at least you have a chance... QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ===================== Q: I have a 486, do I need a 387 or 487? A: If you have a "genuine 486", also known as a 486DX, you do not need a floating point coprocessor. If you have a 486SX, you do need one. Q: It hangs on the "" part of the boot message, does this mean something's wrong with my video card? A: There seem to be a lot of different problems that cause this result. It is not inherently indicative of a video problem, although you could try a different video card. BUGS ==== A lot of hangs can be worked through. "more" hangs the first time it is executed; a 'control-Z f g' seems to clear it from then on. Control-C seems to clear some apparent hangs. Slow machines may take a long time to do things. Hook up your drive activity LED. During compiles of big C files with optimization you may think the system has hung when actually it hasn't. Some hangs seem to be caused by the shell itself crashing -- of course it's not the original Bourne shell. GNU bash works pretty well but requires an original control-C to get it going. This seems to be a 386BSD problem, as subsequent invocations do not require the control-C. The author of the FAQ has seen mysterious hangs more often coinciding with having the network up -- the lack of "ps" is glaring in terms of making determining what's going on much, much more difficult. The "make" program seems a bit fragile. There is a strong correlation between OS panics and large command lines. For example, "cd /usr/include;grep foo * */*" is a panic. Consequently xargs with big file lists fed in seems to cause panics pretty reliably. JOB JAR ======= This sections lists things that are missing for 386BSD and need to be done. Rather than trying to establish some clearinghouse for coordinating this work, pick something and work on it. If you get beyond the fantasy stage, post to the net and see who else is working on it, and maybe work with them. These just reflect Karl's opinion of what needs to be done. Floating point support without requiring an FPU. SCSI device driver. Any bug fixes to improve stability. 5.25" 1.2 MB install set. (DONE!) Tape install. Network install. Definitive, integrated installation notes. "ps" program. (There is sps from comp.sources.unix archives, and "ps" on the Net-2 tape, but severam kvm routines appear to be missing.) "init" program. Friendly disktab editor. Tools! Tools! Tools! X11R5. Good instructions for firing up NFS. Pie in the sky: A boot prom for ethernet cards to enable a diskless boot of 386BSD from a server. -- -- Email info@NeoSoft.com for info on getting Internet access. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing." -- Sledge Hammer