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If you're interested in doing research on raid, you might want to have a look at RAIDframe, which is a system for prototyping disk arrays. It was added to NetBSD last November. It includes a simulator as well as a device driver for doing RAID on real disks, and supports levels 0, 1, 4, 5, hot spares, and more. The base code for level 6 and parity logging is also in there, though I don't know how well it's working.

There's a web page with current notes on RAIDframe on NetBSD here.

cjs

If you're interested in doing research on raid, you might want to have a look at RAIDframe, which is a system for prototyping disk arrays. It was added to NetBSD last November. It includes a simulator as well as a device driver for doing RAID on real disks, and supports levels 0, 1, 4, 5, hot spares, and more. The base code for level 6 and parity logging is also in there, though I don't know how well it's working.

There's a web page with current notes on RAIDframe on NetBSD here.

cjs

This is a bit of annoyance, since so many people seem to think the iMac was such a grand leap forward, that it's entirely unlike other Macintoshes. For a while, the page for Yahoo! Pager referred to "iMac OS 8.5," and the morons at Bell Atlantic tried to tell some poor saps that iMacs were of fundamentally different hardware.

So the better headline would have been "higher-end Macs" rather than "iMacs and G3s."

Any word on when the "Offical" CDs for 1.4 will be out?
www.netbsd.org says to download it from the 'net -
I don't have the bandwidth for such things.

Thanks.

A few questions.. Why are the datestamps on all the files May 11?

Am I looking in the wrong spot? I went happily to my usual mirror (ftp2.au.netbsd.org), thought there was some NetBSD secret that files are hidden for 2 months before being put on show? Anyway....

I have an iMAC (as mentioned above), and I'm trying to get the bastard to boot. Not being at all new to bootp, and extremely comfortable with it, I've fired it up, and set up a root filesystem, etc. This is where the clues are needed.
The page here hints slightly that I need the file /usr/mdec/ofwboot.elf as the actual bootloader (That's kinda useful, having the network loader packaged up inside the install. Sigh) - BUT, it's not there. Not at all. There's a file there that's called 'ofwboot', which I thought would be the one, but it seems like the Mac's OF doesn't like it as it says 'unrecognized Client Program format' (case exactly as displayed). I had a quick search through altavista and found precisely zero hits on 'ofwboot.elf' and zero on the message above.

Help?


--Rob
Comics:
Sluggy.com - It rocks my nads.

Heh. Cool.

Speaking of older hardware... I just got a Sun SPARCstation 10 the other day, and I'm having a blast with it. It's only running NetBSD 1.3.3 now, but I'll probably upgrade it over the weekend. Anyway, one of the things I love about NetBSD is how I can be on a completely different platform and have exactly the same operating environment that I know and love. I mean, I'm reading SlashDot with Netscape Navigator. Cool.

My first Unix that I ran at home was NetBSD 1.2-current on a Mac SE/30... When I got some Intel hardware, the transition was utterly painless. X was tougher to set up, but it wasn't impossible. (X on the Sun was a matter of telling it startx. That's it. Heh.)

Nothing against Linux, but I'm just really happy that NetBSD exists.

Heh. Cool.

Speaking of older hardware... I just got a Sun SPARCstation 10 the other day, and I'm having a blast with it. It's only running NetBSD 1.3.3 now, but I'll probably upgrade it over the weekend. Anyway, one of the things I love about NetBSD is how I can be on a completely different platform and have exactly the same operating environment that I know and love. I mean, I'm reading SlashDot with Netscape Navigator. Cool.

My first Unix that I ran at home was NetBSD 1.2-current on a Mac SE/30... When I got some Intel hardware, the transition was utterly painless. X was tougher to set up, but it wasn't impossible. (X on the Sun was a matter of telling it startx. That's it. Heh.)

Nothing against Linux, but I'm just really happy that NetBSD exists.

The closest shipping match to the Itsy are the Casio E-15 and E-100; with 69MHz/131MHz CPUs and 16M of RAM, they're somewhat larger machines than the 8M 486SX/25 I bought to run Linux 0.12, and you can get larger CompactFlash cards (IDE interface internally) than the 60M SCSI disk that was home for a few years. Both Casios are a bit bigger than the Palm III, although I suppose you could get an Everex Freestyle if you wanted the exact size.

If Digital---uh, I mean Compaq---had seeded the right places with proto hardware, I think the excitement about this project would be more justified. I'm glad they're finally releasing their port (dunno where, but this slide has it as a bullet); if nothing else, it will make work on other Linux PDA environments easier. But the commercial marketplace is serving up almost everything the Itsy hardware has except the prototyping ability today. That's where to funnel all that nervous energy you get when you think about how cool it would be to have a Linux PDA.

Just curious... but what platforms does BSD support that Linux doesnt? Linux runs on everything from PalmPilot's and Itsy's to IBM System/390 mainframes. I can't think of a single platform that exists today that Linux doesn't run on...

NetBSD has a PPC port. They have a thumbnail of an iMac on their page, so I assume the iMac is supported hardware.

As far as the other comments on this thread -- I have X running on my iMac, although it was a royal bitch to install. The one site which really helped with this was the iMac Linux site, already mentioned several times on slashdot. It describes how to get X (with good resolution and color depth) running, and has other tips for the platform.

A bunch of new PPC distros are in the works -- DebianPPC, iMandrake, Yellow Dog, and of course LinuxPPC v5. For the iMac user, probably any of these will be an improvement over the weird-ass iMac installation of LinuxPPC 4.x.

This picture illustrates most of the BSD family tree (except OpenBSD, which forked from NetBSD): Link.

Though many reserach have and will be done with NetBSD, NetBSD is *NOT*!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a resarch platform.

You don't find anything on TNF's homepage that calls NetBSD a "resarch plattform".Please read about the NetBSD Project or it's goals.

If you are to lazy to follow the links, here's the summary:

The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.

NetBSD is not a resarch platform, damnit!

***END OF DISCUSSION***

Though many reserach have and will be done with NetBSD, NetBSD is *NOT*!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a resarch platform.

You don't find anything on TNF's homepage that calls NetBSD a "resarch plattform".Please read about the NetBSD Project or it's goals.

If you are to lazy to follow the links, here's the summary:

The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.

NetBSD is not a resarch platform, damnit!

***END OF DISCUSSION***

Though many reserach have and will be done with NetBSD, NetBSD is *NOT*!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a resarch platform.

You don't find anything on TNF's homepage that calls NetBSD a "resarch plattform".Please read about the NetBSD Project or it's goals.

If you are to lazy to follow the links, here's the summary:

The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish.

NetBSD is not a resarch platform, damnit!

***END OF DISCUSSION***

• NetBSD : Runs on almost every architecture imaginable
  
• OpenBSD : Based on NetBSD, with high emphasis on security and buglessness.
  
• FreeBSD : Developed mainly for the x86 platform (with ports in the works for sparc and alpha); provides excellent speed and stability.
  

Bah... What's up with their not including NetBSD? I know NetBSD has never focussed on marketing, but it seems a rather obvious hole in the article to just flat-out ignore it. In my estimation, right now the NetBSD project is healthier than it's been for a while.

Oh well. The author made himself look foolish to "those who know" more than anything else, I suppose.

It's a pity that they missed mentioning NetBSD because (among other things), that's where OpenBSD came from...

Um, MIPS itself tried this some years ago; it was called "ARC" - the notion was to put together a standard for a commodity hardware platform that was not based on Intel's badly designed CPUs and outdated instruction set. Alas, the effort failed to garner enough momentum from the industry or interest from consumers, and so it died.

If you really want an alternative to Intel, keep pushing on Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, et. al. to port cleanly to as many different kinds of computers as possible. If we get the OS sufficiently independent of the hardware that you don't have to care what it is, you will be able to buy hardware with the best price/performance available, and the hardware guys will be freed from the tyranny of the "Intel Standard" to go and design better architectures.

Of course it runs NetBSD! - the coolest OS on this planet!

http://www.fr.netbsd.org/Ports/mac ppc/index.html

snapshot

ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pu b/NetBSD/arch/macppc/snapshot/

for iMac

ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pub/Ne tBSD/arch/macppc/imac/

http://www.fr.netbsd.org/Ports/mac ppc/index.html

snapshot

ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pu b/NetBSD/arch/macppc/snapshot/

for iMac

ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pub/Ne tBSD/arch/macppc/imac/

http://www.fr.netbsd.org/Ports/mac ppc/index.html

snapshot

ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pu b/NetBSD/arch/macppc/snapshot/

for iMac

ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pub/Ne tBSD/arch/macppc/imac/

Might I interject that Apple's primary product is not the Mac OS, but the hardware that it runs on? While MacOS 8.5 and previous versions are very sorry examples of OS design, MacOS X shows a lot of promise. As for "Mac people talking about how good their OS is", this article is written from the context of a Mac zealot...would you expect him to badmouth MacOS?

Also, there are alternative OS's for Macs, both 68k and PPC. Allow me to submit NetBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, and LinuxPPC for consideration. My Mac Centris (old, I know) runs NetBSD and MacOS...the primary functions of MacOS are, 1. booting NetBSD, and 2. Downloading packages to my Newton MessagePad.

All in all, I found it a nice look into the mind of a Mac addict as he views the Linux phenomenon.

Credit where credit is due.

--

For me, NetBSD rocks. I love being able to build my entire userland by typing "cd /usr/src && make build". I love have a cool package system that automatically FTPs and builds requisite packages for me, from source. (I particularly love how every single binary on my box, with the exceptions of Quake II and Netscape, were built right here on my box!)

I like how unified NetBSD is. I started off using NetBSD because it was the only Unix that would run on my old mac68k hardware. I stuck with it when I got new hardware because I just like the feeling of wholeness and quality that NetBSD exudes. (I prefer it to FreeBSD, which is very nearly as good IMHO, and I definitely prefer it to Red Hat, which I tried once and rapidly removed.)

One thing that I'm curious about, that may be a mis-understanding on my part, is the package systems on non-i386 GNU/Linux platforms. How integrated are alternative architectures? On NetBSD, I can cd into /usr/pkgsrc and make pretty much any package on any platform, without having to ftp anything manually. Are things this slick on, say, Linux/Alpha or Linux/StrongARM, or does someone have to port each package and make it available for FTP somewhere, and hope that people can find it? That's my current impression.

The last point is that NetBSD (and FreeBSD, and I assume OpenBSD) does Linux emulation. With this, I can keep my comfortable, nice environment, and still use stuff like Quake that has only been released for GNU/Linux. (Or Solaris, in that case, but that doesn't apply.) That why, for instance, I wrote to Blizzard and said I wanted Diablo II to run under Linux. I told them that I was running NetBSD, but that NetBSD could run Linux binaries, and that a Linux-native Diablo II would be something I'd buy.

So, the upshot: It's cool that we're running on UltraSPARCS now. It's not half-bad hardware, in my experience, although IMHO you're trading quality for performance as compared to fast Intel hardware, which tends to be faster but which isn't half as meaty in terms of... quality.

PS: If you've never run NetBSD, give it a try. It's free, and it's neat.

For me, NetBSD rocks. I love being able to build my entire userland by typing "cd /usr/src && make build". I love have a cool package system that automatically FTPs and builds requisite packages for me, from source. (I particularly love how every single binary on my box, with the exceptions of Quake II and Netscape, were built right here on my box!)

I like how unified NetBSD is. I started off using NetBSD because it was the only Unix that would run on my old mac68k hardware. I stuck with it when I got new hardware because I just like the feeling of wholeness and quality that NetBSD exudes. (I prefer it to FreeBSD, which is very nearly as good IMHO, and I definitely prefer it to Red Hat, which I tried once and rapidly removed.)

One thing that I'm curious about, that may be a mis-understanding on my part, is the package systems on non-i386 GNU/Linux platforms. How integrated are alternative architectures? On NetBSD, I can cd into /usr/pkgsrc and make pretty much any package on any platform, without having to ftp anything manually. Are things this slick on, say, Linux/Alpha or Linux/StrongARM, or does someone have to port each package and make it available for FTP somewhere, and hope that people can find it? That's my current impression.

The last point is that NetBSD (and FreeBSD, and I assume OpenBSD) does Linux emulation. With this, I can keep my comfortable, nice environment, and still use stuff like Quake that has only been released for GNU/Linux. (Or Solaris, in that case, but that doesn't apply.) That why, for instance, I wrote to Blizzard and said I wanted Diablo II to run under Linux. I told them that I was running NetBSD, but that NetBSD could run Linux binaries, and that a Linux-native Diablo II would be something I'd buy.

So, the upshot: It's cool that we're running on UltraSPARCS now. It's not half-bad hardware, in my experience, although IMHO you're trading quality for performance as compared to fast Intel hardware, which tends to be faster but which isn't half as meaty in terms of... quality.

PS: If you've never run NetBSD, give it a try. It's free, and it's neat.

If you look on some of the *BSD pages NetBSD and FreeBSD you'll see that at least one of them (NetBSD) is being actively ported to PA-RISC.

HP300 was relatively easy, as it used a more "open" CPU, the Motorola 680x0 series. (The "old" processors in the HP800 series is the Moto also.) The new HP700 series (and HP800 that have been upgraded) use PA-RISC, which HP developed in-house, and therefore, keeps wraps on the specs.


Cheers,
Ken Crandall

If you look on some of the *BSD pages NetBSD and FreeBSD you'll see that at least one of them (NetBSD) is being actively ported to PA-RISC.

HP300 was relatively easy, as it used a more "open" CPU, the Motorola 680x0 series. (The "old" processors in the HP800 series is the Moto also.) The new HP700 series (and HP800 that have been upgraded) use PA-RISC, which HP developed in-house, and therefore, keeps wraps on the specs.


Cheers,
Ken Crandall

OpenBSD runs ~13142 shell account here. It runs stable for us and nobody break in, yet 8-D ...
OpenBSD project depends on donations, hardware, cd sales. The project developers can expect some money and hardware from my company in the next couple of years. I bought a cd for myself even ;)
OpenBSD Daily Changelog. Browsing source on the Web and The OpenBSD FAQ

or try NetBSD..For more information, read NetBSD-current changes. Mailing Lists

OpenBSD runs ~13142 shell account here. It runs stable for us and nobody break in, yet 8-D ...
OpenBSD project depends on donations, hardware, cd sales. The project developers can expect some money and hardware from my company in the next couple of years. I bought a cd for myself even ;)
OpenBSD Daily Changelog. Browsing source on the Web and The OpenBSD FAQ

or try NetBSD..For more information, read NetBSD-current changes. Mailing Lists

There's lots of cheap Sparc and other equipment out there if you're willing to live with the older models. (An IPX is dirt cheap these days; on the other hand, an SS5 is a lot more expensive for what you get because it's still a `current' model, even though modern PCs blow it away in terms of speed.)

However, if you want to get good deals and know what you're getting, do some research before you buy. For hardware information, the Sun Hardware FAQ is the biggest collection in one place. Another place worth looking is under the `Supported Hardware' link at the NetBSD project ; there's information there on many different systems, including Suns, and links to other sources of information. (This is also the only modern OS that runs on a lot of old equipment.)

Once you've had at least a cursory look through the resources available, spend a week or two reading through misc.forsale.computers.workstation to get an idea of what a decent price for this stuff is. There are a lot of bad (too high) prices posted there, but these usually get pointed out fairly quickly.

The last thing I'd recommend is to start cheap, to see if this is to your taste. If you decide that working with non-PC equipment is just too much of a hassle, or you get too little performance for your dollar, you're only out a couple of hundred dollars if you bought an IPX, rather than a couple of thousand if you bought an SS20.

Personally, I find old hardware quite rewarding. I currently have running at home 3 Sparcstations (two with rather nice 17" colour monitors that were dirt cheap!), a couple of Sun 3/60s (one colour, one mono, both with 19" monitors) and a VAXStation 2000, and my main mail server for cynic.net is an IPX. I've also had various other things kicking around in the past, though I recently cleaned out my collection. It's fun stuff to play with, and actually does useful work quite well in many circumstances.

cjs

[MacOS X is] a BSD-based system with the source code now secret.

BSD is harming the free software movement more than helping it.

cjs

[MacOS X is] a BSD-based system with the source code now secret.

BSD is harming the free software movement more than helping it.

cjs