A confession ...

Dear Father,

I have sinned. I visited this site a couple of times. But I never downloaded anything before. I just *browsed* around. Yes, I did click on a few links here and there, but its all words ... Really!! Ok, unless you count some of the logo images ... well ...

But today, I felt this pang again ... so I went online once more. This time, it just felt right. I just had to do it. You know what I mean? And I did it.

I downloaded NetBSD for MIPS HPC!!! (HEHEHEHEHE )


I got 2 X 512MB CF right now, so now I downloaded the bins and tried NetBSD with one of them.

Hey dudes, did I say its pretty cool? ... yes, it is. ok, I have not gotten X-Windows X11 etc running ... yet, but on plugging in my Pretec wifi CompactWLAN card, it autodetected in its bare shell and allowed me to configure DNS, DHCP, IPV6 etc ... in 1 min flat (lesser if I just pressed ENTER all the way), I was connected to internet with a steady Green glow of Happiness from my card! I tried ftp and it .... WORKED!!!

Now I just need to figure out how to get the bin sets down and where my mounts go to. Then I can do a full install, and perhaps run firefox on it?? WOOO HOOO

ok, Father, I got carried away ... please pardon me. I promise I won't do it again ... until I finish installation and surf the web, and have tons of fun, and ....

To be continued ... ...

ok, I'm back ...

I figured that I should do an installation through FTP direct instead. Since my wifi card gets detected and installed easily, I am now installing via FTP, direct to my MP790.

Don't mind the poor image ... I am using my webcam to take it!

Will update later with more images. Hopefully I can get some GUI running!
If I get really lucky, maybe even Mozilla firefox!!

Edited by Snappy! 2005-02-03 11:19 AM






Attachments
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netbsd-mips1.JPG (11KB - 78 downloads)

huh! great )) if only i knew how to use netbsd.... is it too complicated for a total newbie?

Well ya gotta be a newbie some time...hehe its not IMPOSSIBLE - but it does take some time to learn. Great job! I should get to trying that out on my 720...so how is your boot process set up? Is there a boot manager or do you have to start it out of CE? ...I think some people would say that you have sinned as you are not running CE!

well ... its ok to be a Newbie to use it. They have a nice bootloader that you run in WinCE. The installation process basically gives you text graphics driven menu ... so you just go through the menus and install.

But that is the tricky part, 'cos I sometimes like the way Windows give you almost no choice except for the most docile decisions like ... setting timezone, languages etc (hehe) ... NetBSD, like linux and all Unix systems allow you to do really drastic thing like set 0MB for swap etc.

Well ... after trying yesterday, I found that while ftp and wifi works great, the downloaded gz tar file crashes the installation and either put me into debug mode or just hangs. The "Great" thing abt NetBSD is that it is so lean, the man(ual) pages are not even downloaded on install boot, so I had to rely on my Unix memory from like 10yrs back and also on thrawling the web for man pages.

I found from a newsgroup that the core dump I am getting is not unique for MobilePros. I am now trying to mount my 2nd CF to see if I can read the installation set from that device instead of downloading from FTP. This way, I can use a different build and see if I get lucky with it.

Ya, that's the thing abt linux, NetBSD in general, it seem so much of poking around and luck, it gets discouraging. While people can rant on and on abt M$, the fact is that 80% of the time, your system works already. Sure 20% of the time it fails, but at least its not the other way round. For linux, NetBSD, its more like 80% of the time you fail first. Then 20% time u get lucky and it works. Then its smooth. .... one installation guide written by a NetBSD guy says "Don't worry if your first install fails, that's normal" ... well ... says alot doesn't it?

Will keep you guys posted.

Heh. The only way to get linux working the first time is to do NO advanced configuration, and here it it...DELTETING WINDOWS FIRST! muahaha.... The smooth part is what I like - but only after I spent the whole summer and 2+ months after setting it up...but it is so nice to go on and know that it has such slim chances of crashing....

Yeah thanks for the warning of the no-man pages. That would've been the first problem {I would have run into.

Great work - I'll get started on mine soon and post back to this thread...

ok ... I kinda put using a 2nd CF and try to mount it on hold. I believe I would need to backup its data and fdisk it in NetBSD, set it to mountable ... then it can be mounted as msdos mount device.

Now I setup the 1st CF to have two partn: 1: 128MB msdos + 2: NetBSD ffs

the msdos partn will contain the bootloader and install boot kernel. It will also contain the installation sets.

I've successfully mounted this msdos partn within the install boot. Am trying to install from local directory after mounting this msdos partn. But somehow the untarring is messing up.

Its stuck at 51254KB (512MB) and its speed of untarring is just counting down .... I think I just ran out of space ... maybe I will need to try a mini install first, then add packages later ...

Generally that is the time when I would format...well since you already have a network connection, can't you untar it on another computer? (Oh wait, do you have one yet! hahahah ok I'll stop this time, I promise! )

-Just as another example as what could go wrong, I found to my surprise today the one command that can instantly destroy the linux operating system. ...although as my system is down I cannot find it! But I will expose to the world this once I can get my history file back...

hi guys,

thank you all

mhm i'll think twice before trying. hpc2000 also requires some tweaking and i already felt at some point it was too much for me. but it was worth it in the end!
so.. i'm sure to try it on some day ..
keep posting your experiences please!

here's an update ...

I found that the earlier hang and counting down bug was due to an incorrectly detected filesize on the tgz file. So while its done, tar gzip still keeps on trying or something. CTRL-C it and it exits and resumes the next file.

One of the file is still flaky and cannot untar properly. I'm now going for a base install, kernel, base and etc instead of the full 500MB install with X11 and stuffs.

Will post back once I get the 2nd CF mounted and base install complete.

This is getting longer than I expected ... ... remind me why M$ is getting all the $$ ...

Well I just ran into a bit of a roadblock. I don't have a serial cable. How am I supposed to start the bootloader without one? I was surprised when I found out that there is way more support going on for the mips distribution. There doesn't even seem like there is a possibility to get X started on mine! And they don't even have all the files needed to run a normal session. I think I'll check out debian, it seems like my only chance now. So it looks like I am pretty much useless at the moment...to bad also as I wasted 100mb of my cf card in netbsd downloads...

PS->Talk("Remind me what device you are using again? J720? or MP700s?"

yes, the MIPS distro seem to have more support than others. For MIPS, you dun need the serial cable to boot into install kernel. You just need two files ...

1. pbsdboot1.exe (for MP790) or pdsbboot.exe (for MP770/780/800/880)
2. netbsd (comes in netbsd.gz file)

Run pbsdboot1.exe from Wince. NOTE: This *will* wipe out the ram in your device, so backup first. The ROM image is still safe, so after you "reboot" or reset your device, it becomes brandnew again.

Select \Storage Card\netbsd for the kernel image. Select the framebuffer device ... MP series are mostly inside. I use MP780 as the device for my MP790.

Click on boot. In a few seconds, you are taken to the boot screen of NetBSD, with the sysinst configured to autorun and let you setup NetBSD on your CF card.

Will update when I get it done up. Not doing anything on that today.

I am using a 720. I need three different files, hpcboot.exe (which I can't find by the way), the netbsd kernel, which I got of both versions, 1.6.2 and 2.0 , and then I need miniroot.fs, which is a filesystem image, and that does not even exist yet. Apparently because of that I cannot start X.

And I just found out that the main guy for the Debian port was killed in an accident, so I don't know how much I can get from that. They say that the next release will be dedicated to him, but knowing Debian, that may be a VERY long time, and I don't see the current release set up for the 720 yet.

The only successful system I has so far seen on it was Familiar Linux, but the page for that was last updated in 2002, and while they got X running, I don't see enough documentation for me to get that started, but with luck I may get that system running.

It looks like I may have to wait for netbsd to catch up already, but at the moment my hopes are set for Debian, or, more likely, Familiar.

HPCBoot:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/uwe/hpcboot/

Heh yeah I just found that. This all seems too confusing though . I still need a serial cable, and even then it still looks like I will have to wait.