Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:19:44 -0600 (MDT) From: Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu> To: Marty C <lalala@globalserve.net> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Many stupid Questions about UNIX and FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9906231409410.5324-100000@peloton.physics.montana.edu> In-Reply-To: <3770D143.41C67EA6@globalserve.net>
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Hi,
On Wed, 23 Jun 1999, Marty C wrote:
> If any of these questions are stupid or redundant, please ignore them
> and accept my apologies; After using FreeBSD for just under a week, I
> have the following questions:
>
> 1) Who uses FreeBSD? Students, proffessionals, etc?
All of those and more. Primarily FreeBSD has been marketed at servers,
but it makes an excellent workstation and a great scientific desktop.
> (I really like FreeBSD and I'm not trying to dis' it, but I don't see
> my mom configuring her own kernel)?
Can your mom add a printer to Windows? I can't, but I can configure my
kernel (well, I know how to add the printer in Windows, but the process
itself failed and I finally gave up since it wasn't my machine).
> 2) When I install and try to run the Netscape 4.51 on my CD's
> (FreeBSD3.2) I get an error about "ld.so"... Is this because
We need more than this - chances are (guessing here) is that you didn't
install the compat-2.2 package on installation. Netscape is an a.out
executable and FreeBSD 3.2 is ELF - to run Netscape you'll need the
compat-2.2 libs to run the a.out version. Option 2 is to use the Linux
Netscape port (if you have the Linux compatibility stuff installed).
> 3)NetScape 3.04 doesn't seem to run java applets, though it
> seems to try...
This I don't know about.
> 4)word perfect and klyx (the BSD ports from freebsd.org) have
> fuzzy buttons that I believe stem from their not being able to find
> their own graphics... Is this a common error everyone knows how to
> fix, or is something messed on my system or what?
These should just work - I've installed Word Perfect on one of my machines
and it worked fine - can you give us more description of what "fuzzy"
buttons mean? Are the images not there or are they fuzzy?
> 5)When configuring one's KERNEL file, is the GENERIC file the
> one that is used to build the start kernel I am booting with now
> (having not yet found the courage to try and compile my own)? (as in
> if I do nothing but add the "sb" driver line, will I have exactly the
> same kernel but with sound?)
Yep. I believe that GENERIC comes w/ sound support though. It may not be
finding it though.
> can I assume the irq values are good? failing that, are the ones
> spewed out by the booting process necessarily right/complete?
> shift+PgUP in a console doesn't seem to work from outside X... Anyone
> know how to get to the messages that have already scrolled by?
You can usually assume they are good - check though w/ dmesg (just type
'dmesg | more' or 'more /var/run/dmesg.boot').
> -- if, while I am looking inside of KERNEL (the kernel compilation
> directives file), I don't know what something is, don't think I have it
> and certainly have never actually used it, but have NO clue what it is,
> is it better to leave it or remove it?
It's better to read LINT and consult your dmesg - did GENERIC detect it?
If so leave it in (assuming it's something you want...).
> -- assuming I go as far as "make" but not "make install", can
> compiling a new kernel mangle mr. computer? If it compiles OK, is that
> good proof that will boot OK?
Nope. Make all you want. Even installing won't be bad - you can always
boot kernel.old or kernel.generic (you should see if these exist in /
though before). Make install moves the current kernel to kernel.old so
that won't be a problem.
[kernel config deleted - sorry I don't have time to look at that right now
but let me know if you have problems]
> 6) At seemingly random moments I get a message (similar to)
> "/kernel: acd1 read_toc failure"; should I be worried?
It means that your Atapi CD-ROM is having a read failure. Whether it's
bad or not depends on what you're doing. :-)
Brett
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brett@daemonnews.org *
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