[BL] BL2 problems with links2 and with mouse in Xvesa

sindi keesan keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
Fri Sep 3 16:59:16 EDT 2004


The below problems were most likely related to my having set the symlink 
wrong in /dev.  It should be
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/mouse
(I may have done this backwards).

Apparently this mistake is sufficient to cause Xvesa to see an Illegal 
instruction and to crash  links2 -g.  It should not happen to anyone who 
has the sense to use BL2 or BL3 with Steven's nice simple beginner-proof 
script for setting the mouse.  I am posting what I learned from my 
mistakes for the benefit of other beginners.

I see the kernel config for BL3 at the website - but not for the older 
versions.  Was the part about coprocessor emulation added in the later 
kernel?  Maybe that is what is causing one of the add-ons not to install 
(floating point problem) in the older version.

I will now try installing BL3 FD version to hard drive (once I round up 
two good 1.44 disks, which should be easier now that floppymeter 
identified the badly formatting drives).  Is there some way to install 
directly rather than via FD?

Most of our disks are 720s but probably not enough people use them to 
bother making a 4-floppy BL3.  Some hardware is more obsolete than even BL 
should support.  Are there any 386 laptops that don't read 1.44MB disks?



On Fri, 3 Sep 2004, sindi keesan wrote:

> If I try to use links2 -g (graphical mode) SVGAlib in BL2 on one computer
> everything hangs.  It works fine on several other computers.  Three other 
> SVGAlib programs (seejpeg, zgv which I set up with links as a viewer, and 
> bmv) work fine here.  I have a serial mouse on com1 and set that up in the 
> SVGAlib config file.
>
> Ialso a link from /dev/mouse to /dev/ttyS0.  The mouse works on Com1 in DOS.
>
> So I tried to see if the mouse worked in Xvesa in case that was causing some 
> problem and it did not.  How do I set Xvesa to use a serial mouse? The man 
> page says nothing about this.  I know psaux is the default.
>
> I was then going to try links2 in Xvesa again after rebooting and now Xvesa 
> won't run either - Illegal instruction.  I don't think I changed anything 
> related to Xvesa.
>
> I do not have Steven's (or anyone's) plain X on this computer.  I have the 
> three required libraries (just checked with ldd).
>
> Has anyone else in the list had these problems with graphical link2s (this is 
> the delilinux version) or with Xvesa in BL2?  I will try Xvesa on this 
> computer with BL3, where I know it is put together correctly.  And/or reboot 
> in case that fixes the problem like it did with the /proc file on another 
> computer.
>
> This is a DFI computer that for a while would tell me 'not a kernel image' 
> when I used loadlin but it has booted perfectly about 10 times in a row 
> today.  Maybe it has a hardware problem related to graphics in linux?
> Another list member also ran into the 'not a kernel image' problem with 
> loadlin on a different model computer, where lilo works, and loadlin will 
> work if booted from Win9x DOS but not DR PC or MS DOS.
>
>
> keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux
>

keesan at sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org



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