Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> Sindi Keesan wrote:
> >
> > I read readme and noted that BL3 is supposed to work on a 
> > 386 with 3M RAM.  
> 
> You definitely need swap to boot with 3mb RAM.  It will
> be tight.  If that system takes a chunk of RAM for shadow
> RAM, it might not boot.

I think you can usually turn off shadow RAM in CMOS.

> > But the hard drive is 30M total and I certainly do not have 
> > 25M free space on it.  Why do we need so much free disk space?  
> 
> To provide room for a large application (like Netscape 3.04).
> I suggest you do df from inside BL3.  You will probably be
> surprised.

How much space do you need if not running additional applications, just 
what came with BL3 (links, mail), in addition to space for the unzipped 
files?
 
> > I looked in /usr/bin and found microcom.  Typing microcom --help 
> 
> Unfortunately, microcom does not recognize a help parameter.
> To get help, do:
> ------------
> man microcom
> ------------

If I had read the instructions FIRST I would have known that, but it was 
rather late, and the monitor (9") was at knee level because we had two 
computers strung together for plip and I was reading one and running the 
other.  I should be able to figure it out today.  I am curious and will 
check how you set up the man pages - with man2html/zless/links, or plain 
text.  

I see why you don't plan to make this version work with standard packages 
- this way you can put things in nontraditional places to simplify (all 
the man pages in one directory).
 
> > At some point I got some instructions to specify the com port 
> > with microcom -D/dev/ttyS1 but when I did that it crashed.  
> 
> That doesn't sound good.  Are you sure it crashed?  When I did:
> ---------------------
> microcom -D/dev/ttyS2       ## my modem is on COM3
> ---------------------
> I got no acknowledment (just a blank screen).  But then I entered:

I got no blank screen - it just hung until I hit Ctrl-C, at which point I 
typed Ctrl-Alt-Del and saw 'segmentation fault' just before reboot.  It is 
possible I left out the S.  I will try again soon.  After reading manual.

> ----
> ati7
> ----
> and got the expected output from the modem.
> 
> > This program is a nice surprise and I hope I can get it to work.
> 
> It's not user-friendly (because of the very small size)
> but it does work for me.  

You can't have it both ways.  I hope it works better than minincom, which 
had commands that interfered with the use of pico, and I think had some 
other problems with terminal emulation or something.  I gave up on it.

> 
> > I can't tell which ppp is in BL3.  
> 
> pppd --help
> 
> > Is there something I could do to adjust the timing to prevent 
> > this failure?  
> 
> man pppd
> 
> > I am using the same ISP in which I got the failure with BL1 
> > and the newer kernel, until I changed to the newer pppd, at 
> > which point it dialed okay.  
> 
> Check /var/eznet/eznet.conf and make sure it is identical to
> the one you use in BL2.

Will do soon.

> > mail  6 (Enter)  gives me a nice place to fill in To: and 
> > Subject: lines and write a message.
> > I don't see any way to fill in the From:  line.  
> 
> Your "From:" address goes in ~/.pmailrc (same as BL2).  It's
> called "reply-to" but it actually appears in the "From:" when
> your mail goes out.

Maybe there is some way to override that setting, since two of us will be 
sending mail on the computer, with different From addresses?  I don't 
recall anything in the menu that suggested I could set From or reply-to
(not that I got the menu to work).  I will read the manuals.

> 
> > I typed 1 to 'configure POP3 and SMTP server' and got into 
> > some screen that appears to be e3pi, with no instructions 
> > for POP3 configuration, 
> 
> Thank you for finding that.  It's definitely a bug (caused by
> a pico parameter that e3pi doesn't recognize).  I'll upload
> a corrected version (3.01) in a day or two (to see if more
> bugs come in).  If you want to fix it in your current copy:
> ------------------
> edit /usr/bin/mail
> ------------------
> and page-down to:    1) e3pi -w ~/.pmailrc
> and change it to:    1) e3pi    ~/.pmailrc
> 
> > when I type 6 instead of the nice screen where I could fill 
> > in To: I see 0/0 Term: 80x24 Pos=134595104 (etc.)
> 
> That's your (empty) inbox.  Press c to compose.

So after the first time you use the program, it takes you to inbox instead 
of the screen used to compose?  I will figure it out eventually after 
fixing the -w in .pmailrc.

Can this new mail program be used with links to send mailto: instead of 
saving addresses from the web?  Or is it the same old program in a 
different wrapper?  

> 
> > X - can't get it to do anything despite having 32M RAM.  
> 
> Xvesa fails with some versions of HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRV.
> Try running DOS with no CONFIG.SYS and no AUTOEXEC.BAT

I will boot from floppy disk and try again.  We have Win98 himem.sys and 
no smartdrv that I know of.

> > Do I need to unzip the swap.zip file first?  
> 
> Definitely not.  It is only there for low RAM systems.
> 
> > I typed startx and chose 640 resolution by typing a, or A, 
> > and nothing happened.  
> 
> Did you press ENTER after A?  If so, the next question should
> be:  "Which port is your mouse on?"

I pressed Enter and nothing happened.  I will try without autoexec.bat or 
config.sys.  

> > I have probably done almost everything wrong that a dummy 
> > could do, but I will keep testing tomorrow.  
> 
> Thank you.

I am reporting my dummy errors in case you want to add a few more 
instructions for dummy-proofing with.  

Next time I hope to be dialed in with BL3.  (Just got lynx for DOS working 
again with the new ISP and am testing that first.)


> Cheers,
> Steven
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