Baslinux mailing list

[David Moberg <davidjmoberg AT gmail.com>]

On 11/29/05, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> I notice you have 1,453,897 bytes on the boot disk (leaving about 2K free)
> and therefore had to omit less

Busybox has a small version of less available. I will see if it will fit.
But I cannot see much purpose in a pager when the main intent
of this disk is to allow you to view pictures and copy them.

> and nano

It would be e3pi if anything. nano is just too big.

> and even e3pi (about 9 bytes).

I will see if it will fit. This was just a "beta" release, so I will
add more functionality later once I verify that everything works.

> You also omitted libvga.config, which means there is no simple way to add
> chipset VESA or chipset VGA,

mkdir /etc/vga
echo "chipset VESA" >/etc/vga/libvga.config

> or to change the horiz syn and vert refresh

I will try to add an editor.

> to get more than plain VGA resolution.

But high color works by default, doesn't it?

> I have some video cards (Tseng and
> Trident and SiS) which either don't display, or display badly, without
> chipset VESA.

OK. I will try to add an example libvga.config.

> Our only ohci
> computer would not boot, but it could not find the kernel so I doubt this
> was related to the ohci, but I will try to test the kernel with an add-on
> ohci card eventually.

Why did it fail to boot? Was it syslinux's fault? syslinux has a 'stupid'
mode for buggy BIOSes.

> I don't have ehci anything.

I have ehci but no USB 2 camera, so ehci support will not be added
anytime soon.

> [zgv] did not work on the AMD K6/2 with Matrox card.

Do you need a libvga.config for it to work? Could it possible
work with chipset VESA or VGA?

> It is not recognized in BL2 or BL3 - ls -l
> says it is there, but it won't run.  -sh:  zgv:  not found.  ldd can't
> find it either.  Did you compile it to need a post-SW81 libc?

No, I compiled it for uClibc. Since neither BL2 or 3 are
uClibc-based, it will not work unless you copy over the libs
from the floppy (WARNING, this may break your existing
library configuration if you are not careful)

> The Matrox card does not need chipset VESA.  It works with the delilinux
> zgv in BL2, but with the zgv from your boot disk it displays vertical
> stripes (black, white, grey and blue, with some repeating pattern).

Is this the same Matrox card as above?

> If you wanted to include e3 (9K) to edit a very short libvga.config (just
> to be able to add chipset VESA and post-VGA horiz sync and vert refresh)
> you could leave out:
>
> 1).  The last three sections of rc (cd-rom, ppp, and ethernet support).

That's on the todo list. As well as some other fixes.

> 2).  A few devices (audio, scd, ttyS0).

A cleanup of /dev is also planned.

> 3).  Compile a smaller busybox.  Omit things like wget and ftpput and
> telnet.

Right.

> Is there a 2K text editor?

No need, e3 will work fine.

> I attempted to reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Del and was told there is no
> /sbin/reboot.

Oops. I should have anticipated that.

> Inittab has lines about /sbin/reboot, /sbin/swapoff,
> /sbin/init, and they are actually in /bin so please rewrite inittab or
> make a symlink from sbin to bin,

Or move the binaries to sbin, which is what I will do.

> and I don't think there is a swapon so you don't need swapoff.

There is a swapon binary.

> I doubt that a computer new enough to have USB
> will need swap space to view even a 5 megapixel image with zgv.

And so swapoff, swapon, and mkswap's days are numbered.

> There is no shutdown.

poweroff or halt.

> When I 'reboot' it does not automatically unmount the /hd

I will fix this.

> Can umount /hd be added to inittab?

I will instead add support for a real /etc/mtab so that busybox
will know that /hd is mounted and automatically unmount it at
poweroff time.

> I was able to mount /fd and /hd without -t vfat, tho it still tells me it
> is not ext2.

It tries ext2 first because ext2 is built into the kernel.

> I notice you have insmodded all the modules automatically,
> including fat and vfat and the ide modules.

More modules are possibly on the way if I can make busybox
small enough. The kernel that you have has networking support so
you should be able to mount a BL3 partition and use Xvesa.
There might be something else required, though. I will test and
report back.

> and I can remember to umount /hd before reboot.

It is mentioned in README.

> Do airport metal detectors mess up floppy disks?

I think that's a myth. See
http://www.pcguide.com/care/care/mediaAirport-c.html

David