Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral
... or maybe we should remind ourselves that the only thing official about FreeBSD is the code. Let the CD vendors figure out ways to attract customers from each other, lets worry more about ways to attract 'customers' from other operating systems. Bill and Jordan are right on this one, guys. We (as in FreeBSD) can put up the ISOs and every Tom, Dick and Harry with a CD burner can distribute FreeBSD, and differentiate themselves on packaging, sales channel, and customer service. Who knows, we might even get a few local shops to pre- install FreeBSD on a machine or two, with their own FreeBSD discs thrown in. It could happen. I'll talk to SuperDale and see if Totally Awesome Computers will do this, they run their web site on FreeBSD. Hi folks! Well, I'm just returning from german Linuxtag, one of the biggest events concernung free software. (http://www.linuxtag.org) We ran also a booth there, providing information ( I also held some speech there, covering the history of BSD) and some contacts. We agreed to do something in Europe: - providing informational structure for BSD - providing a channel where people that want to do booths at exhibitions etc may contact and get some help, pre-financing (perhaps) and merchandise articles to help financing the whole thing. Basically, those people who showed up at our booth asked: Well, ok, it seems that this is a good OS, but where/whom can I contact in case of trouble? Who provides _commercial_ support? I'd love to buy a T-Shirt or a pin, can you sell me one? I already use BSD, but are there any books about it? ((No, not the handbook. People love to pay for additional literature helping make the bookshelf look cool.) So there certainly is money involved, and if we could organize it in a way, that money flows back to the project respectively into activities that help promoting BSD, that should be fine. This also includes the possibility (which needs to be checked for legal/trade commision issued yet) to provide any user with the possibility to order some CDs, T-Shirts whatsoever. BTW: BSD stands herein for: Free/Net/OpenBSD, BSD/OS, MacOS X, as far the BSD portion is concerned. Any input? Maybe we should take this over to -chat. Olaf To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Anybody know the OS in the Maxtor MAXAttach products?
Alfred Perlstein wrote: * Jordan Hubbard [EMAIL PROTECTED] [000927 16:12] wrote: One of the comments on the side is: "Caching file system with Soft Update technology". Sounds vaguely BSD'ish. Maybe even FreeBSD'ish. It is. This product is based on FreeBSD 3.2 if I'm not mistaken. Several other companies are using FreeBSD for thier all-in-one fileserver appliances, afaik Quantum as well. Hi! Yes, Quantum uses a patched BSD in their Snap! Servers. I will get one (Snap 2000/40GB)for promotion issues for a BSD booth at a local Linux fair. They also support those M$/Novell directory services/permissions... Regards Olaf Hoyer To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: PCI Plug 'n' Pray and old BIOSes
At 11:05 19.06.00 +0200, Graham Wheeler wrote: Hi all I have a Genius Hub Card (basically an Ethernet NIC that also acts as a four port hub). I would ideally like to use this card in an old 486DX4 machine which acts as a ppp router. The card is detected (under both Windoze and FreeBSD) as a RealTek card (the model number escapes me right now). I installed 4.0-R on this machine, which detects the card, but gives me "ed0: device timeout" messages. Usually this is because the interrupt is misconfigured, but I don't think that is the case here. As I was under time pressure, I pulled the card out and put it in a different machine, this one a P166 which works fine (with the same IRQ). Anyway, when I get a chance I would like to try it again in the 486. The 486 has three PCI slots, and the BIOS has some additional settings which may be the reason it wasn't working. I'm unfamiliar with what some of these do, and am hoping that someone on the list may have experience with early days of PCI and Plug 'n Play, and be able to help. These are the settings: Slot n IRQ Line (this is the only one I set on my first attempt, to 12) Slot n Latency Timer (ranges from 0..255 PCICLK) (was on 255) On Board PCI/SCSI BIOS Enabled/Disabled (was disabled) CC State Machine: Data Write 0 WS Enabled/Disabled (was disabled) Data Read 0 WS Enabled/Disabled (was disabled) Hi! The card normally should act and behave at least as a normal NE2000 clone (ed0) But as stated before, you might have to jumper it into the mobo. Also the PCI latency is IMHO too high. Try setting it at around 40. If you want to check out possible IRQ conflicts (at least on PCI bus with vid cards), there are some programs (ok, DOS based) that give out very reliable figures. Otherwise try the config utility of the card and put it into jumperless mode, no pnp. Regards Olaf Hoyer ---- Olaf Hoyer www.nightfire.demailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD- Turning PC's into workstations ICQ:22838075 Liebe und Hass sind nicht blind, aber geblendet vom Feuer, dass sie selber mit sich tragen. (Nietzsche) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: [OT] Finding people with GSM phones (was Re: GPS heads up )
At 12:09 06.05.00 -0700, you wrote: There were some famous cases where some criminals were located by tracking down their cell phone. The police needed some decision from court to do that, but after that, it was a short way to go. The GSM nets have some of this ability built in, to track phones. The operators only don't want the "normal" citizen or user to know about that. This capability of GSM was well known when it was introduced in .au, but when my phone was stolen, the telco bastards wouldn't admit to being able to tell me anything about where it was (even though I could still call it...). What's being proposed here sounds just slightly scary. hi! Well, thats reality. Sometimes the mobile telco hotlines are so overloaded, you cannot even tell them that your phone was stolen. (Talk about service-but you get what you pay for) In germany, there is some list, where every cell phone can be entered with its IMEI-number (thats like the MAC on an ethernet card). So theoretically you simply enter them and make them useless for the thief. But its too much work for the telcos, so they tell you they cannot, their computer systems are down, or the list is overcrowded and no more entries can be made (there was a discussion on .de usenet some year ago, IIRC, and they stated that the list indeed was very big and no-one really cared for that), etc etc. It is simply some work, that they don't get paid for, have some personnel that is not trained for other tasks then saying: Ok, I'll send you some prospects... So there are some insurance companies offering policies, but we all know the attitude of insurance... Bottom line: The telco does not want it, because it is work, and they don't make money with it. It would be technically able to enter the _individual number_ of a cell phone into a database (which already exists), rendering stolen cell phones useless immediately. They will be simply denied upon log-in to the tower. Regards Olaf Hoyer ---- Olaf Hoyer www.nightfire.demailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD- Turning PC's into workstations ICQ:22838075 Liebe und Hass sind nicht blind, aber geblendet vom Feuer, dass sie selber mit sich tragen. (Nietzsche) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How hard would it be...
At 19:28 09.04.00 -0600, you wrote: ... to get FreeBSD to boot off a BSD partition that wasn't labeled as 0xa5? I'm looking for a way to create a disk that a certain picky BIOS will like and boot off of, and I think I have to create it with a certain ID and then it will be happy. I suspect that it involves hacking the boot blocks, the boot loader and the kernel's idea of the BSD partition number in disk*subr.c. Are there other things that are needed? I may be barking up the wrong tree in trying to get around this BIOS's pickiness, but I thought I'd at least ask. Yes, this is for a well-known, cheap internet device, which shall remain nameless. I've already OPENed mine up. a real lookER. Hi! Well, if we are talking about the same device, rumors went that the BIOS of that thingie may be reprogrammed via internet. BIOS update in that way also involve disabling IDE parts... I don't know if that is only booting or the whole part.. Have seen some hardware rewiring on another mailing list to prevent that mangling of BIOS. If there is interest, let me know, and I'll look it up. Regards Olaf Hoyer Olaf Hoyer www.nightfire.demailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD- Turning PC's into workstations ICQ:22838075 Liebe und Hass sind nicht blind, aber geblendet vom Feuer, dass sie selber mit sich tragen. (Nietzsche) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: How hard would it be...
At 21:15 09.04.00 -0600, you wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Olaf Hoyer writes: : Well, if we are talking about the same device, rumors went that the BIOS of : that thingie may be reprogrammed via internet. BIOS can be reporgrammed via a program that was downloaded... But only if you called a certain ISP. : BIOS update in that way also involve disabling IDE parts... No. It doesn't. The updated BIOS is just very picky about what it boots. : I don't know if that is only booting or the whole part.. Only booting. Drives detect just fine. : Have seen some hardware rewiring on another mailing list to prevent that : mangling of BIOS. Dremmel tools and heat guns were discussed to allow socked parts to be more easily accessed. I'm trying to avoid that. Hi! Well, ok- Otherwise, roll that thing up from behind- Check out if someone can replace/hack that BIOS? Are there any information about the mainboard manufacturer? There are also small programs that will read out the BIOS vendor ID and display in clear format, if it is some remotely known one... (Yes, they are DOS, but work like a charm-Use them myself in field service-may send you via Mail approx 100kb) Regards Olaf Hoyer Olaf Hoyer www.nightfire.demailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD- Turning PC's into workstations ICQ:22838075 Liebe und Hass sind nicht blind, aber geblendet vom Feuer, dass sie selber mit sich tragen. (Nietzsche) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
re: Is FreeBSD dead ?
At 14:15 10.03.00 -0600, you wrote: FreeBSD won't be dead until they pry the source code from our cold dead fingers :-) There are a lot of hardware companies that had invested substantially in BSD 4.3 knockoffs and Mach kernel knockoffs. The natural upgrade path for those development efforts is a commercialized version of FreeBSD (imho). There are a lot of sites that are still using BSD variants that have refused to upgrade to the more favored SYSV knockoffs, the natural upgrade path for those is a commercialized version of FreeBSD (imho). There are hardware vendors with very high end multi-processor configurations with boo-quoo memory etc. A natural upgrade path for those vendors (when they finally give up on their own "way-behind-the-curve" unix variant) is to move towards a commercialized version for FreeBSD (imho). They may try Linux, but is Linux "high-end-performance-ready"? Hi! Well, there is Turbolinux, which claims to do that. Also there are some projects in clustering. SuSe is selling some clusters already (got to see a small version of that at Cebit) Also, those very big installations use some kind of special Unix spinoff, something like IRIX, sold for specialized hardware, and paying big $$ for. Yes, it is a big chance to get rid of the reputation as being without support, which is very important to the industry. Well, when you can do things yourself, then its ok (Meaning that they have qualified personnel already). But when you can't, and especially smaller businesses cannot, then you have to pay somebody else to do that. ANd thats the point, then they ask what is when some problem occurs. A company like M$ or Sun can be sued at least, at least you can point in one direction and say: Hey, I paid money for that, and you have to fix those bugs and help me install the OS, if somethings goes wrong. Thats the things FreeBSD lacked a bit in the past. And if they see only some small companies offering support on their own as consultants, they decide otherwise. There is a saying: Nobody ever gets blamed for choosing IBM. Thus meaning: If you do what everybody else does, its alright. If you buy Windows, you know about the problems with it, but as everybody uses it, its common practice. But if you stray from mainstream, you get hit very quick if something hickups or even seems as it might like to hickup in the next few hours... Regards Olaf Hoyer P.S:lets take this to -chat Olaf Hoyer www.nightfire.demailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD- Turning PC's into workstations ICQ:22838075 Liebe und Hass sind nicht blind, aber geblendet vom Feuer, dass sie selber mit sich tragen. (Nietzsche) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Re: scsi target mode
a. settings on the controller card (e.g. scsi id, termination) b. freebsd configuration on the initiator and target PCs. (e.g. do we use scsi_pt.c, scsi_target.c, etc). here's a diagram depicting what we want to do. we're trying to setup a PC (PC2 below) with an adaptec controller to act as an emulated disk. PC 1 will access the disks on PC 2. __ __ | PC1| scsi cable|PC2 scsi bus| | adaptec 2940 | = | adaptec 2940 disk | | SCSI ID=7 | | SCSI ID=0SCSI ID=5 | |__| |__| Hi! Well, I'd rather try (for simplification) following combo: I won't connect the two 2940 directly. PC1 goes via the external SCSI-connector to another (50-pin narrow connector), that is directly hooked up to the cabling between the HDD and the 2nd AHA 2940 in PC2. AHA 2940(id5)--^^^--HDD Slot blind with adapter | | to 2940(id7) Those adapters are quite cheap (50 pin from ribbon cable to 50 pin slot blind) In that combo you would bypass the AHA2940 having to act as a "router" with his two SCSI channels, being the external connector one channel. You only would have to worry about right bus negotiation and termination. (Ok, if you want to do this for fun--- nuff said) Regards Olaf Hoyer ---- Olaf Hoyer www.nightfire.demailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD- Turning PC's into workstations ICQ:22838075 Liebe und Hass sind nicht blind, aber geblendet vom Feuer, dass sie selber mit sich tragen. (Nietzsche) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
