Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 19:22:09 +0100 From: Dominic Marks <dominic_marks@btinternet.com> To: William Wallace <ww@austin.rr.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD on Alpha problems Message-ID: <20020903182209.GB288@gallium> In-Reply-To: <ODEMJJBMDNGMFJHKBCMFGEIADMAA.ww@austin.rr.com> References: <ODEMJJBMDNGMFJHKBCMFGEIADMAA.ww@austin.rr.com>
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Hey, On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 12:34:36PM -0500, William Wallace wrote: > > > I'd like to ask a general question regarding the Alpha port of FreeBSD. > Over time I've noticed that the Alpha "installer" (from ISO IMAGE) is not as > "robust" as the i386 one. In the past (4.5-RELEASE), there were many errors > during installation that had to be basically ignored. Recently, after > deciding to install my Alpha server from scratch, I noticed two things: > > 1) The 4.6.2-RELEASE ISO images don't exist, there's been a "README.TXT" > file on the ftp server that indicates that the alpha ISOs would be available > in 48 hours ever since the i386 ISOs showed up. > > 2) The 4.6-RELEASE ISO images look better than the old 4.5 ones (no more > errors when "downloading"), but the install process halts after installing > files to disk saying that the INDEX file for the packages does not exist. > After this, installations is "complete", but the subsequent steps for > configuring the console, installing X and a window manager, configure > security and inetd, etc., etc. are skipped (I assume because of the error). > Basically any additional configuration is to be done by hand. > > Is there a reason for this? It certainly would be nice if FreeBSD could be > installed on Alpha as cleanly as on i386. That certainly would be nice. I'm sure it is possible if people with appropriate hardware put in the time to get it to work. (I don't have an alpha box, but I'd like one :-)) WRT the INDEX file not being present, it looks to me like the alpha ISOs are built without packages, 4.6-RELEASE for alpha's disc one is only 187MB. It should handle this more gracefully though if that is the case. > Another point of interest: Apparently the version of OpenSSH installed with > the base system has problems with privilege separation, whereas the version > that can be installed from ports (openssh-portable) does not. They report > the exact same version, yet the base system one reports some sort of "read > error" when a client tries to connect, and terminates the connection > immediately, whereas the ports version, using > "sshd_program=/usr/local/sbin/sshd" in rc.config, works just fine with an > identical config file. Is this specific to FreeBSD/alpha ? I haven't had the same experience with FreeBSD 4.6 on i386 machines. > Also, looking into the future of the Alphas (or the absence of one). Will > FreeBSD on Alpha be discontinued any time in the near future? FreeBSD/alpha will exist as long as there are people to maintain it. > - William. -- Dominic Marks Computer & Politics Geek [work]::[npl.co.uk] << dominic.marks at npl.co.uk >> [educ]::[umist.ac.uk] << notyet-known at umist.ac.uk >> [home]::[btinternet] << dominic_marks at btinternet.com >> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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