Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 20:42:51 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: knowtree@aloha.com Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: X, NFS, 3C900 NIC Message-ID: <19980201204251.61915@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <34D446B2.23A0@aloha.com>; from Gary Dunn on Sat, Jan 31, 1998 at 11:56:02PM -1000 References: <34D446B2.23A0@aloha.com>
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On Sat, Jan 31, 1998 at 11:56:02PM -1000, Gary Dunn wrote: > Aloha from Honolulu! > > I just got FreeBSD running this past week and have some questions I hope > some of you with more experience can help me with: > > 1. How can I get better video performance with X? The system has a > Matrox Millennia video board and a decent 17\224 monitor. I have done > nothing more that run the sysinstall stuff and experiment with various > settings, and launch X with startx. > > A. This setup gave sterling results with Windows NT (please, no beer > can throwing). With X, at 800x600 and above the center of the screen > \223vibrates\224 especially side to side. Very high frequency, but slow enough > to see the wiggle and not just a blur. Usable, but only with apologies. > At 640x480 the image is rock solid but flickers as though it was > refreshing at or below 60 Hz. Check the output of startx or xinit. What frequencies is it reporting? Are you sure you've set X up for the correct hardware? Why are you using such low resolutions? What's it like at 1024x768 and 1280x1024? I'm running a Millenium I board, and it runs fine. > B. The graphical elements are rather crude, reminiscent of Windows 1.0 > and not at all like the beautiful things I had on an HP workstation I > worked on a few years ago. Would Motif give me what I want? That depends on what you want. But there are at least 5 good window managers available. I personally prefer fvwm2, which has a vaguely Motif-like appearance, but you may prefer others. Unlike mwm, these window managers are free. Check the Ports Collection. > 2. How do I get NFS connectivity from a Windows 4.0 workstation or > server? What would be cool would be to have my FreeBSD server appear in > the Network Neighborhood window, perhaps under a sibling branch to > Microsoft Network and Netware Network, called NFS. I tried a demo of a > commercial product by Xlink (http://www.xlink.com/) but as yet have not > got it to work. (It swears my security is not functioning, or that > pcnfsd is not running.) Their interface was a bit outdated looking, too > -- more like a Win 3.x app. If anybody has an elegant, cheap way to do > this please let me know. I have never heard of NFS working well with Microsoft. This is a Microsoft problem, not a FreeBSD problem. You'll probably be happier with Samba, which implements the SMB protocol. > 3. What needs to be working for Netscape to run? Just vanilla X, or do I > need Motif? Just vanilla X. > 4. I could not get a 3com 3C900-COMBO NIC to work. This is a PCI board. > I changed to an SMC8000 series board, sixteen bit ISA, and it has worked > flawlessly. I like to believe that the PCI board will be faster. Not really. They're both 10 MB/s boards, and the SMC should run with full speed. A PCI board will put less of a load on your system, though. What was the problem with the 3Com board? > 5. When I run /stand/sysinstall in muliti-user more the system dies with > a page fault error, but it runs fine in single user more (that is, after > executing shutdown). Is this what was intended? No. What version of FreeBSD are you running? Versions earlier than 2.2.5 offered multiple opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot. Greg
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