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Re: Getting MOL running (was "Re: Power Management et. al.")



    I'd never expect any success in running pre-compiled binaries made for
    other distributions. Dependencies are usually not as strictly managed
    in RPM's and even when thy are they obviously depend on libraries, not
    the package names used in Debian.
      -- Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> [rejustified to fit 80 character lines]

I've found 'alien' works remarkably well on the i386 branch, but i haven't
used it much here.  You're right, handling dependencies very carefully is
one of the things which distinguish Debian from Redhat.

    So even for newbees it is easier to compile from source than convert
    RPM's - especially if there's a source deb available with source
    dependencies.

I must admit i haven't used the source debs.  Now, if a source deb for MOL
with proper dependencies for the needed '-dev' packages were to exist, then
i think compiling from source by newbies would be more practical.  Yet, even
still, that's still rather a new world for many of them.

Now, if someone packaged MOL with careful version dependences against the
kernel (perhaps use the numbering scheme in use for gcc and friends to 
allow more than one version in a distribution), then perhaps we could win
with binarie debs that way.  Maybe.

    > Getting the most recent source to compile was non-trivial. I had to  install
    > several packages to do so (i think they were libelf-dev, libgd1g-dev and
    > 
    > binutils-dev, and there might be more, since i'd already gotten enough to
    > try to generate boot floppies). There were no hints to what packages were
    > needed in BUILDING and the errors manifested mostly as missing 'include'
    > files.  A few things had to changed by hand, such as the location of the
    > current kernel (or of XMON), to get it to compile [mol-0.9.57/Rules.make
    > and also, respectively, added a -I to mol-0.9.57/debugger/mon/Makefile].

    Strange - it was pretty trivial to me (and I don't consider myself that
    great a hacker).

    I had to add libelf-dev (guessing from a missing include file) but 
    didn't touch the Makefiles at all (until a few days ago when I tried 
    making it not depend on a specific kernel version).

That's the problem, right nwo, it all depends on what you've happenedh to
have done with the machine so far, which packages you've needed to fetch.
I have little doubt someone else will be missing packages that i had 
already.  And it isn't obvious.  For example, i had to ask someone which
package contained <bfd.h> (as i didn't have it on my i386 Debian either).

    I use Debian unstable - which system do you have installed?

I had to roll back to 'potato', picking up enough of the gcc suite from
'unstable' to compile and run kernel 2.4.1 (nothing earlier would handle
my SCSI card and this one only loads that driver properly as a module).
The problem that finally forced me back was that i couldn't get the new
X server to work properly with my OF-only display card (an ix3D with a
proprietary Mac driver from a dead company).

    Hmm - how did they appear if network didn't work properly?

    Ah - maybe you accessed through AppleShare, and TCP/IP didn't work?
    It seems that DHCP is not reliable when used from both Linux and Mac
    - try adding your IP manually in either system.

Correct.  It's already manually configured and works with the i386 box
doing IP masquerading.  Is it supposed to get the same IP address as its
host LINUX system or does it want its own???

    > disappointed that 'startmol' from the i686 produced a screen on a virtual
    > terminal rather than my non-local X screen, but hey, you can't have
    > everything...  It's amazing it works as well it does!!

    As I understand it, fullscreen means using framebuffer, not X.

    Try changing your molrc to make it run from a windows.

    Or try looking into VNC - I haven't played with it, but it seems 
    there's a special VNC mode of MOL...

It works great on the local X server, an amazing hack!  It just doesn't 
work remotely, probably because of the bitmap mapping magic to achieve
X Windows compatability.  I'm not complaining it not working, i would
just like to have shown the folks at work a Mac screen over a dialup
connection under X Windows, especially given how annoying 'PC Anywhere'
is to me.

    Until then, I have .debs and source (without build-dependencies, 
    unfortunately) here:

    http://debian.jones.dk/debian/local/auryn/pool/jones/mol/

I'll be interested to hear other people's reports on this.  Myself, i'd
rather be running off of sources if i have the time and disk space to do
so (and i definitely have the space).

                                -- Tovar



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