sparc/linux deception
Hi,
I became a linux fan when I install linux on my personal PC
some seven months ago. In our laboratory we have several old sparc
running solaris and plan to convert them to linux/sparc. I begin with
a sparc IPC.
The instalation seem ok and I can even have X working thank to
the binaries in ftp://ftp.netg.se/pub/Linux/sparc/X/. At boot I got
some nasty error message about configuation of serial ports. Nothing
serious, I guess I can supress the script init.boot/0SETSERIALS (which
cause the message, I think) because I dont need that (but I havn't
figure out how to supressed the file in a clean way)
That good news, now the bad one. It seems to be a minor isssue
but in fact it is the single one so far which would halt my plan of
installing spacr/linux. The problem is: Keyboard Repeat Rate Too Fast
(actually it is the delay time before repeating which is too short).
Because of this, logging in is a real pain because there is a high
risk that some of your password characters you type have been repeat
and you can't know which. Quite often, after typing a command, I have
to to use the back-arrow to suppress the extra unwanted characters.
I have noticed that my linux intel also have a too fast
keybroad repeat rate. But there are remedies
1a) Use the kdbrate command to set the delay and repeat rate
1b) Use the XF86Config file or command option to set this rate under X
2) recompile the kernel with 2 lines of assembly code commented out
(as described in the Keyboard-and-Connsole Hosto)
None of this works with linux/sparc. I have tried every possible
options in the kbdrate command, my keyboard repeat rate and delay seem
to be unaffected. I have tried similar option in X: same thing. (I
hav'nt tried to use the config file, XF86Config seem not to exist in
sparc/linux/X.) The Xserver man page say -r turns off keyboard repeat,
I have tried this, it still repeats ! As for the solution 2) above,
there seems to have no equivalent in sparc/linux
By the way I have the same problem when I tried the redhat 4.2 sparc
some months ago. I have hoped that their new version 5.1 would solve
the problem, but I cannot check, since they haven't provide a boot
disk image, so I can't install their system. This leads me to debian
(which is in fact better for me because it is leaner). But I suspect I
would get the same probleme with the redhat software.
I hope that some one on this group can come up with a solution. I have
also considered reporting the problem to redhat, but since I am not
their customer, I hesitate. This machine, although slow, serve very
well as an X terminal and I indent to give it the same function under
linux (with moreover the possibility of logging in and experimenting
various things). However, if the keyborad does'nt function correctly,
people will complain and I would get blamed.
By the way, speaking of X terminal, there is a glitch in the
/sparc/linux/X software. I launch
X -indirect name_of-my machine
so that I have a choose menu which I can login into mavhine under X.
The problem is that I cannot return to a console terminal. Unlike
linux PC, Crt-Alt-F1 does nothing, Ctrl-Backspace does not kill X. As
under solaris, the ouly way is to kill X by a kill command, but unlike
solaris, if I do this under linux, the system simply hangs ! I have to
make a cold reboot to restart the system.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PHAM Dinh Tuan | e-mail: Dinh-Tuan.Pham@imag.fr
Laboratoire de Modelisation et Calcul | Tel: +33 4 76 51 44 23
BP 53, 38041 Grenoble cedex (France) | Fax: +33 4 76 63 12 63
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