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Thread #: 1842

My next great computing project

Jeremy Reimer

Tue May 14 19:03:13 2002

Here's what I plan to do:

1. Get a x86 box (probably at work) to run the latest Darwin/x86 (equivalent to MacOSX 10.1's core)

2. Install GNUStep.

3. Develop simple applications in Objective C that will run both on this x86 box and on my iBook with a simple recompile (or better yet, a fat binary, if this is indeed possible)

4. Revel in my uber-cross-platform-l33tness.

Madan

Tue May 14 19:46:33 2002

Remember what you told us about screwing with Linux to say that you did?...

Well, uh, you're doing it yourself now.

Why don't you do something worthwhile and help me come up with a kick-ass school site for my little snot-noses. ;)

M.

Jeremy Reimer

Tue May 14 19:57:11 2002

No, you don't understand, this is going to be a project I work on at WORK, you know, that place that gives me money every two weeks?

I can justify it because we are thinking of migrating our *nix application to Darwin/x86, therefore, I need to know more about Darwin, therefore, it is a work-related project.

The upside is that Gnustep is based on Openstep which are the same APIs as Cocoa, so the same apps could be compiled on x86 and OSX.  In theory.  I'll let you know how well it turns out.

Kick ass school site?  Sorry, been there done that.  Off to something new!

Madan

Tue May 14 20:59:36 2002

Really? You've built a kick ass site? Where?

M.

Jeremy Reimer

Tue May 14 21:09:43 2002

Well, perhaps "kickass" is the wrong term.  I did it when I was at St. George's and the guy in charge of the web site was on sick leave for 6 months after suffering a heart attack (only a few months after he started the job)

He's since returned and changed a lot of shit, but the underlying structure is the same.  Actually I'm surprised how little has changed-- many of the pages haven't been updated since I left, three years ago.  

[url]http://www.stgeorges.bc.ca[/url]

UPDATE ON MY DARWIN PROJECT!!!

I downloaded the Darwin .ISO from Apple's web site, after registering.  I used our BSD development station to burn the CD, then I swapped in a new bare HD and rebooted off the CD.  Darwin/x86 1.4.1 (equivalent to Mac OSX 10.1) is now installing even as we speak.

Once I get XFree86 and KDE installed, I'll post from Darwin.  How cool is my job?  I ask you.  How cool?

Jeremy Reimer

Tue May 14 22:41:21 2002

UPDATE:  I have Darwin running.  I tried running it on the BSD server box, but it has an unsupported Ethernet card (practically everything is unsupported except for Intel 825xx chipsetts)

Ahah.. but here is where I am brilliant.  I configured my own workstation to use one of those Ethernet cards when I was installing OpenStep 4.2... I knew this project would be worthwhile, somehow!

So I have Darwin up and running, and it comes with XFree86 preinstalled, but there is no window manager or desktop environment or web browser.  I have to go get those (prob KDE, maybe something else) then I can post from Darwin!

I AM LEET!!!11111  PH3AR mY AwEsOmE OS-installing ability!

Incidentally, Darwin/x86 was the EASIEST OPERATING SYSTEM I HAVE EVER INSTALLED.  EVER.  You download the .iso.  You burn a CD with the ISO.  You boot from the CD, and type "1" on the list of discovered hard drives to install, then you type "1" again to automatically partition.

THAT IS IT.

All you have to do is wait, reboot, enter your root password, and you're DONE.  The whole OS is installed, all your hardware is detected, it's amazing.  No other UNIX is like this.  

Madan

Tue May 14 23:23:13 2002

Reparative BUMP
DuffMan

Tue May 14 23:26:31 2002

JR is becoming quite the Lunix Haxor.

Us mere windroids bow down before your leetness. :cheesy:

So what kind of apps are you going to make for your cross-platform revelry. Are you going to try and port (well i guess it technically wouldnt be porting) any osx apps for your x86 box?

Jeremy Reimer

Wed May 15 01:08:11 2002

I don't know what kind of apps I'll make, probably simple ones.  From what I've seen, there are toolkits to easily move OSX apps to GNUStep and vice versa-- it's the same API, just slightly different tools used to build the projects, so it should be fun.

UPDATE: I downloaded WindowMaker, the GNUStep official window maker environment.  I did a ./configure, make, make install but it quit with errors near the end.  :(  I have to go back and figure out what caused them, probably a missing library as this is on a bare Darwin install.

Fuck is it easy to work with though.  I took the hard drive from my DVR Server box, that has a Geforce video card and the unsupported Realtek Ethernet card, swapped it right into my workstation, which has an ATI Rageaholic 128 and an Intel 82xxx Ethernet card.  Guess what-- NO RECONFIGURING REQUIRED.  I just booted, and it autodetected the change and reconfigured the Unix core.  I had a DNS server and an IP address through DHCP automatically, and I could start X (minus a window manager though) and ftp to WindowMaker.org and download the source code.  Amazing.  If all UNIXes were like this, maybe I wouldn't bitch about Unix so much.

Of course the supported hardware is practically zilch.  But luckily our lead programmer just happens to be one of the few people in the universe who knows how to write Darwin device drivers... ;)

Jeremy Reimer

Wed May 15 22:25:19 2002

UPDATE:  I found a page full of already-built packages for Darwin-x86, so I grabbed the pkg_add.x86 file on my other machine, uploaded it to the server and downloaded it on the Darwin box.  Then I was able to use wget to grab the entire ports tree.  Took fucking hours over our connection (and the slowass gnu-darwin server)  I do like wget though, it shows you a progress-o-meter and everything

Unfortunately, when going to untar/unzip it, it craps out right at the end.. unexpected end of file.  And windowmaker, the one thing I wanted, wasn't there.  Fucking gigabytes of port trees, and no windowmaker.  

So now I'm trying to add windowmaker separately, but it's fucking timing out on everything.  I'm back to hating Unix again (that didn't take long)

I will keep you posted.

Jeremy Reimer

Thu May 16 22:22:56 2002

UPDATE!

I decided to try adding all the precompiled packages for GNU-Darwin-x86 from the web site.  But augh!  Strange errors about missing devices on all of them! Did a google search, turns out the Apple-supplied tar program is fux0red, it's totally wrong, and the real tar is in the wrong place!  Fuck, it's TAR, probably the first program ever made on Unix, all it does is concatenate files together and strip them apart, this isn't ROCKET SCIENCE APPLE!  Anyway, I copied the Gnutar version from the /usr/local/bin to /usr/bin (saving a copy of the crappy version just in case) and grabbed the entire package list.

I now have Windowmaker running!!!  This looks and feels a lot like NeXTstep/Openstep, but it's GNU software and I can now grab all the GNUstep stuff, including development tools.

I AM UBER L33T.  PHEAR ME OR DIE.  CAN YOU DO ANY LESS?

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Thu May 16 22:30:48 2002

I find you silly in your L33Tn355 :)
Jeremy Reimer

Thu May 16 22:31:58 2002

It is silly, isn't it?  And yet, I'm being PAID to do this.  This is why it is so much fun.
Evil Merlin

Fri May 17 11:40:09 2002

How useful is Darwin/x86 currently?
Jeremy Reimer

Fri May 17 15:16:22 2002

Well, at this exact moment, not very.

Hardware support is minimal, and when I say minimal, I mean MINIMAL, it's less than NeXtstep/Intel was.  XFree86 is included, but because it uses OSX's display driver model, only a vague, 256-color non-accelerated 1024x768 VESA 2.0 spec is supported.  You can't use XFree86 drivers.  Networking support is limited to the Intel 825xx chipsets.  I don't know if there is sound support.

But considering that Darwin/x86 only came into existence because a couple of the Apple engineers were bored one afternoon and decided to see if they could get the core OS to recompile on x86, it's a pretty neat hack.

The only reason we are testing it out is because it has these neat features inherited from Mach and NeXTstep.  Device drivers can be easily written in C++, using IOKit, where all you have to do is take an existing type of driver (wireless LAN, ethernet, sound, whatever) and tweak a few bits of it and boom, you have a new driver.  It also has neat features like hot-swapping PCI cards... the OS is given a signal when a card is put in or removed, and can dynamically load whatever device driver it needs to use said card.  This is perfect for our video capture applications.  There are some other tagnuttery things that only our lead programmer understands as well.

What I'm more interested in is getting the full GNUstep development tools working, because this means that I could use the very good Project Builder/Interface Builder on OSX and just copy the files over to our x86 server and recompile them.  How well they run is, of course, another story entirely...

Evil Merlin

Fri May 17 19:18:43 2002

Hrmm... last I checked both XP and 2K could hot swap PCI cards...

HitScan

Fri May 17 20:18:44 2002

Hrmm... last I checked both XP and 2K could hot swap PCI cards...

OK, 'splain this to me real quick. I've always liked the thought of hot-swappable stuff, but doesn't the mobo and the card have to support it, or is it only required of the OS? I'd be afraid of zapping the shit out of something. That would suck royally.
Evil Merlin

Fri May 17 21:30:27 2002

Both the hardware and the software need to support it.

With XP all of my 64 bit PCI cards are supported (one network, one SCSI and one RAID adapter).

of course you cannot just pull a PCI card out. Use the Remove Hardware Safely option in the Task Bar.

(Edited by Evil Merlin at 2:31 pm on May 17, 2002)

Jeremy Reimer

Fri May 17 21:35:18 2002


Hrmm... last I checked both XP and 2K could hot swap PCI cards...

Can Linux do this, though?

PaulHill

Sat May 18 09:24:08 2002

Well, if it can't, be sure to personally attack whoever asked!

I fucking hate Penguins.  Burn them all, I say.

Jeremy Reimer

Sat May 18 15:16:00 2002

Heh, I hear you, brother Paul!
Jeremy Reimer

Sat May 18 18:12:08 2002

Okay, there is now a link from The Stupid Place(tm) to this thread.  

Here is my update as of Friday.  

Darwin will support 24 and 32-bit color modes.  BUT... only if they conform to the VESA 2.0 spec EXACTLY.  The practical upshot of this is that when I found the specific instructions for switching video modes, and started up X+WindowMaker in 24 bit color, I got a lovely screen, and then a HARD LOCK.  Well, the keyboard was still working, but there was no mouse movement, so I couldn't open a console.  

Then I found out something even more stupid.  Apple, by default, starts up Darwin in GRAPHICS MODE.  Yes, the text scrolls by on its lovely non-accelerated screen in graphics mode, for no reason whatsoever.  This wouldn't be so bad, but if you switch to an unsupported graphics mode, as I tried with 1024x768x32 bit (which SHOULD be supported, I have a 32 meg ATI Rage 128 type card in there) it boots up with an unreadable console.  White text on a white background.  OH FUCKING JOY!

The solution, according to Apple, is to ssh in (impossible, as I'm root on this box) or boot from the Installer CD.  The latter option is not exactly wonderful, as it reinstalled the entire operating system.

So I had to spend half a day downloading and reinstalling all the packages I had done before.  I'm getting the hang of it now, it went much faster than last time, but STILL...

Fortunately there is a way to disable the graphics mode on bootup.  It's still a pain in the fucking ass, because if you start X and the system freezes, you have to reboot once, fix all the fucking errors in the filesystem (WHERE IS THE JOURNALLING FS, APPLE?? WHERE ARE THE SOFTUPDATES???) then reboot AGAIN to fix the graphics mode defaults, then reboot AGAIN just to load them (they are loaded at boot time, way to go Apple)

This is not the world's most advanced OS.  At least not on Intel.  And yet, still, it is kind of fun to be paid to fuck around with it.  There aren't many people in the world that could claim to do so.

HitScan

Sat May 18 18:19:32 2002

And yet, still, it is kind of fun to be paid to fuck around with it.  There aren't many people in the world that could claim to do so.

Damnation. From the sound of that not many people would want to. :eek:
Hoever, if someone wants to pay me teh fat monies to get NetBSD working on their refridgerator magnet or something, I'm all set. :D
AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Sat May 18 19:14:03 2002

Hoever, if someone wants to pay me teh fat monies to get NetBSD working on their refridgerator magnet or something, I'm all set. :D

Could the Mighty HIT tell the Mighty AYB how to install NetBSD on his Mighty POS Mac Clone along the Mighty OS9?

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Sat May 18 19:17:54 2002

Okay, there is now a link from The Stupid Place(tm) to this thread.

Why?

Jeremy Reimer

Sun May 19 01:27:57 2002

Because somebody asked about it.
longmarch

Mon May 20 18:06:31 2002

Jeremy,

What hardware are you subverting to feed this disease?  Also, any screenshots yet?

Jeremy Reimer

Mon May 20 18:10:51 2002

It's just a standard Intel 815 chipset (ASUS CUSL-2 motherboard) and some crap ATI Rage-Against-The-Machine 128 thingy, IDE hard drives, standard stuff.

When I get X and WindowMaker running in 24-bit color (it might take a new video card) and get all the GNUstep tools running I'll take a screenshot.  

longmarch

Mon May 20 18:14:08 2002

Hmm.  I was thinking of giving Darwin a spin but thought it only supported the 440BX.  Any Athlon support?
Jeremy Reimer

Mon May 20 18:18:20 2002

Athlon support is pretty spotty, but I've heard that some people have gotten it running.  I think the problem may be more VIA-related than Athlon-related.  They SAY it only supports the BX, but evidently not, as my i815 chipset is just fine.  
longmarch

Mon May 20 18:34:43 2002

Perhaps I'll try the Athlon route then.  I have a SiS Athlon board and a few with the AMD760/Via combo.  Failing that, I know where I can get an endless supply of Tyan Tsumani AT's, so the BX is always an option.
Harbinger

Mon May 20 18:43:01 2002

JR, ISTR that some people have described the 815 as a "superset" of the BX, designed to support newer CPUs that the BX didn't, and to handle built-in video.

I've never researched this to determine its plausibility, as I didn't really care about it. ;)  Theoretically, I could care less about it, but that means I'd have to put more effort into actually caring less, and I didn't want to waste the energy.


On a side note, I just built a computer for a friend and former co-worker.  Ath 1800 on an Asus A7V333 -- as with recent VIA-based Athlon mobos, it's been very very solid.  I wonder if Darwin supports more Intel-based mobos than it lets on.  I have an LX-based mobo that we can try it on; the machine currently has BeOS installed, so reformatting the drive wouldn't be a big loss. ;)  Plus, it's a duallie -- I'm assuming that Darwin already supports this (I hope).

longmarch

Mon May 20 18:53:26 2002

That's another possibility: I have an old SuperMicro board that supports dual Klamath-core PII's.  Right now it runs FreeBSD on a pair of 266's (when it's turned on, anyway).
Jeremy Reimer

Mon May 20 21:43:49 2002


JR, ISTR that some people have described the 815 as a "superset" of the BX, designed to support newer CPUs that the BX didn't, and to handle built-in video.

Well, as the 815 is a pretty solid motherboard, and the BX was rather legendary for stability back in the day, perhaps there is some truth to this.

Of course YMMV.  I've heard people praise VIA boards and trash i815, and vice versa, there seems to be no consensus on anything in the computing world. :(

My home machine is a VIA chipset, an Asus CUV4X, and I've never had any problems with it, other than certain *ahem* Creative Soundblaster Live drivers freezing the system (I took them out)

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Mon May 20 23:00:02 2002

Well, as the 815 is a pretty solid motherboard, and the BX was rather legendary for stability back in the day, perhaps there is some truth to this.

The BX is perhapse the most long-lived mobo in history.  I am still typing on my Rock Solid BX6-R2. :)

I may need a Tually upgrade for it one of these days.

Harbinger

Tue May 21 13:37:34 2002

Heh, I recently picked up 2 Asus BX mobos (new, but perhaps old stock) that say "Coppermine ready" on them -- I have a few Slot 1 CPUs sitting around, and I'm going to build some boxen and donate them to a local school.  This way, some kids can get computers (hopefully) and I can reduce my stockpile of computer parts littering my basement. ;)
longmarch

Tue May 21 15:26:50 2002

On a whim, I tried installing Darwin on a Via-based Athlon last night, an effort doomed, of course, to failure.  I will swap some other boxes onto the KVM and try again on a different chipset.
Jeremy Reimer

Mon May 27 20:26:49 2002

Well, another work week, another round of bashing away at Darwin-x86.

I joined the darwin-x86 mailing list and asked a question about getting 24-bit color video modes (remember once I had gotten into 24-bit color on the ATI, but it froze up right after?)  Well, there were no helpful replies at all.  Someone said I was lucky to have gotten THAT far.  :(

Equally worthless were the suggestions about my difficulties with compiling GNUstep.  The suggestion was "Try Linux".  THANKS FOR PLAYING, DOORKNOB!  *sigh*

But, our lead programmer had a suggestion for me.  He said I should go to Apple's CVS server and download THEIR version of GCC 3.  Well, I had to learn how to connect to a CVS server and download source, which was mightily painful, finally I figured it out thanks to hints on the Apple web site.  Right now I am downloading GCC3, it's FREAKING HUGE MAN!  But it contains everything I will need, including Objective C, and it has instructions on how to compile and build it under Darwin x86!  Whoo hoo!

So, if it ever finishes downloading, I'll compile it, and THEN get back to trying to compile GNUstep on Darwin.  From the looks of things, it seems like if I am able to do this, I will be the ONLY PERSON ON THE PLANET to have done so.

Pretty cool, huh?

Jeremy Reimer

Tue May 28 01:02:30 2002

FUCKING APPLE.

Their OWN CVS server.  With their OWN version of GCC.  With their OWN SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS for compiling for Darwin-x86.

And it craps out.  Compiles for about an HOUR, and then FUCKING CRAPS OUT.

USELESS!

I find it very annoying that I have to download and compile a compiler just so I can compile another compiler to compile the projects I wanted to compile in the first place!

I'm serious!  I need to download and compile GCC just so I can compile GNUStep in order to compile GNUstep apps.

*sigh*

Harbinger

Tue May 28 03:56:38 2002

Hooray for open source! :rolleyes:

:D ;)

Riso

Tue May 28 14:53:11 2002

Dont forget, its apple after all.
Harbinger

Tue May 28 15:18:09 2002

from Riso posted at 10:53 am on May 28, 2002

Dont forget, its apple after all.

Is that a reason, or a rationalization? ;)

Jeremy Reimer

Wed May 29 18:04:37 2002

UPDATE!!! POSTING FROM DARWIN-x86!!!

Well, I swapped motherboards in my workstation this morning, not for Darwin really, but to get built-in audio on Windows (I had no audio previously)  Little did I know that Windows XP would take offense to this new motherboard and BLUE SCREEN CRASH on boot!  The only XP CD I have is at home, so I can't fix it, and the Win2k CD is no help.

So, I decided I'd fuck around with Darwin again.  On a whim I put in a Ati Rage 128 to replace the old Rage Pro Turbo card... Darwin boots up, no problem with the new motherboard, no problem with the new video card.  Set to 24-bit color.  LO AND BEHOLD IT BOOTS!  Now I can run Dillo, some kind of Mozilla-based rowser thingy, and I'm posting here from DARWIN BABY!

Of course there are still problems.  XTERM won't run now in graphics mode.  I have no idea why, something to do with the color depth perhaps.  Fucking XTERM!  I'm not trying to launch the space shuttle here, I just want a command line!  Oh well, I'll keep fuxoring, the main thing is that I have 24-bit color and can use a browser, which rocks.

Neither GCC or GNUstep will compile, STILL.  Our lead programmer and Unix guru tried for an hour yesterday, manually editing the makefiles for GCC, but it still craps out.  Oh well, I still have something to play with.  

Later DOODS!

longmarch

Wed May 29 18:36:30 2002

Nice, I have a Rage 128 sitting around gathering dust.  Now all I need is a non-Via Intel chipset . . .
Harbinger

Wed May 29 19:29:02 2002

:evilgrin:
longmarch

Wed Jul 17 02:44:16 2002

JR:  Did you ever get any screenshots?  (Maybe I missed them.)
Jeremy Reimer

Wed Jul 17 02:48:19 2002

I did, but I haven't put them up yet.  Soon, baby.   I still haven't gotten GNUstep working though.  :(  
Bad Karma

Wed Jul 17 05:37:23 2002


Windows XP would take offense to this new motherboard and BLUE SCREEN CRASH on boot!

Not exactly.

You do understand why this happens, right?

I seem to remember a BF thread about it where PeterB et al. broke it down.

Harbinger

Wed Jul 17 13:56:07 2002

JR: Are you using GNUstep, or GNU/GNU/GNU/GNU/GNU/GNU/GNUstep?  ;)

Bad Karma: Your avatar looks suspiciously like Jeremy.  Are you guys twins? :confused: ;)

Riso

Wed Jul 17 14:45:31 2002


Windows XP would take offense to this new motherboard and BLUE SCREEN CRASH on boot!


Next time run like sysprep