[rescue] Silly NetBSD question

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, November 19, 2001 at 12:56:08 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Silly NetBSD question
>
> I did set TERM correctly.  It has been suggested to me that I'm an idiot for
> trying to use minicom for serial console work, and that I should use C-Kermit
> instead.  I installed C-Kermit, now I just have to figure out how to use it
> for a terminal emulator.  

Hmmm....  C-Kermit is not a terminal emulator -- it's just a
communications program.

If you're really using C-Kermit that suggests you're using some other
kind of terminal or terminal emulator.  Xterm?  What platform?

The idea behind the TERM variable is to tell the applications on the
target host exactly what kind of terminal you're using so that they can
figure out what keys you are hitting and what codes to send to it to
move the cursor about and such.  If you're using a PC, Mac, or whatever,
or some kind of custom video console on a PC-Unix or even a Sun console
etc., or X11, etc., then you're using a terminal emulator and you need
to either specify a terminal type explicitly designed for the emulator
(eg. "xterm"), or figure out what real terminal your emulator emulates
best and use the type name for the real terminal (eg. "vt220").

When you're using a Unix-like system as the communications program host
then the only time this doesn't apply is when you're also using a
program like "screen" which effectivley proxy your terminal type (screen
does this because it can be disconnected and re-attached to another
different kind of terminal so inside of its sessions you always use the
special terminal type "screen", which describes the internal emulator
screen implements).

> Hmm.  I thought it might be fun to have on hand, and it wouldn't be exposed to 
> the external internet.  But, perhaps I'll just use NetBSD now that I've learned
> a bit about how to use it.

You'll have lots of headaches trying to install stuff on SunOS-4, even
once you get gcc working on it.  SunOS-4 is at least a decade old now,
and much of the user-land that comes with it is far older code.

There's not really very much "fun" about SunOS-4.  It installs nice and
easy, it's quite small (comparatively), and it has a very good VM (a bit
faster than all but NetBSD-current), and its native C compiler generates
quite good code, but other than that it's buggy as can be, even after
you install all the official and unofficial patches and replace dozens
of standard system utilities with their modern-day equivalents.

SunOS-4 is also a lot harder to admin, generally speaking, than NetBSD,
though generally speaking they're somewhat similar (much closer in how
you do things than say RH-Linux and *BSD).  There's not even a nice
add-on software management system like pkgsrc for it.  You've got to
manually port and install everything, and lots of stuff won't build at
all on native SunOS-4 (which is why I mention gcc).

There aren't even enough people running SunOS-4 any more that having
such a system around for testing the software one might develop isn't
worthwhile.  I turned off my last SunOS-4 machine almost four years ago!
(well actually I had a customer's old machine "running" SunOS-4 until a
couple of years ago when I finally decided they would never ever again
need anything restored from it).

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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