Friday 3 September 2010

LAP - Unfinished Business

Various things that have occurred to me as I have gone along with this build. Some, I have been able to incorporate in the instructions (such as unpacking and compiling in ram), and others have just appeared to be too formidable. I am going to list the outstanding stuff here, as a kind of bookmark of things I have yet to figure out how to do.

Firstly, the kernel source folder is left on the system as a compressed folder. It needs to be uncompressed to allow the nvidia drivers to be installed. This is a pain. It would be much better if we could just mount the archive file straight to the file system with out unpacking it.

Apparently, this is possible. I apparently need the packages, FUSE, libarchive, and archivemount. Helpfully, this is not described as bug free.

I also have to test out the beta version of e-uae which is the latest version.

I left most of the kernel options at the default settings when I configured it. It works fine, but it is probably somewhat bloated. I should really read the guidance on configuring the kernel in more detail so I can strip out the unnecessary stuff.

I documented the problems I had getting the system to boot, and I explained the reason I shifted to Grub 0.97. I should really try to get the newer version to work.

Since I am talking about booting issues, I would like to try to get the system to boot from an [init]ial [r]am[d]isk. I think this would allow me to boot the drive with reference to its label rather than having to second guess what device name will be assigned to it on boot. This would allow me to move from machine to machine much more easily.

As far as the Amiga is concerned, it should be possible to install a newer version of the operating system. The next version up from Workbench 3.1 is Amiga OS 3.5. It comes on CD. We can mount the CD ISO image straight to the Linux filesystem by running:

mkdir /media/ISOmount -t iso9660 -o loop [3.5 OS cd].iso /media/ISO

You can then just mount that folder as hd2: in the same way as Shared:.

I would also like to explore some other Amiga software, such as WHDLoad, which allows you to load game disks on to the virtual hard disk. Very useful for multi-disk games.

Openbox has a couple of configuration packages which are referenced in the menu that I have setup. I would like to have those installed.

I can only connect to a WEP enabled network, which is not as secure as a WPA network. I need to work out how the fuck to install and run the wpa_supplicant package. I mean seriously, I have read the BLFS and CBLFS instructions, the Arch and Gentoo guidance, and I still have no fucking clue what I am supposed to be doing.

xterm is pretty crap when compared to the terminals which come with a full Desktop Environment such as Gnome or KDE. I am thinking of replacing it with another terminal such as aterm or eterm.

I am also thinking of installing a simple graphical browser for the linux environment. Dillo is an option, but apparently it does not work with the version of GTK that I have installed. Alternatively the package Links, instead of Lynx, can be setup to work in X as well as the console. I am also tempted to try Firefox, but that may be silly to get a basic browser as it is sure to come with a shitload of dependencies.

The other thing I am aware of is that I have only set up the root user. This is useful because it means I do not trip up over permissions bullshit. On the other hand, it is a security risk. I would not have set this up in this manner to use as a full time machine. If I decide to add further packages, or even install the system to a HDD, then I will want to set up a normal user account to use on a day to day basis.

Finally, I want to see if I can install emulators for other systems such as Gamecube, N64, Playstation, and the PS2.

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