Messages

1

OpenBSD / A Couple Of Irritating Problems

« on: March 28, 2006, 06:02:03 pm »

Adam, check the features in the latest current, there is a sysctl.conf switch to suspend on lid close - note says that it doesn't wake it up when it opens though.

the setting you are looking for is machdep.lidsuspend=1

(http://www.openbsd.org/plus.html)

I like to leave this turned off myself since I leave my Z running for long periods of time compiling stuff and use an ssh connection whilst it's doing this. Seems to generate a lot less heat whilst the screen is off

- Andy
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Andy,

I've been running the latest with suspend on lid close for two or three weeks now. I'm still finding that the battery is completely drained when not used for a few days; I don't find this problem if I boot back into Linux. Barry hinted that some of the OpenBSD developers might have experienced a similar problem. I'm hoping something is found by the time 3.9 is officially released. If not, I'll just have to remember to charge up more often!

2

OpenBSD / A Couple Of Irritating Problems

« on: December 10, 2005, 06:55:03 pm »

I can happily report that the clock problems have gone away  

On the downside, the battery is still an issue. "apm" never seems to think that the battery drops below 90% or so, but this sometimes rises back to 100% even though it hasn't been recharged. I'm sure I don't remember this problem with the original OS but I'm still considering buying a new battery just in case it's broken.

The power button now seems to suspend the Zaurus - I don't remember it working before (I had to do apm -z or zzz) so this is a nice improvement. If only it would suspend when I close the lid...!

3

OpenBSD / A Couple Of Irritating Problems

« on: December 03, 2005, 05:56:46 pm »

Thanks as always, Barry. I've just upgraded to the current snapshots.

At first I thought that the battery issue might be down to buttons being pressed while the Zaurus was being thrown around in my laptop bag, but inconsistent readings from apm probably means it has something to do with that instead.

I'll keep an eye on things and report back in a few days.

4

OpenBSD / A Couple Of Irritating Problems

« on: November 30, 2005, 07:42:58 am »

Very often when I put my Zaurus to sleep (with zzz) the clock appears to stop. I've seen that people have reported this before - was there any solution? It's a problem when you're trying to use the Z for storing your upcoming calendar events and it's way out.

I've also noticed that the battery has a habit of suddenly being completely drained - is this a known issue, or do I just have a bad battery?

Thanks in advance,
Adam

5

OpenBSD / 3.8 First Impressions

« on: November 02, 2005, 06:16:34 pm »

I've been itching to put a "real" installation of unix on my C3000 for some time now. The default Sharp Linux was lacking in the development tools I wanted (gcc, python...) and installing them was such a major pain. As a Linux user of many years, I would probably have gone for pdaXrom, if it had decent C3000 support. But it doesn't, so here I am with OpenBSD.

I did an initial install on my desktop machine with a 3.8 pre-release a few weeks ago to be sure I would be happy with the OS, and to aquaint myself with it. Apart from an unfamiliar installation process and X's refusal to drive my monitor at 1600x1200 I have to say it was painless. I love the simple way of installing third party packages which takes me back to my early days of learning unix 15 years ago. In fact, some of the packages haven't been updated since around then   but they're still good enough for me!

Installing on the Zaurus was much more difficult. My unfamiliarity with how BSD handles it's disks was a big problem and took me a couple of hours to figure out what I was doing wrong (I calculated the sector offsets and sizes incorrectly). Once I had it booting to the installer, it then took me a while to figure out how to get the base packages onto the 3000. My hope was that I could mount the SD card... alas no. My solution was to setup my wifi card and ftp the files to the local disk. This was quite painless, but luckily I had an idea what I was doing before starting.

Once running, the positives definately outweigh the negatives:

+ It's a real unix with all the tools I expect!
+ gcc available by default
+ Lots of other packages ready to go

- Frambuffer console sometimes corrupt (solution: use X  )
- Frozen once when resuming from a suspend.
- Doesn't seem to suspend if I close the lid. (apm -z or zzz)
- I didn't enable enough swap to compile large programs esp with -O2 flag. I guess I'll be adding a swap file.
- SD card doesn't seem to be recognised yet.
- HDD light is permanently lit. (very minor problem)

Finally, thanks to everyone who has been posting here, giving me the confidence to risk bricking my 3000 (especially barryg).