vesta newcomer... and a few questions

Hello all,

I've been watching this mailing list for a couple of months.

Finally i've got VSTa 1.3.2 (fetched from ftp.ibp.fr, a VSTa mirror
ftp in France) running on my home PC (a 486DX2/66 with 16Mb RAM,
Farenheight 1280 S3 graphic, 800Mb disks on IDE and SCSI). It is
mostly a Linux box (at home, and i'm emailing from work).

Thanks to all for a runnable VSTa.

Actually, i'm mostly cross compiling: using Linux as a development
environment (with Emacs -yes I like the full GNU emacs with all its
features and whistles).

The good news:

1) I successfully build a cross assembler and cross linker with GNU
binutils-2.5.1 (which has a vsta target already) using linux as host
and vsta as target. (binutils 2.5.2 is out now, i didn't try it
yet). I hacked a little to add a vsta directory in linux
/usr/lib/gcc-lib and can crosscompile using gcc -b vsta. I didn't
recompile gcc (i'm using a 2.6.0p1 on linux).

2) my PC has a French keyboard (ie AZERTY instead of QWERTY). I half
succeeded to patch vsta/srv/mach/con2/isr.c (making a new cons boot
server). [[this is the main reason for cross-developpment: I really
hate to have a keyboard mapping which is not what my keys engraving
(ie the symbol painted on the real world plastic keys!) are. And very
useful characters such as |<>[]{} have different mapping on French
keyboards.]]

I'm desperately lacking of documentations!! My very partial
understanding is from reading some source files (and the very few vsta
man pages). I did read a year ago some Plan9 introductory papers and
the vsta readme file but i lack a clear picture of the whole thing.

So, here are the bad news and the questions:

0) i can't afford having a PC devoted to VSTa. My PC is mostly a Linux
box, and will remain mostly Linux. Most of my disk partitions are for
Linux. I reserved 50Mb for VSTa (and have space for 90Mb more). Since
i like the Linux environment i use it to cross-develop (source is
Linux, target is Vsta). I might buy another disk in a few months if needed.

1) I didn't succeed to patch vsta/srv/mach/con2/isr.c using the AltGr
key - its keycode is 100 (according to Linux kbd-0.89 sources and
keymaps files). AltGr is needed on french keyboard because the tilde ~
is AltrGR+eacute, where eacute is the unshifted 2 key (digits are
shifted). Many useful chars such as # { | \ are obtained by AltGr-ing
a key (ie press AltGr, press another key, release this Key, release
AltGr). I guess that AltGr key send an e0 extend keycode but i'm not
sure. If someone patched the cons2 server for nonamerican keyboards i
would be pleased to know about it.

2) printf and syslog(LOG_INFO, ..) didn't work. I suppose that my cons
is the first server, and can't printf or syslog since no server can
recieve it (i guess that both of them send messages to a server,
probably cons). How can i debug the cons server? How can i display
IsoLatin1 chars? (ie eacute, etc).

3) How can i use the dbg debugger?

4) It is really annoying that VSTa needs DOS to boot. (i didn't have
DOS on my PC before but had to install DOS for VSTA -what a pity!). I
suppose that the bfs (boot file system) is intended to abolish this
major inconvenience. However, according to bfs.h comments it seems
that bfs moves its files sometimes. But i expect a loader to load
files from a fixed place. How would VSTa boot without DOS under bfs?
I suppose that etc/inittab and etc/fstab would also go into BFs (with
the boot/ subdir of course). Since BFS has no directories, what are
the name conventions? I really wish a VSTA boot disk (ie a 1.44Mb
floppy image). Please, don't assume all people have DOS!!

5) i didn't succeed in creating a user for me -i'm logging in as
vandys. How do i create a user basile having nearly superuser power?

6) i think somebody wrote a VSTA fileserver for the Linux ext2
filesystem? Is this thing out?

7) what exactly is a mount under VSTa? (and what is the /env filesystem?).

8) what is a file under vsta, and a directory? Can a file be both an
ordinary file (a la Posix, ie a stream of bytes) and a directory? I
might write a filesystem whose files have forks (a la
Macintosh). Basically, each file (or inode) would be a dictionnary (ie
like a directory): keys would be IsoLatin1 strings, and values would
be either byte blocks or pointer to another inode. Is this doable?

9) how do I add swap space to VSTa? Preferably, i would either swap to
a partition (thus sharing a swap partition with Linux) or to a file
(eg in a DOS or Bfs or VestaFS filesystem). How can i find out the remaining
free (or used) memory (either physical or virtual) ?

10) what are the VestaFS specifics. How do i find the remaining
available place on a VestaFS filesystem (i succeeded in creating one,
and mounting it thru etc/fstab). How do i run the vestafs fsck?

Thanks for reading (and sorry for my english).

--
Basile STARYNKEVITCH   ----  Commissariat a l Energie Atomique
DRN/DMT/SERMA * C.E. Saclay bat.470 * 91191 GIF/YVETTE CEDEX * France
fax: (33) 1- 69.08.23.81;    phone: (33) 1- 69.08.40.66
email: basile@soleil.serma.cea.fr;  homephone: (33) 1- 46.65.45.53
N.B. Any opinions expressed here are solely mine, and not of my organization.
N.B. Les opinions exprimees ici me sont personnelles et n engagent pas le CEA.
Please cite a small part of my mail in all answers
Veuillez citer une petite partie de mon courrier dans vos reponses
VSTA-ling and Linux-ing at home only!