[buug] FreeBSD 4.5 problems

[f.johan.beisser]

On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Robert Dorman wrote:

> I am a relative newbie to UNIX systems.  I have installed FreeBSD 4.5 on my
> Dell Dimension L800r, separate internal 30GB disk.  Windows XP and Me are
> on a different HD.
>
> 1) After installation, including XFree86 (which subsequently wouldn't load,
> but that's another issue I will deal with later), and rebooting, and
> logging in as root, I repeatedly get the on-screen message:

FreeBSD and X can be a bit of a pain in the ass. it doesn't always play
nice, sadly. generally if you use XFree86 4.2.0 or newer things can "Just
Work".

> "getty [2**]: login tty /dev/console operation not supported by device"
> where ** keeps incrementing with each line.  After awhile I get:
> "init: getty repeating too quickly on port /dev/console, sleeping 30 sec."
> then the first line mentioned starts repeating again.  It interrupts
> anything else I try to do, like editing a file.  (I have a 30 sec. time
> window to work before the damn thing wakes up again!)

don't log in as root. root tends to get all your console output to the
screen.

it sounds like you have something in /etc/tty messed up or something
mislinked. what does the console line in that file say?

your next thing to check would be the fbtab. assuming all of this is just
hunky-dory, you may want to check the message archives for that problem.
specifically the freebsd-questions one at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com.
it's rare that you'll see a problem that someone else hasn't encountered.

> Even switching to a different console using ,<ctrl>D or <alt>F2, F3, or F4
> and re-logging in still produced the problem.  I let this go on for 24
> hours once before shutting everything down.  Back when I was smarter (a
> couple of years ago) I had this same problem and fixed it on a different
> computer.  Now I forgot how I did it!  I think it had to do with a
> configuration file and the overly large number of terminal logins permitted
> in it.

this is probably the /etc/tty or /etc/fbtab file.

> 2) I have wireless DSL, which works just fine with Windows XP and
> Me.  Sometimes I get over 1000kbps.  I uses and Orinoco PCI card plugged
> into an adapter that plugs into my USB port.  Now Orinoco supposedly has
> Linux drivers, but I have no idea how to get this working with
> FreeBSD.  The drivers might only be for the PCI card hardware version
> rather than the USB version.

all of the BSDs have support for the various wireless cards. most of this
was written by Bill Paul. please read the man pages. the interface can be
an0 (in the case of aeronet from cisco) or wi0 (orinoco/lucent). read
ancontrol(8) and wicontrol(8) for details on how to make things work.


-------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+
  http://caustic.org/~jan                      jan at caustic.org
    "John Ashcroft is really just the reanimated corpse
         of J. Edgar Hoover." -- Tim Triche