gnu screen

[rjtucke]

Dear Gentle List Patrons,

A little bit of research has uncovered the reason that my virtual
terminals don't work: there aren't any! The discussions I've seen
suggest using gnu screen instead. <grumble, grumble> OK, so I go to
the packages list... and see nothing. dtach is only a partial
implementation... what gives? And while I thought I was fairly 'search
engine-savvy', I can't seem to find much (read: any) discussion on
this topic. Is it just me, or do any other OpenBSD users like to use
the X-less CLI?

Also, with the exception of the install instructions, I have yet to
find _any_ halfway-authoritative documentation specific to
OpenBSD/PPC. Sure, there are the device manpages, and a couple of blog
entries of other iBook owners, but other than this list, I feel
completely alone in the void...

Could somebody please clue me in here? Is the OBSD/PPC community
hiding from google? Am I a clueless n00b?

With infinite apologies if the latter is applicable,

rjtucke

[Marco Peereboom]

pkg_add screen-4.0.3p1

or

pkg_add tmux

Sent from powerbook 17"

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 05:01:30PM -0700, Ross Tucker wrote:

> Dear Gentle List Patrons,
>
> A little bit of research has uncovered the reason that my virtual
> terminals don't work: there aren't any! The discussions I've seen
> suggest using gnu screen instead. <grumble, grumble> OK, so I go to
> the packages list... and see nothing. dtach is only a partial
> implementation... what gives? And while I thought I was fairly 'search
> engine-savvy', I can't seem to find much (read: any) discussion on
> this topic. Is it just me, or do any other OpenBSD users like to use
> the X-less CLI?
>
> Also, with the exception of the install instructions, I have yet to
> find _any_ halfway-authoritative documentation specific to
> OpenBSD/PPC. Sure, there are the device manpages, and a couple of blog
> entries of other iBook owners, but other than this list, I feel
> completely alone in the void...
>
> Could somebody please clue me in here? Is the OBSD/PPC community
> hiding from google? Am I a clueless n00b?
>
> With infinite apologies if the latter is applicable,
>
> rjtucke

[Jeff Quast-2]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:01:30 -0700, "Ross Tucker" <rjtucke@...>

wrote:

> Dear Gentle List Patrons,

>

> A little bit of research has uncovered the reason that my virtual

> terminals don't work: there aren't any! The discussions I've seen

> suggest using gnu screen instead. <grumble, grumble> OK, so I go to

> the packages list... and see nothing. dtach is only a partial

> implementation... what gives? And while I thought I was fairly 'search

> engine-savvy', I can't seem to find much (read: any) discussion on

> this topic. Is it just me, or do any other OpenBSD users like to use

> the X-less CLI?



Unlike the dos-born i386 architecture, macppc (and sparc's, etc.) are

designed to be in a graphic environment. your machine was built to run a

graphical OS. No effort was put into it to support a console interface, and

perform very poorly. If you don't like that, you shouldn't be using it for

that purpose.



A simple window manager and xterm will perform much better on your macppc

than the console will (especially when scrolling!)



(I also think dtach is pretty fantastic...)



> Also, with the exception of the install instructions, I have yet to

> find _any_ halfway-authoritative documentation specific to

> OpenBSD/PPC. Sure, there are the device manpages, and a couple of blog

> entries of other iBook owners, but other than this list, I feel

> completely alone in the void...



I think the INSTALL doc goes above and beyond helping users become familiar

with openfirmware and the boot process. The architecture-specific X11

README[1] on your system covers X settings such as the apple key and using

a one button mouse.



Outside of some peculiarities like text console, keyboard maps, boot

process, and X windows settings, everything else is, as it should be, the

same for any other architecture. See for instance netbsd's ppc faq[2],

which covers very little else.



Minimalist window managers directed at switching, tiling, resizing and

maximizing terminals by keyboard shortcuts have the feeling of virtual

consoles, and are far more flexible.  Browse around, I think you can find a

great compromise with a little time (see ratpoison, xmonad, evilwm, ion...)



I find the wsfb driver to be very fast and reliable, and since you would

only use xterm, 8bpp should not be a problem for you at all, so give it a

try.



1.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/xenocara/distrib/notes/README.macppc



2. http://www.netbsd.org/ports/macppc/faq.html

[Marco Trillo-3]

Hi,

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 4:59 PM, dingo <dingo@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:01:30 -0700, "Ross Tucker" <rjtucke@...>
> wrote:
>> A little bit of research has uncovered the reason that my virtual
>> terminals don't work: there aren't any! The discussions I've seen
>> suggest using gnu screen instead. <grumble, grumble> OK, so I go to
>> the packages list... and see nothing. dtach is only a partial
>> implementation... what gives? And while I thought I was fairly 'search
>> engine-savvy', I can't seem to find much (read: any) discussion on
>> this topic. Is it just me, or do any other OpenBSD users like to use
>> the X-less CLI?
>
> Unlike the dos-born i386 architecture, macppc (and sparc's, etc.) are
> designed to be in a graphic environment. your machine was built to run a
> graphical OS. No effort was put into it to support a console interface, and
> perform very poorly. If you don't like that, you shouldn't be using it for
> that purpose.

It will perform poorly using an unaccelerated framebuffer for the
console; but in some machines it is possible to use hardware
acceleration to speed at least scrolling. NetBSD has got recently some
drivers for this, such as "r128fb" (for ATI Rage 128) or "chipsfb"
(for a chip used on some old-world PowerBooks) .

The rasops code also supports a "shadow framebuffer" mode which should
speed up scrolling a bit, at the cost of more memory consumption.

Regards,
Marco