RE: please lower the barrier for novice users, up-to-date instructions with screenshots

> I runned the kernel on  hardware and in qemu on debian/etch-amd64 and
> debian/etch-ia32
> qemu-system-x86_64   /dev/sda    (and then I select pistachio)
> 
Which target CPU did you use? I'd suggest using P2/P3 (and not P4) for qemu,
especially if you enable performance counters or other CPU-dependent stuff.

 
> I get rolling characters 
> [...]
> I need the up-to-date instructions 

Did you read http://l4ka.org/projects/pistachio/amd64/ ?
Rolling characters mean the kernel is actually running -- in the default
(debug) config, L4 prints rolling characters at the timer interrupt and on
other events. 

> Launching kernel...
> L4Ka::Pistachio - built ........
> ......

Did you compile L4 with screen or serial port as default debug device? You
have to configure that separately for user (e.g., configure
--without-comport) and kernel configuration (in the cml2 menu). Which
compiler did you use? Did you read the download page before downloading the
source code (http://l4ka.org/projects/pistachio/download.php) ? It
references a separate "Build Status" page listing the results of compiling
L4 and running l4test under qemu. You can see that some newer compilers
don't work presently.

> http://l4ka.org/download/pistachio/pistachio-0.4.tar.bz2
> is not even compilable. (please remove that or put into archive not to
> confuse the users.)

The website says "Warning! The pre-packaged source distributions are
outdated." in huge letters and the versions show the (ancient) release date.
I consider that appropriate.

> Why did you remove support for the opteron CPUs  and few others in the
> head version in mercurial?
 
We didn't drop support for Opteron. It's still in the HG version (and has
even been extended to EM64T).


--
Jan Stoess
System Architecture Group
University of Karlsruhe
Phone: +49 (721) 608-4056
Fax: +49 (721) 608-7664
eMail: [email protected]