Re: NetBSD 7.0 on Mac LC III

Hi,

> I'm trying to optimize NetBSD 7.0 on a Mac LC III.  The LC III has 36 
> MB memory and no FPU.  NetBSD 7.0 (everything except for X) was 
> installed successfully on an external SCSI disk using the traditional 
> method.

Good to know we still have some m68030s out there!

> 1) It takes about 2-3 days to compile a new kernel.  Whether using the 
> default or a customized kernel, the system takes about 20 minutes to run 
> through all of its rc scripts during boot, even though almost everything 
> is disabled in /etc/rc.conf.  I see in /var/run/rc.log that many 
> scripts are run; is there any automatic way to create a single script 
> with just the things that I need based on the settings in 
> /etc/rc.conf?  I could create such a script manually, but I don't want 
> to miss anything important.

It'd be interesting to log every thing that the startup scripts do, then 
consolidate it. It'd be even more interesting to see if there's some way 
to automate a run, consolidate, then run the consolidated script until a 
change is detected. I bet that'd be useful for other low resource / 
embedded systems.

> 2) When configuring a new kernel, is it sufficient to comment out entries, e.g.:
> ...
> #options        M68040
> options        M68030
> #options        M68020
> ...
>
> Or should I use "no options ..." instead?...
> no options        M68040
> options        M68030
> no options        M68020
> ...

I comment out if I'm editing the kernel configuration file itself, and use 
"no options" if I'm including another file.

> 3) Are the FPSP and FPU_EMULATE options needed for a 68030?

FPSP is for the m68040 because there are instructions it has to emulate 
even with an FPU. But you definitely do need FPU_EMULATE because you don't 
have an FPU unless you compile everything with -msoft-float.

> 4) Some commands (such as "ps aux") take a long time (minutes) to run.  
> Is that normal?  Here's the output from "ps aux" (I'm currently 
> compiling a kernel and left those lines out):
>
> USER      PID %CPU %MEM  VSZ  RSS TTY  STAT STARTED    TIME COMMAND
> root        0  0.0 78.1    0 28776 ?    DKl  Tue07AM 34:51.88 [system]
> root        1  0.0  2.3  3616  820 ?    Is  Tue07AM  0:02.24 init
> root      727  0.0  2.8  6060  1008 ?    Ss  Tue07AM  0:19.48 /usr/sbin/syslogd -s
> root     1835  0.0  2.2  3668  804 ?    Is  Tue08AM  0:01.00 /usr/sbin/inetd -l
> root     1966  0.0  2.9  3580  1052 ?    Is  Tue08AM  0:23.48 /usr/sbin/cron

Well, "normal" is a word open to interpretation. It illustrates that there 
are parts of NetBSD which may have gotten a little more resource hungry 
than usual. Older, more modest computers are often useful for finding 
performance bottlenecks.

> Is it normal for the "[system]" RSS to be what appears to be the amount 
> of available memory?

That's a lot for a system with 36 megs of memory... I'll have to check 
what mine is on my smallest memory system, which is a VAXstation VLC with 
24 megs of memory...

> 5) Several years ago I used NetBSD 1.4 on an SE/30, and I don't remember 
> it being as slow.  Unfortunately, SE/30s seem to self-destruct over 
> time, and I no longer have one available for testing.  Would it be 
> better to just use NetBSD 1.x on the LC III?  My main reason for 
> wanting to use 7.0 was to have a more modern gcc and related tools.

SE/30s not only need to have their motherboard recapped, but often work 
needs to be done on the power supply boards, too, to keep them happy.

> 6) Are there any plans to support HFS filesystems in addition to HFS+?  
> To more easily move files to NetBSD, I had to install Mac OS 8.1 just so 
> I could create an HFS+ volume.  (I boot into NetBSD from Mac OS 7.6.1.) 
> thanks for any information

I don't know if anyone's working on that, but for now you can use 
pkgsrc/sysutils/hfsutils. It's a little clunky, but you can use it to move 
files back and forth.

If you like, we can try out a size-optimized, m68030 optimized compile of 
NetBSD 7. Instead of compiling on an m68030 machine, though, I could 
compile it on a faster machine, if you'd like to try it.

John