From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Sat,  5 Aug 1995 02:33:38 -0400
From: rob@plan9.att.com rob@plan9.att.com
Subject: 387 required? *and* Memory errors? Mothra sucks?
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 129303ae-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19950805063338.9c42QCLfa8vvGYCxPqzD8_ZOoXzIzNt7WGCkyscron0@z>

The system will run fine without a 387 until you need a floating point instruction
to be executed.  The kernel and most utilities do not use floating point.

The "no physical memory" messages can be removed by turning on swapping.
Choose a swap partition and point swap at it; see swap(8). It is not enabled by
default because the system cannot safely identify a partition to use; you must
set one up.  The announcement about how much swap space reflects the size
of an internal data structure.

A `urlfs' would be folly, because URLs are not a real name space and the semantics
are utterly unmanageable.  The argument is analogous to that which prevented
us from putting network names in the file name space.  As for mothra, the interface
may be lame but I wonder why you think that, given that you have not got the CD
and therefore probably haven't seen it.  Response from outsiders who have seen
it is that its interface is an improvement.  Its bugs, as said in the manual, are
because it is a very new program.  New releases will likely appear on the net.
I disagree with your assessment of the program - it's a perfectly fine interface
to a perfectly awful network.  It's not a marvel, but it does its job.

-rob