[COFF] BSD 211 Help forum

[will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)]

So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when 
it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I 
can't get this or that working line?

As an example, I'm having some challenges with the networking in 211, 
right now. I finally (after on again off again attempts over 2 years) 
gotten both a vanilla 211BSD p195 system to be accessible via telnet on 
my local lan and am able to ping out to the internet, if I so choose, 
and Andru Luvisi's 211BSD p495 doing networking as well. Thanks to 
Andru's notes and Warner Losh's blog. In both cases, everything just 
"works"... well most things work :). In the 195 system, I don't seem to 
be able to get hostname set correctly:

Assuming NETWORKING system ...
sparks: bad value
add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1

Whereas on the 495 system, it sets fine...
Assuming NETWORKING system ...
add host sparks: gateway localhost
add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1

and on the 195 system, name resolution doesn't seem to function, whereas 
it does on the 495 system.

On neither of the systems do I know how to display the routes (no 
netstat and route doesn't seem to have a display mode).

Anyhow, I'm not really asking the question here (feel free to answer it 
though, if you feel so inclined), but it's the kind of question that I 
sit on not knowing where to ask it. I know that I often tread the 
knife's edge between interesting and annoying on some of my questions in 
TUHS and SIMH because of my lack of knowledge around these systems, but 
I really enjoy working in them when they work and have found that 
everything I learn interacting with these ancient systems significantly 
enhances my skills in the modern realm at least with regards to 
FreeBSD/Linux and Mac. Whereas, on the other hand, most of what I know 
about the modern systems doesn't really have an easily accessible analog 
in ancient unix. Take the question above, to view the route table in 
freebsd - it's just netstat -r, easypeasy, what the heck it might be in 
211bsd is a complete mystery. Grepping the manual turns up nothing that 
I recognize, which is more often the case than I'd like to admit.

The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often arise 
for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to throw 
these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions?

Regards,

Will

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