Recent posts

[How to speak UNIX]

#61

Software / Nextanswer 1088 How to speak U...

Last post by ptek - Sep 21, 2025, 02:59 PM

1088 tips and techniques (Bulletin 92 Spring)
How to speak UNIX

When Technical Support Hotline subscribers contact NeXTedge Technical Support by phone, we need to communicate a lot of information to you, and you need your questions answered as quickly as possible. During a typical call, it's easy to spend a great deal of time communicating words like fstab, exportfs, and fsck. To circumvent the problem of communicating UNIX jargon--such as, special characters, keys, file names, and commands--pronunciation conventions have developed. This article lists many of the most frequently used terms and procedures you're likely to hear on a call to support.

• When specifying a pathname, we don't pronounce the slashes between the pathname components. For example, /usr/template/client/etc is pronounced ``user template client etcetera.''
• Because case is significant, we typically indicate when a character in a file name is uppercase.

• When entering a long file name in a shell, it isn't usually necessary to type every character in the name. You can use the shell's file-expansion capability. For example, suppose you need to type /usr/template/client/etc/netinfo. In the shell, all you need to type is:
  
  /u<Esc>/te<Esc>/c<Esc>/e<Esc>/neti<Esc>The shell completes each file name when you press Esc (emacs edit mode users need to press Esc twice).

• We generally don't specify spaces for command arguments. For example, we pronounce ls-lg as ``l s dash l g.''

Table 1 lists common conventions for pronunciation. Your familiarity with these conventions will allow us to help you more quickly.
Table 2 illustrates the conventions for telling you how to perform procedures.
table 1: characters, file names, and commands
 
character pronunciation
/ slash
! bang
# pound
| pipe
. dot or period
* star, asterisk, or wildcard
~ tilde or twiddle
- dash
$ dollar
& ampersand
file name pronunciation
/etc et-see, E-T-C, or etcetera
/etc/passwd password
/etc/exports exports
/etc/fstab F-S tab
/etc/hosts hosts
/etc/hostconfig host config
/usr user
/usr/adm user A-D-M
/usr/adm/lpd-errs user A-D-M L-P-D errors
/tmp temp
/dev dev
/tmp temp
/dev dev
command pronunciation
cat cat
exportfs export F-S
fsck fisk or F-S-C-K
ifconfig I-F config or ifconfig
ls list or L-S
ls -lag L-S dash L-A-G
niutil N-I U-til
nidump N-I dump
ping ping
su sue or S-U
sync sink

 table 2: how to perform procedures
 
Pull up a console.
Choose Console from the Workspace Tools menu.

Run rc in the background.
In single-user mode, type /bin/sh /etc/rc & at the ``#'' prompt.

R-login into the machine name.
In a Terminal window, type rlogin name.

Type Command-tilde.
Hold down the Command key on the right side of the keyboard and then press the tilde key (don't press the Shift key--you're actually using the backquote key) in the upper-left corner of the numeric keypad.

Type Command-Command-tilde.
Hold down both Command keys and then press the tilde key (backquote key).

Type Command-Alt-star.
Hold down the Command and Alternate keys on the left of the keyboard and then press the asterisk key in the upper right corner of the numeric keypad.

Halt the machine.
As root, type the UNIX command halt in a Terminal window.

List what file systems are mounted.
Type the command df or mount in a Terminal window.

Boot the machine single user.
Type bsd -s in the ROM monitor window.

#62

Virtualization / Re: Emulators with BlueSCSI-co...

Last post by kokomuck - Sep 21, 2025, 12:22 PM

Brilliant!

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will have a look how to best emulate NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP on white hardware. I am trying to build a system with real hardware and BlueSCSI, so it might be handy if I could swap hard drive images without any hassle.

Thanks again,
Kokomuck

#63

Virtualization / Re: Emulators with BlueSCSI-co...

Last post by Protocol 7 - Sep 21, 2025, 09:28 AM

I haven't tested this but in theory a SCSI image should mount in any compatible system. I've mounted a raw SCSI image of a IRIX disk in MAME just fine.

86Box should work fine for NeXT as you can configure it with a compatible SCSI adapter. I love it for PC emulation. The range of customisation puts it way ahead of QEMU or VirtualBox.

For 68k Mac, MAME has SCSI support and I think QEMU does too. QEMU's PPC emulation uses IDE. There's another PPC Mac emu called DingusPPC that I haven't looked at yet.

#64

Virtualization / Emulators with BlueSCSI-compat...

Last post by kokomuck - Sep 21, 2025, 06:32 AM

Hiya,

One of the features of the fantastic Previous is that the hard drive images are compatible with BlueSCSI.

That means that I can use the same image without any extra hassle with Previous or with BlueSCSI in my NeXTcube.

Do other emulators for other platforms (e.g. for Intel) offer the same functionality? Such as 86box, VirtualBox, qemu or others?

And, NeXT-unrelated, even emulators for other operating systems, such as Mac OS or Mac OS X?

Thanks for your help!

All the best,
Kokomuck

#65

Virtualization / Re: Installing Mac OS X Server...

Last post by marvin - Sep 20, 2025, 07:06 PM

Back in 2006 I installed and ran OpenStep 4.2 in Qemu by starting from this post:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061017132248/http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=201

Several patches were required for Qemu 0.8.1 and 0.8.2 and my notes tell my about the following compile line on some 2006 SuSE Linux environment.

Code Select Expand

./configure --disable-gcc-check --cc=gcc344 --host-cc=gcc344 --prefix=/usr/local/qemu-openstep
Have tried today to compile the patched sources on modern Linux and could, of course, not compile the code any more.

According to my project's README, the image was started with

Code Select Expand

/usr/local/qemu-openstep/bin/qemu -m 128 -soundhw sb16 -hda os42p4.img -boot c -net nic -net user
The installed image had this features:

OS 42 Patchlevel 4
+ Developer
+ BusMouse
+ Graphics 800x600 2bit
+ Sound
+ Networking

Sorry for the off-topic.

#66

Software / Re: Window Maker Live 12.12

Last post by jeffburg - Sep 20, 2025, 02:53 PM

As a non-linux user, I am happy to provide uninformed opinions 🥴

#67

Virtualization / Re: Installing Mac OS X Server...

Last post by jeffburg - Sep 20, 2025, 02:47 PM

When I do research online, it seems QEMU does not offer a compatible SCSI or IDE controller for OS4.2 or NS3.3. I would love to be proven wrong. I have not tried myself.

#68

Software / Re: Window Maker Live 12.12

Last post by wmlive - Sep 20, 2025, 10:47 AM

Yeah, I think it's pretty optional because it's a niche use case. But I mention it because in normal debian it works out of the box. It appears that its related to this package

https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/qemu-guest-agent

The qemu-guest-agent package is usually always included with any wmlive release and doesn't appear to provide any kind of copy/paste functionality between guest and host.

Further investigation shows that another package named spice-vdagent provides this missing functionality when installed within the guest:

Code Select Expand

# apt-get -m -t bookworm-backports install spice-vdagent
To make it actually work after installation, it is required to add a channel in the host's virtmanger to the guest VM as follows:


If com.redhat.spice.0 is already in use, just increment its number to com.redhat.spice.1 to use it with qemu-vdagent. Maybe an equivalent configuration needs to be performed in the UTM qemu frontend?

While it seems possible to paste from host to guest by simply choosing a listing entry in the parcellite clipboard application, the usual keyboard combinations don't seem to have any effect. Also, i was unable so far to figure out the reverse copy/paste direction from guest to host.

In any case, that's an interesting approach i wasn't aware of before! Usually i apply a shared screen session to exchange copy and paste data, since i typically access guest hosts via ssh connection. So i was not even missing this specific functionality before.

Thanks again, Jeffrey! You particular perspective helps a lot broadening wmlive's scope! Keep it coming if you are not already tired of it. 

#69

Virtualization / Re: Installing Mac OS X Server...

Last post by Protocol 7 - Sep 20, 2025, 08:15 AM

Do you mean the Intel versions? I think the issue with running those in QEMU would be its graphics emulation. OS 4.2 might be possible with the VESA driver.

The HP-PA or SPARC emulations can't run them for sure. MAME might be our best bet if someone can work on those systems.

For Intel stuff I use 86Box. It's great. I have NS3.3, OS4.0 PR1 and both Rhapsody DRs in it.

#70

Virtualization / Re: Installing Mac OS X Server...

Last post by jeffburg - Sep 20, 2025, 07:34 AM

This is really cool. Thanks for sharing! I assume this technique does not work for NS3.3 or OS4.2? I have heard no one has gotten them working in QEMU.