NetBSD/sun2: Frequently Asked Questions
General
Other sources of information
General
NFS client with a 3Com 3c400 (ec) card
The 3Com 3c400 (ec) Multibus Ethernet card can only
buffer two received Ethernet packets, regardless of their length,
before it starts dropping packets. Unless overridden, an NFS client
read requests 8 kilobytes at a time. This means six or more packets
will be sent by the server, usually quickly enough to fill the card
and cause the third and subsequent packets to get dropped.
NFS has an all-or-nothing mentality about it, so the client will throw away any packets it did get and just send the request again, making for a vicious cycle. The solution is to tell NFS to only request 1 kilobyte at a time, which is done by adding an option to the client's mount command:
# mount -t nfs -o -r=1024 server:directory mountpoint
SunOS Compatibility
NetBSD/sun2 may one day feature extensive binary compatibility with SunOS 3 and SunOS 4 programs, but this work has not been done yet.
History of NetBSD/sun2
The sun2 port of NetBSD was started by Matt Fredette in January 2001. He began working with NetBSD/sun3 from the 1.5 release and after a few months had it booting multiuser. In April 2001 he began merging the port into the NetBSD tree.
Other sources of information
Off-site resources
SunHELP - much sun related information
Sun Hardware Reference FAQ - overview of Sun hardware over the years
Further information at NetBSD.org
General NetBSD Documentation - for questions not specific to NetBSD/sun2.
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