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#1 |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Hi Amiga fellows! Several years ago I discovered how current NetBSD versions run on the Amiga with a wide range of supported hardware that makes our computer feels like at home with a modern, current operating system.
While the AmigaOS is one of the biggest benefits of the Amiga computers, there are other operating systems available for our platform. At the time of writing these lines, current Linux kernel and NetBSD versions still -amazingly- work on the Amiga as long as you have a MMU enabled CPU and enough RAM. Kudos to the team of people of the Linux/m68k, Debian/m68k and NetBSD/amiga community for their work keeping the Linux and NetBSD running on Amiga! This post is about NetBSD/amiga. What is NetBSD/amiga? NetBSD/amiga is the port of NetBSD operating system to the Amiga line of personal computers by Commodore, Amiga International and to the DraCo by MacroSystem. It is a current, up to date UNIX family operating system with an high degree of compatibility with Amiga hardware, multitasking, multiuser and advanced networking features. It comes with a rich set of system utilities, compilers, X11R7 and even games. In contrast with GNU/Linux, where we have a kernel and different distributions for the userspace, NetBSD developers covers both, the kernel and the userspace under a single distribution. Please, note this is not better or worse than the GNU/Linux approach, just different. You can watch the following video captured from my Warp 1260 enabled Amiga 1200, running NetBSD. [ Show youtube player ] Minimum requirements
Apart from the minimum requirements, you can find a list of Amiga supported devices here. Networking I consider networking an essential for any UNIX operating system, and NetBSD is no exception. Apart of several Ethernet controllers, NetBSD supports NE2000 compatible PCMCIA cards. I currently own a D-Link DE-660+ and a Fiberline FL-4680 that work well with both, AmigaOS through the cnet.device and NetBSD. How to install Installing a new OS on your Amiga can make you lose the data in your hard drive, follow these instructions AT YOUR OWN RISK; knowing what you are doing is gold, backing up your data is platinum. I really recommend to try the setup on a emulator such as WinUAE before doing it in your real Amiga. Installation of NetBSD/amiga is not as hard as most people think it is, but it requires some knowledge about Amiga disk partitioning, Amiga CLI and UNIX. The high level steps to perform a install are:
[ Show youtube player ] Post-installation steps Even after successful install of NetBSD on your Amiga, if you are not familiar with the OS you will have a lot of questions: how do I switch to white over black screen? How do I setup the software package manager? How do I start the GUI (X11) in color? Can enable SSH access to my Amiga?... I have gathered multiple miscellaneous post-installation notes on this GitHub Gist. A note on CF cards and NetBSD I found that CF cards that works well in AmigaOS not necessarily work well in NetBSD, as many of them lack ATA commands used by the operating system. This can be checked with the command atactl wd0 identify. If when performing write operations in your storage device you get similar errors to the following ones, then you are likely affected by the issue: Code:
[ 486.702655] autoconfiguration error: wdc0:0:0: lost interrupt [ 486.714186] type: ata tc_bcount: 41472 tc_skip: 24064 [ 486.728095] wd0a: device timeout writing fsbn 5611343 of 5611296-5611423 (wd0 bn 7420703; cn 7361 tn 12 sn 59), xfer 1f30, retry 0 [ 499.221228] wdc0:0:0: timeout waiting for DRQ, st=0x50, err=0x00 [ 499.241306] wd0a: device timeout writing fsbn 5611296 of 5611296-5611423 (wd0 bn 7420656; cn 7361 tn 12 sn 12), xfer 1f30, retry 1 [ 509.830048] wdc0:0:0: timeout waiting for DRQ, st=0x50, err=0x00 [ 509.830048] wd0a: device timeout writing fsbn 5611296 of 5611296-5611423 (wd0 bn 7420656; cn 7361 tn 12 sn 12), xfer 1f30, retry 2 [ 509.830048] wdc0:0:0: timeout waiting for DRQ, st=0x50, err=0x00 [ 509.830048] wd0a: device timeout writing fsbn 5611296 of 5611296-5611423 (wd0 bn 7420656; cn 7361 tn 12 sn 12), xfer 1f30, retry 3 [ 512.041365] wd0: soft error (corrected) xfer 1f30 Have fun with NetBSD on your Amiga! Last edited by karloch; 02 May 2023 at 01:12. |
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#2 |
Paranoid Amigoid
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Athens/Greece
Age: 45
Posts: 1,978
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Nice and complete post there mate.
I remember seeing the video 1-2 months ago and was rather thorough. After installing Debian Sarge with X on my BPPC at some point in my life, I though that it wasn't worth it ![]() Command line NetBSD should be more usable for sure. |
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#3 |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: California
Posts: 375
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Thanks for sharing this detailed writeup! I think this will be fun to play with in UAE
![]() I’d love to hear your thoughts about NetBSD vs Debian - I’m much more familiar with the Debian world than any of the BSDs. |
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#4 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Quote:
[ Show youtube player ] In any case, apart of the CPU, other components such as the RAM speed, RTG or fast SCSI drivers can influence the performance. Even if you stay on the console, there is a lot of fun there: up to day SSH client and server, http server, vim, python, gcc, curl, text mode browsers... Quote:
![]() I am actually much more familiar with Debian GNU/Linux than with NetBSD. I started exploring it because I was curious after knowing about his good Amiga hardware support. Most of my BSD experience comes from OSX (that's Darwin kernel). In any case I must say I am really enjoying the NetBSD approach. Although it is just my opinion, NetBSD feels more like traditional UNIX than current Linux versions: it's smaller, simpler and follows the philosophy of do one thing and do it right. The approach of having the kernel and the userspace as part of a single OS distribution greatly benefits the Amiga as it makes easier to port the operating system as a whole. On the other hand we have GNU/Linux on the Amiga, that is a bit harder than NetBSD. In this case we have a kernel -Linux- and a plethora of userspace choices, that are the distributions. Current versions of the Linux kernel works well so far on the Amiga -except some cases that are being worked on- Regarding the userspace Debian is the only distro giving some -unofficial- support to the Amiga (although you have a Gentoo stage 3 build for m68k as well). Going back to Debian, I have been facing several challenges with Debian Installer: the install images are only prepared to use a SCSI CD-ROM as installation media, as the hd-media and network ones are not compiled with the proper modules. I still have to dive deep again into the topic to look for a workaround, but without some work in Debian Installer it is not possible to setup the OS on a real hardware unless you use a CD, that is not my case. I am curious to know how a current Debian Sid install behaves on the Amiga. The system is heavier than NetBSD, but it is still the Debian we all know and love. |
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#5 |
Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Spain
Posts: 529
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Thank you very much for all the explanation and discovering to many of us all this Unix world for our Amigas.
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#6 |
Semi-Retired
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Leiden / The Netherlands
Posts: 2,066
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Where are the kernel sources and the Amiga specific/needed patches for it? Just wondering if this is something that could run on a PPC card.
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#7 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Quote:
Quote:
Regarding the sources: |
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#8 |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Cutting edge update: just today Alain Runa sent a new version of the ZZ9000 driver, covering RTG and Ethernet. Audio part is half-done and disabled for the time being, while USB one is not implemented.
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#9 | |||
Natteravn
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Herford / Germany
Posts: 2,580
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Quote:
![]() Adam Ciarcinski started the port around 2000 and I worked a lot on it between 2008 and 2010 until I realized that it will never reach a stable and usable state. Quote:
EDIT: It is probably nowhere mentioned where to get it. You find gobsdppc here: https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/phx/amigappc/ And the source text is here: http://sun.hasenbraten.de/~frank/NetBSD/gobsdppc.lha Quote:
Last edited by phx; 03 May 2023 at 00:32. Reason: gobsdppc |
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#10 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Quote:
Quote:
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#11 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Australia
Age: 55
Posts: 229
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Quote:
It's set to be fixed with the 6.3 kernel. Here's how to install Debin/M68k without the cdrom: On the harddrive/cf card simply write the content of the iSO file to some partition. You can use swap partition - only it will be rewritten during the fist actual boot of Linux. You can do it virtually on anything which understands Amiga partitioning of that drive. dd if=debian.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=512 status=progress Fire up the amiboot During the setup there will be error as CD-ROM not detected. Load CD-ROM drivers from removable media - YES Manually select a CD-ROM module and device - YES Module needed for accessing the CD-ROM: none Device file for accessing the CD-ROM: /dev/hda2 Quote:
Unfortunately my A1200/A4000's with 68060's don't have enough ram. Last edited by vk3heg; 05 May 2023 at 03:53. |
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#12 | |||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Quote:
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[ Show youtube player ] Current NetBSD bootup including sshd in my Amiga 1200 with a 68060@50 takes about 2 minutes, a very acceptable time. Last edited by karloch; 05 May 2023 at 11:47. Reason: Youtube automation removing my text from the link |
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#13 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Australia
Age: 55
Posts: 229
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Quote:
Quote:
I've found some instructions to convert to systeminit, but don't want to nuke the system in the process if something goes wrong. |
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#14 | |
Zone Friend
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Middle Earth
Age: 40
Posts: 2,130
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Quote:
![]() Are you running a custom kernal? I have NetBSD 9.3 running on my 2012 ASUS low end craptop (Dual Core, Celeron, 2GB RAM Soldered, was slooooooww with Windows 8.x which is why I swapped to Lubuntu on it, I'm using it right now). Do you cross-compile your applications on amd64 before sending it over? What are you using it for? MySQL, Apache?!? |
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#15 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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Quote:
What I use NetBSD on the Amiga? I missed to install some UNIX on my Amiga in the old days and I am doing now, surprised to see current version not just support it, but it runs pretty well with good hardware compatibility. It turns your Amiga into a networking swiss army knife with modern SSH (something I am missing in AmigaOS). |
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#16 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Wolfach / Germany
Posts: 157
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Quote:
If you have an Account on a1k.org, you can Look for some impressions of my System ![]() https://www.a1k.org/forum/index.php?.../#post-1047139 |
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#17 |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Southport The Last Resort
Posts: 202
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Back in 1995/6 I briefly worked at Easynet, a small internet providor based in London. We ran all our servers (mail, DNS, ftp etc.) on Amiga 3000s and 4000s - all runing NetBSD. Funnily enough, I was the only Linux guy on the team....Happy days though.
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#18 |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Spain
Posts: 11
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More NetBSD/amiga: booting up using serial console. The Amiga serial port is connected to PC USB using Edu Arana's The Listener:
[ Show youtube player ] |
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#19 |
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Wolfach / Germany
Posts: 157
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Some Impressions :)
Hi there,
I did a lot of software for the Amiga-NetBSD port ![]() All Software was compiled from scratch! Using PKGSRC on an Amiga 2000/060 128 MB RAM with Cybervision 64/3D Part 1 Desktops: Enlightenment E16 Enlightenment E17 NetBSD 7.x WSCONS also showing XChat and Dillo Webbrowser Blackbox Last edited by Rotzloeffel; 29 July 2023 at 09:26. |
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#20 |
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Wolfach / Germany
Posts: 157
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