I got HaikuR1Alpha1 working under both Q (Qemu for OSX) and Virtualbox, using Mac OSX as the Host OS. The installation (from physical CD) went buttery smooth in both cases. However, both were unusable because the mouse pointer jumped erratically between Host and Guest OS.
However, the mouse I use on my iMac is the one that comes with the Wacom Graphire4 pad. Cordless, induction-powered, no batteries, only works on the pad. So today I bought a bottom-of-the range Logitech USB mouse, plugged it into the Mac and the problem was solved. Also, OSX doesn’t mind having more than one pointing device attached, so there is no need for plugging and unplugging the two all day.
Moral of the story, if something that should work, doesn’t, drop the hardware complexity level a step or two.
With the release of Haiku R1Alpha1, VirtualBox is a great way to play around with the alpha without committing a real partition to it.
But VirtualBox tends to act like an island, entire unto itself. Your OS is sitting on a .VDI format virtual disk that no other OS or program has ever heard of. So you’ve downloaded some new apps from Haikuware while you were in your Host OS. How are you supposed to get them into Haiku? What is needed is some format that Haiku, VirtualBox and the Host OS all know and understand.
It exists. It is called .ISO (or .CDR on Mac OSX systems). If you are using Mac OSX as your Host OS, the following Terminal command will take a folder (/home/username/Binaries Storage/HAIKU – Storage in this case) and create an .ISO image that VB will accept and that should be readable by Haiku:
hdiutil makehybrid -o ~/Library/VirtualBox/HardDisks/Storage.iso ~/Binaries\ Storage/HAIKU\ -\ Storage/ -ov
Your pathnames will be different, of course. You can put that command in a Mac OSX shell script. You can even make a clickable app from that script using Platypus. Now inform VirtualBox that this is the image you want to use as your CD/DVD. The next time you boot into Haiku, there will be a fake CD for you to mount containing all the data that was in that folder.
Mac OSX will also mount the .ISO file. In fact, it will mount it read/write. But do not have it mounted in both Host and Guest OS simultaneously! First unmount the image in Haiku, then unmount it in VirtualBox (Devices | Unmount CD/DVD-ROM) – you do not have to exit the Haiku VM to do this. Now you can safely mount the image in the Host OS, or recreate it using the command above, then reverse the process to get it mounted in the Haiku VM again.
As other tips in this section note, if you don’t find an entry for your modem
in the Dial-Up Networking panel, you can add it through the custom modems
panel. You should be able to find the right string in the modem’s
documentation or on the manufacturer’s web site. If you don’t, the single
best place to look for init strings is at ModemHelp.org, which is a massive database
of strings for most modems in existence.
If you’re aware of other good sites with this type of information, let me know.
In addition to the age-old Unix ps/kill combo listed above, BeOS lets you take
the easy route. Try kill ‚appname‘ (ex. kill NetPositive)
This is much simpler than grepping for the pid.
But there’s an even cleaner way, that you might try first. Download the
href=“http://w3.datanet.hu/~amezei/“>hey scripting utility and install it
in /boot/home/config/bin. Then use:
hey ‚appname‘ quit
This will, as it suggests, tell the app to quit itself, which might shut it
down a little cleaner than a raw kill, although usually if you’re at this
stage, you’re gonna have to do a kill anyway.
Desktop feeling cluttered? You’ve got more space to work with than you might realize, thanks to BeOS‘ workspaces. Hold down the Alt key and punch the F keys, a la Alt+F2, Alt+F6, etc. You’ll get a clean workspace in each one, and each workspace can run at independent resolutions and host different running applications. You can also switch workspaces graphically, from the Workspaces preferences applet. The applet has the added advantage of letting you drag applications from one workspace to another.
See also: Toggle between recent Workspaces.
On most Unix systems, and in BeOS, you can let the OS finish typing long path and filenames for you by hitting the Tab key after you’ve typed a partial pathname. For instance, let’s say you want to gunzip a file called
BeBox_Updater_ROM_September23_1997.tar.gz
and you’re already in the directory where that file lives. Try typing
gunzip BeB
and then hit the Tab key. You’ll see your command line automatically fill in with the complete filename, and all you have to do is hit Return. But what if there’s another file that starts with BeB? No problem — the command line is smart — it will complete out to the point where it’s not sure which file you mean. Then all you have to do is type the next unique letter or letters and hit Tab again.
Open /boot/home/.profile and scan down until you find a line that reads:
PS1=’$ ‚
Edit it so that it reads
PS1=’$PWD> ‚
The next time you open up Terminal, the prompt will report the current directory, no matter what you do. PWD is a Unix/Be command meaning Print Working Directory — you’ve just told Terminal to print the working directory every time it displays a prompt. If you’re a migrating DOS person, you’ll welcome this extra bit of information.
It should be pointed out that using the single quotes (“) are important. If you use double quotes („“) instead, the prompt will be set to the current directory at the time of opening the terminal and then stay unchanged.
Reason is that within double-quotes all variables like $PWD are evaluated immediately, whereas within single quotes they aren’t. That means:
PS1=’$PWD> ‚ -> PS1 is in fact set to ‚$PWD> ‚
PS1=“$PWD> “ -> PS1 is in fact set to ‚/boot/home> ‚
You can further customize your prompt by including actual phrases, or anything you find useful or fun. For instance: /boot/home/ — What’s up, cap’n? >
Thanks to Lars Duening for the shell expansion details on this tip.
Just Sherrill (justin@shiningsilence.com) adds this information:
By setting parameters in your .profile, there are seemingly endless ways to customize your Terminal prompt.
For example, inserting PS1='$PWD' will make your prompt display the current working directory, which can be handy. However, as you work farther down a set of directories, your prompt can end up taking most of the line.
Instead, the string W will print the name of the directory you are in, without the full path. You can even mix it with color commands. The following example gives you the current directory, without the path, but with a red colon at the end of the prompt.
PS1='W/?33[1;31m:?33[m '
There are lots of other things you can include in your Terminal prompt, listed below: (stolen from http://d oc.rmplc.co.uk/linux/LDP/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO-2.html, and probably available from many other places as well. Not all of these are useful yet on BeOS.)
a an ASCII bell character (07)
d the date in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g., "Tue May 26")
e an ASCII escape character (033)
h the hostname up to the first `.'
H the hostname
newline
carriage return
s the name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion
following the final slash)
the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
T the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
@ the current time in 12-hour am/pm format
u the username of the current user
v the version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
V the release of bash, version + patchlevel (e.g., 2.00.0)
w the current working directory
W the basename of the current working directory
! the history number of this command
# the command number of this command
$ if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
nn the character corresponding to the octal number nnn
\ a backslash
[ begin a sequence of non-printing characters,
which could be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt
] end a sequence of non-printing characters
onyx m. reyes (onyx_reyes@yahoo.com) adds still more information:
The prompt style has four elements: foreground color, background
color, effect (shadow or normal) and prompt script/functions.
The escape code template:
‚e[X;Y;Z + m A‘ or ‚?33[X;Y;Z + m A‘
the escape code can be „e“ or „?33“ its your preference.
You can arrange/exclude X, Y, Z in any order and as long as they are
seperated with a „;“ and the last value has an „m“ after it.
Example:
ps1=’e[40;01,37m $PWD e[m/>‘
ps1=’e[01;34m $PWD e[m/>‘
Use the escape sequence every time you want a change the style of
the prompt.
Finally, here is the list of colors codes and effects taken out
of my /boot/home/.profile (you can cut and past this if you want)
PS1='[e[0;36;44m e[m] [e[0;34;46m $PWD e[m] [e[1;37;40m DarkStar e[m]-['
Some tips:
- using the same forground and background color will make it
really hard to read. - keep in mind that PS1 command will display spaces.
Mozilla has its own keyboard handling, and left keyboard control keys (Ctrl, Alt, Win) are reserved. So international users must use right controls in order to get some symbols, e.g. most important „@“ symbol.
But by default USB keyboards in BeOS disallow some of those keys.
Problem solution is here:
http://bebits.com/app/630
This patch enables right-win key on USB keyboards.
Two years worth of Scot Hacker’s articles for Byte.com’s „The BeView“ are now hidden behind a parent company’s subscription curtain, but have been mirrored on his personal site (legally) at birdhouse.org/beos/byte/. Please consider subscribing to Byte.com if you enjoy this and other legacy computing content.
His very old articles for ZDNet’s long-defunct BeHive can be downloaded as a tarball.
Computer always boots in BIOS Fail Safe Mode.
I have tried clearing the CMOS, changing the battery, reset to defaults, and make tried every setting on power management ?
HELP.
These we donated computer, no doc on Motherboards, I cloned a W98 using Ghost and am trying to boot for the first time.