I wanna help test ...

[John-Mark Gurney]

PaceMakerTaker wrote this message on Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 12:55 -0700:
> So I've got this 270MHz Ultra 5 here with 128 and 8GB
> as well as a 500MHz Blade 100 with 512 and 40GB.  I'd
> love to get involved in the project now that I have
> time!
> 
> For starters, I guess I'd do some testing work since I
> haven't been into the FreeBSD kernel yet (Although
> I've been into the Linux kernel and the SunOS kernel).
>  I've been doing C/C++ coding for years.
> 
> If someone wants to point me off in the direction of
> the notes and installation files, I'll jump right now.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.1R/relnotes-sparc64.html

The cd is bootable, and simple to do.  Works fine over serial console,
that's how I got my box up and running.

>  I'm sure that there is a list of stuff that needs to
> be tested and/or fixed, where can I find that at?

Well, once you get 5.1-R installed, tracking current is good.  You
might still be able to get away with using 5.1-R but not for much
longer since we're already starting to diverge.

Take a look at:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html
for more information about it.  -current is what you want to follow
if you want to do some testing.

> I'm anxious to help and a little bored here; so
> anything I can do, let me know!

Well, test the applications.  Already there have been a few minor bugs
in apps that were pretty easy to fix.

As for other things, take a look at the archives of -sparc64 for the
last week or two.  Thomas Moestl has a patch that uses OFW to enumerate
the PCI bus instead of probing it.  I also have a patch to make
Multi-Function devices probe.  (Both patches address similar issues,
but are also complementary.)

Stay tuned to the list!

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."