MOL future plans

[Keary Suska]

on 4/5/02 5:20 PM, samuel@ibrium.se purportedly said:

> The authoritative MOL documentation is currently the userguide at
> 
> http://www.maconlinux.org/userguide/
> 
> It really should be bundled with mol in the future (this was my
> intention from the beginning, but it just didn't happen). I
> don't quite like the format though. It's a be awkward
> both to read and to write. And, most importantly, it is not as
> extensive as it should be.

I would rank more complete docs higher than man pages. Right now, the docs
suffice mostly to just get MOL working, which doesn't take much, but to make
it useful, certain critical components are missing. Namely: #1 Networking.
The options aren't spelled out or the fact that TAP/TUN interfaces are
considered deprecated in 2.4.x kernels. And from the weeks I have spent
trying to find answers, I found more that needs to be done other than
configuring a TAP/TUN device. Even if you won't want to have information
that is not necessarily MOL specific (such as configuring a TAP device),
having a link to somewhere that does would be nice, although I have not been
able to find one personally. I also tried using the dummy interface and
iptables, but I wasn't able to determine whether that didn't work because of
MOL or because iptables wasn't working properly. Troubleshooting info would
be really nice.

Additionally, the keyboard issue:

> There is a section about key remappings in the userguide above; does
> it help? 

Not really. Why would keystrokes that work under Linux shell *and* work
under X not work under MOL? (note: I have not verified any differences
between fullscreen vs X mode) I have a straightforward no-frills Mac USB
extended keyboard, US layout preferred. Key Caps under MOL show a layout
that does not match my keyboard. IIRC, most keys are OK except for `~, ESC,
one of the shift keys (right one, I think), the arrow keys, and the nav
(i.e. home/pageup/pagedown etc) keys. I don't know enough to determine
whether this is a mapping issue, or a layout issue, or if there is a
difference.

> The main problem is that it is not so simple to figure out which physical
> key corresponds to a particular X event. For instance, the X-server might
> configure the command key to be "Alt-L" but it could as well be "Meta-L"
> etc. 
> 
> One solution would be parsing X config files, but this is tricky.
> As a crude (but effective) alternative one could write a small
> program that asks the user to press each key once. Would this be
> good enough?

Would this matter when running MOL in fullscreen mode? This is another
element it would be nice to have docs on: when does MOL rely on X and when
does it not? Can we not have MOL reliant on X at all?

> If I read you correctly, mol in a X-window works (but full-screen video
> does not). I think a working workaround is switching the depth of the console
> to 8-bit using fbset and then start molvconfig. (I would like to hear more
> about any issues with molvconfig btw).

Well, I am actually operating on hearsay that MOL works under X in my case,
based on feedback from list members. I haven't actually tried it. I prefer
to user fullscreen because of real estate issues and the fact that the
command key doesn't work in MOL under X. I did try running molvconfig under
X, and it locked itself and X up completely, requiring a force-kill
(SIGKILL) to drop them. I will try the 8 bit recommendation and report my
results.

Keary Suska
Esoteritech, Inc.
"Leveraging Open Source for a better Internet"