RK, wehre are you?

QNX Newsgroups (Archives) qdn.cafe
1

Hi RK…

I wonder where are you? We have not heard much from you lately.

I was wondering if you would include a chapter regarding the use of
eclipse in your upcoming book? I know that you do not use IDE’s, but in
this case, eclipse is free and gaining popular acceptance. It has a nice
editor and useful debuging cappabilities. The CDT tools work well in the
NC edition, and you could provide some of your examples in the eclipse
framework using the CDT tools themselves. In any case, I am sure that
you would find volunteers to help you port some of your sample code to
the eclipse ide, and you could put all of these as an appendix. Just
some thoughts.

cheers…

Miguel.

2

Where is RK?
maybe it is related to this: http://www.openqnx.com/Article122.html

3

Frank Liu <fliu@mail.vipstage.com> wrote:

Where is RK?
maybe it is related to this: > http://www.openqnx.com/Article122.html

Nominally :slight_smile:

I’ve been playing in freeBSD land for the last month or so.

Cheers,
-RK

–
[If replying via email, you’ll need to click on the URL that’s emailed to you
afterwards to forward the email to me – spam filters and all that]
Robert Krten, PDP minicomputer collector http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/

4

Miguel Simon <simon@ou.edu> wrote:

Hi RK…

I wonder where are you? We have not heard much from you lately.

I was wondering if you would include a chapter regarding the use of
eclipse in your upcoming book? I know that you do not use IDE’s, but in
this case, eclipse is free and gaining popular acceptance. It has a nice
editor and useful debuging cappabilities. The CDT tools work well in the
NC edition, and you could provide some of your examples in the eclipse
framework using the CDT tools themselves. In any case, I am sure that
you would find volunteers to help you port some of your sample code to
the eclipse ide, and you could put all of these as an appendix. Just
some thoughts.

I’m having some doubts about my ability to market the new book.
The short story is that I’ve contacted QSSL’s VP of marketing, Dave
Curley, and frankly have not been very thrilled with the response
(or, more specifically, lack thereof).

I’ve talked with Dan Dodge, and he is looking into the third party
situation. Unfortunately, Dan’s been away for a while and just got
back a few days ago, and prolly has a pile of work waiting for him.

In order to make the book be worthwhile, I’d need to have some kind
of marketing channel to get the message out. Currently, about three
people in total have contacted me about it (you are number four :slight_smile:).
QNX News was great for third parties, but QSSL has decided for their
own reasons not to continue with it – hey, it’s their business
decision, not mine :slight_smile: “The little guy is dead” is still, unfortunately,
very much the case with QSSL’s marketing department. I see some hope
that that will change, but it’s getting to the point of too little
too late.

In short, unless I can get some kind of help from QSSL’s marketing
department, it doesn’t look very promising (let alone writing about
the IDE which I know nothing about – and I hate writing about stuff
that I know nothing about :slight_smile:).

So… show of hands of everyone who wants the book? I’d need to see
several hundred hands in order to break even.

There are also some technical reasons why I’ve switched to freeBSD;
the fact that it supports >4GB file size, MPEG movie players, schematic
capture packages, etc, etc. In short, I personally need a desktop
O/S that is up-to-date with the modern drivers and applications.
Some of this is definitely outside of QSSL’s market – they’re not a
desktop-O/S company, and that’s fine, but I need a desktop O/S and
I don’t want to be running several operating systems (learning one
and learning it well is enough of a challenge). I’ve just spent the
last two days freeBSD-ifying my machines. Mostly the time was spent
copying data from QNX partitions via FTP to freeBSD partitions.
Some more days will be spent porting my QNX applications (caller ID,
SMDR, full-text-retrieval, spam AEF system, etc) and figuring out
things like POP3 mail, HTTP/PHP servers and the like.

I’ll still run a QNX 6 box for contract work, but it will be the
exception rather than the rule. Contract work on QNX 6 has been
almost nonexistant. Again, this is IMHO a direct result of QSSL’s
marketing department’s lack of interest in 3rd parties and “the
little guy.” I have no plans to be a “big guy” – I’m happy doing
what I’m doing.

So, sorry for the rant, but you asked :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK

–
[If replying via email, you’ll need to click on the URL that’s emailed to you
afterwards to forward the email to me – spam filters and all that]
Robert Krten, PDP minicomputer collector http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/

5

“Robert Krten” <rk@parse.com> wrote in message
news:bg9es8$j27$1@inn.qnx.com…

So… show of hands of everyone who wants the book? I’d need to see
several hundred hands in order to break even.

Put us down for 2 copies. (Well, it’s a start).

Come on, QSSL, this is pathetic. We, too, are the “little guy” and we rely
on resources like RK’s previous books. There isn’t exactly a wealth of QNX
literature out there and while the standard of the QNX internal
documentation is generally high, it just doesn’t cover in depth the topics
that RK was planning for his new book.

If you want to be taken seriously as an OS you need to have these kinds of
resources out there. I wonder how many people do a search for “QNX” on
Amazon and leave with the impression that there are no books at all on QNX6
(seeing RK’s previous book title refers to “Neutrino 2”).

Surely QSSL could at least lob a retainer in RK’s direction to enable him to
finish the book. It would be marketing money well spent.

PS We, too, are looking at other options and agree that FreeBSD seems more
attractive than Linux. Has anyone done a Send/Receive/Reply IPC kernel
module for FreeBSD to ease the porting pain? I know there is one for Linux.

Rob Rutherford

6

Robert Rutherford wrote:
[… ]

Surely QSSL could at least lob a retainer in RK’s direction to enable him to
finish the book. It would be marketing money well spent.

PS We, too, are looking at other options and agree that …

Robert, you are not the only one.

Did you see the last press release from QSSL?
http://www.qnx.com/news/pr/jul22_03_motorola.html

For more information, visit
http://e-www.motorola.com/files/abstract/overview/SPSMPC5200.htm

and when you follow some links you will read:
… Software support from Green Hills®, MontaVista®, and Wind River®
on the Total5200 Development Platform is also planned.
or:
The Lite5200 EVB Kit includes evaluation copies of Metrowerks®
CodeWarrior® Evaluation BSPs for Green Hills Software INTEGRITY
and QNX® Neutrino®, evaluation material for MontaVista Linux,
Wind River VxWorks, and bundled debug probes.

Notice, in Motorola’s data sheets which were available at QNX2000
in Vancouver 3 years ago, there were the only offered development
tools from IBM and QNX…

  • Jutta
7

Robert Rutherford wrote:

“Robert Krten” <> rk@parse.com> > wrote in message
news:bg9es8$j27$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

So… show of hands of everyone who wants the book? I’d need to see
several hundred hands in order to break even.


Put us down for 2 copies. (Well, it’s a start).

Come on, QSSL, this is pathetic. We, too, are the “little guy” and we rely
on resources like RK’s previous books. There isn’t exactly a wealth of QNX
literature out there and while the standard of the QNX internal
documentation is generally high, it just doesn’t cover in depth the topics
that RK was planning for his new book.

If you want to be taken seriously as an OS you need to have these kinds of
resources out there. I wonder how many people do a search for “QNX” on
Amazon and leave with the impression that there are no books at all on QNX6
(seeing RK’s previous book title refers to “Neutrino 2”).

Surely QSSL could at least lob a retainer in RK’s direction to enable him to
finish the book. It would be marketing money well spent.

PS We, too, are looking at other options and agree that FreeBSD seems more
attractive than Linux. Has anyone done a Send/Receive/Reply IPC kernel
module for FreeBSD to ease the porting pain? I know there is one for Linux.

Just an additional question: would it be possible to ‘add’ Adeos to
FreeBSD ?? ( http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/adeos )

Armin



Rob Rutherford

8

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:16:41 +1000, Robert Rutherford
<ruzz@NoSpamPlease.ruzz.com> wrote:

PS We, too, are looking at other options and agree that FreeBSD seems
more
attractive than Linux. Has anyone done a Send/Receive/Reply IPC kernel
module for FreeBSD to ease the porting pain? I know there is one for
Linux.

We (Cogent) are the writers/maintainers of the Linux version of the
SRR kernel module. The original intent was that it should be possible
to port it to other UNIX-like systems. It has since been littered
with Linux-isms, to the point where the code is probably more of a
guideline than a basis for porting. Nevertheless, the code is
available under GPL, so you could give it a shot. Certainly the
idea and structure will port, if not the actual code.

Cheers,
Andrew

9

It’s a real problem that there are so few third-party
QNX books. Robert Kriten has one useful book, and it’s not
distributed through major channels.

This is not good for the future of QNX. If you don’t have
a book on your product in the major bookstores, you’re dead.

John Nagle
Team Overbot

10

John Nagle <nagle@downside.com> wrote in message
news:bge7tn$5h6$1@inn.qnx.com…

It’s a real problem that there are so few third-party
QNX books. Robert Kriten has one useful book, and it’s not
distributed through major channels.

This is not good for the future of QNX. If you don’t have
a book on your product in the major bookstores, you’re dead.

I think that’s a little bit of wierd logic - the existance or lack of 3rd
party book(s) on a product does not corelate to ones ‘liveness’. There is a
lot of 3rd party literature on many products which are dead.

I’m a fan of Rob’s books, and no one likes dead tree like I do, but I think
your reasoning is a tad specious.

-Adam

11

[SNIP]

There are also some technical reasons why I’ve switched to freeBSD;
the fact that it supports >4GB file size, MPEG movie players, schematic
capture packages, etc, etc.

The limit is actually 2GB on qnx4fs (signed 32bit value). I am pretty
sure that fs-ext2 can do >2GB files (I am sure Daryl or John will correct
me if I am wrong - both of the ext2 partitions I have on my boxes are
sub 2G). I have my pick of serveral MPEG movie players (probably mostly
using the same one you do - mplayer). Don’t have a schematic capture app,
but I have also found most of the “free” ones to be pretty crappy compared
to the commerical ones under Windows.

All of this under QNX and Photon. Not trying to convince anyone of anything
either - just want to counter some things for public record. :wink:

chris

–
Chris McKillop <cdm@qnx.com> “The faster I go, the behinder I get.”
Software Engineer, QSSL – Lewis Carroll –
http://qnx.wox.org/

12

Hi RK…

Robert Krten wrote:

I’m having some doubts about my ability to market the new book.
The short story is that I’ve contacted QSSL’s VP of marketing, Dave
Curley, and frankly have not been very thrilled with the response
(or, more specifically, lack thereof).

Did you use to work at QSSL?

I’ve talked with Dan Dodge, and he is looking into the third party
situation. Unfortunately, Dan’s been away for a while and just got
back a few days ago, and prolly has a pile of work waiting for him.

Do you know Dan Dodge personaly?

In order to make the book be worthwhile, I’d need to have some kind
of marketing channel to get the message out. Currently, about three
people in total have contacted me about it (you are number four > :slight_smile:> ).

I wonder if you could contact some universities, and perhaps they can
use QNX + your book to teach a real-time-embedded OS class with it?


QNX News was great for third parties, but QSSL has decided for their
own reasons not to continue with it – hey, it’s their business
decision, not mine > :slight_smile: > “The little guy is dead” is still, unfortunately,
very much the case with QSSL’s marketing department. I see some hope
that that will change, but it’s getting to the point of too little
too late.

In short, unless I can get some kind of help from QSSL’s marketing
department, it doesn’t look very promising (let alone writing about
the IDE which I know nothing about – and I hate writing about stuff
that I know nothing about > :slight_smile:> ).

So… show of hands of everyone who wants the book? I’d need to see
several hundred hands in order to break even.

Humm… I gather that you will not publish your book? I am willing to
buy your book even in manuscript form. At least that would be money for
a beer and a pizza! 0$0

There are also some technical reasons why I’ve switched to freeBSD;

Is there a market for freeBSD? I guess that if you publish a book,
there is a market…

the fact that it supports >4GB file size, MPEG movie players, schematic
capture packages, etc, etc. In short, I personally need a desktop
O/S that is up-to-date with the modern drivers and applications.
Some of this is definitely outside of QSSL’s market – they’re not a
desktop-O/S company, and that’s fine, but I need a desktop O/S and
I don’t want to be running several operating systems (learning one
and learning it well is enough of a challenge). I’ve just spent the
last two days freeBSD-ifying my machines. Mostly the time was spent
copying data from QNX partitions via FTP to freeBSD partitions.
Some more days will be spent porting my QNX applications (caller ID,
SMDR, full-text-retrieval, spam AEF system, etc) and figuring out
things like POP3 mail, HTTP/PHP servers and the like.

Do people use freeBSD for serious business?

I’ll still run a QNX 6 box for contract work, but it will be the
exception rather than the rule. Contract work on QNX 6 has been
almost nonexistant. Again, this is IMHO a direct result of QSSL’s
marketing department’s lack of interest in 3rd parties and “the
little guy.” I have no plans to be a “big guy” – I’m happy doing
what I’m doing.

So, sorry for the rant, but you asked > :slight_smile:

Oh well…, perhaps one day we meet and I’ll buy you a beer! (I do not
drink, so you’ll have to tell me which beer to buy!)

Regards…

Miguel.



Cheers,
-RK

13

Miguel Simon <simon@ou.edu> wrote:

Hi RK…

Robert Krten wrote:

I’m having some doubts about my ability to market the new book.
The short story is that I’ve contacted QSSL’s VP of marketing, Dave
Curley, and frankly have not been very thrilled with the response
(or, more specifically, lack thereof).

Did you use to work at QSSL?

On contract for a few years, a few years ago…

I’ve talked with Dan Dodge, and he is looking into the third party
situation. Unfortunately, Dan’s been away for a while and just got
back a few days ago, and prolly has a pile of work waiting for him.

Do you know Dan Dodge personaly?

Yup.

In order to make the book be worthwhile, I’d need to have some kind
of marketing channel to get the message out. Currently, about three
people in total have contacted me about it (you are number four > :slight_smile:> ).

I wonder if you could contact some universities, and perhaps they can
use QNX + your book to teach a real-time-embedded OS class with it?

I’ve had grief with Universities. Their bookstores tend to buy
100 books, and then return 97 of them. Some may be slightly
damaged, and I have to charge them for that, adjust the discount
schedules – it’s a warehousing/inventory nightmare.
So, the educational program has been discontinued, and the university
bookstores are now treated same as any other distributor – returns
only allowed for damaged books.

QNX News was great for third parties, but QSSL has decided for their
own reasons not to continue with it – hey, it’s their business
decision, not mine > :slight_smile: > “The little guy is dead” is still, unfortunately,
very much the case with QSSL’s marketing department. I see some hope
that that will change, but it’s getting to the point of too little
too late.

In short, unless I can get some kind of help from QSSL’s marketing
department, it doesn’t look very promising (let alone writing about
the IDE which I know nothing about – and I hate writing about stuff
that I know nothing about > :slight_smile:> ).

So… show of hands of everyone who wants the book? I’d need to see
several hundred hands in order to break even.

Humm… I gather that you will not publish your book? I am willing to
buy your book even in manuscript form. At least that would be money for
a beer and a pizza! 0$0

I might still publish it – I have about 200 pages done, so there’s a fair
bit invested in it. It’s a tradeoff between throwing good money after
bad; where do you cut your losses?

There are also some technical reasons why I’ve switched to freeBSD;

Is there a market for freeBSD? I guess that if you publish a book,
there is a market…

FreeBSD is for my own amusement. Contract work will still be done on
whatever non-Windoze O/S the customer chooses :slight_smile:

the fact that it supports >4GB file size, MPEG movie players, schematic
capture packages, etc, etc. In short, I personally need a desktop
O/S that is up-to-date with the modern drivers and applications.
Some of this is definitely outside of QSSL’s market – they’re not a
desktop-O/S company, and that’s fine, but I need a desktop O/S and
I don’t want to be running several operating systems (learning one
and learning it well is enough of a challenge). I’ve just spent the
last two days freeBSD-ifying my machines. Mostly the time was spent
copying data from QNX partitions via FTP to freeBSD partitions.
Some more days will be spent porting my QNX applications (caller ID,
SMDR, full-text-retrieval, spam AEF system, etc) and figuring out
things like POP3 mail, HTTP/PHP servers and the like.

Do people use freeBSD for serious business?

Tons of webservers are FreeBSD based, for example…

I’ll still run a QNX 6 box for contract work, but it will be the
exception rather than the rule. Contract work on QNX 6 has been
almost nonexistant. Again, this is IMHO a direct result of QSSL’s
marketing department’s lack of interest in 3rd parties and “the
little guy.” I have no plans to be a “big guy” – I’m happy doing
what I’m doing.

So, sorry for the rant, but you asked > :slight_smile:

Oh well…, perhaps one day we meet and I’ll buy you a beer! (I do not
drink, so you’ll have to tell me which beer to buy!)

:slight_smile:

Cheers,
-RK

–
[If replying via email, you’ll need to click on the URL that’s emailed to you
afterwards to forward the email to me – spam filters and all that]
Robert Krten, PDP minicomputer collector http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/

14

Chris McKillop <cdm@qnx.com> wrote:

[SNIP]

There are also some technical reasons why I’ve switched to freeBSD;
the fact that it supports >4GB file size, MPEG movie players, schematic
capture packages, etc, etc.


The limit is actually 2GB on qnx4fs (signed 32bit value). I am pretty
sure that fs-ext2 can do >2GB files (I am sure Daryl or John will correct
me if I am wrong - both of the ext2 partitions I have on my boxes are
sub 2G). I have my pick of serveral MPEG movie players (probably mostly

Is fs-ext2 as extensively tested on Q6 as it is on other platforms? I’d
much rather have a “native” solution from the OS vendor rather than a port.
Can I “newfs” an fs-ext2 partition? I’m not being argumentative, I genuinely
want to know…

using the same one you do - mplayer). Don’t have a schematic capture app,

I’ve tried porting these things to Q6, and always ended up with grief. Something
didn’t quite want to build, or there was some weird-ass dependency on some
module that had all kinds of linuxisms in it, or something else bad happened.
I’m willing to believe that things have improved significantly since then.

Can I now rip movies off of a DVD drive under Q6?

but I have also found most of the “free” ones to be pretty crappy compared
to the commerical ones under Windows.

gEDA isn’t too bad at all. I’ve entered a schematic with about 18 74-series
chips, and the process was relatively smooth. You can get the postscript
output at:

http://www.parse.com/~pdp8i/m220b.ps

All of this under QNX and Photon. Not trying to convince anyone of anything
either - just want to counter some things for public record. > :wink:

Appreciate it.

Cheers,
-RK

–
[If replying via email, you’ll need to click on the URL that’s emailed to you
afterwards to forward the email to me – spam filters and all that]
Robert Krten, PDP minicomputer collector http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/

15

Is fs-ext2 as extensively tested on Q6 as it is on other platforms? I’d
much rather have a “native” solution from the OS vendor rather than a port.
Can I “newfs” an fs-ext2 partition? I’m not being argumentative, I genuinely
want to know…

We provide it btw, not a 3rd party. /lib/dll/fs-ext2.so. By default
diskboot doesn’t auto-mount them in /fs, but you can pass the -e option to
it so that it will. You can get the e2fsprogs package from QNX Online to
get e2fsck and friends. Although I found recently that mke2fs isn’t handling
partition creation properly under QNX.

I’ve tried porting these things to Q6, and always ended up with grief. Something
didn’t quite want to build, or there was some weird-ass dependency on some
module that had all kinds of linuxisms in it, or something else bad happened.
I’m willing to believe that things have improved significantly since then.

Yeah, mplayer actually uses SDL for output. MikeG (lestat) is keeping SDL
up and current on Photon. He just got all of it’s overlay API working
properly. Poke around, there are a bunch of people with pre-built mplayer
binaries that work just great.

Can I now rip movies off of a DVD drive under Q6?

Yes - and if you can build videoLan (something I have never tried) you should
even be play to play DVDs. I have a TV and a very nice DVD player for watching
movies, so I have never bothered to try.

gEDA isn’t too bad at all. I’ve entered a schematic with about 18 74-series
chips, and the process was relatively smooth. You can get the postscript
output at:

Yeah, I have used gEDA. Have they made any improvements in the PCB side of
things? One package I always liked was Eagle. In fact, last time I was
using it I actually used it under FreeBSD (linux emulation) and Windows. On
FBSD it ran faster then under Linux. :wink:

chris

Chris McKillop <cdm@qnx.com> “The faster I go, the behinder I get.”
Software Engineer, QSSL – Lewis Carroll –
http://qnx.wox.org/

16

Chris McKillop <cdm@qnx.com> wrote:

Is fs-ext2 as extensively tested on Q6 as it is on other platforms? I’d
much rather have a “native” solution from the OS vendor rather than a port.
Can I “newfs” an fs-ext2 partition? I’m not being argumentative, I genuinely
want to know…


We provide it btw, not a 3rd party. /lib/dll/fs-ext2.so. By default

But it’s still a port :slight_smile: It’s NIH as far as QSSL is concerned…

What about testing?

diskboot doesn’t auto-mount them in /fs, but you can pass the -e option to
it so that it will. You can get the e2fsprogs package from QNX Online to
get e2fsck and friends. Although I found recently that mke2fs isn’t handling
partition creation properly under QNX.


I’ve tried porting these things to Q6, and always ended up with grief. Something
didn’t quite want to build, or there was some weird-ass dependency on some
module that had all kinds of linuxisms in it, or something else bad happened.
I’m willing to believe that things have improved significantly since then.


Yeah, mplayer actually uses SDL for output. MikeG (lestat) is keeping SDL
up and current on Photon. He just got all of it’s overlay API working
properly. Poke around, there are a bunch of people with pre-built mplayer
binaries that work just great.

Perhaps I’ll give it a try again…

Can I now rip movies off of a DVD drive under Q6?

Yes - and if you can build videoLan (something I have never tried) you should
even be play to play DVDs. I have a TV and a very nice DVD player for watching
movies, so I have never bothered to try.

Excellent.

gEDA isn’t too bad at all. I’ve entered a schematic with about 18 74-series
chips, and the process was relatively smooth. You can get the postscript
output at:

Yeah, I have used gEDA. Have they made any improvements in the PCB side of
things? One package I always liked was Eagle. In fact, last time I was
using it I actually used it under FreeBSD (linux emulation) and Windows. On
FBSD it ran faster then under Linux. > :wink:

Dunno; never had to make a board yet :slight_smile: I used to use OrCad in the days
of WIN31, and I forget what its companion board layout package was…

Cheers,
-RK

\

[If replying via email, you’ll need to click on the URL that’s emailed to you
afterwards to forward the email to me – spam filters and all that]
Robert Krten, PDP minicomputer collector http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/

17

Adam Mallory wrote:

John Nagle <> nagle@downside.com> > wrote in message
news:bge7tn$5h6$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
It’s a real problem that there are so few third-party
QNX books. Robert Kriten has one useful book, and it’s not
distributed through major channels.

This is not good for the future of QNX. If you don’t have
a book on your product in the major bookstores, you’re dead.

I think that’s a little bit of wierd logic - the existance or lack of 3rd
party book(s) on a product does not corelate to ones ‘liveness’. There is a
lot of 3rd party literature on many products which are dead.

Adam, and there is much literature of products which are alife!
I agree with John! Go in a bookstore and you will see that QNX is not
existing! But tons of books about other OSes are available.

What are 3 books for an OS which is existing more than 25 years? It must
be such a crazy system that only Frank and Rob dared to write about
although they were partly blocked… Talk with pot. customers and they
are irritated that not more books are available, and it’s a bad sign for
them! It looks like: hands off!

You should think that QSSL is happy at least with these 3 great books,
but it’s not the case.

M$ e.g. is promoting all books, papers, talks or whatever is available
about their products, and 3rd parties are promoted actively.

You can’t expect it from QSSL, and they don’t know for what reason they
should promote or resell the only existing 3 books.
The same for Rob’s Neutrino training CD which comes with a student’s
workbook and his “Getting started with Neutrino 2” book.
No travel expenses, fees etc, and the CD is always handy with the
student’s workbook when anyone needs it. It’s very helpful and
inexpensive with only CAD $750.00 (~ $537 US or 565 EUR)

BTW, all of our customers who bought it are very happy with it… and we
save much time for support :wink:

I don’t see that it’s competing against the QSSx training courses.
Every other OS vendor would be happy to promote such training stuff…

  • Jutta
18

Jutta Steinhoff <j-steinhoff@web.de> wrote in message
news:3F2EA8E0.DA45B362@web.de…

Adam, and there is much literature of products which are alife!
I agree with John! Go in a bookstore and you will see that QNX is not
existing! But tons of books about other OSes are available.

The embedded market is a little more specialized. You won’t see many books
on other embedded OSes, and those that you do see tend to be OSes that play
double duty with other domains (BSD, Linux etc).

Books on embedded systems, need to be priced with the $75(CAD) region or no
one buys them (this is a consumer bookstore). Most of them are a joke,
O’Reilly’s book on building embedded systems, or the other with the
‘toaster’ on the cover are the main ones I’ve seen (and I go quite a lot).

What are 3 books for an OS which is existing more than 25 years? It must
be such a crazy system that only Frank and Rob dared to write about
although they were partly blocked… Talk with pot. customers and they
are irritated that not more books are available, and it’s a bad sign for
them! It looks like: hands off!

I don’t know what you mean by ‘partly blocked’ - I have no idea to the
politics of book publishing.

You should think that QSSL is happy at least with these 3 great books,
but it’s not the case.

I have no idea what you’re saying here - what possible reason could we not
be ‘happy’ with the books already published.

M$ e.g. is promoting all books, papers, talks or whatever is available
about their products, and 3rd parties are promoted actively.

Comparing use to M$ isn’t fair - our pockets are not even close to that
deep.

You can’t expect it from QSSL, and they don’t know for what reason they
should promote or resell the only existing 3 books.
The same for Rob’s Neutrino training CD which comes with a student’s
workbook and his “Getting started with Neutrino 2” book.
No travel expenses, fees etc, and the CD is always handy with the
student’s workbook when anyone needs it. It’s very helpful and
inexpensive with only CAD $750.00 (~ $537 US or 565 EUR)

BTW, all of our customers who bought it are very happy with it… and we
save much time for support > :wink:

I would suggest that the exact opposite is true - we find that the last
thing customers want to hear is that after buying their dev. seat, they
should fork out some more money for books. Their response is that any info
in the book we suggest, we should already provide it in our dev. seat. I
know I’ve suggested Rob’s book many times on many occasions - I don’t think
I like the suggestion that we (and that would include me as QNX) don’t want
to support 3rd party books.

I don’t see that it’s competing against the QSSx training courses.
Every other OS vendor would be happy to promote such training stuff…

I don’t think we see it that way either.

-Adam

19

Robert Krten <rk@parse.com> wrote:

Chris McKillop <> cdm@qnx.com> > wrote:

[SNIP]

There are also some technical reasons why I’ve switched to freeBSD;
the fact that it supports >4GB file size, MPEG movie players, schematic
capture packages, etc, etc.


The limit is actually 2GB on qnx4fs (signed 32bit value). I am pretty
sure that fs-ext2 can do >2GB files (I am sure Daryl or John will correct
me if I am wrong - both of the ext2 partitions I have on my boxes are
sub 2G).

From the fs-ext2.so docs:
The following features are not currently supported:
large files (> 2 GB)

Is fs-ext2 as extensively tested on Q6 as it is on other platforms? I’d
much rather have a “native” solution from the OS vendor rather than a port.
Can I “newfs” an fs-ext2 partition? I’m not being argumentative, I genuinely
want to know…

From the fs-ext2.so docs:
we don’t recommend using fs-ext2.so as a replacement for the QNX 4
filesystem (fs-qnx4.so)

other support utilities (e.g. mke2fs) are not currently available for
QNX 6

It would appear that fs-ext2.so isn’t a “native” solution. I would guess
that fs-ext2.so testing would be a low priority.

The online docs for fs-ext2.so are at:
http://www.qnx.com/developer/docs/momentics621_docs/neutrino/utilities/f/fs-ext2.so.html

–
Kirk Russell Bridlewood Software Testers Guild

20

Adam…

Here is a thought: since QSSL does not have a book such as RK’s
existing and upcoming book, why not provide RK’s upcoming book as an
option or as a value added to the faithful customers that buy a
developer’s seat such as myself? I know I would have been extremely
happy with that! :slight_smile: Even if you add the value of the book to what
people pay already, well, perhaps not too many people would complain.

I have the system architecture book that comes with the developer’s
seat, and I know that RK’s book complement any and all books from QSSL.
Incidentally, this is also true for the QNX 4.2x line of products. We
have -all- of the QSSL documentation and reference books, but we also
have RK’s book for QNX 4.2x. I see that both approaches (QSSL doc +
RK’s book) work well together to explain the likes of QNX.

Lastly, back then when I was a beginner with QNX 4.2x, it was RK’s book
in QNX 4.2x which explained what the QSSL doc’s said and could not
follow. :slight_smile: Only after reading RK’s book was I able to understand,
fallow and appreciate QSSL printed docs.

Regards…

Miguel