please help newbie with RiscOS

I am trying to use Raspberry Pi and RiscOS several days. I got three problems.
1) I accidentally dropped a folder on StrongEd icon at the panel. This caused the infinite loop with the hourglass item. I rebooted but the invoking of StrongEd causes the hourglass again then. So StrongEd has become unusable. :-(
2) I can’t run Heretic game. I installed it from the PackMan. I moved WAD to the created folder. I tried to run and got the error message “Unable to determine user home directory”. The package UnixHome is installed.
3) I can’t run Rise of the Triad. I got “Couldn’t create preferences directory: No such file or directory”.

Please help! Thank you.

I’m not sure…

1. How many files are in the folder? StrongED will open all. This takes a little.

2. + 3. You run the games from the archive or have you unzip the files in a new folder? The distro SparkFS is read only.

The easy way to recover the position is to re-flash the SD card and try again (so far as StrongEd is concerned).

Software in an archive is distributed that way for convenience but is better extracted, under RISC using SparkFS, and copied to the SD card before running it. I usually put such stuff into a directory ‘Test’ until confirming that it runs OK.

As Raik said, loading a directory into StrongED can take a long time as it will load all files inside it as well as those in any subdirectories.

StrongED can remember files between sessions, which is what seems to be happening here. To get out of it, start StrongED by double-clicking whilst holding down left Alt (this will prevent remembered files from being loaded).

If this works, click on StrongED’s iconbar-icon with Select (left mouse button) while holding down Shift. This will open the location where StrongED stores its configuration files.

Open the directory ‘AutoSave’ and check if there’s a file called ‘List’ in there. If the file exists, delete it.

Now quit StrongED and try to run it again, this time without holding down Alt. Hopefully it will start up normally, if not then report back here.

• to Fred Graute:

Thank you very much! The trick with Alt button solves the problem. It even automatically removes wrong `List’ from `Autosave’. However it was my second attempt. I have problems with wireless keyboard so I had to use NFS access from Linux client to find `List’ and to remove it at first. BTW it was the root’s `!BOOT’ folder – it stretched StrongEd’s size at RAM to 150 MB – I couldn’t get number (is it possible?) of total opened StrongEd’s windows.

The trick with left mouse button and Shift is not working. It points to $.Apps.!StrongED.Defaults.AutoSave instead of $.StrED_cfg.UserPrefs.AutoSave. IMHO this looks like purposeless duplication.

• to Raik:

My problem with `Rise of the Tria’ was caused by coreutils package. It install its `dir’ command instead of standard! I spent a lot of time trying to fix this. I’ve found a solution. I issued command `unalias alias$dir’. I should repeat this after each reboot. How to remove or to rename coreutils’ dir? I’ve tried to remove this file or to comment line for it in `!Run’ at `coreutils’ folder – this doesn’t work. BTW `cat’ is also replaced. :-(

The problem with `Heretic’ was caused by necessity to run `UnixHome’ after reboot again. Is there a way to make this automatic?

So I can eventually run Heretic, Hexen, Rise of the Triad, Chocolate Doom. :-) I’m surprised by high speed of these games. I’ve tried PrBoom at Raspbian with 900 Mhz overclocking and it was slower but with music. So RiscOS games lack for music,

• to all:

At first I met with RiscOS at 1991. I was astonished by its speed. The RiscOS 5 has many attractors: stability, good NFS client and server, good telnet and ssh clients, www browsers and server, GCC and unique Basic. It is good to control the electronic devices and emulation due to its single tasking nature. Raspberry Pi with 1920×1080 image at 30" LCD TV looks fantastic! :-)

Is there any open documentation for the RiscOS’s beginners? I’ve just made a small note at
http://litwr2.atspace.eu/riscos-unix-microsoft.html

I would actually like to see its enhanced version at RiscOS wiki. ;-)

I am seeking answers for the next questions about RiscOS.

1. Is there telnet/ssh server?

2. Are there wildcards other than *?

3. What is the purpose of user home catalogue (&)?

4. What are Alt and Ctrl keys functions?

5. How to use pipeline (like `du|wc’ at Unix)?

6. What is the library concept at shell?

7. Is it possible to use file links?

Please…

1. Is there telnet/ssh server?

Don’t know

2. Are there wildcards other than *?

3. What is the purpose of user home catalogue (&)?

4. What are Alt and Ctrl keys functions?

5. How to use pipeline (like `du|wc’ at Unix)?

6. What is the library concept at shell?

7. Is it possible to use file links?

I’m very sorry that I missed this manual (the links from http://www.svrsig.org/Beta.htm don’t work). Thank you very much! Could you help me with my main problem? How to override DIR replacement by coreutils (see question to Reik)?

My problem with `Rise of the Tria’ was caused by coreutils package. It install its `dir’ command instead of standard! […] BTW `cat’ is also replaced. :-(

and:

Could you help me with my main problem? How to override DIR replacement by coreutils (see question to Reik)?

I have no idea what “coreutils” is, but since you are talking about dir and cat, am I right to assume that this is something that provides clones of Unix-like commands?
Okay – please understand – RISC OS is not Unix! ;-) The “standard” way we list files is by *Cat (it is short for “catalogue”). There is also a short form which is *. (yes, star-dot). Most people type this on the command line, it’s quicker. However in code you should prefer *Cat as it is the proper command.

Some other answers:

1. Is there telnet/ssh server?

Depends on what you want. There is a telnet interface to a BBS server, and ages ago I wrote a (very insecure!) program that allowed you to telnet in to the command line because the one I had from elsewhere was too buggy.

2. Are there wildcards other than *?

Yes. There are two wildcards.
The first, *, matches “anything” so check* would match checksum, checkmate, checkers, check-in, etc. Note that it matches “zero or more” characters, so “check*” can match “check”.
The second, #, matches one character, so ch#ck would match chick, check, and chock.

3. What is the purpose of user home catalogue (&)?

It is actually the User Root Directory. In Unix terms, it is like where the user logs in (and cannot really do much beyond) a nominated path, such as /~rick. For me, on that login, /~rick is my user root directory, which isn’t the same as the real ‘/’ root.

In Acorn terms, this stuff has relevance with networking, but otherwise not (in which case & = $ (user root directory is the same as the real root directory)).

4. What are Alt and Ctrl keys functions?

Depends.

In the command line, Ctrl keys tend to output VDU codes (^G will beep for instance). Best not to experiment as some VDU codes have “effects” such as turning on printer spooling, with RISC OS likely hanging when the buffer fills up and there’s no printer to accept the data.

In a custom program, the commands are defined by the program but may be stuff like ^F to find, ^S to save, and so on.

In the desktop, it is similar, control keys (Ctrl and Alt) can be trapped by the program.

If you are hoping for ^C, ^X, etc for process management – again, RISC OS is not Unix.

5. How to use pipeline (like `du|wc’ at Unix)?

You don’t.

You can use:

command { < file } – execute command taking input from file.
command { > file } – execute command writing output to file.
command { >> file } – execute command appending output to file.

Sometimes it is useful to be able to:
command { > null: } – execute command throwing away all output.

However, to directly take the output of one program and provide it as the input of another… we don’t.

Okay, I like, there is PipeFS. Though I suspect the number of programs that use PipeFS could perhaps by counted on the fingers of one hand.

RISC OS does not have the philosophy of hundreds of tiny programs dedicated to a single specific task.
Instead we just prefer to have programs that do what is necessary without heartache or headache.

6. What is the library concept at shell?

Literal: There is a library. It is set at boot (via *Lib) so that the path ‘%’ points to it.

More usefully: Library is a bit of an anachronism. Go to the command line and type:
*Show Run$Path
and you ought to see something like “Run$Path : ,%.,” followed by lots of things.

It is not a broken path to begin comma,percent,dot,comma. What this is telling RISC OS is that when you enter a command (and it hasn’t been recognised as a module-provided command), it should look for it first in the current directory, then the Library, then each of the other paths in turn.

7. Is it possible to use file links?

If you mean symlinks, then… say it with me… RISC OS is not Unix! ;-)

The RISC OS filesystem structure is very very different to the idea of Unix where everything hangs off of /.
So for instance in the Unix mount-point scheme, /cdrom is the CD/DVD drive, /media/sdcard is an SD card, and so on.
Under RISC OS, the CD-ROM is traditionally CDFS::<discname>.$ (may not hold true these days with USB drives) and the SD card would be SDFS::<discname>.$. The only gotcha is that USB storage identifies itself as SCSI.
However RISC OS is quite flexible on how you can refer to devices, so this isn’t as limiting as it might seem to be, unlike, say, a system with illogical structure such as /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, and /usr/sbin (which is today a pile of nonsense propagated from really tiny storage devices in the ’70s and an army of geeks too proud to realise that if it needs books to explain it, it is probably broken).

This might amuse you (though I think I need to rewrite it as some parts badly mess up the cadence):
http://www.heyrick.co.uk/assembler/sanity.html

@Rick re-unix: lol ;-) if only we could get a modern filesystem on RISC OS though – and not some bastardised UNIX one [if someone mentions ZFS I WILL hunt you down!]

[Malcolm, I updated the post – damn this forum not having a preview!]

if only we could get a modern filesystem on RISC OS though

Define modern?

Some systems require redundancy. Like RAID, where drives that fail can be swapped out and the contents restored to a fresh drive.

Some systems requir consistency, so may want extensive journalling and boot-time checks.

Some systems may just want extremely rapid support for insanely large datasets (sparse files).

Some systems may be well aware that they are running off Flash media so will want to minimise writes to the media, try to work in natural block sizes of the Flash chip, and if possible interact with SMART to keep an eye on the state of the device.

However, since RISC OS isn’t suited to processing vast amounts of data (blocking FS and such) plus RISC OS doesn’t kick in housekeeping as and when it feels, so there isn’t actually a lot that needs to be done with the RISC OS filesystem other than making a non-blocking API (which nobody will use as <insert random ancient version> doesn’t do it…).

So, for argument’s sake, what is a modern filesystem? What would it offer RISC OS in particular?

[if someone mentions ZFS I WILL hunt you down!]

I would strongly veto this on account of the specifics of the RISC OS filesystem, including the heavy dependency on metadata. While we might think of a ZFS-like system, ZFS itself should be stomped upon with extreme prejudice – why would we want to bastardise a filesystem that has served us for a quarter-century to use a filesystem that is essentially alien?

Yes, I used <blink>, I’m going to go hang my head in shame.

A modern filing system?

Been pondering this (lightly – waiting on Chihayafuru):

We don’t need user controls/restrictions as RISC OS is not a multiuser OS.

I notice that NTFS records a lot of timestamps – created/modified/accessed. It may be interesting to record creation and modification separately, but is there value in “last accessed”? Certainly repeated updates of the directory block for just looking at stuff is unfriendly to flash media.

What could be interesting is a privacy key system where files are either scrambled or inaccessible until you have logged in. Several IDE podules have included “password protection”, though the password is likely written to the disc someplace specific but this doesn’t encrypt files, it only restricts access to it with that hardware (assuming the format can be read, placing it into a different sort of podule/computer would entirely bypass the so-called security).

Partition support, plus partition merging (two 200Gb drives “appear” as a single 400Gb drive).

Harder protection against data corruption; a drive when mounted should perform an internal consistency check and warn the user if anything seems out of sync. I’m not sure RISC OS justifies the overheads of journalling, but in this day and age it is wise to self-test.

It would be nice if partitions could be resized (if not shrunk, at least increased; including across a new drive). Better if it could be done to a live mounted filesystem.

For the purposes of backup, it might be a nice idea to be able to switch the filesystem to read only for a short time to allow a complete snapshot to be taken. However akin to FCFS, only sectors actually in use need to be copied.

We don’t need dedupe. It’s a lot of processing overhead to pare out a hundred copies of COPYING/TXT.

I’m in two minds about symlinks. Part of me thinks they might be useful, and part of me thinks that a logical structure would remove most of the need for symlinks.

Aforementioned options for Flash media.

Needs an option to programatically disable automatic defragmentation as such behaviour would be undesired if triggered during time-sensitive events (dumping video, live audio, etc).

At the end of the day, when all is said and done and the fat lady sings…. the most important features of any filing system are reliability and resilience. The fanciest system around isn’t worth a damn if random files get trashed, or saved stuff is handed back to you corrupted.

Anything to add?

Partition support, plus partition merging (two 200Gb drives “appear” as a single 400Gb drive).

Ah – volume groups. Did someone mention the X word? :-)

@micro
The !coreutils packaged is better used in separate components. As you have already found, there are cmd name clashes. A simple way is to copy the cmd binary to !Boot.Library which is already in the search path. Rename echo to eko, cat to kat and so on as required.
I have recently compiled sash (Standalone shell) which was designed with the need to run on a system as a rescue shell with its own builtin commands. It uses a dash in front of most commands to distinguish them from the normal system cmds
http://homepages.woosh.co.nz/ron.may/rosash.zip
So far I have fixed the tar cmd to be RISC OS compatible, and renamed the exec cmd to execf to avoid the clash. Sash hasn’t got the redirection power of the larger bash and coreutils, It is tiny in comparison (300kb) but is a nice base for adding or modifying commands, typically one c file per command.

(the links from http://www.svrsig.org/Beta.htm don’t work).

Beta.htm updated to indicate that the links are temporarily broken (since March 2013) while ROL reorganise their site.

`Rise of the Tria’ … install its `dir’ command

The correct function of the ‘dir’ command is to set the current user directory (csd, also referred to as ‘&’) to the parameter given. So if the csd is SDFS::0.$.Fred, then the command *Dir Jim will cause the csd to become SDFS::0.$.Fred.Jim so that &.Bill will actually refer to SDFS::0.$.Fred.Jim.Bill

Thankfully I think the requirements for a modern RISC OS filesystem are much less than for linux.
We have (IMHO) no need for mirroring or volumes, they are nice features – but for a desktop? seriously?
I would say add partition and large disc support are the only features that I care about.
Does RISC OS have journaling, is that worth it? It would be nice, but I think the way the current filesystem works it isn’t needed.
Adding more cache features with the newer hardware may be nice, but with the way RISC OS is and how it is used would that bring any benefit to more than one or two users?

I couldn’t get number (is it possible?) of total opened StrongEd’s windows.

Not directly but there is a way.

Open the iconbar menu and select ‘WindowList’. This will open the LoW (List-of-Windows) window that lists all open StrongED windows.

Click Menu over the LoW, and open the Save LoW submenu. Make sure ‘Selection’ is unticked and drag the filetype icon to StrongED’s iconbar-icon.

Move the cursor to end-of-file (Ctrl-down arrow) and you can read the number of lines in the Infobar (bottom left).

The trick with left mouse button and Shift is not working. It points to $.Apps.!StrongED.Defaults.AutoSave instead of $.StrED_cfg.UserPrefs.AutoSave.

Is StrED_cfg really located in the root directory? If it is then that’s wrong, it needs to be in either Boot:Choices or in the same directory as StrongED. If it’s not in one of those locations then StrongED won’t find StrED_cfg and will revert to using Defaults for storing its configuration files.

IMHO this looks like purposeless duplication.

StrED_cfg is used to store configuration files modified by the user. When StrongED looks for a configuration file it will first look in UserPrefs and then in Defaults. So any files you’ve changed will override the default files.

The main advantage of this is that you can update StrongED without losing your customisations.

Thank you very much.
I am going to work with sash because I still can’t make proper installation of coreutils. :-( It is curious what may commands chgrp, ln, nice, … do under RiscOS?

@Ronald May
It is impossible to install coreutils by copying them to the mentioned directory. All of them require Wimpslot initialization so they run via aliases.

BTW I could successfully run Chocolate Doom at multiplayer mode with desktop Linux machine. :-) I also tried Ultima IV – it was good for me at early 90s.

The symlinks or hard-links maybe very useful at RiscOS too.

@micro
If you click on the rightmost iconbar icon you will see the current application tasks and a Next slot. Drag this too a higher value and it will stay set for running binaries without the hassle.
A binary doesn’t strictly have to be installed as such, It will run (usually from a taskwindow or obey file. You can temporarily set a higher wimpslot in any taskwindow before executing if you need to, or set the wimpslot parameter for a taskwindow if creating one from an obey file. An alias is a compact way of presetting some parameters to a command, though the RISC OS alias has limitations, and it is simpler and less limiting to pass parameters to an obey file.
There are two varieties of symlinks in RISC OS that I know of, I’m not sure what Rick has been working on. There is no support for hardlinks and mkfifo or mknod type of things dont work.
There is a GCCSDK mailing list for questions on ports and porting, the team has been doing great work for unixlib and the cross-compiler, which also spills over into the native !GCC compiler.
I mentioned sash as it might help you get used to unixlib naming conventions and quirks. For example unixlib can handle a RISC OS path but sometimes it might be an advantage to use a unix style path. For example tar cvf ADFS::HardDisc4.$/Public/Holiday/docs.tar workdir will set the RISC OS filetype to tar because of the mimemap. docs,c46 will also work because the unixlib ,xyz extensions have been compiled into tar.
Some coreutils binaries do add a little streaming magic over and above RISC OS or sash, I’m thinking of cat, tail and dd, though dd only works up to 64Kb on the low level RISC OS drives eg (SCSI:0), it is OK with files. HTH

s there any open documentation for the RiscOS’s beginners? I’ve just made a small note at
http://litwr2.atspace.eu/riscos-unix-microsoft.html

You can add CTRL-N to ScrollLock and cmd to run cmd
out put redirection should be { > dest }

1. Is there telnet/ssh server?

There is a telnet server in ROOL CVS. Thomas has compiled this and it works on RPi.
Should I upload this for download?