Installed RISC OS. And now what?

I own a Raspberry Pi. I did a lot of experimenting with it these last few months and had a lot of fun. A few days ago I read some positive things about RISC OS and I decided to give it a try. Downloaded RISC OS from www.raspberrypi.org, put it onto my SD card, started the Raspberry and was very surprised at the minimum of time it took to boot into RISC OS.

But what to do next? I would like to make a file server of my Raspberry/RISC. I know I need Samba to do that. I followed the instructions on www.riscos.org/networking/samba.html to download version 0.07a of Samba as a first step. And now I’m stuck. The file I downloaded is now somewhere on my RISC desktop (if that’s what it’s called by you RISC guys). How and with what do I unpack that file? If I unpack where do the contents of the zip-file go? Does RISC OS come with a file manager? Is there some kind of documentation about how to do these first simple steps? Getting started with Risc OS?

I can find my way very well in Windows or Linux, or on a Mac, but getting acquainted with a new OS without any hint whatsoever is too much.

Hope somebody can help me.

Nico

The file you downloaded is a zip file.
If you set the file-type to be ZIP, that should get you going.
Middle click on the file then go to the File ‘Name’ menu then “Set Type” and enter ZIP

You should be able to double click it and see the !Readme and !Samba directory.
Don’t forget it says upgrade to 0.8, also bear in mind I’ve not seen this on the !Store or !PacMan repositories – so it may not work on later machines (would be great if it did).

While I use LanMan98, a commercial SMB client, a lot I have no experience whatsoever of running a samba server on RISC OS. An alternative if you can’t get it to run however would be to use Moonfish, RISC OS’s NFS server. There’s also Sunfish a NFS client of course. You’ll find both in PackMan, your package manager.

RISC OS should come with SparcFS btw an unzip tool. Never try to unzip files on Linux/Win/OSX as it’ll destroy the filetype. Just transfer archives to RISC OS and unzip them there (if you’re unable to download straight to your RPi).

Samba requires at least 8MB of memory in order to run, so can be relatively memory hungry

In order to do this click on the “Switcher” the little RPi icon to on your Iconbar. Look for the bar labelled “next”, left click it and drag it to increase the memory available

First – welcome to this interesting world.

I followed the instructions on www.riscos.org/networking/samba.html to download version 0.07a of Samba as a first step.

That may not be the most recent – ask again if you have problems.

And now I’m stuck. The file I downloaded is now somewhere on my RISC desktop (if that’s what it’s called by you RISC guys).

We do, and have done from a time somewhat pre-dating any half decent version of Windows (speculation has it that Win95 is a copy)

How and with what do I unpack that file?

Click on the disc icon on the left of the iconbar to open the “root” directory and open the directories /folders from there.
I’m not familiar with the specific layout of the Pi image but SparkFS is probably in Utilities (or ThirdParty) double click it to run it and it will appear on the iconbar thereafter any archive file (Zip or ArcFS) dragged to the icon on the iconbar will have its filetype set appropriately. Double clicking on an archive will open it and many applications can be run directly from the archive -bit of a shock for most PeeCee users that one.

If I unpack where do the contents of the zip-file go?

Ah, now if you’re logical you build a set of directories at a convenient point for the items you want regularly and then you drop them there. Making something like SAMBA run at boot time is a case of running it during the boot sequence which you can do by entering Configure (from the menu on the raspberry icon ¹) and then selecting the Boot options. Drag an application to the Run options window and you create a request to run the application during !Boot

This sort of thing is explained in https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Welcome%20to%20RISC%20OS%20Pi (there’s a copy of this in the Pi image you have)

This will also help https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/HomePage

Does RISC OS come with a file manager?

Yes, Filer is built in and drag and drop is the ethos. click(and hold) then drag an item where you want it copied. If you want to Move it hold down shift during the drag and drop.

NB. If you don’t have a three button mouse (most are, what with scrollwheel click features) then you will have problems as ALL three buttons have different uses – try a left click on a scroll bar and then a right click (that’s just one variation from left vs right button use)

PS. SparkFS as in the image is a read-only version, there’s a paid for version which allows you to create archive files and if you’re running an application from the archive any internally contained settings can be written back into the archive.

Oh, and while you’re learning the system: click on the Apps icon on the iconbar, double-click Help in the applications viewer (it isn’t a proper directory view in this instance) now you will have help pop-ups as you move around. Great for starters, bit of a pain when you are used to things although even old time users don’t know all the options.

Ok, downloaded Samba 0.07a and 0.08, I dropped 0.07a on SparkFS and it now shows two icons: ! (which I did) and !smbserver. This last one should be run to install something, I suppose. Or not? I double clicked it and I got a popup saying: “Application may have gone wrong. Click Continue to try to resume or Quit to stop application”. When I click Describe it shows: “Module ‘SmbServer’ is not 32-bit compatible”. Did I do something wrong, or is this version of Samba just not compatible with my Raspberry/RISC combination? If so, any free alternative to try?

The little icon in my message above should read but then starting with two exclamation marks. The two exclamation marks apparently have a special meaning on this forum.

By the way: how do I get these nicely formatted quotes you are using?

Arrrrgh!!

The icon in the message above should read README starting with two exclamation marks and ending with one.

Can I get notified when another user posts something to this discussion?

This last one should be run to install something, I suppose. Or not?

Not. RISC OS applications don’t need to be “installed”. What you’ve got there is the application, and you just tried to start it up.

It’s still in the archive, by the way. You can decompress it by dragging it out of the archive window and into a regular directory viewer, such as the one accessible from the SD card icon.

Did I do something wrong, or is this version of Samba just not compatible with my Raspberry/RISC combination?

The answer seems rather obvious to me – it was right there in the error message you got, after all. You did try 0.08, right?

If so, any free alternative to try?

Sunfish and Moonfish, as suggested above?

I would advise against getting any version of smbserver to run on RISC OS. I’ve never heard of anyone having positive experiences with that port.

The icon in the message above should read README starting with two exclamation marks and ending with one.

Welcome to Textile formatting. Don’t worry, we all hate it too.

By the way: how do I get these nicely formatted quotes you are using?

At the beginning of the line, “bq.”, then a space, then the quoted text.

Can I get notified when another user posts something to this discussion?

There does appear to be a ‘Watch topic’ button up there. I’ve never tried it myself.

You really really really really really should read this before doing anything else:

https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Welcome%20to%20RISC%20OS%20Pi

http://www.gag.de/software/smbserver/index.html

I just gave this one a try and it worked! Had no luck with the sourceforge version yesterday on my Beagleboard and there’s a thread on here suggesting it won’t. Try the one labelled “good for Beagleboard”

You probably didn’t upgrade the non 32-bit version properly btw. To do this first drag smbserver 0.07 somewhere on your disk, then copy 0.08 over it by dropping the folder over the previous one.
As I said however that version of smb server didn’t work for me either even though it didn’t give me any 32-bit errors.

The one I linked to should work fine for you, no problems connecting from Android.
NFS however would be both faster and more reliable than smb.

By the way: how do I get these nicely formatted quotes you are using?

Your starter for 10 is bq followed by a dot and a space on the same line as the bq dot then end the quote with a blank line. Or use quote and unquote in angle brackets (HTML style)
The bq dot version is listed in the Formatting Help below

There is a brief reference available – just click on the link at the bottom of the page:
“See also the Textile reference here.”

Test your options in the Test forum.

re: Samba

“Application may have gone wrong. Click Continue to try to resume or Quit to stop application”. When I click Describe it shows: “Module ‘SmbServer’ is not 32-bit compatible”. Did I do something wrong, or is this version of Samba just not compatible with my Raspberry/RISC combination? If so, any free alternative to try?

Try the 0.08 version at the link Patric provided – the SmbServer module in that is definitely a 32 bit build. Go for the Stubs for 32bit Castle CLib version.
Note:
Along the way you will find out about the old 26 bit Program counter mode of ARM, everything you need is 32 bit so just stick with the must be 32 bit mental mode. It’s an old issue dating back to the association of RISC OS with the very first ARM chips – the processor build moved on and some software is legacy, the samba port being one example. Newer builds exist in many cases but lots of RISC OS users have machines that have older ARM processors with the old 26 bit mode available and don’t care about the problem. (Imagine a cartoon ostrich with head in the sand, the problem isn’t going away but it seems they are hoping it will)