Message-Id: <9601042343.AA04715@isolar.Tujunga.CA.US>
To: neil@demon.net
Reply-To: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG
Cc: kipp@netscape.com, port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Netscape
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 04 Jan 1996 21:29:09 GMT."
             <199601042129.VAA18132@NetBSD.noc.demon.net> 
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Date: Thu, 04 Jan 1996 15:43:14 -0800
From: Greg Earle <earle@isolar.Tujunga.CA.US>
Sender: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG
Precedence: list

Neil asked me:
> What's the latest story with Netscape under NetBSD/sparc?

Netscape 2.0beta4 comes up and runs under NetBSD/SPARC (1.0 at least; I never
got my chance to upgrade over the Holidays  :-( ).  Kipp @ Netscape changed
the mmap() calls so that it no longer croaks on the VM sun4c hole.  (Yay!)

There are three Known Problems that I am aware of, which cause it to "hang",
where "hang" is defined as "The program keeps running and handles SIGALRMs,
but the window is never updated, and doesn't respond to anything".  (e.g., if
you iconify it and de-iconify it, the whole window comes up blank grey and
it never redraws to handle the Expose events.)

(1) Java applets  :-(

    Workaround: You can edit the Netscape preferences file and disable Java:

	netbsd4me:1:27 [/tmp] % egrep -i java ~/.netscape/preferences
	DISABLE_JAVA:           True

    You might be saying "Why not just pull up ``Options'' and ``Security'' and
    set it there?".  Well, I would, except that brings up problem #2:

(2) Hitting "Apply" or "Save Options" in the Preferences causes it to hang

    I can't save any options/perferences anymore because of this.  It just
    hangs immediately.  Luckily you can set most things manually in the above
    aforementioned file.

(3) It hangs after spawning subprocesses to handle audio links

    This is a rather odd one.  I have these .mailcap entries:

audio/*; sox %s -t au -U -r 8000 /tmp/audiofile && showaudio /tmp/audiofile
...
image/gif; xli -view -quiet %s
image/jpeg; xli -view -quiet -cdither -gamma 1.40 %s

    "sox" and "xli" are natively-built NetBSD binaries.  "showaudio" (from
    the "metamail" distribution) is, in this case, a fancy wrapper around,
    essentially, "cat %s > /dev/audio".

    If I download an image, "xli" is spawned and Netscape continues to work OK.

    If I download an audio sample, "sox" & "showaudio" are spawned, the sample
    eventually gets played, but Netscape doesn't recover - it "freezes" as per
    the above cases.  (Interestingly, Mosaic 2.7beta2 doesn't freeze after
    playing audio links.  Dunno why.)

    Obvious workaround: "Aw, who wants to play audio on a cheesy 8-bit u-law
    AM radio speaker anyway ... "  :-)

Anyway, that's the present scoop.  Someday I'll get up to 1.1 or -current (w/
Paul's later VM mods) and try it again.  Maybe I'll try one of the Solaris
binaries under COMPAT_SOLARIS just for grins  :-)

	- Greg