Re: Resolver failure on VRPC on the Mac

On 14 Apr at 15:05, Rob Kendrick <rjek@netsurf-browser.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 02:48:27PM +0100, Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:
> > >
> > > I would be happy to try any diagnostics that might help pin this
> > > down.
> >
> > And I offer the same.
>
> Perhaps if there is an OS X box running VRPC at Wakefield, we'll be
> able to look.

Regrettably I cannot assist as me and my portable Mac OS Box will be out
of the country.

But if nothing else is available, I could subsequently bring mine over
to a knowledgeable person who lives within 50 miles of Windsor.

> But my understanding is that VRPC uses an egregious
> hack for its networking (proxying SWIs, where RPCemu provides an
> emulated NIC that the host routers), which could cause all sorts of
> excitement given NetSurf does its own resolving, and uses the
> environment variable that tells it which server to use, which may not
> exist or may change if NetSurf queries it before the networking on the
> OS X side has finished connecting, or if there's some race in the VRPC
> hack.
>
> Basically, there are hundreds of possibilities, and it's not going to
> be easy to work it out without physical access.
>
> Perhaps VirtualAcorn would be interested in loaning a copy of their
> software to a developer with access to OS X? (I don't.)
>
> Alternatively, does anybody know if the same issues happens with
> RPCemu under OS X?

Only a week ago I gave RPCEmu another thrash under OS X. But I got
nowhere as networking is not available for this emulation (see
<http://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/>) and also nothing I did would port any
RISC OS software to that emulator.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org
for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/