Oberon/ETH Oberon

Links
ETH Oberon Sitemap

ETH Oberon Tutorial, Fischer and Marais

Oberon Channel in Youtube, Andres Ramos

ETH Oberon White Paper

Contributions, formerly served from the ETHZ

Installing
Originally, Oberon was installed on a bare 32 bit i386 or i486 machine using an Oberon0 diskette. The procedure may still interest an enthusiast.

In a contemporary system the Oberon0 installer can run on a virtual machine. The virtual machine is installed once and can be used for any number of installations. With this method, no time is spent recording and booting from a diskette and the unreliability of diskettes and drives is avoided. The installer runs faster on the virtual machine than it does from a diskette. The method has proven successful in installing ETH Oberon to a variety of laptop and desktop machines including a Micron Trek 2, AGP laptop. Detailed instructions for installation with the QEMU hypervisor are provided and the instructions can be adapted to other virtual machines.

Andres Ramos describes a |installation method where a FAT filesystem on a diskette is used to transfer installation files to the target machine.

System configuration notes in QEMU page are independent of method of installation. In the original installation notes, configuration is discussed under the heading Customization of the installed Native Oberon system. In the running ETH Oberon,  allows access to section "4. Configuring the system".

After installation and configuration on a storage medium, the system can run directly on a native X86 PC. Alternatively, use can continue on the virtual machine. In the native case, a network connection will be over Ethernet or a serial crossover cable. In the virtual case, a network connection uses a TAP or bridge interface connected to the host system.

A Calendar and a Clock
Open an empty Time document with MM on Desktops.OpenDoc Time ~. Set the hook caret by ML in the document. Insert a calendar with MM on Gadgets.Insert Clocks.NewCalendar ~. Insert a clock with MM on Gadgets.Insert Clocks.NewClock ~. MM on [Store]. MM on [Close]. MM on Edit.Open Oberon.Text ~. Alternatively ET.Open Oberon.Text ~. Above the line { System.OpenLog } insert these three lines.
 * { Configuration.Marker set 80% 94% }
 * { Desktops.OpenDoc Time ~ }
 * { Configuration.Marker set 80% 92% }

MM on Edit.Store or ET.Store. MM on System.Reboot.

Telnet Console
Telnet is an insecure protocol but provides a host console in Oberon and in an Oberon sub-system of A2. A host of an Oberon subsystem and a network facing router in a LAN should have a firewall such as Shorewall.

A telnet server daemon is required on at least one host. This in Linux. sudo apt install openbsd-inetd inetutils-telnetd Configure with this line in /etc/inetd.conf. telnet stream tcp nowait /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/telnetd -E bin/bash Refer to the telnetd manual. must be replaced with the id of the Oberon user. Note the default to no authentication; equivalent to parameter "-a none". Restart the inet daemon. service openbsd-inetd restart Try telnet from within a console in the host. telnet localhost Then in Oberon. Desktops.OpenDoc telnet&#58;//localhost To be automatically located in the home directory, append this line to ~/.bashrc. cd ~

Email
TLS is essential for secure transmission of email and is now routine practice. Oberon supports POP and POP3 for retrieving e-mail and SMTP for sending it. E-mail can be received from a smarthost via a TLS tunnel and sent via Exim or a TLS tunnel.

In ETH Oberon, Oberon.Text make these settings. NetSystem = { SMTP = "" {* Outgoing local exim4 or TLS tunnel to smarthost. *}  POP = ""  {* TLS tunnel to smarthost for incoming mail. *}  ...    POPMode &#61; "POP3"  &#123;* POP3 or APOP *&#125; EMail &#61; "me@my.domain.name" &#123;* your return address *&#125; ... &#125; Ports 25 for SMTP and 110 for POP are visible in Oberon.Mail.Mod.

In A2, Oberon.Text, or Oberon. .Text if using myaos, make these settings. NetSystem = { SMTP = "localhost" {* Outgoing local exim4 or TLS tunnel to smarthost. *}  POP = "localhost"  {* TLS tunnel to smarthost for incoming mail. *}  ...    POPMode &#61; "POP3"  &#123;* POP3 or APOP *&#125; EMail &#61; "me@my.domain.name" &#123;* your return address *&#125; ... &#125; Ports are visible in Oberon.Mail.Mod.

Install stunnel and configure as in this example. The server name and port, exemplified by my.email.server : 995, should be adjusted according to smarthost documentation. &#35;&#160;localhost : /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf &#35;&#160;Example SSL client mode services &#91;pop3&#93; client &#61; yes accept &#61; localhost : 110 connect &#61; my.email.server : 995 Hypothetically, systemd should start stunnel. In Debian 11 a bug interferes with automatic startup. This line in /etc/crontab may work. @reboot root /bin/stunnel If all else fails, start stunnel interactively with root authority and submit a bug report against the stunnel package.

Set POP authentication using NetSystem.SetUser as in this example. NetSystem.SetUser pop : myEmailID : myEmailPassword@my.email.server &#126; The original SetUser command assumed the @ character did not occur in myEmailID or in myEmailPassword. This command, for example, would fail. NetSystem.SetUser pop : me@my.domain.name : r2d2$8Ch@my.email.server &#126; The difficulty is resolved by more thorough parsing in the SetUser command. Retrieve the revised NetSystem.Mod in ETH Oberon; Unix.Oberon.NetSystem.Mod in A2. Compile the module. In ETH Oberon. Compiler.Compile NetSystem.Mod ~ In A2 apply the compile button in the editor (menu Files > Files > Unix.Oberon.NetSystem.Mod > MM MM) or MM on this command. Compiler.Compile Unix.Oberon.NetSystem.Mod ~

Install Exim in the host according to system specific documentation for Debian, Fedora/CentOS and etc. Exim authenticates to a smarthost according to a password file. Details of configuration for a specific mail server can be obscure. For example, the server can fail to specify STARTTLS or TLS on connect. Before attempting to configure Exim, ambiguities are best resolved using Swaks. Replace arguments of Swaks options -au, -ap, -f and -t with appropriate values for user, password and email address. Refer to the excellent manual for details. A userid pattern commonly used by ISPs is me@my.authentication.domain. swaks -tls &#92; -ao -apt -au me@my.authentication.domain -ap r2d2\$8Ch &#92; -s my.smarthost.com --port 587 &#92; -f me@my.email.address -t me@my.email.address

The example password has eight characters; \ is not included in the password but prevents misinterpretation of $8 by the host shell. Swaks creates a trivial test message automatically. Arguments of options can be adjusted until transmission succeeds. Confirm transmission by receipt in Oberon as discussed above.

News Reader
Notes pending.

Text
These tables show the structure of records in memory representing a Text. When Texts.Store records a Text in a file for a storage medium, the information in the record structure is serialized. In the inverse process, Texts.Load deserializes the information to the record structure of the Text in memory.

Texts.FindPiece and the cache
For a given Text, T, and offset pos in [0, T.len), procedure Texts.FindPiece has the task of locating the piece containing pos. At each execution, FindPiece could begin at offset 0 and add lengths of pieces until the piece containing pos is located. A cache based upon T.pce and T.org allows better efficiency. When FindPiece completes a search, the pointer to the found piece is recorded in T.pce; the offset of the first character of that piece is recorded in T.org. The next execution of FindPiece begins at that cached location. With a result from FindPiece often being near the preceeding result, this strategy avoids repeated summation of lengths from the beginning of the first piece.

Text Dataflow in ETH Oberon
This dataflow example illustrates relationships between Oberon Text, HTML and ASCII text. &#160;  &#160;   &#160;   &#160;

MediaWiki markup with color and syle but hyperlinks and images omitted MediaWiki processor &#x27F6; HTML5 text with text color and style Web &#160;&#160;browser&#160;&#160; &#x27F6; &#160;&#160;&#160;browser&#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;text Clipboard or Save operation &#x27F6; ASCII text file

Text color and style, images and hyperlinks are lost by conversion of browser text to ASCII. Consequently the rightmost Oberon Text has the same appearance as plain ASCII text. Text color and style can assist with reading and understanding a source but compilation is not influenced by color and style.

Module Sources
The last release of ETH_Oberon at the ETHZ was 2.3.7. At bootup, release date 2003-01-05 is announced in the System.Log. Sourceforge has the file "Native Oberon 2.3.7 Alpha/NativeOberon_2.3.7.tar.gz" and bootable installer images in "Oberon0 boot disk/". Package structure is in Native.Tool. Sources are also available at https://github.com/schierlm/NativeOberon-2.3.6-Extracted in the directory FullInstall_ASCII. Sources and Tools remain under the ETH Oberon License.

Module Sources in System Package
The System Package contains approximately 170 modules. Refer to Native.Tool.