I didn't have quite as much bad luck with rc2 as Pierre Fortin did, but, as usual, so much that is so obvious to anyone who tries to install it that I do not report such things because of their "obviousness". This makes me critical of Mandrake's alpha testing, and I will not cooperate with them or report stuff until it is acceptable and the team signoffs are included.

My chief complaint about rc2 is its inability to set up a good lilo.conf when the bootloader was previously installed on the MBR by one of the other Mandrake partitions. In this case the installer should update the lilo.conf on the existing lilo-active linux partition and chroot lilo to it so that operations are not disturbed except for the addition of the newly installed partition stanza which will then become bootable immediately after installation. This is obviously a basic requirement.

In any case rc2 testing here has to stop until October 1 since my broadband download quota for September is exhausted due to the inexcusably RPM-repetitious nature of Cooker downloads.

Pierre Fortin wrote:

There is NO way rc[12] are release candidates... releasing this would make Mdk a laughing stock and really tick off a lot of users.

As mentioned below, INSTALLATION is the MOST IMPORTANT part of any distro;
without it, it doesn't matter how good the "distro" is rated to be -- it
simply does NOT exist if it can't be installed...!!

From what I've seen so far, 9.2 is gonna be a bomb if the installer isn't
cleaned up.

Even after telling 9.2rc1 installer where 9.1 is, I'm writing this (as we
travel along I-40) on a crippled 9.2 kernel even though it *should* be the
original 9.1... image=/boot/vmlinuz <====== (1)
label="linux9.1"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.22-1mdk.img <===========!!!! (2)
read-only
(1) Install was on hda9, so shouldn't this read
[/mnt]/91/boot/vmlinuz...???
(2) Should also read: [/mnt]/91/boot/initrd-2.4.21-0.13mdk.img


where /91 is the name I gave the 9.1 partition during 9.2 install...

This is the classic problem of failing to corectly tell lilo where stuff
really is...

To understand what is wrong with the installer's view of lilo.conf, here
is my hand-crafted lilo.conf on the 9.1 side (/dev/hda1) -- the 9.2
version needs to take the opposing view of /dev/hda9 with hda1 as the
"foreign" OS using /91 as the mount point...

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=menu
vga=normal
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
        label="linux"
        root=/dev/hda1
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img
        append="devfs=mount acpi=off prof=Home"
        read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
        label="linux-acpi"
        root=/dev/hda1
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img
        append="devfs=mount acpi=on prof=Home"
        read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
        label="failsafe"
        root=/dev/hda1
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img
        append="failsafe devfs=nomount acpi=off"
        read-only
other=/dev/fd0
        label="floppy"
        unsafe
image=/boot/vmlinuz
        label="office"
        root=/dev/hda1
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img
        append="devfs=mount acpi=off prof=Office"
        read-only
# 9.2
image=/92/boot/vmlinuz
        label="linux9.2"
        root=/dev/hda9
        initrd=/92/boot/initrd.img
        append="devfs=mount acpi=off resume=/dev/hda7"
        read-only
image=/92/boot/vmlinuz
        label="failsafe9.2"
        root=/dev/hda9
        initrd=/92/boot/initrd.img
        append="failsafe devfs=nomount acpi=off resume=/dev/hda7"
        read-only

In other words, there is no way to correctly build lilo using a common
lilo.conf file; the "view" depends on which partition you're starting
from...

Of course, not enough of 9.2 was installed to really give it a serious
look...

-- Ron. [Melbourne, Australia] "If you keep a green bough in your heart, the singing bird will come" Get Fastest Mandrake downloader, English-only, from: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ronst/ Click all ye faithful!




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