The have been bugs in older install scripts a.k.a. RH5.2
The one which could strike people with dual boot systems is a strange one. I
had win98 and Linux on an old HDD which I was upgrading.I used DOS FDISK to
partition my new drive.I wanted to keep my Linux partitions in the extended
partition, So I kept a primary partition C for Win98 and a Secondary
partition with a generous amount of space free.
I Started an install of RH 5.2 and everything went fine until I came to the
screen where a user is asked to choose between fdisk and disk druid. I ,
having a fondness for the command line chose fdisk. and created some Linux
native and a Linux swap partition. The next screen was the mount point
screen. Imagine my surprise when I found that the extended partition gave a
hex code by it's side and no Linux partitions were visible. More than a
little puzzled, I went back and fired up disk druid. The same situation
persisted. I simply could not access any partition within the extended
partition. Since I could not set up a mount point for the root partition , I
could not set up RH 5.2 . I then started up Slackware from an earlier PCQ
CD. The partitions were visible from fdisk. Then the answer hit me. FDISK
had created something called an extended LBA partition which Linux could
read , but not the RH install Disk Druid , hence the partition was not being
recognised for what it was.
I ended up by booting from my old disk and copying and setting up the
filesystems and mount points manually and everything ran fine. However ,
when i upgraded to RH 6, The installer now recognized the LBA partition just
fine and everything proceeded smoothly.
The only gripe was that my colour scheme(colour dir listing etc) was wiped
out by the new INIT sequence and I had to add a number of variables and
settings to a large number ( well , perhaps not so large:-)) of config files
a la .bash_profile,/etc/bash_profile etc. to get them going again.
The *MAJOR* Problem I have faced with RH as a whole , regardless of
versions is that the distribution contains only the Intel copy of the
kernel source tree which makes error free patches of the kernel source using
the patch command a physical impossibility. I had to download the 2.2.12
source , all 13 MB bz2 of it .
And Yes , slackware was better for some desktop machines as the installation
would ask if the machine was stand alone and configured it accordingly. No
sendmail hangs due to incorrect /etc/hosts entries. The pkgtool utility was
quite adequate though I did enjoy the glint utility under RH5 which seems to
have been replaced by gno-rpm.
Shanker
----- Original Message -----
From: Amol Rao <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 8:08 PM
Subject: Re: [ilug-cal] Buggy RH6.0
> hi all :
> I think, bug is never related to the installation programs etc. They
are
> the little undetected faults in the programs. If RH 6.0 installation
program
> can not detect the mouse or any other device, it may be problem with the
> script of installation program etc or the probing program only. One can
not
> blame the whole RH 6.0 suite for that. My experience with RH 6.0 was good.
I
> had no problems in mouse probe. I use Logitech First Mouse.
> Moreover, RH guys should not spend much effort on making
> installation easy. Present stage is very acceptable. Sometimes, developers
> end up making the world's greatest installation program and the worst
> operating system.
>
> >From: Arup Bhanja <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Subject: Re: [ilug-cal] Buggy RH6.0
> >Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 13:13:51 +0530
> >
> >Hi Shourya,
> >
> > > I think RH 6.0 is _definitely_ buggy. I remember people having
problems
> >with
> > > RH6.0 probing the mouse type and and the installation process does not
> >
> >Actually, I had quite a good experience with installing RH6.0 on a
> >friend's machine. He has 16 MB of RAM so the box is slow but the
> >installation went fine.
> >
> >He also has a digital mouse and the probing failed so I selected
> >"Generic 3 button" and it worked. The sound card AdLib was detected and
> >installed properly with sndconfig.
> >
> > > System halted" is not a pleasant intro to an OS. On that count I
think,
> >MS-WIN
> > > (I can see a few guns being drawn;-)) does have an marginal edge....
> >with
> > > common people. If we gotta give "Power to the people", focus needs to
be
> > > channelised in this direction.
> >
> >Yes, this is something RedHat is trying to do at least RH6.0 is easier
> >than RH5.2 which I have in my box.
> >
> >Enjoy Linux,
> >
> >--
> >Arup Bhanja,
> >Calcutta,INDIA.
> >
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> >
> >
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