Linux-Setup Digest #521, Volume #20 Sun, 28 Jan 01 14:13:10 EST
Contents:
Re: Need your suggestion on how many partition for my 30GB hd?? ("ne...")
Re: rpm 4 under Caldera? ("ne...")
about ifconfig and route (scythe)
Re: KPPP Problems (Trent Joy)
Re: Mandrake & c++ (Thomas Dickey)
Re: rpm 4 under Caldera? ("L. Friedman")
Re: Proliant 2500R + Red Hat 6.2 - RAID5 suddenly loses drives ("Jez Thomas")
Linux on floppy disks? ("Andrew Wain")
explain memory model for linux (kimbray)
Re: pppd for non-root??? ("Meron Lavie")
Re: rpm 4 under Caldera? (bleatgoat)
Re: explain memory model for linux ("Peter T. Breuer")
Installation Help (subuno >)
Re: KPPP Problems (Steve Ackman)
Re: Boot Problems Win98/RH7 (Mark Bratcher)
Re: Boot Problems Win98/RH7 (Mark Bratcher)
Re: HD Image (Mark Bratcher)
Re: rpm 4 under Caldera? (Black Eagle)
Re: rpm 4 under Caldera? (Black Eagle)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "ne..." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Need your suggestion on how many partition for my 30GB hd??
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 14:54:57 GMT
On Jan 27, 2001 at 16:01, kellyboy eloquently wrote:
>I have this 30GB HD and I plan split into several partition for linux
>Mandrake 7.2 set up...
>
>My question is:
>how much space for each point...
>
>my current set up (as said in fstab) are this...
>
>hda1 /boot
>hda5 /
>hda6 swap
>hda7 /usr
>hda8 /var
>hda9 /home
>hda10 /root
>hda11 /tmp
You might also want to consider /opt and /usr/local as
additional partitions.
/boot - 25M
/ - 150M
swap - up to 2 x RAM
/usr - 4G
/var - 500M
/home - 750M <= 3 users, 250M x # users, adjust to suit.
/root - 50M
/tmp - 1G, especially if you compile in it.
/opt - 4G
/usr/local - 2G
>
>I want to split my 30GB properly... which mount point (/home /usr /root
>/boot) need how much space in mb?
>
>Im trying to choose the right amount of space when I make it in fstab under
>Linux so I can have the biggest partition as possible under /home
The divisions given above are only guidelines. You'll
have to decide based on what you use your machine for.
>
>and do I really need swap space when I have 256mb RAM on this computer?
Yes. Check out http://kt.linuxcare.com/kernel-traffic/latest.epl
for the article on swap for the reasons why.
--
Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org)
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain
9:45am up 17 days, 12:44, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.00
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.caldera
From: "ne..." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: rpm 4 under Caldera?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:12:13 GMT
On Jan 27, 2001 at 15:47, Robert Morelli eloquently wrote:
>I am running Caldera eDesktop version 2.4. The version of rpm
>in Caldera is 3.03, while the current version of rpm seems to be
>4.04. I've run into quite a few packages that seem to require
>version 4 and it's becoming a nuissance. However, I'm very
>puzzled.
Go to Redhat's site and grab rpm 3.0.5 for the RH 6.2 errata.
Do a diff on the listings of both 3.0.3 from Caldera and 3.0.5
from RH to make sure that they are similar enuf to not cause
any problems. You can then install this. Else grab the tarbol,
compile and install. 3.0.5 from RH handles version 3 and 4 rpms.
[...]
--
Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org)
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
10:06am up 17 days, 13:04, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
------------------------------
From: scythe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: about ifconfig and route
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 23:03:22 +0800
when I run the commands ifconfig and route under linux, there are a lot
of terms and I don't quite make out what they exactly mean....can anyone
explain they to me term by term?
I would like to know the meaning of the following terms,
a) ifconfig:
Link encap, HWaddr, inet addr, Bcast, Mask, "UP BROADCAST RUNNING
MULTICAST", MTU, RX packet, dropped, overruns, frame, TX packet,
carrier, collisions, txqueuelen, Interrupt, Base address, lo.
b) route:
Destination, Gateway, Genmark, Flags, Metrics, Ref, Use, Iface.
what does Flags U, UH, UG mean? Genmark, Ref and Use mean....??
thx a lot
------------------------------
From: Trent Joy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.os.linux,alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions,aus.computers.linux,comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking
Subject: Re: KPPP Problems
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:19:23 GMT
Open up a terminal window as root. enter this:
chmod u+s /usr/sbin/pppd
go to www.kde.org and read their FAQ, they have a
workaround for the KPPP problem with the redhat
distro.
--
=====>Trent
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.earthlink.net/~trentjoy
------------------------------
From: Thomas Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mandrake & c++
Date: 28 Jan 2001 15:35:53 GMT
Markus Kossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Jon Church wrote:
>>
>> I may be brain dead here, but, it seems that a workstation installation of
>> Mandrake 7.1 does not include the standard c++ library <iostream.h>.
>> I've never had this trouble with RH. Mandrake includes other libraries
>> (stdlib.h time.h etc) but not iostream.h I can't believe this is true but
>> I can't get the simplest c++ programs to run. Where am I going wrong??
>>
> Well, just install the rpm for libstdc++ development. AFAIK it's called
> libstdc++-devel in Mandrake and not part of the "workstation"
> installation.
perhaps you mean something like
libstdc++-devel-2.95.2-12.mdk.i586.rpm
which I see at
ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/distributions/mandrake/7.2/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/
however, it was not included in the cdrom that I installed from. Note that
we're discussing Mandrake 7.1 and I see it available in 7.2 - perhaps it was
overlooked in 7.1. A related problem is that the shared libraries are
stripped, making them provide less information for a walkback -- compiling
gcc myself highlighted this difference, since the shared library as installed
by Mandrake is much smaller. I do not see this addressed in any of the 7.2
rpms.
> Of course you can discuss, what should be included in "standard
> workstation" installation.
workstations are used for development.
what else did you suppose they are used for?
--
Thomas E. Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
------------------------------
From: "L. Friedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.caldera
Subject: Re: rpm 4 under Caldera?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 10:55:53 -0500
Robert Morelli wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "L. Friedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> > Robert Morelli wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >> "Michael West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> > What are you hoping the documentation will tell you?
> >>
> >> For one thing, I would hope it would tell me exactly the sort of
> >> things that you and the other posters are telling me. In particular,
> >> some of the problems you say some people have had sound serious to me.
> >
> > Which is exactly why you don't play with experimental versions of
> > software unless you know what you're doing.
>
> The reason I posted here was to find out if in fact rpm 4 is
> experimental or prone to problems. If you read my original post, you'll
> see that I was unable to find any documentation for rpm 4 at all on the
> www.rpm.org site -- not a word. All of the documentation there
> is years old. Nevertheless, the link to rpm 4.0 is placed prominently
> on the home page, labeled as the ``current latest release.'' At the
> same time, the site claims, ``This site aims to bring you the latest and
> most up to date information on the RPM software packaging tool
> which is taking the world by storm.'' I consider this a little
> irresponsible.
>
> I'd really like to encourage the Linux community to take this sort of
> thing more seriously. In my opinion, documentation is as important
> as code. If you release a new version of something, you have to say,
> at the very least, ``This release fixes this and that ...'' or ``This release
> is experimental,'' or ``This release introduces such and such feature ...''
> I think it's pretty dangerous and misleading that www.rpm.org has an
> experimental version of rpm listed as the ``current latest release''.
>
> Anyway, it's good at least to have helpful folks the newsgroups.
Oh, i agree with you 100%.
The problem with RPM project is its history. ALthough RedHat loves to
have its name in the spotlight, and RPM certainly does that for it, its
not until very recently (in the past year or so) that Redhat made *any*
significant development contributions to rpm. Up until then rpm was
nothing more than marketing for Redhat, while others who had no
relationship to RedHat the company, did the bulk of the development
work. Then all of a sudden, Redhat to get actively involved in the
development of rpm again, and started to play little games with the
other developers. In addition, they started to add 'features' to rpm
which in effect broke alot of backwards compatibility, and then used
their customer base as the guinea pigs via their distro releases.
RedHat-7.0 is a perfect example, where they dumped rpm-4.0 out to the
world, effectively changing the rules and forcing people to either jump
through hoops to allow them to use the newest rpm packages, or to simply
'use RedHat-7.0'. I don't think i need to spell out which company's
tactics this mirrors.
The bottom line here is that RPMs are a nice idea, however you should
make an effort to be profficient with other means of getting new
software on your linux system, that way you aren't dependent on what
RedHat does.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The alt.os.linux.caldera FAQ:
http://netllama.ipfox.com/COL_FAQ.html
Step-by-step help for COL problems:
http://netllama.ipfox.com/stepbystep.htm
10:45am up 13:34, 2 users, load average: 1.89, 0.82, 0.30
------------------------------
From: "Jez Thomas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq,alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.redhat
Subject: Re: Proliant 2500R + Red Hat 6.2 - RAID5 suddenly loses drives
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:55:17 -0000
This belongs firmly in alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers, so follow-ups set.
The Archimage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
> OK, here's the scenario:
>
> I have a Compaq Proliant 2500R, dual PPro 200's, a gig of EDO ECC RAM,
> and an external Compaq F1 Raid array with 9 identical Seagate 9.1 gig
> SCSI drives.
<snip - disks fail>
> I called Compaq, and they told me to upgrade to the latest BIOS and
> utilities, and then run the system erase utility.
You needed to do:
- Systemboard firmware
- RAID (SMART) card firmware
- Disk firmware
- System partition upgrade (Thinks - does Linux support the system
partition?)
IMO, the system erase should not have been necessary.
> I did, then I ran the
> compaq diagnostics. I ran two complete runs (took 66 hours), and the
> machine, the CPUs, the memory, the SCSI controller, and the disks all
> passed.
Diags won't pick up a firmware bug.
> Any clues where to look next? I'm leaning towards bypassing the onboard
> NCR SCSI card and putting an Adaptec 2940UW in a PCI slot and running
> the array off of it.
Eh? Are you not using a Compaq SMART Array card???
Where do you get an "onboard NCR SCSI card" from?
------------------------------
From: "Andrew Wain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Linux on floppy disks?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:19:32 -0000
<if you reply to this message using email, I'd prefer my mail sending to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hi,
Well, I have been into computers for as long as I can remember, and feel
that Linux is the nex natural progression from Windows, as I can't stand it
crashing, I'll mak it crash down the stairs one of these days! However,
before I commit windows to the bonfire, I would like to give it a tryout on
my laptop. Which I would need to install it on eventually anyway.
My laptop doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, so I was wondering whether a PCMCIA
drive would work or whether I would need to find some floppy disks.
If floppy disks is a viable option, from where can they be obtained. I don't
really want to spend a lot of money on it, ideally under �10 including
shipping to UK.
The laptop is a Compaq LTE500
P75
800MB Hard Drive
16 MB RAM
Floppy Drive
No modem on laptop so a download is out of the question.
Thanks for your help
Andrew
------------------------------
From: kimbray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: explain memory model for linux
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:30:04 -0000
can you explain the memory model for linux
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: "Meron Lavie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: pppd for non-root???
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 21:24:04 +0200
This did not work for me. Any other ideas, please?
--
Meron Lavie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
NOTE: THERE ARE NO NUMBERS IN MY REAL EMAIL ADDRESS HOST NAME: ANTI-SPAM!
"Steve Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Peter Nyhlen wrote:
> >
> > /etc/ppp/ISP.chat: /dev/modem: Permission denied
> > Anyone have any ideas what else I need to set to get pppd to work from
> > non-root accounts?
>
> Find out which serial port your modem is on (ls -l /dev/modem)
> and change the permissions on that port, i.e. chmod 666 /dev/ttyS1
> (or whatever port). I put an entry in the /etc/rc.d/rc.serial
> file to do this on bootup, never have a problem.
>
> Hope this helps.
------------------------------
From: bleatgoat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: rpm 4 under Caldera?
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.caldera
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 12:07:17 -0500
drumvudu wrote:
> Robert, you can get rpm v4 from rpmfind.com. I will tell you that there
> are issues involved in upgrading directly to v4 from your current version.
> v4 will break certain packages and you will end up back at your
> version. Your best bet is to get the current version of v3. It has support
> built in to load packages that need version 4 and is way more stable.You
> can get it at rpmfind.com also. Once you install it <man rpm> for the
> docs..
>
>
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Robert Morelli was alledged to have proclaimed:
>
> > I am running Caldera eDesktop version 2.4. The version of rpm
> > in Caldera is 3.03, while the current version of rpm seems to be
> > 4.04. I've run into quite a few packages that seem to require
> > version 4 and it's becoming a nuissance. However, I'm very
> > puzzled.
> >
> > First, I could find no mention of rpm version 4 on Caldera's site.
> >
> > Second, the home site of rpm at www.rpm.org has no recent
> > documentation. Every document there is years old.
> >
> > I've never seen a feature of an operating system as important
> > as rpm go undocumented this way and I really don't know what
> > to make of it. Some obvious questions:
> >
> > Is there a source of information on rpm 4 that I've missed?
> > Is this sort of lack of documentation just a ``normal'' part of the
> > Linux culture?
> > Is rpm 4 still experimental?
> > Are there known serious problems with it?
> > Should I avoid rpm 4 until documentation appears?
> >
> > Any advice appreciated.
> >
>
> "Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and
> plain dealing"...Ralph Waldo Emerson
>
> "It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few
> stupid ideas"...George Santayana
>
> Confucious say "If you play in root,
> eventually you will kill tree"...anonymous
>
> SuSE 7.0 2.2.16
> Linux: t h e c h o i c e o f a
> G N U g e n e r a t i o n . . .
>
>
If you dont want to fuck up your system you need to upgrade in steps.
Sounds dumb but I've already been burned by this. You need (I think) to
jump from 3.03 to 3.04 to 3.06 and then can make the jump to 4.x and then
likely need to run rpm --rebuilddb
------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: explain memory model for linux
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 17:35:42 GMT
kimbray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> can you explain the memory model for linux
flat.
Peter
------------------------------
From: subuno <"<subuno"@nowhere.net.comnstuff>>
Subject: Installation Help
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:43:59 GMT
If anybody could help me with a installation problem I would appriciate
it. I installed Mandrake 7.1 and then tried to set it up to run with my
cable modem. With the carrier I'm with I should just have to make sure
the card is recognied and then set up DHCP(according to the HOWTO). I
figured out that my card wasn't being recognized and then tried to
install the module with no luck. I checked /proc/intterupts and it says
that there is some kind of usb device their. On my Winoze system the
modem was IRQ 10 and was at 0x280. I tried doing a reinstall in expert
mode and when I had it probe for pci devices it didn't find my card even
when I picked the driver to look with. My card is an SMC EtherEZ and is
supposed to work with the smc-ultra driver. I tried all the drivers
offered for the SMC cards and it didn't recognize the card with any of
them. Can someone please offer advice on how to proceed from here. Is
anyone currently running 7.1 with a cable modem.
Thanks,
sub
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steve Ackman)
Crossposted-To:
alt.os.linux,alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions,aus.computers.linux,comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking
Subject: Re: KPPP Problems
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 12:29:09 -0500
On Sat, 27 Jan 2001 18:38:48 +0200, Meron Lavie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I am a Linux/RH7 newbire, who is experiencing 2 problems with PPP:
>
>I can use the _Redhat Linux_ dialup tool within KDE, with no problem
>whatsoever, however with KPPP:
>
>1) I can successfully dialup when I'm root, but from without root I'm always
>asked for the root password. Why shouldn't everyone be allowed to use the
>modem?
Because Linux is a multi-user OS. You don't want
Joe disconnecting the modem when Cindy is in the middle
of downloading a file. Cindy gets very testy about
such things. If you're root, you don't want to see
Cindy when she gets testy.
--
Steve Ackman
http://twovoyagers.com
Registered Linux User #79430
------------------------------
From: Mark Bratcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Boot Problems Win98/RH7
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 18:18:10 GMT
Bob Lewis wrote:
>
> Sorry, bad typing/proofreading on my part when I posted, current conf file
> does read
> other=/dev/hda1
> label=dos
> table=/dev/hda
> Thanks for pointing that out though.. Bob
>
Bob, did you say that even trying to boot from a DOS OS floppy or Win98
Boot Floppy it still hangs? If that's the case, then LILO isn't
involved. There is something else very strange happening.
See if you can at least get it to boot DOS or Win98 command line off the
floppy. What messages to you see exactly before it hangs in this case?
--
Mark Bratcher
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
=========================================================
Escape from Microsoft's proprietary tentacles: use Linux!
------------------------------
From: Mark Bratcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Boot Problems Win98/RH7
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 18:19:55 GMT
Bob Lewis wrote:
>
> Sorry, bad typing/proofreading on my part when I posted, current conf file
> does read
> other=/dev/hda1
> label=dos
> table=/dev/hda
> Thanks for pointing that out though.. Bob
>
> Rasmus B�g Hansen wrote:
>
Bob,
Did you say in your prior post that it also hangs if you attempt to boot
DOS or Win98 command line of the floppy? What is your BIOS set for disk
boot order? Is it C,A?
--
Mark Bratcher
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
=========================================================
Escape from Microsoft's proprietary tentacles: use Linux!
------------------------------
From: Mark Bratcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: HD Image
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 18:25:36 GMT
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
==============A7E8B10814B21EEF97514B60
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Federico Bravo wrote:
>
> I 've just started using Linux ( RedHat 7.0 ).Can somebody teach me a
> very fast way to make an image of my installation onto a CD, so I can
> recovery my soon-to-come stupid errors? I don't have installed my
> CD-writer yet, since the HOWTO left me pretty confused. Maybe I can use
> another OS.... oops! Thank you in advance.
> Federico.
Frederico,
I've attached a cheesy backup script I wrote for backing up my system
onto 4 CDs. You can look at this and use all or part of it if that
helps.
--
Mark Bratcher
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
=========================================================
Escape from Microsoft's proprietary tentacles: use Linux!
==============A7E8B10814B21EEF97514B60
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii;
name="cdbackex2"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename="cdbackex2"
# Prerequisites:
# BACKUP_DIR is the default backup file path
# /mnt/file is available for mounting the file system
USAGE="Usage: `basename $0` [-t] {1|2|3|4} [dest_dir]"
if [ .$1 = . ] ; then
echo $USAGE
exit 1
fi
if [ "$1" = "-t" ] ; then
TEST=1
shift
else
TEST=0
fi
case $1 in
1)
FILE_LIST="/bin /boot /dev /etc /home /lib /lost+found /root /sbin /tmp /var
/usr/share /usr/bin" ; TDIR="" ;;
2)
FILE_LIST="/usr/local/attic /usr/src" ; TDIR=usr ;;
3)
FILE_LIST="/usr/local/alsa* /usr/local/[^a]*" ; TDIR=usr ;;
4)
FILE_LIST="/usr/X11 /usr/X11R6 /usr/X386 /usr/dict /usr/doc /usr/etc /usr/games
/usr/i386-redhat-linux /usr/i486-linux-libc5 /usr/i486-linuxaout /usr/include
/usr/info /usr/kerberos /usr/lib /usr/libexec /usr/man /usr/sbin /usr/tmp" ; TDIR=usr
;;
*)
echo $USAGE
exit 1 ;;
esac
if [ .$2 = . ] ; then
BACKDIR=$BACKUP_DIR
else
BACKDIR=$2
fi
if [ $TEST = 1 ] ; then
echo Backup dir is "$BACKDIR"
du -sbc $FILE_LIST
else
if [ ! -d $BACKDIR ] ; then
mkdir $BACKDIR
fi
if [ ! -f $BACKDIR/bimage.ex2 ] ; then
dd if=/dev/zero of=$BACKDIR/bimage.ex2 bs=1024k count=650
/sbin/mke2fs -q -F -b 2048 $BACKDIR/bimage.ex2
fi
insmod loop > /dev/null
mount -t ext2 -o loop=/dev/loop1 $BACKDIR/bimage.ex2 /mnt/file
rm -rf /mnt/file/*
if [ ! .$TDIR = . ] ; then
mkdir /mnt/file/$TDIR
cp -a $FILE_LIST /mnt/file/$TDIR
else
cp -a $FILE_LIST /mnt/file
fi
umount /mnt/file
cdrecord -v -blank=fast -speed=4 -dev=hp $BACKDIR/bimage.ex2
fi
==============A7E8B10814B21EEF97514B60==
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Black Eagle)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.caldera
Subject: Re: rpm 4 under Caldera?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 18:31:22 GMT
On Sun, 28 Jan 2001 10:55:53 -0500, "L. Friedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Robert Morelli wrote:
>>
>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "L. Friedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Robert Morelli wrote:
>> >>
>> >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> >> "Michael West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > What are you hoping the documentation will tell you?
>> >>
>> >> For one thing, I would hope it would tell me exactly the sort of
>> >> things that you and the other posters are telling me. In particular,
>> >> some of the problems you say some people have had sound serious to me.
>> >
>> > Which is exactly why you don't play with experimental versions of
>> > software unless you know what you're doing.
>>
>> The reason I posted here was to find out if in fact rpm 4 is
>> experimental or prone to problems. If you read my original post, you'll
>> see that I was unable to find any documentation for rpm 4 at all on the
>> www.rpm.org site -- not a word. All of the documentation there
>> is years old. Nevertheless, the link to rpm 4.0 is placed prominently
>> on the home page, labeled as the ``current latest release.'' At the
>> same time, the site claims, ``This site aims to bring you the latest and
>> most up to date information on the RPM software packaging tool
>> which is taking the world by storm.'' I consider this a little
>> irresponsible.
>>
>> I'd really like to encourage the Linux community to take this sort of
>> thing more seriously. In my opinion, documentation is as important
>> as code. If you release a new version of something, you have to say,
>> at the very least, ``This release fixes this and that ...'' or ``This release
>> is experimental,'' or ``This release introduces such and such feature ...''
>> I think it's pretty dangerous and misleading that www.rpm.org has an
>> experimental version of rpm listed as the ``current latest release''.
>>
>> Anyway, it's good at least to have helpful folks the newsgroups.
>
>Oh, i agree with you 100%.
>The problem with RPM project is its history. ALthough RedHat loves to
>have its name in the spotlight, and RPM certainly does that for it, its
>not until very recently (in the past year or so) that Redhat made *any*
>significant development contributions to rpm. Up until then rpm was
>nothing more than marketing for Redhat, while others who had no
>relationship to RedHat the company, did the bulk of the development
>work. Then all of a sudden, Redhat to get actively involved in the
>development of rpm again, and started to play little games with the
>other developers. In addition, they started to add 'features' to rpm
>which in effect broke alot of backwards compatibility, and then used
>their customer base as the guinea pigs via their distro releases.
>RedHat-7.0 is a perfect example, where they dumped rpm-4.0 out to the
>world, effectively changing the rules and forcing people to either jump
>through hoops to allow them to use the newest rpm packages, or to simply
>'use RedHat-7.0'. I don't think i need to spell out which company's
>tactics this mirrors.
>
>The bottom line here is that RPMs are a nice idea, however you should
>make an effort to be profficient with other means of getting new
>software on your linux system, that way you aren't dependent on what
>RedHat does.
It would be helpful if an "uninstall" package were included with
tarred and zipped files. That way (except for those helpful programs
that put everything in one or two subdirectories), it would be easier
to remove ALL references to a program.
I recently had to remove a broken application to replace it with an
upgraded version. It took me nearly a day to find all references to
it in all the various subdirectories. It had files scattered all over
my machine.
Black Eagle
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Black Eagle)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.caldera
Subject: Re: rpm 4 under Caldera?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 18:33:03 GMT
On Sun, 28 Jan 2001 03:16:54 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Lew) wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Robert Morelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>I am running Caldera eDesktop version 2.4. The version of rpm
>>in Caldera is 3.03, while the current version of rpm seems to be
>>4.04. I've run into quite a few packages that seem to require
>>version 4 and it's becoming a nuissance. However, I'm very
>>puzzled.
>>
>>First, I could find no mention of rpm version 4 on Caldera's site.
>>
>>Second, the home site of rpm at www.rpm.org has no recent
>>documentation. Every document there is years old.
>>
>>I've never seen a feature of an operating system as important
>>as rpm go undocumented this way and I really don't know what
>>to make of it. Some obvious questions:
>>
>>Is there a source of information on rpm 4 that I've missed?
>>Is this sort of lack of documentation just a ``normal'' part of the
>>Linux culture?
>>Is rpm 4 still experimental?
>>Are there known serious problems with it?
>>Should I avoid rpm 4 until documentation appears?
>>
>>Any advice appreciated.
>
>I've had to dig recently into rpm 4x and found some info on the redhat
>site; and asof today, saturday jan 27 2001, the info on the site says
>rpm 4x is still "in development" and not a production release.
>
>"rpm" is redhat's "property" and not a "normal" linux package even if
>other distributions use it; a potential problem exist in that when using
>a rpm to install, one could install into a place that redhat uses and not
>the distr one is acutally using and thereby possibly creating duplicates.
It was my understanding that Caldera was a major developer of rpm in
conjunction with Red Hat. Am I wrong?
Black Eagle
------------------------------
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