Zane Gilmore wrote: >On Sun, 2002-07-21 at 21:14, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > >>Barry wrote: >> >> >> >>>Well what a day, thanks be that Saturday night & Sunday were time to >>>relax. >>> >>> >>> >>Indeed! >> >> > >The day was a roaring success. But my feet have only just recovered. > > > >>>It would be nice to have some feedback from the installers (and >>>installees) on the success or otherwise of the efforts. >>> >>> >>> >>The first comment I'd make is that there were far too many punters >>there. I seemed to be spending my whole day trying to be in about 8 >>places all at the same time. Next time can we please control the number >>of punters to some thing a bit more manageable? Say about half or two >>thirds. >> >> >Maybe if we try to match up installers to installees before the day. >Now we have some idea of space requirements etc we can also plan here >too. I have been racking my brains for a room on campus bigger than the >ones we had and able to accomodate us. > >Anybody got any ideas? > Could we 'leak' out into the passage / hall-way of the MaCS building. There is plenty of space, and a highpower mains socket at the end of the hall behind the coffee engine. There are more than enough tables in those 2 rooms to line them up along the parapet of the stairwell.
Another possibility is to use the Sydenham hall where we have the meetings, but to ration the numbers to suit the size of the hall. We dont really need fast 'Net access to do and initial install. Little and often being the by-word. >>Next time would it be an idea to see if the owners of the coffee >>dispenser in the hall would like to be there to serve up their wares. >>Even if we do our own refreshments next time could we organize a 'coffee >>& bickkie runner' to bring it around. >> >> >My god yes I could have done with refreshments along the way. > I will attempt to 'volunteer' my son for that next time, but I expect he could do with a bit of help. >>>I suggest recording number,distro, machine, success or otherwise; if a >>>failure the perceived reason for future reference so here goes.... >>> >>>1,Peanut 9.2 failed, P166 64k, faulty distro got to login, no X not >>>enough probing etc modutils for an earlier kernel, considered the >>>machine OK would try another distro. >>> >>> >>> >>I have installed Peanut successfully on that kind of hardware. I don't >>think it is Peanut itself causing problems. >>I have the feeling either that the video card was probably not >>supported, or that the hardware was faulty. Did you check that possibility? >>Are you certain that the CD was ok? Did you check its md5sum? >> >> > >Some planning into getting a known good distro for really old machines >would be good and also one of those boot from CD jobbies too. > There must be some diagnostic software for ix86 machinery. I know of a memory tester but not much else. This would save a tremendous amount of time attempting to install Linux onto dud hardware. Michael spent some 3 or 4 hours farting about with a recalcitrent machine. From his descriptions of what was happening I suspect that the machine was faulty. It's well known that Windows seems to install onto faulty hardware ok, and then just flakes out intermittently later, but linux is more demanding. I have put the VALinux enhanced RedHat-6.2 onto older machines, but they did have 32Megs, but I am sure that 16 would be enough, because the firewalls work well with only 16 megs. s/w - never again will I utter its full name - installs with only 8 megs, but it swaps continuously. I have a 1995 vintage Yggdrasil Linux install compact disk which I have used to install onto a classic Pentium I machine with 16 Megs. It just happened like it was supposed to. Great pity that distro died, it was the best at the time. High-power marketing from RH killed it. >I tried to install Redhat on young Ben Devine's machine with 16M of RAM >and Redhat refused to even start. > Which version of RedHat was that? Try these ones instead:- ftp://ftp.valinux.com/pub/software/VALinux/released/6.2.4/os/iso/va-redhat-os-bin-6.2.4.iso.gz ftp://ftp.valinux.com/pub/software/VALinux/released/6.2.4/powertools/iso/va-redhat-powertools-bin-6.2.4.iso.bz2 If he put another stick of 8Megs in it would definitely work. Go and see Molten Media. >If we had a distro to install on these kind of machines that can offer >the most on these sorts of hardware things could have gone a bit >sweeter. > > > >>1) I successfully installed an IPCop firewall, and oversaw a RedHat one. >> >>2) I wish I had known about: >> >>http://www.superant.com/smalllinux/ >> >>before I gave this child a copy of toms root and boot diskette so that >>he could play with Linux on his truely ancient Toshiba portable. >> >>3) There seemed to be a lot of punters milling around not really knowing >>what to do. We need to have the handout a bit more developed. >> >>btw, did any of the Mac people get linux installed on their Apples? >> >> > >I think one the people turned up but just to have a nosey. >What I think we need here is someone arranged who knows at least the >first thing about a Linux install on PPC hardware. >Another possibility is just installing a non-Apple windowing system on >top of Darwin instead of Apples proprietary job. This set up could >amount to a similar sort of setup to Linux anyway and it's all open >source. > > I have read somewhere - possibly dot.kde.org - that kde-3 has been got to function on top of Darwin. -- Sincerely etc., Christopher Sawtell.
