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RE: [Sheflug] newbie questions



Looks like Red Hat are only just behind you ;-)

	HTH
	R

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Fairtlough [mailto:nospam [at] dcs.shef.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2000 01:53
To: sheflug [at] vuw.ac.nz
Cc: matt [at] dcs.shef.ac.uk
Subject: [Sheflug] newbie questions


A beginner has teething problems with Linux.
 Any help much appreciated.

I am using Gentus Linux, distributed by Abit, makers of my motherboard
(KA7-100).  Why?  Because the other versions I have tried (SuSE6.4,
Debian2.2
and the latest RedHat) crash on installation, my guess is because UDMA100
and
in particular, the HighPoint disk controller, is not supported.  Has anyone
had any experience with installing Linux on a hard drive with an HPT
controller?  Currently my best option may be to ditch it and use a standard
IDE controller instead, but of course I'd rather not leave a potentially
useful bit of hardware lying idle.  Or has anyone experience of Gentus who
could help advise me on migrating to another Linux distribution from it?

What I'd like to do is to get a new kernel, configure it to include drivers
for my hardware and remove unnecessary drivers and then install the packages
provided by e.g.  SuSE or RedHat (such as Yast), proceeding more-or-less as
if I had installed SuSE or RedHat in the first place.  But I don't a) yet
know how to do this (for example, I don't have the kernel_sources package),
nor b) if it will work in the way I expect, nor c) whether any kernel is
available that will allow me to use the HPT disk controller.

I want to move to another Linux because
a) the Gentus distribution is not a mainstream one
b) it is based on RedHat 6.1, and does not seem to
come with all the packages it should, e.g. install_source

Secondly, mounting the 250M zip drive.  I guess I can find a driver
somewhere e.g. from the Iomega web site, but I understand there are problems
with driving it from Linux and I wondered if there were any guidelines
anyone
knew of for how to proceed.  I don't need it as a boot disk, just for
transfer.

My setup is as follows (I was gratified to find some of you liked the look
of
the hardware before I went out and bought it, but I am a little frustrated
that I have made such little progress in the weeks since I've bought it:  I
don't have a stable installation and I can't print, access the net or use
the
Zip drive yet, nor have I managed to install cdrecord so I can burn my own
CDs, so I'm quite a way from a usable solution):

I have Win2k installed and plan to install Win98 (sorry...) so I'm looking
for a triple-boot option.  Currently I have dual-boot via LILO, which was
installed in the MBR by Gentus (without warning or choice, by the way)

Abit KA-7 100 motherboard with onboard HighPoint UDMA-100 disk controller
Athlon 800MHz CPU
IBM internal 45GB Deskstar 75GXP hard disk
256MB PC 133 memory

Yamaha 8824 internal CD-RW
Pioneer 10x internal DVD
IDE internal 250MB Zip disk

Mitsubishi 19" Diamondtron Plus 51 monitor
Diamond Viper 770 ULTRA graphics  
Soundblaster sound card                                        

Lexmark Optra E312 b/w laser printer
US Robotics 56K external modem


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Fairtlough					m.fairtlough [at] dcs.shef.ac.uk
Verification and Testing Group			Room 115
Department of Computer Science			
University of Sheffield
Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street
Sheffield  S1 4DP			Tel:	(0)114-22-21826
UK					Fax:	(0)114-22-21810
WWW:	http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~matt/
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[fm] redhat-highpoint install disk 6.2-1.url