Re: [Sheflug] SuSE 8.2, Debian and XP

[Alex Hudson <home [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 13:52 +0000, Lesley Anne Binks wrote:
> Thought I'd post my recent experiences to see if anyone can shed some
> light on any of the problems I have experienced (apart from criticisng
> a lack fo preparation perhaps :) ).

It's always good to try to test things before you do them as much as
possible ;)

> I was actually extolling the virtues of Linux to a Windows using
> friend about 2-3 weeks ago.  This was around the midnight hour, .  We
> chatted on and I said I'd get a URL for her.  Came to the machine to
> find out I'd been chucked out to the login prompt. This was at about
> 0010 hours to be exact and I think my updates took place about
> midnight. Located an oops in the syslog file.  First oops I've ever
> had. I ran a new copy of memtest to check for hardware faults and all
> was hunky dory. Or at least it reported it so.

An Ooops could be any hardware fault or kernel bug; memtest only really
checks memory. If you could post the oops here, I can probably tell you
what went wrong with some margin of certainty. So, don't assume that you
don't have a hardware problem at the moment - all you've really verified
with memtest is the memory (and, by extension, the CPU I guess :)

> SuSE 8.2 threw out my ethernet card driver, 8138too, and it failed to
> show at all on an lspci command.  This was rather annoying.  

lspci works at a pretty low level, and doesn't require the driver for
the card to work. That sounds like a hardware issue.

> Unfortunately, I thought I'd backed up my data sufficiently well, but
> I missed out some vital component of my Alcatel Speedtouch modem

D'oh :o)

> It appears XP won't talk with GRUB. *sigh*

XP will talk with grub, but only in the same way lilo will: you need to
keep the XP bootloader around. Usually, though, you can just chain into
the partition XP is installed into. If you're having other boot issues,
it's sounding more like a parted partitioning bug that is currently all
the rage (but unlikely, give you used woodyr2).

> Due to this experience I hesitate to go fully Linux again.  
> It's cost me 3 days in locating faults and deciding strategies to
> overcome it, with the last resort being going back to Windows. :-(  I
> can't afford that time, especially when the 'problem' seems to have
> stemmed from an update to software from SuSE with a version they
> should be dropping soon.  

Well, to be honest, you haven't convinced me that this is a "Linux" bug
yet ;) The fact that Windows is running (at the moment ;) doesn't really
prove much. It could be an update which broke your machine, but that
would really surprise me - updates to old software tend to be very
small. I would smell co-incidence, to be honest.

> They kindly provided a pre-release v3. gcc in 8.2 with no way to get
> to a v2.95 *and* the source provided on the CD's would not compile
> with this compiler.  So there was no way to even trim the existing
> kernel let alone come off the branch they issue at release time.

I think actually the problem was in the kernel source using deprecated
gcc features (multiline strings, for example) - certainly, looking at
google, people using 8.2 are having no issue compiling vanilla kernel
2.4.21 ( I think ... ). But, maybe I misunderstand what the problem
was...

> I'll take a look @ 9.2 when I get it but I suspect, if I can get a
> stable Debian system with GUI going, before 9.2 gets here, I might not
> even open the box.

Well, firstly, try a few live cds before reinstalling ;) If a Debian-ish
live cd works on your system, then you should have no problem installing
that kind of system. Ditto the redhat-ish and suse-ish CDs. 

Second, if you like the Debian way of doing things, perhaps look at
Ubuntu linux? I have it on my personal machines at the moment, and it's
fine.

Cheers,

Alex.

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