Re: [Sheflug] SuSE 8.2, Debian and XP

[Lesley Anne Binks <lesley.binks [at] xxxxxxxxx>]

Alex Hudson <home [at] alexhudson.com> wrote :

> 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 ;)
 
Agreed, but ... (and I know this is going to sound like I hate Suse atm but it has operated quite well since I started in Linux about 2000) ... well, I was rather disappointed that the woody r2 install didn't get to GUI status.  I could of course tweak the Xfree config file but I think I'll buy some more CD's to write to and download sarge.  Or try networking up woody r2 on the Celeron to this box and do a network install. 

> 
> > 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 :)

I did back up my /var/log so I should be able to fish it out  but I need to tidy this box up before I change everything back and connect up the Celeron-woody box to the screen and keybd. The AMD laying open on the floor with it's guts open while I run it in and the Celeron hasn't had a cover on it in years.

> 
> > 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.

Given the machine is a 1999 build I wouldn't be surprised if some h/w issues are coming up.
> 
> > 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)

Oh, yup :>
> 
> > 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).

Mmmmm .... I am beginning to wonder what's up with the Celeron box then. I am between the possibility of a kernel problem on the SuSE (which now shouldn't exist because of the change over to woody) or a hardware fault.  BTW the Ethernet card was correctly recognised on a re-install of Suse and when I installed woody. The box is at least 5 years old now and that disk has been round the block a few times. 

I will try and find that oops for you but my main aim for the rest of today is to catch up on some eating and some sleeping and these boxes are both in bits on the floor. 
(I'm working nights atm so my sleep and eating patterns are shot.)
  
> 
> > 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.

I have got woody r2 on the Celeron box at the moment.  It installs fine, I just don't have a GUI working on it and I like having one of those. In fact I would say I need one for most of the work I do.  

XP is running on my AMD box on an Asus V733 mobo which is a home build with IRQ probs - some were due to the Promise RAID chip / IDE but I've changed jumper settings and it seems a little better.  Am well aware that Windoze can cludge it's way through a badly set up machine which is why I didn't want to trust this box too much until I had sorted out the IRQ issues.

The board comes with a plethora of USB connectors and there was a uhci conflict when I last tried a Linux install on it.  But that was last year sometime and I sat the box to one side with a 'must do this' ticket on it. It's possible the board was too new or won't run under Linux, in which case I'll be looking to commit this box entirely to Windows :S.

Any problems that may occur with the AMD box are a completely separate issue to the problems I am having with the Celeron box.

> 
> > 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...
> 

Well I had 2.4.20 with various upgrades from SuSe via their online upgrade facility (YOU).  That's from a straight out the box CD install not a download install.  What cheesed me off about it was soon after I went broadband, the later kernels (>= 2.4.24 or 2.4.26 (?)) included the Alcatel driver in the kernel release.   I would have simply liked to upgrade to one of those. 

I tried a number of times to compile the kernel source code that came with the CD and it failed, not due to deprecated strings but due to some hash_defs not existing at all.  With hindsight, I could have #def'd those but it is past history now :>  Suse 8.2 released with a prelease version of gcc and it was gcc v.3 while most kernel literature (for the kernels I was looking at) advises v2.95.

Given I got the source off the CDs that I installed the system from I would have thought there was a strong chance the kernel would have compiled with the existing v3 compiler. 

> > 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 ;) 

I think my plan is to have two Linux boxes going and perhaps have XP tucked up on one for emergency situations or any 'doze work that needs to be done.  But then that might eventually stretch to three boxes so that I can have XP running on the network in it's own right.  Bit daft for one person to have so many bxen but I don't get out much :)

I have downloaded two kernel sources and am thinking of testing whether I can compile using gcc v2.95 on the woody release I have installed on my Celeron box.  First I'll try the source that came with the kernel, then I'll try the 2.4.x where x > 18, then the 2.6.x I have It would be nice to be able to play with the kernel a bit.  Much to learn there.  But my plan was to have one box to play on and one to work on.

I tried the Suse 9.1 CD and it was fairly SuSE-ish :) .  

> 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. 

Until recently, I have not had a problem with SuSE at all.  Bar not being able to get a kernel to compile :)  Oh and not being able to install Gnome without KDE there too.  Oh, and a few other minor points, like how it changes it's configuration everytime it upgrades so sometimes my Alcatel would come up on a hard restart and sometimes not and there was one time it would also come up on a soft reboot but it stopped doing that of it's own accord - so that generally I got left with the feeling that I couldn't be sure what it would do next time I rebooted or restarted.  And I couldn't really be sure what driver the modem was using.  I have no idea where /usr/lib/speedtouch/firmware.bin came from, I certainly didn't put it there and can only assume that the Alcatel driver had been back ported to the 2.4.20 I was running.

> 
> 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.
> 

I will take a quick shufti at it but I have spent some time familiarising myself with the way debian does things.  And the way SuSE does things.

Thanks for your input.  Will get back to you with that oops later.

Regards

Lesley








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