Subject: YDL 2.0 OldWorld Install Issues Postmortem
frazz@lump.mine.nu
Date: Sun Jun 10 2001 - 22:29:53 MDT
Hello all,
I just installed YDL 2 this wweekend and ran into some issues and
some things that I would consider show stopping problems.
Now I'll start off by saying I'm impressed with the kernel they shipped
with YDL becuase it had no trouble with any of my hardware, upgrades and
all. So Cheers to TSS for that. Here's what I'm working with:
PowerMac 7500/G3 400 w/1MB backside cache (Sonnet upgrade)
I do have the extensions to enable the cache
280MB RAM
Advansys UW SCSI Controler
ATI Nexus 128 (32 MB Rage 128)
Inital Booting
Well I had troubles, like I said before teh kernel booted the machine just
fine but once it got to the ramdisk, that was the first of the show
stoppers, I can't remember the error off hand but I could reproduce it if
anyone is interested. But the boot process stopped becuase it couldn't
read the ramdisk image compressed. I had to boot back into MacOS and
uncompress the ramdisk (this was the x11 ramdisk BTW) and rebooted and
selected the uncompresed ramdisk and it booted into the installer just
fine.
Installation
After that I wanted to take care of cleaning off all the old partitions
before I did a general install. I chose customer and went into the drive
partitioning and did all that set up my partitions how I wanted them and
such. went back into the install profile chose default and it hoased up
becuase going back did something to my partition that I had set up to be
my /boot partition. I had to get into the rescue CD and reformat it. Now
the rescue CD I was suprized to find out had no nodes in the /dev
directory for a SCSI system at all. I had to make my own SCSI nodes so
that it would handle the partions that the insaller corrupted so they
could be repaired.
I booted back into the installer and tried a general install, which was
going pretty well, until it chose the 16MB partition I made for the boot
partition as it's root, unless that is what it is ment to do? I wouldn;t
think so since it quickly ran out of space and died. So I went just throgh
the custom install and cleared and reset my partitions and then the mount
points where I wanted them. Chose the everything install, and with no
feedback after it was "transfering packages" I thought it had locked up.
It turns out after several reboots into the installer and trying out the
Devel Workstation that just before i was about ready to three finger
salute the machine it continued on.. and did the install. I did want and
everything install so I went back and tried to choose Everything after teh
devel workstation package install was complete. After clicking OK for each
package that was installed the installer froze not knowing what to do
to continue installing non-installed pacakges. Yes another reboot, this
time I reset the partitions and mount points and just selected everything
install and it actually installed everything. Which was good so there was
a YDL 2.0 install on my machine after nearly 8 hours of work and wait. Yes
I did make the whole process harder by not sticking with a default install
or a custom install, but hey... I wanted the best of both, and I wouldn't
have found all these nifty little issues with the installer either.
Overall
I am a bit upset that there wasn't a way to have the CD's bootable on
OldWorld hardware. LinuxPPC does this with 2000Q4 it doesn't seem like it
would have been that difficult to include. That along with the other
issues I have I am thinking OldWorld users got left by the wayside on
this release. So this was supposed to revitalize old hardware, bring out
those old 603 and 604 machines, buy the CD's and find out that you'd not
be able to use them without work that is not covered in the Guide. Anyway
I digress with that, I'm not trying to say YDL is bad, just the ramdisk
included. The installer seemd pretty beta to me, not being able to handle
installing over already installed packages,. why even ask the question if
the pacakge is already there or not, it's doing the installation, write
over, I'm sure the wait is worth actually getting through the install.
I would have to say, that through out the whole install, I was able to
work through all the problems, but the biggest shocker was the lack of
SCSI device nodes on the rescue CD, making it nearly worthless as a rescue
CD to anyone with hardware they want to revitialize most of those systems
are all SCSI systems. I was a little upset that the XFree86 install came
with a bad rage128 driver, I am missing the accelerated video. I'm
definitely looking forward to seeing YDL 2.0 release in yup to update
XFree86 with somethng that includes working rrage128 support. I have to
say Kudos for KDE< I have never been able to get arts to produce such
clear and unintrrupted sound with my own source installs, and all the apps
work wonderful as far as I've tested them. My fiance likes the Potato Guy
and jezzball games. Good job, but the install was definitely far from easy
for this Old@Wolrd user.
If anyone wants any more detailed information on anyting I've talked about
in my post, please feel free to mail me. Thanks all.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun Jun 10 2001 - 21:35:55 MDT