Re: Can't get YD 2.1 to install


Subject: Re: Can't get YD 2.1 to install
From: Nathan A. McQuillen (nm@steaky.dhs.org)
Date: Fri Nov 02 2001 - 23:17:59 MST


Dan sez:

> Truthfully I have yet to meet one person that uses Linux of any sort as a
> desktop OS, most set up a server of some sort and walk away from
> it............

Pleased to meet ya, Dan. :)

So here's some non-techie advice. I don't know too much about the way it's
/supposed/ to be done, but I've gotten Linux running well on a lot of
pretty arcane things (see below) so I figured i should try to help out.
First off, it really sounds like you should try a different installation
method. The very easiest thing would be to install the drive you want to
use with YDL in one of your other machines, do the install, then stick it
back in your 8500 and see if it still chokes. Remember, Linux will just be
"borrowing" the CPU of your other system, so if you don't mistakenly mess
with the other drives with pdisk or anything, the change should not affect
the other machine at all (except for the brief downtime for the install).

(If you run the text based installer I think you will be happier too. Just
my 2 cents, here, but I am personally unimpressed with X-based installers
and I don't see the need unless we really want to make sure we can't fit a
rescue disk on a single floppy. Fine option, but option it should remain.
Others are of course entitled to their opinions. At least partition the
drive manually -- it's easier, better and more fun!)

Speaking of partitioning, I would also /really/ try to avoid using a split
disk, like you say you are. I don't really know if this makes theoretical
sense, but in my experience, using a dual partitioned disk one seems to
run into issues with the Mac driver, potential bad blocks that Linux can't
tinker with, etc. You'd be better off backing up the Mac files, booting
from a small (like, 150MB) Mac drive (formatted HFS, NOT HFS+, so you can
get at it from Linux!) at a different SCSI ID (ideally 0, since that'll be
the system default if you zap the PRAM or something else does), and going
from there. I use this setup to boot my G3/300. Since I have onboard ATA,
though, the only thing on the SCSI bus in my machine is the tiny 8 year
old Mac boot drive (which then mounts as /macdrive in Linux, so I can mess
with it), then the CD-ROM and the two 40GB ATA/66 drives sit exclusively
in Linux, blissfully unaware that there is any such thing as the MacOS.

This technique (such as it is) is not limited to ATA enabled machines,
BTW; I use the same setup in my hacked Quadra 800 Debian machine except
the Linux drive is a 1GB LaCie SCSI drive, and the boot drive is a Quantum
80meg (system specs available at http://steaky.dhs.org/quagga/). And my
486 Mandrake system boots from a 720K floppy into Linux on a 1.2GB drive
that the system firmware is too old to see.

Bottom line is that YDL is certainly not engineered to hang in the way
you're describing, so either your hardware is screwed (bad RAM or bad L2
cache or bad SCSI configuration) or your media is screwed or you've got
bad power, which is not inconceivable either. I suspect, given the age of
the machine and the fact that, in installing YDL you're dealing with a lot
more raw data going across the busses than your daily Mac business
requires, you're just bringing an existing hardware condition out into the
open, and you might be able to run fine if you can get past the atypical
stresses the installation process is creating. (BTW, if you're installing
that second DIMM, pull the old one out for now. No way YDL needs 128 megs
on your system. Do give it a biggish swap partition though, 128 megs would
work there).

My other recommendation is to install the very smallest and most basic
system you can select, to see if you can get the installer to finish and
see if you can boot from the HD to Linux. You can just mount /dev/cdrom
afterwards and add packages from the disk directly, once you know it
works.

Now, to address your other assertion: I /do/ run Linux as a server,
probably on more different architectures than a lot of folks (Apple PPC,
486, Athlon, StrongARM, MIPS, and M68000 to date, soon hopefully to add
RS/6000 PPC) and it's to die for (well, the Netwinder/ARM implementation
of Red Hat 6.2 is pretty flaky) -- but I've also been using YDL as a
"desktop OS" for going on two years, on two generations of machines, with
no hassles except those caused by my ignorance (and one little nagging
ethernet problem that nobody seems to want to help me with.) It's caused
me probably a total of two nights serious downtime, and that because I
didn't initially know what I was doing, and happened to have a bad Adaptec
card.

If you mean to question how many people are using X/KDE as a production
GUI, well, I don't do that very much, simply because for what I do I need
a Mac, running Adobe software. I /have/ edited images, made web sites,
written documents, set up spreadsheets, printed all sorts of files, viewed
PDFs, downloaded and listened to MP3s, all on X on PPC Linux, mostly YDL,
but I don't use X on a daily basis except to check email, manage servers,
etc. -- I can, however, attest to its all-round competence provided one
knows what one is dealing with (and I know of at least one presidential
campaign whose anti-corporate platform required that the campaign ran
entirely on linux). There's nothing per se but the need for compliance
with monopoly market conditions keeping me with the MacOS. (Well, that and
the fact that Adobe writes fine code that I really enjoy working with.)

As far as your installation goes, try the suggestions above, I'm pretty
sure they'll work for you.

- Nathan

PS -- Since it seems to be bitch week here on YDL-General, my experience
so far with OSX is that it's preserved much of the things I /didn't/ like
about the MacOS (in particular, the growing tendency toward
counterintuitive management metaphors, byzantine interfaces, panes, and
cycles wasted on glowing thingies), removed many of the things I did (a
simple and unified interface with close to zero wait time), it's the
slowest Unix GUI I've used (like, the beta I tested on my G4/450 took
almost 30 seconds to give me a terminal -- compare that to 040 NeXTStep),
it doesn't like most of my hardware and seems designed (no surprise) to
make people purchase new equipment (I don't even run YDL on an open
firmware Mac, see, and it's perfectly happy) -- in short, I've not been
terribly impressed.

10.1 looks better, but I can't afford it right now, can't afford another
drive to put it on, will /not/ run my software in that dreadful 'Classic'
debacle (makes me feel like i'm running shapeshifter on the amiga, just
needs a flicker fixer) so can't afford the OSX native versions I'd need to
do real work, and also can't afford to screw up the OS9 fraction of my G4
or Lombard again like OSX did last time. So for now it's 9 and Linux (and
a little Win2k when the customers bring me publisher files) and I'm a very
happy camper.

Except for that little Ethernet problem. :)

N.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Fri Nov 02 2001 - 23:30:10 MST