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Re: Sarge - Not an Easy Install



Am 2004-12-27 11:28:49, schrieb fester@mwt.net:

> I started with a $38 P2 I bought on Ebay. Upon completing the download for SARGE
> the machine wouldn't load GRUB, something about an error 18. I posted a request
> for an explanation of error 18 and was told to create a small boot partition at
> the beginning of my hard drive. I did so.

This is normaly not neccesary, because
there is no 1024 Cylinder limit anymore.

> 1. The boot partition must be named  /boot,

:-)

> 2. Don't bother defining it as being bootable yet, the next partition you define
> becomes bootable by default,
> 3. Say you want your /boot partition formatted, the partitioning won't finish
> without it,
> 4. When you're starting just use the EXT3 system unless you have a good reason
> not to,
> 5. Watch out for PARTITION NOT USED, you don?t want it,
> 6. Your next partition must attach at / (root),
> 7. Don't forget to go back and make your /boot partition bootable.

Why not make 

hda1    pri     /            250 MB (bootable)
hda2    pri     swap         250 MB
hda3    pri     /tmp         500 MB
hda5    log     /usr        3000 MB
hda6    log     /var         500 MB
hda7    log     /var/log     200 MB
hda8    log     /home       XXXX MB

> I decided to try downloading WOODY in hopes of a more care-free experience. This
> time I couldn't start X-WINDOWS, the fonts were missing. Running APT-GET INSTALL
> XSERVER-XFREE86 produced no results.

To get a minimal X-Window, you need

    apt-get install x-windows-system-core

and a window-manager like "fvwm" or for a full X-Window

    apt-get install x-windows-system

If you need other charsets like iso-8859-15 you need to install

    apt-get install xfonts-base-transcodes xfonts-75dpi-transcoded \
                     xfonts-100dpi-transcoded

> WOODY wasn't doing any better than SARGE so I downloaded SARGE again and got the

WOODY installs perfectly...

> same problem with X-WINDOWS. About this time I noticed that on a fairly regular
> basis files timed-out rather than download, thus I know I had several missing
> files. By this time I was getting fairly used to using APT-GET, with a

???  -  Never heared about it.
Which files are missing ?

> half-dozen variants. Sometimes they added a couple hundred extra megabytes to my
> hard-drive (oh joy!).

What Du you have tried to install ?

Eh...   apt-get install *

> Loading SARGE the third time worked no better than the first two tries. (While I
> was doing all this downloading, I noticed any website would download the first
> file, but none would download anything else unless the current time was shortly
> after the top of the hour. I'd sure like to know why.)I went to
> LinuxQuestions.org for help and got it. One recurring theme was, what was in
> this or that file? There wasn?t anything obvious like an EDIT command to use so

There are no files to edit...

When was the download blocking ?

While bootstraping the Base-Packages ?

How do you have downloaded it ?

Modem, ISDN, DSL or fixed Network ?

What about 'nano-tiny' as editor ?

> I loaded Knoppix. Knoppix allowed me to read files but not to change them
> because Debian said Knoppix wasn?t the owner. (This is a nice security feature
> but underscores the need for an easy-to-use text editor.) Next I was steered to
> VI, and as promised, it wasn?t easy to learn. Eventually I learned what I needed
> to and made the changes I wanted.

What about the command 'su' or 'su-to-root' ?

> The next thing I tried was re-running the setup utility. There I noticed the
> DESKTOP option I had checked was no longer checked, which probably explains why
> I couldn?t run X-WINDOWS. In addition, the MAIL SERVER option was checked when I
> hadn?t asked for it during the install. I unchecked MAIL SERVER and re-checked
> DESKTOP and exited the utility. A bunch of stuff was deleted but X-WINDOWS still
> hadn?t made it onto my machine.

The x-window-system needs an xserver  :-)
And many other Packages too.

No MTA no X !

> Finally, it was suggested I tried APT-GET DIST-UPGRADE, this generated some
> activity. Next I ran APT-GET UPDATE and APT-GET UPGRADE for about the tenth
> time. This time it used up several hundred meg more disk space. Somehow I was
> moved into a setup routine for X-WINDOWS. During the usual, and truly helpful,
> dialog boxes, I came across one which explained very nicely about all the
> different types of mice there are in the world. The next screen was a listing of
> mouse drivers. The problem was: the dialog box never told me which driver to use
> for my kind of mouse. I picked one and got lucky. 

If you know your mouse, you know its driver...

> I tried STARTX again, and lo-and-behold X-WINDOWS came up!  I was so happy I
> quit there until after the holidays.
> 
> 
> All this whining assumes the intent of Debian/Linux is to eventually become a
> widely used operating system for use by the average computer user. If I?m right,

Ehm what ?  -  Debian is already used by "averaged computer users"
the problems are some DOS/Windows-Users  :-)

> maybe my experience will help squash some of the bugs. If I?m not, I?m sorry you
> bothered to read this far. In any event I plan to continue learning and using
> the system.

Do you have read the install-manual ?

I think not, so RTFM !

Greetings
Michelle

-- 
Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ 
Michelle Konzack   Apt. 917                  ICQ #328449886
                   50, rue de Soultz         MSM LinuxMichi
0033/3/88452356    67100 Strasbourg/France   IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com)

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