Re: Debian and others installation
On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 01:11:18PM -0500, Roseland, Winton wrote:
> I have recently attempted to install the debian-net-install, Ubuntu 5.1,
> Kubuntu 5.1 and Knoppix 4.0 on separate occasions but to the same
> machine. The machine is not very fancy, FIC VA503+, 500-K62 and 384 MB.
> I would like to report problems I had. I get many comments that the
> VA503 board is trash, but they (I have 2) have worked well for me.
> After service pack 6A, NT started to lock up on it, so I went to Win2K
> but after a service pack I started getting lock-ups again where it
> appeared that the IDE controller did not respond. Linux has worked
> well, as Knoppix will run for months before I reboot.
Make me wonder if that system is even stable. Might explain the USB
problem below. Maybe the power supply is not stable, or the not very
good via chipset that they used on that board is causing problems.
> 1) I have a HP PSC 1315 printer attached to a USB 2.0 PCI card, and all
> recent Debian based versions died during the install as long as the
> printer was plugged in. A message came up about initializing or
> checking the USB and that was the end. There were no errors: it just
> never did anything else. If I unplugged the printer and hit the reset
> button, all would work. I refused to do that on Knoppix 4.0 (it is
> bogus fix), so I am back at Knoppix 3.8.
No idea what that is about.
> 2) The Debian net-install did not set X up so that I could use the
> features of my monitor. The greatest resolution it would give was
> 800x600 (I tried the reconfig thing for X later and it never changed the
> settings). I had the etc directory from a Knoppix 3.8 install so I
> copied the X configuration files from it to get the resolutions I
> expected. The Debian file seemed to be missing quiet a few lines.
Well you have to get the monitor and video card settings correct. It
does currently have a tendancy to pick vesa for way too many video cards
that I think it should actually support.
> 3) I had changed from a PCI network card to a 3c515 card in order to add
> another IDE PCI controller. None of the versions found the 3c515. The
> net-install used it, but there was no network connections on subsequent
> reboots. When I reinstalled Knoppix 3.8, it did not find it either, so
> I had to add my own script to do a "modprobe 3c515" and "ifup eth0" on
> every start-up. Suse 10.0 and Fedora 4 find the network card. I think I
> answered the Suse question about my workgroup incorrectly so it would
> never use the card, but ifconfig always showed it. Debian's network
> configuration seems a lot better.
Well remember you have to fiddle with the isapnp config to activate the
3c515. Last time I messed with that it involved echo'ing some stuff to
/proc/isapnp to turn on the card and set it's ports and such. Or
perhaps if the bios has 'pnp os' set to no, the bios will take care of
it for you.
> 4) I have a Sound Blaster SBAWE-64 ISA card. This card is never seen
> during install or boot (Suse and Fedora do see it). So I added a
> "modprobe snd-sbawe" (I think it is correct) to my start-up script.
Sound cards is a problem for udev/other things. The installer doesn't
care since it doesn't affect getting the system installed.
> Soapbox time. I have written software and I do not understand how Linux
> can be so finicky. I would think that the installation would be tested
> using idiots like me to verify that it is going to work. My wife thinks
> I am nuts: her windows pc just keeps running and I am always having to
> do something to fix a problem on the Linux pc. I have the HP PSC 1315
> connected to the Linux box because xsane works so much better and is so
> much faster than the HP application running on the Win2k box and I have
> the process to get windows to print to the Linux PC down to a science.
> I had Samba working great on my Fedora 4 install, but I am going to
> spend hours (that I should be spending on something else) trying to get
> it right on Knoppix (it does not log into the windows machines
> properly).
Well samba never seemed that hard to configure.
Len Sorensen
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