Re: debian-devel-digest Digest V102 #138
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>Content-Type: text/plain
>debian-devel-digest Digest Volume 102 : Issue 138
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>Today's Topics:
> interesting times installing 2.4.17 [ jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys) ]
> Re: Debian as a CORBA component [ Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo@gnome-db.org> ]
> Virus Found in message "new photos f [ Justin Hahn <jeh@profitlogic.com> ]
> aspell package splitting => dependen [ Domenico Andreoli <cavok@filibusta. ]
> Bug#131301: ITP: netperf -- Network [ erik@todo.de ]
> Re: Debian as a CORBA component [ Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org> ]
> Re: aspell package splitting => depe [ Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org> ]
> Re: The future of gpassman (was Re: [ Andreas Rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at ]
> Re: Encrypting BTS Messages [ Rob Bradford <rob@debianplanet.org> ]
> Bug#131318: general: apt-get and dse [ Brady McCary <brady@poo-2.dhs.org> ]
> Re: The future of gpassman (was Re: [ Scott Henson <shenson2@wvu.edu> ]
> Re: Spam (Re: Urgent Investment) [ Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.o ]
>------------------------------
>Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 08:29:49 -0800 (PST)
>From: jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
>To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
>Cc: keithp@keithp.com, branden@debian.org, ajt@debian.org
>Subject: interesting times installing 2.4.17 in Woody...
>Message-Id: <[🔎] 200201281629.g0SGTnO410989@pachyderm.pa.dec.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain
>I'm new to Debian; an old fart in UNIX and X, and using RH and Mandrake
>the last few years...
>I had an interesting (as in the chinese curse) installing Debian; in some
>ways, I know too much, and tend to go down paths that some newbies might
>not. In others, I am alot like other newbies... So solving some of these
>problems would reduce the inertial barriers to attracting new recruits.
>I posit that I am the kind of person you'd like to see using Debian, and
>that problems I have are the immediate kinds you'd like to fix (rather
>than catering to the completely unwashed user community, which while
>a laudable goal, involves alot more work indeed).
>And at this date, most people using woody are likely to be developers,
>and many/most of them will want/need 2.4, so I claim the upgrade path
>is going to be very common, even if stable is still 2.2 based; and given
>the date, alot of people will soon been following the upgrade path even
>after woody ships as the next stable. This is becoming the default in
>commercial distros, as 2.4 has (finally) mostly shaken down.
>This was my second Debian install (or third, if you count the fact that
>I screwed up my first so badly I started over), onto my laptop. I'll leave
>that tale to some other time.
>As I'm setting up to do some actual hacking on X, to teach it about the
>new input system, I needed to install a recent 2.4. Also experience has
>shown me over the years that having a journalling file system is *really*
>nice (having had one on Tru64 UNIX for many years), particularly when
>hacking on X servers, where you can do yourself in given the horrifying
>propensity for PC graphics hardware to hang your system buss...
>So I got the basic install done, and loaded a pile of packages (I'd kept
>a list of what I'd likely need from my previous install). Modulo the fact
>that the tasks are broken in tasksel, per previous discussion, things
>went ok, and, wonders upon wonders, I even ended up with a functional
>X/Gnome environment, including my USB mouse. Fixing tasksel in woody
>to load decent sets of packages would be a big help.
>So far, so good....
>I installed the 2.4.17 package, appropriately edited my lilo.conf
>(note that I think the message about what file to add in the package install
>to get the initrd is slightly broken; at least it was in my desktop install;
>would be even better if it added it itself).
>This went relatively smoothly (this time); the first time I had trouble
>with the name of the initrd file, as the kernel install script suggested
>a slightly broken name, and I didn't check the name of the initrd
>file first hand.
>But a number of problems remained, which could either be fixed by
>some pretty simple package changes, or by documenting a 2.4 upgrade
>in the installation directions:
>o gnome battery aplet is advising me the kernel may not have APM support.
>Is this true? Do I have to build a kernel to get it? This would be
>unfortunate....
>o the gdm in woody is very old; as I muck around in X server land, I
>appreciate some of its new features and regret its antiquity (and edit
>by hand), as recent versions allow me to edit what server gets started
>with what options, and I need to run a TinyX server; that is a different
>tale, and one I'll work on first hand).
>o My wireless card didn't work. Memory on previous 2.4 installs warned
>me about the transition to the ornioco driver, but of course, details
>are not in my cache. With alot of wandering around, figuring out the
>changes required to /etc/pcmcia/config for the orinoco was solved,
>along with the change needed to get the system to DHCP on the card.
>o The really obscure problem I could not have solved easily without
>Keith Packard's help was the need for the file /etc/default/pcmcia,
>with the line PCIC=yenta_socket. That one I would not have suceeded
>very soon at figuring out (as opposed to the orinoco driver, where
>I had some memory to help me look and had found it about the time
>I was bothering Keith last night).
>o to get ext3 to work on my root file system was another interesting
>diversion (beyond tune2fs -j). On my desktop, I had rebuilt the kernel
>and added support built in.
>On the laptop, Keith's suggestion was different: to add ext3 to my initrd.
>Using mkinitrd did the trick, and now my laptop is running ext3 on the
>root. It sure would be nice if the initrd that came with current 2.4's
>after 2.4.16 came with ext3 in it, or if the base system built ext3 in
>entirely.
>o someone, somewhere along the line installed gpm on me: this caused
>various trouble in my X hacking along the way.
>In general, gpm should *NOT* be the default (if you install an X desktop,
>anyway, which can be used as a signal you aren't likely to want cut and
>paste on the consoles). It only makes interactive behavior of the system
>worse by interposing a user process. With Keith's (relatively) new X
>scheduler in place, having a user process in the way makes for poorer
>interactive feel, particularly on a loaded system. In the short run as
>2.4 deploys, setting up the server to use /dev/input/mice is probably
>the right answer; in the longer run, I hope to move the X server over
>to /dev/input/event completely, and the entire mess will vanish (presuming
>we can get a line discipline in the kernel to handle PS/2 and serial mice
>someday for legacy boxes).
>Net result was a day or two of messing around that is preventable, by
>at most a few hours of writing documents, or a few days of messing with
>packages.
>Still can't get sound out of xine, but that will wait for another day...
>(xmms is working fine).
>Hope this experience helps.
> - Jim
>--
>Jim Gettys
>Cambridge Research Laboratory
>C
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