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- Subject: I am not impressed with Debian so far.
- From: REMOVETHISbsamuels@deskmail.com (Barry Samuels)
- Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 18:36:20 GMT
- Message-id: <CG4B5TdGX1EG-pn2-0YdCC2dI550d@localhost>
I have been using SuSE since v5.2 ( now on 6.0 ) and, having heard
about apt-get, I thought that I would give Debian a try.
I bought a 4 CD Debian distribution and installed alongside SuSE. I
managed to miss the bit about putting the second CD in first when
first running dselect. That instruction should really be more
prominent.
The installation went well until dselect was first run. It then
failed because dselect could not find the file:
'var/lib/dpkg/methods/multicd/available'
this was not surprising as it was actually in 'var/lib/dpkg/'. So I
put in a symbolic link to point to it and was then able to run
dselect. Not a promising start.
After finishing the install, configuring X and trying the system
briefly to make sure it worked, I decided to recompile the kernel.
Everything here went without a hitch until I rebooted the machine. It
seemed from some error messages during boot that some support
functions which I had included in the kernel were also being loaded as
modules.
Before anyone starts suggesting what I didn't do, I did:
make dep
make clean
make zImage
make modules
make modules_install
copy resultant image to /boot/vmlinuz
copy System.map to /boot
run lilo
I then recompiled again but this time modularising those support
functions which caused error messages. On reboot this time everything
was fine.
So why should it be necessary to have some support functions as
modules rather than included in the kernel? I went through the same
process with SuSE without any of these problems.
The next process was to run pppconfig and try pon. All went well for
a time until, on starting pon, I began to get General Protection
errors. Sometimes, immediately after booting, pon would run and
connect without any problems but mostly it wouldn't.
About this time I decided to scrap the whole system and re-install and
this time I would remember to put the second CD in first when dselect
was run.
I still had to stop after the base install and create a symbolic link
to get dselect to work ( shouldn't have to do that ) but after that
the install comleted successfully.
I had the same modules problem on recompiling the kernel and was
forced to include some functions
vfat
lp
busmouse
network device
as modules to get a clean boot.
I originally included wdm and xdm in the install but decided to remove
wdm temporarily. Having done that I cannot now re-install it. If I
run dselect, mark wdm for install, then install I get a message
'Install OK' but it has not installed and is still marked for
installation. If I then set it for a complete uninstall (purge) it
goes throught the motions but apparently does nothing. There appears
to be no trace of wdm on the partition but I cannot install it.
Not an entirely satisfactory experience. I have not yet been able to
try apt-get but I hope to do that soon and I shall probably need my
fingers crossed.
I would not yet regard this Debian installation as reliable. Only
time will tell.
Incidentally I would have posted this on linux.debian.users but the
server refuses to let me post to that group ???
Barry Samuels
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