Re: I am not impressed with Debian so far.
On 06/07/99 at 18:36:20, Barry Samuels wrote concerning "I am not impressed with Debian so far.":
> I bought a 4 CD Debian distribution and installed alongside SuSE.
Whence did you buy it? SuSE makes all their own CD's, I think, but
Debian, in contrast, relies on 3rd party CD vendors to make CD's. Not
all of them follow the rules all the time, making CD's that deviate from
"Official Debian." I've had some snags with Cheap Bytes CD's in the
past that required symlink contortions to make it work. This factor
could be pertinent to most of your problems.
> I managed to miss the bit about putting the second CD in first when
> first running dselect. That instruction should really be more
> prominent.
I've heard things to that effect before -- never had to deal with it
myself because of the vintage of my install CD's. Maybe this should go
on debian-devel?
> 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.
Since others have not had this problem, I would suspect the CD's
themselves.
>
> 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.
This is how I understand what you wrote: you compiled some functions
*not* as modules, but your system tried to insmod modules for those
functions anyway... right?
>
> 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
Just a guess... your /lib/modules/2.x.x/ tree had old module files in it
that, when found, made your system think it was supposed to insmod them.
To avoid this altogether while taking advantage of the Debian packaging
system's convenience, you should install the kernel-package package and
use it (see /usr/doc/kernel-package). This automates many of the steps
you listed above, while making sure that your module tree and everything
else is handled properly.
> 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.
If my guess is correct, then with SuSE, you didn't have those old module
files hanging around under your modules directory. Perhaps you were
compiling a kernel version you hadn't previously installed, or at least
you weren't "de-modularizing" any of the functions in your current
kernel.
Aside: It's often more advantageous to have things compiled as modules
rather than into the kernel itself -- what is your reason in this case
for choosing the latter?
>
> 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.
Sorry, never heard of that. Sounds alarmingly like Windows terminology.
:-) This is a "stable" version of Debian, right? I'm using pon/poff,
but I didn't set it up with pppconfig.
> 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.
How do you know wdm doesn't get installed? It could be that it's just
not fully configured for use. I don't use wdm, so I don't know much
about it. This may also be a good use for apt, either apt-get or the
apt dselect method.
> 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.
Consider mine crossed as well. :-) Another reason many like Debian is
because of the quick and complete support they receive on the mailing
lists. In fact, I'd say that's even more important than the ease-of-use
that apt offers.
>
> I would not yet regard this Debian installation as reliable. Only
> time will tell.
Good call. Over time, you should get more comfortable with it while you
have fewer and fewer problems. They say that Debian is one of the more
difficult distributions to install, but by far the best to maintain.
Now with Corel's cooperation, the install process should improve
dramatically.
> Incidentally I would have posted this on linux.debian.users but the
> server refuses to let me post to that group ???
If you're serious about trying Debian, I'd suggest actually subscribing
to the debian-user mailing list. (See the web site for instructions.)
There's a lot of traffic, but you'll learn a lot and be in direct
contact with lots of people who want to help.
HTH,
Jesse
--
Jesse Jacobsen, Pastor jjacobsen@jvlnet.com
Grace Lutheran Church (ELS) http://www.jvlnet.com/~jjacobsen/
Madison, Wisconsin GnuPG public key ID: 2E3EBF13
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