Re: Etch is REALLY fast! :-)
andy wrote:
Dave Witbrodt wrote:
Hi all,
I ran into problems with Gnome automounting CDs and USB flash drives
over the weekend. I have been sticking with Sarge, and I had been
using a backports kernel (2.6.15) that I custom compiled back in
February, but when I bought a new video card recently I found that I
had to compile a new kernel module to get 3D working properly. At
that point, I decided that I might as well grab the latest kernel
sources and upgrade the entire kernel (to 2.6.18).
Unfortunately, 'hal' stopped working, and that broke 'gnome-volume-
manager'. I saw that backports had an upgrade for 'udev', and I
installed that hoping for a quick fix. The backports 'udev'
conflicted with 'hal' and 'hotplug', and I found myself facing a big
decision.
Since Etch is nearly ready to be released, I decided that my best
bet was to keep the new kernel and replace everything else! ;-) I
chose to dist-upgrade to Etch.
I've been using Etch now since Sunday night, and everything is
working really smooth. Everything seems a lot faster, too. No doubt
some of that is due to the improved video card, but boot time is
faster and everything I do when working without X also seems faster.
I would like to thank the developers who are busting their buns to
get Etch ready for release! Can anyone suggest other Debian mailing
lists I can post my thanks to, so that the greatest possible number of
developers will see it? (I realize that "thanks" is just noise, and
not productive, but everyone wants to hear that their hard work is
appreciated!)
Dave W.
Dave
As a matter of interest, can you describe what happened when you say
that you ran into problems with Gnome's automounting CDs and flash
drives. Did your system freeze up, or was it some other problem?
Cheers
Andy
No crashes, slow-downs, or other Windows-like behavior. I simply
realized that inserting a CD or a USB flash drive no longer resulted
in Gnome giving me a desktop icon.
As mentioned above (see 2nd paragraph in OP) the root cause was
'hal' failing to run, which broke 'gnome-volume-manager' (and 'gnome-
volume-properties').
I had been running stock Debian kernels (2.6.8) until Feb. 2006,
when I made my first custom kernel (2.6.15; source from
backports.org). Sarge continued to run good with that kernel, but I
decided to compile a new kernel (2.6.18) this month, on the occasion
of having to compile 3D support for a new ATI video card. That kernel
broke 'hal' apparently, but I didn't realize it until I noticed that
Gnome automounting wasn't working.
My first stop on the debugging pilgrimage was '.xsessions-errors',
where I found a one-liner about 'gnome-volume-manager' failing to load
because 'hal' wasn't running.
My next stop was 'dmesg', where I confirmed that 'hal' was failing
to run at startup. I then realized that my new kernel had broken
things, but immediately concluded that it was my own fault for
straying too far from the officially supported set of internal organs
for Sarge.
I believe that I made a quick look for backports of 'hal' and/or
'hotplug' and didn't see any. (Or maybe that is a false memory, and I
made no such check.) However that may be, I _did_ find a backport of
'udev', and wondered (or desperately hoped) that it might make a quick
fix of the situation. Instead, the 'udev' from backports somehow
conflicted (according to 'aptitude') with 'hal' and 'hotplug'. (I
found this bizarre, since a quick look at
http://packages.debian.org/testing/admin/hal
showed that Etch's 'hal' still depends on 'udev', not conflicting at all!)
So, I dist-upgraded to Etch... and lived happily ever after! (So far.)
DW
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