Linux-Advocacy Digest #962, Volume #29 Tue, 31 Oct 00 13:13:07 EST
Contents:
Need to vent ... Red Hat 7 installation hell (Michael Szczuka)
Re: Ms employees begging for food (Douglas Siebert)
Re: Newbie(?) Linux Question.... (Andrew Aylett)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Szczuka)
Subject: Need to vent ... Red Hat 7 installation hell
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 16:43:33 GMT
Now, these were three long days until I had three boxes up and running
Red Hat.
And from what I've experienced a fair number of the problems I
encountered were caused by Red Hat's distribution and not by Linux in
general.
I'm a big Linux advocate but after these days Red Hat has to do some
really great things to get back on my good list again.
Some problems:
* Frequently crashing installation program and unfortunately not
deterministic (about 80% of the installs crashed at different points).
And it hurts me very much to admit that Win2K installed smoothly :(
(When those server tests are finished I'm gonna try SuSE and Debian.
And if they install just fine ... no more Red Hat _ever_ for me.)
* Trying to beat a possible problem with the CD-ROM I tried an
installation via the network. In any case I needed a driver disk since
the driver for the RAID controller was not on the initial boot disk.
(Had to use boot disks - but this was honestly _not_ RH's fault)
However the driver was not found when I tried to install via FTP! An
installation from CD-ROM worked (apart from the crashes). I still have
no clue why half of the drivers of the driver disk were not available
when I tried the net-boot image, but everything worked smoothly with
the normal boot image.
* I wasn't quite up to date with Red Hat's use of both gcc 2.9.6 and
egcs-2.91 (?) (as kgcc). Of course that undermined some kernel builds
of non Red Hat kernels (clean 2.2.17 source from kernel.org wouldn't
compile) until I figured that out.
* Oracle 8.1.6 installed fine but wouldn't create a database. Thanks to
UseNet I found out that this is definitely another problem people
experienced with RH7.0.
And some other issues I already forgot (thanks God for that).
These were really tough days for an avid Linux supporter like me.
Hopefully those will be scarce in the future.
-msz
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Douglas Siebert)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 16:56:56 +0000 (UTC)
T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>I'm afraid that's a somewhat dubious value. An "ethernet" can run at
>100% utilization, or 99%, but the question is how much of that
>utilization is 'collisions', and even "resends" due to higher layer
>connectivity issues. A non-switched, shared media ethernet with a
>nominal 20 transceivers (potentially including both a router and a
>server, to characterize the logical and software topologies) would be
>hard pressed to maintain the "rule of thumb" 30% utilization *and do so
>while providing sufficient throughput*. This presumes, of course, we
>don't take the easy way out by defining that 18 of those transceivers
>will rarely transmit anything at all.
>No matter how often I say it, it never seems to get any easier for
>anyone to swallow. But it isn't because it ain't true; that, I have
>direct proof of, in my own experience. The utilization of the ethernet
>doesn't have *jack squat* to do with the throughput of the network, and
>forgetting that will instantly cause any analysis of either statistic to
>be an empty gesture.
However, you seem to believe that because you have "direct experience"
of this, that it must be true, and those of us who have direct experience
that conflicts with yours are either lying or stupid. Different devices
violate the rules in different ways, and the collection of 20 devices
you had were different from larger shared networks I dealt with in the
past which worked fine with much higher utilizations. Look up stuff
like differing inter-frame gaps on different equipment, and consider the
effect that having devices violating these rules on your ethernet are
going to have. In my case, I had a network that was all HP workstations
and Gateway PCs. The PCs at that time had very little traffic, what
traffic they did have was directed at a Cisco router. The HPs had almost
all traffic to a single server or that router. I saw sustained utilizations
over 90%, with actual bandwidth seen at the server (in terms of data sent
and received on that network interface) of over 50%.
I still moved to switching to break that up and give the server a 100mbit
full duplex uplink as soon as possible, because obviously this was not a
stable situation. But it did work, just fine, despite your claims about
what you "know" about ethernet capacity. But I'm glad the days of shared
ethernet are long gone in any network for which performance in any concern.
--
Doug Siebert
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
------------------------------
From: Andrew Aylett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Newbie(?) Linux Question....
Date: 31 Oct 2000 16:59:08 +0000
Hondo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I question my status as newbie since I don't even have Linux yet but
> am seriously considering a change.
>
> I've made the progression (regression?) through Windows 3.11, 95, 98,
> Me and am fed up with MS Crashware.
>
> My question is this. I need suggestions on which commercial Linux
> version would be best suited for learning the OS? I just use my
> computer at home for the entertainment value. I derive my
> entertainment from researching on the web, email, mp3's and the most
> important value comes from learning new computer skills. I'm looking
> at either Linux Mandrake or Corel Linux as a starting point. Any
> suggestions would be most helpful.
>
> Ken McFelea
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please, whatever you do, if you want to learn Linux, do not use Corel
Linux... It is very good at installing, and presenting you with a
nicely set up system, but it doesn't include most of the basic shell
functions that you would want from a complete Linux system.
My personal recommendation is Suse... Its what I've been using for a
while, and I think its very easy to set up.
I would also recommend strongly that you start off with a dual boot
setup: it took me quite a while to get into Linux enough to be able to
do everything I want to with it, and I still can't access my modem
from Linux.
Still, whatever you choose to do, have fun learning...
Andrew
------------------------------
** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **
The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.advocacy) via:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
ftp.funet.fi pub/Linux
tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux
sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux
End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
******************************
