I tried to help a friend this weekend convert to Linux.
He lives in Upstate New York, so it was a long trip from
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He has a Dual Pentium III, 600 MHz TYAN "Thunderbolt".
It has a built-in Adaptec SCSI controller and Intel
100-base-T Ethernet controller. It also has 1/2 Gbytes
of RAM. It's a superb machine.
It had been running Windows 2000 "Professional". Several months
ago, he purchased Red Hat "DELUXE" version 6.2. He was unable to
install it. I convinced him that installation was easy.
I was terribly wrong. This Red Hat version is irrevocably defective.
(1) It will not create a bootable disk because it forgets
to load scsi_mod.o, and sd_mod.o before it loads
aic7xxx.o
/etc/conf.modules was found to contain only aic7xxx
as an alias for scsi_hostadapter.
(2) Once I made a bootable diskette from a working machine
at home (200 miles round-trip distance), I was able to
install its supplied kernel version 2.2.14-5.0, and
2.2.14-5.0smp into the LILO boot sequence.
(3) It "sort of" worked. However, network daemons kept
dropping core. X would eventually crash, leaving the
terminal in an unusable state, etc.
(4) It is impossible to build a known working kernel on the
machine because the linker, `ld` crashes:
Script started on Sun Nov 19 19:11:55 2000
[root@merrimac linux-2.2.17]# make dep
gcc -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -o scripts/mkdep scripts/mkdep.c
collect2: ld terminated with signal 11 [Segmentation fault], core dumped
make: *** [scripts/mkdep] Error 1
[root@merrimac linux-2.2.17]# ld --version
GNU ld 2.9.5
Copyright 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License. This program has absolutely no warranty.
Supported emulations:
elf_i386
i386linux
[root@merrimac linux-2.2.17]# cd scripts
[root@merrimac scripts]# gcc -o mkdep.o mkdep.c
collect2: ld terminated with signal 11 [Segmentation fault], core dumped
[root@merrimac scripts]# gcc -c -o mkdep.o mkdep.c
[root@merrimac scripts]# ld -o mkdep mkdep.o
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
[root@merrimac scripts]# strace ld -o mkdep mkdep.c
execve("/usr/bin/ld", ["ld", "-o", "mkdep", "mkdep.o"], [/* 20 vars */]) = 0
brk(0) = 0x807bb84
old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) =
0x40014000
open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=16290, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 16290, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40015000
close(3) = 0
open("/usr/lib/libbfd-2.9.5.0.22.so", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=314936, ...}) = 0
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\320\242"..., 4096) = 4096
old_mmap(NULL, 279260, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40019000
mprotect(0x40059000, 17116, PROT_NONE) = 0
old_mmap(0x40059000, 16384, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 0x3f000) =
0x40059000
old_mmap(0x4005d000, 732, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS,
-1, 0) = 0x4005d000
close(3) = 0
open("/lib/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=75131, ...}) = 0
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\340\34"..., 4096) = 4096
old_mmap(NULL, 12428, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x4005e000
mprotect(0x40060000, 4236, PROT_NONE) = 0
old_mmap(0x40060000, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 0x1000) =
0x40060000
close(3) = 0
open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=4101324, ...}) = 0
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\210\212"..., 4096) = 4096
old_mmap(NULL, 1001564, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40062000
mprotect(0x4014f000, 30812, PROT_NONE) = 0
old_mmap(0x4014f000, 16384, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 0xec000) =
0x4014f000
old_mmap(0x40153000, 14428, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS,
-1, 0) = 0x40153000
close(3) = 0
mprotect(0x40062000, 970752, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE) = 0
mprotect(0x40062000, 970752, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC) = 0
munmap(0x40015000, 16290) = 0
personality(PER_LINUX) = 0
getpid() = 763
getrusage(RUSAGE_SELF, {ru_utime={0, 0}, ru_stime={0, 0}, ...}) = 0
brk(0) = 0x807bb84
brk(0x807bbbc) = 0x807bbbc
brk(0x807c000) = 0x807c000
open("/usr/share/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat64(0x3, 0xbfffb84c) = -1 ENOSYS (Function not implemented)
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2265, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) =
0x40015000
read(3, "# Locale name alias data base.\n#"..., 4096) = 2265
brk(0x807d000) = 0x807d000
read(3, "", 4096) = 0
close(3) = 0
munmap(0x40015000, 4096) = 0
open("/usr/share/i18n/locale.alias", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
close(3) = 0
open("/usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/SYS_LC_MESSAGES", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=44, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 44, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40015000
close(3) = 0
stat("/usrusr/lib/ldscripts", 0xbffffa7c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
brk(0x807f000) = 0x807f000
brk(0x8080000) = 0x8080000
brk(0x8081000) = 0x8081000
brk(0x8082000) = 0x8082000
brk(0x8083000) = 0x8083000
unlink("mkdep") = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("mkdep", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC, 0666) = 3
brk(0x8084000) = 0x8084000
brk(0x8088000) = 0x8088000
brk(0x8089000) = 0x8089000
brk(0x808a000) = 0x808a000
open("mkdep.o", O_RDONLY) = 4
fstat(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=9716, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) =
0x40016000
_llseek(4, 0, [0], SEEK_SET) = 0
read(4, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\1\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 4096
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
_llseek(4, 4096, [4096], SEEK_SET) = 0
read(4, "E\364\215\24E\0\0\0\0\241\0\0\0\0f\213\24\20\203\342\10"..., 4096) = 4096
_llseek(4, 8192, [8192], SEEK_SET) = 0
--- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) ---
+++ killed by SIGSEGV +++
[root@merrimac scripts]# exit
exit
Script done on Sun Nov 19 19:14:35 2000
I can even see obvious bugs in the trace, i.e., :
stat("/usrusr/lib/ldscripts", 0xbffffa7c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
----------^^^
Although this was not the reason for the seg-fault.
(5) I returned home (200 mile round trip), removed my
SCSI disks from my home machine, and then returned
and installed them in my friend's machine. The
machine worked perfectly with Linux version 2.2.17,
and gcc-2.7.2.3, Binutils-2.8.1.0, etc., the standard
stuff.
This shows that the problems are not because of a
defective machine.
I cloned my disks to his disks and, he's running.
however, I don't have all the GUI stuff installed that
he likes (needs). My disks had been built up over
over several years by Richard Johnson, a frequent
contributor to Linux.
(6) I have been told that I could get a statically-linked
version of `ld`, plus another 'C' compiler statically-
linked so that these don't use the possibly defective
dynamic libraries. I could then build a decent working
system using sources available on the Internet.
From a customer's perspective, this is absurd. When
a customer purchases a "shrink-wrapped" operating
system he expects it to work.
(7) This fiasco is an example of why Linux is in big trouble.
Once Linux obtained visibility, it became necessary for
the most visible distributors and VARs to provide a high
quality product.
Red Hat, provably does not. Red Hat employees dominate
Linux kernel development, even moderating (read controlling)
what will be and what will not be done within this operating
system.
As repeatably demonstrated on this list, Red Hat employees
spend much time denigrating others at the expense of providing
a useful product.
(8) Now I'm pretty sure that this email will generate a lot of
flames. So be it. Linux, as an operating system to replace
windows, has gone to hell because of at least one distributor's
selling of garbage. There may be more such defective distributions
out there. I certainly don't know what to purchase for my
next attempt at a "shrink-wrap" installation.
Very Truly Yours,
Charles Turner
Member(s) IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, AIAA
I speak only for myself, which is enough of a problem.
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