Two more bugs to report:
1) By default, Mandrake attempts to turn on DMA for available IDE devices.
Attempting to copy the contents of a CDROM to my hard drive, I encountered
the following errors:
hdd: timeout waiting for DMA
hdd: irq timeout: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hdd: DMA disabled
hda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: irq timeout: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: DMA disabled
and then the entire machine locked up. The keyboard was frozen and I ended
up "kicking the Big Red Button" on the machine.
I modified my BIOS settings to disable DMA support for the interfaces and
rebooted. Trying to make the copy, the same errors and lockup (and
resolution occurred).
Finally, I modified /etc/rc.d/init.d/mandrake_everytime to change the -d1 to
-d0 in the hdparm line and rebooted the machine.
After the reboot, I again attempted the copy only to be greeted with the
same errors followed by:
hdd: ATAPI reset complete
ATAPI device hdd:
Error: Unit attention -- (Sense key=0x06)
Power on, reset or bus device reset occurred -- (asc=0x29, ascq=0x00)
hdd: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdd: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30
ide0: reset: success
The machine did not lock up this time, but I'm a bit worried by the
messages. This machine had NO PROBLEMS running Mandrake 6.0 and had no
problems running 2.3.x kernels.
Thinking that I'd simply bypass the bad judgement on Mandrake's part, I
moved to compiling my own kernel. Once again, I'm hit with a bug:
2) Inability to compile a kernel. Attempting a 'make menuconfig' yields:
gcc -O6 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti -pipe -s -mpentium
-mcpu=pentium -march=pentium -ffast-math -fexpensive-optimizations -malign-loops=2
-malign-jumps=2 -malign-functions=2 -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -DLOCALE
-I/usr/include/ncurses -DCURSES_LOC="<ncurses.h>" -c lxdialog.c -o lxdialog.o
cc1: Invalid option `preferred-stack-boundary=2'
make[1]: *** [lxdialog.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.2.13/scripts/lxdialog'
make: *** [menuconfig] Error 2
This leaves me with a couple questions:
* RPM packaging is supposed to ensure that binary packages are reliably
recreatable using the source package. If I can't even get the resulting
source to build, how did you manage to compile the thing in the first
place?
* Where the hell is the quality testing?! I've only owned this
distribution for two days and already I've tripped over three bugs that
should not happen.
TO THE MANDRAKE STAFF:
I know that the second bug has already been reported to this list. I
haven't seen a reponse from Mandrake concerning an updated package to fix
the problem. Actually, I don't think I've even seen a response from anyone
at Mandrake for any of the reported problems.
I'm not a clueless, confused, newbie user. I'm not adverse to fixing these
problems myself. However, I'd prefer the opportunity to shoot MYSELF in the
foot prior to Mandrake grabbing the gun and doing it for me.
Well? You got my money, how about giving me a workable product for it?
Consider putting that on a bulletin board somewhere. You'd do well to take
it to heart.
--
Steve Philp
Network Administrator
Advance Packaging Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
