Re: shell Hell

Bar wrote:
Chris Cox wrote:

Bar wrote:
I changed a couple default configurations like only using 512Meg swap
partition and the rest as /. Further, I choose ext2, not reiser. (Why
reiser?)

Reiser has some enterprise characteristics like the ability to be
resized on the fly without unmounting the filesystem.

Laptop.

YMMV, ext2 is not used except for very small filesystem, ext3 is preferred
fo larger filesystems.

A journalling adds little security over ext2 in such a limited application
yet slow operation by about 15%.

15% might be an exaggeration. If you filesystem is small, and your
laptop has good suspension capability (doesn't go down hard), then
perhaps ext2 will work well for you. Most people don't see such
a large performance difference and prefer the better data integrity
provided by a journaling filesystem (at least resulting in faster
start up after a hard down).

WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!!

Hours and hours and hours of watching the CD drive C R A W L through the
installation up until disk 5 then all of s sudden U can't get CD 4 to
eject. I hit the [Eject] and CD 4 ejected BUT the dialog box disappeared
so I could continue the installation process. The [Abort] button did
nothing. The [Help] button provided NO HELP AT ALL!

Crawl, hours? It's possible that DMA was not setup on the drive (which
does happen on certain hardware).

I never checked the status of the DMA because was not given access to a
console like Slackware does during installation.

Hmmm... actually you do have a vc during install. Did you even check?


Somewhat unusual to use CD 5... were you trying to install EVERYTHING?
You might want to start off with something simple at first.. you can
always add packages later.

I went through a list a selected almost everything from every category.

So, what do the SuSErs do when install *** up?

Don't know exactly what happened in your case, but sometimes you just
reinstall.

Gee, that sounds like another company I know... Micro... Micro... it will
come to me later.

Microsoft gets blamed for problems with your own hardware? I didn't
know that.


I tried a bunch of key combos then I pushed every key to no avail. I had
to POWER DOWN to get it to restart.

Does sound like an interesting hardware issue.

Are there key combos that could have brought me to a terminal?

The normal ones... Ctl-Alt-F<number> There is at least one shell
vc running during install. You will have limited access to tools
of course.


The computer wasn't locked up - there was just nowehere to go.

That is a major problem!

Not sure. Most of us haven't experienced the problem you've had.


I get back to the same dialog box after the system rebooted and this time
when I hit [OK], nothing happens. It hunts and hunts and hunts and
produces bizarre error messages about being unable to cd:///?/dev/hdc -
what does that mean?

So I skip past CD 5 and try CD 6 but the same story,

CD 6? Well... I'm lost. You mean the add-on CD? There is no
CD 6.... oh... I see below.. add-on... duh...

What about the error message about 'cd:///?/dev/hdc'?

Sounds like a problem in recognizing the hardware. Not sure.
Since your install is somewhat suspect at this point, it's wrong
to try to assume that anything will work.


I hunt around and found YaST and after entering the magic password tried
to catalog CD 5 and CD 6 (Add Ons). - no joy!

Incidently, I tested the media using the YaST Test Media and both CDs passed
with flying colours.

Both CDs? I'd go ahead and verify them all.. .but it sounds like
the issue lies elsewhere.


I then bail out of KDE down to the root command line and start
troubleshooting and discover to my horror hundreds and hundreds of shell
scripts and tiny little config files.

ARE YOU GUYS KIDDING OR WHAT?

I am used to rc shell files and scripts and text config files but all
SuSE has gone overboard.

Actually it's very straight forward. However, it's System V-ish. If
you've worked on Solaris or HPUX, it should be familiar.

I have worked extensively with BSD Unix, Slackware and some with RedHat but
this is incredible.


BSD is not System V. Which is probably the source of confusion.
As weird as it seems, it really is pretty straight forward. Solaris 10
no longer prefers a System V init way of doing scripts... but <gulp>
uses a proprietary database format for storing daemon startup info.
But certain what I said holds true for Solaris <10 and the other
System V variants.

I start looking online for some hint about how the system is organized
but found absolutely nothing - it is like it is a state secret ot
something.
Nothing is secret if you understand a System V style init. But, that's
probably new to you.

Just for starters, start with /etc/inittab. From there you can unravel
the whole "mystery". It's really not terribly hard... but if you're
not aware of how a System V init works... could be difficult to figure
out where to start... now you know.

I checked out initstab (we have it in Slackware as well) - it was the
beginning of an incredibly convoluted to what appeared to be a trail with
no end.

Hmmm... my /etc/inittab clearly shows that a script called
/etc/init.d/rc is called with the runlevel as an argument. The default
runlevel is also found in /etc/inittab, showing in my case that
initdefault is 5. So I expect my system to execute /etc/init.d/rc 5.

/etc/init.d/rc does some initial check stuff then eventually gets to
the work of processing the S/K scripts for a given run level. K scripts
are run when transitioning from a runlevel where the service does not
have a corresponding S script in the runlevel being transitioned to.
For example, if moving from runlevel 5 to runlevel 3, the system will
kill off xdm (K12xdm) .... etc. Moving from runlevel 3 back to
runlevel 5 would result in xdm coming back (S10xdm). The numbering
helps determine ordering, so that services are brought up in the right
order for a given runlevel (where services depend upon each other).

While this may seem hard at first, it's really not.


The client that brought the laptop and SuSE disks left with a full fresh
Slackware current installation with all the bells and whistles he could
imagine - dvd players, video players, three music players, wireless and
ethernet (pcmcis card) bluetooth, OpenOffice, RealPlayer, Adobe Reader,
K2B, power management, games, blah blah blah... but no YaST.

Ok. Nothing wrong with slackware.

Very BSD like.Very simple architecture compared to SuSE. Makes
troubleshooting a problem lightening fast.

For someone familiar with BSD... probably. There's nothing wrong
with that.


But guess what? The client has to the command line and type 'installpkg
packagenameversion.tgz <enter> and it is done in a couple seconds. Want
to upgrade an entire installation? telinit to single user and
upgradeinstall --install-new *.tgz and everything is either ugraded if
already installed or installed if new. The program will skip right by
already installed current packages and doesn't require anybody to watch.

Yup, a couple command line recipes and everything works right out of the
box.

Ok. Customer is happy, You're happy...

I am disappointed and a little frightened if SuSE is supposed to be an
example of Linux's future.

I think putting a nail into the coffin of Slackware is premature. SUSE
is just one of many. Both SUSE and Red Hat use a System V init
paradigm, though, SUSE is much more commercial Unix-like than Red Hat.
Red Hat is neither BSD-like or System V-like ... they sort of do
their own thing, borrowing bits and pieces from both and whole lot
of neither. Arguably more frustrating than SUSE just because of
that.


I won't be trying or recommending SuSE to anybody after these last two
days. The online forum reacts slowly and this newsgroup is dead.

Just my viewpoint.

Hmmm.. I find this newsgroup to be incredibly active. The forums from
Novell can be accessed via nntp as well (which I prefer)...

Usenet is distributed on the 'Net using nntp.

Novell's forums are availble nntp and through their web forum interface
(at least last time I checked)... that was my point. Not sure if
talking in terms of "Usenet" is wise anymore. There are many servers
running newsgroups.. how far and by what servers they are carried
can vary. It's not a simple as it was in the good ole days.


sounds like you might prefer. I don't expect to see you around though.
Sounds like you're sufficiently ticked-off.

Totally. You guys have to figure out how to simplify, stabilize and
streamline your OS or it is going to become Vista.

Oddly enough, being Vista-ish is sort of a goal... that is, becoming
a successful desktop in the same vein as Microsoft's success on
the desktop. But rather than doing it via force, doing it via user's
choice.

I think SUSE makes for a great server as well though. But you
can certainly run Slackware or BSD if you like.


I still have some queries running their course on some online forums I have
to finish off.

Bye for now.

See you... I really do expect perfection from SUSE as well. Two steps
forward.. hopefully only one step backward... you know... slow climb.
Making mistakes (e.g. Red Carpet), yet still trying to make things
better.
.