Re: Any incremental mode for Red Hat install
From: Eric Chang (ericchang_at_my-deja.com)
Date: 05/30/04
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Date: 30 May 2004 00:44:00 -0700
nobody@nowhere.com wrote in message
...
> Hate to mention it, but that's very new hardware and that is
> a very old OS with little or no present support, so it may be
> a very challenging effort to get 7.3 installed and working properly.
> Even more so if you actually want modern security levels and
> so on.
>
> Not sure what to suggest though since I'm in very much the
> same boat with major applications. One approach is to use old
> hardware to support the legacy OS. You also can run inside VMWare
> or another emulator (install modern Linux first of course).
>
...
Hi Stan. Thanks for the reply. I think that I did find my
incremental mode. It is to use the custom installation method to
install the minimal set of packages, and upgrade later. Thid did get
me past the install problem, and once I am online, many of the
packages can be updated over the Internet.
But, it turned out that I was not correct about ht eboot problem. It
is not a Red Hat installation problem. Rather, it is a problem of the
motherboard. I should have mentioned that I am using an ECS
Elitegroup K7VTA3. This motherboard has IDE boot issues, as a yahoo
search revealed. The solution seemed to be "replace the marginal
power supply" but I am using a nice 400 W ATX supply, and this does
not seem to be the problem. I contacted the manufacturer, and the
support dept. replied that capacatance loading between the case and
the IDE connector can cause this problem (the new cases contain the
metal shielding too close to the motherboard. So, the suggestion was
to run the motherboard outside the case with long wires. Usually,
outlandish solutions do not work, and this one was no exception. But
I had to try it.
I did find a workaround for the problem. The boot problem is probably
due to a bad IDE controller. Note that the system can install to the
IDE drive, but just cannot boot. But it can boot from an Adaptec 2940
connected to an old DEC SCSI drive. So, I was able to install, and
once the system boots, the IDE hard drive is accessible. Kind of a
silly way to work around shoddy hardware, but I am sending this
message from the workaround!
Unfortunately, this drive is too small to install the legacy Red Hat
7.3 which my killer app requires, and the more up-to-date Fedora for
all the rest of the uses. Probably the way to work around this
problem is to get a new SCSI drive, or to mount /home and /usr on the
large IDE drive, and split the SCSI partition with parted. Does this
sound reasonable?
It took me several evenings of work trying to figure out a solution to
this junk motherboard problem. I don't think I learned anything, and
I could have rolled $100/hr doing Linux system consulting, paying for
that motherboard several times over. Also, it wasn't very fun or
satisfying, as it was hacking Linux in the old days.
Thanks,
Eric
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