This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Joe Brenner <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: Newbie Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 23:51:27 -0800 Tyrone Khan <TSKhan@rgoc.com.ph> wrote: > I'm only a newbie in Redhat and I installed version 7.2 after the the > installation the system will reboot. After rebooting and I saw some files > being loaded ..then my monitor went to dark and I've been stuck there, my > friend told me to re-install it and I tried it over and over again to no > avail can someone pls. help me about this Try it one more time, and take detailed notes on all the choices you make and the behavior of the machine, and get back to us about it. Be sure to tell us everything you know about your machine (intel architecture? What processor(s)? What motherboard/bios? and so on). As a shot in the dark: The installation proceedure asks you if you want to use the graphical or the text based installer. Try the text-based one. Another shot in the dark: it offers you a choise of boot-loaders, grub (I think) and the older "lilo": try "lilo". I suspect it's better tested and works on a wider variety of machines. (My experience with installing: first time I tried graphical/grub, it acted like it installed, but it evidentally didn't put anything on the hard disk. Second try I went text/lilo, and it mostly just worked. Another possible differnce though: maybe I selected more packages as part of the "Custom" install than I did on my first try, I'm not sure.) Oh, and I've heard it suggested that you should stay away from Ext3... evidentally some people are reporting data corruption problems with it. To play it safe, choose Ext2 as your file system (the Ext3 default is new with Redhat 7.2). (Redhat has a history of shipping with stuff that isn't really ready for prime time. This is one page they've taken from Microsoft's marketing: they like to advertise "features", even if they really need more work.) === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: ABrady <kcsmart@kc.rr.com> Subject: Re: Newbie Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 01:38:17 -0600 On Wed, 2 Jan 2002 15:32:35 +0800 Tyrone Khan <TSKhan@rgoc.com.ph> implied: > Hi to all, > > > I'm only a newbie in Redhat and I installed version 7.2 after the the > installation the system will reboot. After rebooting and I saw some > files being loaded ..then my monitor went to dark and I've been stuck > there, my friend told me to re-install it and I tried it over and over > again to no avail can someone pls. help me about this ..Thanks a lot > and God Bless all of you Let me guess: you are using a graphic login. Not a question. I'm sure of it. You have 2 choices. a) reinstall and don't choose a graphic login. Login as root afterward and run Xconfigurator to fix your graphic setup. You can get to X by typing "startx" without quotes. If it fails. try asking again with information about graphics card, monitor, etc. b) boot into linux with single user mode. If you installed grub instead of lilo, you'll need somebody else to help on how to get single user mode. I use lilo. If in lilo, hit CTRL-X at the bootup screen. At the prompt type "linux single" with no quotes. After it stops booting,type "init 3" (noquotes to get services running that are needed to test X. Login as root and type "Xconfigurator" (noquotes) and setup your graphics. Use "startx" (noquotes) to test the configuration. If this continues to fail, see the last sentence of option a) above. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: nit etc <nit_etc@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Newbie Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 00:24:18 -0800 (PST) If your X setup is at fault, try pressing "Ctrl+Alt+F1" when your screen blanks out, this might give you access to the console. === To: <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: "Ed Wilts" <ewilts@ewilts.org> Subject: Re: Newbie Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 06:41:47 -0600 From: "Joe Brenner" <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> > > Tyrone Khan <TSKhan@rgoc.com.ph> wrote: > > I'm only a newbie in Redhat and I installed version 7.2 > > after the the installation the system will reboot. After > > rebooting and I saw some files being loaded ..then my > > monitor went to dark and I've been stuck there, my > > friend told me to re-install it and I tried it over and > > over again to no avail can someone pls. help me about > > this > Try it one more time, and take detailed notes on all the > choices you make and the behavior of the machine, and get > back to us about it. Be sure to tell us everything you know > about your machine (intel architecture? What processor(s)? > What motherboard/bios? and so on). Probably far more importing is the video card and monitor and whether he's booted to graphics mode or text mode. I typically use text mode since it leaves less room for error. You can always start up X once you've signed on in text mode. > As a shot in the dark: The installation proceedure asks > you if you want to use the graphical or the text based > installer. Try the text-based one. Another shot in the > dark: it offers you a choise of boot-loaders, grub (I > think) and the older "lilo": try "lilo". I suspect it's > better tested and works on a wider variety of machines. Bogus. Grub is solid and has been shipped by Mandrake for a while. It works. > (My experience with installing: first time I tried > graphical/grub, it acted like it installed, but it > evidentally didn't put anything on the hard disk. "Evidentally"?. Do a ls /boot/grub and verify it. > Oh, and I've heard it suggested that you should stay away > from Ext3... evidentally some people are reporting data > corruption problems with it. And many, many more people are reporting that it's working fine. Me included. > (Redhat has a history of shipping with stuff that isn't > really ready for prime time. This is one page they've taken > from Microsoft's marketing: they like to advertise > "features", even if they really need more work.) Of course evidence of this would be too much to ask and irrelevant to this thread anyway. Red Hat has a better track record than a lot of vendors. They've screwed up here and there, but overall 7.2 is fairly solid with the latest patches. === To: Redhat <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: Statux <statux@bigfoot.com> Subject: Re: ext3 or ext2 ? Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 14:55:42 -0500 (EST) > Are there good reasons for not using ext3? For now this machine > won't be my main machine. With proper backup of important files > it could fail without being a major pain ... Despite the fact that people say that ext3 is good enough for production use, you can't ignore the dozens and dozens of complaints people make about it constantly. In all honesty, ext3 is still under development as are most journalling filesystems. I wouldn't use it, say, for the root partition, but I might for a lesser important one... just until you get the hang of it and until ext3 is well enough developed to the point where the complaints stop :) === To: Redhat <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: Hal Burgiss <hal@foobox.net> Subject: Re: ext3 or ext2 ? Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 14:58:06 -0500 On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 02:55:42PM -0500, Statux wrote: > > Despite the fact that people say that ext3 is good enough for > production use, you can't ignore the dozens and dozens of complaints > people make about it constantly. In all honesty, ext3 is still under > development as are most journalling filesystems. I wouldn't use it, > say, for the root partition, but I might for a lesser important > one... just until you get the hang of it and until ext3 is well > enough developed to the point where the complaints stop :) What are the complaints? The only one I know about is a performance hit under heavy IO pressure, which I think is fixed in the latest kernels. I don't recall anything about data loss, stability, etc, or am I missing something? === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Jared Brick <jbrick@videotron.ca> Subject: Re: ext3 or ext2 ? Date: 02 Jan 2002 15:27:30 -0500 > Despite the fact that people say that ext3 is good enough for production > use, you can't ignore the dozens and dozens of complaints people make > about it constantly. In all honesty, ext3 is still under development as > are most journalling filesystems. I wouldn't use it, say, for the root > partition, but I might for a lesser important one... just until you get > the hang of it and until ext3 is well enough developed to the point where > the complaints stop :) What complaints? On /.? Your opinion is entirely unsubstantiated. I have not heard of anyone actually having a problem with ext3. Use it, it works fine. In fact it works better than fine since you won't be waiting for your system to boot up. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Brian Ashe <rhlist@dee-web.com> Subject: Re: ext3 or ext2 ? Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 16:02:42 -0500 On Wednesday 02 January 2002 05:47, you babbled something about: > I'm not complaining here, but I have noticed a performance lag while > using ext3. I have two hard drives, both Western Digital. One is used as > my system drive (40G, 7200rpm, ext3) the other is used for storing > archives (60G, 5400rpm, ext2). When I run hdparm -t /dev/hda(40G), I get > average results of about 16.5 MB/sec., the same test on /dev/hdb(60G), > the results are about 23.0 Mb/sec. For a slower drive, I should not be > getting faster read times. > hdparm test results are independant of filesystem. Likely your speed issues are with either the difference in the HD's different internal buffer/controllers or the motherboard BIOS or I/O controller. But ext3 should give some performance hit. It has been documented. But you can't measure it with hdparm. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: ABrady <kcsmart@kc.rr.com> Subject: Re: ext3 or ext2 ? Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 15:07:22 -0600 On 02 Jan 2002 15:27:30 -0500 Jared Brick <jbrick@videotron.ca> implied: > > > Despite the fact that people say that ext3 is good enough for > > production use, you can't ignore the dozens and dozens of complaints > > people make about it constantly. In all honesty, ext3 is still under > > development as are most journalling filesystems. I wouldn't use it, > > say, for the root partition, but I might for a lesser important > > one... just until you get the hang of it and until ext3 is well > > enough developed to the point where the complaints stop :) > > What complaints? On /.? Your opinion is entirely unsubstantiated. I > have not heard of anyone actually having a problem with ext3. Use it, > it works fine. In fact it works better than fine since you won't be > waiting for your system to boot up. Alright, maybe you missed this or I just didn't include it on this list. I know I mentioned it several times, and I'm almost certain this was one of the places, but.... If I have squid cache on ext3, it takes 2 to 3 days and it becomes corrupt. This is reproducible. This happened in both Roswell betas, in 7.2 and now in 7.1 (after I dumped 7.2 for a lot of reasons). It goes away every time I change to ext2, it comes back every time I go to ext3. It didn't matter if the parition was an ext2 to ext3 upgrade or was formatted and installed ext3. It didn't matter if it was on /var (usual rom default) or /usr or anyplace else. It didn't matter the browser, what desktop, whether a desktop was in use a or anything else. I used netscape 4.7X, mozilla 0.9whatever, galeon, opera netscape 6.x and dillo. All had the same result. If I turned proying off, no problem. When I turned proxying back on, corruption. I could delete and recreate the cache and have corruption in 2 to 3 days. This happened on 2 different computers, both perntiums (200MHz MMX, 25GB harddrive, 192MB ram; 400MHz, 40GB harddrive, 384MB ram). It happened with large swap space and small swap space. It happened right after reboots or after a long period of not shutting anything down. It happened if I left squid running or I restarted it. It happened if I had junkbuster forwarding to squid, went straight to squid, used dansguardian or squidguard or anything else. It was always squid, only squid and only with ext3. How did it manifest itself? I would start getting the homepage of MCMSystems. They are, I believe, a company that hosts one of the tucows (linuxberg) sites. I've only been to the homepage once in my life, and only a long time ago. All hard drives have been completely and thoroughly wiped, repartitioned and formatted since that time and it still happened. In any case, I would go to, say, freshmeat, and end up at the MCMSystems homepage. At first it would only be a couple of pages. Within a few days, almost every page I tried to reached would end up at the same page. Plus, the URL line in the browser would be what I tried to get, just that the displayed page was not what I wanted. If I tried freshmeat the URL would say http://freshmeat.net and the page would be MCMSystems. As a test I tried clicking a few of the links that were on the page. I'd get the freshmeat errors complaining about the page not existing. So it was even affecting the links inside the pages. I placed the mouse over links (while still viewing MCMSystems page) and it would say something like http://freshmeat.net/services/about.html which naturally didn't exist but which would have been fine if I'd wanted the same pages from MCMSystems. To make sure, I totally deleted everything and tried again. 2-3 days later it would begin again. I'd delete the cache, convert to ext2. Not a single problem. I could use it for weeks and nothing would be amiss. I could than change back to ext3 and all would work. But, 2-3 days would pass and it would begin again. Now, I had been going to the tucows linux page that was hosted by them. So, I stopped doing that. First I wiped out all partitions and settings and reformatted all partitions for a new install (this was when I was returning to 7.1). So there was only one reference to thatpage and that was in bookmarks for a couple of browsers. I made /var ext3, set up squid and deleted the bookmark for tucows and set up one in another state. So? 2-3 days later, MCMSystems. About the only test I didn't think to run was using ext3 until it got corrupt, then converting back to ext2 and seeing whether it straightened out or kept using corrupt cache. I'm guessing it still would have been corrupt, but I didn't substantiate that. I now have only one partition that is _not_ ext3 and that's the one the squid cache is on. I've had zero problems with this setup, no matter how long I let it run or where I visit. So, this wasn't slashdot and it is a problem that I can substantiate at will. And it has the added advantage of being one you've heard about. To be fair, I haven't heard of anyone else having anything even remotely similar. I'm not slamming ext3, I love it. Just not for squid caching. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Joe Brenner <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: It works (can someone explain to me why?) Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:31:39 -0800 > "Ed Wilts" <ewilts@ewilts.org> wrote: > > "Joe Brenner" <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote: > > Tyrone Khan <TSKhan@rgoc.com.ph> wrote: > > > > I'm only a newbie in Redhat and I installed version 7.2 > > > after the the installation the system will reboot. After > > > rebooting and I saw some files being loaded ..then my > > > monitor went to dark and I've been stuck there, my > > > friend told me to re-install it and I tried it over and > > > over again to no avail can someone pls. help me about > > > this > > As a shot in the dark: The installation proceedure asks > > you if you want to use the graphical or the text based > > installer. Try the text-based one. Another shot in the > > dark: it offers you a choice of boot-loaders, grub (I > > think) and the older "lilo": try "lilo". I suspect it's > > better tested and works on a wider variety of machines. > > Bogus. Grub is solid and has been shipped by Mandrake for a > while. It works. If you say so (having been a Mandrake pick definitely helps it's credibility). That would indicate that my problem was with the graphical installer. The reasoning behind dropping grub is that I was setting up a machine with two SCSI harddrives, working off of an oldish Symbios Scsi card. It seemed at least conceivable that this configuration was a little too odd for grub to be working with it. > > (My experience with installing: first time I tried > > graphical/grub, it acted like it installed, but it > > evidentally didn't put anything on the hard disk. > > "Evidentally"?. Yeah. Tried to do an install (graphical/grub) and I thought that it had worked. Certainly I saw no error messages. Then I repeatedly tried booting the machine, checking BIOS settings and so on, but it kept acting like there wasn't anything to boot off of the hard drive. Someone suggested I try a text/lilo install, and it worked. Notably, it took a lot longer for the install to "finish", and in retrospect my first attempt "finished" supiciously fast. > Do a ls /boot/grub and verify it. Well, it's there. The date on it looks the same as much of the other stuff in /boot. What does that prove? I would guess it was put there on my second install attempt (I did a Custom install, I don't remember precisely what I selected). > > Oh, and I've heard it suggested that you should stay away > > from Ext3... evidentally some people are reporting data > > corruption problems with it. > > And many, many more people are reporting that it's working fine. Me > included. That's great, but it's not like I'm suggesting the majority of users are having data corruption problems. At the last balug meeting, someone who follows the kernel list was telling me that there have been problems reported there. If I get a chance, I'll go and try and look some reports up for you. I'm definitely convinced that Ext3 should *not* have been made the default for a *.2 release. (Making it an option in 7.2 and possibly a default in 8.0 would have been fine by me.) > > (Redhat has a history of shipping with stuff that isn't > > really ready for prime time. This is one page they've taken > > from Microsoft's marketing: they like to advertise > > "features", even if they really need more work.) > > Of course evidence of this would be too much to ask and irrelevant to this > thread anyway. Do you, or don't you want to talk about this? It's relevant because newbies need to understand that just because RedHat is pushing it, doesn't mean it's going to work for them. If you want "evidence", the only thing I should need to say is "linuxconf". I would also point at the history of the default window managers, e.g. AnotherLevel and Enlightenment > Red Hat has a better track record than a lot of vendors. Could be, I don't have first hand experience with any other distros yet. Debian sounds cool, and I get the impression that Mandrake has their heads screwed on right. > They've screwed up here and there Exactly, that's the point. >, but overall 7.2 is fairly solid with the latest patches. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Joe Brenner <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: It works (can someone explain to me why?) Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:31:39 -0800 > "Ed Wilts" <ewilts@ewilts.org> wrote: > > "Joe Brenner" <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote: > > Tyrone Khan <TSKhan@rgoc.com.ph> wrote: > > > > I'm only a newbie in Redhat and I installed version 7.2 > > > after the the installation the system will reboot. After > > > rebooting and I saw some files being loaded ..then my > > > monitor went to dark and I've been stuck there, my > > > friend told me to re-install it and I tried it over and > > > over again to no avail can someone pls. help me about > > > this > > As a shot in the dark: The installation proceedure asks > > you if you want to use the graphical or the text based > > installer. Try the text-based one. Another shot in the > > dark: it offers you a choice of boot-loaders, grub (I > > think) and the older "lilo": try "lilo". I suspect it's > > better tested and works on a wider variety of machines. > > Bogus. Grub is solid and has been shipped by Mandrake for a > while. It works. If you say so (having been a Mandrake pick definitely helps it's credibility). That would indicate that my problem was with the graphical installer. The reasoning behind dropping grub is that I was setting up a machine with two SCSI harddrives, working off of an oldish Symbios Scsi card. It seemed at least conceivable that this configuration was a little too odd for grub to be working with it. > > (My experience with installing: first time I tried > > graphical/grub, it acted like it installed, but it > > evidentally didn't put anything on the hard disk. > > "Evidentally"?. Yeah. Tried to do an install (graphical/grub) and I thought that it had worked. Certainly I saw no error messages. Then I repeatedly tried booting the machine, checking BIOS settings and so on, but it kept acting like there wasn't anything to boot off of the hard drive. Someone suggested I try a text/lilo install, and it worked. Notably, it took a lot longer for the install to "finish", and in retrospect my first attempt "finished" supiciously fast. > Do a ls /boot/grub and verify it. Well, it's there. The date on it looks the same as much of the other stuff in /boot. What does that prove? I would guess it was put there on my second install attempt (I did a Custom install, I don't remember precisely what I selected). > > Oh, and I've heard it suggested that you should stay away > > from Ext3... evidentally some people are reporting data > > corruption problems with it. > > And many, many more people are reporting that it's working fine. Me > included. That's great, but it's not like I'm suggesting the majority of users are having data corruption problems. At the last balug meeting, someone who follows the kernel list was telling me that there have been problems reported there. If I get a chance, I'll go and try and look some reports up for you. I'm definitely convinced that Ext3 should *not* have been made the default for a *.2 release. (Making it an option in 7.2 and possibly a default in 8.0 would have been fine by me.) > > (Redhat has a history of shipping with stuff that isn't > > really ready for prime time. This is one page they've taken > > from Microsoft's marketing: they like to advertise > > "features", even if they really need more work.) > > Of course evidence of this would be too much to ask and irrelevant to this > thread anyway. Do you, or don't you want to talk about this? It's relevant because newbies need to understand that just because RedHat is pushing it, doesn't mean it's going to work for them. If you want "evidence", the only thing I should need to say is "linuxconf". I would also point at the history of the default window managers, e.g. AnotherLevel and Enlightenment > Red Hat has a better track record than a lot of vendors. Could be, I don't have first hand experience with any other distros yet. Debian sounds cool, and I get the impression that Mandrake has their heads screwed on right. > They've screwed up here and there Exactly, that's the point. >, but overall 7.2 is fairly solid with the latest patches. ===