This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Douglas Bollinger <dcb@321.net> Subject: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 13:47:49 -0500 For a few years now I've been using Linux with a headless box and off-and-on on a dual booter with Windows. Windows, however, was always the primary OS on the dual-booter. With the introduction of RH 7.2, I've decided to go crazy and try using Linux full-time as my desktop OS. It's been a few weeks now of using RH 7.2, so I thought some of you might be interested in my trials and tribulations. Since this is the Red Hat list, I'm going to keep things Red Hat oriented with discussion mostly centered on the 7.2 release, as well as some programs I found to greatly add to the desktop experience. The Good: Grub: Grub is really cool. I was looking forward to tryng this new bootloader, and so far it's been interesting to play with. Some people seem to think it's "lilo light," but if you read the docs you'll find it supports a shell with a number of built-in commands. Not having to run lilo -s after a kernel change is sweet! It looks pretty in graphics mode to. Ext3: Unfortunately, I got plenty of lock-ups to try out the new journaling feature of the standard ext filesystem (see below). Works great so far. Also appreciate how easy it was to change my /usr/local partition from ext2 to ext3. A few people were puzzled why RH didn't use Reiser, but after seeing for myself how nice ext3 is to work with, I completely understand. Mozilla: Glad to see this is the default web browser. The version included in 7.2 is a bit long in the tooth, and it looks like a bugger to upgrade with all the dependcies, but at least it's stable if sluggish. The traditional Netscape is old, buggy and almost useless nowadays. Hopefully Mozilla will continue to get speedier as it matures, although I think it will always be a memory hog. I got half a gig; not worried. :) Of course, all the usual library and system upgrades that make a decimal point upgrade importnat. On the whole, I would say 7.2 is another good RH .2 release. Before I get into the other stuff, here's some other resources I found useful or important for the ultimate desktop experience: www.deja.com I'm so glad this resource is back online. Don't run Linux without it! http://enigma.freshrpms.net/ Check here for lotsa good RPMS to help round-out the desktop. Almost all the programs below have RPMS available here or at their own websites. Sylpheed http://sylpheed.good-day.net/ This is a _very_ good email client if you are looking for a light, fluffy, easy-to-use workalike of Outlook Express in Windows. Seems very stable already; I've only experienced a few very minor bugs. Red Hatted folks, this should be part of your distro! Pan http://pan.rebelbase.com/ This is a GREAT newsreader. Pan is included with 7.2, but it's a few revisions old and since every revision changelog since then has the line "Lotsa bugfixes" it's a good idea to run the latest and greatest. I read alot of USENET, and Pan works well enough to avoid making me miss Gravity too much. Multi Gnome Terminal Offhand, I'm not sure the address of the home page, but make sure you grab this at freshrpms. When playing with KDE a bit, I really appreciated the tabbed, multi-terminal that they use. This is a version for gnome. It should be the default, because once you use it you won't want to go back to have x-terms scattered throughout your desktop. MPlayer http://www.mplayerhq.hu Despite the fact that the developers _REALLY_ don't like RH's 2.96 gcc, it works fine on my system. It's the best general video player I've found in Linux: it's fast and play's all kinds of files other linux viewers can't. You'll have to compile it, though, no RPMS around. Don't forget to enable the GUI, it's pretty slick. Thanks to vlc, ogle and xine, I now have more DVD players in Linux than in Windows. LOL! The Bad: The Licq gnome plug-in is buggy. I had problems with garbled text and general unstability. The solution was to rpm -e RH's licq, grab the newer gnome-licq plugin and build my own licq in /usr/local. Now it works fine. I suppose I should file a bugreport on this and maybe RH will offer an updated RPM. A minor thing: I forgot how ugly regular X fonts look! I had to steal the TT fonts from my Window's font dir ASAP to make web pages readable. It would also be nice if RH would actually document how to install TT fonts, since they are so necessary. Sure, they mention it in the manual but go on to say it's a too indepth topic to cover in the manual. C'mon, it's only a few commands in the shell! I had to dig through the HOWTO's so I could recall the couple of commands you need to get the TT fonts working. There are a few other things I could gripe about, but nothing really important. I'm saving my griping for the next section. :) The Ugly: Wow, is the emu10k support really f*cked-up in the 7.2 kernels! It's absolutely horrible! Besides all the popping and cracking, it may have been responsable for some serious system instability. Here's the whole story: When I first installed RH 7.2 on this system, I experienced total system lock-ups every few hours. Very annoying! I then went through the entire up2date process. No help. Then I installed the new kernel. Still locking-up. At this point, I was about at the end of my rope and ready to make the Windows partition the default in GRUB when I decided to hit www.deja.news and search for a cure. After awhile, I discovered a post describing a problem very similar to mine (same RH 7.2 system). His solution: Turn off Gnome's sound support! Yes, Programs/Settings/Multimedia/Sound for Gnome. I couldn't believe this was the problem, but I gave it a shot. That was the last lock-up I had, and disable Gnome sound a few weeks ago. Now, I'm not sure if it's the bad emu10k support or something else, but it definately solved the problem. The odd thing is that the lockups didn't seem to have anything to do with sound! Usually the freeze was when I was moving the mouse around or typing. Very weird. I also use sound plenty with no lockups, I just have to stay away from the Gnome sounds. Of course, I get tons of clicks and pops. Sometimes when I start Soldier of Fortune or try to play a sound file, I get 100% distortion. The weird thing is that XMMS _always_ works. That's how I "reset" the sound card, play XMMS and then play SOF or play the sound file, then they work. I mean, c'mon, a Soundblaster card isn't exactly a fringe sound card! I've never seen such a bad feature regressions in a non-experimental kernel before, but I guess this is the hallmark of the entire 2.4.x series: bugs bugs bugs! Not entirely RH's fought, I just hope then can fix this problem. Overall I'm pleased with my RH 7.2 system. If the kernel guys ever get on the ball and release a stable 2.4.x kernel, I'll be a happy camper. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Devon <devon@tuxfan.homeip.net> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 18:31:03 -0500 On Thursday 22 November 2001 01:47 pm, Douglas Bollinger wrote: [snip] > Of course, all the usual library and system upgrades that make a > decimal point upgrade importnat. On the whole, I would say 7.2 is > another good RH .2 release. I couldn't agree more. Other then a few minor problems, the 7.2 upgrade has been fairly painless here. > MPlayer > > http://www.mplayerhq.hu > > Despite the fact that the developers _REALLY_ don't like RH's 2.96 gcc, > it works fine on my system. It's the best general video player I've > found in Linux: it's fast and play's all kinds of files other linux > viewers can't. You'll have to compile it, though, no RPMS around. > Don't forget to enable the GUI, it's pretty slick. It works fine here as well. I created a spec file for MPlayer v0.50, if anyone wants to create their own rpms. To use it you need the specfile, a minor patch to make the config script stop complaining about gcc 2.96, and the source from the developers site. The specfile and patch can be found here: http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rpms/mplayer/ The source is available here: http://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/MPlayer-0.50.tar.bz2 You may also want the Win32 codecs: http://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/w32codec-0.50.zip To create rpms: (assuming a standard rpm build environment) Put the specfile (mplayer-0.50.spec) in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ Put the patch (mplayer-0.50-gcc_version_patch) and the source (MPlayer-0.50.tar.bz2) in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/ Build the rpms with: rpm -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/mplayer-0.50.spec After compilation, install the new rpm with: rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/MPlayer-0.50-1.i386.rpm > A minor thing: I forgot how ugly regular X fonts look! I had to steal > the TT fonts from my Window's font dir ASAP to make web pages readable. > It would also be nice if RH would actually document how to install TT > fonts, since they are so necessary. Sure, they mention it in the > manual but go on to say it's a too indepth topic to cover in the > manual. C'mon, it's only a few commands in the shell! I had to dig > through the HOWTO's so I could recall the couple of commands you need > to get the TT fonts working. Then automate the installation of some true type fonts. :) http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rpms/xf86ttfontool-0.1-6.i386.rpm === To: "'redhat-list@redhat.com'" <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: "Green, Aaron" <JAGREEN@GAPAC.com> Subject: RE: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 19:34:40 -0500 question about the fonts part. Those aren't automaticly installed? What's in KDE 2.2.1 then, those fonts look pretty smooth. And would installing that package help Gnome look a bit better? === To: "'redhat-list@redhat.com'" <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: "Green, Aaron" <JAGREEN@GAPAC.com> Subject: RE: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 19:42:35 -0500 > The Ugly: > > Wow, is the emu10k support really f*cked-up in the 7.2 kernels! It's > absolutely horrible! Besides all the popping and cracking, it may have > been responsable for some serious system instability. Here's the whole > story: > > When I first installed RH 7.2 on this system, I experienced total system > lock-ups every few hours. Very annoying! I then went through the entire > up2date process. No help. Then I installed the new kernel. Still > locking-up. At this point, I was about at the end of my rope and ready to > make the Windows partition the default in GRUB when I decided to hit > www.deja.news and search for a cure. After awhile, I discovered a post > describing a problem very similar to mine (same RH 7.2 system). His > solution: Turn off Gnome's sound support! > > Yes, Programs/Settings/Multimedia/Sound for Gnome. I couldn't believe this > was the problem, but I gave it a shot. That was the last lock-up I had, > and disable Gnome sound a few weeks ago. Now, I'm not sure if it's the bad > emu10k support or something else, but it definately solved the problem. > The odd thing is that the lockups didn't seem to have anything to do with > sound! Usually the freeze was when I was moving the mouse around or > typing. Very weird. > > I also use sound plenty with no lockups, I just have to stay away from the > Gnome sounds. Of course, I get tons of clicks and pops. Sometimes when I > start Soldier of Fortune or try to play a sound file, I get 100% > distortion. The weird thing is that XMMS _always_ works. That's how I > "reset" the sound card, play XMMS and then play SOF or play the sound file, > then they work. I mean, c'mon, a Soundblaster card isn't exactly a fringe > sound card! I've never seen such a bad feature regressions in a > non-experimental kernel before, but I guess this is the hallmark of the > entire 2.4.x series: bugs bugs bugs! Not entirely RH's fought, I just hope > then can fix this problem. > I've got to agree about sound. Since this same driver supports alot of SB cards, it should be looked at. I have the same problems as you when start RtCW. I too, disabled sound support in KDE to fix some of my lockups. When an event happened in KDE and I was playing a game, that would usually mean a lockup or garbled sound. I have not just become Windows free, but Linux dependent with all the features and open source programs out there. And I think if the 3D gaming area improved (and it has greatly over the past year) then we would see a lot less dual-boots and a lot more new users. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Devon <devon@tuxfan.homeip.net> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 19:49:26 -0500 On Thursday 22 November 2001 07:34 pm, Green, Aaron wrote: > question about the fonts part. Those aren't automaticly installed? > What's in KDE 2.2.1 then, those fonts look pretty smooth. And would > installing that package help Gnome look a bit better? > > Then automate the installation of some true type fonts. :) > > > > http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rpms/xf86ttfontool-0.1-6.i386.rpm The above rpm installs a script called fetchmsttfonts (as well as a utility to extract MS .cab files). When run, it downloads Microsoft's true type web fonts, extracts them, installs them, and adds them to the fontservers path. I've found them useful. Additionally, the commands in the script can just as easily be used as a guideline for installing additional truetype fonts. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Art Ross <aross@skyenet.net> Subject: System Locks after RH7.2 install Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:24:00 -0500 I'm having trouble on my system that has successfully operated RH6.2. When I placed a new removable HD in my system and installed RH7.2, I wasn't able to reboot without locking up. Not being discouraged, I tried again. Same problem! Still not being discouraged, I installed Mandrake 8.1 which also uses the 2.4.x kernel. Same effect! Are my problems with the newer kernel? If so, where should I start to look. I've reviewed documentation which states my AMD K6-2 300 MHz processor and my MicroStar 5165 MB are compatible. What is going on? === To: <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: "Meph Istopheles" <Meph@Aeon-AL.Com> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 07:38:38 -0800 Hey, > The Ugly: > > Wow, is the emu10k support really f*cked-up in the 7.2 kernels! It's > absolutely horrible! Besides all the popping and cracking, it may have > been responsable for some serious system instability. Here's the whole > story: I've had 7.2 installed twice. The first time, each time with bad results. I've a P-III 500 w/256MB RAM & I normall just go w/256MB swap -- very smoothe with RH 6.0 & 6.2. But either 7.2, Gnome, Ximian, or a combination of the three, would force me to have to restart daily. Each boot was a white knuckle extravaganza as I watched countless inodes having to be either fixed or cleared. Even 7.1 wasn't much joy. But I made the mistake of going two days before a restart. Not only was nearly every inode screwed, somehow my W98 partition was also corrupted. I've reinstalled 6.2, & had to go with W2k, as the two W95 boot disks I had wouldn't start the cd no matter what I did to various files. I'm working in W2k till I feel like configuring 6.2 -- now, without all the backed up config files I had been keeping in my Windows partition. > I've got to agree about sound. Just a note on sound. I've found that in 6.2, 7.1 & 7.2, if I leave my usb speaker (off the sub-woofer) plugged in, the sound card isn't detected, but when I run sndconfig without that hooked up, it configures fine, I re-plug in the usb, & the subwoofer (though not supported) also works. Odd. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: Ed Wilts <ewilts@ewilts.org> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:03:32 -0600 On Fri, Nov 23, 2001 at 07:38:38AM -0800, Meph Istopheles wrote: > I've had 7.2 installed twice. The first time, each time with > bad results. I've a P-III 500 w/256MB RAM & I normall just go > w/256MB swap -- very smoothe with RH 6.0 & 6.2. But either 7.2, > Gnome, Ximian, or a combination of the three, would force me to > have to restart daily. Each boot was a white knuckle > extravaganza as I watched countless inodes having to be either > fixed or cleared. Even 7.1 wasn't much joy. Please read the installation manual before you install. Here's the section on the swap partition: "The minimum size of your swap partition should be equal to twice the amount of your computer's RAM or 32 MB, whichever is larger." Your swap is too small. 2.4 isn't the same as 2.2, and the requirements are different. You're shooting yourself in the foot. Note tha the installation manual is available online in HTML format, or you can download it as a PDF, HTML tarball, or RPM. No excuses. http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.2-Manual/install-guide/ch-partitions.html#S2-PARTITIONS-HOW-MANY === To: <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: Duncan Hill <dhill@cricalix.net> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 11:05:58 -0500 (EST) On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Ed Wilts wrote: > "The minimum size of your swap partition should be equal to twice the > amount of your computer's RAM or 32 MB, whichever is larger." My god, thats going to hurt my disks on the 1.5 GB RAM server I have to install. === To: <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: Duncan Hill <dhill@cricalix.net> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 11:02:08 -0500 (EST) On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Meph Istopheles wrote: > I've had 7.2 installed twice. The first time, each time with bad > results. I've a P-III 500 w/256MB RAM & I normall just go w/256MB swap > -- very smoothe with RH 6.0 & 6.2. But either 7.2, Gnome, Ximian, or a In counter to all of this, I run 7.2 on a dual ppro with 98 MB RAM, and it runs like a charm.. ext3 even. Never crashes, nothing dies randomly. Granted, I use it as a server/workstation, with my Win2k box acting as a glorified (X) terminal. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: "Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz@indahaus.com> Subject: Re: Red Hat 7.2: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:20:25 +0000 At 11/23/2001 11:02 AM -0500, you wrote: >In counter to all of this, I run 7.2 on a dual ppro with 98 MB RAM, and it >runs like a charm.. ext3 even. Never crashes, nothing dies randomly. I'm running 7.2 on: * An old Cyrix-133 (P166+), 32MB, 500MB disk as a firewall/DHCP/NTP server * An old P200MMX, 64MB, 2GB as an SMTP/POP/IMAP/HTTP/FTP/DNS server * My IBM Thinkpad T20 notebook (P3-650, 512MB, 20GB) with "the works" * My wife's Toshiba notebook (P3-600, 192MB, 12GB) with "the works" So far, the GNOME panel crashes for one of my users on login and I don't know how to fix it. Other than that, I've had no problems at all on *really* different hardware. All machines use ext3, all use iptables, all have relevant updates installed. === To: redhat-list@redhat.com From: "John P. Verel" <jverel@home.com> Subject: Re: Please advise on upgrade to 7.2 Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:38:19 -0500 Interesting question. I just this momenent upgrade from 2.4.7-10 to 2.4.9-13, using up2date. Two observations: First, it was flawless. Bravo, Red Hat! Second, when I boot using LILO, I now get my choice of the old kernels as well as new ones. My /etc/lilo.conf now looks like this: prompt timeout=50 default=linux boot=/dev/hdb5 map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b message=/boot/message linear image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10enterprise label=linux.bak read-only root=/dev/hda6 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10smp label=linux-smp.bak read-only root=/dev/hda6 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 label=linux-up read-only root=/dev/hda6 other=/dev/hda1 optional label=Windows98 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-13 label=linux root=/dev/hda6 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-13enterprise label=linux-enterpris root=/dev/hda6 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-13smp label=linux-smp root=/dev/hda6 read-only So, if your new kernel gets blown away, the current up2date rpm, which is in the Red Hat distro, should make it a breeze to put it back. === To: redhat <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: Avi Aumick <avi@m-issues.org> Subject: Re: 7.2 Upgrade: Ximian and up2date? Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 00:51:27 -0600 (CST) On 17 Nov 2001, Ed Wilts wrote: > On Sat, 2001-11-17 at 13:35, John P. Verel wrote: > > I'm currently running 7.1 and using ximian gnome. The 7.2 release notes > > make clear that there are issues to be solved when upgrading to 7.2, if > > ximian is installed. > > > > One option suggested by Red Hat is to remove ximian prior to upgrade. > > This, I believe, would result in a non working gnome desktop...prior to > > a successful upgrade. > > > > I'm thinking of a) uninstalling ximian and then b) running up2date, in > > the belief that this will install the RedHat gnome rpms, then c) running > > the RH7.2 upgrade. > > I believe that it's easier to just do the 7.2 upgrade and then > immediately re-install Ximian again. I've read that this should work, > but I have not tried it. > I did what you are suggesting. When I ran the Ximian setup program it would not complete the install. It complained that it was missing something. The only solution that I had was to uninstall all Ximian components from the system and then run the Ximian setup program. === To: <redhat-list@redhat.com> From: "Jerome Neuveglise" <jerome@neuveglise.com> Subject: Re: Please advise on upgrade to 7.2 Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 11:14:43 +0100 >(...) > > So, if your new kernel gets blown away, the current up2date rpm, which > is in the Red Hat distro, should make it a breeze to put it back. > > > I also have a soft RAID1 setup with distinct / and > > > /usr partitions. According to : > > > http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55198 > > > the raidtool shipped with 7.2 has a bug that prevent > > > the machine from booting in this situation with > > > raidtools-0.90-23. But the bug is corrected in the > > > 0.90-24 release. How do I install this version instead > > > of the CD one during the upgrade process ? > > You need to clarify if you're doing an upgrade or an > > install, but when I did my install, I used the > > installation CD without the updated raidtools, and it > > did install and boot properly. Why, I don't know, but > > the bug did not affect me. I do have separate / and > > /usr partitions. The install did the right thing. Of > > course, I did upgrade to the newest raidtools package > > right after the install, but I am still not sure why it > > worked in the first place. Thanks for your experience. But as it a production server (quite buzy) I'd like to have other feedbacks or an official statement or a way of including the 0.90-24 version during the install. The kernel is not so important to me as I know the machine will boot with 2.4.7 but I am not sure of the raid issue :( ===