timelord100

Once again you go off on a rant about everything under the sun without even properly reading my post. Actually go to the google cached page you linked from your own post (https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=32931&st=75#) and read it. As I pointed out in my last post in the section "Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64" it has a link to the ISO images on the mirrors "Mirrors for Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64".

The page is obviously a mistake and a temporary one at that, right before they implemented a new website design. It wasn't like that earlier in the year and its not some sneaky or malicious attempt to hide the free ISOs from people because the link is right there on the page!

Arctic... the issue is not the 1 month delay ... I was quite happily doing an ftp install anyway.

The question is whether Mandriva are a truthful company.

Unless you think google are making some sort of play for mandriva to enter into the desktop linux market why would google falsify the cache records? Why would ianw1974 make up a link ?

 

The issue is Mandriva stated categorically the iso's were not on the mirrors yet they were and they were still stating this 5 days later so its not like everything was lost in the 30 minutes....

 

Like I say we can speculate if its an accident, deliberate or plain lazyness but the google cache is pretty much close to being fact. I and ianw1978 both saw the iso's ...

 

but the bottom line is I don't like being called a liar. I know what I saw ... I know I tried the enterprise kernel and what timelord100 is posting is saying I did not.

Gowator I think you need to follow your own advice and not call other people liars without being very sure. If you actually look at that cached version you'll see a whole section titled "Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64" and a link that says "Mirrors for Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64".

I don't know why it also says "look in a few weeks in the other section of this page" but given that they've completely changed the design of the website its more than likely they just stuffed the site up during the transition. How did you get to that page? Did you go from www.mandrivalinux.com and click 'Downloads' or did you just click it as a link?

It looks like an old page which is still on their webserver. If you go there now it only has download links for 2005LE - http://www.mandriva.com/en/downloads/otherdownloads/mirrors.

And BTW nowhere did I call you a liar. I just think you're wrong and I'm trying to point out why, so don't get so defensive.

I still don't understand what you're talking about. Goto www.mandrivalinux.com, click on the link that says 'Downloads' and its all there. Its been like that since they released the 2006 ISOs way back in November. Yes they had that ~1 month period where the ISOs weren't there but 2006 was but they were quite open about that - they always delay the free ISO release.

No I couldn't and Im getting pretty tired of you saying I could ... you have no idea which kernel version it was, you can't because neither have I.

 

and the statement is completely meaningless anyway because if I know what mandriva patched I can download from kernel.org and apply the patches and theoretically make the same kernel.

 

The point is I recreated EXACTLY the stock kernel at the time ... built it and installed it and bulit against it but repeating the same steps did not build the same kernel as the -enterprise version.

 

Secondly, since my real aim was just to get the kernel source to compile against for the modules its completely irrelevant... I should be able to download the kernel source, change nothing and compile against it without rebuilding or touching ANYTHING except the modules....

 

Its maybe only coincidence that Mandriva withholds those drivers to club members but I rather think the idea is to piss people off to the extent they buy. well I already did buy ... the CD's were just faulty and Mandrake were exceptionally rude to me as a paying customer so they will never see a cent of my money ever.

The Kernels on the pay-for version are the same as the ones available on the free version and the main mirrors. The Kernel SRPM is what the kernel RPMs are built from.

A lie is a lie is a lie ....

Fact the iso's are on the mirrors.... (http://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors/Mandriva/official/iso/2006.0/i586/)

Fact Mandriva say they are not... (I already posted that)

What are you talking about? When did they lie? The ISOs weren't on the mirrors until about a month after the release, that's what they announced, that's what they linked to on their website.

Which part of this is not mandriva lying through their teeth?

Huh? What did they lie about?

This is one of my major gripes ... people keep arguing that x,y,z doesn't work if you use a custom kernel or in my case had to compile your own... but the fact remains if I download kernel source I expect it to be kernel source and if I run ./configure && make && make install I expect it to make the EXACT same kernel...

Get the kernel SRPM, not the kernel-source binary RPM and you can rebuild the exact same kernel.

The fact is the info on mandriva's site is just plain wrong, the kernels sometimes don't match and noone is sure what the status of supermount is.

The kernels don't match what? Mandriva are sure of what the status of supermount is - see the links in my 2 previous posts.

Being generous take the downloads iso's don't exist for 2006 statement ... well it WAS correct at some point and my guess is someone mentioned this and someone said yep but we have more important things than editing a webpage for freeloaders, we'll do it when we are less busy....

?? Its well known that they wait a month or 2 before releasing the free ISOs after they release the distro to the club members. Their original release announcement specifically states that you have to do a network install or join the club, the 2nd (a month later) announces the free ISO images are available. See http://www.mandriva.com/en/community/news/(offset)/10

If it is a proper, clean, gvm based solution, then it should work irrelevant of the kernel in use, be it custom, or distro provided. Hence my suspicion that it isnt such a pure setup as they'd like us to think. Alternatively, it could just be poorly configured which wouldnt surprise me either.

It is a proper, clean gvm based solution and it does work for me and I'd say a lot of other people too with many different custom kernels (2.6.13, 2.6.14, 2.6.16, 2.6.17) without any fiddling. I don't know what might be causing the problems that some people have, all I can see is it works fine for me.

that's hardly an excuse for it to happen. the idea is you *fix* it if that's happening. My point was that Mandriva's has seemed less reliable than other setups i have seen and used.

I'm not making excuses for it but my point was that it works for most people, just because there are posts in a forum from people who it doesn't work for doesn't prove its less reliable than other distros (which also have many posts in their forums from users who it doesn't work for).

Newer udev versions replace hotplug entirely. It's old.

Hopefully they will update this in 2007, its been a while that 2006 has been out - hotplug was probably the way to go then.

Mandriva are not using a pure dbus/hal based userspace automounting solution. If they were, then using other kernels, such as self compiled kernels would not break the setup. According to many posts from members around here, supermount still exists in mandriva and plays some part, as for what part? I'm not all too sure.

We've been through this on the other threads. Some users have trouble with their own kernels, some do not. Mandriva only uses supermount for floppy drives and some tape drives because they don't provide notifications to the kernel when media is inserted: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-c...4304570&w=2

They use the proper hotplug/udev/hald/gvm system for everything else.

From the posts on this forum it's evident that Mandriva's current setup isnt too reliable either, you still see posts asking how to mount pendrives and such.

I's one of the most common problems posted about any distro

uses superior automounting solution

What does Ubuntu use that's superior to hotplug/udev/hald/gvm? (http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main...eRemovableMedia)

My 2 cents is that Ubuntu does seem a bit more polished than Mandriva, certainly simpler than Mandriva to use (eg. not having to know about easyurpmi to have the repos setup). The 6 month release cycles are also good - Mandriva does start to look a little dated near the end of a year release cycle, although it is very stable :)

Still I prefer Mandriva because it seems to have 'more', it seems aimed more at power users by default than newbies, but that's just my impression. Also the whole ubuntu/kubuntu split along desktop lines really bugs me. I like distros to give a choice of which desktop, or both, to install and most importantly to have the best applications for each task installed by default. Eg. don't not install k3b by default in Ubuntu just because it isn't a GTK or GNOME app. App decisions based on religious 'this desktop is better' ideology is a Bad Thing IMHO :)

Also I don't think Ubuntu has any great advantage in hardware detection. I've had 5.10 not work on a desktop PC that Mandriva 2006 worked on by default. Then again maybe with the 6.06 release they are ahead again because of the newer kernel and drivers, until Mdv releases 2007.

So Im not sure where I am meant to get the 4th CD from....

The DVD image might contain it .. basically who knows?

So I am left with pre-knowing that the 3CD's don't contain the devel libs or source?

 

The bottom line is we know Mandriva needs to make money but ....

This just doesn't help ....

By the time you have begged/borrowed/stolen the bandwidth got your CD's and installed you can be pretty miffed you can't get your graphics card working without finding the dev packages .(not to mention if its a modem problem ).. and if you have no internet its not easy to ask someone else to find the reason out....

I never said anything about a 4th CD :huh:

All I meant was that you download the packages from the main repo if you have to use Mandriva offline and don't have a pay-for 'Powerpack' DVD version. You'd goto easyurpmi anyway to setup your repos so its not something hidden, although it is not properly advertised by Mandriva. It'd even work better on a crappy internet connection because you're downloading a whole lot of small files instead of a few big ones - much easier to pickup the download again without losing things.

The ISO's! If they had been available at the time he had the connection, chances are he would have downloaded them. That's like me losing my connection now, and not being able to get Mandriva 2007 when it's released. Impossible without a fast connection, so your only option is downloading somewhere where there is a fast connection (college, uni, etc) or buying a magazine with them on the front.

 

If you don't have the money, like some people, or live in third-world country where fast connections don't exist or have the money, you ain't gonna buy a full release, are you? That's what gowator is trying to explain.

Sorry I don't understand what you're saying? Gowator said he downloaded the 3CD ISOs by a begged/borrowed/stolen (;)) internet connection. I'm just saying if you can download 3CDs (~2GB) you could just as easily have downloaded the whole main repository and one install CD (~4-5GB) and had all the software available to you when you're offline again, including the devel tools.

Well, first you'd have to know ... secondly perhaps you are not doing it yourself, when i had to do this I had to ask someone to do it for me in their work time... thirdly there is time... it can take 2-3 days to download a CD when the mirrors keep stalling etc. and you are on dialup. I used to use the work connection and leave it running at night for the download then have to ask someone with a CD writer to write the CD and explain how to burn it as an ISO etc. in any case I only had a gig of storage space so I could only do one at once.

None of that would stop you downloading the main repo instead of the CD - in fact it would be easier because downloading lots of smaller files is much more tolerant to connections dropping out all the time and having to burn it to CD bit by bit (if you only have limited storage space).

But yes it is something that you have to know and unfortunately if you're going to use any modern Linux distro completely 'offline' its probably something you have to think about. Modern Linux distros are definitely meant to be used on a computer with an internet conn., but there's no reason you can't use it offline if you take a couple of extra steps.

What weren't available? The repositories? They're all listed at easyurpmi, there's plenty of them if a few go down.

2. Go to a local uni and beg them to let you download Mandriva on their DSL line or buy a $5 set from some linux CD distributer or get it off a magazine ...

So why didn't you download the full repository when you had access to that DSL line?

That's the point I was trying to make in my previous post: if you had a connection capable of downloading 3CDs you could just have easily downloaded the full repository plus the first CD or even just the boot CD.

If you are an old timer then you know to take your own empty egg boxes when getting your free eggs but first timers don't.

I'm talking about the standard Mandriva software install tools that everyone uses, not some super-hack that only experts and 'old-timers' know about.

I lived for about 6 months a few years ago with just my mobile phone for an internet connection and I can assure you platitudes like you can download the dev packages doesn't really help.

If you have an internet con. capable of downloading 3CDs (~2GB) then you have one capable of downloading the dev tools or even the entire main repository (~4GB) for later offline installation of stuff.

Or if you bought the CDs instead just put up a few more $ for the DVD or 6-CD version.

I don't realyl see the problem here?

I kept asking because it doesn't make sense that you'd get supermount errors if you hadn't specifically patched it into the kernel, I also suggested the only other logical possibility is that it was a problem ooutside the kernel. You can hardly conclude its a fluke that it works for me just because you and a few others have the problem. Sounds like any typical bug - it affects some users and not others depending on their environment/configuration.

As I told you time and time again, I didn't introduce supermount. You need to read more carefully. And since I'm not the only one who has encountered this problem it's definitely not just me.

 

So yes, now you agree, that as I've compiled the kernel and not done anything abnormal, then Mandriva is the problem.

I think its you that needs to read posts more carefully. What I was saying is that if you didn't do anything to the kernel then it can't be something to do with buildign the kernel. This was a couple of posts ago now (https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...mp;st=105)

This is what I was telling you, Mandriva have done something that stops us from compiling kernels, because of god knows what. Only they could tell us why, which is why we said to stop patching the kernel with supermount and god knows what else. But also, it seems that another point, stop making your apps work with just your own kernels, either with patches to the kernel to make them work, or some weird config that doesn't allow it to work with other self-compiled kernels.

I'm telling you that I've had no trouble compiling my own kernels with Mandriva with any patching or problems with apps afterwards. It sounds like something specific to your, and a few other people's, configuration or environment. I've never said its not a problem but it sounds more like a bug that affects a few people rather than an over-arching design fault.

Mandriva doesn't make any money out of leaving the dev stuff out of the 'Free' edition CDs. All you have to do is goto easyurpmi and setup your repos - Mandriva puts all their software (except for the closed-source and proprietary stuff) out on the Internet for free in pakcage repositories.

Sure it does. If I use a Mandriva kernel, the problems don't exist. As soon as I compile my own, errors occur. So how can you say it's not the kernel? And if it's not the kernel, then whatever problems occur are directly resulting from something lacking in the compiled kernel.

But supermount is not included in the vanilla kernel. If by compiling a kernel you've introduced supermount then its something that you've done. Or (if its not something you've done when compiling your vanilla kernel) its something outside the kernel that Mandriva has done - some configuration or some modification to some other package.

Nope kernel 2.6.17.1 wasn't any better. Same problem with cd's not being able to mount, so obviously missing something from my raw kernel, that Mandriva has patched in theirs. Autofs will allow me to use it anyhow normally, so I can get around it, but it just shows kernel compiles on Mandriva ain't as easy as other distros.

I don't think this has anything to do with the kernel, after all how can it be a problem with the kernel that you're getting supermount errors when you haven't even patched supermount into the kernel? It must be something else, the fact that you've tried multiple kernel compiles all with the same result shows that it has to be something outside the kernel.

And as I said before I've had absolutely no trouble with custom compiled kernels with no patching required so I don't think that Mandriva is any harder to compile kernels for than any other distro.

I mean that it was confusing for the average user seeing Mandriva Online in their panel by default they will think that that's the way that Mandriva has to be updated. That page says nothing about the availability of updates for free using the default control centre update thingo.

A Linux distro that requires payment for updates would put a *lot* of people off.

17. Please avoid multiple applications for same task. Choose only best ones defaultly.

 

18. Include more multimedia applications ( which is the plus point of Mandrake/Mandriva so far) like transcode, frontends for mencoder and transcode, tag editors, AVIDemux, VLC media player, KDE frontend for Mplayer etc.)

These 2 seem to contradict each other - Mandriva includes xine and its frontends Kaffiene (for KDE) and Totem (for GNOME) as the default player. Installing mplayer as well violates the 'multiple applications per task' rule, although in this case it might be good to make an exception since mplayer can often play things that xine can't (some Real Media videos in my experience).

Still all this stuff is in the repositories.

19. Include more developement packages (please don't neglect the developement section. Most my friends dissapointed with Mandriva 2006 since developement packages were missing. eg: Kdevelope, Eclipse, Glade, IDE for Python, Ruby etc. )

All these packages are in the repositories, they just aren't on the 3CD 'Free' edition since otherwise it would be a lot more than 3CDs.

20. Please try to remove the Mandriva Online services from Mandriva free editions if the company is not giving updates to the free editions.

They are giving free updates - see the Update program in the Mandriva Control Centre. Mandriva Online is supposed to be a pay-for service that is better (I'm not sure how). As usual Mandriva have confused people with this - they see the Mandriva Update applet started by default in their panel and think Mandriva has gone to a pay-for updates system, like Red Hat Network for eg.

Otherwise some pretty good points. Maybe some of you guys should join the cooker mailing list and discuss your suggestions there - you'll usually get a direct response from the actual developers that way. Now's the time to suggest changes, they probably won't change anything once the beta process is underway.

I'll have to agree to disagree for the time being (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

 

The error appeared as CD's wouldn't automount, so I tried to mount manually using:

 

CODE

mount /mnt/cdrom

 

 

as you can see from fstab this would normally work fine, but it reported back a supermount error. Strange

That is very strange, it may have something to do with the fact I don't have a floppy drive in this laptop so supermount was never "enabled" in whatever way it does that.

Still I had no trouble compiling kernels on it and they work, perfectly with no 'supermount-hangover' :) Give one of them a try (http://linuxonacer5020.sourceforge.net/), it'd be interesting to see if you still get the supermount problems.

So it leads me to conclude that the problem with supermount is because of Mandriva, not because something was wrong with my system. I'm not actually bothered about it, because I can live with the Mandriva kernels. I don't need the latest and greatest, but it just proves that you cannot compile your own kernel without problems because Mandriva heavily patch it for their own requirements based on what they use in their distro. I have not had problems compiling kernels on Red Hat, Gentoo or other systems.

I disagree, Ive had no trouble compiling my own kernels with Mandriva's .config and no kernel patching. The resulting RPMs and SRPMs are on that page I linked to before (http://linuxonacer5020.sf.net). My CD/DVD and USB mounting works perfectly out of the box.

You still haven't said where the supermount error appeared?

I know that kernel-source get's upgraded automatically, and I know I have to upgrade my kernel manually. So it wasn't that either.

Sorry that was a reply to another poster, 2 posts seemed to get mixed together.

I know they use hal, etc, etc, but what isn't explicable is why, after a kernel compile, it mentioned supermount for the CD-ROM. I never introduced this patch to the kernel.

What mentioned supermount for the CD drive? your fstab? That's got nothing to do with your kernel compile - you must have put that in there somehow.

It was raw, unpatched, unlike Mandriva's kernels, which are. Supermount for one, and bootsplash is another that I know about, god knows what else.

I compiled fine from raw, unpatched kernels from kernel.org with the Mandriva .config file. The kernels I made had no supermount and no bootsplash. If you have supermount or something still showing up it must be because of something you did outside the kernel (eg. the fstab file).

What annoyed me in the old days was because I had a gig of RAM I used to have to use the enterprise kernel but if you downloaded the srpms and compiled it it wasn't the same as the mandriva kernel? Not even the same size!

I never did actually work out what was the reason and this was the straw that broke the camels back for me in terms oif it meant everything else had to be compiled specially as well like the nvidia driver modules for the sound and network because they wouldn't compile against the mandriva supplied source code.

Did you look in the spec file before you tried to rebuild the RPM, eg:

# this flag build kernels for:
# i686-up-4GB
# i686-up-1GB
# i686-smp-1GB
%define build_test 0

%define build_enterprise 0
%define build_BOOT 1
%define build_secure 0

There are a lot of build options in there for all the different kernels the SRPM can build.

Its also possible that you didn't upgrade the kernel RPM, which has to be done manually with the urpmi command (http://www.mandriva.com/en/security/kernelupdate), whereas the kernel-source RPM gets upgraded automatically when you do updates. This leads to a mismatch between the kernel installed and the kernel-source and not surprisingly Nvidia drivers and stuff won't install.

IMHO its one of the most stupid things they do but there are no secret kernel patches or anything like that.

I think that shows exactly their problem, they should be more offensive about their product, its inner workings and so on, then all this half-information would be no problem

 

but this is a problem with many linux-companies

 

ubuntu shows it, you just need to be loud enough and you will get the media

 

P.S. I love both mandriva and ubuntu, just in case someone might ask :D

http://www.mandriva.com/en/security is their page for security advisories. They do keep Firefox and anything else in the main repository up to date with security and bugfix patches. They could do a better job of explaining the whole backports thing though (a FAQ perhaps?).