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2009 RC1 redux...


astronomer
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I recently attempted to install 2009 RC1 and encountered a few problems (see first 2009 install post). Thanks to all for the responses.

 

I have now found time to get it all working and thought it deserved a second post - hope it is OK to start a new thread...

 

My biggest problem(s) with the first attempt were a lilo failure complicated by my first brush with UUIDs in the lilo.conf and fstab files (ie, my own lack of understanding). I think I now have the 'failure' resolved and have accepted UUIDs as a fact of life and implemented an alternative using labels which accomplishes the same thing (suggested by arctic).

 

The lilo failure was related to the installation being on an older system (HP cica 2003, 1.3ghz, 250gb disk). It turns out that the BIOS does not correctly handle disk geometry beyond 137GB - vmlinuz and initrd.img were sitting right on the 137gb blocks so lilo got it wrong (from the BIOS). I had been aware of this limit long ago but had never hit it on this box... (also, my 2007 lilo on the same box was able to create a chain boot to it - odd). Anyway, I reclaimed a lower swap block for /boot, resized a couple of partitions with diskdrake (great tool!) and got it all going...

 

So - finally - 'second' first impressions... quick answer: overall another GOOD Mandriva distro in the making!

 

... long answer: here we go...

 

KDE 4 - this was my first look at KDE4, I am a long time KDE user, but much like the transition from KDE2 to KDE3, I think KDE4 has a ways to go. Overall look and feel is pretty good... I keep feeling as if I am missing the point with plasma (a possibility) - it is different, but what is the 'advantage' - that is, what compelling reason is there for using it? I also found KDE4 to be a bit slow. Granted this machine is showing it's age, but it is still a workhorse and has no problems at all with 2007 PowerPack/KDE3. I also found KDE4 configuration choices to range from obscure to missing in action. So - KDE4 looks nice - but let me know when it is a little more useful.

 

KDE3 - I switched to KDE3 and found it to be mostly familiar and pretty much as fast and useful as on older Mandriva distros. The difference between it and KDE4 was very apparent on this machine. I selected the KDE menus instead of kicker (another new thing to me - why?) and got down to work.

 

I have a single 'must have' legacy application from anotherr OS that I have run under Wine since Mandrake 10 days - so I needed to see it work under 2009. I downloaded source for wine-1.1.4 and compiled - had to also compile GNU Bison from source as there was no pakage on the DVD. All went well - worked out of the box and my legacy app fired right up! Excellent!

 

I also compiled the latest Fluxbox (1.1.1 as I recall) and there were no problems until I tried to add it to kdm... the familiar configs were not there and it was all very confusing. I was able to figure out that I needed to add a file to /etc/X11/wmsessions.d/... but that had no effect. I found a page on the Mandriva wiki that supposedly told how this should work using 'fndSession', but it was certainly not a 'how-to'... I got it going but with as many WMs and tastes as there are, this really needs to be better documented (or the better docs need to be much more accessible). Also, the MCC does not seem to offer any choices on configuring dm or kdm - don't think I missed anything. But - the newly compiled Fluxbox also worked fine with no other packages required.

 

In getting Fluxbox working I also found that I could not get a text login from kdm - it would kill the Xserver and look like it was going to give a text session - then the Xserver would restart and you are back where you started. This was easy enough to get around with ctrl-alt-F1-6, but the menu item needs to at least work.

 

I also had difficulty with resolvconf rewriting my /etc/resolv.conf file. This was also new to me so I did my homework and see how it is supposed to work - but I think it is a mistake to enable it by default. Anyway, I disabled it using MCC/Boot options... but it still clobbers my resolv.conf file. I see a couple of ways of stopping it but still don't know why it persists after being turned off... anybody else had experience with this? But for now I am out f play time so it will have to wait a few days...

 

Lilo - I am, and remain a lilo diehard - even more so after my ability to ultimately cope with the initial boot problems I experienced - and in rebuilding the boot loader for all partitions after it became unbootable. I had to take a refresher course on it, but remain warm and fuzzy with lilo ;-). It seems to be an inactive project - I really hope it is not abandoned - but it is still a solid, useful boot loader system and I am glad to see it in 2009 - and beyond I hope. But I found that MCC does not offer a graphic lilo boot screen - any reason why? Hope that is included in the offical release.

 

I have more comments but no more time... so to close - even with my own problems getting things going, I am looking forward to the 2009 official release - and the Power Packs. We had planned to evaluate moving most of our production boxes to 2009 and still plan to do so. Clearly we have some new things to learn and cope with, but the attraction of Mandriva for us has long been the ability to do so without any lingering mysteries or obscure configurations or dependencies. Easy installation, good hardware support out of the box, solid basic kernel build with few surprises, good continuity of structure (mostly) from release to release... we will stick with Mandriva.

 

Thanks for reading this way too long post! Anybody else tried 2009?

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Disable the resolvconf service, or make /etc/resolv.conf immutable:

 

chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

 

which will stop anything overwriting this. Of course, this also includes DHCP also if you're using DHCP to assign your IP address. So if you're sure that the DNS server won't change at all, then lock it and leave it. Alternatively, investigate what running apps/services you have that potentially could be causing this problem. The resolvconf service is one of them, which is why I always disable this service as I see no usefulness in it.

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Why are you compiling fluxbox and wine? The latest packages are available in the repositories, did you try those? kde3-kdm seems to be buggy atm, not showing sessions use gdm or kde4-kdm instead

Hi ffi.

Fluxbox did not install with 'Other graphical desktops' and was not in the DVD ISO so I just grabbed the source. Same with wine but I had the latest source already at hand so just built it - my wine app is 'mission critical' so I usually manage it myself anyway.

I have added repositories to urpmi and installed a few more things today, lyx, gnuplot, all the greats!

Hope kdm gets fixed.

Thanks.

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Disable the resolvconf service, or make /etc/resolv.conf immutable

Ya, I did that to get it going, but better to understand what is happening with it.

Of course, this also includes DHCP ... resolvconf service is one of them, which is why I always disable this service as I see no usefulness in it.

No we do not use DHCP here, and I agree - I see no real usefulness for resolvconf so will drive a wooden stake through its... well, I'll kill it anyway.

Thanks for the response.

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