I'm just gonna put the big reply at the top of this email instead of even
bothering with the whole mass and causing everyone to scroll alot, so here
goes :).
First of all, thanks Heather for replying, and the welcome. I had a feeling
you might, since I've been watching this list for a good while now and the
people on it seem really intelligent :). It's funny though, when I've
actually sent emails to this list before and nobody still knows me until
now ;) (j/k). Anyway, let me tell you something that's been common with me
ever since I've been using computers, since about '93 (my first 486)...
Every single time I've ever had a problem with anything software based on
any computer of mine, and I even tried to get any help with it at all (web,
irc, etc), there wasn't ever good documentation (especially before I even
had internet access). Therefore, I've always been forced to figure out a
solution to my problem on my own, whatever that may have been. Ironically,
I've almost always been successfull in fixing my problems myself without
any help when I've had to. It was usually something I missed along the way
("Oh, I forgot about that!", "Ooooooooooh yeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh", etc), but
sometimes it was something that took hours of tinkering and trial and error
to get it fixed just so, so that it would work correctly. But I guess the
fact that I do figure most of it out myself has actually helped me increase
my knowledge of the subject at hand in a different way it could have been
increased just by reading FAQ's or asking someone else to do it for me :).
This has happened during this whole week, as you have read in my initial
email. The whole process of having to start over because the installation
decided to commit suicide at the same spot every time WAS very maddening
and frustrating. I guess that's what I get for attempting to upgrade to
unstable (this didn't happen the first time I upgraded to potato when it
was unstable though; all went perfectly... /me wonders why :) ). As I said,
I started out with the slink base, probably from one of the very first
build cds that were released (it came in a big goodies package from VA
since I volunteer for themes.org). Anyway, I didn't actually have to go
through the rigerous (sp?) process of upgrading slink itself several times
before it was able to be upgraded to potato (yes, I usually do put the
distribution's codename (ie slink/potato/woody) in place of stable/unstable
in sources.list just as a personal preference). All I did was change the
sources.list line and go from there. Everything upgraded to potato just
fine, and the second time I did it (after I remembered IO.pm and everything
that goes with it comes in the perl pacakge and not perl-base), I had perl
installed, so when I dist-upgraded to woody (again using it's codename
instead of "unstable" just because I like it that way :P), the perl problem
was gone, and it was able to begin configuring the packages.
The kernel problem I mentioned did come when modutils was being upgraded.
This evening I was fiddling around with newer versions of the kernel and
recompiled pcmcia-cs source, to see if the woody version of modutils liked
newer versions of the kernel better. To my astonishment, it does. There
must be some backwards compatibility issues between the newer version of
modutils and the old 2.0.x kernels; I don't know if anyone else has noticed
them yet... if not, this issue should probably be made public. So after
upgrading the kernel to kernel-image-2.2.18 (I didn't have the time or will
to compile the source), modutils was able to finish configuring (through
dpkg --configure modutils, that is), and there was no more "QM_MODULES:
function not implemented" error. So all's well that ends well, if that's
how the saying goes. Now I just have to wait another 3 and half weeks
before I get back to school and my T3 connection, because tomorrow's my
last day before break. Stupid dialup at home takes about 22 hours to do a
distribution upgrade :(~.
So thanks for the help, even if it was a little bit late... it just
confirmed my assumptions :). Like I said, I usually figure out everything
myself anyway and end up not really needing any help at all.. heh. Thanks
though, and hopefully the AM's will get thier butts in gear and accepts
some new applicants ;).
- Jordan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://e.themes.org php developer
At 12:34 PM 12/14/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>[Mucho trimming - to summarize..]
>
> > ... . My laptop (Dell Inspiron 3200)
> > ... , I've been attempting to get debian back on
> > it and up to a usable state of woody (heh). I was doing this from school,
> > where they have a 100mbps microwave connection to the school's local isp,
> > so I was averaging about 85-90k/s from eecs.umich.edu ;).
> >
> > Anyway, these are my problems. The only debian cd I have in posession
> is an
> > old-as-mud slink cd (which btw uses kernel 2.0.36),
>
>Err, since you're installing from bare metal anyway, do you have a CD burner
>handy anywhere, even on a Windows or Mac nearby? Because, you could fetch
>the potato ISOs with that kind of bitspeed.
>
>Failing this, I recommend that you can install from the CD you have, then
>take the plunge in *much* smaller chunks.
>
>First, upgrade you slink-antique to the newest slink, by using either a
>mirror that still carries slink (it would have to be at least partially
>mirroring debian-archives, now) or the real debian ftp site.
>
>One difficulty you'll have is that my favorite toy, console-apt, probably
>won't work until you grab a number of additional loose parts. However,
>I do know that it works with slink for the following values: console-apt
>0.6.5.3-1 worked on a somewhat newer slink (around the time they were
>starting to press slink-and-a-half, I think) and that's what I used to
>start snacking on potato.
>
>Critical: DO NOT use the keyword "stable". Use the keyword "slink" and
> chase down an archive that has it, until you get your slink
> un-rusted.
>
> > So I started over (today). I had slink already installed before I got to
> > school, so all I had to do was dist-upgrade to potato and then woo0dy. I
> > remembered this time, however, ... perl ... modutils ...
>
>Hopefully a dist-upgrade to slink (as stored on the open net -archives-)
>will make this easier. Clean up any messes that leaves you in.
>
>Then dist-upgrade to slink-proposed-updates, using the same archive areas
>as you had to for slink. That should get you at slink r6 or maybe slightly
>better.
>
>There is a document on the debian website on gotchas to look out for, for
>slink users upgrading to potato. Errr... at least, I saw it up awhile back,
>I don't think it was two months ago... I don't seem to easily find it now -
>darnit, that really torq's my gourd. Um, I might be able to hunt up a
>local copy of it. But you have definitely pegged two of its warnings right
>on the head.
>
>In fact, I will add from personal experience, be really-really careful
>upgrading your perl from 5.004 (I think that is what you'll end up with as
>base) to 5.005 even, and clean up all its little messes before you even
>consider adding any additional versions of perl. You might have to do
>some package forcing to get the dependencies to settle in.
>
>There is a potato-proposed-updates too. I now keep security.debian.org
>on my apt-sources list.
>
> > I have a strong urge to think this has something to do with the existing
> > kernel on my system, which had been installed from slink's 2.0.36 base
> > installation. Am I correct in assuming this, and do I need to start over
> > again after upgrading the system to a 2.2 kernel before dist-upgrading to
> > woody so it'll be able to configure modutils?
>
>Rebooting the system would be good, but rebuilding the whole install should
>not be necessary. I was running slink happily on a locally built 2.2.x for
>a while before the potato builds were getting safe. The idea is that modutils
>are supposed to be smart enough to deal with the differences...
>
>...though I'd welcome anyone else's comments on whether they still handle
>2.0.x properly.
>
>At the very least the slink archives have a 2.0.38 kernel image available,
>and there's a source kit for 2.2.5 in slink-proposed-updates.
>
> > because I used potato in unstable state for a long long time), and my
> > laptop isn't all that fast (p2-266 on 64mb of ram). Suggestions are
> welcome.
>
>Mine's a 233-MMX and quite happy on potato, thanks. It's not the speed,
>it's the latency ...
>
>Anyways, once you're safely on potato, get yourself console-apt (if you
>haven't already). BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM very neatly to some media you can
>get it back from, since you're going to be playing with woody and it's
>been living up to the term "unstable" lately... so this way you can go
>back to a healthy potato over and over instead of driving yourself nuts
>like this.
>
>Then you can use console-apt to snag little things at a time. Be really
>careful when handleing glibc - read the devel list and keep up on who
>clutzed out during uplaods, etc.
>
> > One final note... How would you guys recommend partitioning a 4gb hard
> > drive? :)
>
>With at least a seperate /tmp, 100 to 300 Mb would be fine. Less might
>be okay even, depends on whether you use apps that bloat /tmp. Since I
>don't trust apps, I think a little extra space is okay.
>
> > I don't really want to use one big partition, which I've been
> > doing for a long time, so I decided to split it up this installation. I
> > tried an 800mb /,
>
>huge, mine is only 120 Mb and not in real danger of growing full. I
>usually format / with less "space reserved for root" because, um, very few
>things are writing to it that aren't root.
>
> > 1200mb /home, 1800mb /usr,
>
>I'd probably merge these and symlink /home to /usr/local/home. You can
>format this with lots of inodes if you like.
>
> > and 250mb /var (which actually
> > isn't big enough since downloading deb packages can take well over 300mb,
> > so that'll HAVE to be bigger).
>
>ok size, if you symlink /var/cache/apt to something like /usr/local/AptCache
>and /var/lib/dpkg to /usr/local/Dpkg (note the caps, they sort to the top
>in listings - you could make them dot-directories, but then you might forget
>to back up the packaging system). I also format /var with less "space
>reserved for root" because, frankly, nearly all the run-off-at-the-mouth
>logs are written as root anyway. Grr.
>
> > The rest (about 60mb) was devoted to swap. I
> > feel like I need to learn about partitioning schemes :).
>
>Looks like a good swap size to me.
>
>don't forget to let your laptop format its hibernate space :)
>
> > Thanks for the help, and good luck to all you developers. I'll be joining
> > you soon ;)
> >
> > - Jordan
>
>Welcome to the list, Jordan :)
>
>* Heather Stern * star@ many places...
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