So I got Ian Eure's "netinst" iso image so that I could install Debian (woody) fresh on a new machine (die, floppies, die!). I use Debian because apt-get is VERY cool, and I try to advocate it to my friends considering Linux, thanks to the ease of installs and upgrades. And I figure I might as well run the latest and greatest.
This install was a Woody install, on whatever was current for Woody on 1/26/2002 using the apt-get installers to the us.debian.org site. I had two fairly major problems, and a minor one. I was able to resolve them all by poking about on the web and mailing lists, and they seem to be well understood problems. Though the answers are not too hard to find, I fear these problems could very well halt a new Debian user in their tracks and send them off to another distribution. If they are already bugs submitted, I'd like to vote for them. If they are not, I'd like to learn how to submit a proper bug. Your suggestions are welcome. The system came up after boot and the mouse was behaving erratically. I was able to fumble into the system using keyboard only, but discovered that no Window Manager was installed with Gnome. I couldn't reach a command line at all (since gdm was installed) and finally got to tweak the config files only by booting a rescue disk and hand-editing inittab to run at runlevel 1. What were the problems? 1) Both gpm and X were installed, and I naively told XFree86 that mouse was at /dev/psaux instead of /dev/gpmdata. This is apparently a VERY common mistake and I'm surprised there are no methods to catch and compensate for the problem at install time. Would be nice if there were a way to track the dependency and configure accordingly. 2) Somehow, the installer installed Gnome, but no window manager. This seems to happen to some other people as well (at debianhelp.org). I had to apt-get install sawfish-gnome apt-get install wmaker-gnome and then I had to select wmaker, and then switch back to sawfish to make sawfish work. I got an error at install time about problems installing a window manager, but I ignored them. If someone points me at the right log file, I will share the messages. 3) (minor) Since GDM was installed and running by default, I had no way to get a nice, dumb terminal to work out config issues (since the window manager and mouse were both hoarked). I wish there was an easy, keyboard-based way to kill gdm and drop back to a terminal in the case of serious X issues. That would have saved me the trouble of so many rescue disk reboots. So, maybe I'm an idiot. But I think these issues should be easy to resolve, and I'd like to help resolve them. Where do I start? My system is working now, but I think there were an awful lot of extra post-installer steps that might have scared off a newer newbie than me. I am not on debian-users, so please reply directly if you have any suggestions, ideas, next-steps, or flames. Cheers. Phil
