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  • From: Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum AT orgis.org>
  • To: sm-users AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Users] first experiences and problems
  • Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:49:30 +0100

(warning: take a cup of coffe or whatever... this posting sums up more than a
week of user experience with some frustrating events)

Hi all!

I recently decided to get some SourceMage v0.9.5 experience and am quite
exited about this distro. Somehow I really like it despite of a growing list
of problems I see... Since I like the distro's idea and core implementation
I'm hoping to get these nagging things fixed in the future. So here is a list
of things that I hope we can change to the better:

I had two installs now with one only half-succeeded...


Install 1: Success but not without sweat
========================================

The install itself went fine... It took me a while to find the correct way of
keeping the distro's linux sources out and my 2.6.14.2 in.
Problems started with first reboot attempt: The grub splash image couldn't be
loaded and thus there was blackness instead of boot menu ... I remember
deactivating the splash line and grub was OK then. Not sure if the first
install was just messed up because I have my harddisk on an Promise add-on
card.

Then the boot halted because of non-existing /dev/console &. Co. (because I
like udev) together with root mounted read-only so that they couldn't get
created. Booting with read-write once made creation possible.


After having the system basically running, I got to know the casting. Took a
while. One lesson is, that casting spells with huge dependency tree and
counting on the needed stuff being pulled in is not that a good idea. The
hundred answers you typed in for a cast that failed after the configuration
step are not remembered...

I had my time with circular dependencies. Example:

X -> gs (for documentation) -> gtk -> X

So, when I do `cast xorg` (or pull X in as dependency of xine-ui, as I did -
which lets you answer _many_ questions before it fails) and don't think twice
when saying yes to the gs dep (when it is question number 37 you don't think
anymore), I'm screwed.
Sorcery really should check for this circular dependency and at least warn me
(or recon that it can compile X without the optional gs first and then a
second time later with the optional dependency).


Then I had some strange moments with various packages... probably because I
didn't think that scribe puts a new grimoire in front of the line (I added
test and somehow thought that there would be some further action needed to
activate it or make it even the default place).

Tk failed to compile with missing tclInt.h although I installed tcl
successfully before that. Reinstalling `cast -r tcl tk` got it magickally.
Then I wanted Midnight Commander, whose install failed because someone made a
file called /usr/man/man1... removed that file and install was OK.

Also qt,gv,uudeview failed on first attempt but worked later.

Then I wanted to play some doom (could there be a legacy doom spell??) in the
incarnation of prboom. That needs guilib. But guilib cannot install because
it has wrong md5 sum. I found a posting concerning this (guilib guys changed
file w/o changing version) and tried the version in test grimoire with new
md5 sum, but now it's the gpg check that fails!

And, now a really strange thing: I have both xdm and kdm installed; both init
scripts are there. Xdm script works. Kdm script doesn't. I cannot `telnet
enable kdm`. What works, is to replace the path in the xdm script to point to
kdm and enable that one again.
Even copying the exact same working code from %5/xdm to %5/kdm doesn't work.
Maybe should I read more docs, but somehow I don't feel like it being
necessarily necessary when I got the telinit command and the script from the
spell.


I'm not sure how much of this is caused by me just ignorantly "pushing
buttons" without reading the docs - which are quite scarce or at least not
easily accessible, btw - but there are places

Sadly, I have to conclude this part with the disturbing relevation that the
system just froze as it did once before out of sudden. It didn't do that with
other OSs; hopefully this is just some ACPI stuff in the kernel that wants to
be deactivated. I suspect so; the mainboard is not _that_ new. I'm trying not
to blame SourceMage for that;-)


Install 2: Where am I?
======================

On a second machine, the installation menu got me. The first run yielded an
empty root partition; pobably I accidentally missed to do the crucial step.
Second run went through, but I managed _not_ to install grub somehow. Boot
from cd into install; install grub, ok...

Well, now there is a system that boots but such things as /etc/fstab and init
scripts are somehow missing.

This raises 2 questions:

Could the installation program check basic sanity of the system before reboot?
How can I complete the half install without going through all config again?

Also the installer could do something not to hide errors of executed
commands. I remember flashing lines with some (fatal?) errors that are hidden
under the menu that fills the screen after the commands have been executed.
With this info I may have had some hints about what I did wrong (missed a
step or not did right).


So, there are some quite some issues I have here, but I'm really looking
forward to see a robust SourceMage v1.0.0 . I don't know exactly why, but I
really like this system; it may even replace the very custom LFS that dwells
on my laptop. It feels like more control and more comfort at the same time
compared to Gentoo. I want to see a 1.0 . But for now I want to get install
number 2 running... Ah! and the important part: This second computer lives in
an separated network segment that gets through to the internet only via
http/ftp proxy (or ssh relay through another machine of different segment in
same network). Will the download stuff work in this configuration?


So long,

Thomas.



  • [SM-Users] first experiences and problems, Thomas Orgis, 11/30/2005

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