Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

sm-users - Re: [SM-Users] first experiences and problems

sm-users AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Sourcemage Users List

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>
  • To: Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum AT orgis.org>
  • Cc: sm-users AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Users] first experiences and problems
  • Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 12:34:49 -0800

Thanks for the feedback, I'll intersperse some comments...

On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 09:49:30PM +0100, Thomas Orgis wrote:

> (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.

The ISO is right now kinda the most touchy part of the system. Once you
get a system up and running though, it gets a lot easier to maintain.

>
>
> 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...

We make it a transaction, configuration is only saved for spells that
worked so that you don't not get reasked them. If we saved the
configuration that didn't work for you, you would probably not notice it
was your picking a huge number of odd options conflicting options.
Sorcery is now getting subdependency support which should make most of
these odd failures go away in the future.

>
> 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).
>

This is a known issue that we're working on. It is being fixed in devel
grimoire now with the split xorg spell that allows us to put more
fine-grained dependency data on the different parts of xorg.

>
> 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).

Using test is ensured to give you problems :) If you use scribbler, you
can negotiate using different parts of different grimoires.

>
> 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.

a "gaze from /usr/man/man1" would have found the culprit package. If
you can run that and let me know what spell caused the problem, I can
file a bug on it (or you can file your own bug: bugs.sourcemage.org).

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

Maybe because of the xorg issue?

>
> 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!

If you haven't updated sorcery, sometimes the /root/.gnupg folder isn't
created and the gpg check fails.

You might also have a bad download summon -d <spell> causes it to
redownload.

>
> 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.

Interesting. Why does telinit enable kdm not work?

>
>
> 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;-)

It usually is too much bugginess in the kernel. There have been reports
that 2.6.14 is a little dodgy.

>
>
> 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?

It's being redesigned to take dependencies into account. Maybe it just
needs more testers like you to proof check it :)

>
> 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).

The test isos had a few seconds delay so that errors would be shown.

>
>
> 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?

You can use wget's http/ftp proxy support. It's configurable in the
sorcery menu (or simply /root/.wgetrc)

>
>
> So long,
>
> Thomas.

thanks for the feedback,

Seth

--
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
Quality Assurance Team Leader & Security Team: Source Mage GNU/linux
Linux so advanced, it may as well be magic http://www.sourcemage.org
Key id 63C1E02F = E07A FB0E 5925 CE4A 6526 2AD5 1782 FEC2 63C1 E02F

Attachment: pgp67SZw4tzx3.pgp
Description: PGP signature




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page