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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 [am I really on the list?]
  • Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 01:01:05 +0100

Hi again!

Somehow I didn't get Seth's response... I just saw it in the archives after I
indeed got the reply from Jeremy (spotting traces of the missing post in
there). Strange.

Of course I want to keep the duscussion going, so:

@Jeremy:

Yes, I didn't expect scribe to put the new grimoire first, but I have to
admit that I didn't even try to study the man page. I wanted the system up
quickly and just went on when I thought I got the point from the program's
help. Putting it the new grimoire first even may make sense, though my
handling poses a different view:

I see that package X is in extra grimoire Y. I want X. I scribe add Y. I pick
X out of Y and put it in my first-postion personal grimoire "zauberbuch".
Then X is found by cast before any other version of it occuring in stable &
co. I don't want this to happen for _all_ packages in Y automatically.
On the other hand one may wonder why installation of grimoire Y doesn't have
any effect and still the versions abailable in stable are picked (if there
are). One may want to have the new grimoire in front. Both points are
sensible. I settled for the first, conservative, practice; dunno if I am
representative for the majority of potential newbie SM users.

Maybe one should just let scribe give out a message stating that grimoire Y
has been but in front? Or handle it like init scripts with a
separate enabling step additional to install? At least a more verbose scribe
possibly could print out the modified grimoire list after and add. Problem is
that I won't stumble over that again; A modified scribe had to be tested by
another "virgin" user for its intuitivity.


On GUIlib: Can I expect that this will be fixed soon?


@Seth:

First system/general:

> 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.

I agree on both. Problem with the menu-driven install is that you attract
fools, or better: let people act like fools (even if they - I - know better)
with not carefully reading docs or not carefully thinking because such a menu
(even text mode) somehow promises to be fool-proof. Maybe one should display
a RTFM splash screen;-)

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

That's not optimal... couldn't one save the text and make it accessible
through the menu? It provides this uncanny feeling when you spot something
suspicious in the underground but can't nail it because it is gone after a
moment and you have your clean menu world back; you try not to bother...
something's wrong, but that may be OK... mostly, it isn't!

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

Could it be that 2.6.x will never stop being bleeding edge? Ever changing
features, bugs in and out... If I eventually install sourcemage instead of my
very custom LFS on the laptop; I'll exile the linux spell, too, and use
exactly the same 2.6.11 sources that I have patched together now. Tried
2.6.13 once: Not on my Portege.

In this particular case, actually, I think that's an old issue. I had another
2.6 kernel before on that machine and remember needing acpi=off (or just
pci=noacpi?) or similar to avoid an occasional freeze. I dreamed of getting
the S3 mode of the board to work once... that may stay a dream. Sadly, this
board has no apm bios to fall back to for such simple things as switching off.


Second system with half install and behing proxy:

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

Good. I'll see how far this goes with the concerned network... may it be
feasible to continue with the half-broken install? Or am I left with manually
saving at least the kernel config and doing it all over again carefully?


On a possible third system: How do I install SourceMage from a running Linux
(maybe booted over network so that local hard disk is free) without boot cd
access?


So, its late. Thanks for your time and attention.

Thomas.

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