My YDL 3.0 Install

Fri Apr 18 14:13:01 2003

Drew,

My experiences parallel yours almost exactly.  I'm using an old PowerMac
6500/225 with 128 MB of RAM and a brand-new 80 GB IDE disk (my intended
application is as a file server -- hence the big disk)  Here are some of
my observations:

	I concur that it would be very helpful if there were a "README" or
"HOW-TO" on the install CD describing how to set up BootX for OldWorld
Macs.  Even just a link to a relevant support web page would be helpful.
 Maybe in YDLv3.1?

	I have adequate RAM so the graphic installer runs just fine on the
6500.  It's pretty  slick.

	X-windows didn't work  after I rebooted, so I booted single user mode
and changed the default runmode in inittab to 3 (text mode) then
rebooted and ran Xautoconfig.  X-windows still didn't work.  But then I
changed the bits-per-pixel from 16 to 15, and everything was fine.  I'm
not sure why Xautoconfig can't figure this out for itself.  (Another
thing for the YDLv3.1 wishlist.)  

	A FAQ on LinuxPPC video-modes and the various ways of setting them (and
what they mean; and what video chips/boards each mode applies to; and
how to tell what you have installed on your machine!) would be very
helpful.  Maybe such a thing already exists?  Can somebody provide a pointer?

	I think it's interesting that the graphical installer had absolutely no
problem with the built-in video for my 6500, but it couldn't figure out
how to convey that information to the installed system.

	During reboot, I occasionally get a screen that tells me the DMA sound
device has either disappeared or re-appeared, and what do I want to do
about it?  Clearly, there's something flakey about the sound driver or
the sound hardware.  I don't care at all about sound on this machine, so
it's just an annoyance.  I'm sure other folks will care passionately.

	Cups just appears to freeze during the initial bootstrap.  If you let
it sit long enough, something eventually times out, and the boot
proceeds normally.  It only happens on the first boot after the install.
 On subsequent reboots, cups does not take a long time to initialize.

	I'd really like a how-to (or group of how-to's) on the setup things you
have to do once you have completed the install.  Things like setting up
printers with cups, creating logins for users you didn't do during the
install process, a list of daemons that commonly need to be configured
locally, and how to find and modify their config files.  (Whoever does
the daemon example config files for YDL is pretty good at making them
self explanatory -- once you find them! -- but finding them can be a problem.)

	Speaking of post-install configuration, it should be possible (and
there should be  pointers from the "README" file to the relevant
documentation) to do any config task *both* via a gui *and* via the
command line.  Lots of server machines don't have the luxury of running
gui config utilities.

Enjoy!

Rick

Drew Lane wrote:
> 
> Thought I would share my experience installing YDL 3.0
> 
> First, I am very impressed with it overall, but there
> are a few problems.
> 
> I decided to install on my old Performa 6360 before
> upgrading my main server, just in case.  I did an "everything"
> install just so that I could check it all out.  This takes about
> 5 GB of space and took something like 3 hours to install from
> the CD.  I used an unallocated 7 GB partition for this.
> 
> I have to use BootX with this old world machine, and I was
> able to figure everything out, but I didn't really see any good
> instructions on the CD.  Fortunately, I have done this a few
> times before and it was not too difficult.
> 
> However, I kept having trouble getting the installer to run
> from the ramdisk.  The graphical installer would not run at
> all, and the text installer would freeze when it asked which
> media I wanted to install from (CD in my case).  I figured it
> was probably something to do with the built in video, so I
> eventually selected no video driver on bootX and was able
> to run the text based installer.  The install went well, with
> no errors.
> 
> I rebooted, tweaked by BootX prefs, and Linux started to
> load.  Everything went well until it tried to load CUPS, at
> which point it froze up.  I did this about 3 times and finally
> bypassed CUPS manually and I was in.  The only other thing
> that was kinda strange was that the screen blanks twice while
> it's booting.
> 
> After tweaking a few of my Xautoconfig parms I started
> X and everything looked pretty good.  Except, it didn't sound
> very good.  In fact, there is no audio at all!  I don't know, maybe
> a certain module didn't load or something.  Not sure at this point.
> I can't get audio from the command line or from KDE/Gnome.
> 
> BTW, is it just me or do KDE and Gnome look too similar now?
> 
> That's about all I can think of right now.  If anyone has suggestions
> with respect to CUPS or the audio problem, I'm all ears.
> 
> Drew
> 
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