[Rule-list] Introduction

[Michael Fratoni]

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On Tuesday 16 April 2002 11:10 pm, Geoff Burling wrote:

> Well, first off I found it a bit hard to find the latest version of
> slinky on the web site. I ended up downloading it from
> www.tuxfan.homeip.net.
> If it's accessible from the web site, could the image be placed in
> directories marked ``miniconda" & ``slinky"? It'd make things easier
> for slow-witted people like me to find.

That's my fault to a degree. I made a typo or two while uploading, and 
put a few files in the wrong directory, making things a bit hard to 
comprehend. :) We have upload access only, so I can't delete the 
misplaced files. 
The correct paths are:
http://freesoftware.fsf.org/download/rule/slinky/
http://freesoftware.fsf.org/download/rule/miniconda/

> The test system is a 486DX33 processor with 16MB or RAM & a Quantum 540
> MB hardrive. (Originally I had a SCSI 4x CD drive in the sytem, but
> since the kernel on the slinky image doesn't handle SCSI, I bought a 6x
> IDE CDROM drive for $10-- & slapped it in. And looking around in the
> stores, I see I can buy a new 52x drive for just under $40.--.)

The kernel will handle scsi, but it isn't automagic. You have to download 
and then insmod the proper modules for your devices. There should be 
plenty of space on disk 2 for needed modules. Less than optimal, but at 
the 8M memory and 2 disk installer limits I'd like to keep, options are 
limited.

> I suspect the CDROM drive because occasionally when slinky (both 0.1.5
> & 0.1.9a) unpacked the rpms, occasionally I would see on the console
> screen a report of a MD5 sum mismatch. I also saw reports of a few
> other kinds of errors (e.g., one was a cpio read error.) Later, I could
> unpack the rpm package without any problems -- & the packages slinky
> had varied between the two versions.

Quite possible. You might find it helpful to boot with 'linux nodma'. 
I've considered using the nodma boot param by default in the installer, 
actually.

> Error reported while installing
> /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/modutils-2.4.6-4.i386.rpm. Error reported while
> installing /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/info-4.0b-3.i386.rpm. Error reported
> while installing /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/findutils-4.1.7-1.i386.rpm.
> Error reported while installing
>
> The rest of the error information was not captured. I wonder if this
> incomplete information is due to how rpm directs its output, as I had
> problems capturing messages when I ran ``rpm -vvh $RPM_PACKAGE" to a
> log file.

Logging is less than optimal at present. The log only contains info I 
have told the scripts to write out. I could redirect the errors to the 
log in full, I suppose. I'll give it a shot anyway. I haven't figured out 
redirection in the 'msh' shell included with busybox. Standard bash 
redirection doesn't seem to work properly.

> Lastly, it appears that RH by default starts up the slocate daemon, as
> well as uses ext3 with the journaling mechanism turned on. Which IMHO
> is not only overkill, but caused my poor, elderly 486 to hit a load
> average over 2.50 for the first 30 minutes after the reboot! And when I
> performed a kill -1 on the two processes behind these features, I lost
> some files I had copied over to /tmp. (Well, I assume running kill -1
> on slocate & the journaling processes had caused the files to
> disappear. The alternative is the HD is about to crash.)

slocate (and any other cron jobs) get run by anacron, the ext3 default 
was my decision. I do plan on offering the option to use ext2 in the near 
future. You can edit the base_packages file and remove anacron, or create 
a post install script to run 'chkconfig anacron off'. I know it is 
annoying to have it run as soon as you boot, but anacron is useful on 
machines that may not run constantly. If it detects that cron jobs were 
missed while the machine was down, it runs them as soon as possible.

> Bringing the system back up as I write this failed to recreate the
> 2.50+ load average. Now I know I didn't imagine this . . . (but it's
> not the first time I've experienced unreproduceable results.)

This is still quite alpha quality. I expect unreproduceable results. ;)

- -- 
- -Michael

pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
Red Hat Linux 7.2 in 8M of RAM: http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/rule/
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