[RULE] Observations on a test install

[Michael Fratoni]

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On Tuesday 15 July 2003 02:21 pm, James Miller wrote:
> Am now installing RULE just as a sort of test.  Someone wanted me to
> test out some hardware for them, so I threw together a 486 dx2 80 with
> 16MB RAM to test the hardware and fiddle with RULE a bit.  I had
> trouble with the installation documentation.  In general, I think too
> much attention is paid to explaining general computing concepts (e.g.,
> drive partitioning) and not enough to the particulars of the way a RULE
> install goes.  I used Slinky, btw.  

What version of slinky did you use?

> I did finally figure out how to
> start the process.  The hangup was where the first boot disk sort of
> dumps you off in no man's land: the message is something like "waiting
> for enter to start /bin/sh . . ."  I just wasn't sure what to do here. 
> I was expecting it to ask me to insert the second floppy.  After
> waiting a bit, I decided to hit "enter." Well, after that, I was left
> off in more familair territory - a bash prompt.  I know how to use bash
> generally and am familiar with Busybox (Basiclinux uses this in place
> of the full bash).  But again, I was not sure what to do: I guess I was
> expecting more feedback from the console. Looking over the install
> documentation again, I decided I needed to ype /scripts/setup.sh at the
> bash prompt.  

Since slinky-v0.3.93, you should be asked if you want to start the 
installer or drop out to a prompt. It was confusing in the past, I agree.
Currently, the installer is at v0.3.95.

> After this, installation went more smoothly and, at least
> for me, intuitively.  A couple of problems I would like to note are: 1)
> at a certain point you are asked "which device would you like to use
> for installation?"  This is ambiguous.  I had to guess whether this was
> asking the location of the installation media (logically this is how I
> would read it) or the device onto which the installation will be made. 
> I think this should be rephrased "to which device would you like to
> install RULE?"  To my thinking, this eliminates the ambiguity. 

Easily changed, and I agree. Your suggestion would be more intuitive.
This will be changed in the next version.

> Anyway,
> things went pretty well after that til it actually came to the point of
> installing packages from the CD.  All packages failed with errors, not
> installing.  Worrying that I had maybe chosen a bad CD drive for this
> installation, when I rebooted I mounted the drive from the bash command
> prompt and checked the contents.  It mounted and I was able to inspect
> the contents.  I decided to leave it mounted and continue with the
> install.  This time it seems the packages are being found and installed
> properly.  However, when the time came to insert the second CD, I could
> not eject the first one.  So that install failed as well.  Third time I
> did *not* manually mount the CD, but the installation routine did find
> it and the needed packages, which it installed pretty much ok.  It was
> able to eject the disk this time so that I could insert the second CD. 
> This third installation attempt seems to have been successful.  There
> was only one error message about a disk read error on the CDROM: I
> don't rule out the possibility that this CD drive may be a bit punchy,
> and that this may be why the first install attempt failed. 

You might try booting with "linux ide=nodma"
I've seen quite a few CD drives on test machines behave in a similar 
manner. For that matter, I've seen it with older hard drives as well.

Hope that helps,
- -- 
- -Michael

pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
Red Hat Linux 7.{2,3}|8.0|9 in 8M of RAM: http://www.rule-project.org/en/
- --
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