(no subject)

[der.hans]

Am 29. Nov, 2000 schwäzte Jason Kennerly so:

> Problems noted with the STORM Rain Release:

Is Rain the most recent?

> * The installer uses the gpmdata setup by default, regardless of what kind
> of mouse you have. Thus, if GPM is unable to see your 3 button mouse, but
> it has worked just fine with X in the past, your middle button will not
> work.  I fixed this by restoring the settings from my old install. Running
> gpm with the repeater option on also breaks X.

Not a good thing. I haven't run into this with debian, but have with
another dist (I think SuSE, but am not certain). Haven't used Storm, but
since that's debian-based I mentioned debian, which I have used quite a
bit.

> * Despite correctly identifying my video card as having an S3Virge
> chipset, the installer went ahead and picked the SVGA server! The version
> it used was 3.3.5, one I know to NOT work properly with this card. I had
> to download and install XF86_S3V - I got version 3.3.6. Version 3.3.6 of
> XF86 has been available for glibc for quite some time;  the only reason I
> had experience with using XF86_SVGA 3.3.5 is because it is or was the
> server of choice for a libc5 system with a Trident 3DImage975 card - my
> other box. Note that the XF86_SVGA 3.3.5 server almost works with my S3
> video, and it did work well enough to complete the install. 

What's the official stance on S3V vs. SVGA from the X consortium? That's
what they should be using. Also, they might've rolled in (or even
originated) the patches that fixed 3.3.5. This is the case for many
packages with debian. I recently ran into that with zope on debian. Storm
should benefit from those updates to debian. Via apt-get you can :).

> * The installer doesnt install the PINE package. Hence, no PICO editor!

Read the License. They aren't allowed to include it. Also look at the
pine4-src and pine4-diff packages and nano for a pico replacement. Don't
forget pgp4pine or pinepgp as an added bonus :).

> Laugh all you want, but if the idea of Storm is to have a user-friendly
> install, and it sure as hell seems to be from how easy it was, forcing
> users to use vi as their editor is a HORRID mistake. Besides, I never
> learned vi, I can barely remember its quit command; I've been using jed
> for programming for quite some time.

There are others to choose from that don't have the license problems that
pine has.

I like pine. I use it. It's the only MUA I find good enough to bother
with. It does, however, have a restrictive license as far as distributing
binaries goes. debian's done a great job making it available. It was
pretty easy to build with their -src and -diff packages.

> * the /usr/local/src directory is not created, even though a compiler is
> installed by default.

Is that part of the filesystem standard? Even if it is, it's in
/usr/local, so the dist isn't responsible for it, the local admin is.
There's one on one of the Stormix boxen I have access to, and it is on my
more recent debian boxen as well as a Mandrake box I checked.

> * Far too many applications and other crucial components are installed
> with the ownership granted to the user, rather than root. Storm's install

Which user? Which components, apps, etc.? "ls -l /bin /usr/bin /sbin
/usr/sbin | grep -v root" doesn't turn up much on the boxen I'm looking
at. On the Mandrake 7.2 with übersecurity (not done by JLF) I, as a normal
user, can't look at /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. On a 7.1 box the uu* utils are
owned and grouped by uucp.

> asks you to define a user and password at the same point it asks you to
> define a root password.

That's a good thing. It probably doesn't let you specify the UID for that
user, which is something I'd rather be able to do. The idea is that you
shouldn't normally run as root, so at the same time that they give you
access to root, they also remind you not to use it unnecessarily and make
sure you have a non-priviledged account on the machine. Also, exim, the
default MTA, requires a non-root account for root mail.

> * There is no support for libc5 binaries by default!

They're pretty old by this time. Looks like you can add them. In fact,
using apt-get or the Storm front end for it should automagically grab
those dependencies.

> * Once, the install crashed at the very tail end during the creation of
> crucial boot information. I was never able to recover that install since I
> am not familiar with the operation of the /boot directory, nor the newer

Not much to it. I've been using one for at least a couple years.

> versions of LILO that require it (LILO sure is different than it was in
> Slackware 3.0 ... whoa!). It is my belief that this crash occured

Ah, coming out of the bomb shelter to see how the world's doing :). I used
an even older slack box until about a year and a half ago. It was a good
dist. I learned *a lot* about Linux :).

> primarily because the install failed to do a reboot after altering the
> partition table of my IDE Hard Disk - this is a critical that cannot be
> overlooked.

I never reboot after changing the part table on x86. Hasn't caused me a
problem that I know of. Changing a filesystem I was using did. I just
wanted to see what would happen :).

> * The shipped kernel 2.2.14 seems to have major issues with me changing
> the text mode. I am recompiling a 2.2.17 right now, it is currently my
> belief that they failed to add support for reasonable text modes in the
> kernel. 

Can you get them via modules?

> * The installed compiler 2.7.2.3 makes BLOATED kernels. My first attempt
> at recompile suggested I use modules or bzImage. I had specified to use
> bzImage AND modules for everything I didnt anticipate using frequently,
> and had specified modules for SCSI as well since I will be attempting to
> get a scanner working on this box (fun!) I feel it is critical to upgrade
> the compiler to 2.95.2 before doing much of any customization on this
> system. In other words, the kernel version (2.2.x) and the compiler
> version (2.7.x) arent well suited to each other.

After installing did you do a dist-upgrade to make sure you have the most
recent updates? I'd do that before compiling stuff (as long as I could get
to the net for the updates).

> * Directory colors arent very well setup. /etc/DIR_COLORS is missing.

man dir_colors indicates it should be a dir_colors file in /etc, not that
my debian box has that either :).

> * There is no termcap file installed. I noticed this while installing
> pico. The library function to support it is also missing. I copied in my
> old libc5 version after putting in the most recent version of libc5 (as
> suggested in the glibc-2 FAQ)

Yeah, pine's hosed this way. The debian packages don't pick up that
dependency. pine4-diff does suggest libncurses-dev, which has the termcap
stuff. Not the most obvious, but it does work :).

> * sudo is missing

apt-get update && apt-get install sudo

I think I've always had to go grab that. debian makes it easier than other
dists. It does do OpenSSH by default, though :).

> * "." is not included in the default search path!

A good thing. It shouldn't be, especially not for the root account.

> * The GNOME applications dont run from the menu with the GNOME install.
> The KDE aps worked from the menus, under that install, however.

Hmm, I thought X setup and GUI admin were Storm's advantages over debian.

> * The shutdown script writes to CMOS (eek!) in order to update the system
> date. My system now thinks its 4AM. Suffice to say, something is seriously
> wrong here.

man hwclock

> * I downloaded and installed Netscape 4.76 for Linux-2.2. Libraries are
> missing! libstdc++-libc6.1.1-so.2 isnt there!

lufthans@debppc:~/lokal/data/Fakturen$ apt-cache search libstdc++
libstdc++2.9 - The GNU stdc++ library (old egcs version)
libstdc++2.10 - The GNU stdc++ library
libg++2.8.1.3-dbg - The GNU C++ extension library - debugging files.
libstdc++2.10-dbg - The GNU stdc++ library (debugging files)
libstdc++2.10-dev - The GNU stdc++ library (development files)

Does Netscape still require specific lib versions? One of the Netscape
packages wasn't working for me under debian. I got the other. Not many
probs. I mean nav vs. comm. not static vs. dynamic.

> * Netscape 4.76 for linux-2.0 complains about libraries until the
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable is properly defined. Storm Linux does
> not do this. (edit /etc/profile. I use a script that generates these
> variables based on the contents of /etc/ld.so.conf)
> 
> * Then, Netscape still cant load libg++.so.27! At first I was really
> worried about this, until I realized that the symlink to libg++.so.272 is
> simply missing. Same for libstdc++.so.27. Unfortunately, after fixing
> this, it complains about libm.so.5 being missing. This is a libc5 program,
> and when the old libraries are installed, Netscape simply segfaults. Drat. 
> 
> I was beginning to understand why a great number of Linux users scoff at
> Netscape. Unfortunately, the problems arent with Netscape! I never had
> these sort of problems with the old libc5 system, which I messed up quite
> severely attempting to add glibc support. Right now, after fussing with
> glibc-2.2 for a week and succeeding only in almost ruining my box (I still
> have the old root config on disk, in a different directory) and completely
> ruining its compiler, I have come to the conclusion that glibc, at the
> present moment, is a Bad Thing for anyone wanting to put together an "Easy
> to install" linux distribution. Right now, I am seriously thinking "Easy
> to install" will mean, unfortunately, "what everyone else is using", or by
> the numbers, RedHat... 
> 
> Attempting to install Netscape manually from the .deb's revealed that not
> only was Netscape not installed in my installation, but a GREAT variety of
> other .deb's were not as well, like MIME support for example. Clearly, the
> people at Stormix feel that if I will not be using Communicator 4.6, I
> have no need for MIME. I tried to install a few of the not installed
> .deb's Netscape's deb required, only to discover they required uninstalled
> deb's as well! 

Use apt-get install. That will get dependencies, provided their available
at one of the places listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.

> I chose to reinstall from scratch at this point. Guess what... the
> Netscape included with the distribution dies because it cannot load a
> shared library - the exact same reason Communicator 4.76 couldnt load! So
> much for my reinstall. To make matters worse, partitions other than root
> are not umounted. I suspect something is seriously flawed with how the
> Storm installer mounts partitions: running "mount" with no arguments on
> the commandline doesnt show anything other than proc mounted. Yet there
> they are, quite obviously mounted in /target and any directories under
> target specified.
> 
> KDE and Gnome are pretty, but it wouldnt be too hard to set up fvwm with
> the Goodstuff module such that dropdown menus appear below the Goodstuff
> bar's icons (my old setup) in a manner than any user could use. Do file
> managers, and the other tools really need to be exclusive to one window
> manager or the other? Im just itching to get my hands on the source to
> fvwm, so I can add it to the list. I miss my 25 virtual desktops that I
> could switch between with extreme ease, in less than the blink of an eye.
> This will definitly be the next step after getting a browser working.

fvwm is still my favorite window manager, but I've gotten soft and lazy
:).

Finally, and most important, find out what Storm's bug reporting mechanism
is and use it. bug and reportbug are the interfaces I use in debian. Don't
know what Storm uses. You could use those and report to debian, but they
might tell you to bug off if it's Storm specific :).

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
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