Anybody want some Mandrake 8 CDs?

[drmbb]

I have two sets of iso burns, both good (md5sums check out fine), but have given up on this distro.

I originally updated my 7.2 install (with all but 10Mb /boot as ReiserFS partitions) - the install seemed to go fine - BUT - I cannot boot to the new Mandrake 2.4.3 kernel. I can boot to my old 2.2.17-21mdk kernel and all is well, all the new stuff is installed and working fine. Nothing I do though will boot that new kernel - played with LiLo and Grub settings, took out the Win98 drive, played with BIOS drive settings, bypassed my Promise Card and went with the onboard controllor, NADA.

The weird thing is that 7.2 worked just fine (UDMA drives and all), and I just now tried RedHat 7.1 and it went on sweet as ever - so, I'm going with RedHat for now. Just as well as it's the officially supported distro at work, so it's not a bad thing I become more familiar with its specifics.

Anyhow, anyone want the 'Drake CDs, send me an e-mail and I'll mail them off to you.

[fallenang3l]

Is RH 7.1 just as good at detecting hardware as Mandrake 8 is?

[Datura]

drmbb YGM.

[drmbb]

Originally posted by fallenang3l:
<STRONG>Is RH 7.1 just as good at detecting hardware as Mandrake 8 is?</STRONG>

I would say yes! My system:

Gateway PIII-450, 224Mb RAM
Gateway VX700 monitor
NVidia TNT card with 16Mb VRAM
Promise UDMA66 controller card
1x8.5Gb Western Digital drive (Win98)
1x10Gb Maxtor drive (Win98 and Linux)
1x20Gb Maxtor drive (Linux)
Micro systems 5button/wheel optical mouse
HP DeskJet 952C USB printer
USR external 56K modem

RedHat found all of that fine - except unlike ManDrake 8 it does not set up the wheel mouse by default, and I have to use HP950C printer drivers (whereas ManDrake 8's CUPS version has HP developed drivers specifically for the 952C). Also, RedHat does not let you set up ReiserFS partitions during install, but its 2.4.2 kernel will support them if you want to set them up later.

ManDrake 8 also looks good, just they have altered that 2.4.3 kernel somehow, and it is foobarred on my system.

P.S. A couple of other things - ManDrake sets up a parallel zip by default if detected, RedHat does not. Also, do a custom install with RedHat and check the packages carefully, as it does not install some things by default, like LinuxConf, and openmotif (which I need). I also had to go to rpmfind.net after the install and get some dependent packages that ManDrake installs by default (I needed libXm.so.1, which ManDrake puts on by default, but RedHat did not).

[ 27 April 2001: Message edited by: drmbb ]

[bdg1983]

I'm afraid that Linux is just like Microsoft. Wait at least until the first service pack is out before upgrading to the new version.

Hence the reason Caldera's distro are very stable. They don't rush out their distros while some of the others cater to everyones need to get the latest and greatest of everything.

Just my opinion. :)

[drmbb]

You may have something there. Certainly I've been hearing a lot of good things about RedHat 7.1 (as opposed to 7.0).

But I've also been using ManDrake as my main desktop system for nearly two years, and in 5 releases, this is the first one that's been screwy (what the heck could they have done to the kernel to cause it not to boot, while everything else installs and runs fine :confused: AND all my hardware is correctly found during the initial CD boot).

In the past few weeks, I've also tried Libranet - needs some work! It only found my first two drives at setup (would NOT see the third), and even when I tried to install on /dev/hdf - when it got to installing LiLO, it would only look for /dev/hda, even though it had identified my drives as UDMA previously (I ain't got no hda, just hde, hdf and hdg, but I could not tell it otherwise at that point in the install). That was just so screwy I immediatly gave up on it.

Enough of the distro trials - RedHat installs fairly well, I'll spend time this weekend getting it tweaked the way I like, and then that's it, other than security updates, for awhile (life is too short).

[scoobydope]

Originally posted by mdwatts:
<STRONG>I'm afraid that Linux is just like Microsoft. Wait at least until the first service pack is out before upgrading to the new version.

Hence the reason Caldera's distro are very stable. They don't rush out their distros while some of the others cater to everyones need to get the latest and greatest of everything.

</STRONG>


I guess that's why Mandrake is calling it a BETA release... cuz it is.

[Tigger]

There is a slight bug with this version of Mandrake with regards to the kernel and Promise cards. I am running LM 8.0 and I have a Promise card.

The problem is that the install sets lilo and grub up to use /dev/hde but as soon as the kernel starts to boot, it swaps the controllers and calls /dev/hde /dev/hda.

The fix is really easy:

1-boot up with the first Install CD and press F1 to get additional options. From here, enter the rescue system.

2-once it has booted into memory you can mount the drive as follows:
mount /dev/hde# /mnt/disk

3-go into the /mnt/disk/etc directory and edit fstab. Change all the references of /dev/hde# to /dev/hda#. Save and exit.

4-edit lilo.conf(this is what I use) and only change the root=/dev/hde# to root=/dev/hda# for each linux entry. Leave the boot disk and if you have a windows entry as they are.

5-change to the /mnt/disk directory and issue a chroot /mnt/disk.

6-run lilo and it will update the MBR or wherever you are putting it.

7-umount /mnt/disk and reboot the system.

[edit]
8-edit /etc/lilo.conf and change all instances of /dev/hde to /dev/hda, even the windows ones now. re-run lilo and you are set.

This should work for all promise cards/controllers and maybe any other ultra 100 cards out there.

There might be a different way but this worked for me and wasn't that difficult to do.

Oh, BTW, if you make any changes to /etc/lilo.conf once you are booted, you might have to change all references of /dev/hde in the file to /dev/hda or else lilo might not be able to install properly. I will have to test this out and will let you know.

Good Luck!
[Edit] I just tested it out and you do have to change all instances of /dev/hde to /dev/hda in /etc/lilo.conf after the first boot or else you will not be able to make any changes in the future. This is step 8. I would also stay away from Mandrake's GUI boot configurator as it may revert things back - not sure but not worth the risk.

[ 27 April 2001: Message edited by: Tigger ]

[drmbb]

Originally posted by scoobydope:
<STRONG>
I guess that's why Mandrake is calling it a BETA release... cuz it is.</STRONG>

Mandrake 8.0 is a "stable" release - they are even taking pre-orders on the boxed sets due to ship in the next week or two.

Tigger - Thanks for the info :) Since I haven't really done anything with RedHat other than initial install, I will try your ideas - I'd just like to make this work as it is clearly so close.

Okay, that means I'm eating my words, but hey, I have all my stuff backed up, so might as well try and learn something before I put together a "final" setup (famous last words, those).

[WeDeliver]

I like Mandrake 8 alot.

Pentium III 600, socket 370 133mhz fsb
128MB PC133 RAM
Abit BX 133 RAID motherboard
Creative 12x DVD
Some generic Acer CDROM
Voodoo 5 5500 AGP
Creative modem blaster
Maxisound Muse
Microsoft USB optical mouse
USB keyboard
Some generic CDR
Seagate Ultra ATA 100 10 GB
Western Digital, really old 34300 Caviar (4.3 gb) udma 33


It all came up fine expect the voodoo, which took 20 minutes or so to get right. The gaming isnt fast on the drivers, but I'll give it time. Until then, I popped my voodoo 3 back into it to play Quake 3 at a decent frame rate. Grub is awesome, I don't think I'll use Lilo again unless I have to. I was actually stunned that my sound card worked right off the back, as even with the low level MPU 401 compatible drivers didnt work under 7.2. Also, the mpeg playback from the Creative DVD is very nice, not as great as in Windows, but I haven't really tried many apps and settings wih it yet.

I think maybe you should hold onto one disk set just incase you come across the problem. Mandrake 8 really is pretty good.

[scoobydope]

i am currently running it, downloaded the .iso's a couple days ago, and was under the impression that it was a pre-release "not quite finished" version.

In this first full day of tweaking i have seen some pretty wonky things going on with it. For example, their own "Mandrake Control Center" contains a link to install Internet Connection sharing.
i ran this this afternoon, and what was the first thing it did? it accessed the ipchains RPM off the CD and tried to run a script using ipchains.
This is kernel 2.4.3 guys, its iptables from this point on. Filled up my /var/log/messages with errors like this:


Apr 27 15:21:32 s64-180-33-181 ipchains: ipchains: Incompatible with this kernel
Apr 27 15:21:32 s64-180-33-181 ipchains: Flushing all chains: failed
Apr 27 15:21:32 s64-180-33-181 ipchains: ipchains: Incompatible with this kernel
Apr 27 15:21:32 s64-180-33-181 ipchains: Removing user defined chains: failed
Apr 27 15:21:32 s64-180-33-181 ipchains: Resetting built-in chains to the default ACCEPT policy failed

yeah DUH

also, even though they are shipping portsentry stock with the distro, there is nothing in the portsentrty.conf file to point to anything to do with iptables. Tons of things in there for ipfwadm etc, but no iptables.

i was really hoping it was still in the work room at the Drake.

[drmbb]

Well I tried messing with Lilo and such, but no joy. My partitions are

/dev/hde1 = FAT32
/dev/hdf1 = FAT32

/dev/hdf2 = /boot = ext2
/dev/hdf5 = / = ReiserFS
/dev/hdf6 = /var = ReiserFS
/dev/hdf7 = /tmp = ReiserFS
/dev/hdg1 = SWAP
/dev/hdg5 = /usr = ReiserFS
/dev/hdg6 = /home = ReiserFS

I tried mapping these to hda, hdb, and hdc (and various combinations of that scheme), but I still get a kernel panic with 2.4.3.

So, tomorrow I set up RedHat 7.1, which by the way, sets up iptables and tripwire from the install (if you want). I will have dependancies to download that I didn't have to with ManDrake, will have to set up ReiserFS post-install and get CUPS and the new HP drivers and all, but at least it works as it should. It is just annoying that RedHat can get kernel 2.4.2-2 and the new LiLo working fine, and ManDrake somehow had to mess with it - and they were one of the first to include UDMA support and auto-detection (especially Promise) in their default 2.2 kernels :confused:

[Tigger]

Did you remember to change fstab?

hde = hda
hdf = hdb
hdg = hdc

Kernel panic because it can't mount root fs is because the root specified in /etc/lilo.conf is incorrect. According to your last post, it should be set to 'root=/dev/hdb5'

What does your /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab files look like at the moment?

[chadm1967]

drmbb:

Like you, I really like CUPS. I gave up on Mandrake, as well, and installed Red Hat 7.1. Very, very nice......two of our clients want us to install Red Hat 7.1 on their servers and firewalls so I really need to learn it.

I downloaded CUPS and installed it on my Red Hat box. It took a little configuring but I was able to get it working pretty well.

[scoobydope]

ok, on the printing note, i am EXTREMELY happy about the way Drake 8.0 handled my Brother HL-1020.

i tried mucking around with cups on Mandrake 7.2 but just couldn't get the printer working. Everytime i needed to print docs i had to boot into windows.

Mandrake 8 found my printer no problem and kicked out a lovely graphic testpage during the install of the OS. :cool:

[drmbb]

Originally posted by Tigger:
<STRONG>Did you remember to change fstab?

hde = hda
hdf = hdb
hdg = hdc

Kernel panic because it can't mount root fs is because the root specified in /etc/lilo.conf is incorrect. According to your last post, it should be set to 'root=/dev/hdb5'

What does your /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab files look like at the moment?</STRONG>

Sorry, I had to give up on this last night as I was heading out. Yes, I edited both fstab and LiLo so that all drive references were as you indicated above, but still 2.4.3 would not boot. Thanks for the help, but I'm out of patience with this.

P.S. I'm mailing off the two Mandrake CDs to the first two people who emailed me address info, so they are gone.

[drmbb]

Just in case anyone else is still struggling with this.

The best solutions I've found are to boot with an old Mandrake kernel (i.e. 2.2.17 from 7.2), then just get and compile kernel 2.4.4, or if you want ReiserFS support, use 2.4.2 and the current ReiserFS patch (3.6?).

I went back to ext2 partitions and used kernel 2.4.4 and Mandrake 8.0 is now fine - the problem with the promise cards seems to be a kernel 2.4.3 specific problem.