[TriLUG] Mandrake 8.1 installation--Part TWO--the problems! according to Lockergnome's Penguin Shell

[al johson]

I got a great response on yesterday's issue covering the Mandrake install
process. You guys are great about keeping this creature moving forward. I
received quite a few personal accounts of Mandrake installs, both good and
bad. We've probably got enough material from today alone to fill another DIY
Friday issue this week. Great job! The spirit of the old pulling along the
new is really reaching another level.

I'd intended today to do two things. First, I wanted to talk about some of
the "gotchas" I've uncovered in the Mandrake 8.1 install I did this weekend
and described yesterday. Second, I wanted to hit the high points of the
available applications in the installation. In rolling through the rpms on
the install discs today, I realized that there are somewhere in the
neighborhood of 2200 applications available for install, spread across the
various CDs available for download or purchase. I felt a bit overwhelmed, to
say the least. So, this report on the Mandrake install looks to be a
3-parter. I'll get my ducks in a row for tomorrow to talk about the
available applications and the options for downloading and/or purchasing
Mandrake 8.1.

My good friend and partner in a small computer company, Ed, commented
jokingly to me today that I'd sold out. He knows what a diehard RedHat fan
I've been for the past few years. After reading yesterday's Penguin Shell
and the rapturous description of the install process, he was sure I'd jump
on the next plane for France to kiss the MandrakeSoft code-writers on both
cheeks. Not true. As well as the install went, I have a few things to send
along by way of a heads-up. These could be machine-dependent issues. They
could be as the result of my personal install. Regardless, they exist, and I
want to share them with you.

Three nagging issues and several smaller ones have arisen since this install
on Sunday. You'll recall first that I praised the network setup in the
install process. It was very easy and required only that I know my IP and
DNS information. Well, that's not quite true. When I booted to the Gnome
desktop for the first time and opened Galeon, my favorite Linux browser, I
had no connection to the 'net. During the initial boot, eth0 (the first [0]
[eth]ernet card) initialized just fine. I know that that's just a hardware
issue and really has nothing to do with the connection to the Internet, but
I usually make the assumption, anyway, that I've got a good connection. In
other words, it doesn't explicitly fail, it must be good! Nope. I still had
to manually configure the ethernet interface for the correct default gateway
and domain, using the tools provided by the command line tool (opened as
root) netcfg. It was a bit of a disappointment. I did get it configured and
restarted the network interface [as root: /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart],
but it seemed like a glaring oversight to leave these crucial numbers out of
the initial install. If I'd been using Mandrake for the first time, I'd have
had no idea how to resolve it.

After about 20 minutes of surfing through the various programs and desktop
configuration screens, I opened up XMMS, the X Multimedia System. It's the X
Window Winamp, if you will. I wanted a bit of music in the background while
I went on my merry configuration way. Happily, I saw first that Mandrake had
auto-mounted my Windows drives on /mnt/win_c and /mnt/win_d - another plus.
But when I loaded my '70s playlist into XMMS, I had no sound. Again, I had
to rely on past experience. I opened a console screen, logged in as root,
and opened the sound card configuration using sndcfg. The program probed for
sound cards and found only the Crystal onboard card. It completely missed
the SoundBlaster Live! PCI card. I had to "fake out" the system to configure
the SB. The sndcfg program plays a test sound of Linus Torvalds prounouncing
both his name and "Linux", then asks if you heard it. I lied. I entered "no"
and let the system roll me into the manual configuration screen. From there,
I was able to pick the SoundBlaster Live! from the device list, and
everything went smoothly. Since then, I've had to run through the above
configuration process at least twice more in order to have sound. I'll look
through the HowTos to see if there's something in the autoconfiguration
that's missing as compared to configuring manually. I'll let you know.

Those issues were mere annoyances in the big picture. I was still pretty
happy with Mandrake when the third problem reared its ugly head. When I
reboot the machine, whether through the GUI or the console window, the
shutdown process hangs just after the USB devices are disconnected. This
isn't a good thing. Eventually, I'm left with no option but to hard kill the
box. I'm pursuing a remedy for this problem to share with you. I've found
nothing in the known issues and may, today, contact MandrakeSoft directly.

So, this turns out to be a pretty mixed bag. If the shutdown problem is
related to hardware and is resolveable, I'd still recommend Mandrake 8.1
with a few caveats. If not, I'd have to go thumbs down despite the beautiful
and easy install. For new Linux users, that first install can seem like a
big black void, even if it goes well. If there's no previous experience with
either troubleshooting or working the Linux newsgroups, it can be very
lonely, as well.

Tomorrow, I'll cover the programs available in the Mandrake installs. And,
I'll let you know if and how these problems were resolved.

I haven't yet put my RedHat hat permanently on the shelf.


Tony Steidler-Dennison