[TriLUG] Mandrake frustrations

[William Sutton]

Add another couple frustrations to my list:
- I switched my KVM to my Windows system (Belkin OmniCube 4-port) to play 
a little relaxing Minesweeper.  When I switched back to the Mandrake 
system, the mouse pointer started flickering all over the screen left- and 
right-clicking like nuts...couldn't get it back short of rebooting.
- I had chosen a security setting of "higher" on install since the 
suggestions for each level said "if you're planning to have services on 
the internet, use 'higher'."  Since I am, I did.  I find I can't ssh 
outside my network as me...have to do so as root, yet I can't login 
directly as root (have to do so as me).  This is bizare in the extreme.
- As a side issue, on my first install, when the Mandrake installer was 
prompting me to add users, I swear it did an ls of my existing /home 
partition to determine potential users.  The partition looked rather like

/home
    /backup/
    /home.tar
    /william/

It prompted me in order for users "william" and "home.tar", and wouldn't 
let me go until I actually entered a user for "home.tar."  Of course since 
it didn't think that "." was a valid character in a username, it griped at 
me until I changed it to "home".

This is really steaming me.

I liked Red Hat enough to follow it up through 7.x.  I upgraded to 9 since 
my motherboard manufacturer (Iwill, the board is a DPL-533) said that they 
guaranteed the board was usable with 7.3 and 9.  I haven't really liked 
any Red Hat release since 7.2 (particularly since they have made it 
impossible to get Enlightement working and have stripped mp3 support out 
of XMMS).

I tried Gentoo on this system (full install once, gave up during the 
install process almost a year later) because of random lockups, 
particularly when trying to compile (which is a real damper when trying to 
run Gentoo as darned near everything is compiled).

I am making this stab at Mandrake because it has been alleged that 
Mandrake has easy Enlightenment support (OK, I had to go off on a 
dependency hunt since apparently the only way to officially get it is to 
buy yet another CD from Mandrake, but the rpms I found still installed; 
no chance to test yet) and because it allegedly is easy to install and 
use.

I'm getting to the point where I'm really wondering why I don't just cave 
in to the evil beast in Redmond.

William

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004, William Sutton wrote:

> Not sure that I follow you on the subject of testing the video after 
> configuring it.
> 
> For what it is worth, this is my personal workstation/development/surfing 
> environment.  Any business tasks (e.g., resumes) get done on the Win95 
> system, and since I'm the only one using my computers, it doesn't really 
> need to be an idiot-friendly system (although as of the last day or so I'm 
> feeling more and more like an idiot ;) )
> 
> William
> 
> On Sun, 26 Dec 2004, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> > Hi William,
> > 
> > Others have addressed your specific questions, so as a 4 year Mandrake user, 
> > let me address your frustrations.
> > 
> > Mandrake can be frustrating, and certainly installation is the most 
> > frustrating of all, but I've found it to be a great distro for a "superuser 
> > desktop". It has all the apps you could ever desire on those 3 little CD's.
> > 
> > I've found that as I use more and more Mandrake versions (I think I started 
> > with 6.x), you get used to its little foibles. And yes, I concur with Jason 
> > -- always configure via NFS to avoid CD flipping, which occasionally stops 
> > the whole process.
> > 
> > Another thing -- never, ever, ever test the video after configuring it. 
> > Testing can halt the install, requiring either a complete reinstall or some 
> > very fancy footwork.
> > 
> > By the way, I use Mandrake only for superuser type stuff. For my kids' 
> > computers, I use Knoppix, which installs reliably in 30 minutes or less.
> > 
> > SteveT
> > 
> > Steve Litt
> > Founder and acting president: GoLUG
> > http://www.golug.org
> > 
> > On Sunday 26 December 2004 07:36 pm, William Sutton wrote:
> > > Mandrake experts (particularly Lovelace), I started installing MDK 10.1
> > > today (downloaded from a mandrake linux mirror site, 3 CD isos, all burned
> > > to 700 MB CD-R disks under Red Hat 9 via command line (sorry, exact
> > > utility escapes my pea brain at the moment but it's a standard CLI
> > > CD-writing tool).
> > >
> > > Install has been somewhat painful to this point.
> > >
> > > The good:
> > > - MDK installation automagically recognized my video card (Matrox G450)
> > > and provided a chance to configure it as such, including Xinerama, as well
> > > as for my two ViewSonic E90fb monitors.  Easiest time I've ever had doing
> > > that, especially compared with Gentoo where I actually had to write a
> > > Gentoo FAQ on the subject...
> > > - mp3 playing works (hurray)
> > >
> > > The bad:
> > > - During installation, 3 different packages were reported as being unable
> > > to install, one of which was XScreensaver (didn't make a list, but the
> > > reports were the same during two separate and differently customized
> > > installation processes (first one I tried deselecting individual packages,
> > > when that didn't work so well, I installed a second time (fresh install)
> > > by starting small and adding extra packages))
> > > - On initial boot and graphical login, I discovered the mouse didn't work.
> > > Investigation revealed that the XF86Config file was referencing /dev/mouse
> > > but the only mouse device MDK had created was /dev/mouse0.  This was
> > > rectified by the simple expedient of editing the XF86Config file (simple
> > > if one knows where to look, a real pita if one doesn't; fortunately I do)
> > > - On logging in after setting the mouse up, I discovered that there's no
> > > configuration option for the printer (!) (so I didn't select office
> > > productivity...geez ya think it would still be a default item!) so I
> > > tried to "install" the files from CD...woops, message 'Please insert the
> > > medium named "Installation CD 1" on device [/dev/sr0]'.  Unfortunately I
> > > have no /dev/sr* devices in my system...(what's going on here?)
> > > - To get around the /dev/sr0 problem, I went to download the various
> > > dependencies from rpm.pbone.net (google search for the various file names
> > > from the rpmdrake gui tool)...found the ones I wanted but about every
> > > other search I did crashed mozilla....
> > > - once I had the various dependencies I (thought I) needed, I installed
> > > CUPS...logged out of X, logged back in....still no gui configuration
> > > options (!)
> > >
> > > frustration is beginning to mount...
> > >
> > > I can put the CDs up online as iso images (I think...if I can figure out
> > > httpd under MDK) for inspection & verification but I don't think the
> > > problem necessarily lies with the images themselves...
> > >
> > > I've got a lot of issues listed above and would dearly appreciate some
> > > help and a sense that I'm not completely stupid here.
> > >
> > > William
> > 
>