Re: Clarification on a few things

[Ray <rehenry-at-up.net>]

On Thu, 01 Mar 2001, David wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
<s>
> Ray, Paul and Ian,
> Thankyou very much for your replies. After reading your reply Ray, I thought
> I'd best have a closer look at my system,and on booting up I noticed 5.2
> showed Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Apollo) Kernel 2.2.14-12 on a i586, and
> 6.2 showed Red Hat Linux release 6.2 (Zoot) Kernel 2.2.14-12 on a i586. By
> the way, the problem I mentioned with 6.2 is that when I type in the startx
> command some text flashes past the screen and then the screen goes blank and
> stays that way, the guy I had setting it up for me tried eveything he could
> think of to remedy the situation, but to no avail. I've heard that 6.2 is
> very sensitive regarding the type of video card used, but at this point
> sorting that problem is very low on my priority list and this isn't really
> the most siutable place to try.

I haven't used Red Hat since the 5.2 that I have.  It's kernel is 2.0.36
and that is the one, along with rtlinux09J that has been the workhorse that
this group spoke of.  Others would have to respond to RH with newer
releases. I do use Mandrake and that is a close neighbor to RH.

Your startx problem is a video driver problem.  Unless you have some hot
gamers system, the generic SVGA drivers and a low res (800x600) setting will
get you going.  Sounds like the probing during install just didn't find
quite the right setup.  Someone closer to linux would have to tell you
how to change the x windows driver from a terminal.

>  I find the concept of the Brain Dead Installation fairly appealing, but the 
> burning question is how does the stability and reliability of BDIEMC on 6.0 
> and 6.1 compare to that of EMC on Red Hat Linux 5.2 (which correct me if I'm 
> wrong, is regarded as the most trouble free release), I'm prepaired to go 
> through some pain to get the best possible system working. 

I worked with the beta BDI for about an hour last evening and was not able
to make it crash.  (I'm getting good at crashing EMC)  It seemed to be rock
solid.  If that proves to be the case, I won't install any other way or
any other release.  The BDI took less than 340 Mg of a 420 Mg hard drive
and about 12 minutes on a 300 Mhz Cyrix for a workstation install.  The most
difficult part of the install was dusting off the old drive and figuring
out where to put the jumper to make it primary.  The board that I used has
an S3 chipset and the install found a better svga driver than Mandrake 7.2
finds.  (Blessings on you Paul, until you're better paid)

> I had a browse over the scriped instalation for the rt patch on 5.2 and 
> noticed something very important, it said if you try this script on a custom 
>install your system will not restart. Well, I have a custom install. I have
> 2 hard drives with three partitons running Win 95, 5.2 and 6.2. My main 
>reasons for running Win 95 was to network the EMC computer (which will be 
>dedicated purely to the workshop) with the computer in my office. I intend
> drawing componants in Autocad 2000, generating the G-Code then sending the 
> code to the EMC computer via a network. I've been advised that sending data 
> from a windows computer to a seperate linux computer is very trickey indeed, 
> but sending data from a windows computer to another windows computer with 
> linux in another partition is much easier, and then shifting the data from 
> one partition to another is fairly easy, I would also like to use the EMC 
> computer as a backup for my main computer, and also to have for doing quick 
> drawings in the workshop. I already have the hardware and cable for 
> networking and would much prefer to go that way rather than be using 
> floppies and CDs, so, is there still a way to acheive this? 

I feel your pain.  It took a long time for me to work my way from MS
windows to X windows.  I did the dual boot modification to Tim's 5.2
install script that you are contemplating.  The only problem is getting LILO
set up correctly.  His script will not do that for you.  I found it easiest
to install the windows first in a C: partition that it's happy with.  Get it
working just the way you want -- with all the CAD/CAM/comm that you want. 
Make a floppy windows boot disk because linux is going to modify the boot
sector that 95 uses.   

Now install linux using Tim's script and ask linux to use the remaining
hard drive space.  Make a Linux boot disk because it won't reboot from the
hard drive.  Now reboot using the linux floppy and edit /etc/liloconfig and
run /sbin/lilo until you get both systems to boot correctly.  

The nice thing here is that windows 95 will think that it's all alone. 
(that is a good thing)  In linux all you need to do is mount the windows
partition and you can access any file in there as if it were a linux file. 
You can even try to run the dos and windows .exe programs from linux using
wine or some other emulator.  (In most cases open source doesn't try
to trash proprietary.)

Then try adding the third.  For this you will need to move the 6.2 kernel
and system.map to the  /boot directory used by the first linux and then
fiddle with the root definition in that lilo block until it starts up in
the third partition.

Ray