My experience with 0.5 final

red_over_blue · 2003-07-23 02:48:27

Hello everyone. First, I would just like to say that although I am new to Arch Linux, I think it is great and plan to make it my primary distro. Also, please don't take the following comments the wrong way, they are just my personal experiences, and I wouldn't be surprised if half the errors actually occured between the monitor and the keyboard

That being said, here are the things I noted while installing 0.5. I also noticed many of these with 0.5beta4.

1. My biggest problem was with GRUB. If I choose to have a seperate partion and mount it as /boot and install Grub to this partition, I could never boot. I would always get "Grub Grub Grub......." no matter what combination of parameter I set in menu.lst. I don't think grub is actually being installed to the correct location, although I definitely could be wrong. I had absolutely no problems if I installed Grub on the MBR. It simply worked flawlessly.

2. I'm not sure, but I think there is some form of auto-config happening to create menu.lst. If so, I always get root (hd0,2) which is my "root" partition, ie where / is. However, the root field should indicate where Grub is, not where my root partition starts, and thus should have read "root (hd0,0)". If this is simply a default menu.lst, then please ignore this comment.

3. If you first choose to "autoconfigure" the HD (I did this to see what defaults would be used) it is now impossible to manually partition and create filesystems/mountpoints. I believe it is the part where you choose the mount points and filesystem types that the installer states something like "You don't have to do this, you autoconfigure the HD". This is dispite the fact that after autoconfiguring, I decided I would not be happy with the way the disk was, and manually partitioned the drive. There could be a flag set after manual partitioning that undoes the autoconfigured flag.

4. I'm sorry, I'm probably just dumb, but I still don't understand the "select all packages by default" thing. I seem to get the same result no matter which I select (yes/no)

5. To help with issues involved with Grub, Grub should be included on the install disk. When trying to resolve my grub issues (as to where it was actually being installed), I had to resort to using a knoppix disk. If it is on the disk, ie just after booting and typing "arch", I couldn't find it.

6. Could pacman.conf be included in the system config phase during the install? This boils down to user error on my part, but after finally installing my system, and after the first boot, I started installing packages. Only after installing a dozen or so packages did I remember that I forget to add "unofficial" in pacman.conf. As I am new to Arch, I am not sure if there is overlapping version in stable and unofficial, so I'm not sure if this is actually an issue. What I am trying to say is, will I find newer versions of software in unofficial? If so, I think pacman.conf should be in the sytem config phase of the install.

7. Finally, and not related to the install, packages that have been compiled against a kernel should include the kernel version that they were compiled against in their descriptions. Examples of this include nvidia and alsa drivers. I installed both only to find that they were compiled against 2.4.20.

Thanks for reading this, and PLEASE, don't take this as critisisms. It is easy for people (like me in this case) to pick out little things, but I just thought the developers would like this info.

sarah31 · 2003-07-23 03:38:43

red_over_blue wrote:

Hello everyone. First, I would just like to say that although I am new to Arch Linux, I think it is great and plan to make it my primary distro. Also, please don't take the following comments the wrong way, they are just my personal experiences, and I wouldn't be surprised if half the errors actually occured between the monitor and the keyboard
That being said, here are the things I noted while installing 0.5. I also noticed many of these with 0.5beta4.
1. My biggest problem was with GRUB. If I choose to have a seperate partion and mount it as /boot and install Grub to this partition, I could never boot. I would always get "Grub Grub Grub......." no matter what combination of parameter I set in menu.lst. I don't think grub is actually being installed to the correct location, although I definitely could be wrong. I had absolutely no problems if I installed Grub on the MBR. It simply worked flawlessly.

sorry have no ideas here i have never done this personally.

2. I'm not sure, but I think there is some form of auto-config happening to create menu.lst. If so, I always get root (hd0,2) which is my "root" partition, ie where / is. However, the root field should indicate where Grub is, not where my root partition starts, and thus should have read "root (hd0,0)". If this is simply a default menu.lst, then please ignore this comment.

this is a default menu.lst.

3. If you first choose to "autoconfigure" the HD (I did this to see what defaults would be used) it is now impossible to manually partition and create filesystems/mountpoints. I believe it is the part where you choose the mount points and filesystem types that the installer states something like "You don't have to do this, you autoconfigure the HD". This is dispite the fact that after autoconfiguring, I decided I would not be happy with the way the disk was, and manually partitioned the drive. There could be a flag set after manual partitioning that undoes the autoconfigured flag.

good point this would be handy. personally i think autoconfigure should be removed from the installer.

4. I'm sorry, I'm probably just dumb, but I still don't understand the "select all packages by default" thing. I seem to get the same result no matter which I select (yes/no)

heh interesting. probably a bug the developers did not pick up on or users did not report.

5. To help with issues involved with Grub, Grub should be included on the install disk. When trying to resolve my grub issues (as to where it was actually being installed), I had to resort to using a knoppix disk. If it is on the disk, ie just after booting and typing "arch", I couldn't find it.

are you referring to the grub source or the grub package? it would have to be somewhere on the disk.

6. Could pacman.conf be included in the system config phase during the install? This boils down to user error on my part, but after finally installing my system, and after the first boot, I started installing packages. Only after installing a dozen or so packages did I remember that I forget to add "unofficial" in pacman.conf. As I am new to Arch, I am not sure if there is overlapping version in stable and unofficial, so I'm not sure if this is actually an issue. What I am trying to say is, will I find newer versions of software in unofficial? If so, I think pacman.conf should be in the sytem config phase of the install.

there should be no duplication of packages. unstable or unofficial may, however, occasionally contain developer/unstable/cvs packages. as well unstable has more variety of packages because the developers try to keep official small and containing only enough packages to get up and running satisfactorily with some treats. official also will not depend on anything in unofficial. (it should be noted with the exception of some cvs and development packages the goal is to keep unofficial containing only current stable released packages)

7. Finally, and not related to the install, packages that have been compiled against a kernel should include the kernel version that they were compiled against in their descriptions. Examples of this include nvidia and alsa drivers. I installed both only to find that they were compiled against 2.4.20.

this was an oversight the developers were so busy with preparing for release that a few kernel dependent packges were overlooked (albeit key ones at that). in fact the nvidia driver will likely be removed from the tree soon anyway.

Thanks for reading this, and PLEASE, don't take this as critisisms. It is easy for people (like me in this case) to pick out little things, but I just thought the developers would like this info.

thanks for the comments. just one minor nit picky thing though. if you had noticed some of these bugs ealier in the beta you should have mentioned it then

red_over_blue · 2003-07-23 12:23:20

Thanks for your quick reply. I only started using Arch a few days ago, and was having the problems with the Beta4 release, then 0.5 came out. I didn't have time to post anything prior to this since I've only really got my system working properly in the last day or two.

are you referring to the grub source or the grub package? it would have to be somewhere on the disk.

The actual grub program. I wanted to run Grub from the install disk after installing, but simply typing "grub" at the command prompt returned a "command not found".

sarah31 · 2003-07-23 15:33:36

ah ok hopefully apeiro will be able to fill you in on the grub stuff. thanks agian for your valuable input!

Jagged · 2003-07-23 15:41:09

you could try mounting your newly installed partition, chroot, then run grub

Gyroplast · 2003-07-23 21:56:45

4. I'm sorry, I'm probably just dumb, but I still don't understand the "select all packages by default" thing. I seem to get the same result no matter which I select (yes/no)

Let me guess. You only selected the base category?

I hoped I explained this option thoroughly enough in the documentation.. you did read it, right? Basically this option has no effect if you only select the base category, as the packages in this category are mandatory for a running system. It would not make sense deselecting them. What this option DOES do, however, is either selecting all packages in all _other_ categories you chose, or not. Just try selecting a few more categories, and try both answers. If you select "Yes, select all packages by default" you will then be thrown into the package selection screen with all packages selected, if you select no, nothing _but the base_ will be selected.

Alright?

HTH,
Dennis

red_over_blue · 2003-07-23 22:05:37

Ok, thanks for the clarification about the "select all" part of the package selection. I did read the documentation, and it makes perfect sense after your clarification. Thanks again.

Gyroplast · 2003-07-23 22:08:05

Hmm.. do you have a suggestion how to reword this section to make it clearer?

red_over_blue · 2003-07-24 04:46:25

Maybe just add a caveat along the lines of:

Note - If you are only doing a base install, this question will have no effect on package selection.

I'm not saying it is necessary, just that as an individual, I did not understand at the time that since I was only doing a base install, and thus installing only base packages, that the question had no consequence. Other's results may vary

Arch Linux

#1 2003-07-23 02:48:27

My experience with 0.5 final

#2 2003-07-23 03:38:43

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#3 2003-07-23 12:23:20

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#4 2003-07-23 15:33:36

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#5 2003-07-23 15:41:09

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#6 2003-07-23 21:56:45

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#7 2003-07-23 22:05:37

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#8 2003-07-23 22:08:05

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

#9 2003-07-24 04:46:25

Re: My experience with 0.5 final

Board footer