RedHat Question

[Derek Moore]

> I am currently trying to install RedHat 6.1 from scratch

Aaron -

I'm not sure exactly what might be causing the problems you're having... I
do know that because of all the mass hordes rushing to Red Hat's main FTP
site to grab the 6.1 ISO a lot of the mirror sites haven't been able to
get a complete mirror. It could be that you're trying to install from a
mirror that isn't yet complete. It's a possibility anyways.

Also, I do know that you might also wanna wait for 6.2. Red Hat is gonna
/have/ to release a 6.2. They really really really screwed up a lot of
stuff in the install process. Sometimes LILO will get installed properly,
sometimes it won't. In the graphical install is shows you the packages
it's going to install no matter what (the default packages that are
normally hidden during the package selection part), but it shows you those
packages as though they're not going to be installed. The text mode
install is missing the F1 for RPM package information while you're
selecting different packages. The graphical install is about 7 times
slower than the text install. And the problem you're experiencing could be
just another one of the tons o' bugs that were introduced when they
rewrote the installation code. The changes from 6.0 to 6.1 aren't too
extremely drastic anyhow. `Cept 6.0, so far as I can tell, doesn't have as
many glitches in it. 6.1 is good... But Red Hat is gonna have to release a
6.2 to fix all the broken parts of the new stuff that they stuck in 6.1.

Prolly the biggest changes in 6.1 is in the init scripts. They've
introduced a "Press `i' for interactive startup." feature, which is
basically the same as F8 in the startup of MS-DOS 6.x or Win9x (I believe
Solaris also has an interactive startup thingy). And the addition of
Kudzu, which detects added or removed hardware and builds a profile of
your machine and stuff. Well... Those things and the graphical install.
But who cares about a graphical install... You only see that during the
install and never again.

Anyhow. That's my take on the situation. If you're happy with 6.0 (or if
6.1 is annoying you), then I'd say go with 6.0 and wait for 6.2. 6.2
should be out pretty soon. This same type o' thing happened with 5.x
series o' Red Hat Linux. 5.0 came out and people thought "Neato." A while
later 5.1 came out with some crappily implemented stuffs. And not too much
time passed and they released 5.2 to fix the stuff in 5.1.

Oh... Yeah... Also. You might wanna try using "expert text" at the boot
prompt at the begining of setup. I've found that's the best way to install
6.1 so far, it's more like the old install methods (where you actually
have access to fdisk and you don't have to use their stupid Disk Druid
thing).

Another thing... Don't even try using the WindowMaker that was distributed
in 6.1. They are distributing 0.61.0 which has a super nasty bug in which
WindowMaker seg faults every time you try to save the session. Not a Good
Thing(tm). If you're a WindowMaker user then I'd suggest getting the
latest WindowMaker from Freshmeat RPMs (ftp.freshmeat.net/pub/rpms). But
the list o' bugs in RHL 6.1 goes on... *grin*

/*  Begin Signature File  */
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
@sig = ("Derek Paul Moore",
        "derekm at madcowi.com",
        "I don't do Microsoft.",
        "I started with nothing & I still have most of it left.");
print ("$sig[0]n$sig[1]n$sig[2]n$sig[3]n");
/*   End Signature File   */