Re: initial setup for newbies

Hello John,

I commented your e-mail below...

John Hughes escreveu:

> Don't use the "stable" version.  ("We biologists have a word for
> 'stable', we say 'dead'").

For initial tests, I would prefer to use the stable version. Unless, of 
course, the testing version is more stable than the stable. :-)

There is any know problem with release 1.2? It is still being maintained?

> The easiest to install is the testing version based on Sarge.

Which version this should be? 1.9?

I'm using version 1.2 and it's not that easy. Getting DVD ISO images 
from Sarge is a bit slow since the option of using bittorrent is not 
available anymore (well, I didn't find it).

I used the documentation for version 1.2 and the URL to the OpenSSI 
repositories are wrong (should end with a "openssi-v1" instead of "v1").

Since I installed Sarge 3.1r8, I noticed that some packages suffered a 
downgrade after executing "apt-get dist-upgrade". Should I worry about that?

> The easiest way of working around hardware support problems, and dealing
> with the probable initial cock-ups is to install OpenSSI under qemu or
> kvm.  Once you've screwed things up a few times in a virtual environment
> you can try with real machines.  :-)

Gee, I really don't have any background with qemu or kvm.
Screwing up hardware now is not an issue. :-)

> What hardware do you think would cause trouble?  NICS?  Sata?

A NIC from NVidia (it's onboard). Sarge looks like to have the latests 
version of the driver (forcedeth 1.25) but the module just doesn't work.

After several tries (even compiling the module) I gave up and installed 
a off-board NIC. Worked like a charm.

  > The kernel is the OpenSSI kernel for the version you install.  You don't
> get any more choice than that.  (The Lenny based preview offers two
> kernels, 2.6.12 based and 2.6.14 based, but I'd prefer you to try the
> 2.6.14 based kernel - the more debugging it can get the better).

Looks like kernel 2.4 from Sarge 3.1r8 works just fine.

Thank you for your help.

Regards,
Alceu


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