new user, and some questions/comments

[John P. Looney]

I'm on the rpm-list, and I've noticed lots of PLD contributors on it.
That, and the fact that most of the cool RPMs on rpmfind.net are PLD ones
:)

So, today when my 2.4.17-pre something box died (filesystem corruption),
I decided to try out PLD. I'm only using it a few hours, so at the moment,
I'm really just seeing things I miss from my customised RedHat 7.2 box.

First, the installer:
I didn't want to install it on my old RedHat partitions, just
in case there was something there I could salvage. When I asked
to partition the disk manually, it quit, and started downloading
mod_ide & parted. I thought it was trying to start installing,
before I'd told it where, and got very upset, until I realised what
was going on.

The installer is a little too verbose - it prints each package as it
downloads & installs them. I'd no idea how long it would take, or what
it had installed, unless I was looking through everything.

I was also confused when the installer asked me what to do about
multilingual packages - I didn't know would it install packages with
just polish docs, if I chose english-only etc. That should be cleared
up.

I liked the detection of USB devices...but I've a USB mouse, and it
didn't see fit to create a /dev/usb/mice file. I had to do that myself
later.

I was quite surprised that there was no X configuration at all. So,
the network installer also had to download all the X modules for all
cards. Will there be one soon ?

There was also NIS configuration, or keymap configuration on startup.
Most likely because the developers don't use NIS, or different
keymaps.

Some other bits:
The boot was quite slow. I think there must be "sleep 1" buried
somewhere inside all of the cute '[BUSY]' bits on startup. I was very
used to /etc/init.d/<scripts> as I was used to Solaris and RedHat -
Does the LSB specify that /etc/rc.d/init.d should be used ? The lack
of a "service" command is annoying - I thought that was part of the
LSB too. I note that PLD uses lilo - why not grub ? It's so much
nicer.

I really like the modular approach to some complex RPMs, like apache.
Load of bits to choose from (I run a very lean apache). That said,
when the machine booted, it did moan that mod_auth_apache was
configured, but it had a "dbm_fetch" symbol undefined.

Also, it installs, but does not configure zmailer on install. So, I
sent a few mails in mutt, and it took ages to realise that I was
getting errors like:

Apr 3 09:16:28 bartender smtp[8812]: S392188AbSDCIxm: to=<***@linux.ie>,
delay=00:22:46, xdelay=00:00:20, mailer=smtp, relay=mail.tuatha.org
([194.125.145.45|25|172.24.1.104|1052]), stat=error2 ^M->> 250 Reset state
cvt=NONE
Apr 3 09:16:42 bartender router[2736]: S392188AbSDCJQb:
from=<mailer-daemon<@>>, rrelay=STDIN ("??"@bartender), size=6641,
nrcpts=1, msgid=<20020403091642Z392188-2736+***@bartender>

in my maillog, without mutt reporting problems. This is really bad.
I've never used zmailer, so I tryed to work out where to configure it,
couldn't, ripped it out & put back sendmail (which at least is a one-line
"DS mail.antefacto.com" configuration).

I'm looking forward to using PLD over the next while. One BIG problem
I'm had was the lack of a 2.4 kernel. Is there one anywhere ? I have some
old stuff on ext3 filesystems - I've just downloaded a stock kernel from
somewhere, but I'd prefer if there was a SRPM I could customise instead.

John

[Marcin Chojnowski]

Post by John P. Looney
I didn't want to install it on my old RedHat partitions, just
in case there was something there I could salvage. When I asked
to partition the disk manually, it quit, and started downloading
mod_ide & parted. I thought it was trying to start installing,
before I'd told it where, and got very upset, until I realised what
was going on.

OK maybe installer lacks of some information what it's going
to do but It's doing something It has to.

Post by John P. Looney
The installer is a little too verbose - it prints each package as it
downloads & installs them. I'd no idea how long it would take, or what
it had installed, unless I was looking through everything.

You are trying to compare our small installer to something
that RedHat make. The PLD idea is that this system is used by
people that used to use Linux everyday.

Post by John P. Looney
I liked the detection of USB devices...but I've a USB mouse, and it
didn't see fit to create a /dev/usb/mice file. I had to do that myself
later.

I think it could be fixed.

Post by John P. Looney
I was quite surprised that there was no X configuration at all. So,
the network installer also had to download all the X modules for all
cards. Will there be one soon ?

I don't think so, It would take a lot of time to prepare such
one. If you have some spare time and maybe you'd like to work
with some kind of solution you're welcome.

Post by John P. Looney
LSB too. I note that PLD uses lilo - why not grub ? It's so much
nicer.

It doesn't matter I think that lilo is set by default, but
you can switch to Grub anytime you want.

Post by John P. Looney
Also, it installs, but does not configure zmailer on install. So, I
sent a few mails in mutt, and it took ages to realise that I was

OK, as I wrote before it's not RedHat nor Mandrake. PLD is
used mainly by sysadmins that know how to configure their
systems. If you look for PLD that will configure all services
automagically I think you will never find PLD as this kind of
distribution.

Post by John P. Looney
I've never used zmailer, so I tryed to work out where to configure it,
couldn't, ripped it out & put back sendmail (which at least is a one-line
"DS mail.antefacto.com" configuration).

Many people are using Postfix or Exim as sendmailers. But it's
up to you witch one you will use. The problem maybe is that
installer is not asking witch MTA you would preffer.

Post by John P. Looney
I'm looking forward to using PLD over the next while. One BIG problem
I'm had was the lack of a 2.4 kernel. Is there one anywhere ? I have some
old stuff on ext3 filesystems - I've just downloaded a stock kernel from
somewhere, but I'd prefer if there was a SRPM I could customise instead.

If you want to use some experimental packages you should look
at ftp://ftp.pld.org.pl/dists/nest/

It will provide you 2.4 kernel and many more.

Martii

[John P. Looney]

Post by Marcin Chojnowski
OK maybe installer lacks of some information what it's going
to do but It's doing something It has to.

Indeed. And I thought it was very good that it didn't download IDE or
parted, before it needed them. It was just that I got a fright!

Post by Marcin Chojnowski
You are trying to compare our small installer to something
that RedHat make. The PLD idea is that this system is used by
people that used to use Linux everyday.

Well, no. I understand you don't care about newbies yet. But even I'd
like to see a message like;

[100 out of 923 packages installed]

after each install.

Post by Marcin Chojnowski

Post by John P. Looney
I liked the detection of USB devices...but I've a USB mouse, and it
didn't see fit to create a /dev/usb/mice file. I had to do that myself
later.

I think it could be fixed.

To point out - I think it's a kernel problem; RedHat 7.2 doesn't work
with this either.

Post by Marcin Chojnowski

Post by John P. Looney
I was quite surprised that there was no X configuration at all. So,
the network installer also had to download all the X modules for all
cards. Will there be one soon ?

I don't think so, It would take a lot of time to prepare such
one. If you have some spare time and maybe you'd like to work
with some kind of solution you're welcome.

I'll have a look at it. The installer should be quite simple...isn't
there a configuration tool shipped with XF 4.x ?

Post by Marcin Chojnowski

Post by John P. Looney
Also, it installs, but does not configure zmailer on install. So, I
sent a few mails in mutt, and it took ages to realise that I was

OK, as I wrote before it's not RedHat nor Mandrake. PLD is
used mainly by sysadmins that know how to configure their
systems. If you look for PLD that will configure all services
automagically I think you will never find PLD as this kind of
distribution.

I'm a sysadmin that knows how to configure my system. Or so I thought.
Then I lost ten mails that I thought were sent; this violates the
"principle of least surprise". It's more that zmailer doesn't work
out-of-the-box like qmail/sendmail.

Post by Marcin Chojnowski

Post by John P. Looney
I'm looking forward to using PLD over the next while. One BIG problem
I'm had was the lack of a 2.4 kernel. Is there one anywhere ? I have some
old stuff on ext3 filesystems - I've just downloaded a stock kernel from
somewhere, but I'd prefer if there was a SRPM I could customise instead.

If you want to use some experimental packages you should look
at ftp://ftp.pld.org.pl/dists/nest/
It will provide you 2.4 kernel and many more.

Excellent. Thanks! I love that 'poldek --sn nest' lets me select from
there.

BTW, I'm not complaining. I really, really like PLD so far. These are
just a few little things that I think could be made a little better.

John

[Mariusz Mazur]

Post by John P. Looney
BTW, I'm not complaining. I really, really like PLD so far. These are
just a few little things that I think could be made a little better.

Rule of thumb is: PLD is used by experienced users (sysadmins) but mostly by
the developers themselves. So the big question is: do you want to help?
(warning: you don't speak polish... and since foreign developers are a vast
minority the "official" language is polish - you would miss 99% of the
development).

[John P. Looney]

Post by Mariusz Mazur
Rule of thumb is: PLD is used by experienced users (sysadmins) but mostly by
the developers themselves. So the big question is: do you want to help?

Um. I'd certainly like to help. I've a lot of experience with making up
RPMs & making spec files. I can certainly help in that if I get a package
that doesn't work, I'll fix it, and contribute it back. I would also like
to upgrade packages like Mozilla & Galeon which I use daily, when new
versions come out (however, Mozilla-0.9.9 RedHat SRPM won't build for me
on PLD at all).

Are there small projects - perhaps a "to do" list that I could have a
look at, and get started on ?

Incidentally I tried to install gcc3 from "nest", and got:

***@bartender /tmp]# poldek --sn nest
Loading
ftp://ftp.pld.org.pl/dists/nest/PLD/i686/PLD/RPMS/packages.dir.gz...
131 packages read
Loading cache /root/.poldek-cache/packages.dir.dbcache.var.lib.rpm.gz...
470 packages read

Welcome to the poldek shell mode. Type "help" for help with commands.

poldek> install gcc-3.1-0.20020311.2 rpm-4.0.4-0.50
Processing dependencies...
gcc-2.95.4-0.20010823.3 obsoleted by gcc-3.1-0.20020311.2
gcc-3.1-0.20020311.2 marks cpp-3.1-0.20020311.2 (cap cpp = 3.1)
cpp-2.95.4-0.20010823.3 obsoleted by cpp-3.1-0.20020311.2
rpm-4.0.2-61 obsoleted by rpm-4.0.4-0.50
error: rpm-4.0.2-61 (cap librpm.so.0) is required by rpm-build-4.0.2-61
error: rpm-4.0.2-61 (cap librpmbuild.so.0) is required by
rpm-build-4.0.2-61
error: rpm-4.0.2-61 (cap librpmio.so.0) is required by rpm-build-4.0.2-61
error: rpm-4.0.2-61 (cap rpm = 4.0.2) is required by rpm-build-4.0.2-61
error: librpm.so.0 is required by poldek-0.17.2-1
error: librpmio.so.0 is required by poldek-0.17.2-1
error: rpm = 4.0.2 is required by rpm-utils-4.0.2-61
error: librpm.so.0 is required by rpm-utils-4.0.2-61
error: librpmbuild.so.0 is required by rpm-utils-4.0.2-61
error: librpmio.so.0 is required by rpm-utils-4.0.2-61
error: librpm.so.0 is required by wuch-0.21.0-1
error: librpmio.so.0 is required by wuch-0.21.0-1
error: rpm = 4.0.2 is required by rpm-devel-4.0.2-61
error: rpm = 4.0.2 is required by rpm-perlprov-4.0.2-61
There are 3 packages to install (1 marked by dependencies), 3 to
uninstall:
I rpm-4.0.4-0.50
I gcc-3.1-0.20020311.2
D cpp-3.1-0.20020311.2
R cpp-2.95.4-0.20010823.3
R rpm-4.0.2-61
R gcc-2.95.4-0.20010823.3
error: 14 unresolved dependencies
There were errors
poldek>

Is this a work in progress, or something I've broken ?

John

[wrobell]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Mariusz Mazur
Rule of thumb is: PLD is used by experienced users (sysadmins) but mostly by
the developers themselves. So the big question is: do you want to help?

Um. I'd certainly like to help. I've a lot of experience with making up
RPMs & making spec files. I can certainly help in that if I get a package
that doesn't work, I'll fix it, and contribute it back. I would also like
to upgrade packages like Mozilla & Galeon which I use daily, when new
versions come out (however, Mozilla-0.9.9 RedHat SRPM won't build for me
on PLD at all).

Can you send the buildlog to ***@ite.pl?
Thanks in advance

wrobell <***@ite.pl>

BTW. You can take a look at mozilla.spec in branch DEVEL...

[Artur Frysiak]

Post by John P. Looney
Is this a work in progress, or something I've broken ?

Work in progress, but:
# poldek --sn nest\*
poldek> uninstall wuch-0.21.0-1
poldek> install gcc-3.1-0.20020325.0 rpm-4.0.4-0.50 rpm-lib-4.0.4-0.50 rpm-utils-4.0.4-0.50 poldek-0.17.2-1

Don't install glibc-2.2.5-2.1 from nest-test, because this package is
broken :(

Regards

[Michal Kochanowicz]

Post by Mariusz Mazur
Rule of thumb is: PLD is used by experienced users (sysadmins) but mostly by
the developers themselves. So the big question is: do you want to help?
(warning: you don't speak polish... and since foreign developers are a vast
minority the "official" language is polish - you would miss 99% of the
development).

Yeah, you really know how to attract developer.

[Mariusz Mazur]

Post by Michal Kochanowicz
Yeah, you really know how to attract developer.

If somebody asked me wheter PLD is user friendly I would say NO. The same
goes for foreign developer friendlines. The discussions are held in polish
and that's a fact. So the bottom line is: instead of listening to discussions
John would have to ask for everything. That's a handicap imho (not that the
discussions are *that* important... the signal to noise ratio is rather high
plus if you follow the commits you can get a grip of what's going on whitout
the discussions).

Note that this should change if more foreign developers join in (that is more
threads are started in english).

[Michal Moskal]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Marcin Chojnowski
You are trying to compare our small installer to something
that RedHat make. The PLD idea is that this system is used by
people that used to use Linux everyday.

Well, no. I understand you don't care about newbies yet. But even I'd
like to see a message like;
[100 out of 923 packages installed]
after each install.

It's almost there. Poldek 0.17 has it, I hope I will find time to
rebuild bootdisks tomorrow.

[Micha³ Margula]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 10:17:28 +0000

Post by John P. Looney
The boot was quite slow. I think there must be "sleep 1" buried
somewhere inside all of the cute '[BUSY]' bits on startup. I was very
used to /etc/init.d/<scripts> as I was used to Solaris and RedHat -
Does the LSB specify that /etc/rc.d/init.d should be used ? The lack
of a "service" command is annoying - I thought that was part of the
LSB too. I note that PLD uses lilo - why not grub ? It's so much
nicer.

I've checked and we have sleep in that places:

- shutdown (between sending TERM and KILL signals and before unmounting
filesystems) so it has nothing to do with booting up
- there is one sleep 1 when it asks for a key to enter interactive mode
- sleep 5 before initialisation of usb devices
- sleep 1 in booting process of mysql

So in worst case you loose 6 seconds. Is it too much? ;-)

[John P. Looney]

Post by Micha³ Margula
- shutdown (between sending TERM and KILL signals and before unmounting
filesystems) so it has nothing to do with booting up
- there is one sleep 1 when it asks for a key to enter interactive mode
- sleep 5 before initialisation of usb devices
- sleep 1 in booting process of mysql
So in worst case you loose 6 seconds. Is it too much? ;-)

It's probably that I have lots of services running then!

I always wanted to work on a boot process that used "make" instead of
/etc/rc.d - so that some parts could run in parallel, with make resolving
dependancies...it's about the only way a workstation with snmpd, apache
etc. could boot quickly...

John

[Micha³ Margula]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 11:30:41 +0000

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Micha³ Margula
- shutdown (between sending TERM and KILL signals and before unmounting
filesystems) so it has nothing to do with booting up
- there is one sleep 1 when it asks for a key to enter interactive mode
- sleep 5 before initialisation of usb devices
- sleep 1 in booting process of mysql
So in worst case you loose 6 seconds. Is it too much? ;-)

It's probably that I have lots of services running then!
I always wanted to work on a boot process that used "make" instead of
/etc/rc.d - so that some parts could run in parallel, with make resolving
dependancies...it's about the only way a workstation with snmpd, apache
etc. could boot quickly...

My system boots up from Grub to GDM in about 54 seconds, and yours?

My computer is a notebook powered by Celeron 400 and with slow HDD
(8megabytes per second with hdparm). In boot up process it starts - hdparm,
alsa, oidentd, pcmcia modules mysql, httpd, cups, gpm and gdm.

[Micha³ Margula]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 10:17:28 +0000

Post by John P. Looney
The boot was quite slow. I think there must be "sleep 1" buried
somewhere inside all of the cute '[BUSY]' bits on startup. I was very
used to /etc/init.d/<scripts> as I was used to Solaris and RedHat -
Does the LSB specify that /etc/rc.d/init.d should be used ? The lack
of a "service" command is annoying - I thought that was part of the
LSB too. I note that PLD uses lilo - why not grub ? It's so much
nicer.

Oh and one thing I forgot - we DO have grub. Just install rc-boot (a wrapper
for grub and lilo) and then remove lilo and install grub. I have grub on
every box I own ;-)

[John P. Looney]

Post by Micha³ Margula
Oh and one thing I forgot - we DO have grub. Just install rc-boot (a wrapper
for grub and lilo) and then remove lilo and install grub. I have grub on
every box I own ;-)

Wow. That was simple. I do a lot of playing with bootloaders (I help
maintain a distribution that my company installs on our hardware), and
I've wiped my own so often I keep a grub boot floppy around.

I like this.

John

[Micha³ Margula]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 11:34:57 +0000

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Micha³ Margula
Oh and one thing I forgot - we DO have grub. Just install rc-boot (a
wrapper for grub and lilo) and then remove lilo and install grub. I have
grub on every box I own ;-)

Wow. That was simple. I do a lot of playing with bootloaders (I help
maintain a distribution that my company installs on our hardware), and
I've wiped my own so often I keep a grub boot floppy around.
I like this.

This wrapper helps you moving from one bootloader to another. Grub part of
that needs some work, but generally works fine.

[Tomasz Kłoczko]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Mariusz Mazur
Rule of thumb is: PLD is used by experienced users (sysadmins) but mostly by
the developers themselves. So the big question is: do you want to help?

Um. I'd certainly like to help. I've a lot of experience with making up
RPMs & making spec files.

So .. all is opened before You. Most from as can communicate (better odr
worse) not only polish language :_)
Now as Mariusz sayd ~99% messages about PLD developmet is in polish but
this will can change. All comments in cvs resources are in english so on
this level all is ready for people also outside Poland :)

Post by John P. Looney
I can certainly help in that if I get a package
that doesn't work, I'll fix it, and contribute it back. I would also like
to upgrade packages like Mozilla & Galeon which I use daily, when new
versions come out (however, Mozilla-0.9.9 RedHat SRPM won't build for me
on PLD at all).

New mozilla 0.9.9 and galeon are prepared partialy in branch in cvs
repository. You must know we have central CVS reposirory with all
resourses used for build packages (also all tar balls and other binary
files are stored in CVS .. yes I know this looks strange but it is very
very usefull :). Using this you can build any packege from any development
point of hidtory. Oure repo is publically RO accessable on
:pserver:***@cvs.pld.org.pl:/cvsroot

For example:

$ cvs status -v mzilla.spec
===================================================================
File: no file mozilla.spec Status: Needs Checkout

Working revision: No entry for mozilla.spec
Repository revision: 1.140 /cvsroot/SPECS/mozilla.spec,v

Existing Tags:
DEVEL (branch: 1.140.2)
mozilla-0_9_8-4 (revision: 1.140)
[.long tags list.]
mozilla-5_M14-1 (revision: 1.15)
STABLE (revision: 1.140)

So usiging builder script stored in SPECS module by:

[SPECS]$ ./builder -g -r DEVEL mozilla.spec

you can download current mozilla 0.9.9 resources. After modify any package
you can send any fixes/changes to this list or any person which you are
see listed in file commit log or .. if you will want even you can also
obtain RW account.

We heven't full documentation on how to use oure cvs resource or how to
prepare automated/transactiomnal building envirement separated (yes we are
using ths kind tools and mostly all it is ready to use without significant
adjustments) from rest system so if you inetestred on some details about
how to effectively work on rpm packages in style/techics used by oure team
all advices/help on this on-line you can obtain for example on #pld
channel in IRC Net.

Post by John P. Looney
Are there small projects - perhaps a "to do" list that I could have a
look at, and get started on ?

Oure BTS on http://bugs.pld.org.pl/ allow store "feacture request" and
"improve request" marked tickets which can be used for this kind things.
Now oure BTS has no "include file/patch on send tickets" but allso source
code BTS engine is stored in cvs repository .. so if you have some php
experiences you can also help on exted this :)

kloczek

[John P. Looney]

Post by Tomasz Kłoczko
[SPECS]$ ./builder -g -r DEVEL mozilla.spec

This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).

I love this build script!!!

John

[Mariusz Mazur]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Tomasz Kłoczko
[SPECS]$ ./builder -g -r DEVEL mozilla.spec

This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).

You can change this:

[***@home mmazur]$ cat .rpmmacros
%_topdir %(cd ..;pwd)

This can be any dir you want :)

[Artur Frysiak]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Tomasz Kłoczko
[SPECS]$ ./builder -g -r DEVEL mozilla.spec

This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).

Small hint: Don't use root acount to build rpms.

Regards

[John P. Looney]

Post by Artur Frysiak

Post by John P. Looney
This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).

Small hint: Don't use root acount to build rpms.

Seems like a few people here have been bitten by things like doing;

rm -rf $RPMBUILD_ROOT/

instead of

rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/

Yes ? I will setup my account to build RPMs somewhere nicely, thanks!

John

[Tomasz Kłoczko]

Post by Mariusz Mazur

Post by Michal Kochanowicz
Yeah, you really know how to attract developer.

If somebody asked me wheter PLD is user friendly I would say NO.

Yes .. but it can be user/admin friendly on more points than now :)

kloczek

[Tomasz Kłoczko]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Tomasz Kłoczko
[SPECS]$ ./builder -g -r DEVEL mozilla.spec

This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).

No, no .. all PLD packages are ready for build from non-root account.
So not /root/rpm/SPECS but ~/rpm/SPECS :-)

kloczek

[Tomasz Kłoczko]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Artur Frysiak

Post by John P. Looney
This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).

Small hint: Don't use root acount to build rpms.

Seems like a few people here have been bitten by things like doing;
rm -rf $RPMBUILD_ROOT/
instead of
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/
Yes ? I will setup my account to build RPMs somewhere nicely, thanks!

Yes but if you will look (again) in oure cvs repo in SPECS module you can
find adapter.awk acript.
Using this script pevent so stupid bugs :o)

Try use this script on any spec file you heve by:

[SPECS]$ ./adapter.awk foo.spec > bar.spec

and compare :)

If you will look deeper in commitd logs you will see many times "- spec
adapterized." comment or simillar. Probably now you know what it can mean
:)

kloczek

[Blues]

Post by John P. Looney
I'm on the rpm-list, and I've noticed lots of PLD contributors on it.
That, and the fact that most of the cool RPMs on rpmfind.net are PLD ones
:)

:)

Post by John P. Looney
The installer is a little too verbose - it prints each package as it
downloads & installs them.

many people were talking that it's too little verbose. What have we do?
Make 2 instalers??

Post by John P. Looney
I'd no idea how long it would take, or what
it had installed, unless I was looking through everything.

yes - this could be very usefull

Post by John P. Looney
I was also confused when the installer asked me what to do about
multilingual packages - I didn't know would it install packages with
just polish docs, if I chose english-only etc. That should be cleared
up.

come on - we aren't making polish distribution...
This is PLD Linux Distribution.

Yes, polish is very well supported, but english is base.

Post by John P. Looney
I liked the detection of USB devices...but I've a USB mouse, and it
didn't see fit to create a /dev/usb/mice file. I had to do that myself
later.

none mouse is detected. especialy usb.
This could be on TODO list (Malekith? :) )

usbfs is now mounted on cvs versions

Post by John P. Looney
I was quite surprised that there was no X configuration at all. So,
the network installer also had to download all the X modules for all
cards. Will there be one soon ?

yes, X configuration is on TODO-list. When? who knows... (do you want to
make it? ;) )
you can select modules to your card - installer supports it...

Post by John P. Looney
The boot was quite slow. I think there must be "sleep 1" buried
somewhere inside all of the cute '[BUSY]' bits on startup.

come on...
On debian which I sometimes have to use (sad, but true...) this take the
same time...

Post by John P. Looney
I was very used to /etc/init.d/<scripts> as I was used to Solaris and
RedHat - Does the LSB specify that /etc/rc.d/init.d should be used ? The
lack of a "service" command is annoying - I thought that was part of the
LSB too.

In cvs-version there is service

Post by John P. Looney
I note that PLD uses lilo - why not grub ? It's so much nicer.

we have grub too. and rc-boot at your wish

Post by John P. Looney
Also, it installs, but does not configure zmailer on install. So, I
sent a few mails in mutt, and it took ages to realise that I was
delay=00:22:46, xdelay=00:00:20, mailer=smtp, relay=mail.tuatha.org
([194.125.145.45|25|172.24.1.104|1052]), stat=error2 ^M->> 250 Reset state
cvt=NONE
in my maillog, without mutt reporting problems. This is really bad.
I've never used zmailer, so I tryed to work out where to configure it,
couldn't, ripped it out & put back sendmail (which at least is a one-line
"DS mail.antefacto.com" configuration).

zmailer is not good prepared...

Post by John P. Looney
I'm looking forward to using PLD over the next while. One BIG problem
I'm had was the lack of a 2.4 kernel. Is there one anywhere ? I have some
old stuff on ext3 filesystems - I've just downloaded a stock kernel from
somewhere, but I'd prefer if there was a SRPM I could customise instead.

we have 2.4 in "nest" on ftp.

[Jakub Bogusz]

[...]

Post by Blues

Post by John P. Looney
I was very used to /etc/init.d/<scripts> as I was used to Solaris and
RedHat - Does the LSB specify that /etc/rc.d/init.d should be used ? The
lack of a "service" command is annoying - I thought that was part of the
LSB too.

In cvs-version there is service

BTW: I've checked LSB 1.1.0 - it says about /etc/init.d, but doesn't
mention 'service' command.

Maybe it whould be better to add /etc/init.d symlink for more LSB
compliance (but NOT /etc/rc[0-7].d dirs as some other "standard"
wanted)... but I think 'service' command is more useful.

Also, I don't think about strictly obeying LSB - it says for example
"Packages may not use RPM triggers" - but sometimes triggers are
_needed_ for correct upgrade.

[Blues]

Post by John P. Looney

Post by Tomasz Kłoczko
[SPECS]$ ./builder -g -r DEVEL mozilla.spec

This is wonderful. It took me a while to work out that I should have all
my SPEC files in /root/rpm/SPECS instead of /tmp/SPECS (which is where I
used CVS to check them out).
I love this build script!!!

WARNING.

Don't build RPMs from root. You can do maaaany bad things with your
system...