[rhelv6-beta-list] My first experiences with RHEL6 beta

[John Summerfield]

are entirely underwhelming.

A system which installs and does not configure a working network does 
little to recommend itself to me.

First, I tried to install RHEL6 beta in a virtual machine on Windows XP. 
My VM software of choice is Microsoft Virtual PC. I have tried vmware 
(it lasted just as long as it took me to figure out it prevents fas user 
switching) and virtual box and that too gave me grief. So Microsoft 
Virtual PC it was.

However, neither Fedora 12 nor RHEL6 beta installs on VPC. Both and tall 
all of their packages, and hang right there. I let it run for a few days 
just to be sure. I could find nothing less that resetting the VPC would 
regain control, so that's not a goer.

On installed VirtualBox-3.2-3.2.4_62467_rhel5-1 on RHEL5-clone 5.4 and 
used that to create a virtual machine.

First, I did a text install. I was very surprised how many pointless 
questions it asked, and how many sensible ones it didn't ask. Like, "Do 
you wan swap?"

I do not want swap. I especially do not want 2 Gbytes of swap on a test 
virtual machine.

When I do want swap, I usually want a swap file, not a swap partition. 
Swap files are more flexible, they can be created and dispensed with at 
will. Its a minor task to add a swap file, provided only that disk space 
is available. It's even easier to dispense with swap and assign the 
recovered space to other tasks.

it would have been really nice to have a working network after 
installing. All I needed to do to get it running was to manually run 
dhclient. Not hard, but it's a fair bet that I don't always want to 
logon to my freshly-booted system. Especially if it's a car drive or 
further away.


It wouldn't have been so bad had there been a tool to configure the 
network, but other than vi I could see nothing.

Speaking of vi, why is the whole of vim not installed? Why, when I 
wanted to install more software, yum goes out to the network and 
downloads stuff at 30kbytes/sec (my network can do 1.5 mbytes/sec and 
better, the the speed problem's not at my end) when it could load of my 
virtual DVD at 200 Mbytes/sec?

A question that arose: When I booted, I added the boot option "vga=813"

That works with a lot of Linux kernels, but not this one. On prompting, 
I manged to choose one that was close, and went on to install using a 
framebuffer console.

If a user specifies "vga=" something, it's a good clue that they do not 
like the default behaviour. The default behaviour might even not work, 
my boss insists on using a nice Apple screen on his PC, and he cannot 
read the BIOS console messages, and I could not use a Linux rescue disk 
on it without replacing his screen.

Mostly, when "vga=" is specified. the system boots and works and the 
installer might recognise that and make it a boot option for the 
installed system. In my case, although the initial value wasn't 
accepted, I was still able to boot - otherwise I'd have tried with vga=813.

vga=813 too works with a lot of Linux kernels, but again, not all. 
Bother are good choices for Linux in virtual machines.


I find the text-mode timezone choice a real pain. And that's with 
Australia being near the top of the list. Some software that uses the 
same basic technique uses "hot keys" so users can scroll more quickly to 
their preferred choice. "B" works well for Australia, it's near the end 
of the As, and I expect Zimbabweans would really appreciate it.

Speaking of timezone preferences, when a user chooses Australia/Perth, 
you can be pretty sure that their language is English (en-AU and not 
en-US), that we spend dollars, measure in metres (and notice the 
spelling, meters are for measuring), we load A4 paper into the printer 
(except when we use A3 or A5), that the 3/2/2001 is the third day of the 
second month.

It would be really nice of the Mozilla software, OpenOffice.org and all 
the other software recognised that without being told.

I have up on the first install and reinstalled, using the GUI tool this 
time. I swear there were sensible choices offered to me this time that 
were not offered with the text-mode install. I got to modify the package 
selection, to choose no swap. Oh, joy!

Oh dear. On installation, I again have no network. I logged on (I'm 
using KDE) and hunted around for something to configure the network. 
There is something, part of KDE, that looks like it's supposed to do the 
job on RHL up to RHL9, Connectiva, Mandrake, SuSE, Debian Woody, unnamed 
releases of Fedora, but nothing that seemed "just like RHEL6."

Perhaps that bit of KDE could be left out (or better, fixed).

Eventually, I found an icon on the panel that did the job. Just started 
the network. I worked so easily that I wonder why I had to install KDE 
and logon to make it work. A bare server install is all very well, but 
lots of folk (especially those using Z-boxes) will want to logon 
remotely immediately. Without a desktop.

Oh, the desktop. 800x600 is entirely unsatisfactory. So is the lack of a 
configuration file where one might change it. Or a configuration tool.

Here's the VGA card, the kernel's happy with it:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH 
VirtualBox Graphics Adapter (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
         Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- 
ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
         Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- 
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
         Latency: 0
         Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
         Region 0: Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=16M]
         Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]



Language support
On viewing the available groups of packages, I see there is support for 
lots of minority languages installed, such as Japanese, Armenian, 
Inuktitut, but not for English (UK) which is the best approximation or 
English (Australian).


To be continued.

-- 

Cheers
John

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