Subject: Still Installing

From: Mike Hill <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 20:26:58 -0400

Many thanks to Alex deVries for the on-site service call and the loan of
his hard drive to prove that SGI/Linux will boot on my hardware
(R4600PC, 32 M RAM, 8-bit graphics).  It was quite a thrill to see the
login prompt for the first time.  At the same time Alex was treated
first hand to some bizarre SGI/Linux behaviour that he's only been able
to read about until now.

Installer notes:  I was getting stuck at the point where the root drive
is mounted, with the message "Fatal error opening RPM database" and
signal 11.  Instead of partitioning the drive with fx or from within the
installer, I reran the Linux-installer 0.2 procedure.  After that, the
Hard Hat installer continued into the package installation.  Many
packages (including bash) failed to install with the "script execution
failure" message.  This was also reported by Alexander Ehlert.  The
installer finished and I had a login prompt, but I couldn't log in.
I'll download the testinstall-tree and continue with Alexander's
strategy.

Kernel notes:  I also get the truncated screen reported by Jan Chadima
(and Leon Verrall?); it seems like at least ten lines scrolling out of
view.  When I can compile a kernel I'll try reducing the screen size in
bootinfo.h.

First with the 2.1.116 kernel binary and now with 2.1.121 (thanks
Thomas), I get some streaky turquoise bands across the screen which
obscure the text that scrolls by behind them.  I couldn't reproduce this
for Alex using the installer kernel.

Mike

---

From: Alex deVries <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 01:29:33 -0400 (EDT)

> (R4600PC, 32 M RAM, 8-bit graphics).  It was quite a thrill to see the

Please note that such service is available provided you can supply
transportation and dinner :)

> first hand to some bizarre SGI/Linux behaviour that he's only been able

Okay, there are definite differences among Indy's.  I thought they wer
pretty much all the same.  There are two big differences between ours:

- 32 MB appears somehow just not to be enough to operate well.  I don't
know where the memory is actuall ygoing, though.

- There must be two different screen resolutions, since the *exact* same
binaries that displayed beautifully on mine were chopped off on Mike's.
Is ther emore than one version of the newport?

> I'll download the testinstall-tree and continue with Alexander's

Okay.  So there's a partitioning issue.  I think we knew that.

The script execution thing is, i think, just because the CD you have isn't
quite the latest one.

> view.  When I can compile a kernel I'll try reducing the screen size in

This is strange.  This means that different newport graphics cards have
different sizes.

- Alex