RedHat 3.0.3

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

Hi, all!

I decided to switch another machine from Windows NT Server to Linux
(we just don't have much demand for NT; the students don't like
logging in for some reason, and Windows 95 is much better GUI in any
case).  I decided to try RedHat 3.0.3 following Craig's example.  Some 
comments and hints:

o Get the INSTALL file, it will save you a lot of grief ;-)
o I used the "FTP it all down into a spare partition" method.  You
  *must* put the RedHat directory in the top directory of the
  partition (ie, in / if it's mounted on /, in /mnt/ if it's mounted
  on /mnt).  There's no way to specify a different directory.  I don't 
  know what happens if you try to put it in an MSDOS partition, I used 
  an ext2 partition.
o For the initial install, there seems to be no point in getting the
  instimage/ directory; it's sufficiently straightforward that using
  the X version of package management is not a big help.
o This saves about 30MB of space on that partition; it's still going
  to require about 100-110MB for all the RPMS.
o When ftp'ing, you can mkdir RedHat/RPMS, cd RedHat, and do mget
  RPMS/*.  This doesn't work for some of the other directories.  I
  couldn't get either ftp.redhat.com or ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp to do a get
  <dir>.tar.gz, but ftp.cc.gatech.edu (/pub/Linux/distributions/redhat) 
  will.
o Overwriting a Slackware or other previous non-Red Hat installation
  is a bad idea.  They use different conventions for the symlinks
  (/usr/X386 -> /usr/X11R6 -> /usr/X11), and this causes lots of X
  programs to fail in installing fonts and/or app-defaults.
o Adaptec 2940 kernel images are not in images/custom as the README
  says, they're in updates/images/1213 (or similar).  I tried using the
  2.1 kernel images, but this of course failed miserably.  I couldn't
  find a way to install my own kernel; I wanted to do this because Red 
  Hat does not supply an AIC7xxx (SCSI) + DEC Tulip (ethernet) kernel, 
  and I have yet to get either of the Tulip drivers to insmod properly.
  So I have to go back and remake the kernel, then install the network 
  (the Red Hat installation will not permit you to install a dummy
  network, it insists on starting the netowrk processes).

-- 
                           Stephen John Turnbull
University of Tsukuba                                        Yaseppochi-Gumi
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com