tlug: new debian user beats head against wall, cries for help...film at 11

["John Seebach" <jseebach@example.com>]

I installed Debian on my laptop yesterday for what was probably the
third  or  fourth time. Each time, I get a little closer to that
elusive goal of a happily working system, but each time I manage to
fail anyway. Clearly, I have much to learn.

There wouldn't have been a problem at all, except that my laptop uses
a NeoMagic video card, and that absolutely requires Xfree86
3.3.3.1-ish as far as I can tell. The stable branch of the debian
distribution has 3.3.2.3 instead. Now,  I've nothing  *against* a
command-line interface per se, but a windowing system would be nice.
I suppose I could have just downloaded and unpacked the tarred XFree86
binaries, but where's the fun in  that? I mean, what's the point in
having debian's nifty packaging system if none of the software that
you need is packaged? So, feeling brave and throwing caution to the
wind, I apt on over to the dark side -- the unstable branch, where the
software is a little more recent. Start updating all of the Xfree
stuff. Find out that these packages require that I install a new
version of libc6. Hmmm.  Sounds kind of daring, as this requires that
crucial libraries and compilers come from a place called "unstable."
But what the heck, I'm young and reckless. So I give it a try.

Install, configure X, and everything seems to work great. X fires up
in full-color, high-resolution glory. No mysterious crashes or
anything like that. All is right with the world.

Until, that is, I decide to give kernel-package a spin and compile a
new kernel, because I want to be able to suspend my laptop and need
apm compiled into my kernel to do this.

Sigh. a minute or two into the make-kpkg step,  the compiler spits out
errors and dies. I don't really know why.

I'm assuming that the problem probably has something to do with the
fact that I'm using libc6 >=2.1 and that my kernel was compiled with a
different set of libraries, because I think I read something in some
help file somewhere that suggested that this might cause problems. But
I don't know that for sure, because I'm somewhat frazzled and because
I'm getting into an area here in which I have zero knowledge.

Any ideas? Ideally, I'd like to NOT re-install this system because I'd
like to NOT pay NTT for the privilege of re-downloading the 8 MB or so
of XFree86 that I need. Would downloading and installing a kernel
binary that was compiled with libc6 >=2.1 and then trying to compile a
custom kernel again be a worthwhile exercise or just be a waste of
time and phone charges? Or is there a better, more obvious solution
for getting everything working that I'm completely overlooking?
Any suggestions, hints, or advice would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
john seebach
jseebach@example.com


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