tlug: Redhat 6.1: (Bad) First Impressions

[Jim Tittsler <jwt-tlug@example.com>]

I decided to give Redhat 6.1 a try yesterday.  It looks like they rushed the
release (again). [1]

I tried to update the RH6.0 installation on my main work machine.  The RH6.1
(admittedly pretty) X-based installer claims I don't have any Linux
partitions.  :-(

Giving up easily, I decided to try it on my home machine.  There, the RH6.1
installer hung when it was scanning the partitions looking for the old Linux
installation.  A few minutes with DejaNews turned up the problem in this
case.  Redhat has already confessed that the RH6.1 upgrade process crashes
if any of the drives have NTFS partitions.  [2]  The workaround [3] is to
temporarily change all of your NT partitions into something else, do the
installation, and then change them back.  Of course at the point you need to
do this, the device nodes haven't been created yet... so it takes a bit of
prodding.

And even after doing that, the installation ground away for a while and
eventually told me that I needed another 115MB free (in addition to the
40MB that were still free) on my /usr partition... just to update the
packages I had previously installed.  Pretty healthy (+20%) growth, dare I
say bloat, there.

Jim

P.S.  Now that I've scared away most of the punters, I can say that I can
probably make a *small* number of CD-Rs (or even CD-RWs if you want to be
ready for the RH6.1.1 release :-) of the distribution discs (it takes two
this time, one for the RPMS, one for the SRPMS) in time for Saturday's TLUG
meeting in exchange for the usual small donation to the club.  Please Email
me directly if you are interested so I don't needlessly make 12cm
polycarbonate coasters.

jwt

[1] Long time TLUG readers will recall my favorite rant against Redhat is
the limited time between "beta" and "gold", meaning few errors get detected,
and even fewer fixed.

[2] Remember the furor when Win95 did bad things to an old OS/2
installation?  I find it amusing that RH6.1 crashes when there is
an NT installation.

[3] And it will be interesting to see how they fix this... since the problem
is in the code on the CD-ROM, not the boot diskette.  One can only hope they
left hooks...

P.P.S. Apologies to Stephen for over-using the "footnoted Email" technique.
(But I actually talk like this, and can't decide where to put all of my
parenthetical remarks.  :-)

-- 
Jim Tittsler, Tokyo   ICQ: 5981586

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Next Technical Meeting: October 9 (Sat), 13:30   place: Temple Univ.
* Linux Internationalisation Initiative (Li18nux) speaker: Akio Kido
* Japanese TrueType Fonts                     speaker: Adrian Havill
Next Technical Meeting: November 13 (Sat), 13:30 place: Temple Univ.
* Network Security                               speaker: Steve Baur
Next Nomikai:  December 17 (Fri), 19:00 Tengu TokyoEkiMae 03-3275-3691
-------------------------------------------------------------------
more info: http://www.tlug.gr.jp        Sponsor: Global Online Japan