Yep that did it..
Redid the CD which this time joined the right way and I got 688Mbytes (and change) lxx -k vmlinux -- root=/dev/hdb (using the Shell of course as I can't stand the SB command line never have, never will :-) Installed right (and took also quadruple the amount of time).... Previously it never got past the "installing skeleton fs" message (now it installed the rpms... I am wondering what it thought it was doing during the 1 + hour it was "thinking" before) which meant that Richard was right (of course he was he made the whole thing!) and the rpms were broken. Restart (This time the press the reset button prompt was correctly shown : That was a good sign from the get go) with -- root=/dev/hda4 this time (as per the installation- howto)... starts great (takes a loooooooooooonnnggggg time as expected).... and several stuff fail: First the modprob fails on lo (to be expected as I was playing around with my ethernet card... fixed later by changing /etc/modules.conf -Btw: why are there two of them there? /etc/modules.conf and etc/modules.conf.q40 -changed them both to be on the safe side), NFS fails (expected).., also 127.0.0.0 is not accepted as a address, something else is already using it... Anyway come to the login prompt, login as root and... startx.... nothing (invalid command or something similar)... go to usr/XF86R11/bin.... ls... it's there... type it from there just in case the environment is not set properly... nothing (invalid command again)... lynx fails too, with invalid library (don't remember exactly which but I can get the correct message) Start Linuxconf, mess around with the settings a bit (also add root password), restart, this time the adapter doesn't fail but other nice stuff begin to appear... When attempting to login as a user that I created from either console, the local echo dissappears totally (so I have to type blind) but reappears after a little bit (and a lot of frustration). lynx still fails and so does X and I am clueless... so the next logical step is cry for.... HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP :-) (before I spend another 4 hours to install... that's how long it took) BTW: I left it a good one hour before i restarted after the first boot to give ample time for anacron to go about its business and the second boot was a lot faster... After I manage to get it working I need to test my ethernet (it's a 100 Mbit one so I am not exactly sure if it will work but if it does, i will order enough for the benefit of Q40/Q60 owners) and then start to clear the kernel from all the stuff i don't need... If I can get it to boot in under a minute I will be the happiest guy in the world :-) It sure is a LOT different from the experiences I had with SCO in the early 90s and FreeBSD for the past 5 years (both had also very sofisticated installation tools that hid everything that was going on)... My FreeBSD installation has been imaged and I just unpack it with every new computer and works just fine (It's my secondary machine at the moment as the PC has to take precedence because of university requirements.. pah!)... The closest I've been in an environment like this was while i was in high school in the 80s when we had a Motorola MiniComputer with System V on it and TTY connections via IBM PCs (Served them right too :-) but that was not from a root point of view and everything was preinstalled so our jobs was to get in and fire up the Fortran and C compilers and that's about it... Also when I finish everything, the hard disk will come out of the Q40 and will immediately get the DriveImage 8.0 treatement (can deal with little endian AND big endian formats...) cause sure as hell I am NOT spending another 6 hours of my life to reinstall linux if I can avoid it :-) (Reminded me of Novell 2; installation on a Tulip 286 took approximately the same amount of time)... oh hell I am spoiled by the GHz and/or SMSQDOS I'd guess.... with the latter affirming my belief that MOST oses are totally bloated... Oh well :-) Phoebus
