[wlug_org] yet another installfest update (distro...)

[Jamie Baddeley]

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 17:58, Wood Brent wrote:
> > 
> > Bah. Novice installer - not novice distro ;-)
> > 
> 
> 
> Perfect summary Jamie!! 
> 
> I couldn't say it better. I'm a novice debian/knoppix installer, & the distro
> is inappropriate for such!
> 
> Given we plan to inflict this on the unwary at the fest, the following might be
> relevant:

This is debian dtl's call, but I wouldn't generally recommend doing an
hd-install from Knoppix for a newbie. It runs the unstable (read latest
and greatest, and as stable as any other distro) branch. Which would
commit the newbie to regular updates and changes.

The idea I assume for the live-cd distro is to run as a live CD. A
sampler.
> 
> 
> the problems (apart from me) were:
> 
>    I'm supposed to run knoppix-installer, but only got kdx-hdinstall to work.  
>  
this is what you are supposed to do.

>    The partioning was enough to scare most novices I've dealt with away
>    permanently.
> 
noted. Joey Hess has been hacking furiously at the next version of the
debian installer that is going to be with the 3.1(sarge) release - which
is due this year. Expect partitioning to be greatly improved.


>    once I got that sorted:
> 
>    the CD icon on the desktop points at /mnt/cdrom
>     /etc/fstab mounts /dev/scd0 at /cdrom
> 
Uhh no scsi huh?

>     as well as this minor problem, which, after all, wouldn't really bother
>     anyone who knows how to turn a PC on
> 
>     no files could be read from /cdrom, as root or anyone else, irrespective of
>       mounting manually, unmounting etc. eject -r worked fine, however.
> 
mmm.

>     by creating the dir /mnt/cdrom2, 
>     then mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom2 -t iso9660
>     I could then read the CD to copy the presentation to the hard drive.
>     I'm assuming there was something wrong with the /etc/fstab options, I don't
> 
>     know enough about them to know exactly what. But of course other novices 
>     will be more conversant with this....
> 
>     I set the user up as NZ with US english & got what appeared to be european 
>  
>     chars on the xterm command line, so no "/", "~" or "-" characters which
> made 
>     command line stuff tricky. A console to work in as root fixed this though, 
>     but not through any X based window.
> 
did you user adduser or useradd?

> I'm sure these minor hassles could be happily faced & solved by most novices,
> but I prefer to stick with distros that don't give me these problems. (I had no
> problems with Knoppix 3.2, but 3.3 has not been a positive experience)
> 
We're installing 3.4 at the 'Fest.

> I seriously suggest some of the Debian installers, who are going to be giving
> away Knoppix 3.3 disks at the 'fest have a try with a clean Knoppix install &
> make sure it is a simple operation for novices to do, or maybe produce a
> handout to give instructions if they think it is appropriate?
> 
ref comments above.

> (or try & explain to me in words of one sylababble or less, what I did wrong &
> why it's all my fault :-)
> 
were you wearing shoes? - that might be it :-)

jamie