Greg Thomas wrote:

On Sat, 9 Sep 2000, Purple Shirt wrote:

...

Just another reason for SuSE to put the fucking thing on ftp. its annoying to have to wait for 2 months+ and listen to 7.0 talk without a product in the hand.

Why get all uptight about it? It's their policy to not put it up on ftp for awhile. Plus I've yet to see anything worth upgrading from an updated 6.4 anyway.

Greg

a) some of us haven't had the best of luck w/ 6.4, or the updates for it, and would like to try our chances w/ the next version. It's gamble, but what the heck. b) It is awfully annoying to have to wait so darned long. Especially since I'd guess most of us in the U.S. are accustomed to getting things _first_, and everyone else having to wait ;) c) It's a little discouraging to install the software off of 6 CD's, or one dvd, and then turn around and have to download a pile of patches and upgrades, especially when you have a slow line. I guess this does have a positive side -- The german users get the pleasure of finding the more glaring quirks the hard way first. d) Correct me if I'm wrong, but does any other distro wait so long to put a version up on ftp? Or even close? Usually, I thought, the point of the ftp and iso's is to be able to sample and decide if you want to upgrade, or pay for the support and commercial apps, or whatever. W/ SuSE's ftp schedule, half the packages (not literally, thank god) in the distro are either 1) out of date, or 2) have security patches by the time you can actually get an ftp install or iso image to test drive. Plus you are usually close to halfways to the _next_ release. Which kinda defeats the purpose. I do agree that yes, it is SuSE's right to decide when to put things up for ftp. But when you add up the time lag to get the distro released in the states, and the time after _that_ before the ftp appears, the delay starts to approach being unreasonable, IMHO. Monte P.S. FWIW, I'm tired of waiting. I'll probably fire up wget this weekend and just start downloading the patches for 7.0 now, so I don't get too far behind. Hope not to many of them are language specific. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

Niels Stenhøj wrote:

IMHO this is not a specific SuSE problem. This can happen to W95, W98 and 2000 as well. I've found that it's a hardware problem.

Working temperature. -------------------

Your machine must reach working temperature before booting, installing, partitioning, formatting etc. What we are talking about is the fact that the coefficient of expansion is not the same for the phycical disks as for the arms carrying the RW heads of your harddisk. Any misalignment of the

This is precisely the reason why hard disks do temperature recalibration. Hard disks have done this for at least 15 years but this might still be a concern if you are trying to install SuSE 7.0 on a 80kg 12inch 5MB hard disk from around 1980... ;-) Best regards, Lars Knudsen -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

Niels Stenhøj wrote:

That's fine. But tell me why letting the machine reaching working temperature establishes a stable system and the difference between Heaven and Hell. If it applies to Quantum hard disks only, I'll certainly consider other options next time I'm going to buy hardware.

When the temperature of a basic electronic component changes so does its value, even if the manufactures do their best to avoid this. It is the responsibility of the electronics designer to design the computer so these changes do not cause the final product to malfunction but unfortunately malfunctions are quite common. When you see a problem with a computer at one temperature but not at another it is thus most likely that one of the electronic parts is at fault. If you buy a new computer and it has this kind of problems you should take it back to the dealer. I allways run new computers through a series of hardware tests before starting to use them or shipping them to our custumers, this practice has shown me that about 1 in 10 PCs have errors that most users never ever notice.

FYI, I use 8.4 GB and 13.6 GB Quantums, both supporting UDM66. It doesn't make any difference if they are connected through a Promise Ultra66 card or directly to the motherboard.

Quantums are nice disks. They do temperature recalibration just like every other hard disk....

Anyway, the end justfies the means ...

Yup! :) Happy hacking, Lars -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

"Bryan S. Tyson" wrote:

On Sat, 09 Sep 2000, Lars wrote:

...

I allways run new computers through a series of hardware tests before starting to use them or shipping them to our custumers, this practice has shown me that about 1 in 10 PCs have errors that most users never ever notice.

Could you give some examples? Thanks.

Have a look at sourceforge, the VA Linux Cerberus Test Control System. I am using this at the moment - earlier on I just used to recompile the kernel a few hundred times and verify that the result was allways the same. With both methods the "fun" starts when you notice that there is an error and try to localize it - this is the hard part. I usually start out running the tests on the computer with everything installed. If this works I am done, if not I strip out everything except CPU, RAM and a hard disk and do the test again with this minimal setup. If this works I ad the video card and the other boards one by one until I find the one causing the error but most of the time I get no errors or the error turns out to be with the CPU or RAM. Happy hacking, Lars -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

I have worked on disk interface hardware for proprietary systems. Disk controllers do have analog components that can be temperature sensitive. This is not the problem it used to be, but a controller can malfunction if the ambient temperature is out of range. I believe that range is quite forgiving with modern systems. Jim Arlen Carlson wrote:

I hope I'm not creating a major flame war here, but I've never heard such a theory proposed before. In fact I'd go as to say it's a little absurd. I see no reason to be using such ridiculuous theories to blame a software (or faulty software operation with certain hardware) problem on hardware designs (designs that have been fine-tuned over a number of years with no such temperature problems).

On 09-Sep-00 Niels Stenhøj wrote:

...

IMHO this is not a specific SuSE problem. This can happen to W95, W98 and 2000 as well. I've found that it's a hardware problem.

Working temperature. -------------------

Your machine must reach working temperature before booting, installing, partitioning, formatting etc. What we are talking about is the fact that the coefficient of expansion is not the same for the phycical disks as for the arms carrying the RW heads of your harddisk. Any misalignment of the tracks during the installation or boot process can cause the system to hang. In Windoze a symptom is a message of failure to access the registry. In SuSE it may be a failure to start Samba or another module.

If complying with the rule of letting the machine reach working temperatures before actually starting saves you for a lot of problems. To accomplish this press Del to enter the BIOS menu. after a couple of minutes, press Ctrl Alt Del to start the machine.

Installation on a clean hard disk. ---------------------------------

"And no man putteth new wine into old bottles."

I admit that despite complying to the above rules, installation failures may still occur. To me this happens if I try to install a new system on top of a hard disk which only has had its master boot record erased. So I overwrite the intire disk using the OnTrack disk utility (for Quantum zerofill.exe) remembering to let the machine reach working temperature before starting this utility. Then I partition and format the disk and finally I press Ctrl Alt Del to let the CD-1 boot and start the installation process. I also remember to manually select partitions without formatting. This way, Yast2 works brilliantly. If you feel sorry to (re)configure too much because of this new and virginal installation, you may wish to have a look at the back up, that you, of course, remembered to burn before even thinking of installing a new SuSE release. Else you may be lucky to find that a new release has resolved sources of irritation.

With regards,

Niels

--

---

Arlen Carlson

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. -- Clive James

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