Hi, On Wed, 4 Feb 1998, Tom Schaefer wrote:

Hubert Mantel wrote:

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There is no "real" reboot: Most of the installation process is done when linuxrc is running. YaST is executed directly off the CD. Because of that one cannot switch CDs whilst installing. After all packages from CD 1 are installed, the system completes its boot and starts the just installed base system. This is NO reboot, it's just finishing the first boot process. You can consider this "installing the system whilst booting it".

Ub, right ... I understand the concept - that part is fine and executes well, but I have noticed on some of the installs I have done with 5.0 qnd 5.1 - I didn't get the prompt for the 2nd or 3rd CD.

So maybe you didn't select any packages from CD 2 or 3?

That part needs to be made a tad more clear to the user/installer. For example, you should mention that with some sort of message "You have selected packages from the 2nd and 3rd CD sets, these will not be installed initially until after the system has been brought to init x (1 or 2?) and then you will be prompted for those CDs. Currently, the first CD is being used as a live file system and cannot be unmounted"

Currently YaST says: "You cannot switch media (e.g. CD) using this installation mode. Any selected packages not presently accessible will be noted for later installation." I understand we should find a text which is better understandable.... Any proposals? ;-)

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There's only one case if you have partitioned your harddrive.

Yes - that is good that you do a reboot here

No, it's unnecessary in most cases. A reboot is ONLY needed if anything on the freshly partitioned drive is currently in use (a mounted partition or a used swap partition). We plan to detect this and avoid the reboot if we do not need it. Currently we just choosed the safe way. But if linuxrc asks you whether to reboot you can say "no" and start YaST over again. But currently you do this on your own risk ;-)

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To be on the safe side, we require a reboot to make sure the kernel gets its harddisk info right. This will be improved in the future.

understood - BTW - the kernel selection screen needs a tad bit more information as well. I know it's difficult to gen a series of goofproof kernels, all distributions suffer here. But I think as long as the "canned" kernels are documented good, the user can at least get the system up and ready to customize their own kernel.

There's only one aspect which needs to be considered when choosing a kernel: It must support your SCSI adapter to allow mounting of the root file system. All other drivers are loaded as modules on demand. But we're working on making this even easier. YaST could determine the kernel itself based on the information about the modules the user has loaded in linuxrc.

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Why do we do it this way? Well, we are able to install on machines with only 4MB of RAM

Then yours and Slackware are the only ones which can meet that requirement - as far as I have heard anyway ... good job ...

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(although our hardware requirements are 8MB due to problems with the kernel buffer cache code in earlier versions; but it does work with only 4MB of RAM). In order to install a S.u.S.E. system, you only need one single boot (from disk, CD or using loadlin).

excellent - I have booted from CD, as well as diskette - both work fine

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Thank you for your feedback,

Hubert

No problem! I think you guys are on the right track - just a few little "annoyances" and "bugs" overall. You guys have elevated the standard where Linux distributions are concerned. Keep up the good work.

I think many "bugs" will turn out as "I'm not used to do it this way". People in the USA are used to RedHat and Slackware. If something with S.u.S.E. works in a different way, many people consider it a bug. This is understandable. Of course we do have bugs. And will ever have ;-) Hubert -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e