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Technical Notes
ZOIS Technical Note TN-2002-06-25
Author and Audience
This TN is intended for persons working with the Linux/GNU Operating
System on Intel/PC platforms. UNIX systems programming skills are
assumed. Written by Martin Sullivan[1], ZOIS
Limited, Cockermouth.
Abstract
Linux on a reasonably beefy not-too-old PC was upgraded from Red
Hat 6.2 to Threads 7.3. Although it was accomplished without much
difficulties there were one or two wrinkles.
Introduction
ZOIS has a number of Linux based machines all using
Red Hat[2] Linux at version 6.2. As Linux moves along
it is becoming increasingly hard to install packaged program suites on
this platform, the RPM mechanism in particular needed to be upgraded and
pre-compiled binaries expect the next iteration of the GNU C library,
GLIBC, at 2.2. It was therefore decided to install Threads Linux
7.3. Threads Linux is Red Hat's `free' distribution provided by The
Linux Emporium[3]. Threads Linux is so called for
it does not contain official Red Hat goodness and the name "Red Hat"
is cherished, a trademark that we duly acknowledge (as we indeed
acknowledge everything that might be a trademark). As you might guess,
Threads Linux 7.3 approximates to Red Hat 7.3.
Materials and Platform
A two year old IBM Aptiva E46 was chosen for the upgrade. It
has 128 MBytes of memory, an ADM K6 CPU and has a single 8 GByte
hard disk, of which 3 GBytes as been allocated to Linux (the rest
being used for another Operating System). In addition to the standard
hardware the machine is equipped with an NE2000 emulating Ethernet
card and a HP CDROM writer. The Threads Linux 7.3 distribution, as
supplied by The Linux Emporium, comes on 3 CDROMs. Until the upgrade
it was running a RH 6.2 distribution.
Method
The first of the three CDROMs was installed in the CDROM drive and the machine rebooted off that CD. The installation options chosen was graphical and upgrade. As further choices were presented (in the form of a Wizard) the defaults were chosen, including increasing the Swap to 156 MBytes from the previous 72 MByte partition. This swap space appears to be a held in `regular' file-system space rather than being a raw partition in its own right. When asked it was decided to migrate existing `ext2' systems to the new `ext3' type the answer was yes.
The installation takes approximately an hour and uses 1.5 GBytes of disk space (the upgrade was to a fairly full installation). On initial reboot you get a Red Hat splash screen from lilo, rather than the old familiar prompt and Kudzu, the hardware detection software, spots two new devices, USB and Sound. These, of course, were there all along just RH 6.2, notoriously, did not spot them.
Local convention dictated that it was necessary to edit /etc/passwords to change the home directory of the single user on the system from /home to /u. The appropriate entries in /etc/fstab for NFS directories /u and /var/spool/mail were made and then the file systems mounted.
It was not possible to telnet or rlogin into the box, this was surprising since this was an upgrade and it had been possible before. It was therefore necessary to install the telnet, rsh and wu-ftpd server packages as RPM from the second of the CDs. These are named, unsurprisingly, telnet-server, rsh-server and wu-ftpd-server. Once installed the entries in the xinetd system for these packages need to be edit for they are installed disabled. Somebody doesn't like them, but this is a trusted site and they are considered useful. Xinetd is a replacement for the `master internet demon' inetd, its configuration is a series of stanzas which, in Threads 7.3, has been split into a series of files the /etc/xinetd.d directory. As an aside, the installation of the wu-ftpd server generated some errors, libconf complained about libgd.so, but the ftp server appeared to install and function correctly. The FTP system did install in such a fashion as to allow anon-ftp access. This is not required on an internal machine and was switched off by deleting the added ftp user from the /etc/passwd file using vipw.
X-Windows was not running and the occasional message about "x" respawning too fast pointed to problems with X-Window's display manager. The display manager is started from a script which itself is started from the init table, /etc/intittab. This is unusual for the author is more familiar with having this start from the /etc/rc.d scripts. The display manager could not start the X-Server and this appeared to be because it was reading the old X-Server configuration file (/etc/X11/XF86Config) which now, as far as the new X-Server was concerned, had several invalid entries in it. A new XF86Config had been installed as XF86Config.rpmnew, but this appeared to be a skeleton, for the X-Server did not like it either. Moving the new file into the correct place and running the Xconfigurator program seem to be the solution. All the defaults were selected with video-card memory being set to 4 MBytes and the resolution and depth of the screen being selected as 1024x726 and 32 bits respectively. The X-Server booted correctly, and for once there was no problems with mode-lines!
With X working users could login. Those selecting the default seem to directed to the K Desktop Environment (KDE)[4], now in its third incarnation, although Gnome[5] could be selected too. Both these Windowing systems display much visual gadgetry and prettiness.
It was noted that one user could not run the KOffice stuff because
of apparent problems with dcopserver, an essential communications
demon. These problems were ongoing at the time this TN was
published. Suffice it to say that there are a number of ways dcopserver
can be made to fail (if the KDE mail-lists are anything to go by) and
this is currently being investigated.
Conclusion
Upgrading to Linux Threads 7.3 from Red Hat 6.2 was remarkably easy
although some niggles were demonstrated. It was disappointing to note
that it now requires 1.5GBytes of space to install an installation that
did not include telnet. The niggles did not present major problems for
the author, but may do so for others who may not be so versed in UNIX
and its spawn. In this respect the user-friendly installation scripts
may lead them up the garden path and leave them there.
References
$Date: 2002/11/20 18:21:37 $