Installation attempt doesn't resemble documentedprocedure...HELP PLEASE.

[John Mattioli]

Lee, Janina and others:

Lee wrote:
Do you remember where the HowTo came from?

	Yes, it came from a pointer on the linux-speakup home page.

Lee wrote:
	Perhaps if it's anything Janina has control over she can get rid
of the obsolete one.

	Apparently it is something she has control over and she has
already changed the URL.  Seems she updated the web site on Sunday.
Thanks for that update Janina.

Lee wrote:
	If the entire Fedora distribution came from pointers in that old
HowTo, though, it should be internally consistent so presumably isn't
the cause of the swap partition hang(???)

	I downloaded the yarrow images from the speakup site so I agree
with you that it shouldn't have mattered.  I also have already reread
the howto.  The images on the web site have changed ... They're now
dated 5/17/2004 which is obviously later than any images I could have
downloaded last week.  So I'm in the process of downloading again and
I'll reburn and retest.  Seems that without creating the initrd I failed
to include speakup in my *real* bootable system.  That's annoying, but
not catastrophic.  I verified the hang where linux attempted to enable
the swap space using the optacon.  I wonder if firstboot is attempting
to do something graphical but it isn't happening due to something weird
with my video card.  I don't think this is the case because I tried
switching consoles and that seemed to do something though all I could
see on the screen was a blinking cursor and I couldn't get a login
prompt.  That behavior seems to differ from the description of how bad
life will be if firstboot runs that's in the installation hoto which
reads, "Unfortunately, FirstBoot launches before any consoles launch, so
there is absolutely nothing you can do as a blind user once FirstBoot is
running either to work with FirstBoot or to get out of it."

Lee wrote:
	Note also that the first IDE hard disk is HDA; I assume HAD was
just a typo.

	Hmm, it wasn't a typo, it was an outlooko (if that's the proper
term for what happens when you type hda and Microsoft, thinking they
know best, decides you made a typo so they rearrange the letters to had
(which is a real word even if it isn't a valid unix device <grin>.

Janina wrote:
	You really should take Bill Acker up on his offer of tech
support by telephone--just like the HOWTO says. Let's get you working.

	Perhaps I will, but I'd like to make at least one more attempt
to get this right before bugging the guy.  If the errors are mine, due
to reading wrong documents or something I can fix easily on my own, I'd
rather save the tech support for when I have real problems.  For
instance, I noticed the installaiton howto not only doesn't talk about
how to get gnopernicus working, but doesn't point one in a direction
where such information is available.  If I can't find such information,
I'll be bugging people for help again <grin>.

John