[rhelv6-beta-list] My first experiences with RHEL6 beta

[Jon Masters]

On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 17:19 +0800, John Summerfield wrote:

> First, I did a text install. I was very surprised how many pointless 
> questions it asked, and how many sensible ones it didn't ask. Like, "Do 
> you wan swap?"

Can you let us know if there was a reason that you could not do a vnc
install? This will give you a lot of flexibility during installation.

> I do not want swap. I especially do not want 2 Gbytes of swap on a test 
> virtual machine.

It can be a little frustrating to use virtual disk space for swap
volumes, but it is highly recommended in general by the Linux community
that you use a swap volume. As has been pointed out, LVM really does
mitigate a lot of the file-vs-volume issues. The kernel really likes
having swap because it is able to better manage cacheing and virtual
memory with the option to page stuff out to disk. Even under virt.,
there are many good reasons to have swap around. There is separate work
ongoing upstream to reduce double-cacheing type situations, but they
don't pertain to using swap space with a virtual machine.

> When I do want swap, I usually want a swap file

I am not aware of many distributions that support this mode of
operation, and I can't remember the last time I was asked about it (vs.
some unusual nbd-type-swap) but I do think there's some merit in having
file based swap in the general longer term if we get good low-memory
notification and reservation support upstream so we can have the system
dynamically adjust the swap size. But again, I am not aware of anyone
really asking for that, I'm just interested for academic reasons.

> it would have been really nice to have a working network after 
> installing. All I needed to do to get it running was to manually run 
> dhclient. Not hard, but it's a fair bet that I don't always want to 
> logon to my freshly-booted system. Especially if it's a car drive or 
> further away.

Perhaps you selected a non-Server install option? Depending upon what
choices you make during install, you may find that NetworkManager is
responsible for bringing up interfaces, which may result in you having
to login to configure the network.

> Speaking of vi, why is the whole of vim not installed? Why, when I 
> wanted to install more software, yum goes out to the network and 
> downloads stuff at 30kbytes/sec (my network can do 1.5 mbytes/sec and 
> better, the the speed problem's not at my end) when it could load of my 
> virtual DVD at 200 Mbytes/sec?

There might be more recent package versions available online, and so it
is a good idea to look for them. Of course, if you have local media then
that can be used too. I typically configure a local repository for my
beta systems based upon the ISO image so that I can be flexible about
using those or the latest package versions, etc.

> I have up on the first install and reinstalled, using the GUI tool this 
> time. I swear there were sensible choices offered to me this time that 
> were not offered with the text-mode install. I got to modify the package 
> selection, to choose no swap. Oh, joy!

The installer screens are slightly different when doing a graphical
install (there is always the VNC option also). Some of these are due to
it being easier to express things like package selection graphically,
whereas most users doing a text install are on a server on some serial
console or other and perhaps have different needs.

> Oh, the desktop. 800x600 is entirely unsatisfactory. So is the lack of a 
> configuration file where one might change it. Or a configuration tool.

There are several configuration tools available, however I am not a KDE
user, so I suspect someone else will have to provide a pointer.

> Here's the VGA card, the kernel's happy with it:
> 
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH 
> VirtualBox Graphics Adapter (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
>          Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- 
> ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
>          Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- 
> <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
>          Latency: 0
>          Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
>          Region 0: Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=16M]
>          Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]

I don't actually know what driver is used there, but perhaps you're
falling back to a VESA driver on this system. Most modern graphics
hardware is supported, but I am not sure what the maximum supported
resolution is for VirtualBox with the out-of-the-box drivers.

Jon.