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

Tue Jun 15 02:56:03 UTC 2010

Jon Masters wrote:
> 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

I know it's highly recommended. I don't take "highly recommended" as 
gospel. I've never seen a recent cogent argument for using partitions 
over files, and I've already expounded my argument to the contrary.

The "phlogiston theory" was once regarded as gospel, but I'd be 
surprised if more than two or three have heard of it.

If a swap partition is required for suspend to disk/resume to work, that 
would be a satisfactory argument for those cases, but not all.

> 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

Neither am I, but that does not mean they're right and I am not!

> 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.

Automatic adjustment is right, and Windows (and OS/2 before it) does that.

> 
>> 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.

In neither case was I asked.

> 
>> 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.

The idea of configuring the install medium as a repo isn't new, Debian 
has been doing it for donkey's years. I think SUSE does it too.

> 
>> 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.

At the installer boot prompt, there used to be some help screens where 
this kind of information can be provided. I didn't see anything of the 
kind this time, is it because I'm blind?

> 
>> 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.

vesafb might be a reasonable fallback if /dev/fb0 exists. The lack of a 
configuration file means my prior experience isn't useful in this case.

Really, though, I think it's reasonable to expect that if the kernel can 
get higher resolutions out of the (virtual) card, then X should too.

> 
> Jon.
> 
> 
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-- 

Cheers
John

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