Suse 9.0 ftp install software error, and older boxes
 

Hi,

Just thought I'd share this with everyone, as i have had a few painful days.

I have a few old k6-2 300MHZ machines with 128MB ram and 8GB HD - modest a few years back. I want these to act as internet cafe style public access machines - with a quality browser and a good word processing package.

I am trying to make good use of them. They origionally came with win95 - and we abandanoned that a while back, because of network difficulties. We don't want to splash out on new windows licenses.

I have tried a few distros, I just want something plain and simple, user and admin friendly and fast, and pretty. I would install win98 with opera and open office if possible because they work well on older equipment - not solid, but okay...

All distros seem to have a problem with the permedia2 video cards in our machines. I have a real problem getting good graphic performace out of these nearly retired beasts. I am stuck with a horrid 800*600 resolution and small 15inch monitors...yuck. We don't want to chuck this hardware away as it cost quite alot origionally and we want to squeeze every last drop of blood out of them.

Anyway suse 7.2 installed on them well in the past. So I thought hey let's try 9.0, where are the isos?

I soon found out there weren't any, so I tried to install from over FTP by using a bootable cd. Everything went well untill I hit a dead end - an error reading software packages.

After a good look around on the net, I figure from Suse's notes that the server may have been too busy.

After that, to save bandwidth and time - so I thought - I downloaded the FTP tree. I took a day fixing a previous download of rpms with mangled dos names, but I digress. Eventually I had the FTP tree on an XP box with filezilla ftp server running.

Now I try again. But I get the same as before. I try sharing over smb - I get the same response. I nearly give up. I consult the web, as far as I can assertain others have the same problem. Some suggest permission problems but don't give a solution.

I try using the smb method ia few more times, making sure I get the workgroup and user name correct, eventually, everything is fine after numerous repeated efforts.

The error message that appeared was during the yast2 setup with unavailable software media or something similar.

This has annoyed me greatly. And to top it all off, Suse doesn't run brilliantly under it's default install on this equipment, but appears more logical and user friendly than previous versions. Maybe I'll try adding more ram.

The annoying thing is, another 233 that we have runs fine with damn small linux off a cd! Fluxbox is clear, and dillo is superfast. The permedia2 graphics card on the K6-2 300 boxes just seems to be a royal pig, it burped at damn small linux. I'm sure in windows there was acceleration on the permedia2, no such possibility apparently in linux.

All I want is a fast simple workstation with good clear readable fonts, without which web browsing is pretty horrid, unless of course you use lynx.

Can anyone recommend a slimjim lovely distro, or a way to trim down suse 9.0, or squeeze some more performance out of our old boxes?

Geoff.

FTP Install
 

Hi,
I'm having the same problem with the FTP install. It gets into setup after downloading the 46meg file into RAM. Then gives the media error message, which when clicked goes to the package manager. It appears it is searching for a file called user.sel. I've looked all over but cant find it anywhere, even on a few FTP servers.
Anybody know where I can get this file or a way around?
Stu Jones

Guys,

Have had the same problem. But I have an earlier version on CD. Did a search on this and found a directory full of the .SEL files.

This directory is on the FTP server under

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.0/suse/setup/descr/

Just now have to work out how to copy one of these files so the new box can see it. :-)

Probably download it on another machine to a floppy....

Cheers
Jim

The Sunshine State
Queensland, Australia

>I would install win98 with opera and open office if possible because
>they work well on older equipment - not solid, but okay...
NT4 is much more solid and works smoothly on your class of hardware
if you don't install IE 4+ which assimilates the files explorer and jams
bits of IE into the system DLL's.

>Anybody know where I can get this file or a way around?

Get a copy of SuSe 9.0 on CD from someone who bought the boxed
set and is finished with it or buy a secondhand copy off ebay.

The version of KDE included with 9.0 is annoyingly slow on a k6-300.
9.0 is just not intended for use on a machine which is that slow, I'm
not saying thats a good thing. I stopped using SuSe because I
see no reason to upgrade my hardware.

Thanks for your reply.

>NT4 is much more solid and works smoothly on your class of hardware
if you don't install IE 4+ which assimilates the files explorer and jams
bits of IE into the system DLL's.

The problem here is that we don't want to buy windows at all. I work on a pentium 300mhz with win2k, and 128mb ram and performance is fine.


>The version of KDE included with 9.0 is annoyingly slow on a k6-300.
9.0 is just not intended for use on a machine which is that slow, I'm
not saying thats a good thing. I stopped using SuSe because I
see no reason to upgrade my hardware.

I felt it was quicker than the kde that came with 7.2.

My new project is to switch window manager to fvwm2, as I have discovered how stonkingly simple and good it is. Building a simple fvwm2rc file also is useful for locking people out the system, ie you can specify a handful of applications easily.

I'd have to say I am very impressed with the suse/kde integration and on a faster box I'd recommend that combination. KDE is so hungry with RAM it is a pig.

The two boxes are k6-2s 300MHZ with 128mb of ram, and I think this is more than ample, and demand great performance without using windows. A small distro like damn small is too limited and I see a distro like that serving older more limited hardware. After all I spent £700 on a 350mhz AMD and it worked fine, these machines are not dinosaurs!

G.