Is my machine too slow for RH9
 

:D After many hours of trawling the web for linux switches to allow me to install RH9 I finally managed to get through to the graphical installation program.

:study: I wanted to set my machine up so that it's got a web server, mysql, GUI of sorts and some development tools. So I picked a server installation.

:study: I picked what I needed and a good few where curiosity got the better of me and proceded to install the packages.

:D After rebooting the system being full of the joys of looking forward to a new OS it seemed to run up pretty sharpish until I got to the GUI.

:o I logged in and waited 2 hours whilst listening to the HDD thrashing away. A couple of error messages popped up regarding sound cards but thats OK because I don't have one. It took me about ten minutes to acknowledge this to the system and then I finally got p!$$&d off after another half hour of waiting and BGB'd it (Big Grey Button'd).

:confused: I've checked my machine against the specs on my RH9 1 CD and my machine should be fine (I think).

I've got a Compaq ProLiant 5000 4 x 200 Mhz P Pro, 192Mb, 3 x 2.1Gb and 1 x 9.1Gb. Thoughts ?

:confused: Does RH9 do something wacky when it starts up for the first time like complie all the code for all the programs you need?

:o Am I being too impatient ?

:newbie: in need of saving

try rh7.3 or rh8.0.

I promise I'll use the spell checker this time !

According to the specs my machine either passes or meets the recommended.

Min My
CPU Pentium Pentium Pro
Graphical 400MHz 4 x 200MHz (800MHz)
HDD 475MB 6.3GB & 9.1GB
Mem 128MB 192MB (Recommended)

Chears fir the cwik rispons Devboy

RedHat is heavy. Take another of less weight distro, like Debian.
and you'll never run any GUI with a pentium 200 (well you'll but certainly not KDE or Gnome).

I think something went wrong during install, GaryOswald. I use RH9 and RH8 and MDK9 on my old computer with:
AMD K-6II 300 MHz
128 MB SDRAM
SiS6326 integrated video
slow hardrive

and it runs fine- KDE takes almost a minute to start, but that's about the worst of it.

Maybe try getting a new graphics card to speed up the graphical display.
But first try WindowMaker, which is less graphics intensive than KDE and Gnome. Just type: switchdesk WindowMaker (enter) startx (enter)

I think you should go with Slackware 8.1. In the first two weeks with Slack, I've got twice more gray hairs then I usually had and half of it I almost tear apart.(and I'm only 23, got my first white hair at 15) I've been using Mandrake for an year, then switch to RedHat for 7 months and few weeks ago to Slackware. It's just amazing the speed difference you get on it. But be ready to push your hands thru the door often. At the end, Slack with blackbox is quite worthy for speed/stability :), just my two swedish crowns :)

Yes, Gary, I'm afraid that system is too dated for RH 9, even with 4xP200's. Maybe there's some way to break it down and MAKE it work, but I'm a newbie so I may be waayy off base.
RH 9 says it's minimum recommended system is PII-400 processor-based. I'm running it on a Compaq Armada 1750 (PII-350 proc.) w/128M RAM and 6GHD.
You could probably run a 6.2 RH version on your system though, I'm running that on a single processor P200 MMX system. Waiting for some programs (like Netscape) to come up the first time is agonizing, other than that it seems OK.
I just remembered though, I originally installed it on a PII-400. I moved the HD to a P200MMX system later. Don't know if this makes a difference, but it is running fine currently.

I've just found something on a different thread that has got the old cogs going.

When I installed I typed "linux mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=191MB@1M" this was how I managed to get it to install.

However I am using GRUB and from what I have read so far GRUB and Compaq's don't mix.

I think I'll re-install except pick LILO as my boot loader with Window Maker as the GUI. The trick from there will be for this long serving soon to be ex-Windows user to suss out editing the lilo configuration file so that it does it every time.

If that all fails another distribution will be in order but if anyone knows any tricks to aid the path of installation glory I'd be really happy to hear from you.

I'm not sure why you need to do a command-line install. ( :newbie: ). Must be because you are using multiple processors, I assume. So far I've just booted from the CD and run the default install, pretty much, on my single-CPU systems.
If GRUB doesn't "get along" with Compaqs, I guess my installs have been flukes? These Compaqs have a 10 or 15M partition that holds CMOS configuration programming, maybe GRUB doesn't take that into consideration by default? I figured I'd have no trouble as long as I didn't ask the install wizard to wipe the entire disk, just Linux partitions. I did have issues the first time I installed though, because the wizard didn't have an option to wipe just the main partition on the (originally WinNT-ntfs) system, and I had to manually partition the Linux system. I think I made the swap partition too small, anyway I couldn't boot to the GUI. I was then able to run the install again, select the "delete all Linux" partitions options and run the default install, which automatically partitioned the area it cleared.

:D At last :D Deep Deep Joy

I took into consideration what you said about the Compaq partition and ensured that I didn't scrub it. I also installed it using LILO as opposed to GRUB.

There was an amazing impact on speed. I firstly tried just installing the machine with WindowMaker only and then moved on to GNOME.

All being well I picked the configuration I wanted to implement in the first place and I am now running a RH9 Server with Web,MySQL and GNOME.

Oh by the way I forgot to mention the fact that I installed another graphics card after I bought the machine. ATI Mach 64 8Mb.

It's not rapid but runs about the same speed as when I had the dreaded NT on it.

I'd just like to thank everyone that has helped me get up and going and am looking forward to bouncing some more ideas off you all.

You never know maybe there's a newbie out there with a similar problem that I can help.

Thanks once again all !!!!! :D :D :D :D