I recently rescued a 1995-vintage pentium 233 from the back corner of my gar
age
and returned the borrowed hardware to it - floppy, HD's 8.4GB, 6.4GB, & 1.6G
B.
FC5, as I have here, is out of the question for that old machine, so I insta
lled
RH7.2. It seemed to be running Ok, but there was a problem when it was left
unattended. I think the screen saver was taking effect and I'd find it froze
n
with a blank screen. Space bar and/or mouse movement would not get it to com
e
back to life.

So I fresh installed RH9.0 (everything) and it now freezes at the text "logi
n:"
prompt. This looks familiar, but I can't remember the problem.

I've run memtest86 for a day and there were zero errors. Win98 has been
installed on hdb-6.4GB (the 1.6GB is setup as linux swap) now and it runs
without any problems, so I doubt that the freezing is any sort of hardware
problem.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Bob

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 10:56:01 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote:

> I recently rescued a 1995-vintage pentium 233 from the back corner of my g
arage
> and returned the borrowed hardware to it - floppy, HD's 8.4GB, 6.4GB, & 1.
6GB.
> FC5, as I have here, is out of the question for that old machine, so I ins
talled
> RH7.2. It seemed to be running Ok, but there was a problem when it was lef
t
> unattended. I think the screen saver was taking effect and I'd find it fro
zen
> with a blank screen. Space bar and/or mouse movement would not get it to c
ome
> back to life.
>
> So I fresh installed RH9.0 (everything) and it now freezes at the text "lo
gin:"
> prompt. This looks familiar, but I can't remember the problem.
>
> I've run memtest86 for a day and there were zero errors. Win98 has been
> installed on hdb-6.4GB (the 1.6GB is setup as linux swap) now and it runs
> without any problems, so I doubt that the freezing is any sort of hardware
> problem.
>
> Does this sound familiar to anyone?
>
> Bob

I don't think that the resource requirements for FC5 are all that much
greater then they were for RH9. You might want to try it and see what
happens. You could also give Damn Small Linux a try, it's much lighter
weight then RH9 was and it's using modern components.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>
> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 10:56:01 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote:
> 
>
> I don't think that the resource requirements for FC5 are all that much
> greater then they were for RH9. You might want to try it and see what
> happens.

I hadn't mentioned the other specs of this 233MMX machine, but the release n
otes
for FC5 indicate that the 128MB memory it has will not support graphics for
either install or operation. That was my experience a few days ago when I
started an install with just the first CD of FC5. I've also started installs
 of
ubuntu 6.06, suse 10.0, & centos4.2 just to see what they look like, before
loading RH9 which I've had for quite awhile.

> You could also give Damn Small Linux a try, it's much lighter
> weight then RH9 was and it's using modern components.

True. That are lots of alternatives, but right now I'd like to solve a probl
em
that shouldn't be happening.

Bob

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:30:02 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote:

> General Schvantzkoph wrote: 
>
> I hadn't mentioned the other specs of this 233MMX machine, but the release
 notes
> for FC5 indicate that the 128MB memory it has will not support graphics fo
r
> either install or operation. That was my experience a few days ago when I
> started an install with just the first CD of FC5. I've also started instal
ls of
> ubuntu 6.06, suse 10.0, & centos4.2 just to see what they look like, befor
e
> loading RH9 which I've had for quite awhile.
> 
>
> True. That are lots of alternatives, but right now I'd like to solve a pro
blem
> that shouldn't be happening.
>
> Bob

If you really want to get RH9 working your best bet would be to search for
your problems in Google Groups and see if you can dredge up an answer that
someone posted when RH9 was current. RH9 is so old that most of us have
forgotten the fine details of it's problems. Using a contemporary
lightweight distro means that there will be other current users to answer
questions. DSL is so small (50 MBytes) that you can download it in a few
minutes. If I were you I'd burn a DSL live CD and try it. If it works
satisfactorily then you can forget about getting RH9 to work.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>
> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:30:02 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote:
> 
>
> If you really want to get RH9 working your best bet would be to search for
> your problems in Google Groups and see if you can dredge up an answer that
> someone posted when RH9 was current. RH9 is so old that most of us have
> forgotten the fine details of it's problems.

I was only hoping that it might be a configuration problem that I could edit
 and
that someone here might remember off the top of their head.

> Using a contemporary
> lightweight distro means that there will be other current users to answer
> questions. DSL is so small (50 MBytes) that you can download it in a few
> minutes. If I were you I'd burn a DSL live CD and try it. If it works
> satisfactorily then you can forget about getting RH9 to work.

That isn't what I want to do. It will take me less time to simply reinstall 
with
a different configuration and see if that does the trick. It wasn't supposed
 to
happen in the first place, so that may be the easiest fix.

Bob

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 12:25:38 -0700, Robert Heiling
<robheil@comcast.net> wrote:

>General Schvantzkoph wrote: 
>
>I was only hoping that it might be a configuration problem that I could edi
t and
>that someone here might remember off the top of their head.
> 
>
>That isn't what I want to do. It will take me less time to simply reinstall
 with
>a different configuration and see if that does the trick. It wasn't suppose
d to
>happen in the first place, so that may be the easiest fix.
>
>Bob

If you really prefer to use an old Red Hat version at this point
rather than switch distributions, you should at least use the
fedoralegacy.org updates (available for 7.3 and 9, though not for
7.2).  That might solve the problem.  I used 7.3 with only 128MB RAM a
few years ago and it seemed tolerable, though I would guess some
applications (OpenOffice?) would have had trouble if I'd tried them,
regardless of the distribution.  Even if you go with DSL or something,
you might want to see whether the system will accept more RAM (and
whether you can find compatible RAM cheap enough).

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Some Other Somebody Else wrote:
>
> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 12:25:38 -0700, Robert Heiling
> <robheil@comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>
> If you really prefer to use an old Red Hat version at this point
> rather than switch distributions, you should at least use the
> fedoralegacy.org updates (available for 7.3 and 9, though not for
> 7.2).  That might solve the problem.

Now that's responsive to my posted question. I'll take a look at those. Than
ks!

> I used 7.3 with only 128MB RAM a
> few years ago and it seemed tolerable, though I would guess some
> applications (OpenOffice?) would have had trouble if I'd tried them,
> regardless of the distribution.  Even if you go with DSL or something,
> you might want to see whether the system will accept more RAM (and
> whether you can find compatible RAM cheap enough).

The RedHat 6.0 disks are still laying around, so I know that was installed o
n it
back then and I think there was something else I had on it prior to that
(non-RedHat). So it's not the first time that linux has been on it and the
motive is not simply to get some linux running on it. This exercise is solel
y
for experimentation and I won't be putting any money into hardware either as
 the
computer isn't worth it. This system that I'm on now boots FC4, FC5, Win2K a
nd
WinXP, so I don't need that other one for anything other than the fact that 
I
was going to connect it to my LAN and do some experiments. I have another on
e to
try if that one doesn't work out.

Thanks for the tip.

Bob

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 10:56:01 -0700, Robert Heiling <robheil@comcast.net> wrote:
> I recently rescued a 1995-vintage pentium 233 from the back corner of my g
arage
> and returned the borrowed hardware to it - floppy, HD's 8.4GB, 6.4GB, & 1.
6GB.
> FC5, as I have here, is out of the question for that old machine, so I ins
talled
> RH7.2. It seemed to be running Ok, but there was a problem when it was lef
t
> unattended. I think the screen saver was taking effect and I'd find it fro
zen
> with a blank screen. Space bar and/or mouse movement would not get it to c
ome
> back to life.

> So I fresh installed RH9.0 (everything) and it now freezes at the text "lo
gin:"
> prompt. This looks familiar, but I can't remember the problem.

I'm trying to understand what you mean by "freezes".  Have you
tried typing "root" at the prompt, and then use the password you set
up during the install?

If you fresh installed RH9, then perhaps this is the normal login
prompt, waiting for you to login.

Also, I seem to remember that an "everything" install of RH9 gave some
users problems.  Perhaps you should try a "Workstation" (I think it
was called) install.

It's been a long time since I installed a RH9 system, and I never did
an "Everything" install.

> I've run memtest86 for a day and there were zero errors. Win98 has been
> installed on hdb-6.4GB (the 1.6GB is setup as linux swap) now and it runs
> without any problems, so I doubt that the freezing is any sort of hardware
> problem.

> Does this sound familiar to anyone?

--
Dale Dellutri <ddelQQQlutr@panQQQix.com> (lose the Q's)

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Dale Dellutri wrote:
>
> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 10:56:01 -0700, Robert Heiling <robheil@comcast.net> w
rote: 
> 
>
> I'm trying to understand what you mean by "freezes".

Only what's normally meant by the term - the system is frozen or hung. There
 is
no HD activity and key depressions have no effect and aren't echoed on the
screen. Mouse movements do not result in movement of cursor if on a graphics
screen.

> Have you
> tried typing "root" at the prompt, and then use the password you set
> up during the install?

You are joking I hope.

> If you fresh installed RH9, then perhaps this is the normal login
> prompt, waiting for you to login.

As above.

> Also, I seem to remember that an "everything" install of RH9 gave some
> users problems.  Perhaps you should try a "Workstation" (I think it
> was called) install.

I can recall that there was an obscure Asian font that caused problems with 
it
in the past and just that one font needed to be left out. That problem didn'
t
show up this time. Now I have re-installed with the simple personal computer
installation instead and that is now freezing on the Welcome screen and hasn
't
even completed the setup.

> It's been a long time since I installed a RH9 system, and I never did
> an "Everything" install.

I'm trying various kernel parameters in grub in search of a solution. mem=12
8M
didn't help, so I'll try others.
[vbcol=seagreen] 
> 

Bob

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>
> On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 20:40:33 -0700, Robert Heiling wrote:
> 
>
> I seem to remember that RH6.x was pretty buggy. RH7.3 worked well and I
> used it for a long time. I was very unhappy with RH8 and RH9, as I recall
> the performance of those releases sucked. I stuck with 7.3 through the RH8
> era and then when RH9 came along and it was worse than RH8 I switched to
> Mandrake for a while and stayed with it until I got my first Athlon64
> system. Mandrake 10 had terrible A64 support so I switched back to Fedora.

I had RH9 running on this system for a long time and it ran fine for me (2.5
 GHz
CPU, 759 MB memory). Attempts to install FC4 in a separate partition last ye
ar
from DVD failed right after hitting carriage return. I gave up after trying
quite a number of misguided suggestions for kernel parameters and getting ti
red
of the whole thing. Then, earlier this year, I encountered a situation in a
completely different context that involved ACPI and wondered if that had bee
n
the problem with the FC4 installation. Sure enough! I turned ACPI off and th
e
install went through. Later, I also installed FC5 over the RH9 installation.
 Not
knowing how it would work out, I kept FC4 as backup, but I guess that partit
ion
is where I'll put FC6 when it's ready.

> If you are looking to run an old RH on that system I'd use 7.3 not 9.

But flash back to sometime in 2003 when RH9 was more current. I have no trou
ble
visualizing the responses to a proposal to install 7.3 and they would likely
 be
that 7.3 was too OLD and I should use the current RH9. <G>

Bob

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