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[First an apology; Week before last when the next issue was due here, I had company and was too tied up to open the computer].

As you see by my previous post, I had quite a weekend with my SUSE 10.1 install. I was busy the next weekend, but last Saturday I had another go at it, and will tell you what I learned here.

This time I had done some research in the areas where I was weak in knowledge the other time, and I knew what I should choose for network connections, and so on. The man at PCTech101.com from whom I had ordered the DVD, graciously sent me the 6 CD set when I wrote him of my trials. I did my backups, and then settled down for a new installation process. I really hoped it would NOT be like that other weekend, when I gave up three days to try over and over.

I had not changed my boot order in BIOS back to the hard drive yet, so starting was easy. I inserted the first CD in the drive, and rebooted the computer. Things went along nicely until YaST (the installer program) asked if I had any other sources to add to the catalog. I indicated yes, and it asked me to insert that media. I put in the Add-ons, or 6th CD, and it refused to recognize it as a valid CD. It kept asking me to put in the CD.

When I tried to back up and take it out so I could put in the first one again, the drive wouldn’t give it up! Ho-boy! Now what?

But after clicking “back” a couple of screens, I tried again, and the drive opened, so I could put the first CD back in. Then I proceeded right past that point, and didn’t offer another source any more. I figured I’d just be stuck installing those programs later.

When I got to the partitioning stage I carefully set each of the partitions I had reserved the previous time to be mounted, except for the ones at the end of the second hard drive where I had installed SUSE 9.3. I wanted to keep that for emergencies! I did make some changes in naming some of the partitions, but I guessed at a couple, as to which to put where. (Later I discovered what I’d done wrong here).

From that point on, the whole installation proceed very well. YaST indicated at first that it was going to take 6 hours for the install, but as it hummed along, it kept correcting the time estimated, and over lunch I had to come back to switch to the next CD on a fairly frequent basis.

It showed CD 6 as a source in the list it was working through, so I hoped it would turn out okay there.

It did too. Although the installation seemed to stall sometimes for whole moments. I convinced myself, that YaST was adding to the catalog the programs it had not listed at the beginning.

The next snag came when it was suppose to go online to do the update. I’d read that SUSE 10.1 has a flaw here, and doesn’t always do this. You have to try more than once. Usually the second time it will go do the update. I tried several times, and gave it about 15 minutes before I gave up doing it here. The error message was: curl 28 failed. I checked to skip the update for now, and went on.

Before long I was logged into the system! That took me 4 hours and 26 minutes.

I went into SAX2 and adjusted the monitor resolution. I’m used to choosing 800 x 600 in the install stage, but this was so small in the center of my screen that I knew the default 1024 x 600 would be better. (That means I’ll have to set all my fonts to be larger so I can read them).

Then I went into YaST and clicked on YOU to do my updates, and saw almost right away, why it wouldn’t do it. In the lower left corner was a graph showing how much of my computer’s resources were full. The /usr partition where programs are put and updates go, was 98% full, and the bar graph was very red! My other partitions looked fine, and in a moment or so I realized that I’d made a mistake in the partitioning.

I had assigned the 3 GB partition to be the /usr and the 6 GB partition to be for the root, or / . If I had reversed those I probably would have been fine. Even better would have been to delete everything on the first drive (10GB) and just set a Swap area, and the rest all for / (root), and then a large 20 GB section for /home on the second drive which is much larger. Then root and /usr could adjust themselves as they needed to share that first drive.

Yes, as long as I live, and keep making mistakes, I’ll keep learning.

Obviously, there was no point in trying to do updates, or even set up all my “look and feel” to the SUSE 10.1 as the only answer I could see, was to wait until this coming Saturday, and go through the whole process again! This time I expect to get the partitions right, and if everything else goes as well as last time, I should be settling into my new SUSE Castle next week.!

Will there be a part III to this saga? We’ll see