[ILUG] Suse Followup ...

[Dunphy Richard-rdunph01]

> As long as you stay on lilo's mbr side you'll be just fine. Looking
> through newsgroups and suse's support database, i've realised 
> how shitty
> is their way to handle lilo. They've got the only lilo i know which
> won't work even after you write it down on a partition other than the
> mbr. I spent a couple of hours yesterday playing around with it and
> things are not as bright as all the reviews said.

I think you'll find this is standard! If you install it to a partition then you need something in the MBR which allows you to boot the partition. I've no problems using the Boot Manager that comes with Ranish's Partition Manager and having lilo boot from /dev/hdb2.

> 
> Depending on how you recompile a kernel for instance, you 
> won't get your
> usb scanner recognised anymore ... That sucks a lot ...

Don't have a USB Scanner, but suspect you should have run 'make cloneconig' before recompiling the kernel to ensure you get all the SuSE settings, then remove the ones you don't want.

> Suse provide their own 2.4.10 kernel, which you can recompile without
> troubles unless you have an AMD ... People remember about blacklisted
> kernels operating on AMDs such as 2.4.10/11/12. They were so bad my
> machines never hung so many times in a day.

I've never had problems compiling SuSE kernels for AMD, Intel, PPC or others. Usually if there is a problem with a particular SuSE kernel version then it's also usually in the stock kernels. SuSE tends to add extra functionality, not break it. 

That said... Did once have problems installing SuSE on an early Athlon system with 7.0 (I think) but downloading a new bootdisk from their website resolved that one.

> Yast2 which is their configuration tool is a brilliant tool i 
> must say,
> you can update your system freely and quickly using several methods
> including local FTP (which works nicely at home). On the 
> downside, Lilo
> config will f*** up again if ever written anywhere else than 
> the MBR ...

Yast2 is very good. I particularly like the way SuSE have integrated it into the KDE Control Center as well.

RikD.