Topic: Install e-smith over Redhat v8.3??

[Ed]

Is it possible to install the e-smith RPMs over a standard v 8.3 install of RHL?  If so, how?


The reason I ask is that I cannot get the iso image disk of v5.6 to load. It keeps telling me that the boot block is corrupted, and then "throws up its hands and surrenders," spitting my CD back at me.

Anyway, I have the basic RHL 8.3 that came with the RHL Bible. I am able to use fdisk to clear all partitions and then get RHL to install. I cannot get SME to load under the same conditons. (I have tried this several times). I even tried loading SME over the RHL install, with no success.

I now have a functioning RHL v8.3 workstation, but I am too dense to figure out how to make it into a server/firewall like SME. Believe me, I tried. I just can't figure out how to configure the sucker! SME is soooo much easier (I had a 5.6 install working, and broke it somehow when I installed dansguardian). I could not use the upgrade feature as SME would not load (same error, something to do with hda3 being too small).  I had a  miserable weekend trying to load WIN98 so I could run fdisk, and even resorted into using Ghost to restore the original WIN XP image. This it did just fine, but SME still refused to load!! S**T S**T S**T!!

Before anyone asks, I have already ordered a replacement hard drive.



I see some advantages in having a full blown RHL running instead of the subset installed by SME. I believe that SME 5.6 and RHL 8.3 both use the same kernal components.  SO, bottom line, has anyone tried this?

Thanks in advance,

Ed Hamlin

[rick@jokiin.com]

I have had a problem installing 5.6 if the system already had red hat on it, I couldn't work out why at the time. The easiest way around was to boot up with a win2k disc, start the install, delete all partitions then reboot with the sme disc instead. Once I had no red hat partitions at all the install went ahead no problems. Not sure if this is what is happenening for you or not but I have seen it a few times now.

[Dave Liquorice]

> The reason I ask is that I cannot get the iso image disk of v5.6 to
> load. It keeps telling me that the boot block is corrupted, and then
>"throws up its hands and surrenders," spitting my CD back at me.

Tried making a boot floppy and booting from that?

Cheers
Dave.

[Steven]

Not sure, but presumably if you went fdisk /mbr your wouldn't need to boot w2k setup.

How did you get the ISO ? if you downloaded it, did you use ascii or binary download? - only download binary

Steven

[Bob Todd]

definitely sounds like a corrupt download of the ISO you're using.

[Ed]

Thanks all.

I probably  am going to have to punt on this one - my main client is a Mac running OSX 10.2, which is (supposed to be) able to create iso images. It sure acts like it! I can read the CD on the RHL installation. I know this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a true image, but my SME 5.5 CD, created the same way, loaded OK. I still think it's something goofy on the hard drive. It was an e-machines pentium in its previous life, e-machines tends to do things differently so maybe that's the problem. I guess I can use my RHL distro to compute a checksum and see if it compares to the posted value.

 I am a little disappointed that nobody had ideas about installing the e-smith RPMs on top of RHL. Theoretically this should work, but I realize that SME has probably messed with the basic kernal so maybe it won't be so easy to do. (Silence is nature's way of saying: "You're on your own, bub!") ANYONE -- ideas on this??

I may try this just for grins - I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen? Kill my workstation? It's already got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel....

... and in the meantime I shoudl be getting a new hard drive Wednesday, when I can try out the SME install again. This is kind of a poor man's way of partitioning - disconnect one hd and connect the other! (Funny thing - I could not find a small hard drive! Had to buy a 40 gb, which is a LOT more than I need.)

Rgds
Ed

[Scott Smith]

> I am a little disappointed that nobody had ideas about installing
> the e-smith RPMs on top of RHL. Theoretically this should work,
> but I realize that SME has probably messed with the basic kernal
> so maybe it won't be so easy to do. (Silence is nature's way of
> saying: "You're on your own, bub!") ANYONE -- ideas on this??

The SME kernel is pretty much stock Red Hat. You wouldn't (or shouldn't) find any issues there.

If I follow, you seem to mean loading just the e-smith/Mitel RPMs over an existing RH load. I've tried that, not great results. Gave up, not because it is impossible, but deemed it more work than it was worth.

I like the idea of an installation that pulls from the Red Hat distro, though. Even if it is via a custom boot disk and ks.cfg that would load only the packages needed, etc. There seems some value in being able to say, "Take the SME boot disk, insert your Red Hat media...." Anything not present on the Red Hat media -- such as the e-smith/Mitel template and config db systems, RH security updates -- could be pulled in via the Internet. Or from the SME CD.

However, I think it would be difficult to configure an SME load that could be post-installed over Red Hat. Mainly because you'd have to figure out what was needed that didn't get loaded, what is loaded that you don't want, what is loaded that might conflict, etc.

My $0.02

Scott

[del]

Hi,
I had problems installing SME on a HDD with a previous RH8 install on it and I used a utility called Delpart.exe, it is really for deleting NTFS partitions but it also deletes Linux and FAT. If you create  DOS boot disk and copy delpart onto it you just boot to the dos disk and run delpart.exe and it shows all the existing partitions and you can delete them. Remember to choose save when you have finished (I say this because I didn't and couldn't understand why they were still all there!).  You can download delpart from: http://hercules.lss.ksu.edu/download/MSSTUFF/
Hope this helps,
Del

[Ed]

I think there's an easier way to do this - unfortunately I am not skilled at C+ or Perl, but if someone was skilled, there is a simple script that could be built.

The e-smith distro has a file called "comps" located in /e-smith/base/ folder. This appears to be a list of rpm packages in the order that they are loaded:

1 SMEServer {
  LPRng
  MAKEDEV
  SMEServer
  SysVinit
  anacron
  apache
  apmd
  ash
  at
  authconfig
.
.
.
(etc, etc)

which I interpret to mean "the SMEServer consists of  these rpms:"  (each of those corresponds to the pricipal name of a particular rpm in the folder  /e-smith/RPMS/ on the distro.

I'm sure someplace on the distro is the script that reads this file, copies the rpms to the hard drive, and installs them. I played around a bit and found that by using:

rpm -Uvh -*rpm

it would uniquely identify the correct rpm in ALMOST all cases. (The "-" following the name is important, because acts as a delimiter for the rpm name).

I was going to brute-force the install by manually editing the comps file and adding the correct characters to turn it into a shell script, but I think that will be a lot of work (there is a whole bunch of rpms in that folder). A script to create a shell script file, or to actually just do the rpm -Uvh * function in the correct order, would be much more elegant.

Now, if it wasn't late and I was a bunch smarter about this stuff, I might try to find the script someplace. It's gotta be in there!!

Also, several of the rpms are the same as ones already installed in the basic RHL distro, but in that case, the rpm command just returns with a message saying it's already installed. A good script could just deal with that. (This is making me wish I had some abiliy in Perl!!)

Regards
Ed

[Ed]

Whoops! wouldn't you know I would use some html control characters in one of my sentences. The sentence that reads:

rpm -Uvh -*rpm
 

Should read:

rpm -Uvh name_of rpm_from_comps_file-*rpm

Sorry about that!

[Charlie Brady]

Ed wrote:

> Is it possible to install the e-smith RPMs over a standard v
> 8.3 install of RHL?

I;m a little confused about your intentions - there is no version 8.3 of RedHat linux. Or did I somehow miss it?

Charlie

[Ed]

You're right; I meant to say "V7.3", which is the same version used by e-smith.

I believe the fundamental problem is that I am not creating a clean install CD on my Mac, despite the fact that the OS is telling me it has verified the disc. I plopped the CD into the unix box, and it would return an error when I tried to do an md5 checksum. I am going to use my daughter's WIN XP laptop and try again.

I'm giving up on this approach -- if I want full linux, it's probably easier to upgrade an e-smith install than vice-versa. I tried loading the rpms in the order indicated in the aforementioned "comps" file, and ended up with a bunch of dependency errors. I am not comfortable with loading the rpms "nodeps", altho I bet that would work.

Thanks for all your collective ideas!

ed

[Marc]

You need to have an error free MD5 checksum before burning the iso. Try downloading  the iso again, and confirm a matching MD5 checksum. Then do a clean install. It works for me.

Cheers.

Marc

Ed wrote:
>
> You're right; I meant to say "V7.3", which is the same
> version used by e-smith.
>
> I believe the fundamental problem is that I am not creating a
> clean install CD on my Mac, despite the fact that the OS is
> telling me it has verified the disc. I plopped the CD into
> the unix box, and it would return an error when I tried to do
> an md5 checksum. I am going to use my daughter's WIN XP
> laptop and try again.
>
> I'm giving up on this approach -- if I want full linux, it's
> probably easier to upgrade an e-smith install than
> vice-versa. I tried loading the rpms in the order indicated
> in the aforementioned "comps" file, and ended up with a bunch
> of dependency errors. I am not comfortable with loading the
> rpms "nodeps", altho I bet that would work.
>
> Thanks for all your collective ideas!
>
> ed

[Ed]

I can't get an md5 checksum on the CD, but the file itself checks out fine.

I have tried burning about a zillion copies of the CD, and even have downloaded some third-party tools for both OSX and XP and tried them out. I always get an I/O error when I try to do an md5sum on the CD from either the Mac or linux workstation (I have RedHat 7.3 installed on the workstation for now). The file checks out fine.

I am ready to give up and try to find my old v5.5 disk and install THAT instead.

To the SME gurus who lurk on this BB:

HEY SME GUYS! THERE ARE OTHER SYSTEMS BEING USED OUT THERE. (done shouting). Don't you think it's a limitation to have an install package that only works when downloaded and burned from a WIN box? It would be nice if your install could be downloaded and burned from a Redhat linux box..... after all, why would anyone want to play in WIN when he can play in *ix? (it's too much to ask for Mac OSX support, and I think the problems I am having are Apple's fault, not yours). Just a thought....

Rgds
Ed

[Dan Brown]

HEY ED!  MITEL ISN'T DOING ANYTHING NON-STANDARD! (done shouting).  They're distributing an .ISO file, which many thousands, if not tens of thousands, of users have managed to burn and use from any number of platforms.  I know I've personally burned it successfully from a linux box.  I don't know where you got the idea that SME has "an install package that only works when downloaded and burned from a WIN box", but it's entirely false.