[olug] RedHat 7.3 Installation Woes

[William E. Kempf]

This is driving me crazy!  Why is Linux so danged hard to maintain?!?

Here's the scoop.  I was running Lycoris and got a tad fed up with how
difficult it was to find RPMs that work for this distro.  So, I decided to
switch to RedHat 7.3 since you can almost always find RPMs for this distro.
Maybe not the best reason to switch distros, but I just figured this would
make it easier on me as I get past the learning pains involved with Linux.

So, I D/L the 7.3 ISOs and burn some CDs.  Go to install the first, and
several more times and watch a LOT of CD activity (after the "starting
anaconda, please wait..." prompt appears on the screen), but nothing ever
really happens.  Eventually I just re-burn the first CD and suddenly the
install works MUCH better.  Not all that relevant to the questions that are
coming, but it shows you how my frustration levels are already at an all
time high... so bear with any rants here.

For the most part, the installation appears to go quite smoothly.  One key
item I need to mention is that when it came to configuring X I selected a
mode of 1280x1024x24, which worked with Lycoris and the test during the RH
installation looked fine as well.  I finished up the installation and let
the machine reboot... and that's where my problems begin.

First, when KDE starts up, the display is totally hosed.  Further, the
keyboard doesn't work so I have to reset the computer to get anything
accomplished.  I manage to boot into single-user mode and modify inittab so
that it boots to run-level 3, just so I can get to a usable system, even if
it's command line only.

I run Xconfigurator and probe the hardware... and it can't detect how much
ram is on the graphics board.  Huh?  Didn't get that problem during
installation.  Any way, I supply the values I believe are correct and it
goes to test and... hosed display again.  Lycrois had absolutely no problems
detecting and configuring all of my hardware, so I don't understand why RH
is giving me such fits.  I could certainly use any advice on how to go about
fixing this.

Now, on to the next problem.  I thought I'd try and work through some of
these issues remotely while at work, so I set up sshd quickly, tested it
from my Windows box on the same network (sitting behind a Linksys router
connected to cox.net) and connected fine.  So I assumed everything was hunky
dory and took off to work.  Once at work I try to ssh back... and the
connection fails.  I remotedesktop to the Windows box, and curiously I can
still ssh to the linux box from there.  (I should note, I'm ssh-ing to the
public IP of the router, i.e. the IP assigned to me by Cox, so I should be
connecting in the exact same manner as I do from work AFAIK.)  Checking
around on the Linux box I find that DNS names aren't resolving.  My
resolv.conf looks like this:

search kempf-ville.com
nameserver 68.13.16.30
nameserver 68.9.16.30

I verify that these are the IPs of the DNS servers configured for the
Windows box and reported by the Linsys.  Curious, I try and ping the DNS
servers... and get "Destination Host Unreachable".  WTF?!?  On the one hand
this would seem to indicate the box has no connection to the outside world
(which I still couldn't explain), but connecting from the Windows box
through the routers IP would indicate that that shouldn't be true, shouldn't
it?  All of this is, AFAIK, how the Lycoris box was configured, which worked
flawlessly, so I'm hunting in the dark for a cause for both the X problems
and the networking issues.

A little more information on the network setup, in case it's useful.  I've
assigned both the Windows box and the Linux box some static IPs of
192.168.1.25 (windows) and 192.168.1.24 (linux).  I've got a MyDynDNS custom
DNS of "kempf-ville.com" to resolve the IP provided by Cox (that's why the
search line in resolv.conf).  The router's got full firewall turned on, with
only a couple of ports open and directed to the appropriate boxes (such as
ssh for the linux box).

If anyone can shed any light on either of these problems, or direct me
towards TFM appropriate to the issues, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Bill Kempf