[Leaplist] [1/2] CentOS install -- Sysreport v. SOS

[Bryan J. Smith]

Hank Lambert wrote:
> Thanks. I had already gotten it mixed up until I just read this.

Totally understand.  I used apt-get (both DPKG and RPM based) before
yum myself, although I was quick to note the difference.

Yum doesn't have a separate "update" repository info, it always syncs
the repo meta-data (adding a great amount of delay), unless it is
very recent or you explicitly tell it (with an option) to run from
cache.

> OK, good to know. Is that the same as using apt instead of dpkg?

Absolutely!  If you could proliferate this information to every
Debian, Ubuntu and other user, we Fedora, RHEL and other users would
love you.  Fedora and RHEL are not RPM-based, unless you call Debian
DPKG-based.  If you call Debian Apt-based, then refer to Fedora and
RHEL as Yum-based.

> Very likely I misread it. The server is going to be a headless
> server, so I have a really bad CRT hooked up temporarily.

If there is no video framebuffer, Red Hat Anaconda will attempt to
use a serial port for console.  I.e., you can connect a null modem
cable to COM1 and connect to it.

Some "ServerBIOS" releases offer this for even the PC BIOS Int10
Video Services and 0B000h Memory Mapped I/O for MONO80/COLOR80
framebuffer as well.  So you can have a completely serial-based
system.

You can also tell Anaconda to launch a Xvnc (VNC-based X-Server frame
buffer) which you can connect to, among other options.  The problem
with this approach is that you have to create a Kickstart file to
tell it if you don't have KVM (keyboard, video, mouse), so it's not
straight-forward for someone new.  But if you have a KVM attached,
but don't want to use it, then you can throw the VNC option.

Anaconda isn't perfect, but RHEL 5 (Fedora Core 6-based) is much
better than it used to.  It's a legacy thing (long story).  I.e.,
RHEL 5 is at least a Yum-based install, update, etc... system.  RHEL
6 (should be based on Fedora 9) will finally be "full modernized" in
my book.  The build/distribution system has been completely unified
(as of Fedora 7, with some further "sanity changes" in Fedora 8
Anaconda).

> Will do. Thanks for the help.

Anytime.  You're just being exposed to Yum-based systems, so feel
free to fire off questions and "why the hell did they do that?" type
questions.  Many of us ask, "why the hell did they do that?" a lot. 
There's always a reason why things happen, even if legacy or
marketing that is less than ideal in the eyes of some.

As long as it doesn't become "distro pissing," it's all good.

Red Hat does a lot of things that piss people off, but I will defend
as "sound, technical choices" from the standpoint of what they are
trying to achieve, technically.  I haven't seen a marketing (often
incorrectly deamonized as a "shareholder") decision made in Red Hat
since before Red Hat Linux 10 Beta became Fedora Core 1 Test.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith       Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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       Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution