[H-GEN] Running SuSE 8.1- NOT!

[Robert Brockway]

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On Tue, 20 May 2003, Alex Delaforce wrote:

> I have attempted to install Samba from source files downloaded from

Hi Alex.  I haven't played with Suse but I'm surprised you had to pull
Samba from source.  All distributions I know of include Samba and the only
reasons you'd normally be going from source is if the included version
either had a security hole the distro wasn't fixing or you needed a
feature not included by the distro (eg, a feature only in recent betas).

The latter reason sometimes occurs, and that is part of life.  If it is
the former reason, get a new distro as they all need to be doing timely
updates to security problems.

Personally I prefer Debian.  Setting up & maintaing Samba using this
distro is pretty trivial.  Similarly other distros like Redhat and
Mandrake make it easy to install and use Samba.

> samba.org - I followed all the instructions in the documentation - this
> didn't work, none of the files were in the correct places according to
> the documentation, most were missing completely.
> I have tried following the instructions in the SuSE administration guide
> -  none of the steps have any effect - the service doesn't end up
> running, files are missing etc.

I really can't speak of Suse but this is all sounding a lot harder than it
should be.  Perhaps it is time to try a different distro.

> I downloaded the 'Samba - An Introduction' from the SuSE website and
> followed the instructions which do not agree with the details given in
> the Administration Guide. Files are in the wrong places and most are not
> installed.

Interesting.

> Even installing SuSE proves problematic. Each install that I do to clean
> up from my attempts to install Samba brings a new set of observations
> despite the hardware and partitioning  being identical. On one install
> the system will detect three CD devices despite there being only two,
> the next install will detect only two, the next will decide to redetect
> the mouse on every reboot, the next will drop the volume of the sound
> card to 0 the next will not detect the video card or be able to drive
> the monitor correctly, the next gives the full range of video modes with
> no intervention from me. As you can see I have reinstalled the SuSE
> system several times.

I have to say that it I had been seeing these sorts of problems from a
distro I'd be staying away from it :)

> documentation (even that from SuSE) say they should be. Is Linux really
> this hard to use? As you can tell I am feeling very underconfident about

I don't think so :)  In recent years it has actually got _really easy_ to
use and administer.  The modern package management tools of today,
intelligent defaults and smart hardware auto-detection have made life
easy.

> all this despite putting several months of hard work into the learning
> process.

I think you've done well to stick with it despite problems that sound very
frustrating.  At this point I recommend a different approach.  Pick one of
the distros used commonly by 'bug members.  The ones that come to mind are
Debian, Rehdat & Mandrake.  Club members use others but I think these are
the big ones.  This give you the best chance of someone being able to give
you almost hands on support.  If you get really stuck hands on support at
meetings is also an option.

Installing samba should really be a matter of installing the relevant
packages if they are not already installed, editing smb.conf to give you
the features you want and starting samba.  A little debugging is sometimes
needed but default configurations are usually fairly close to most peoples
needs these days.

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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