old redhat 5.2 install

[Monte C. Haun jr.]

Greetings:

I am trying to install an old version of redhat linux 5.2 on my gateway
with a p 4 .
I have created the partitions ok thru disk druid, and it successfully
created ext2 filesystem on /dev/hdb7 but when it came time to insall
packages each one had an error message like this:

error--rpm install of setup failed package setup of 1.9.2-1 is for
different architecture

[The Natural Philosopher]

Any especial reason why an old redhat is preferred to a new something else?

Looks like the hardware is too new...

[Monte C. Haun jr.]

The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Thanks for the response.
I am in the learning stage of this os and want to have the older linux on
my computer because my assumption is that there will be a pretty steep
learning curve, and learning is what I am after. It also was free and a
gift.
I am just curious as to why the filesystem was fine to create but the rpm
failed. Was the address bus too wide, or is there some simple fix?
Monte

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is possible that some hardware simply wasn't recognised. Or you have
a completely different machine spec..

But really if you want to learn, what's wrong with - say - banging on a
later distro - like Debian stable 6 - and once you have it running,
playing around.

Learning how things were done 6 years ago is not necessarily what you
want to do today.

What IS the hardware anyway?

[Larry Blanchard]

On Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:33:24 +0000, Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:

> I am in the learning stage of this os and want to have the older linux
> on my computer because my assumption is that there will be a pretty
> steep learning curve, and learning is what I am after. It also was free
> and a gift.

Actually, in many cases the newer releases are more user friendly and
easier to install and tweak to your liking. Try Ubuntu or Mint.

If, however, you really want to learn the innards, get Slackware :-).

I started out in Linux with Slackware 0.95 or thereabouts. Now that I'm
old and lazy I use Ubuntu.

--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw

[Moe Trin]

On Tue, 8 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j9bg3t$n5r$1...@pcls6.std.com>, Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:

>I am trying to install an old version of redhat linux 5.2 on my
>gateway with a p 4 .

RH 5.2 (apollo with a 2.0.36 kernel) came out in November 1998 and
went end-of-life October 2001 just short of it's third birthday.
Your P-IV came out later than that.

>error--rpm install of setup failed package setup of 1.9.2-1 is for
>different architecture

I'm not exactly sure why 'setup' is barfing:

7735 Oct 14 1998 setup-1.9.2-1.noarch.rpm

as the 'noarch' architecture means it fits all, but most probably RH5.2
doesn't know what your new-fangled P-IV is. Find a distribution that's
less antique. The package manager (rpm) has a '--ignorearch' option,
but I don't know how/if you can tell the install program to pass that
option to the package manager.

[galileo ~]$ rpm -qpl /net/history/old.dist/rh52/setup-1.9.2-1.noarch.rpm
| column
/etc/csh.cshrc /etc/hosts.deny /etc/profile.d
/etc/exports /etc/motd /etc/protocols
/etc/group /etc/passwd /etc/securetty
/etc/host.conf /etc/printcap /etc/services
/etc/hosts.allow /etc/profile /var/log/lastlog
[galileo ~]$

Those are all text files, but your system is _probably_ identifying
itself as an i686, which RH5.x never heard of (I _think_ RH6.2 was the
first RH version to support the i686). You'd have other problems as
well. The version of rpm (2.5.5-5.2) that came with 5.2 also doesn't
know about later packages - it was updated up to 4.0.2-5 in March 2001,
but that update also required a number of other packages (db3 I think,
popt for sure, and rpm-3.0.5-9.5x which had been released in August
2000 - you couldn't go from 2.5.5 directly to 4.0.2 as it didn't
recognize the new file format). 5.2 (and actually releases up to 7.1)
had several major security vulnerabilities out-of-box, and I doubt you
can find the errata that fixed those.

Old guy

[Trevor Hemsley]

On Tue, 8 Nov 2011 16:33:24 UTC in comp.os.linux.setup, "Monte C. Haun jr."
<mh...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote:

> It also was free and a
> gift

Actually I think you'll find that all downloadable Linux distributions are free
:-) If you need media created for you then you can buy it off the net but it's
usually not much more than the cost of the media + P&P.

But seriously, I am not sure if you meant Gateway as in the make of computer or
gateway as in router. If the latter then you definitely want a newer distro, one
that still receives active security fixes!

--
Trevor Hemsley, Brighton, UK
Trevor dot Hemsley at ntlworld dot com

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 11/08/2011 02:12 PM, Trevor Hemsley wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Nov 2011 16:33:24 UTC in comp.os.linux.setup, "Monte C. Haun jr."
> <mh...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote:
>
>> It also was free and a
>> gift
>
> Actually I think you'll find that all downloadable Linux distributions are free
> :-) If you need media created for you then you can buy it off the net but it's
> usually not much more than the cost of the media + P&P.

Actually Mandriva comes in the free version and a PowerPacked version
which actually is down-loadable after you buy a copy of it.
You would want to try the free version first but start with the
Mandriva 2010.2 or even Mandriva One to see if you like the
Mandriva Control Center et al.

>
> But seriously, I am not sure if you meant Gateway as in the make of computer or
> gateway as in router. If the latter then you definitely want a newer distro, one
> that still receives active security fixes!
>

bliss

[Monte C. Haun jr.]

Moe Trin <ibup...@painkiller.example.tld.invalid> wrote:
: On Tue, 8 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

I have been thinking about Debian or Slackware, but for now the solution
is to dust off my old 486 and dedicate that to the old Red Hat 5.2 OS.
Nonetheless, I can't help but be curious as to what happened.

I checked around and the p4 seems to have a similar addressing scheme as
the p2 which accepted my RH 5.2 with out a problem.

More than anything else, I am wondering if the fact that the filesystem
was created with out an error message implies that the kernel was copied
to the disk??

Thus:

making ext2 filesystem on /dev/hdb7

install began:

first dozen or so: error messages -- "rpm install of'xxxxxx' failed
package'xxxxxx-000.00-00' is for different architecture"

setup-1.9.2-1
packagefilesystem-1.3.2-3
basesystem-4.9-3
ldconfig-1.9.5-8
afterstep-1.5-0.7
Afterstep-APPS-1.5-0.3
AnotherLevel-0.7.3-1
glipc-2.0.7-29
mktmp-1.4-3
termcap-9.12.6-11
libtermcap-2.0.8-16
bash-1.14.7-13
ncurses-4.2-10

...and so on.

Monte

[Aragorn]

On Wednesday 09 November 2011 18:24, Monte C. Haun jr. conveyed the
following to comp.os.linux.setup...

> I have been thinking about Debian or Slackware, but for now the
> solution is to dust off my old 486 and dedicate that to the old Red
> Hat 5.2 OS. Nonetheless, I can't help but be curious as to what
> happened.

If my memory serves me right, then RH 5.2 would have been optimized for
Pentium-class processors, i.e. i586. By consequence, installing it
would fail on an i486-based machine.

> I checked around and the p4 seems to have a similar addressing scheme
> as the p2 which accepted my RH 5.2 with out a problem.

The Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4 and Pentium D are all i686
machines.

> More than anything else, I am wondering if the fact that the
> filesystem was created with out an error message implies that the
> kernel was copied to the disk??

If it was, then it will reside in "/boot", so you can easily check that.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

[Moe Trin]

On Wed, 9 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j9ed13$7ke$1...@pcls6.std.com>, Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:

>I have been thinking about Debian or Slackware, but for now the solution
>is to dust off my old 486 and dedicate that to the old Red Hat 5.2 OS.
>Nonetheless, I can't help but be curious as to what happened.

That _should_ work, but don't be offering any services to the Internet
(better still, avoid connecting to the Internet). 5.2 had at least
three remote root exploits (kick the server in the right way, and you
had root access), and two or three other exploits - I've long forgotten
the exact details. OTHER THAN THAT, 5.2 was a good distribution.

>I checked around and the p4 seems to have a similar addressing scheme
>as the p2 which accepted my RH 5.2 with out a problem.

The problem isn't that the P-IV is so different - it's how it identifies
itself when asked. It runs i386 code flawlessly, which is why the
install program was able to work.

[hubble ~]$ uname -a
Linux hubble.phx.az.us 2.0.36 #1 Tue Oct 13 22:17:11 EDT 1998 i586 unknown
[hubble ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
cpu : 586
model : Pentium 75+
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
stepping : 12
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : yes
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid : yes
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8
bogomips : 53.04
[hubble ~]$

hubble was a Pentium 166 - and here (actually running an 'out-of-box'
install of RH-5.2 about 10 years ago) it was identified as a i586. This
was the designation given to "Classic Pentiums" and "MMX". The later
Pentiums had extra features, and identified themselves as a i686 to
tell the software that they were capable of newer/wonderful tricks.

>More than anything else, I am wondering if the fact that the filesystem
>was created with out an error message implies that the kernel was copied
>to the disk??

You have to understand what's going on under the sheets - you started
running the install program on the CD. It was able to run, and found a
hard drive and video system it could work with. The program running
was written for an i386, and that will run on anything from a 386 on
up to the latest whizzy 64 bit Triton. OK, so it was able to set
up a filesystem. Next, we've got to install all of the packages (on
RH-5.2, that was about 300 out of the 514 supplied on the CD). To
install, we run a program that after all is said and done is running
the package manager "rpm" - but rpm has to know what processor you're
running. It asks, and is told ``I'm a i686'' which is a little problem
because it never heard of an i686 (which hadn't been released when that
version of rpm was created). Result? It says "I don't know what to
do, so I'm going to say the architecture isn't compatible and bail".

>Thus:
>
>making ext2 filesystem on /dev/hdb7

while running a 386 program

>install began:

>first dozen or so: error messages -- "rpm install of'xxxxxx' failed
>package'xxxxxx-000.00-00' is for different architecture"

Daddy, what's a i686? Nope! you need newer software for that box.

Old guy

[Moe Trin]

On Wed, 09 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j9eet2$clc$2...@dont-email.me>, Aragorn wrote:

>Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:

>> I have been thinking about Debian or Slackware, but for now the
>> solution is to dust off my old 486 and dedicate that to the old Red
>> Hat 5.2 OS.

>If my memory serves me right, then RH 5.2 would have been optimized for
>Pentium-class processors, i.e. i586. By consequence, installing it
>would fail on an i486-based machine.

Just happen to have data from a RH 5.2 box handy...
*Minimum* specs are:
CPU: x86
RAM: 16 MB _recommended_ (X with a FVWM2 needed 13 MB)
HD: 120MB min, 450MB workstation, 1.6GB server.

No, unlike Mandrake, the Pentium requirement didn't come to Red Hat
until later. The box for RH 7.3 says

*Minimum* specs are:
CPU: Pentium CPU (200-MHz for text mode, 400-MHz for GUI);
RAM: 32 Mb for text-mode, 128 Mb for GUI
HD: 650 Mb (everything = 3.7 Gigs, w/s with Gnome & KDE 1.8 Gigs)

Oh for the simple life back then ;-)

Old guy

[Monte C. Haun jr.]

Moe Trin <ibup...@painkiller.example.tld.invalid> wrote:
: On Wed, 9 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article

: <j9ed13$7ke$1...@pcls6.std.com>, Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:

:>I have been thinking about Debian or Slackware, but for now the solution
:>is to dust off my old 486 and dedicate that to the old Red Hat 5.2 OS.
:>Nonetheless, I can't help but be curious as to what happened.

: That _should_ work, but don't be offering any services to the Internet
: (better still, avoid connecting to the Internet). 5.2 had at least
: three remote root exploits (kick the server in the right way, and you
: had root access), and two or three other exploits - I've long forgotten
: the exact details. OTHER THAN THAT, 5.2 was a good distribution.

I remember those stories about RH 5.2 vulnerabitities and was not planning
on connecting with it, mainly just a way for me to learn unix/linux and
having the thrill of being root. Thanks much for your help, if I ever
figure out how to make my p4 accept the rpms, I will let you know.
And I pine for the old days as well.

Monte

[Moe Trin]

On Thu, 10 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j9fle9$8l3$1...@pcls6.std.com>, Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:

>Moe Trin <ibup...@painkiller.example.tld.invalid> wrote:

>: That _should_ work, but don't be offering any services to the
>: Internet (better still, avoid connecting to the Internet). 5.2 had
>: at least three remote root exploits (kick the server in the right
>: way, and you had root access), and two or three other exploits -
>: I've long forgotten the exact details. OTHER THAN THAT, 5.2 was
>: a good distribution.

>I remember those stories about RH 5.2 vulnerabitities and was not
>planning on connecting with it, mainly just a way for me to learn
>unix/linux and having the thrill of being root.

Looking over an old directory listing of the errata for 5.2 and some
even older notes, 'apache', 'bind', 'nfs-utils' and 'wu-ftpd' were the
big problems, and there were lesser problems with 'egcs' (the C
compiler), 'ghostscript', 'glibc', 'pam', 'sendmail' and 'telnet'.
Another minor problem is that 5.2 was early in the life of the Linux
Standard (http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/) and Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/) which is meant to standardize
the underlying operating system, and speaks about where certain files
are located. (Similar in concept to how POSIX affects UNIX.)

>Thanks much for your help

Glad to be able to help

>if I ever figure out how to make my p4 accept the rpms, I will let
>you know.

Oh, that's simple. Just get a more recent version of Linux ;-)
There is a lot of contributing factors - example: 'XFree86-3.3.2.3-25'
was out of box, and that included

XFree86-8514 XFree86-AGX XFree86-Mach32 XFree86-Mach64
XFree86-Mach8 XFree86-Mono XFree86-P9000 XFree86-S3
XFree86-S3V XFree86-SVGA XFree86-VGA16 XFree86-W32

and which of those will handle your ATI or NVidia graphics card? Got
a nice gigabit Ethernet card? USB? Wazzat? Extra memory? I
forget when that change came about, but earlier kernels couldn't see
more than 3 GB of RAM (but then:

[hubble ~]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 30824 30156 668 22224 1552 9648
-/+ buffers/cache: 18956 11868
Swap: 36284 18360 17924
[hubble ~]$

it didn't need that much - hubble had 32 Megs of RAM and 36 Megs of
swap). No, wander off to http://www.distrowatch.com and find your
choice of current distributions starting as low as a couple of bucks.
Not only will you find something that will work on your P-IV, it will
be something a lot of people can help you with from current memory.

>And I pine for the old days as well.

I started with Red Hat Linux 2.0, before they moved from Westport, CT,
but that wasn't my first Linux - go back a bit further, when you got
Linux by downloading (at 2400 BPS) twenty or thirty floppy images.
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/ (your Gateway
doesn't have a floppy drive? Oh, dear!) ;-)

Old guy

[philo]

Hey, that's right where I was about 11 years ago.

RH 5.2 was the first version of Linux I used...and it was on a Pentium-1

I am sure your hardware is way too new for RH5.2

If you want to have an installation where you need to think a bit...
the suggestion to use Slackware is a good one!

[Jean-David Beyer]

Moe Trin wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
> <j9bg3t$n5r$1...@pcls6.std.com>, Monte C. Haun jr. wrote:
>
>> I am trying to install an old version of redhat linux 5.2 on my
>> gateway with a p 4 .

I started out with Red Hat Linux 5.0. I used most of the others of that
series, and it seems to me if you want an old version of Red Hat, that
7.3 was about the best of them. Earlier ones had ugly desktops, and the
X Window System locked up a lot. But 7.3 was quite nice. If there was a
Red Hat 8, I never tried it. I tried Red Hat 9 and its version of CUPS
did not agree with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 that I had on my other
machine. Fedora 2 or something was no good for reasons I forgot, so I
put CentOS 4 on the old machine.

As someone else said, newer versions are easier to install.


--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 12:10:01 up 21 days, 22:16, 4 users, load average: 4.75, 5.03, 5.15

[Moe Trin]

On Fri, 11 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j9jlf...@news1.newsguy.com>, Jean-David Beyer wrote:

>I started out with Red Hat Linux 5.0. I used most of the others of that
>series, and it seems to me if you want an old version of Red Hat, that
>7.3 was about the best of them.

When Red Hat dropped the non-enterprise releases in November 2003, 7.1
and later was still receiving updates. Red Hat dropped all update
support except 9 in December 2003 (support for RH 9 continued until
April 2004) but for a while you could get back-port erratas from
download.fedoralegacy.org in /redhat/X/updates/Y/ where X = "7.2",
"7.3" or 8.0" and Y = "SRPMS" or "i386". Releases were slow. 7.2
and 8.0 received extremely limited support in early 2004 and were then
dropped when RH dropped official support of RH 9), though 7.3 and 9
continued with pack-ports from Fedora or RHEL until the end of July
2006 when all ``support'' ended.

>Earlier ones had ugly desktops, and the X Window System locked up a
>lot.

Ugly is (of course) personal opinion - and variables in a configuration
file that can be tweaked. I remember we were using fvwm (and later
fvwm2) though I think we changed color schemes. As for X locking up,
I don't recall this at all, and we used Red Hat 2.0, 2.1, 3.0.3, 4.1,
4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 6.2, 7.2 and 7.3. That stability was what we found
missing in later releases.

>If there was a Red Hat 8, I never tried it.

RH 8.0 was released 30 Sep 2002, to be replaced in April with RH 9.
We looked at it, and decided 7.[23] was better.

>I tried Red Hat 9 and its version of CUPS did not agree with Red Hat
>Enterprise Linux 3 that I had on my other machine. Fedora 2 or
>something was no good for reasons I forgot, so I put CentOS 4 on the
>old machine.

We never adopted 8.0 or 9, and Fedora was to experimental for us, much
like 'rawhide' (the continuous beta release starting in 1998). No idea
why CUPS would be a problem - as RHEL3 (taroon) was a re-badged RH9,
and used the same cups-1.1.17-13 package.

Old guy

[HASM]

ibup...@painkiller.example.tld.invalid (Moe Trin) writes:

> Ugly is (of course) personal opinion - and variables in a configuration
> file that can be tweaked. I remember we were using fvwm (and later
> fvwm2) though I think we changed color schemes.

I still use fvwm2 with every single Fedora release ...

-- HASM

[Jean-David Beyer]

Moe Trin wrote:
>
> We never adopted 8.0 or 9, and Fedora was to experimental for us, much
> like 'rawhide' (the continuous beta release starting in 1998). No idea
> why CUPS would be a problem - as RHEL3 (taroon) was a re-badged RH9,
> and used the same cups-1.1.17-13 package.
>

I did not figure it out either. I Booted 7.3, tried a coupla Fedoras and
dropped them (I don't remember why), and installed CentOS 4 and CUPS has
worked ever since, and has congtinued to work with RHEL5. A friend said
about the time I was having trouble, there was a major change in CUPS
and it got fixed in the next release or something. So Either RHEL3 was
too old, or Fedora was too new. But since CentOS4 is newer than RHEL3,
my guesses here must be, in part, incorrect. THe problem was that CUPS
worked OK on the server, but the client could not send messages to the
server. The client though it had printed, but the server did not print
or queue; they just vanished. IIRC.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org

^^-^^ 15:05:01 up 23 days, 1:11, 4 users, load average: 4.82, 5.22, 5.48

[Moe Trin]

On Sat, 12 Nov 2011, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j9mjr...@news2.newsguy.com>, Jean-David Beyer wrote:

>Moe Trin wrote:

>> No idea why CUPS would be a problem - as RHEL3 (taroon) was a
>> re-badged RH9, and used the same cups-1.1.17-13 package.

>I did not figure it out either. I Booted 7.3, tried a coupla Fedoras
>and dropped them (I don't remember why), and installed CentOS 4 and
>CUPS has worked ever since, and has congtinued to work with RHEL5.

The 'Internet Printing Protocol' had only been standardized about
when RH 7.0 was released (September 2000) with cups-1.1.1-4 an extra
on the powertools CD. The default printing package on RH7.x was LPRng,
and that remained the default until RH 9. 'cups' was on the RH 7.3 main
CD, but was installed in _addition_ to to LPRng. LPRng was finally
dropped in Fedora and the RHEL 2.9.5 beta for RHEL3. On the other hand,
I don't consider Fedora production quality.

>A friend said about the time I was having trouble, there was a major
>change in CUPS and it got fixed in the next release or something.
>So Either RHEL3 was too old, or Fedora was too new. But since CentOS4
>is newer than RHEL3, my guesses here must be, in part, incorrect.

I dunno - RH7.3 came with cups-1.1.14, RH8.0 had cups-1.1.15, and RH9
and RHEL3.0 had cups-1.1.17. Fedora 1 used cups-1.1.19, and Fedora 5
was still using a 1.1.x version (1.1.23). It was only Fedora 6 and 7
that went to cups-1.2.x. The 'Internet Printing Protocol' standard
(RFC2910 and 2911) was updated in late 2002, but that didn't change the
basic operation. The cups packages on RH 7.3, 8.0 and 9 all had been
updated in late 2003, but I don't remember the reason.

>THe problem was that CUPS worked OK on the server, but the client
>could not send messages to the server. The client though it had
>printed, but the server did not print or queue; they just vanished.
>IIRC.

I would _expect_ that if it were a network problem, the client would
be complaining about not being able to connect, so it thought it was
making a connection. I'm not the printer guy at work, but have seen
that problem when the client has the print-queue (or more likely, the
print filter) set up incorrectly. That can be _very_ frustrating to
troubleshoot. THAT sir, is why I'm not the printer guy, and why we
have three people who are stuck in that barrel.

Old guy