Redhat 7 and Corel Office 2K Crashing...
Br. Nicholas
I know this is a Corel OS newsgroup, but I've been following this and a
couple of other Corel newsgroups, and you all seem much more friendly and
responsive than most of the folks on Redhat newsgroups.
I'm trying to get Corel Office 2000 to run on Redhat 7. I can get through
all the installation mess -- which certainly is not Corel's fault. My
problem is, it doesn't run worth anything on my machine. It locks up and
crashes unbelievably often. For instance, if I use the command "Select all"
on a
two page WP9 document, change the font, unselect the text, and then try to
scroll down to the bottom of the document, it will lock up the entire system
every time.
StarOffice 5.2 locks up on me, too. Netscape Communicator 4.75 also gives
all sorts of erratic behavior and also locks up; but I've heard that from a
lot of people using both Redhat and CLOS.
One of the things I have been wondering concerns what patches to apply on
Redhat. They have a ton of Big Fixes for 7.0. Most of them are for the
i386 platform, with only a few for the i686 platform. So what bug fixes
should I install on a PIII? Should I install both the i386 and the i686, or
just the i686, or what???
I've asked a couple of people I know who have been using Redhat for years,
and they didn't know. I posted this question to a Redhat group three or
four weeks ago, with no reponse. Somebody just emailed me privately
wondering if I ever got an answer to this, because he is wondering the same
thing. Can someone out there please help us out?
Is anyone else out there using Redhat 7 having so much trouble with it they
don't want to deal with it anymore? Any advice?
My brother is sending me Redhat 6.2 to try. It should be here tomorrow.
Does it run better than 7.0?
I seriously question how much of my problems with linux have to do with
WPO2K, and how many have to do with RH7. ???
The specs to my machine:
I am using a Dell Dimension PIII, with 128 Ram, 20 gb hd, Rage 128 Pro video
card, and an Adaptec AHA-2940AU SCSI card (for a Mustek scanner and an HP
T20 tape drive). I have a second hard drive -- a 2.4 gb -- which is what I
have linux installed on. 'Figured I didn't want to mess with repartitioning
my big hard drive if I didn't have to.
Any thoughts or advice will be greatly appreciated. I REALLY hope someone
can answer this Redhat i386 / i686 update question.
In Christ,
Br. Nicholas
----
Dormition Skete.
A Monastery of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece and the Diaspora.
Synod of Archbishop Kallinikos of Lamia.
http://www.BuenaVistaCO.com/GOC
----
Alan Shutko
> I know this is a Corel OS newsgroup, but I've been following this and a
> couple of other Corel newsgroups, and you all seem much more friendly and
> responsive than most of the folks on Redhat newsgroups.
Hey, I'm on both. 8^P (Anyway, this is actually a WPO2k/Linux group,
so RHL problems with it are very on-topic.)
> My problem is, it doesn't run worth anything on my machine.
There are known issues with WPO2k/Linux, and many with WINE. The
problems you are seeing may not be related to running RHL7 at all, or
they might.
First thing you might want to do is update your WINE. This can fix
lots of problems. The easy way is to download the free Photopaint
download and run it. Photopaint will offer to update WPO2k's version
of WINE. This should fix many problems.
A more difficult way to upgrade would be to try compiling Corel's WINE
from their CVS repository. Some tips on doing this were posted to one
of the groups recently, but if you aren't comfortable messing around
at that level, you might want to see if someone has easy-to-use RPMs
for it yet. The WINE in CVS seems to have fixed a lot of problems for
me, even ones which have been around a long time.
> StarOffice 5.2 locks up on me, too. Netscape Communicator 4.75 also gives
> all sorts of erratic behavior and also locks up; but I've heard that from a
> lot of people using both Redhat and CLOS.
Question for you: is it locking up the whole system, or just the app?
If it seems to be the whole system, can you hit Control-Alt-Backspace
and restart X, or can you ping the machine from somewhere else on the
network?
In general, none of these apps should be capable of locking the entire
machine. If they are, it points to a problem somewhere
else... perhaps you don't have enough swap space or need a newer
version of XFree86.
> One of the things I have been wondering concerns what patches to apply on
> Redhat. They have a ton of Big Fixes for 7.0. Most of them are for the
> i386 platform, with only a few for the i686 platform.
The fixes are the same, but sometimes RH will compile a i686-optimized
version because it ends up faster on i686 machines. For the rest,
they just do an i386 version, which will work on all machines.
Basically, install all the i386 RPMs unless you see an i686 version to
install. I just use up2date, which downloads and installs things for
me.
> I've asked a couple of people I know who have been using Redhat for years,
> and they didn't know.
Oh, those youngsters. 8^)
> Is anyone else out there using Redhat 7 having so much trouble with it they
> don't want to deal with it anymore? Any advice?
After installing all the errata, it's much happier.
> My brother is sending me Redhat 6.2 to try. It should be here tomorrow.
> Does it run better than 7.0?
Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on whether you need the features in RHL7
(like XF 4.0.1 and being mostly compatible with kernel 2.4.0) because
you might make the system less stable by adding in those features
yourself.
> I seriously question how much of my problems with linux have to do with
> WPO2K, and how many have to do with RH7. ???
I'd guess most are WPO2k/Linux problems, because so many of them are
fixed by upgrading WINE.
--
Alan Shutko <a...@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Your picture of the world often changes just before you get it into focus.
Br. Nicholas
Greetings in Christ.
Thank you very much for the advice. I downloaded PhotoPaint9 in mid
September when I first downloaded CLOS. I will certainly try that. I hope
it helps.
> > StarOffice 5.2 locks up on me, too. Netscape Communicator 4.75 also
gives
> > all sorts of erratic behavior and also locks up; but I've heard that
from a
> > lot of people using both Redhat and CLOS.
>
> Question for you: is it locking up the whole system, or just the app?
> If it seems to be the whole system, can you hit Control-Alt-Backspace
> and restart X, or can you ping the machine from somewhere else on the
> network?
>
It's locking up the entire system. I can't kill the app. The keyboard and
mouse freeze up.
I did not know about the Control-Alt-Backspace procedure. I don't have
WPO2K loaded right now, so I can't give you a quick answer. If I continue
to have problems after updating WINE, I'll try this and ask again.
> In general, none of these apps should be capable of locking the entire
> machine. If they are, it points to a problem somewhere
> else... perhaps you don't have enough swap space or need a newer
> version of XFree86.
>
I currently have 128 mb Ram and 128 mb swap space. (Actually, it is 129
swap -- just the way the partition magic wanted to do it.) I read in
Redhat's installation guide, I think, that a good figure to use in setting
up the swap space is to make it the same as the amount of Ram. Should I
have more swap space than this?
I would think that I have the latest XFree86, since RH7 just came out???
> > One of the things I have been wondering concerns what patches to apply
on
> > Redhat. They have a ton of Big Fixes for 7.0. Most of them are for the
> > i386 platform, with only a few for the i686 platform.
>
> The fixes are the same, but sometimes RH will compile a i686-optimized
> version because it ends up faster on i686 machines. For the rest,
> they just do an i386 version, which will work on all machines.
>
> Basically, install all the i386 RPMs unless you see an i686 version to
> install. I just use up2date, which downloads and installs things for
> me.
>
On my current setup, I have all the bugfixes for the i386 installed, but not
for the i686. Someone suggested to me that I not mix the two updates, and
see if that helps. Should I go ahead and install the i686 updates? (I
think there is only one that applies to my setup - for the glibc.)
I really like Redhat, and I very much want to support Corel in their linux
endeavor, even if it does look like they want to get rid of it. All of us
here will greatly appreciate any help you can give us.
In Christ,
Br. Nicholas
Alan Shutko
> It's locking up the entire system. I can't kill the app. The keyboard and
> mouse freeze up.
Is it spinning the disk a lot, or is the machine silent? If it's
spinning, it's low memory and may eventually recover (in a long
time)... add more swap. If the machine is silent, it's something
else.
> I read in Redhat's installation guide, I think, that a good figure
> to use in setting up the swap space is to make it the same as the
> amount of Ram. Should I have more swap space than this?
Well, swap=mem is a good guideline on Linux systems, but the real
number is "swap=however much you need". If you find yourself swapping
to death a lot, you may want to update it.
> On my current setup, I have all the bugfixes for the i386 installed, but not
> for the i686. Someone suggested to me that I not mix the two updates, and
> see if that helps.
They're wrong. Go install the i686 updates. You don't _need_ to, but
it may turn out faster.
In general, only install the i386 update if there is no i686 update.
--
Alan Shutko <a...@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Mieux vaut tard que jamais!
Br. Nicholas
"Alan Shutko" <a...@acm.org> wrote in message
news:873detn...@wesley.springies.com...
> "Br. Nicholas" <dormiti...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> > It's locking up the entire system. I can't kill the app. The keyboard
and
> > mouse freeze up.
>
> Is it spinning the disk a lot, or is the machine silent? If it's
> spinning, it's low memory and may eventually recover (in a long
> time)... add more swap. If the machine is silent, it's something
> else.
>
It's silent.
> > I read in Redhat's installation guide, I think, that a good figure
> > to use in setting up the swap space is to make it the same as the
> > amount of Ram. Should I have more swap space than this?
>
> Well, swap=mem is a good guideline on Linux systems, but the real
> number is "swap=however much you need". If you find yourself swapping
> to death a lot, you may want to update it.
>
Is there any way of really telling how much I need?
> > On my current setup, I have all the bugfixes for the i386 installed, but
not
> > for the i686. Someone suggested to me that I not mix the two updates,
and
> > see if that helps.
>
> They're wrong. Go install the i686 updates. You don't _need_ to, but
> it may turn out faster.
>
> In general, only install the i386 update if there is no i686 update.
>
What do I do in the case of the glibc update, for instance?
For the i686 platform it has:
glibc-2.2-9.i686.rpm
For the i386 platform it has:
glibc-2.2-9.i386.rpm
glibc-devel-2.2-9.i386.rpm
glibc-profile-2.2-9.i386.rpm
nscd-2.2-9.i386.rpm
Should I install the 686 package, and the other three 386 packages: ??
glibc-2.2-9.i686.rpm
glibc-devel-2.2-9.i386.rpm
glibc-profile-2.2-9.i386.rpm
nscd-2.2-9.i386.rpm
Also, since I already have the glibc-2.2-9.i386.rpm installed, should I
uninstall it before I install the glibc-2.2-9.i686.rpm -- or will the 686
rpm overwrite it?
One last item: Do you think it would be better if I take this second hard
drive out and run it all on one hard disk? Could that be the source of some
of my problems? I do have enough extra space that I could do that without
any problem.
Many thanks.
Denis Roy
>
> Well, swap=mem is a good guideline on Linux systems, but the real
> number is "swap=however much you need". If you find yourself swapping
> to death a lot, you may want to update it.
Actually, if it's swapping to death, you'd much rather increase the RAM,
especially in these days where RAM is cheap. But I think our Brother
has enough RAM with 128M.
D.
--
Denis Roy (MCSE, CNA, MCP)
Denis Roy
>
> Thank you again! - Just a few more questions, though.
On a typical workstation, 128MB swap should be all you need. Use the
'free -m' command to monitor swap usage:
Before launching WP9 and PhotoPaint 9:
[toofast@dont toofast]$ free -m
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 251 200 51 162 10
108
-/+ buffers/cache: 81 170
Swap: 39 0 39
After launching WP9 and Photopaint 9
[toofast@dont toofast]$ free -m
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 251 243 8 139 7
116
-/+ buffers/cache: 118 133
Swap: 39 4 34
Notice here that I have 256M installed (251 reported) and a 40M swap
partition (39M reported). Of the 39M swap, 4M are in use. This is with
Netscape 4 and 6 open, as well as WP9 and PhotoPaint.
Don't worry about the "243 used 8 free". Notice that out of 243M used,
116M goes to the file cache. The important thing here is to realize
that in order to load WP9 and PP9, only 4MB were swapped to disk, and
they could have easily been spared.
> One last item: Do you think it would be better if I take this second hard
> drive out and run it all on one hard disk? Could that be the source of some
> of my problems? I do have enough extra space that I could do that without
> any problem.
UNIX filesystems are very flexible, and I strongly doubt that this cause
erratic operation. In other words, don't worry about it.
Best of luck!
Alan Shutko
> Actually, if it's swapping to death, you'd much rather increase the RAM,
> especially in these days where RAM is cheap. But I think our Brother
> has enough RAM with 128M.
If you don't have enough swap space , the machine will have to spend
more time dropping and reloading executable pages (and the page cache,
because there may not be enough room to write all the dirty pages to
swap (forcing them to stay in memory, or only get written out when
something else is loaded in).
Since it's easy to add more swap to see if things get better, it's
worth a try. You might not need more RAM, since you may have a lot of
quiescent processes taking up space in swap. When running a
latex2html on a longish doc a few years back, I always had to add a
few hundred MB swap, because it wanted that much (and I only needed it
when running that doc). (And if you're running the 2.4 kernel, you'll
need to have more swap for things to be happy than running the 2.2
kernel, since it allocates swap earlier or something... check recent
linux-kernel for details.)
But I agree that this problem doesn't sound memory related, not if it
hangs quietly....
--
Alan Shutko <a...@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you.
Br. Nicholas
Well, my system has been mostly down (sometimes completely down) for the
past couple of days. I now have a new install of Redhat 7. My brother sent
me a copy of RH6.2, and I thought I might like to try it, since so many
people seem to consider it to be more stable than 7.0. I thought it'd be
nice to have something to compare 7.0 to.
Unfortunately, I was not able to get X configured for it. I don't know if
it didn't like my video card, or my off-brand monitor, but rather than mess
with it too much, I ended up installing 7 again. (In fact, it wouldn't let
me do a graphical install. I had to use a text install. Not a big deal,
but none-the-less, it doesn't leave me feeling overly confident that I will
be able to get it to work with my hardware without putting forth a major
effort.) The good news is that in looking at the 6.2 documentation, I found
where I have been bungling a lot of stuff with 7.0. So between what I
learned from 6.2, and what all of you have shared with me, hopefully this
configuration will be better. If not, I'll try 6.2 again; but I hope that
won't be necessary.
I would like to thank all of you very, very much for taking the time and
putting for the efforts that you have in helping me with this. All of us
here at Dormition Skete and Holy Apostles Convent appreciate it very much.
Now this afternoon, the WPO2K install....
In Christ,
Br. Nicholas
----
Dormition Skete
A Monastery of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece and the Diaspora.
Synod of Metropolitan Kallinikos of Lamia.
http://www.BuenaVistaCO.com/GOC
----