Trying to install lucid beta on a SCSI box, plus need to get GSM/3G modem dialup...

[Thomas Orgis]

Hi folks,

In an attempt to lessen the scare factor of Linux I tried to install ubuntu studio on a machine that so far uses a rather custom Source Mage system. The setup consists of a Athlon64 X2 (really using 64 bit OS, too) on some Asrock mainboard (I don't like that one, really) with integrated graphics, PCIe Firewire card, Adaptec U160 SCSI controller with 3 10K rpm drives.
Oh, and there's a IDE DVD-RW and SATA DVD-ROM, too.

There is also a USB card reader built in which seems to have higher priority for the ubuntu kernel, so the first disk is /dev/sdf . In my custom system I have the SCSI driver built in and it's sda as it should be.

The Audio interface is an Edirol FA-101, but I'm not yet at evaluating usage of that. My first experience with the ubuntu studio 10.4 beta (9.10 simply is too old -- I'd have to immediately recompile a fresher ardour2) can be summarized as follows:

1. Install goes fine, just except that it fails to install the boot manager.
Both grub and lilo fail, without explanation. I really miss some error messages there... I have stored install logs (there in the box, not here with me now) but a glimpse in there also didn't show anything.
For now I assume that there is some confusion because of the unusual setup of /dev/sdX actually being SCSI:-/
I managed to restore my old boot manager (after some fighting because of the mismatch of disk order between the kernels... lilo doesn't like the disk order differing between system to boot and the rescue system where lilo is installed from)... and was able to add an entry for ubuntu studio to it.

2. The boot attempts fail for default parameters. Because I have SCSI.
I remember that from earlier times while building the studio system: I ruled out ubuntu because of this bug: The boot drops to busybox, complaining that the root device is not there -- but when you look in the shell, it is there immediately.
This is fixed by an annoyingly huge rootdelay parameter (like, 90 seconds). I am disappointed that this still prevails... and it's the same old workaround. This worked with older systems -- also with initrds!
Well... after fixing up boot parameters... I was able to get into the system.

3. Next problem: I need internet. Ubuntu doesn't really fly without internet, right?
I was surprised not to find the network manager (or wicd, whatever) happily waiting for me to automagically get my network fun -- this is ubuntu, after all. I have been told that this is by intention since network manager had bad interaction with the realtime kernel. But I also have been told that this might not be an actual problem today.
I tried to install the network manager via synaptic... selecting the DVD as package source (as the .debs indeed are present there), but synaptic keeps complaining... and wants to remove the language support package all the time -- I suppose it could be fixed with missing components once I have internet connection ...
Anyhow, I managed to install some packages... the manager, the gnome applet... providerdata. I was even able to configure the 3G dialup connection with proper provider etc, but: The manager applet doesn't not recognize my modem (huawei e160)
The kernel has the correct driver loaded, /dev/ttyUSB* exist, but network manager doesn't see it?
I guess I could get it running using the custom script and wvdial ... what I do on the custom Source Mage install... but since this is ubuntu -- how am I supposed to get the 3G dialup working?

4. Whatever the plymouth daemon does... I've seen notification of it crashing. I hope it's nothing vital.


Well, that's it for now... The boot manager install would be a showstopper for the average creative people... I might try to reproduce that on another test system with a similar SCSI controller, but my time for experiments on the studio box is limited. There I would prefer to get the system into a workable state ASAP. I hope I don't upset anyone with the focus on flames here... I'll wait with praise for ubuntu studio until I actually got a working setup;-)
This is a beta release anyway, so I hope the main problems can be helped.


Alrighty then,

Thomas.
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