From MyLinuxNotes

Go ahead flame me for using RedHat, but I needed something that I could get up (X too) and running quickly. Then I just got used to it and haven't had the time to really explore other options. If anything I would probably go with Suse. I tried Debian a couple of times and was never really able to get X the way I liked it, and that was a huge struggle.

---

Contents 1 Upgrading 1.1 up2date 1.2 Version Upgrades 2 Compiling a Kernel 3 Other problems 3.1 Serviceconf

Upgrading

up2date

This is supposed to give apt-get a run for its money I suppose, close but no cigar. To even use it you have to register with the RedHat Network and register all your machines. The free version only allows you to upgrade one machine at a time. To switch between machines you have to "entitle" each machine individually. Recently I wasn't even able to log onto their servers because of network load. More recently it has gotten better. Time for a cron job. You can pay $60/per machine to get priorty connections.

Recently when I up2dated I was no longer able to send mail. Check out PostfixServer for the fix.

Even with it's short comings, it's a valuable tool. It keeps you up to date with all the...

Version Upgrades

Since the fiasco of 7.0 I have stayed away from upgrading immediately from the fear of hosing my system.

6.2 --> 7.1 --> 7.2 were all very painless. 7.2 --> 7.3 was another story. After upgrading I found that mutt, xcdroast and sound did not work.

• mutt:

• xcdroast: Couldn't connect to the Xserver for what reason I am not sure of yet. To fix the problem I used:

xhost +localhost

• sound:

I had to edit /etc/modules.conf and add the proper lines for my card.

On another 7.2 --> 7.3 upgrade, the Postfix got broken. Check out PostfixServer for the fix. The system I upgraded I had been upgrading with up2date-nox -u religiously so all my packages for the 7.2 feed were up to date. After upgrading to 7.3 PHP4 didn't work. To fix it I registered my machine again, changing to 7.3 feed. Then an up2date-nox -u did the trick.

9.0 seemed to go pretty well until I tried to go to a https url with Konqueror. I would get the error:

   An error occured while loading https://somesecuresite.com:
   Could not connect to host somesecuresite.com

To fix this I had to install the kdelibs-devel and openssl-devel.

Compiling a Kernel

I generally follow the Red Hat Linux Customization Guide Appendix A. Building a Custom Kernel found at their site. These are the steps I generally follow:

make mrproper

If you leave this out you might get errors when doing make modules like:

In file included from paep.c:67:
/usr/src/linux-2.4.20-19.9/include/linux/kernel.h:60: invalid suffix on integer constant

make oldconfig

Makes a .config of working defaults. If you have tweeked your kernel before you should have a .config in that kernels source directory. Use that one instead.

make xconfig

Load the .config you just created and edit it as nessecary

make dep

make clean

After this step you should edit the Makefile and change the EXTRAVERSION line to how you want to identify your kernel

make bzImage

make modules

make modules_install

make install

Other problems

Serviceconf

I was constantly using serviceconf to remove/add services from run levels. Then all of a sudden it started crashing. I finally found out that it was due to duplicate entries in /etc/init.d and /etc/xinetd.d. This happend to me with pure-ftpd. I changed one to pure_ftpd and it worked like a champ. I guess I could have deleted the one I didn't need.