My Recent Installation Experience

[mark9117]

Installed Mageia 3 on two separate systems this weekend, one was my Lenovo Thinkpad T-400 and the other was my tried-and-true, dual core desktop. They were both installed from DVD and they went very differently.

The laptop is fairly simple. I don't have a lot of packages installed on it and I use it for remote connections, basic web browsing, email, stuff like that. The install was actually an "upgrade" from Mga2 and took about 45 minutes to get installed, on the network and updated, and was totally unremarkable.

The desktop was a challenge from the get-go. The installer was told to upgrade from Mga2 and I immediately noticed that the mouse wasn't functioning in a way that I could use it effectively. Whenever I would move the mouse to point to a button, it would skitter all over the screen and keep trying to find it's way to the left of the screen. This was okay for the most part, but eventually, I came to screens where I could not navigate with the Tab key. Aggravation ruled

I spent far too much time testing the mouse, reseating it, and replacing it with a known working mouse none of which resolved the issue. I struggled with it until I was able to catch the button and get it clicked. That happened on several screens. It made the job a real chore, but once I got passed that, the upgrade failed with about 360 or so packages left to install. I restarted and struggled with it again. It failed again at exactly the same spot.

At that point, I gave up and went for the "Install" option. Again, I was faced with a mouse that skittered all over the screen when I tried to point with it. All I could do was curse it and keep trying. I probably burned 15 minutes total just wrestling with the mouse. Fortunately, the install fared much better and I was eventually able to get it to boot into my profile after catching an episode of Top Gear on Netflix. (I learned that Jeremy Clarkson in a car is faster than James May and Richard Hammond in a boat.)

Then things got peculiar. I was logged on and things looked pretty good. My weather plasmoid (YAWP) and Gkrellm were gone, but everything else seemed fine. I tried to add media and download missing apps. The media manager failed to find the network. The network was fine, at least the Internet side of it. I hadn't restored my fstab and hosts, created mount points, and connected to my LAN. I fussed with that for about 10 minutes configuring the network and did some basic testing, and it finally worked. I have no idea what caused to start working, but I was able to add media and start installing packages. (Note: this desktop's NIC is wired to an Ethernet port on my router.)

After a while, the notifier popped up and announced that I had updates to apply. Fortunately, I am on the bandwagon early this time and the updates were few - Thunderbird, Firefox and another thing or two. Easy peazy. In the meantime, I tested the screensavers and power management. Bob was looking an awful lot like my uncle.

I got my LAN hooked up and everything was rosy a little more than 2 1/2 hours after I configured it and found that starting my VPN tunnel firewalled my network somehow. I spent about 2 more hours (wee, wee, small hours in the morning) and was unable to resolve it. I went to bed unfulfilled.

First thing I thought about upon waking this morning was my VPN. I got up, and as one does when hearing the siren song of new computer stuff, I sat down and tried it. The VPN was working like a champ as was the rest of my network. Victory!

I did prevail, but it wasn't pretty. The issue with the mouse seems like something awry in the installer. New users will quickly punt when confronted with this kind of thing. I wish I could provide more details as to what was going on with my initial network issues when it came to adding media, but frankly at that point I was tired from wrestling with the mouse and frankly not very methodical about the matter.

At this point, things are quite good. I've still got an issue or two to iron out, but I've got 6 to 9 months to do that. It seems that installer issues aside, Mageia 3 is another quality release that will suit my purposes to a "T". I hope that it ages better than Mageia 2 which frankly seemed to deteriorate on my desktop over time.

My only remaining project is to update my HTPC. I'm really gunshy about that because if it fails, it will mean rebuilding that MythtV box which is a chore. I have some vacation time coming up. Maybe I will risk doing it then.

Mark

[marja]

Hi Mark,

If you still have the /root/drakx/report.bug.gz of such an install with mouse problems, can you then please file a bug report and attach it?

If you're not used to filing bug reports, then please read https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly first.

I'm glad you persevered while installing

Thanks,
Marja

[mark9117]

Reported https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10533.
Couldn't find a place to upload the 1.5 Mb report.bug.xz file, but there you go.

Mark

[doktor5000]

Upload it maybe to something like this: http://dfiles.eu/