[conspire] 1998-era Compaq laptop

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com> -----

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 16:10:42 -0700
From: Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com>
To: bofh at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Advice on 300 MHz Armada


Hi Rick,

I have a 300 MHz Armada 7800 with Red Hat 9 on it.  It will no longer 
boot.  It stops at "Socket status: 30000006"

I've tried all the libraries from Redwood City to Los Altos, and all the 
RH9 CDs are missing or unreadable.

My data files are all backed up, so a fresh install is an option.  I read 
that Fedora chokes an old machine like mine--is that true? Should I 
repair the Red Hat 9, or install something newer? 

What would you recommend?

Brian


----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 16:41:21 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Advice on 300 MHz Armada
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Brian Good (snug.bug at hotmail.com):

> I have a 300 MHz Armada 7800 with Red Hat 9 on it.  It will no longer 
> boot.  It stops at "Socket status: 30000006"
> 
> I've tried all the libraries from Redwood City to Los Altos, and all the 
> RH9 CDs are missing or unreadable.
> 
> My data files are all backed up, so a fresh install is an option.  I read 
> that Fedora chokes an old machine like mine--is that true? Should I 
> repair the Red Hat 9, or install something newer? 
> 
> What would you recommend?

Hi, Brian!

I'm not aware of any reason why current releases of Fedora would
necessarily choke on PII-vintage machines such as your Compaq Armada
7800 laptop -- other than shortage of RAM, if (as seems likely) your
machine falls below the minimum spec for the installer program.

The Armada 700 has 64MB of SDRAM on the main board, and is capable of
expansion up to 256 MB total RAM, the maximum supported by your model of 
laptop.  How much total RAM does your machine have?  It's likely to be
the critical factor in deciding what your machine can/should run.

Actually, though, it would be desirable, first, to get to the bottom of
what is causing the 'Socket status: 30000006' message.  

During startup, you should see a prompt saying you can hit 'i' to enter
interactive startup.  Do that, and go item-by-item through the various
startup items until you find the one that hangs the machine.  Having
identified that item, now force a fresh reboot, do 'i' for interactive
startup again, and this time _skip_ whatever item causes a hang.  You
can now disable that item.  For example, if it's the PCMCIA card
services that are causing the machine to hang, you could do (as the root
user):

  chkconfig --level 0123456 pcmcia off 

I'm using 'pcmcia' as an example because I think that's what the 'Socket
status: 30000006' message concerns.  Caveat:  Keep in the back of your
mind the possibility that what's hanging is the startup service _after_
the one that issues the final on-screen message.  It might be that the
failing service chokes the machine before it has time to output anything
to screen.

One reason you should concentrate on getting to the bottom of the
'Socket status: 30000006' message (aside from its root-cause
_apparently_ standing in the way of booting) is that I'm unclear on
whether that's a hardware or software error, which would be good to
figure out.

That consideration aside, there are objective reasons why you should no
longer run RH9 in the year 2010:  It has unfixed and unfixable security
problems.

And now for the bad news:  Even if your Armada is maxed out on RAM, you
are going to be constrained as to choice of year-2010 Linux
distribution, because 256 MB is no longer enough for leading desktop 
distros, especially the overwhelming majority that use the three most
RAM-sucking 'desktop environments':  GNOME, KDE, XFCE4.  (The fourth
most commonly encountered 'desktop environment', LXDE, is something you
should consider. 

Here are the hardware recommendations for the most recent Fedora:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/14/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Welcome_to_Fedora_14.html#sect-Release_Notes-Hardware_Overview

Notice that the minimum RAM for graphical operation (with GNOME) is 384
MB, and the recommended amount is 512 MB.

Once you let me know how much RAM there is in your Armada, I can better
advice you on possibilities.


----- End forwarded message -----