Re: emc (TOME)

> The one guy that suggested someone should
> burn a universal CD that would work slam-dunk, which he'd be happy to
> pay for?... I thot of the old phrase we used to use on our managers, "if
> someone says to you, I want software I can just plug into any computer
> and play without difficulty, hand them a lollipop". Heh.

We won't see a truly universal linux/rt/emc install CD until the
hardware manufacturers include loadable-module drivers with any
hardware they introduce which is not already supported. Some of them
have actually started doing this, although the rapid pace of linux
development makes it a bit challenging (company releases driver, but
it only works with an outdated kernel version).

In the meantime though, it should be possible to put together a CD
that would install a version of Red Hat 5.2 already patched for
realtime, including EMC as just another software package RPM. This
would be as universal as the orignal Red Hat CD - wich means it would
not cover everything, but should cover a lot of the computers out
there. Since most of the hardware specific functionality went into
loadable modules, the overhead of a supplying a kernel with hooks to
support "everything and the kitchen sink" has become relatively small
compared to the convenience. So basically, the CD would have a
near-universal kernel with all the options that are enabled in the
RedHat one, only realtime as well. At some point it would ask you how
much ram you have (or probe it) and set up lilo to allow you to boot
the realtime kernel, and maybe a plain nonrealtime one as well.

Some of the problems people seem to be having with the EMC install
script stem from the fact that it is apparently less univesal than the
plain RedHat install. For instance, the case of the guy who got
RedHat working fine on his SCSI disk, but had the intallation broken
by the emc/realtime script that apparently made an invalid assumption.
That is why I'm suggesting letting the Redhat install tool do the hard
work - and let it install EMC too.

Chris

--
Christopher C. Stratton, stratton@...
Engineer, Instrument Maker & Horn Player
(978)538-5179 work, (617)492-3358 home
30 Griswold Street Cambridge, MA 02138
http://www.mdc.net/~stratton