New Subscriber - HELP

["Guy Fletcher" <vk2ku@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi Linrad people,

First, to introduce myself:
Guy  VK2KU, active on 144MHz EME, CW and JT44.
I am new to Linux, but have some experience as a user (not administrator)
on Unix machines at work before I retired 5 years ago.
So I know my way around a bit, and where to expect files to be found.

I have planned for a year or more to learn more about Leif's Linrad software radio.
A month or two ago I tried to install Linux in a separate partition on my Win2000
computer; installation was ok and Linux worked, but Win2000 "fell in a heap",
apparently because Win2000 could see the Linux partitions but couldn't handle them.
I decided on the spot to run Linux on a separate dedicated computer; suitable
second-hand machines are cheap enough.
I now have a 500MHz machine with a 10GHz hard-drive and 64MB of RAM for Linux only.

Operating System:
I have CDs for RedHat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0.
On advice from Leif, I am installing RedHat 8.0.
Installation was straightforward, in principle at least.
I booted into DOS with a floppy, and then ran autoboot from the dosutils directory of the first CD.
Having an empty hard-drive, I opted for "Automatic Partitioning" and "Remove all Partitions".
With no requirement for dual booting into different operating systems, I accepted the default
boot loader "Grub".
Firewall "Medium" and default firewall rules.
Two accounts: Root and Guy.
Workstation, and Customize packages.

So far so good.
I am including the boring details in case they are relevant to problems below.
The choice of packages is somewhat bewildering!
On this second attempt at installation, I opted for NO GUI, 
i.e no X-windows, no Gnome, no KDE.
I prefer to work from the Command Line in this kind of situation.

I won't bore you with all the package details.
I included nasm under Development Tools, and Kernel Development,
as Leif advised me.

Now for VGA and SVGA, according to Leif's webpage on this.
After running updatedb, "locate vgagl.h" finds nothing, so no SVGA as expected.
Likewise "locate svgalib" finds nothing.

The unexpected comes with "locate libvga": /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libvgahw.a
This is presumably the actual VGA library, but not where I expected it.
Remember, I did not choose to install X-Windows.

Leif's webpage lists files he had to remove when upgrading to SVGA:
rm -f /etc/vga/libvga*
rm -f /usr/local/lib/libvga*
rm -f /usr/local/man/man5/libvga*
and
rm /usr/local/include/vga.h
rm /usr/local/include/vgagl.h

I found no directory vga under /etc/,
no files at all in /usr/local/lib/,
no directory man under /usr/local/.
However the directory /usr/share/man/man5/ exists but with no libvga files in it.
Finally there are no files at all in /usr/local/include/,
though there are lots of header files in various other places.

I am wary of proceeding to install SVGA until I understand what is going on.
Maybe I chose some wrong package options along the way.
I am quite happy to reinstall Linux as many times as necessary to get it right,
before moving on to Linrad.

So HELP, please someone!
Sorry for the length of this first posting.

73  Guy  VK2KU



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