kg> If it were me, I would put something newer than
  kg> redhat 8 (which has long since been end-of-lifed
  kg> by redhat) on the machine.

Of course that's the ideal solution, and probably the
source of many of my problems, but I'm not in a
position to do that. The system in question is my
*only* Linux system, and I use it all day every day to
make my living on. If I try to install a new version on
the system and it fails to come up properly I will
effectively instantly unemploy myself.

QUESTION 1: What are the chances that installing *any*
	 Linux distro on this system will go as smooth
	 as glass and allow me to get right back to
	 work?

ANSWER 1: 99.999% likely to fail.

QUESTION 2: What are the chances that installing *any*
	 Linux distro on this system with the
	 assistance of people at an Installfest will go
	 as smooth as glass and allow me to get right
	 back to work?

ANSWER 2: 99.991% likely to fail.

Those odds aren't good enough.

Nonetheless, it's been my hope to install a new version
as soon as possible, probably by means of an
Installfest. Regretably, I am unable to get to one this
weekend. I'm targeting the one next month, and hope by
that time I will have archived everything important,
and made a list of all the other stuff I need to
install and/or re-configure.

Traditionally, whenever I do an OS upgrade, the pieces
don't stop rolling for a couple of weeks.

  kg> by the time you fiddle around with getting the
  kg> correct libraries on that machine in rh8, you
  kg> will have probably spent the same amount of time
  kg> it will have taken to back up your data, install
  kg> a newer linux, restore your data.

Not to mention the tons of other stuff I have on this
system that has been installed over the last couple of
years.

  kg> you might look into one of the distros which
  kg> don't require that type of update, like gentoo or
  kg> debian. you will be much happier in the end, with
  kg> an easier to maintain system.

I was planning on Debian. Not real familiar with
GenToo, other than I've heard positive things about it
from technically savy people.

  >> 
  >> Greetings,
  >> 
  >> I've been out of town and not watching the list, so
  >> maybe this has been discussed recently, but ...
  >> 
  >> I just downloaded the FireFox 1.0PR bundle, unwrapped
  >> it, tried to install it, and as it tried to unwind it
  >> spit out the message:
  >> 
  >> Fatal error [-618]: Couldn't open xpistub library
  >> 
  >> In fact, I do have four different iterations of
  >> libxpistub.so on my sytem:
  >> 
  >> /usr/lib/mozilla-1.0.1/libxpistub.so
  >> /usr/local/mozilla/libxpistub.so
  >> /usr/local/netscape/libxpistub.so
  >> /usr/local/mozilla1.2.1/libxpistub.so
  >> 
  >> but not what the installer is looking for.
  >> 
  >> I'm trying to install this on a Red Hat 8.0 system,
  >> which is getting increasingly difficult to maintain.
  >> 
  >> There's no readme, no instructions of any kind, etc.
  >> 
  >> Just like the old days. Here I thought the days of
  >> supposedly high quality projects delivering things that
  >> are broken from the get-go or missing important pieces
  >> were mostly behind us. Apparently not.
  >> 
  >> So ... does someone have a clue what I should do next?

-- 
Lynn David Newton
Phoenix, AZ
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