Volution: Promising Solution, GUI Not Quite There Yet - page 3

A Volution Overview

We all know how it goes. You sit down to start what should be a dirt simple install and end up spending three hours swearing at the machine as it presents you with a series of bizarre errors. In my case, I sat down at my Linux lab box, the poor machine that I'm always tearing down and reinstalling as I set it up for whatever custom use I might require, and first sailed through the Caldera OpenLinux Server 3.1 installation with no problems. The documentation said to stick with the web server install class so that's what I did, and I was off to the races.

Then I went to install Volution Messaging Server 1.0. I popped the CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive and waited for the handy dandy welcome screen that the documentation promised me, but nothing happened. I clicked the CD-ROM icon to start the installer by hand, and was treated to the error: Unable to run the command specified. The file or directory file:/auto/cdrom does not exist.

Okay, not the end of the world. I fussed with things a bit to try to mount the CD-ROM manually, put the CD into another machine running another distribution to make sure it wasn't a faulty medium and suddenly the welcome screen pops up. No problems with the disk. So I got lazy and went over to the Caldera web site's self help section's Knowledge Base, and within five minutes discovered that the distribution decided that my /dev/cdrom was /dev/hda, my primary IDE drive.

The recommended fix, in my case typing ln -sf /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom, worked just fine. So, I put the CD-ROM back in and get asked if I want to run the autorun program. A click of the mouse and I've got the license agreement, which of course I accept since yours truly could not otherwise review the product. Then I get a confirmation screen basically telling me there's only one installation class for Volution Messaging Server.

From there, the install just whizzes by. A few progress bars churn and then you're done, unless you're me and the install crashes for no identifiable reason. I'm not sure what happened but I rebooted the machine so I could use another distribution for a bit, and when I came back and tried the installation again it ran without a problem. Go figure.