dcowart's Journal: Dead DB server and OpenSUSE wtihout PostgreSQL???

Lost my home database server last night. It had been up and running for a while and I wanted to update it from FC1 to OpenSUSE 10. I've been using OpenSUSE at work for a while and really enjoying it. It seems to be a very viable desktop linux candidate. So I backed up the important data and configs and rebooted with the OpenSuSE cd in. So it took forever to boot, I'm talking like five minutes or more. It finally got to the first setup screen and I tried to use a mouse... It wasn't working so I tried by-passing my KVM switch, still dead, I tried a second mouse nothing, finally I tried a USB mouse, Success!!! I was really happy about this stupid mouse. (I also seem to have lost a small Playstation Mouse in the process. That I'm really not happy about. :-( ) I got through the next few screens clicking away and that I was trying to type in the volume group name in the LVM setup and the keyboard wasn't working, tried the same steps and darn it I had to use a USB keyboard to do things. If that means what I think it does, the PS/2 parts of the Northbridge of the are blow/corrupted. I chugged along with the USB devices, and began the actual copying files part of the install. Once it got to where it would normally ask for CD 2 it rebooted. {sigh} That blows. It now hangs while trying to boot.

So I've begun my search for another web/database server for my house. I am going cheap b/c it's not a highly loaded machine. I'm looking at a sempron 64 mobo that should do nicely, that sempron 64 2800 and a gig of RAM should not cost more that $150 or so. (newegg.com pricing) I'm just gonna have to wait until I get paid again :-(

During the install of OpenSuSE from the CD's I noticed something though. While they do include the PostgreSQL libraries for connecting to a Postgres DB, they don't actually include the Database itself. This maybe a CD vs. DVD thing. Novell is doing something funky where the packages don't match between the OSS version and the "Non-Free" version. Although they do include some OSS software in the Non-Free version. I'm wondering if it's not included b/c it's an "enterprise" DB. I'm gonna compare it with the SLES 9 version and see what's different. Hopefully I can update the OpenSUSE Wiki with the info sometime today.