On Thu, Jul 20, 2000 at 09:35:16PM -0500, Gil Baron W0MN wrote:
> > I did read your problem. Perhaps you should read it again. You say
> > "cannot install (CLEAN)" yet nowhere in the message above, quoted so
> > you can read what you wrote in the first place, doesn't once mention
> > the word "clean". Yes I see you wrote "... don't work and machines
> > that run perfectly with 7.0 but don't install/run 7.1..", *that* I
> > understood. Nowhere did you mention clean. Perhaps if you'd like a
> > little help you could drop the attitude please?
>
> I did not mention it because it does not matter. I get the same error in
> both cases. You have not answered why I get the error about the setting up
> file systems. Here I copy the error again.
>
> The ACTUAL ERROR shown when I exit install is as follows:
>
> Entering Step "'Setup filesystems'
> error resetting /mnt/etc/mtab at usr/bin/perl-install/fs.pm line 313
Hmmm... I think this is a problem with partition tables, like
Civilme mentioned. Did you try re-partitioning the drive with the
installer?
> Is there ANY way to upgrade manually that is reasonable to do. I could boot
> to version 7 and do it if it is a reasonable thing to do..
There probably is, by manually upgrading each RPM and following
dependencies. This probably isn't your (or my) idea of good time,
however.
> I think you would have to agree that it is frustrating to buy the
> distribution and then not be able to use it when I was able to use the
> previous on the same machine. I can't do anything to help until I have it
> installed can I?
Totally! I don't disagree that it's frustrating. But the message
that I read (and perhaps you gave more info in previous messages that
I hadn't see or replied to), left me with very little to go on. I
simply saw a "bash Mandrake" message and responded to it.
> > > I also keep losing my mouse after adding the things for Wheel Mouse.
> >
> > You never mentioned this before. Now we see one of the "problems"
> > you mention. Perhaps try downgrading your version of imwheel to the
>
> The wheel mouse works so poorly that it is not wroth bothering with at this
> time. It moves too far on each turn and there is no adjustment like there is
> in the intellimouse software under windows. It also only works in root. I
> don't think the user should have to go through so much to get something
> working that is supposed to work out of the box. If I were using the cooler
> version I could understand, but the distribution is at most a beta at this
> point.
Just out of curiousity, but are you trying this with XFree86 4 or
3.3.6? And, again, you have to remember that hardware like the
intellimouse was designed for Windows and we have to figure out a way
to make it work under Linux. This provides us with a challenge and
many problems, and ends in frustration for the user. But short of
begging MS to provide a solution to our problem or giving up
entirely, we have to keep trying to refine it and make it work,
right? It doesn't happen magically. I think if you consider the
number of applications in the distribution, and the number of
applications that work as expected, the ratio is pretty good. You
happen to be one of the people that have a problem with it, but there
are also many others that are satisfied and have no problems with
Mandrake. Does that mean they are better than you? Certainly not.
Do they know more? I wouldn't guess on that. I would imagine it's a
difference in hardware, which is where one of the major weaknesses in
Linux lies. But, again, we keep working on it and in the (near)
future we hope to provide adequate solutions to allow people to use
the newest and coolest hardware under Linux. But that takes work,
and testing. To delay a new version of Mandrake with it's many many
applications simply because imwheel doesn't work 100% isn't entire
reasonable, as I'm sure you would agree.
> > do you mean by "losing my mouse"? Does it disappear? Does it
> > freezer in one spot on the screen? How do you correct the problem?
> > Do you reboot? Do you log out then back in to get it to work again?
>
> I mean there is no mouse cursor and I have no way to do anything in KDE that
> needs a mouse (almost everything) so I have to reboot and them it often
> comes back. I finally removed all of the configuration things for the wheel
> mouse and it seems ok now, another reason to forget about it.
So you can use the mouse as a regular mouse, you just can't use the
scrolling wheel? When imwheel is running is when you have all the
problems?
> > Do you restart the X server and it works?
>
> No as there is no way to do this when the gui is up and you have no mouse.
> That is another problem, Ctl Alt Backspace does not go to the shell, KDE
> comes back up, still no mouse. Even when the mouse is working the only way
> to get to the shell is to change the boot mode and reboot.
You mean it goes back to the login manager, KDM? That's normal.
If you're in runlevel 5, it will kill the X server and restart it
immediately afterwards. The only time C-A-B will go back to the
shell is if you start X with the "startx" command at a shell prompt.
However, if you need to get to a shell prompt, just press "Alt-F1"
and you will get a shell prompt. You don't need to change the boot
mode and reboot if all you want is the console. I switch back and
forth from X to the console all the time without rebooting my
machine.
> > it would be nice to have it work straight out of the box, I agree.
> > But is it really that difficult to tell Mandrake, during the install,
>
> But if you miss it during the install you are out of luck unless you know
> what to change it what configuration file. The documentation is hard to find
> if it exists for such tings. The help files should tell you exactly what to
> do with every config file. AIX which is the IBM version of UNIX is VERY good
> with this. I have used AIX and have very few problems. It is vastly superior
> to Linux.
I've never had the opportunity to look at AIX, but it certainly
sounds like the documentation is better than what came with OS/2.
For most of OS/2 you were more in the dark or had far more cryptic
documentation than with Linux. Looks like they must have done
something right with AIX.
Most people, I hope, wouldn't miss something like the RAM detection
during the install. It's fairly obvious, and short of making it a
very large font and blink red or something, it's easy to see when it
comes up. And you can't say that there aren't many resources
available for finding the memory information. It has been asked so
many times on this mailing list that doing a search for "memory
undetected" will most likely bring up a whole bunch of messages.
Plus there are various HOW-TOs and other places of information. I'll
bet MUO has some info as well. Just because the lilo manpage doesn't
contain the info doesn't mean it's not around. Yes, you need to look
for it, and yes, I know how impatient someone can be when something
doesn't work as expected but... MandrakeSoft cannot be held
responsible because the author of lilo doesn't include in the manpage
an example for every conceivable kernel paramater that might be
passed to it. We try to make the best distribution we can, but there
are certain limits to what we have to work with and what we can do.
*However*, having said that, the feedback you and other users provide
is what will help us to make our manuals better so that the next time
you or anyone else buys a copy of Mandrake and has a memory problem,
the documentation may say how to resolve that. Of course, we have to
be careful with this too... we don't want the manuals as thick as the
last edition of Linux Unleashed either.
> > As far as the wheel mouse being setup automatically... is it
> > connected via PS/2 or USB? You have to remember that for a lot of
>
> It is a PS/2 mouse, that should work at the very least as it is the
> ubiquitous form of the mouse.
True, except for the fact that the wheel is a part of it and that's
what imwheel is trying to handle and, obviously, it's not doing a
very good job (yet). Am I correct in assuming that without imwheel
running, the mouse works ok?
> > this hardware stuff, people have to reverse engineer drivers or write
> > their own in order to use them which makes Linux's compatability with
> > hardware sometimes tricky. Yes, it's gotten much better than it used
>
> This I understand but it makes it very tough on the users.
Absolutely! Which is why everyone who is writing hardware devices
and drivers for Linux is trying to improve it. It's why Linux users
petition hardware vendors to open the proprietary specs for their
hardware and/or write drivers themselves. We realize it's a point of
frustration for users, which is why we are working on this, trying to
make it better. In the meantime, users are left with unuseable or
partially useable drivers which can only be improved with time. I
don't think the authors of imwheel are sitting back and chuckling
about the fact that it doesn't work 100%... my guess they are
working as dilligently as they can to provide a working program that
will solve the current limitations. And that's all we can ask of
them.
> > > My desktop sucks. The ICON are partly hidden by the menu bar at the top.
> >
> > So? Move them! When I installed, it made links for every connected
> > device... CD-ROMs, ZIP drives, etc. I don't want those icons on my
>
> I do move them but the problem is they do not stay moved they just go back
> to the default place on the next boot. That needs to be fixed too. I
> certainly am not going to move them all every BOOT. Actually I found a
> refresh desktop fixes it up pretty well or moving the bar form the top down
> to the bottom, but it is sort t of frustrating and not well done.
This is extremely odd. Now, I gather you're using KDE, right? I
don't use KDE much myself but perhaps it's a permission issue? Do
you have the right permissions for the ~/.kde directory? Did the
user (root or whatever) have an existing KDE desktop and directory
already setup? What I mean is, if this was an upgrade, did the home
directory exist already with already defined KDE customizations?
Have you tried it with a fresh user and allow KDE to make all the
needed dirs in ~ to see if that helped? I've had similar issues with
GNOME in the past and had to delete the .gnome-* directories in my
home dir and let GNOME re-create them.
> > > Many little things like this that do not happen in 7.0. I am pretty much
> > > ready to give up on 7.0 AND ON MANDRAKE if this does not
> > improve soon. It
>
> Actually I meant give up on 7.1. Version 7 probably will do all that I need.
> I am actually using it only to get familiar with it and not as my main OS.
> that will never happen at home at this rate. It is much more likely that
> Windows 2000 will fill that spot. If not, probably just stay with WIN98.
Well, I sincerely hope that doesn't happen. I've never been much of
a Windows users.. before Linux I used OS/2 exclusively. But I do
have a Win98 machine and am totally unimpressed with it. It causes
me more grief than the other 5 Linux Mandrake computers combined. I
hope we can resolve these issues for you so you don't have to resign
yourself to WinSomething-or-Other.
> > While I agree that the beta testing period for 7.1 could have been
> > longer, my experiences with 7.1 do not lead me to the same degree of
> That is certain. It should not have been released as a final in the state
> it is in. I would rather wait. I and others have wasted huge amounts of time
> with this distribution.
But many others, myself included, have had an extremely happy
experience with 7.1! To me, 7.1 is a final-quality product. It's a
shame the same can't be said for yourself and some others, but I
would wager than 80% of the folks that have bad experiences with
Mandrake is because of hardware issues and not Mandrake-specific
issues.
> > Really... maybe you should read what *I* write instead of being so
> > self-absorbed. I was giving you *my* experiences. 7.1 works
> > flawlessly for *me* on three different machines. What conclusion
>
> I don't because you insinuate that your experience is what all should
> expect. Not true, not even close.
No. I never insinuated that. I never even came close. The "FYI"
that I included was to tell you my experience, not to tell you that
it was the experience of every single Mandrake user with the
exception of you alone. That was not my point, nor was it even close
to what I said. Your initial message insinuated more than anything I
have said yet.
> > Did the lack of Mandrake detected the full amount of RAM and not
> > auto-detect a wheel mouse prevent you from completing an install?
>
> \No, the thing that prevented the install is MUCH MORE SERIOUS and listed
> above. That is the main thing to answer here.
The filesystem problem. Yes, that is severe. But, I didn't know
that previously so I couldn't comment on that early. I'm sure you
can understand my confusion based on the three points you mentioned
in your previous message. Yes, that is a definite problem.
Like I see Civilme mention, it looks to be a partition problem, and
perhaps there are problems with your partitions? If you can, perhaps
try to use the mandrake installer to re-partition the drive and try
it again. If you've used something like Partition Magic, you're
almost begging for trouble. I used to swear by it, but after the one
time it completely hosed my partition table, I swear *at* it. You
don't, perchance, use PM at all do you?
Is it feasible to re-partition the drive? If so, perhaps you could
try that and see if it works.
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