This query refers to a Mepis (Debian variant) install I've done, as well as to the live-CD version of that distro, from which the installation runs. I'm setting up a computer for a friend who is not very computer-literate, but who also can't afford XP, so I wanted a fairly user-friendly distro, but something not too far removed from what I know better (Debian). The choice really was decided by the fact that, of those distros I tried on the target hardware (P3 500, 128MB RAM, 4GB HD--found in the garbage), Mepis was the only one that autoconfigured the Lucent winmodem the thing has. Because the machine was a bit tight on space, I added a second drive--1.2GB. Unfortunately the automated install Mepis runs does not allow for much in the way of partition tweaking: in fact, it's set up to only install to a single drive. So, I installed it to the 4GB drive, planning on moving some large dir over to the second drive and creating a mount point and fstab entry for it. It took me a couple of install attempts to get that right. In both of my previous attempts, as well as during sessions run from the live-CD, the modem was working fine. On the third attempt, before actually booting into the newly-installed system, I found a suitably large directory to move over to the second drive--/usr/lib (640+ MB). I copied it's contents over to the second drive (as root cp -R /usr/lib/* /mnt/hdb2), renamed the original dir to /usr/slib on the main drive, created a new /usr/lib (using Konqueror as root) on the main drive, and edited /etc/fstab to mount the second drive at /usr/lib. On boot, it all seemed to go successfully. The drive mounts at the specified place, and files are accessible. But I was greeted on KDE startup with the message "/dev/dsp not found." I didn't see that on previous install attempts or on running from the live-CD. And when I tried to query the modem, it told me the modem cannot be opened. I'm trying to find out what went wrong.
Could moving the directory /usr/lib to the second drive have caused this problem? Did I maybe screw up some permissions in copying? Any suggestions--short of another install--for fixing it if it does seem like this is where the problem lies?
First, "cp -R" is not the safest way to cp an important directory like /usr/lib . "cp -a" (or its equivalent, "cp -dpR") is much safer. It is possible you introduced some sort of ownership or permissions or symlink problem with your approach ...but I can't actually think of one that would affect the contents of /dev . That makes me wonder if the info about /dev/dsp is a red herring (/dev/dsp normally accesses the sound subsystem, not the modem ... but I am not familiar with the Lucent driver or its peculiarities).
All else I can suggest, really, is that you round up the usual suspects and see if they shed any light on the problem. Look at (and if you want help with the process, show us) the output of:
more /etc/fstab
df
ls -l /dev/ds*
ls -l /dev/modem*
lsmod
(in particular, is lt_modem loaded?)And can a lightweight command-line app (minicom is the usual one) access the modem? That is, might this be a KDE problem (your cp approach *may* have interfered with its access to some needed library)?
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
