Hello,
Please bear with me, this message is not short.
I started using Linux last year, with a small version called doslinux that ran
from a file in the dos filesystem. It was a pleasure so I bought a second
hard drive and tried out SuSE linux and Red Hat 6.
I have just installed linux-mandrake 7 (the others, except for doslinux, have
been taken off). However it has presented me with some puzzles:
1) During the installation process I did not select the dos partitions to be
mounted but mandrake mounts them anyway. What causes this?
2) If I edit the fstab file to remove them they still get mounted. They are
always called /mnt/DOS_hda# (# being the hd number). How does it do this?
3) Unlike in redhat, slakware or SuSE I find that I cannot use chmod on any of
the directories or files that mandrake has by default. It has no effect the
system just ignores it. Even if I set security to none (welcome to hakers
etc.). I have tried removing msec but that causes kde to be almost unusable -
none of the panel features and icons work, all you can do is ctrl+alt+shift to
log out.
4)If I try to look at the /mnt directory with kfm, kfm dies and so do the
panel features and icons. To recover I have to log out and back in again.
5) Whichever window manager I am using, I cannot write to the dos file system
that mandrake insists on mounting. This I think is also what is preventing WINE
from working (it keeps complaining about files being unavailable or
inaccessable).
I am sending this message out because I have looked in all these places and
failed to find a possible cause:-
/etc/fstab /etc/profile /etc/bashrc .bashrc .bash_profile .cshrc
.ked/shre/config/kfmrc and the other k#rc files and am trying to trawl through
the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit script for clues.
I would be greatful if somebody could show me how to make mandrake as flexible
as the other linuxes. All the above happens even when I log in as root.
By the way what uses the variable SECURE_LEVEL that is set in the /etc/profile?
Regards,
Kizito
