Re: [newbie] Strange boot options
On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 23:58:06 +0100, Derek wrote: On Wednesday 02 Jun 2004 22:37, brian wrote: snip So most of those I understand, but anyone know what the numeric entries represent? Second question - 9.1 ran just fine on this PC (600 MHz PIII, 512 MB of memory) but once I'd installed 10.0 I noticed a lot of disk thrashing going on. I ran up KDE system guard (Im using the version of KDE which came with 10.0, and that's the only desktop I've installed) to find that I'd only got a couple of megs of memory free, which explains the thrashing, Linux uses all unused memory as a disc cache. It is perfectly normal for memory usage to be 100% After all unused memory is 'wasted' memory. Hmm. And a hard disk which is being *constantly* accessed is a hard disk that is likely to have a short lifespan - assuming you're not running server-class drives, which I'm not on my Linux box. I wouldn't have noticed the memory usage had it not been for the disk thrashing. As far as servers that I've installed are concerned, I have MySQL, ProFTP and Apache (that I'm aware of). I've also got Kylix on the PC, but that doesn't have anything sitting in the background until you actually run it. Anyway, what puzzles me is that I've got six copies of httpd2, one with a login of root and five with a login of apache, Perfectly normal. That is how more than 1 person at a time can hit your web site. OK, that's cleared that one up. six copies of mingetty, Hit Ctl+Atl+F1 through to F6 and you will see text consoles. These are the instances of mingetty. You could run fewer, but it would save virtually no resources. Any idle process eventually gets swapped out to swap and consumes insignificant resource. OK. five of saslauthd, Perfectly normal assuming you are actually using SASL (Possibly for email authentication) Not to my knowledge - unless it's by default. and a couple of other programs which show two or three instances. Can anyone tell me whether the footprint of 10.0 with KDE really is this large, or has something gone wrong with the update process? No its all normal. Do not worry about it. I'm worried about any system that shows constant disk access while idle. If there are services you have installed but do not use, then by all means turn them off or uninstall them. The only service I would recommend disabling is tmdns (Tiny DNS server) which is more trouble than it is worth and screws up lots of peoples net connection. The net connection, at least, is working just fine. As above, don't underestimate my ignorance of Linux. I used to write Fortran programs under some variant of Unix 25 years ago, and that's about the extent of my knowledge of Unix/Linux systems. Since then all my PC work has been with Billy G's offerings. At the moment, I know about enough of Mandrake to navigate round the file system and to fire up Kylix. Just enough knowledge to be dangerous ;-) Not really - the dangerous ones are those who know nothing but think they know something. I know the dangers of learning a new operating system from scratch, I've been through it too many times. :-( Some have been Unix-like, e.g. Hewlett-Packard's RTE-6 and RTE-A, but it's all buried by time under a mountain of Windows and VAX/VMS. Someone on this list used to have a good signature :- If your Linux system is not broken, you are not trying hard enough! Have fun No guarantees. ;-) I've really not that much interest in hacking around in the depths of the system, all I'm after is to learn enough to develop the same sort of software under Linux as I currently do under Windows. Had it not been for Borland's Kylix, I'd not even bother looking at Linux. In any case, I just don't like an OS that tries to beat hard drives into an early grave. Thanks for the info, but I'm still not convinced. If this constant disk access really is normal for a Linux system, I'm going to buy shares in some hard drive manufacturers! Brian. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake 9.0 installation problems
On Fri, 04 Oct 2002 23:55:43 -0400, you wrote: Your 24X Mitsumi IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drive (Mfg. date - circa 1997) is designed to read CD-Rs, BUT is limited to a max storage capacity of 630 MBs in Mode 2 (standard read mode). You may not be able to read the Install CD for MDK 9 (~690+ MBs) properly or at all. Good one - hadn't thought of that. Is this burn of MDK 9 from the very same burner you used to make your MDK 8.2 CDs? Yes. Is your CD-RW capable of burning 700 MB CD-Rs? Yes. Have you checked disc number one for complete readability? Yes, but not on the Mitsumi drive. It sounds like the size of the first CD of MDK 9 is your problem. Either your burner cannot accommodate beyond 650 MBs No, it's not that. and/or your CD-ROM drive cannot read beyond that point (as your specs suggest!) Sounds likely. BTW: If you lack the specs on your CD-ROM drive, they are here: http://support.tulip.com/TulipExchange/Public/nlhe0016.nsf/332a0dc0f76dd553412567370035f4a2/3055793e2171be614125654c00493b53?OpenDocument (careful! one very long URL!) Shane has been able to trick some CD-ROM drives into reading beyond their mfg. capacity. However, if I understand him correctly, the drives at least allowed the install to get to the point of picking out the packages (where you could choose to nix those that were in the nether regions of your CD-R.) If you aren't able to get the installation to recognize the drive, it would seem this is a moot technique. Nope, the installation doesn't start up at all. Some things to consider in your hardware setup of drives and CD-ROMs for the future: 1. It would be best for your setup if you slaved the two drives together on the primary IDE channel and made the CD-ROM drive the master on the second IDE channel. It's really not best for the performance of the drive to have a CD-ROM on the same channel and can cause problems. Yes, I should switch them around - the PC used to have a third hard drive, but I had to steal that one for another PC. snip Does any of this help? Yes, I think you've probably got the answer with the capacity of the CD-ROM. Damn! I'd much sooner have seen Mandrake go to a fourth image than cause this problem - in fact, given that those of us who run both Windows and Linux will tend to use the older boxes for Linux (for obvious reasons!) I'd even question the commercial logic of Mandrake's decision. I guess the newer CD-ROMs aren't that expensive these days Thanks for the help, Brian. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake 9.0 installation problems
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002 22:02:42 -0700, you wrote: On Friday 04 October 2002 7:12 pm, Brian Meadows did speak unto the huddled masses, saying: I'm trying to upgrade a box currently running Mandrake 8.2 (Pentium 133, 64 MB RAM, one 6.4GB hard drive as the primary master, a Mitsumi FX240S as the primary slave, and a second 2GB hard drive as the secondary master). Insert the 9.0 disk 1, with the PC set to boot from CD-ROM of course, I get the usual POST and BIOS messages, then the following did you install from cd boot before? my older machines (166) simply do not boot correctly from cd. ever. Yes. The machine boots from the CD-ROM just fine, that was how 8.2 was installed. I think the answer is the near 700 MB CD and the old drive. Brian. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Mandrake 9.0 installation problems
Hi all, Baffled by this one, anyone got any ideas? I'm trying to upgrade a box currently running Mandrake 8.2 (Pentium 133, 64 MB RAM, one 6.4GB hard drive as the primary master, a Mitsumi FX240S as the primary slave, and a second 2GB hard drive as the secondary master). Insert the 9.0 disk 1, with the PC set to boot from CD-ROM of course, I get the usual POST and BIOS messages, then the following ISOLINUX 1.76 Mandrake Linux isolinux Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it isolinux: Failed to locate CD-ROM drive: boot failed And that's it - the PC hangs, and a hard reboot is the only way out. Yes, the downloaded images did give correct MD5 sums before I burned them to CD. Anyone have any ideas? Obviously the system still knows it has the CD-ROM there (at least initially), as it would otherwise drop me into GRUB and my 8.2 startup. I can't believe Mandrake have removed support for my particular CD-ROM from V9.0. Thanks, Brian. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] LILO problem
Hi all, Been persuaded by the release of Kylix (Delphi for Linux) to take a look at Linux, but I'm running into a problem with multi-booting Mandrake 8.0 and Windows. The system is a Dell PIII/600, 512 MB RAM, AMI BIOS, with a single H-P CD-RW hanging off the motherboard controller, and all of the drive space hanging off a Promise ATA/66 card. The first two drives are my Windows 2000 Pro. setup, and I was intending to use the third drive for Linux. I go through the setup, everything installs just fine, and the setup routines tells me that my system will be rebooted. It finds the Promise controller and all the drives, but then all I get is a blank screen except for the two characters 'LI' at the top left of the screen - presumably this is part of the LILO prompt. The system hangs at that point, and I have to boot off my Win 2K Pro CD and overwrite the MBR in order to get Windows back again. Anyone got any ideas what's going wrong? Make no assumptions, I'm a total novice at Linux. Thanks, Brian.
