Re: [newbie] browsing, browsing, over the bounding main
Hi Stephen, Sunday, September 28, 2003, 4:28:24 PM, you wrote: SK On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 16:53, Lance Cummings wrote: Okay, before I go out and smell the dioxins, there is one item of urgent (for me, anyway) business: Please look at the following URL in both Mozilla and Konqueror: SK WHACK WHACK? ^_^ Advice and counsel sought, providing I survive the dioxins, that is. Lance SK Pages/Sites done in FrontPage do not necessarily conform to STANDARDS - SK but if it's written in FrontPage, it will most certainly display in SK Internet Explorer... SK One of the sad things about quite a few web developers is that they SK don't care to bother with a standard, nor are they concerned as to what SK a site is going to display like in anything other than what they're SK using - Internet Explorer, mostly. SK After viewing the page source, I am of the opinion that the page was SK done in FP2000 or XP...but I could be wrong... Okay, I well understand I think, but right or wrong is not the question. I have to do business with these people Monday through Friday, every day of the year except national holidays. So, I need a comfortable view of what they are providing, regardless of their adherence to STANDARDS. g My question at this point is how do I comfortably view their output, regardless of how oblivious to or complicitous with the Redmond monopoly they might be? Redmond be damned, I have to look at that site, every day, so I need a way to see that site completely and correctly, regardless of the shortsightedness of the webmaster. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Kicker?
Got this new little app-launch button on the taskbar after upping to RC2. Looks kind of like a little gear. Clicking it produces an error window: Unable to run the command specified. The file or directory file:/home/lance/.kde/share/apps/kicker/Welcome.desktop does not exist. Should I be concerned about this? (Sorry for the plethora of what are probably simple questions, but I *am* a newbie.) ^_- Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Kicker?
On Saturday 27 September 2003 15:48, Charlie M. wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 September 27, 2003 12:06 am, Lance Cummings wrote: Got this new little app-launch button on the taskbar after upping to RC2. Looks kind of like a little gear. Clicking it produces an error window: Unable to run the command specified. The file or directory file:/home/lance/.kde/share/apps/kicker/Welcome.desktop does not exist. Should I be concerned about this? (Sorry for the plethora of what are probably simple questions, but I *am* a newbie.) ^_- Lance Yep, you're running cooker all right. (-: I would never lie about such a thing. ^_^ --We do them this way in Japan. Hold the Alt button and hit F2 at the same time. You can type Konsole or rxvt to open a terminal and become super user. If you like you can save a step by clicking the options button and open the terminal as root. Then run the following command: rpm --rebuilddb updatedb update-menus -n ldconfig You should get your menus back. Assuming of course that part of KDE hasn't gone missing, in which case let the list know and we shall see what we shall see. Okay, did that, and the drive light got serious for a while (quite a while, actually), and I got a couple of lines on the xterm saying some things had been written. But nothing changed. Logged out of X and back in, too (MS habit lol nearly rebooted to see if that would help). ^_- Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Kicker?
Hi Greg On Saturday 27 September 2003 20:23, Greg Meyer wrote: On Saturday 27 September 2003 02:06 am, Lance Cummings wrote: Got this new little app-launch button on the taskbar after upping to RC2. Looks kind of like a little gear. Clicking it produces an error window: Unable to run the command specified. The file or directory file:/home/lance/.kde/share/apps/kicker/Welcome.desktop does not exist. Try deleting or renaming the ~/.kde/share/config/kickerrc file. Did that. Renamed it to kickerrc-renamed. Nothing changed. ^_^, --small tear Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Fwd: Re: [newbie] more refresh and modeline fun follies
Hi Richard On Saturday 27 September 2003 21:23, you wrote: Resending this, as it hasn't shown up and KMail had no email From email address set. Phew! I'm back again. I just had a very nasty disk crash taking / and /home away to the filesystem in the sky. I even *considered* doing a backup the day before... So forgive me if I sound forgetful, I would have to visit the archives to check up on the thread. No problem. My sympathies, and I was there once. I never want to be there again, and backups are done too often now. g I use a big portable USB drive, normally offline, and image partitions to it, and I also have a batch file I run using a neat little (Windows) utility called xxcopy. Clones the essential files very very quickly. The batch file is very nice -- I can dump every essential file on the box to that USB in just a few minutes. The imaging program is Acronis True Image, which is another real nice piece of work, allowing any Windows partition, including XP and 2000 system partitions, to be imaged on the fly from inside the GUI. So the maximum dot clock rate is 200MHz, or maybe a bit less, to keep your monitor happy. So any of the three modelines would work, and since the highest dot clock was 126MHz, you could get higher than a 100Hz refresh. One of the things you missed while you were gone is that the refresh rate is now settled successfully. And I do appreciate the help you offered. I took your advice and simply tried them. One was very close to perfect, another needed a large adjustment, and the third was seemingly way off the mark, giving me a view through a 7-Up bottle (are they still green, and does anyone still drink it?). RU The output of a startx --probeonly would be very helpful. Okay screaming newbie alert I had no success with startx --probeonly. OK, my bad. The option is to the X server, not the startx command. Try XFree86 -probeonly file1.txt 2file2.txt (Reading the manual I thnk all the useful information comes out on stderr, so a simple redirection would not catch it. This way you get the info either in file1.txt or file2.txt) Note that that's a single -, as given in man XFree86 and not a double -- as given by Eric Raymond. One of them may be wrong... Remember that to kill the server if in fact it starts by accident, it's ctrl-alt-backspace. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu. You might find hints about where to put them and so forth if you take a look at XF86Config (with no -4). That's the one for version 3, which did not do so much automatically, there's probably a wealth of modelines in there. (I wouldn't actually try any of them though.) I did that, thanks. The confusing part was that there were *no* useable modelines in -4, and that was confusing to me because I didn't understand the way the system was working automatically. I have a slightly better idea about what is happening now. One thing you might clarify for me: It is my suspicion that only rather prolonged running of the monitor (more than 2 or 3 minutes at least) I'm not a video engineer. It is my understanding that a reasonably close modeline wont damage a modern monitor quickly, and that if you get a picture then you wont be causing damage. The more I read about this, the less concerned I am about it. Xvidtune warnings aside, apparently most modern monitors (at least less than 5 years old) of any reasonable quality will not fry this way. Apparently a lot of circuit breaker type stuff has been put in to prevent people who haven't read Modelines for Dummies from hurting the monitor. ^_^ Thanks for your help Richard. Please keep an eye on my threads so you can grasp just how much one human being does not know. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Kicker?
On Sunday 28 September 2003 00:28, Charlie M. wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 September 27, 2003 05:23 am, Greg Meyer wrote: On Saturday 27 September 2003 02:06 am, Lance Cummings wrote: Got this new little app-launch button on the taskbar after upping to RC2. Looks kind of like a little gear. Clicking it produces an error window: Unable to run the command specified. The file or directory file:/home/lance/.kde/share/apps/kicker/Welcome.desktop does not exist. Try deleting or renaming the ~/.kde/share/config/kickerrc file. I should have thought to tell him that Greg, thanks. I must have been half asleep again. I must have some loose wires in my cranium again. ^_^ He (and everyone else) probably knows it but the tilde..(~); well it isn't just the go home flag it's often used for. Too much trivia as usual from me. (-: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/04/history_of_the_tilde Also the dot before a file or directory name sets that object's state to hidden. So if Lance is looking for that file he won't find it unless he uses the exact name to find it with an editor or sets his file management browser to show hidden files in the view setting. Thanks Charlie. I did indeed figure out that .xxx meant hidden, and set Konqueror to show them all, as I run the same way in Windows. As you probably read in my other response though, renaming did not do anything I'm aware of. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Kicker?
On Sunday 28 September 2003 01:38, yankl wrote: The gear icons you see means that system could not find an icon for specific file. Think you are right, sir. No need to keep that icon around at all then. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] nasty upgrade surprise
On Sunday 28 September 2003 01:56, yankl wrote: On Saturday 27 September 2003 05:10 am, Anne Wilson wrote: On Saturday 27 Sep 2003 6:42 am, Lance Cummings wrote: That is *not*, however, something one expects of an upgrade routine. Lance, anything on Cooker is not at release status, and you install at your own risk. Anne My fair lady. I would call it a bug. Upgrade should recognize that I had kmail and install it. A specially in RC2 that usually a last RC before final. How ever it is not a RC2 or mandrake problem it is KDE issue. KDE start changes in the packaging with out considering the rpm upgrade schema. It like they expect every one to uninstall KDE and then reinstall it from scratch. With all regards to Anne being technically correct, I agree with Yankl. RC2 means Mandrake thought RC1 was good enough to consider releasing, but put it out for one final bug check. So RC2 is probably very near release, having addressed the last-ditch bugs from RC1. Not release, as Anne points out, but darn close. And in any case, any upgrade that uninstalls or deconfigures your e-mail client -- one of the primary apps on a system -- has a bug, IMNSHO. ^_^ That kind of thing is an attention grabber. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Exploits (Was: keep password broken?)
On Sunday 28 September 2003 01:35, Derek wrote: On Saturday 27 Sep 2003 1:13 am, Lance Cummings wrote: y Bad idea, If your computer connected to the Internet. Even though, the number y of viruses/trojans for LINUX is miniscule it not 0. Given all user root y rights will increase chance for getting your box compromise. Along that line . . . what are some of the Internet gotchas regarding Linux? There are very few gotchas. But here are a few things to consider 1/ Do not run as root- If you do then just visiting a web site with a browser which has an exploit could cause arbitary code to execute as root. Not very likely, but technically possible. Good to know, thanks. I will be tempted to run as root someday I'm sure, as I run as administrator (but renamed for security) in WIndows. But that would be quite some time from now, and maybe I will forgo the idea entirely if it's not too big a pain not to be root. ^^_^^ 2/ Do not use weak root or user passwords. There are utilities which will guess a weak password quite quickly. Also make sure you are running at a security level high enough to report unsuccessful logins (I think 'standard' security is OK) Same advice applies to Windows, thanks. I am running 'standard', so glad to hear it will prolly suffice. I use strong passwords, and I expire them. 3/ Make sure you enter an email address in the Mandrake control Centre Security window. That way you will be alerted to security attacks. Totally unaware. Thanks. 4/ Install the chkrootkit RPM which will examine your system daily to see if you have been compromised. It does not need any set up. Its reports will come in your daily Mandrake security report. On the CD? (guess I'll go have a look) 5/ Read about how msec (Mandrake Secure) works at http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/ Okay. Right after I finish 'War and Peace'. ^_- 6/ Do your Mandrake Security updates regularly, either by the GUI, or from an automated cron job The command urpmi.update updates urpmi --update --auto-select will do the updates for you. (That assumes you have defined a urpmi update source called updates) Oh-oh. Unknown thing. Danger, Will Robinson! (I have defined no such thing, and would be unlikely to do so until I figure out how to do it.) lol Note:Now you are running Mdk 9.2RC2 you **must** delete your current 9.1 urpmi sources and add 9.2 sources. Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh. A **must** that I have no idea how to accomplish. I am in deep kimchi now, I suspect. Thanks Derek, Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] nasty upgrade surprise
On Sunday 28 September 2003 01:17, Derek wrote: On Saturday 27 Sep 2003 6:42 am, Lance Cummings wrote: On Saturday 27 September 2003 14:02, yankl wrote: On Saturday 27 September 2003 12:27 am, Lance Cummings wrote: I put Cooker RC2 over my Bamboo last night, and I'm pretty unhappy that I did so. ---8--- Next steps are fonts (which Charlie has kindly offered help with) and sound. Anybody know how to get sound (using an Asus P4PE with Soundmax on board)? (Feel free to change the subject line if you reply to that.) Lance The easy way to get fonts is to install the microsoft fonts packages from Texstar Get Texstar defined as a urpmi source by following the url in my sig, and then use your Mandrake Software Installer to install the msfonts and msfonts-style packages. Thats it Done! Looking forward to doing that and reporting. Say what one will about MS (and oh yes, a lot can be said), the fonts are not an issue. Stuff is very readable and clean right out of the box. As for sound. If harddrake reports a driver is installed, then the chances are the sound is working, but your volumes are muted. Mdk 9.1 often installs with all the mixer levels muted. Adjust the levels with kmix, aumix, and alsamixer (you will probably need to install th alsamixergui RPM) One or more of them may be needed to unmute the sound. Okay . . . I fired up kmix immediately from an xterm: ERROR: kmix: Mixer cannot be found. Please check that the soundcard is installed and that the soundcard driver is loaded. Four times it said that, faster than you can bat an eye. ^_^ Then it produced the mixer, so it must have finally found it, or it was just pulling my leg to see how I'd react. ^_^ Things seem not muted according to the mixer, but still no sound. Jean-Luc Ponty and Stephane Grappelli refuse to perform. ^_^ This is a letdown of major proportion. I am opening a bottle of Chablis to properly mourn. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] nasty upgrade surprise
On Sunday 28 September 2003 01:17, Derek wrote: Get Texstar defined as a urpmi source by following the url in my sig, and then use your Mandrake Software Installer to install the msfonts and msfonts-style packages. Thats it Done! Okay . . . download accomplished. Root did many things, few of which I understood. But I am a trusting soul. To a point. ^^_^^ I will try and install these packages now. I don't know where they are, or what their names are, but I will hunt them down like Al Qaida members. g I shall report back, unless I am killed or severely wounded in this process. It took an entire 180 seconds or so to download ~35 MB. Someone throttled me. g I understand. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Parking messages in KMail
Anyone know if it is possible to 'park' a message in KMail? (means setting a cannot-delete flag on a particular message so that it cannot accidentally be nuked via the delete key, nor can a folder containing a thusly marked message be deleted until it is either moved out or un-flagged) KMail is not too bad, otherwise. It is considerably slower than The Bat! on Windows (if you do need to run a Windows mail client, that one is a dandy, written in Delphi) but KMail is not slower enough to be a real bother, just noticeable when deleting and when it does its cleanup after closing. My mail database in Windows is rather sizeable however (multi-account and more than 25,000 messages and attachments), and my mail database in Linux is miniscule, so it will be interesting to see if KMail slows down much as the database grows. What are the top three GUI mail clients in Linux, do you all reckon? Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] keep password broken?
File manager su mode and Mandrake Control Center both prompt for root's secret of course. And both have a check box to keep the password. My experience is that this check box don't mean a thing. Anyone else? Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] taskbar design?
I have two problems with the taskbar in KDE 3.1. 1) some applications open with the titlebar under the taskbar when the taskbar is at the top of the screen This also is a bug in XP, at least on my machine. I keep my taskbar at the top of the screen, a la Mac style. For me, the extension of the fingers to move the cursor up is a much easier movement on the hand and wrist than the contraction to go down-left. What has become the normal start button location is about the ergonomically worst possible position for me. But there ya go, and some apps open with titlebars under the taskbar. I doubt this happens with the taskbar at the bottom -- it doesn't in Windows either. 2) the identifying text on taskbar buttons fades out on the right side of the button Can't believe this is by design, but it must be. Doesn't matter the app, the text is fine for the left-most 85 percent or so of the button, then fades fast. Ugly as sin IMHO. Where the title of the application is short (does not fill the button), there is no problem. But if the title extends to the right side of the button, the text fades out. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] clipboard integration with Mozilla
On Friday 26 September 2003 18:14, Raffaele Belardi wrote: Try this: - highlight the link keeping left mouse button pressed - switch to mozilla - in the address bar, press mouse middle button It is an X feature (I think), it should work for all applications, though sometimes it does not with StarOffice. A secret of X revealed Raffaele. Thanks. Do you know how to get Mozilla to fire instead of Konqueror when double-clicking one of these? Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] keep password broken?
Hi Anne, Friday, September 26, 2003, 7:38:23 PM, you wrote: AW On Friday 26 Sep 2003 10:27 am, Lance Cummings wrote: File manager su mode and Mandrake Control Center both prompt for root's secret of course. And both have a check box to keep the password. My experience is that this check box don't mean a thing. Anyone else? Lance AW Have you thought that keeping your password means that absolutely AW anyone who can get near your computer can become root? Sure. But absolutely no one can get near my computer. ^_^ And I do mean no one. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] nasty upgrade surprise
I put Cooker RC2 over my Bamboo last night, and I'm pretty unhappy that I did so. When I reboot after the upgrade, my taskbar buttons have been reconfigured. Some, for example KMail, are gone. Others are new. In my opinion new is okay, I can always deal with that. But I cannot come up with any justification for an upgrade routine that subtracts or eliminates anything I've configured. Moreover, and really annoying, my KMail appears to have vanished into the ether. It is not on *any* menu or sub menu (believe me, I have checked and triple-checked them all), and I cannot find it on the drive (which may be that I simply don't know where or how to look). So I'm rather annoyed at the moment, and e-mailing from Windows. I realize a beta is a beta is a beta, etc. But an RC2 is also extremely close to a release version, and many actually be one. The reason I did this, by the way, is that someone else running a P4PE with onboard sound told me it worked in Cooker. Not mine. So this entire exercise was a waste of time, and has apparently set me back rather than moved me forward. Is one able to trust an upgrade routine from Mandrake? To what extent? Where do you suppose my KMail is? Yes, upgrade was selected from the install routine. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] nasty upgrade surprise
On Saturday 27 September 2003 14:02, yankl wrote: On Saturday 27 September 2003 12:27 am, Lance Cummings wrote: I put Cooker RC2 over my Bamboo last night, and I'm pretty unhappy that I did so. ---8--- Kde packages after 3.1.2 got really segmented first try to run kmail from cli. If you will get an erorr message try to reinstall kdenetwork package. Just urpmi kdenetwork as root. Reinstall of kdenetwork successfull, and thankfully mail database still there. whew That is *not*, however, something one expects of an upgrade routine. (I still have to reconfigure my taskbar application launch buttons, which is kind of rude.) ^_^ Can you explain what you mean by 'got segmented'? I understand the words of course, but not the context as it relates to what happened to me. The reinstall of kdenetwork was slick as a whistle, and the KMail menu was right where I would have expected it to be: NetworkingMailKMail. Next steps are fonts (which Charlie has kindly offered help with) and sound. Anybody know how to get sound (using an Asus P4PE with Soundmax on board)? (Feel free to change the subject line if you reply to that.) Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] more refresh and modeline fun follies
Hi Richard, Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 6:01:57 PM, you wrote: trimmed where appropriate RU On Wednesday 24 Sep 2003 4:39 am, Lance Cummings wrote: It's possible they are all wrong. RU Not at all. They are all using different dot clock frequencies to give RU you the same display. Well how about that. Truly, I never would have guessed. I sure appreciate this information, and I wonder how widely this is known. RU I cannot find anywhere in the thread a mention of which video card RU you're using. What is its maximum clock rate? I think I mentioned it sometime near the very beginning of this, but in any case it is an nVida based card, a GeForce4 MX440. The maximum clock rate is 350 MHz -- which I certainly did not mention, because it took me a while to find it. RU The output of a startx --probeonly would be very helpful. It RU would tell us the rates that the monitor itself was happy with RU (if for example viewsonic changed the spec halfway through RU production.) It would tell us the dot rates that the card was RU capable of, and it might even tell us the specifications of the RU sync pulses. Okay screaming newbie alert I had no success with startx --probeonly. I tried it just about as many ways as I could think of to try it. Maybe it *was* doing what it was supposed to do, and I just did not realize it. In any case, I get X opening, to a desktop I've not seen before. (I tried this both as lance and as root.) Do I need to pipe the output to a file? If so, can you specify the command? RU If you were you, I'd try all three. If one works then we don't RU need to bother going any further. If not then send me the output RU of startx --probeonly and I'll extract the interesting bits for RU the list (IIRC it's rather long.) And also post the spec of the RU video card. As for trying them, I'm not sure exactly how to do it. There seems to only be 3 modelines at all in XF86Config-4. These modelines do not seem related to the frequency I'm running at, but seem to be for a Sony laptop and some TV settings. Well, I'll give it a go and see what happens. One thing you might clarify for me: It is my suspicion that only rather prolonged running of the monitor (more than 2 or 3 minutes at least) at specifications it's not designed for would damage it. Is that right? If so, I can feel a bit freer to experiment, because I do know how to set the file back. But if I'm risking permanent damage by simply trying a modeline that is wrong, I'd rather not fool around. Thanks for your help, Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] First Steps Vertical Refresh (WAS: partitioning for Mandrake 9.1)
Hi Jim, Tuesday, September 23, 2003, 1:11:54 PM, you wrote: JC Well, I found it on my MDK9.0 system. Yes, it's in a gui. Mandrake makes it JC a hidden part of the KDE Control Center. It's called kxconfig. If you type: JC kdesu -c kxconfig JC and supply your root password it will show up. Please backup JC /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 before you do this so you have a way back if you or it JC messes something up. After you run this it will be in the 'Screen' section JC of the program. You will be able to change the refresh rate there. I JC thought I saw something like this setting in the Mandrake Control Center JC under Hardware in MDK 9.1, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure this will JC work, I've never used it. So YMMV, caveat emptor, use at your own risk, etc. Well I went flying over there to see if this was the solution, but I didn't have much luck. Typed the command in an xterm window, and a GUI dialog comes up asking me for root's password. But after supplying that, the program seems to just die. Xterm reports that some necessary libraries are being loaded, but that is that. I did spend several hours today searching the Net for a modeline, or something that could lead me to create my own. But I haven't had any luck. Part of the reason for that may be ViewSonic's fault. There are one or more modeline generators out there, but you need good hardware numbers to input of course, to get a good modeline. ViewSonic has specs online for non current monitors, like my PF790, but going there and looking at them does not give one very much confidence. To wit: XFree AND my manual agree that the Fv range for my monitor is 50-160. But ViewSonic says online that it's 50-180. I'm pretty comfortable with 50-160 being correct, but now I need a max. bandwidth figure (video input), and that is NOT anywhere in the manual, yet can I trust the 200 MHz that ViewSonic gives me online? Well, after the Fv discrepancy, in a word: no. g So, the best I could do was input what I had, regardless of my confidence in it, and the program did generate a modeline for [EMAIL PROTECTED] Of course the standard use at your own risk disclaimer was there. I did add this modeline to XF86Config-4. But the resulting reboot got me a very green-tinted display. Clearly, this was not the ticket, and I quickly ran mv XF86Config-4.old XF86Config-4 and overwrote. Back to normal on the next boot. So, this is still rather discouraging, and I still find it rather amazing that there is no user database for this. Thanks for the help. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] more refresh and modeline fun follies
First, a quick thank you to everyone that's chipped in on this. I've run across, and also been pointed toward, several modeline generators. I present to you three of them: 1. http://www.sh.nu/nvidia/gtf.php 2. http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/spec/linux/modeline/modeline2.cgi 3. http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl All of them offer to pump out a modeline for you after you input the values of the Fh and Fv ranges, and the resolution and refresh you want to run at. Wow, what convenience. Using the values of Fh = 30-97, Fv = 50-160, and 1024x768 and 100 Hz refresh however (you know what is coming, right? vbg) produces the following three DIFFERENT modeline calculations: (numbers correspond to the URLs above) 1. # 1024x768 @ 100.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 81.40 kHz; pclk: 113.31 MHz Modeline 1024x768_100.00 113.31 1024 1096 1208 1392 768 769 772 814 -HSync +Vsync 2. # V-freq: 100.00 Hz // h-freq: 81.70 KHz Modeline 1024x768 124.84 1024 1088 1240 1528 768 768 771 817 3. Modeline [EMAIL PROTECTED] 126.64 1024 1056 1536 1568 768 781 794 807 I ask you . . . are we having fun yet? The values wildly disagree with each other, but since this is presumably a precise mathematical calculation, only one of them can possibly be correct, but indeed NONE of them NEED be correct of course. It's possible they are all wrong. Certainly someone in the community who is really in the know ought to have a look at these discrepancies, I would think, and set the record straight for everyone else? I certainly don't want to plug the wrong modeline in and fry a very nice monitor. And I'm simply not qualified to calculate my own modeline, since I don't clearly understand the math behind it. Obviously, from the results above, I'm not alone on that score, and even people who think they know what they are doing well enough to put up programs for others to use may indeed be flailing around in the dark. Unless I am completely mistaken about this concept (a possibility, I readily admit) at least TWO, if not all three, of the modelines generated above are worthless, and maybe even dangerous to use. One thing that might help me decide if I want to take a chance on one of these modelines: Can anyone reading this input your own numbers to any of the three generators and get a modeline that matches the one that you are using in XFconfig-4? That would be very interesting information to have. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] First Steps Vertical Refresh (WAS: partitioning for Mandrake 9.1)
Hi Derek, Hope the reply-to is set correctly now. Let me know. Monday, September 22, 2003, 5:22:59 PM, you wrote: DJ Mandrake will run a nightly job to compress and rotate your log DJ files, so overflowing the logs will not happen. It also does a DJ lot of other housekeeping at the same time. However the job runs DJ at 4am and if your computer is switched off it will not do its DJ nightly housekeeping. If you install the anacron package, any DJ missed job will run when you turn your PC on in the morning. Overnight I have Windows running a lot of jobs, so I guess it will do it whenever I log into Linux. Glad to hear about this, however. Having a /var volume doesn't hurt anything however, right? DJ SNIP So the big next question is where the heck do I get at this vertical refresh setting? DJ Unfortunately the scan rate cannot be easily selected like it is DJ in Windows. It can be set but you have to do a bit of working DJ out. The easiest way to set it is probably to run the Monitor set DJ up utility again in Mandrake Control I have run that several times, but I see no setting for refresh rate, only for color depth and screen res. DJ it will have selected a generic monitor with quite conservative settings. I have a Viewsonic PF790, perfectly detected, and in the file you referenced. DJ Check your monitor handbook and put the appropriate values in DJ there. *DO NOT* put in values too high or you could damage your DJ monitor. I well understand the danger of values too high, thanks. The settings are auto detected apparently, and they are correct. However, there is nothing in this file that allows me to set the refresh rate that I can see. ---8--- Your next lines below set off very loud alarm bells for me. DJ Note nowhere does it say scan rate. The system calculates scan DJ rate from the Horiz and Vert rates, and from the resolution and DJ colour depth. Hmmm. This seems to contradict what you said up above, which I reproduce again below: DJ Unfortunately the scan rate cannot be easily selected like it is DJ in Windows. It can be set but you have to do a bit of working DJ out. Either I can set it precisely, or I can't. But I don't see anything that allows me to control it, nor do I see any way to verify what the actual refresh rate is that the system has decided is optimal for my eyes. g I do know this: What I'm getting right now at 1024x768 @ 24 bits in Linux is eating my eyes up, and there is absolutely no earthly reason for that to be happening. The monitor and card can do 100 Hz @ 32 bits @ 1024x768. This would be the preferred setting, although I'm sure as I said I can live with 24 bit depth. But I am going to get this refresh rate, and know I'm getting it, or I'm going to run away from Linux -- or at least Mandrake Linux. rant No guessing, no system knows best; this is for me to decide, and there should be a fairly easy way to set it, although I'll accept an arcane file edit. But it *will* be set to *my* specifications, or Mandrake Linux is rather a joke AFAIC. I strongly suspect that this is going to grate on some nerves here, and I'm sorry about that. But it's impossible to deny the fact that something very key is missing here. For me, this one is game, set, and match: Redmond wins. I'm probably not any happier about typing it than you folks here are about reading it. But it's a glaring, stupid, startling omission, one that has been solved in Windows a long long time ago. /rant DJ If you want to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 it has to be done as root. Easy way DJ to do that is DJ MenuApplicationsFileToolsFileManager(SuperUserMode) DJ right click on the file and select OpenwithKedit I really appreciate your help on this. But I don't want to do any editing that isn't going to result in 100 Hz refresh. I'm very sure I'm getting 72 as the default, maybe 76, but neither of these settings are tolerable for me -- 85, also a valid setting at that resolution and color depth, is the minimum I'll use. I paid a little extra money for the monitor and card specifically so I would not have to worry about this aspect of computing, and I'm not going to put up with sub par video performance by running an OS that isn't developed enough to let me control this setting precisely. (Sorry again, but a fact is a fact, and this is apparently a fact.) If you or someone else knows how to accomplish what I want, I'd really like to hear about it. But as I said in the other note, this is a show-stopper issue. I control the refresh rate on my monitor -- within spec. Not Linus Torvolds, not Mandrake, not anyone else. Or I simply go right back to Windows, which gives me that authority. I find it hard to believe Linux users can't precisely set their own refresh rates, or apparently even know what they are. Isn't this kind of embarrassing to the community? Our eyes are the basic interface with the box. I will not use an OS that hasn't figured that much out. Lance Want to buy your Pack or
Re: [newbie] First Steps Vertical Refresh (WAS: partitioning for Mandrake 9.1)
Hi Paul, Tuesday, September 23, 2003, 9:25:42 AM, you wrote: HF On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 15:17:04 +0100 Derek Jennings HF [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HF chops down an Oak Hey calm down Lance. I was not saying you cannot control refresh rate in Linux. Merely that it is not as simple as just selecting a drop down box like in Windows. To get 32bit 1024x 768 resolution all you need do is add the lines HF gets out the wood chipper derek HF I think part of his point is it should be simpler. I agree with him. That's about the long and short of it, yes. Linux is clearly trying to make a push onto the corporate and retail desktop. And a lot of Linux backers are claiming these days that the ease-of-use and installation issues have pretty much been taken care of by the modern distributions and automated install routines. And to a large extent, this claim is clearly true. But here is a very basic configuration area where there is a rather large hole. Refresh rate is very basic for ergonomic computing. The desire of a great many people to run at as high a refresh rate as their hardware will allow is not going to go away. And people -- by and large -- are not going to take mini E.E. courses in order to configure their monitors to run at desired settings in Linux, especially given the fact that the wrong numbers on a mode line can silently trash the monitor. Some will indeed do that of course, but the OS isn't ever going to go mainstream that way. This is simply an incompleteness in setup and configuration, and a pretty glaring one considering the progress that has been made in other areas with respect to getting this puppy ready for the mainstream. (There are three things everyone wants to set almost immediately with regard to the visual interface: color depth, screen res., and vertical refresh rate -- Linux has the first two down pat and is missing the third, so it's very, very noticeable.) I have a very well-known monitor that has been out for a number of years. There are probably tens of thousands of people using the exact same model (Viewsonic PF790), and there would have to be at least hundreds if not thousands of Linux users using it. It's hard for me to believe there isn't a database somewhere in the Linux community where these settings are maintained, and I can just read and make the appropriate edit with some fair degree of confidence. But apparently that is the case. Sometimes it takes an outsider with a fresh viewpoint to notice things. This is very noticeable. shrugs Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] partitioning for Mandrake 9.1
Hi Derek, Sunday, September 21, 2003, 9:33:47 PM, you wrote: trimmed DJ You have masses of space for your Linux partitions. It does not DJ really matter how you partition it up. Just make sure you have a DJ separate /home partition. That is where your user data goes. So DJ if you ever reinstall you can preserve it. The Mandrake installer DJ will suggest partiton sizes for you. You might as well just stick DJ with that. I do have masses of space (I didn't even mention the scsi subsystem g), but a lot of it is currently spoken for. If I understand the install docs correctly, the Mandrake installer will only suggest partition sizes if I let it take over the whole drive. Is that correct? If so, I'll need to define my partition sizes myself, 'cause I can't just let 'er rip and overwrite. DJ The default file system is Ext3 other choices are Reiserfs, XFS, DJ and JFS, but to be honest as a newbie you will not notice the DJ difference between any of them so leave as default. I guess the question I should have asked there is, Are any of these file systems better in terms of reliability -- as regards data integrity? The one that has the least chance of data corruption is the one I want to use. That might mean an older, more stable or more tested file system, even if it's a bit slower. I know pretty close to zero about the differences right now. DJ The default Linux kernel will not address 1GB of RAM you will DJ only use 700 odd MB. There is an 'Enterprise' kernel on the CD DJ which will address the 1GB, but the extra instructions needed to DJ use the high memory actually makes it run slower than the DJ standard kernel. So I would not worry about it. Linux will run DJ much faster than Windows even with less memory. Fair enough. Swap partition size? (out of the ~35 GB) DJ It is actually quite safe to let Linux overwrite your MBR You DJ would get a nice graphical screen to select which OS you want to DJ run. Most of us here do that. But if you would rather boot from DJ floppy thats your choice. It all works ;-) The key for me would be the ease or difficulty of getting the MBR back to its original state if I decide to flee back into the smothering embrace of Redmond. g Seriously though, I just need to make very sure I can get into XP when I need to. Until such time as I might decide to make a complete migration, I'd have real need to get into XP on demand. DJ Have fun. Thanks. One more question comes to mind. I'm on 100 MB/second glass, and my wife and I share the connection through a router. The install routine will figure out how to get me connected? Thanks again. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] First Steps Vertical Refresh (WAS: partitioning for Mandrake 9.1)
Hi Björn all, Sunday, September 21, 2003, 11:36:31 PM, you wrote: BL I'd proberbly set it up something like BL / ~ 4-6 GB BL /swap ~ 150 - 200 Mb (You've got lot's of RAM) BL /usr ~ 10 Gb BL /home ~ The rest ( ~ 20 Gb) That's pretty close to what I ended up doing. Thanks for the advice. The only change I made was to add /var (about 3 gigs) at the end. My reading of the docs seems to suggest that a lot of log activity ends up there, and some chronic problem that I don't notice right away might run up a log big enough to fill the volume. In any case, I suspect I haven't ruined anything . . . yet. g Install was pretty nice, although I didn't find a setting for install every bleeding package on all CDs, which would have been nice. g Actually that would be overkill of course, but it would be nice if when in the individual packages menu selector one could check a top level menu item, say development and have every package under it get checked. That did not happen in my install, and I found myself spending a *lot* of time running down all those menu items looking for packages I might want to install. Since I need both Japanese and English support, I had to make sure I got it. I think I did, but we'll see. g BL When you get the taste for it, You can look at LVM, BL Logical Volume Groups, to assign more or less space BL to your partitions, but leave it until you've got BL used to the concept behind it. Will do. I relented and put the bootloader on /hda by the way. Seems to work fine. All hardware seems ready to go immediately too, which is also nice, and the Net/LAN config was perfect -- right through the router without a snag, instantly connected. Now . . . POTENTIAL SHOW STOPPER NUMBER 1: I'm in my mid 50s. For those of you who aren't, if you get lucky you soon will be. g My eyes have always been sensitive to refresh rate flicker however, and age hasn't helped that one bit. Particularly my peripheral vision picks this flicker up like nobody's business, but even my forward vision tires quickly with a low vertical refresh rate. In Windows this is an *easy* thing to set. I run at 1024x768 in 32 bit depth, with a vertical refresh rate of 100 Hz in Windows. Anything below 85 Hz is a show stopper, and there is no question the Mandrake default is below that, probably around 72 Hz I would guess. Obviously, my hardware (monitor and video card) can handle what I need. So the big next question is where the heck do I get at this vertical refresh setting? Setting screen resolution and color depth are pieces of cake of course. But unlike Windows, I can find *nowhere* to get at vertical refresh, and without the ability to control that this experiment has to come to a screeching end for me. I just cannot take less than 85 Hz. I'm also curious about why the maximum color depth is apparently 24 bit, although this is not even close to the issue that vertical refresh is. I'm sure I can probably live with 24 bit color, even though the Windows world (at the XP level anyway) may be more advanced here. g Last question for now: I set up the box to use KDE and Kmail. I did not give Kmail my account information yet, because for the time being I want to keep my e-mail database on Windows intact. That means I want to download, but not delete from the server with Kmail. Anyone know real quick how to set that up before turning on Kmail by giving it access to my server? Thanks to everyone who's chipping in here. Lance Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
