Re: [newbie] Help with memtest and errors. (a little long)
On Wednesday October 15 2003 06:05 pm, Terence J. Golightly wrote: Greetings, I posted last month message me thinks I got a virus. Well.. I'm almost positive that I don't have a virus. I am still having the locking up problem and I downloaded memtest ISO burned it to a CD and ran the standard tests. It locked up on test 5 with errors in the 5 figures range. I ran it successfully by starting at 5 but the system crashed on 8. According to the documentation on the memtest86 web site, these are the crucial tests that shouldn't fail. Indicating that I have a bad DIMM. I read something about setting up memtest as a selection from the bootloader writing the bad memory blocks to disk and using another program/module to tell the kernel to not use that memory. Has anybody done anything like this? If not too involved I would like to try it before I buy new. In the event that this route is not feasible for any reason, would someone care to comment on the ram that they use and who make quality memory. I know that this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find them on the newbie mailing list archives. The search engine hasn't worked for me yet. If someone remembers the month I'll go back and check it out, no need to add any more bandwith like this sentence :). Thanks, Terry First, remove the ram and clean the contacts. A pencil eraser is good for this. Rub lightly, if it's decent ram the contacts are gold. Blow out any dust from the mobo slots. Re-seat the ram and check again. Try it in a different slot. If you have more than one stick, change the order you install them, ie, swap slots around. Still errors? then, I've come to believe memtest86 is a very lenient ram check. So if it found errors, the ram is surely bad, and probly will get worse. Best to replace it. In answer to your question tho. Install the Mandrake memtest86 rpm on your CD's (you never needed to get it from their website). The rpm will install memtest86 and make it a boot option in lilo and grub. Boot to memtest86, and as soon as it's running, press the c key for configuration. From memory, I believe you want to then select 6, then 2, then 8. Check the docs, but this should restart the test, log and report bad memory areas. Then you can add those statements to lilo or grub to let the kernel know not to use them. All of this works only if you are running one of the latest Mandrake kernels with the 'badmem' patch. AFAIK, that means, 2.4.22-7mdk or newer. I know for sure the tmb kernels have this patch, eg, 2.4.22-12.tmb.1mdk I'd just replace the ram, and offer the old stuff to somebody I didn't like ;) You can always depend on Crucial for quality ram. http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=RAM Corsair is good too, http://www.corsairmicro.com/ A good measure is to buy better ram than you need. EG, if pc100 is required, buy pc133. Ditto, pc2700 is required, get pc3200. Those are just consumer labels tho. Important ratings are ns (nanosecond) and Cas rating. The lower the better. I recently failed to follow my own advice, and now I'm stuck with some under performing (no bad areas tho) Kingston junk till I get around to replacin it. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] 9.2 torrent, I was wrong
This mornin I got up and was readin my email. Much of which was
down on bittorrent (sux!), much of which was very positive. So
what'a heck, I started a 9.2 iso torrent after checking here,
http://torrent.mandrakesoft.com:6969/ to see how many givers
and getters were online. After the first hour, my upload connection
was maxed out. Making sending email, even surfing very slow. I was
getting about 5kB/s down, but uploading 12kB/s up. SOS, seemed as
bad as my prior experience gettin cooker iso's with torrent.
-BUT-
Many of the positive on torrent posts, gave the links and even
posted the edits to tweak bittorent to increase performance and not
kill your connection for other use. I decided to try. During my
prior cooker experience, I was usin bittorrent on the CL. This time
I was usin the GUI. So I stopped the current torrent.
Seems all I had to do was edit...
/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/BitTorrent/download.py
and change
defaults = [
('max_uploads', None, 2,
^ this was a 4
.and limit upload.
('max_upload_rate', None, 6,
'maximum kB/s to upload at, 0 means no limit'),
The 6 was a 0, or unlimited. My adsl connection is only 128
kilobit up, about 14kB/s upload max. More likely 12 in the real
world. So I made the upload rate about 50%, or 6kB/s, 2 getters
instead of 4.
Made a world of difference. My internet connection became
completely usable, yet in the next hour after restarting (it
resumed where it had been stopped) bittorrent started going. Took a
while to ramp up, but then started getting over 300MB/hour (50% of
my normal speed). About 6 times as fast as when I first tried with
the default config.
So I was wrong. Bittorrent does make sense for getting Mandrake
iso's. Specially since Mandrake depends on donated mirror space
and bandwidth, and torrent goes easy on both. And since the
reduced upload rate makes my connection otherwise completely
usable, I intend to keep torrent runnin long after my d/l is
complete. It's only fair to do so. Thanks,
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 torrent, I was wrong
On Wednesday October 15 2003 02:48 pm, Dennis Myers wrote: So I was wrong. Bittorrent does make sense for getting Mandrake iso's. Specially since Mandrake depends on donated mirror space and bandwidth, and torrent goes easy on both. And since the reduced upload rate makes my connection otherwise completely usable, I intend to keep torrent runnin long after my d/l is complete. It's only fair to do so. Thanks, Tom, is there anything special one has to do to connect with a tracker? Open a port or whatever, I have a Lynksys router with the 688x ports forwarded, but have not gotten a tracker since starting yesterday. The folders were made automagically and files for the iso's but they are 0 bits. Any suggestions? Grasping at straws to make sure I have this set up right. -- Dennis M. linux user #180842 You're not askin an expert ;) Shortly after I posted the 'I was wrong' sentiment, the BT GUI crashed. Well, it froze anyhow. I killed it and restarted. But it wouldn't. Here's the steps I took; I used 'rpm -Uvh --force bittorrent-*' to reinstall the bittorrent rpms. That didn't do it. Still no go. So I did a similar deal with it's deps, 'rpm - Uvh --force' libwxPythonGTK2.4-2.4.1.2-3mdk.i586.rpm wxPythonGTK-2.4.1.2-3mdk.i586.rpm (these are all, 9.2 cooker versions, I'm already runnin) Try'd again, still no go. 404. By now I wished I'd never bitched about torrent, or said 'I was wrong' and it 'makes sense'. Last straw; I deleted my bittorrent file and re d/l'd it from Club. Voila!! (or as we say in TX, walja!!). The damn torrent connection started goin again ... right where it left off. So I guess when BT GUI froze, an I killed it, my.torrent file got screwed. Re-install'n the rpms with --force was probly not needed. Re-doin my 'download.py' edits was, again, to limit upload, speed up d/l and keep my connection otherwise usable. As I started off with, this bittorBS is new to me, never been a fan of p2p anyhow. There's a growin consensus of docs, FAQ's, an smart BT people tho. Use the list archives, cooker, expert, an newbie, Club links, plus Google for people smarter than me. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] XWC - Undelete?
On Tuesday October 14 2003 10:39 am, Jason Greenwood wrote: Anyone know how to undelete in XWC? I accidentally deleted some files I'd dearly like to have back =( Cheers All, Jason File manager you use isn't the question, what file system you use is. Anyhow, undelete is not doable, and/or you won't be too happy with the results anyhow. If the files you accidently deleted belong to a package, just use 'rpm -Uvh --force package.rpm' (same version/patch level as already installed) to replace the missing files. See 'man rpm' to see just what --force does. This is just about the only proper use of --force. If it was your data or config files, restore from the backups you regularly make ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] XWC - Undelete?
On Tuesday October 14 2003 08:59 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: On Tuesday October 14 2003 10:39 am, Jason Greenwood wrote: Anyone know how to undelete in XWC? I accidentally deleted some files I'd dearly like to have back =( Cheers All, Jason File manager you use isn't the question, what file system you use is. Anyhow, undelete is not doable, and/or you won't be too happy with the results anyhow. If the files you accidently deleted belong to a package, just use 'rpm -Uvh --force package.rpm' (same version/patch level as already installed) to replace the missing files. See 'man rpm' to see just what --force does. This is just about the only proper use of --force. If it was your data or config files, restore from the backups you regularly make ;) Just an addition. There's a pertinent article to the subject today at http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/10/08/1416248.shtml?tid=23 It's mostly about recovering file systems, but deals with undeleting also. If you read the whole article, I believe you'll see why I wrote 'undelete is not doable, and/or '. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] ksysguard loses connection to local host TOP Segfaults
On Saturday October 11 2003 01:16 pm, Heather/Femme wrote: help? i've never seen this before am at a loss as to what to do or where to look... my system was OCed till last night..but vid problems are forcing me to look at this issue further... i was running Ksysguard to keep an eye on a program that tends to have a memory leak. ideas??? From what you wrote, I believe I've had a similar issue recently. With the added variable that I run cooker 9.2+. In my case, whenever I run pan and d/l from binary newsgroups, I need to close pan before I do anything else, particularly with the files I just d/l'd, or the X server sometimes loses connection and the screen goes screwy or just black. Requires a cold shutdown for at least 30 seconds to a minute. Safer yet was not to close pan normally, but to kill it with Ctrl+Alt+Esc. You might experiment with the same for the app you suspect has a memory leak. BUT, most problems like this are hardware related. I finally found that reducing ram tweaks, specially pre-charge from 2T (ticks) to 3, all but eliminates the pan problem. I also set Cas to 3, and disabled banking just to be cautious. I believe the real problem is I foolishly bought Kingston DDR ram recently, instead of Crucial or Corsair, as I knew I should'a. So much for payin attention to rave Website hardware reviews. Of course with any oc'd system, the first step should be to un-overclock, set default values for FSB, multiplier, voltages, etc. Seems you've already done that. Don't bother with memtest86. It's not a very good ram test. But you could try it first. Too often tho it doesn't find ram problems. So get http://mersenne.org/gimps/mprime2212.tar.gzand run ./mprime -mand choose menu item 17 (torture test). Let it run for hours. You're probly OK it it doesn't stop an give a hardware error message (seti is not a substitute for this). As always, heat could be the problem if errors are seen. Take the case cover off an point a table fan directly into the box. Try again. Until hardware error (and/or mis-configuration) possibility is eliminated first, there's no sense lookin for software reasons for problems. If you really wanna verify the hardware is solid as configured, install the Mandrake 'cpuburn' rpm (it's on your CD's) and run the module appropriate for your cpu. In your case Femme, I think that's 'burnP6'. It'd probly be wise to check with memtest86 and mprime first tho. Another opinion (?), I'm beginning to believe there's no sense overclocking new systems that are already wicked fast and high Ghz. Hard to admit for an oldtime overclocker ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] annoying alarm on standby.
On Sunday October 12 2003 06:52 am, ed tharp wrote: On Sun, 2003-10-12 at 07:03, Jerry Barton wrote: On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 18:34:36 +0800 Aidan Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Saturday 11 October 2003 11:33 pm, Charlie M. wrote: Thanks Jerry and Charlie for your responses. I am very new to linux, and so I wouldn't have a clue how to see if I have gkrellm and lm_sensors running, but I'll certainly explore and see what I can find.One more question for you, if it is a cpu overheating, I can understand it doing it after the computer has been on for a while, but why would it stop again once i press a button on the keyboard to start working again?? just a guess, the fan is spinning down to save power, but the CPU is not going all the way to sleep. (zombies?) That'd be my guess also. During standby the cpu is normally still busy. Just somewhat lower loads than when the system is up and running. For the original poster, some suggestions and opinions; In bios you should have an option to disable the fan spinning down. Set it to run 100% fan speed all the time. The sound you heard from the system speaker was most likely the bios alarm for cpu overheating. Probly nothin to do with lm_sensors, and since you didn't know what lm_sensors is, you probly don't have it installed anyhow. OTOH, it shouldn't happen. When the cpu temp went too high, bios should'a turned the fan speed back up. Could be marginal motherboard and/or bios (win)design. Could be due to a thermal pad instead of grease being used. Could be a lot of things including dust bunnies. In any event, I suspect your cooling (including case) might just be barely adequate. I believe there's a way to alter fan behavior using 'setpci', but since I've never needed it, I don't know how to use it. I was recently contacted offlist by someone who is using setpci to vary fan speeds with load/temp (a bad idea IMO). So there's probly a way to force 100% fan speed all the time. Check an see if you have a bios option to enable/disable HLT (halt) commands to the cpu. If so enable it, if not the Linux kernel HLT signals just might not are being sent to the cpu, even if you see Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. in /var/log/dmesg It could be that your motherboard came with a Windoze CD, and winsux software to handle what the bios should be doin at the hardware level, fan an HLT wise, ie, (win)designed. Specially if you don't have fan speed and HLT options in bios. All too common situation in ready made systems or motherboards designed primarily for Windoze use. Even otherwise very good ones. IOW's, an increasing prevalence of win-hardware and shifting hardware/bios functions to software. Billy's real crime. IMO, all these power saving deals are just gimmicks anyhow, 'cept for powering down the monitor. Any chip, particularly those that require a heatsink, does NOT have steady temps. Instant heat spikes in the core are the norm, even on standby. If you reduce fan rpms, then the mass of the heatsink base will be hotter than when running the fan at 100% all the time. So when the spikes do occur, then the heatsink is less able to handle them. If you want to see this happening, run a cpu load gauge (like gkrellm). When you see the gauge shoot from under 5% to around 25 to 50% and higher, and then right back down, the cpu core temp just spiked up correspondingly. Note how often these spikes occur too. Almost constantly. This is completely normal behavior, and even on standby the cpu still has work to do. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] have we killed the reason we are here?
On Thursday October 9 2003 01:50 am, Aron Smith wrote: On Wed, 2003-10-08 at 22:55, HaywireMac wrote: On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:21:57 -0500 Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: Nobody will bite your head off ... that's nonsense and you know it. awww just because... Ironically, just after I posted this request to move OT traffic to the OT list now I can't post to MdkOT. All my posts eventually get returned with Message from yahoo.com. Unable to deliver message to the following address(es). [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Sorry, I wasn't able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1) I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long. It's a damn shame the only DSL connection I can get is SBC- Yahoo. Yahoo sux, but they handle my mail and I'm stuck with that. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Windows Must be Stopped
On Thursday October 9 2003 08:08 am, HaywireMac wrote: The recent report by the CCIA gave us an academic viewpoint as to why Windows is a blight on the Internet. This article provides a concrete example as to why Windows machines should be disconnected from the Internet, quarantined, and otherwise shut out, wherever possible, until MS decides to take responsibility for this outrageous lack of security. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60747,00.html Quote: According to Tubul, his group controls 450,000 Trojaned systems, most of them home computers running Windows with high-speed connections. The hacked systems contain special software developed by the Polish group that routes traffic between Internet users and customers' websites through thousands of the hijacked computers. Well, many big ISP's are doin somethin about M$ users. Unfortunately they don't get it right a lot of times. Most all medium to small ISP's do nothin. For example, just this mornin I got an email from SBC DSL Services. It said in part, Failure to act may require us to temporarily suspend your service. and Unfortunately, we have reason to believe that your computer has been infected with a variant of the Blaster worm (also known as Blaster.D and Welchia) and that it is continuing to infect other computers. Because of the nature of this particular worm, you may not notice any effects right away. However, the worm on your system could have significant impact on others. It is necessary for us to request your immediate action in order to help protect all SBC Internet Services members. [went on to give M$.com links to clean my computer and to call SBC when this was done] .. There's not one byte of Microsoft or any other Winsux virus transport software installed on this computer. So I called SBC, and fortunately got a woman who realized that Linux is incapable of getting or spreading M$ viruses. She put me on ignore for a while, then came back an told me I should disregard their email, an apologized. Said my use of 100% Linux and absolutely no M$ software would be noted in my SBC account records. Still if I showed up to them as a false positive, I can only wonder how many infected Winblows users they miss detecting. OTOH, disconnecting many Winsuz users, even just the infected ones, would put any ISP out of business. Big or small. Specially since a lot of Windoze users refuse to believe they're infected, or do anything about it even if they are. Usual response is I'm not havin any problems. Besides I have a virus checker and use Zone Alarm. (both of which are cruel jokes). I can only wonder if I might have showed up in SBC's logs as receiving infected email from Winsux users. Probly most of whom don't realize (or care) that they are spreading viruses and fsckin up the Internet. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] have we killed the reason we are here?
On Thursday October 9 2003 08:07 am, Aron Smith wrote: It's a damn shame the only DSL connection I can get is SBC- Yahoo. Yahoo sux, but they handle my mail and I'm stuck with that. I had been meaning to ask you about that SBC DSL connection I inquired at SBC about DSL and when I said Linux ... Well I'm not gonna ask again. It was either them or cable. I get about 70 channel cable service thru the RV park I'm in at no cost. I didn't wanna give that up, plus Time Warner cable in this area has a lot of outages. So there was a good potential of not havin TV or an Internet connection for hours at a time. Cable was out for 6.5 hours just last Friday, 11AM to 5:30PM. Also many short fallouts due to sun spot activity this far south on the planet. OTOH, I believe I know what you're alluding to about SBC-Yahoo DSL. Only windoze is supported, and you _must_ use their Winsux installer to connect the first time to get a user name and password. They won't give you one over the phone. So I had to clear my first partition on hda and format it for fat32, install W98 and SBC's dumbass installer. Connect and establish userID and password. Then I booted Mandrake's 1st CD and reinstalled lilo, booted Linux and installed rp-pppoe, did the setup and connected! No muss, no fuss ;) Then I used diskdrake to erase Winsux and reformat hda1 for ReiserFS ;) PITA, but I only had to do it that one time. The connection is good. It's 1.5Megabit and averages about a steady 145 to 150Kbytes/sec thru Southwestern Bell. Never down. Unfortunately mail is thru Yahoo's server, smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com and it sux. I get some posts a day after they were sent. Some I never see, only replies to them. SW Bell has a Usenet newsfeed, but I also use (need) two paid services. Giganews and Athena, mostly for binaries. Stuff ISP newsfeeds don't carry (or allow) ; -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: Re[2]: [newbie] Windows Must be Stopped
On Thursday October 9 2003 01:41 pm, rikona wrote: Hello Tom, Thursday, October 9, 2003, 8:37:48 AM, you wrote: TB I can only wonder if I might have showed up in SBC's logs as TB receiving infected email from Winsux users. Perhaps someone spoofed your address and SBC doesn't know/care who really sent it. Well, I suppose that's possible, but it seems more likely it was incomin Windoze emails from lists or privately from other people. I run iptables an every scan tells me all my ports are blocked/stealthed. I don't run any servers, even webmin. I also regularly run 'chkrootkit' an always get a clean bill of health. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] have we killed the reason we are here?
On Thursday October 9 2003 01:01 pm, ed tharp wrote: On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 08:37, Tom Brinkman wrote: On Thursday October 9 2003 01:50 am, Aron Smith wrote: On Wed, 2003-10-08 at 22:55, HaywireMac wrote: On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:21:57 -0500 Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: Nobody will bite your head off ... that's nonsense and you know it. awww just because... Ironically, just after I posted this request to move OT traffic to the OT list now I can't post to MdkOT. All my posts eventually get returned with Message from yahoo.com. Unable to deliver message to the following address(es). [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Sorry, I wasn't able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1) I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long. It's a damn shame the only DSL connection I can get is SBC- Yahoo. Yahoo sux, but they handle my mail and I'm stuck with that. damn shame I guess that explains why you did not have something to say about http://ed-tharp.is-a-geek.org/tombrinkmannascar.jpg;... I did, I asked if that was your wife sittin next to me ;ppp It failed to get thru tho ;( -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] VIA KT600 chipset
On Tuesday October 7 2003 01:34 pm, 70233,2610 wrote: On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 08:30, Tom Brinkman wrote: N B, I've got a KT400a and 9.2. Basically the same chipset as the KT600. Everything should work right out of the box. The 6 channel VIA AC97 works great. You don't really need a 600 unless your gonna use a XP 3200+ with 400Mhz FSB (the only difference between the 400a and 600). Both my chipset and the KT600 support SATA, but from all I've read, I'd stick to usin the ATA/133 ports, and forget SATA with Linux. It won't be any faster, probly slower than /133 anyhow. Thanks, Tom. You're right, of course. The main dif btw the two chipsets is the FSB speed. Its just that I've fallen in love with an EpoX board with the KT600. I got a small grant to build (I think that's what the committee liked - sweat equity) four lab workstations to run free software and National Semi's Labview for Linux, and could probably squeeze in the XP3200+ CPUs, but I sure don't have to for this application. They'll replace six Pentium 133 machines running Win95! The lab already has an nbd special KT333 computer running MDK 9.1. I know enough to stay away from the nForce chipsets. I'm thinking of the future too; in two years the kid they hire to replace me (at twice my salary) can upgrade to the by-then cheap 400 MHz FSB CPUs and soup them up a bit. You're probably right that everything will work right out of the box, but I'm spending student technology fee money here so I'm a bit cautious. I wish I knew somebody with one of these boards; I'd bring my Knoppix disk to try it out. I presume the 2.6 kernel would solve it all in 2004 anyhow; maybe I can just take my time building them since they're not really needed until next summer. Regards,1.0 The only Epox board AMD recommends for the 3200+ is the EP-8RDA3+ ATX NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 AGP DDR Award I'd advise to avoid nVidia nForce chipset boards for now. They're no better supported under Linux than their video chipsets. IOW's, proprietary drivers that need to be changed any time you change kernels. Plus all the other garbage that goes with needin a 3rd party closed source tainted kernel. There's been other complaints about nForce + Linux too. OTOH, if you've found an Epox VIA chipset board that supports 400mhz FSB, the AMD lack of recommend might not be that big'a deal. Epox makes quality boards. 3200+'s are relatively expensive tho. For the purposes you cite, I'd look at AMD recommended VIA chipset boards for a XP 2500+ (cheap, about $80). Probly the current 'best bang for the buck' cpu AMD currently sells. It overclocks well too. http://www2.amd.com/us-en/recmobo/ResultsHandler/1,,30_182_869_4348^7923~63674,00.html In any event, I believe you'll do well keeping to VIA chipset boards. Their best one's are usually their A series, eg, KT400a. The latest stepping, revision, ie, last of the runs with some improvements over prior steppings (production runs). But w'ta heck, the only way you could do worse is to buy a ready made computer ;) Then quality is certainly not there, an Linux compatibility is suspect also. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] New to the list
On Sunday October 5 2003 04:24 am, Anne Wilson wrote: If the existing drive is WD, don't panic. I understand that more modern WD drives don't have the problem, and while I wouldn't buy one, just in case, I would happily try out an existing one. Back up any existing data before you start, and you should have no problem. Anne It's the new drives that do have the CRC checking shortcuts. Prior to August 1998, WD's did proper CRC checks, were some of the best drives. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] New to the list
On Sunday October 5 2003 09:18 am, Anne Wilson wrote: It's the new drives that do have the CRC checking shortcuts. Prior to August 1998, WD's did proper CRC checks, were some of the best drives. Now you've really confused me, Tom. I posted Civileme explanation to another list and they said that it was old hat - no longer a problem. I guess the answer is if you've got one try it, if you haven't, steer clear, to be safe. Anne Here's the whole story. Overclockers long favored WD, Quantum, and IBM IDE drives, particularly WD's. Mainly because they did much better on off-spec PCI buses (anything SCSI has problems on an off-spec bus). Often necessary to overclock Intel cpu's of the era. In the fall of '98, many started complaining of problems and failures of WD IDE drives. Research by the more knowledgable overclocking gurus, soon revealed that WD had lowered their drive specs (8/98). AFAIK their current specs are the same or even lower. OTOH, many HDD manufacturers have lowered their specs over the last several years, and consequently, their warranty periods. While Civileme was/is certainly an authoritative source, an even better source, the final answer for the WD-CRC checking situation is the linux kernel mailing list. It was the kernel hackers that discovered the WD problem, and AFAIK, the improper CRC checking is still the situation with WD drives. Your research may vary, http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel I've just avoided WD since '98, but maybe the kernel gurus have found a work around for WD's. I doubt it tho (I lurk on lkml), since the problem was WD drives depend on (Windoze) software for CRC checking rather than including the needed hardware and firmware on their drives. It made their drives slightly cheaper and a little faster than their competitors drives. For windoze users (and system OEM's), this was seen as a Good Thing (and probly why WD did it). IMO tho, I'd worry more about tainting a Linux system with closed source software and drivers, or other forms of win-hardware, before I'd replace a perfectly good working WD drive. IOW's, for those with WD drives and no problems with them, or traceable to them, I wouldn't give this WD-CRC deal another thought. Bottom line is, keep backups, all drives today are lesser quality than they use to be. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] have we killed the reason we are here?
On Sunday October 5 2003 03:08 pm, ed tharp wrote: That's not bad as a general rule, but I still think there is a place for MS-related posts when there is a relevance to Linux/OSS, as in the case of the Phoenix BIOS post. BTW, please delete the reply-to field in your mail client! Sir Robin Just so long as I don't have to acknowledge any M$ product as 'the alpha male'. I might even go so far as anti-anything messages should be kept to the barest possible minimum. lets work for 'positive' and pro-active solutions Hell, if we couldn't rant on about M$ B$, a lot of threads would lose a bunch of substance. Most of y'all attack the sloppiness of Billy's software, but fail to see how much M$ influence has degraded desktop hardware quality and ability over the years. If it keeps up I'll probly need to buy server racks to keep runnin Linux. M$ comments should be embedded in (intending to be) 'helpful' Linux use replies. New users' queries to newbie about Linux shouldn't be overly scared away with posts about windoze hardare and software crapiness an questionable suitability for Linux. After all the Linux community is workin very hard to deal with proprietary hardware, even M$ software. And doin better each an every day. There I agree, tryin be positive an not derogative in replies to new Linux users. Problem is, so is the dark side, an they're gainin ground. More'n more hardware (even firmware) is becoming more'n more M$ and/or proprietary dependant. To quote M$ and many other hardware vendors, 'It only works with Windows (XP)'. I didn't join in to the M$ bios thread because I considered it a 'borderline' OT subject, but the recent stories (really old news) about M$/bios integration is nothin new. IBM, Apple, and some others have long ago adopted that strategy. Difference is they did it with OPEN standards. I doubt M$ will do so since they've tried to corral anything they can get a foot in the door with, and EEE (extend, embrace, extinguish or control). IOW's ... CLOSED. The real shame is the hardware (or specially in the case of win-hardware) SUX! (btw, the worst bios, Phoenix... has for several years since they bought 'em, owned the best .. Award. Think of it as OEM it's probly Phoenix, quality it's still Award) I too noticed the alpha male remark. It's part of M$'s successful brain washin. They've got a lot of the world's population thinkin they were the beginning ... and will be the end all. Neither of which is/will be true, in spite of many not even being aware of anything else, before or after. But OTOH, most new Linux users wouldn't be here unless they've already suspected M$ veracity an capability. As to the subject, there's only one solution. Ignore, don't participate in OT for the list threads. If ya wanna spout about topics semi or completely unrelated to Mandrake Newbie, please join us at http://mdw1982.dyndns.org/mailman/listinfo/mandrakeot Please realize that newbies are the most important Linux users, with their testing, questions, complaints an suggestions. Without them, there'd only be M$, and viable much better alternatives would be only for a few, an certainly not single desktop users. I was reluctant to reply to this thread, as I thought it at least semi off topic. BUT this list needs to seriously reduce OT posts. Please post Linux accomplishments and or M$ failures to the OT list. Specially political, even religious topics. Nobody will bite your head off ... you might even convince somebody or two. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Filtered TCP ports 1080-1081
On Sunday October 5 2003 04:23 pm, Björn Olsson wrote: Good evening, or morning or whatever... Every now and then I use to scan my machine for open ports. Today I visited www.pcflank.com and did a more thorough scan than usual. With all firewalls disabled (Yes, I _did_ disable them. Stupid, I know, but I was curious.) most ports showed up closed but TCP ports 1080 and 1081 were stealthed. Now, how can that be? Could it be that they are filtered by my ISP? Björn Try a better scan(s), http://scan.sygatetech.com/ -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Using K3B making an ISO
On Friday October 3 2003 11:32 am, Josenildo Marques wrote: Actually, what is the advantage to creating an ISO image as opposed to simply burning the data files to CD? I dunno, but I always make an image of data files and then burn the image to CDr. Simple as 'bdcd cd_image' (alias bdcd='cdrecord -v -eject speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -data') Hell'uva lot easier than any of the damn GUI's ;) Hi Tom With CDRDAO I usually issue the command cdrdao copy --driver generic-mmc --device 0,0,0 --datafile TheNameILike Yeah, with Linux there's always several ways to do it. I'm aware of cdrdao, but I don't favor usin Disk at Once except for iso's. Then I use 'biso NameOfIso' (alias biso='cdrecord -v -eject speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -dao') -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Some MS Propaganda for ya (Funny)
On Tuesday September 30 2003 05:37 pm, HaywireMac wrote: On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 17:40:45 -0400 Michael Scottaline [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: I'll look forward to seeing your letter. Will you sign it JH or haywire? ;-) Best, Mike *If they print it...* Who knows where it will end up? Dear Editor, The abovementioned article is so rife with inaccuracy and untruth, it is difficult to believe it was not dictated directly from Redmond and printed verbatim. First of all, the reason Microsoft is the target of most hack attacks has nothing whatsoever to do with it's market share. The internet suffers unduly because of egregious security flaws in Microsoft's operating system, *despite* the fact that most of the websites on the Internet and most of the Internet's structure is built on Unix, Linux, and other non-Microsoft platforms. The internet continues to function in a useable manner day-to-day only because the non-Microsoft software that it runs on is able to cope with the load that Microsoft vulnerabilities generate. This bit of propagandistic fluff is clearly an editorial response to the report issued recently by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which quite rightly heaps almost all of the blame for the woes of the average user's Internet experience squarely where it belongs: Microsoft. The fact that said report is not mentioned *once* is in itself a glaring oversight on the part of the journalist. Microsoft's corporate culture is characterized by inattention to security, and has been for decades, not the hardware manufacturers, not vendors of Unix products, not the Open Source community, only Microsoft. This is why, increasingly, Governments across the globe are turning to alternatives to Microsoft, not only for the reduced costs and less restrictive licensing terms, but out of concern for their security. The U.S. govenment itself is turning to Linux to power it's most secure operations, such as the N.S.A. I would hope that Mr. Lohr, supposedly the author of this article, do more and better research to get his facts straight in the future. -- Regards, T Bruce Milne All right, where is the real JoeHill? ;) BTW, M$ servers are currently 23.5% of all web servers and their share has been in decline over the last year. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] installing a fix for x86
On Tuesday September 16 2003 02:46 pm, HaywireMac wrote: On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 20:36:13 +0100 Derek Jennings [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: BTW: Mandrake 9.2 is (currently) using XFree86-4.3-23mdk Waitaminnit... I'm still not good for understanding the versioning numbers but... I have XFree86-devel-4.3-5mdk, so is XFree86-4.3-23mdk ahead for behind?! 4.3 is the version number, -23mdk is the patch level. You could interpet patch level as bug fix, security fix, compatibility with other packages, fix a typo in the description, change deps and/or requires, . kdebase is up to patch level -78, a new height even for Laurent ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 already out?
On Saturday September 13 2003 11:25 pm, David E. Fox wrote: Last I heard... September 20th, probly the announcement on the 22nd. AFAIC, it's already ready. Install RC2, update to current I've been upgrading via urpmi to cooker contiinually since I upgraded from RC1, so I figure I alrady have at least RC2. When was RC2 released? I haven't managed yet to burn RC2 disks, and will be on vacation so maybe final will be out by the time I get back (9/21). Judging from the activity in urpmi, there's a lot of changin' going on :). You're way past RC2 if you're currently updated. Since cooker is frozen since RC1, it's just about all bug fixes up till now. Unless you've got some weird hardware expectations, it's done, _fini_. A lot of the updates (specially KDE, Gnome) are as trivial as fixin spellin errors in the rpms' description/change log. Tho new kernels are still comin, ie, kernel-2.4.22.8mdk is current, but kernel-2.4.22.9mdk is the current change log. Probly be on the mirrors soon. RC2 as near as I can tell was roughly a September 4 snapshot of cooker. Can't be more precise since the Mandrake internal server is always ahead of the cooker mirrors, even the primaries (sunsite, sunnet, an now uninett), by a day or so. Sunsite still remains the most current, tho I keep hearin they're fixin to retire. At this point I wouldn't bother with gettin RC2. OTOH, I'll be late gettin the final iso's myself. Got'a go to Talladega an watch 'em run real loud'n fast next weekend. Hang out with my brother in Alabama's temporary second largest city, the 'other' Mardi Gras twice a year ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 RC2
On Sunday September 14 2003 01:32 am, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Tom Brinkman wrote: Anyway, ya just gotta ask yourself why t'hell you would want, or would need to regularly update everything with force an nodeps in the first place (?) Specially cooker Is anyone reading my posts? Yes, I know --allow-force != --force, if nothin goes wrong, if it works as it's supposed to, if the mirrors aren't borked. You haven't had any updates in the last month or so remove most of KDE, without asking? Remove other files, links, and even directories, without askin? Let me say it again. When you run the command above it will try to install the packages. If it runs into a dependency it can't resolve it asks me if I want to try to install the offending package without checking for dependencies. I say yes or no depending on what the package is and what the possible effects would be of allowing it to do so. If I say no it exits. If I say yes it then tries to install the packages without checking for dependencies. If it still cannot do it because of a conflict with an already installed package it asks if I want to force the install. I again have the option of saying Y or n. If I say no it exits. If I say yes it installs the package without checking anything. It forces it to install without any regard for breaking dependencies or conflicting with existing packages. So I ask again, why do you believe that usin --allow-force and --allow-nodeps regularly is a good idea? I'm sure you know what you're doin, but IMO, it's dangerous, and could be misconstrued by a lot of newbie cookers as a good thing to do regularly. It's not. It's not even a good thing to do in the few cases it's needed. Better to switch mirrors, get the src.rpm and rebuild it, or wait till the problem is fixed in cooker and/or on the mirrors. I believe since cooker unfroze shortly after 9.1 release, I've needed/used either --allow option all of about twice. And then just waitin a day or so for new updates on the mirrors would've made --allow-* unnecessary. used absentmindedly. You have to think about what you are doing when you add that extra option (-f). I have. I added it a long time ago when the mirrors were worse than they are now. It only gets the synthesis.hdlist download (a few extra seconds), needed or not. I did it because the hdlist wasn't being updated even tho the one in ../base on the mirror was newer. Due to upgrades in urpmi and perl-URPM, it no longer seems to have any effect and isn't needed. I've been meaning to take it out. But it can't/doesn't hurt anything to leave it in either. urpmi.update -a -f --wget urpmi --wget --no-verify-rpm --auto-select -v It'd be nice if signatures were proper and --no-verify-rpm wasn't still needed too. It'd be nice if the mirrors were more dependable and --wget wasn't needed also. But they're not dangerous options. And I know Mandrake has little or no control over donated mirrors. In a perfect cooker world all that would be needed isurpmi.update -a urpmi --auto-select YMMV, -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installing BibleTime from source
On Sunday September 14 2003 10:04 am, Russ wrote: Hi All, I attempted to install BibleTime from an rpm designed for mdk9.1 because they had none for 9.0 (which I am running). I recieved several failed dependancies. I was able to get an answer from them and was told I would probably need to compile it from a source code. Probly, but before you go with a tarball, try to find a Mandrake src.rpm. I just looked an found one for 9.2, so they must exist. Try an find one closest to version 9.0 and, as root rpm --rebuild bibletime-1.2.2-2mdk.src.rpm (that's the 9.2 cooker version, it probly won't work) If that doesn't work out for you, then you'll need to learn about compiling from source tarballs. Start here, read all 3 pages http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/basics/bsource.html Hint, when you believe you're ready to compile, use ./configure --prefix=/usr rather than just plain ./configure That'll put the binaries created in directories normally used by Mandrake. Otherwise the program will probly put 'em in /usr/local You'll probly have more questions after readin mandrakeuser, so holler back ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2rc2 and MD5sums
On Friday September 12 2003 11:53 pm, Dennis Myers wrote: Thanks all got it this time altho I don't think that 9.2 is quite ready for prime time. You are right, it is 9.2rc2 which is Release Candidate 2, it is not final yet. RC2 is also not a release in itself, it's just a cooker snapshot. Quite old by now. There's been a sh!+load of new packages since, most all of them bug fixes. Install a few cooker mirror sources, and 'urpmi.update -a -f --wget urpmi --wget --no-verify-rpm --auto-select -v'to get current. On the MandrakeLinux web site there is a poll asking if they should use 650MB iso or 700MB cause they can get more on the 700. Mentions a lot of good stuff left off, because KDE and Gnome grew, IIRC. Hmmm, been no mention of it on the cooker list, and I couldn't find it on Mandrake sites, including the Club. Could you post the link Dennis ? -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] importing contacts into Evolution?
On Friday September 12 2003 06:40 pm, Merlin Zener wrote: ls -l in the /usr/bin directory scrolls off the end of the page, and even scrolling back up doesn't go as far as files beginning with c, so I don't know. I looked in 'man ls' but I didn't see any way to make it just show one screenful of info at a time. You shouldn't need 'ls -l'. Check to see, type 'alias ll' in a console, EG, tom $ alias ll alias ll='ls -l' It's long been a standard alias that Mandrake uses. To see all of 'em (including any you've created) just type 'alias'. For displaying large outputs, use 'll |less' and then you can Arrow, Page down, or scroll with your mouse down thru the output, either a page or line at a time. EG, 'll |less /usr/bin' -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2rc2 and MD5sums
On Saturday September 13 2003 12:22 pm, Dennis Myers wrote: Hmmm, been no mention of it on the cooker list, and I couldn't find it on Mandrake sites, including the Club. Could you post the link Dennis ? Hi, you might of found this by now but here is the site/ it is the club site and first on the list of the club homepage. Sorry for the delay getting back to you all. -- http://www.mandrakeclub.com/article.php?sid=1160mode=nocomments Dennis M. linux user #180842 Thanks, but I can't help rememberin the arguin that went on with 9.1. 650MB won out in that deal. I voted for 700 even tho I don't really care. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Laptop memory not recognized
On Saturday September 13 2003 03:15 pm, Noah A Hicks wrote: Thanks all for the input After messing around with the BIOS it seems apparent that my problem is located there. After turning off quiet boot I could observe the system checking the memory up to 127mb passed ok. The memory setting in the bios does not allow me to change the value (ie it just displays the number) Is there any way to force the BIOS to recognize my 256mb chip? Thanks -Noah Noah, I've long wondered. I install additional, ram, but on boot even the bios doesn't see it. Made sure it was seated properly, the clips snapped into position the first time. Still no go. Take it out an redo the whole deal presto, added ram on boot. Blame it on gremlins ;) Either that or motherboards, try changin the order or the ram sticks around in the slots. Usually what works best is to put the best ram in slot1, then slot2, an so on. I had a board some time ago that didn't like this arrangment tho. Slot1 empty, slot2, then slot 3, slot4 worked fine tho. That said, FedEx has another 256MB Corsair stick on it's way to me, so I hope I remember this advice ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] ShockWave for Mozilla ??
On Saturday September 13 2003 03:17 pm, Bob Read wrote: I've been doing searches for Shockwave for Mozilla on Linux but all I'm finding is questions from others. Does anyone have answers they can point to? Much thanks, Bob Mandrake has an rpm, FlashPlayer-6.0-3mdk.i586.rpm I've had it for a while in storage, but IIRC you can get it off the Club or /unsupported mirrors. Just install it, you should then have flash in NS, Mozilla, Konqueror ... with nothin on your part to do. Oh, I sux, here's the link http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/MandrakeClub/comm/9.1/i586/FlashPlayer-6.0-3mdk.i586.html -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Weird Web pages..Rant
On Saturday September 13 2003 10:46 am, Aron Smith wrote: Why do so many people in the Linux community think that it is cool to use a black or purple or dark blue background on their web sites? My 60 year old eyes can't take it. Jeez, I didn't know you were THAT OLD Aron. Heck, I'm a youngin' at 55 ;ppp -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 RC2
On Saturday September 13 2003 04:41 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: HaywireMac wrote: On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 16:09:59 -0500 Dennis Myers [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: I know cause I just did it using Tom B.s instructions. basically it would be urpmi --update --auto-select? Here's what I use to update. urpmi -v --auto-select --allow-nodeps --allow-force --no-verify-rpm -v to see everything that going on --auto-select to update everything that needs to be updated --allow-nodeps to allow you to install without checking dependencies if needed --allow-force to allow you to force the installation if needed --no-verify-rpm to keep it from complaining about bad gpg signatures That'll do it. With often dire results. The allow --allow-nodeps --allow-force being the BAD offenders. Here's what I've gravitated to. I install several 'trusted' mirrors that I have some current confidence in. It's a movin target, now I'm currently usin uninett, sunsite, club-internet.fr, a PLF source (also club-internet) simultaneously and then update several times a day with tom # cook (that's all I need to type ;) alias cook='urpmi.update -a -f --wget urpmi --wget --no-verify-rpm --auto-select -v' (in /etc/bashrc) I've found --wget much slower than curl, but more reliable. It'll keep on tickin, takes a lickin, when the default curl will fail on unwilling mirrors. --no-verify-rpm gets by bad package signin, still plaguing cooker as they move to a new signature model. NBFD, anyway. The last -v just gives verbose output. The dbl ampersand in the middle just says, 'don't run this next command unless the last one completed successfully'. When I see major updates I run 'upall' an login/out, restartin the X server with Ctrl+AltBspace in between. (alias upall='rpm --rebuilddb updatedb update-menus -n ldconfig') There are a few situations from time to time when --allow-nodeps --allow-force might be called for or needed, but those are usually best avoided by being a cookerer. By that I'll just say again, Y'all shouldn't be runnin cooker unless you subscribe to an read the cooker and CHRM (change log) mailin lists. (I know you do Brant, so I'm surprised you cavalierly use force, nodeps), it's a must before you do updates. Need for force or nodeps will have already been suggested by the developers or other cookerers. when called for in rare instances, an then only for certain rpms. Just as often as not, the better solution is to the d/l the current src.rpm for the package an rebuild it yourself. The only time I've ever had problems, cooker being my only installed system for years, is when I disregard this, my own, gathered mostly from others advice. Other than that, it's always been better than the last (what some of y'all call) 'stable' release. Just takes a little more effort. IE, updating with --auto, or a cron job is an equally BAD idea. Case in point, a little more'n a week ago a very bad initscripts rpm update was on the mirrors (shortly before RC2). I woke up, made some coffee, an typed 'cook'. THEN read the cooker an CHRPM lists. Sure enough, as I could'a been forewarned, I'd just updated to an initscripts package that fubar'd many of my /etc/initd* links. In my case it also wiped a bunch of /proc subdirs. I should'a read the lists first ;( A fixed package was available in short order. It soon became apparent that a fresh install of RC1, an update to current cooker would be needed for my situation. The whole deal was only my negligence. Still, it got me off my butt to take a look at the new installer ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 RC2
On Saturday September 13 2003 05:59 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: H.J.Bathoorn wrote: On Sunday 14 September 2003 00:26, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: I should clarify that --allow-force and --allow-nodeps does not automatically install without checking dependencies or force an install. Actually it does! check all the aliases to find out where Mdk does all the handholding. Thatway you'll find out why rm -r xxx is a PITA on mdk:o) rm -f xxx solves that BTW or change the aliases. If you don't know how...don't!!! That's another one up for the mandrakians:o) Good luck, HarM I'm aware of the safety net implemented for the rm command, but what does this have to do with what I said? --allow-nodeps whether an alias or a true option passed to urpmi does indeed ask you before it does its business. The same with --allow-force. See man urpmi: --allow-nodeps Allow urpmi to ask user to continue installation using no depen- dencies checking due to error. By default urpmi exit immediately in such case. --allow-force Allow urpmi to ask user to continue installation using no depen- dencies checking or forced installation due to error. By default urpmi exit immediately in such case. Alias or not, these are the actions of those options. Bet your life on it Brant? My money's on HarM ;) urpmi --allow-force --allow-nodeps --auto-select Will allow packages to be updated, and --ALLOW it without checking for dependencies, and will --ALLOW replacement of files and directories. I know it's supposed to ask, but it doesn't always, _if_ you include force. IE, (from man urpmi) --force Assumes yes on all questions. ~ --allow-force Allow urpmi to ask user to continue installation using no dependencies checking or forced installation due to error. By default urpmi exit immediately in such case. Often as not it Assumes yes on all questions, or just exits doin nothing. The first case can be a disaster, the second case a waste of time and bandwidth. These options should not be used except in rare cases. Nor should they with 'rpm'. --force is good for re-installing already installed rpms of the exact same version/ patch level, to correct links and files. --nodeps is fine after the rpm packager admits a fsck'up in his/her %requires, and/or package and says it's no problemo. YMMV, stick around, you'll see ; alias safety nets have got nothin to do with it. (_Don't_ use the --force, Luke ;) Anyway, ya just gotta ask yourself why t'hell you would want, or would need to regularly update everything with force an nodeps in the first place (?) Specially cooker Better to go gently thru the night -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] configuring a monitor
On Saturday September 13 2003 05:22 pm, d2ci1fj g1nf24 wrote: Hi, I am using a flat screen crt monitor. It is a Logisys LGX-750 crt flat screen. I attached the monitor config file to this email. Would anybody help me with this? The parts in the monitor configuration file that I was wondering about are some of the settings. There's not all that much to do. It's a generic (plug'n play) monitor. So run XFdrake an choose 1024x768, 65k colors (16bpp), @ 60 refresh rate. That'll work for any 17 crt monitor. What video card? The monitor doesn't run all by itself ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 already out?
On Saturday September 13 2003 07:42 pm, Anarky wrote: oh .. ok ... you know .. I think I've looked like half a dozen times already at by when 9.2 will be out .. and yet I forgot again ... mid september or octomber? Last I heard... September 20th, probly the announcement on the 22nd. AFAIC, it's already ready. Install RC2, update to current cooker, you'll be as close to 9.2 final as it gets. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] ShockWave for Mozilla ??
On Saturday September 13 2003 08:04 pm, Bob Read wrote: Thanks Tom. I have FlashPlayer installed, but it doesn't play ShockWave files. Bob Yeah, meal culpa. I realize I totally had a brain fade an missed what you were askin for. Sorry ;( -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Teach yourself unix in 24 hours
On Saturday September 13 2003 09:56 pm, Aron Smith wrote: Don't forget The Rute Users Guide you can buy a copy or download either HTML or PDF version from http://www.programming-hub.com/Linux_Rute_Users_Tutorial_and_Expo sition If it's not already on your Mandrake CD's (me thinks its is, has been for a long long time), then tom # urpmi rute ftp://ftp.uninett.no/pub/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/rute-0.9.1-3mdk.noarch.rpm installing /var/cache/urpmi/rpms/rute-0.9.1-3mdk.noarch.rpm Preparing... ## 1:rute ## tom $ loci rute /usr/lib/menu/rute /usr/share/doc/rute-0.9.1 /usr/share/doc/rute-0.9.1/rute.pdf tom $ xpdf /usr/share/doc/rute-0.9.1/rute.pdf ~~ Then you can read it (First thing I do after an install is disable the CD sources, as they're already obsolete. I go to mirrors to get current. 'Course first thing I do with instructions is throw 'em in the trash ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] This is just the most heinous idea...
On Saturday September 13 2003 08:32 pm, Carroll Grigsby wrote: Flunk the test, and you lose the privilege of paying taxes. I already did. I'm on the receiving end. You don't wanna go there. Stay young an healthy ... pay the damn taxes. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Weird Web pages..Rant
On Saturday September 13 2003 09:23 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: Jeez, I didn't know you were THAT OLD Aron. Heck, I'm a youngin' at 55 ;ppp /snip Jeez, I didn't know you were THAT OLD Tom. Always imagined you about 27, living inside a computercase, eating disks with screwdrivers :-) Kaj Haulrich. You're only as young as you think. I live in a travel trailer, so that's sort'a like a computer case. I've still got my teeth, so no need for screwdrivers yet. I do like tortilla's tho. That's as close to 'eatin disks' as I get now'a days. http://www.gocampingamerica.com/coloniadelrey/ http://www.google.com/search?q=colonia%20del%20reyie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8 -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Weird Web pages..Rant
On Saturday September 13 2003 06:32 pm, Aron Smith wrote: On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 17:02, Tom Brinkman wrote: On Saturday September 13 2003 10:46 am, Aron Smith wrote: Why do so many people in the Linux community think that it is cool to use a black or purple or dark blue background on their web sites? My 60 year old eyes can't take it. Jeez, I didn't know you were THAT OLD Aron. Heck, I'm a youngin' at 55 ;ppp So you LIKE dark blue on Black ?? As long as it ain't on my butt. If I don't like websites, they're history. OTOH, I've got a real good pair of Wal*Mart readin glasses ($8) that sort'a kind'a restore my tired ol' eyes. Seriously, they've got kids recruited worldwide that determine ergonomics and marketing appeal for these things. Colors'n all. Not just Linux web sites. Personally I believe the Winsux ones are a lot uglier. Face it we're just cranky old fogies. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2rc2 and MD5sums
On Friday September 12 2003 02:01 pm, Aron Smith wrote: Have been trying to get 9.2rc2 up on a spare box . however the MD5sum that whe website has does not match the sum generated by [EMAIL PROTECTED] aron]$ cd distros [EMAIL PROTECTED] distros]$ md5sum MandrakeLinux-9.2rc2-CD1.i586.iso 9725a5942d84390c691d78f95084b5ee MandrakeLinux-9.2rc2-CD1.i586.iso [EMAIL PROTECTED] distros]$ iD8DBQE99hnZ54mK4HB3H/MRApCJAJ0TTvtWk4a5GScLj52rGjz3e5onVQCfSNsQ 5JdJS66zBlHBYG14xzGthp4= So what am I doing wrong? These are the correct ones 9725a5942d84390c691d78f95084b5ee MandrakeLinux-9.2rc2-CD1.i586.iso 78374f7ff4335f5b46b3cd7d8e2f3e94 MandrakeLinux-9.2rc2-CD2.i586.iso 70de3baa4a1e3f3c0229bed38b237d8a MandrakeLinux-9.2rc2-CD3.i586.iso If you have 9.2rc2.md5sums.asc with these sums, and the three ios's all in the same directory, then 'md5sum -c 9.2rc2.md5sums.asc' in that directory will do the checks for you, an should just output 'OK' for each file. Check again after you burn 'em, as some GUI apps for cdrecord can screw things up. Or just burn the iso's on the CL with cdrecord -v -eject speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -dao iso . The most important part being -dao. Check the CDr's with md5sum /dev/scd? (replace ? with the dev number for your CD-RW) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 3 quick questions
On Wednesday September 10 2003 12:35 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 13:44, Tom Brinkman wrote: With this in mind, today after twice rebooting to new kernels'finding modules' was instantaneous. Hardly a blink. Uh...what kernels are you booting to now? 2.4.22-7mdkxp7 Actually a 2.4.23 pre kernel, compiled for AthlonXP. But I've never hung on 'finding modules' as far back as I can remember. FWIW, I'm a believer that recompiling kernels is of no performance benefit. I only do it recently to test and time my new hardware. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] RC2
On Wednesday September 10 2003 11:11 am, Gilligan wrote: Is there a way to upgrade to RC2 without dling the iso's and creating discs via ftp? I am running RC1 and really would like to just dl and install. TIA Create cooker mirror sources for both main (RPMS/) and contrib (RPMS2/) and thenurpmi.update -a -f --wget urpmi --wget --no-verify-rpm --auto-select -vin a terminal as root. I just did this a few days ago an it took 1.5 hours with a 1.5Mbit adsl connection. Still it's a lot less d/l'ing than getting the RC2 iso's. When you're done you'll actually be well past RC2. You can use urpmi.setup (as root) to easily add cooker sources. It's pretty intuitive, you'll figure it out quickly. I'd suggest uninett as it's a fairly current an stable primary mirror. If you then keep your cooker install current, by the third week in September, you'll have 9.2 final. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Intel |Unveils
On Tuesday September 9 2003 04:14 am, John Richard Smith wrote: So once again AMD are ahead of the game.So does anyone know of a Mobo, and which AMD processor is currently the right choice for testing , 64 bit architecture. Why will it be some while before it's mainstream PC ? I mean, if it works, it works for whatever software ? or are you saying the technical aspects of PC's means it will not be compatible until someone does the necessary ? I might have a think about trying it. Just where does one obtain the 64 bit M9.2 version anyway, cooker I suppose, but what would it be called ? John Well, I see Charlie already gave you a best answer. The only thing I'd add, is there's no sense in havin a 64bit desktop, till most all the apps you use are ported to 64bit. Same deal as dual processors (SMP). Then expect some of them to run slower due to the overhead of addressing at twice the amount. I'll just stick to what I said originally, it's gonna be quite a while before 64 bit hits the desktop. And 64bit versions of most all distros have been available for quite some time for servers. As to Mandrake, http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/briefs?n=/mandrakesoft/news/2414 -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] A Serious Question - Do You Ever Stop?
On Tuesday September 9 2003 03:01 pm, ed tharp wrote: Costs too damn much $50.00 /lb here (California) and do you think it would be worth it if it only cost 2 times as much as starbucks? not me well, Ed, you need to remember that $50 in California is only $25 every where else, 'cept maybe Chicago an NYC. $15 in S Texas ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 3 quick questions
On Tuesday September 9 2003 06:01 pm, Stephen Kuhn wrote: 1) When booting there is about a 18 second delay while the system checks modules. Is this normal? All the other steps seem to pass quickly. 20 seconds is normal, 18 is fast. Something MUST be wrong - or we can teach you how to set the time-out much higher(JOKE) Yeah, that's about normal... With this in mind, today after twice rebooting to new kernels'finding modules' was instantaneous. Hardly a blink. I don't remember it ever bein any different (?). The only thing that did ever lag is 'eth0', 20 maybe 30 seconds. I have a dynamic DSL connection. BUT, I found changing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ ifcfg-eth0, BOOTPROTO=dhcp to BOOTPROTO=static makes it zip by eth0 on boot in less than a second. With either config, eth0 is still up and working. My edit just gets rid of the boot lag. I've discussed it with the Mandrake developers an they're scratchin their heads too. This was durin 9.1 devel, but it still holds true for me now in 9.2 RC2 + updates. Anyways, if your boot is takin 18 or more seconds to resolve module deps, somethin ain't configured properly, or somethin is weird. OTOH, like my eth0 deal above, sometimes when they're try'n make sure stuff works out of the box for everybody, the config's and apps sometimes are less than optimal for those who don't need the kludges in the first place. I never had the eth0 situation till a few complained on the 9.1 devel (cooker list) that there were problems with dhcp-client and their connections ;) They won, I had to scratch. NBFD, eth0 works either way, otherwise you wouldn't have to read this ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Blue Bash
On Tuesday September 9 2003 04:56 pm, Heather/Femme wrote: On Tue, 09 Sep 2003 07:54:16 -0500 mike [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS1=\[\033[36m\][\$(date +%H%M)[EMAIL PROTECTED]:\w]$ second gives me a cyan prompt...but ty. :D Femurs PS1= \W \\$just gives ya a good 'ol tom $ (as user) -or- tom # (as root) 'tom' is the working directory with either. if you edit /etc/bashrc, not your local one. Femurs, aren't those leg bones? -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Intel |Unveils
On Tuesday September 9 2003 02:56 pm, ed tharp wrote: Well, I see Charlie already gave you a best answer. The only thing I'd add, is there's no sense in havin a 64bit desktop, till most all the apps you use are ported to 64bit. Same deal as dual processors (SMP). I might take a bit of this last one up with you Tom, that be there Winblows thinking... about SMP anyway. I promise there is a marked difference between an SMP machine doing anything in MDK-Linux, and the same machine with out 2 cpus. in Winblows, including W2kp, and XP, if they ain't special SMP aware apps, there ain't no value, but in MDK, everything (when really loading up the box) is faster SMP. the visual difference is roughly the same as going from 128 meg ram to 256 meg ram, as UP vs SMP OK, we've got an argument Ed! ;) I talk to people all the time (Winblows users), they use their computers (if you can call ready made laptops computers) to email, use as typewriter, or surf the web. And they think they need broadband an faster computers. Most of 'em hunt'n peck like I do on a keyboard, an consult with their mouse. When they ask me for advice, I tell'm I don't do Windoze, an I don't do laptops. Not one believes that M$ is their biggest problem. I don't push the issue. Not even after they say I think my computer has a virus. I just offer free Mandrake CD's and support as my only solution. But I digress ... Twin 1 Ghz processors does not a 2 GHz system make. It's still a 1GHz system. Same speed, just more lanes on the highway. If they're open to traffic (software). Anything above 600 Mhz, single processor is good for compiling kernels, specially 'make modules'. That's about it. BTW, with the lastest kernels a few weeks ago, my 1.4 Athlon, oc'd to 1.5Ghz, plain old sdram, would take a stock Mdk config an 'make modules' in 40+ minutes. Now with an XP 3000+ oc'd to 2.3Ghz, DDR 400 sdram @ DDR 427, it doesn't even take 20 minutes. If it was dual cpu, it'd most likely still take close to 20 minutes. It surely wouldn't get done in 10. BFD anyhow, everything else is hardly at all noticeably quicker. My typin is slower I think. An what makes you think addin ram makes a system faster? If the ram amount was adequate to the task to begin with, addin more just means it might be able to do more at the same speed without VM (/swap). 'Cept for Windoze, then the system gets slower ; Or in all truth, a Linux industrial strength multi processor server is slower too with a bunch of ram, if it's used close to capacity. SMP has little merit on the desktop. For loaded down servers, a dual processor system surely wouldn't even cut it. Then bunches are called for. Just not on a desktop, ever. So it's not about how fast, it's more a situation of how much. Sure multiple proccesors can do more in a given length of time, given lots'a ram... but for a desktop, No. Desktop: UP, run it hard an put it up wet. Overclocking will produce much more than SMP. They only use one motor on winning race cars. The multi motor cars are called 'crowd pleasers', but they're not fast, just showy. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Request Motherboard and CPU suggestions
On Monday September 8 2003 11:27 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: Most decent HS's now ship with grease, not pads. There's two big problems with pads. They're not as heat transfer efficent as grease, and they deteriorate fairly quickly. Often in just a few months. The hotter the processor runs, the quicker the pads fail. I hate to horn in on this Tom, but you made it too interesting. ;) No problem, the more the merrier. As I said earlier 'never take just one person's advice'. I would like to add that pads are one shots. True. They are designed for one mounting and one only; after that their efficiency is shot. Theoretically pads are supposed to have an advantage over grease, but only if you never upgrade. (i.e., remove the heat sink and put it back with the same pad) Also much of the efficiency advantage is lost comparatively speaking if you use a superior heat compound like Arctic Silver 3, which is according to test results the best stuff on the market right now. Here we differ. The pads are not as efficient. They soon detiorate, often gettin dried out and baked, split an cracked, almost turned into dust. Even if never disturbed. I've dealt with 'problem hardware', where the pad had burned away to nothin. Even worse, usually on the cache side of the die where it's needed the most. Causing the HS to tip slightly, an then not work for the other side either. As to 'a superior heat compound like Arctic Silver 3' that's all marketing B$. Radio Shack's $3 tube that'll build several dozens of systems is just as good. Even the little generic silicon based bits of grease they now ship on or with heatsinks is just as good. The XP 3000+ kit (I've overclocked to 2323mhz from 2166), came with a generic HS that had grease already on the HS's base. I judged it too thick an scaped some off. Spread it thinner, cleaned of the excess, an attached it to the cpu. Temps are normal for an overclocked system. They wouldn't be a half degree lower with Arctic Silver. Even in south Texas ;) One more suggestion I have, and I think it's the most important one, wear your static wrist band secured to a valid earth ground while you are inside the machine, so that you will keep your computer equipment in mint condition. LX I don't fool with those things. Work on the system barefoot on a tile floor ... no static. Just touch the case every once'n a while to make sure you're discharged. A few beers doesn't hurt either, MOF it's a prerequisite. 'Sides, soon as I get to pushin hardware to it's limit, it's no longer mint condition ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Linux and Wireless Lan/Internet
On Sunday September 7 2003 08:02 am, Derek Jennings wrote: Actually you will be lucky to get more than 5 Mbps of 'goodput' out of an 11Mbps wireless card. I spent some time recently putting together a wireless router for a small ISP here in the UK, and that was the best throughput I measured, (side by side on the bench) and agreed with info I have read around the web. Its the packet overhead and forward error correction that limits it. http://reviews.cnet.com/Siemens_SpeedStream_Powerline_802_11b_Wir eless_Access_Point/4505-3334_7-20684674-4.html http://www.cs.umd.edu/~shankar/Papers/802-11b-profile-1.pdf I found some chip sets were better than others. Cisco Aironet was a bit faster than Orinoco/Agere , and Atmel (usb) was a fair bit faster than Prism 2.5 (usb) There is not much in it so do not base your choice just on my say so. derek OK, thanks. That all seems to confirm what I've read. I'm not considering wireless, just curious. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Request Motherboard and CPU suggestions
On Sunday September 7 2003 09:39 am, Michael Lothian wrote: Your best bet is going to be a motherboard that uses a via chipset (as apposed to an nvidea one) As these are very well supported under linux. Maybe your best going for a KT400 instead of the newer KT600 as linux is always a little behind in supporting new features. As most motherboard manufacturers stick to the standard chipset from via and don't substitute them for others everything should work out the box. It's only when the manufacturer decides that sticking some cheep network/sound/name_of_device_here chip instead that people have problems in linux. Also people can have trouble with Nvideas stuff as they require drivers which aren't GPLd (IFAIK) which means if you try and change your kernel without setting up your drivers again linux won't boot up :( I think that was everything. In short buy a very popular board that uses a via chipset as more linux people will use them and write drivers for them. ;) Mike I'd agree. nforce boards are not for Linux. Let the Windoze users buy 'em. I've never liked anything SiS. So that leaves VIA. A few weeks ago I bought an Aopen AK77-400/Max. On board Realtek NIC and AC97 5.1 surround sound, KT400a chipset. Mandrake 9.2 cooker booted with the new board, found and properly configured the NIC and sound. No muss no fuss with anything. KT400a meets or beats nforce chipsets for performance. But those are Windoze hardware reviews. So when it comes to pickin a motherboard, o Don't be guided by Windoze hardware reviews o For AMD, only buy a motherboard on their recommended list. The ones not listed, aren't listed for very good reasons. Tho for the very latest cpu's (eg, XP 3000+, XP 3200+), some motherboard brands just might not have been AMD tested yet. o Only use a PSU and wattage that's AMD recommended. http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_4348,00.html o Keep in mind that ram is just as important, don't use generic. (Crucial or Corsair is currently the best) Buy one grade above what's required, eg, DDR400 when DDR333 is required. This is very important. o Motherboards that allow for increasing voltages with bios settings are a big plus, even if you don't overclock. Greatly enhances stability, specially for cpu, ram, and AGP cards. Some of the better boards provide increased voltages by default if they don't have bios settings to raise them. o IMO, an Award bios is a plus. Avoid Phoenix. o Any decent heatsink and fan will do, but use thermal grease, not a thermal pad. Provide plenty of air movement (ie, case cooling). o Study bios settings an what they affect. So you can configure and tweak the system properly. Many hardware problems are really just configuration mistakes. o Don't just take one person's advice ;) For Intel cpu's, you're on your own. IMO, there hasn't been a decent chipset for Intel processors since the good ol' 440BX. Probly best to use an Intel Retail (not OEM) board for P4's to be on the safe side. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Virus
On Sunday September 7 2003 08:45 am, ed tharp wrote: On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 08:55, DrewMartin wrote: Hi All, Before this turns into a flame war between those of us how still use Windows to some degree(or are forced to for various reasons). It is a well know fact that the script kiddies who write these insidious pieces of code only do so, because Windows is such a wide spread OS in the world out there.If/when Linux(or Macs) become the OS of choice for the world at large,then the will start writing viri for these OS's too. Yes I do know for a virus to have full affect in Linux you must be running as root,but some clever bastard out there will one day work out how to rip thought that level of secretly. Drew ahh NO! http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/ I was gonna stay out this. Oh well ;) I was thinkin of posting the same link Ed. OTOH, M$ OS's being attacked because Windows is such a wide spread OS in the world just goes to show how successful M$ FUD is for those who want to believe it. Many do. For Linux to ever be as vulnerable as any M$ OS is, all the simplest security measures would have to be ignored, and you'd need to run, and connect to the Net as root. There's very real reasons M$ currently has their own microsoft.com servers hiding behind some Linux boxes. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Sunday September 7 2003 01:24 pm, crak600 wrote: 'lspcidrake' and 'ddcxinfos' will tell you which video card you have, and what your monitor specs are (HorizSync, VertRefresh) if the hardware has this info imbedded in it's firmware. There's another utility that reports onboard video ram, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. Vram shouldn't be a problem for configuring the Vcard an monitor tho. as root in a terminal, 'ddcxinfos' will tell you the video card ram size. Yep, I knew I'd seen it somewhere ;) just ran it, so that's how i know. sadly, this NVidia GeForce2 card is only a 32mb card, the same as the NVidia RIVA TNT2 i took out, but i can tell a visual difference between the cards. the images on the screen with the GeF2 card are much clearer, sharper, have more depth to them. everything looks better. MUCH better. and i didn't think it was bad to begin with. 32mb is plenty. Set the aperature to 32 also. You'll never need more than that. Most of the time you're only usin about 4mb of video ram, even at the resolutions you mentioned I snipped. A lot of onboard video ram is mostly a marketing gimmick. now that i'm in the GUI and can see all this, in the GUI it's showing that i'm using the RIVA TNT2 card still and says i'm using a plug'n play moniter, although in a terminal it's showing that i'm using the GeF2 card. should i be concerned with this? the command line makes me 'god' to the computer and i would think any info i got from a terminal would be more correct than info gotten from a GUI. is that right? I dunno, I've never had that happen, and I have changed video cards before. I wouldn't worry about it tho. Probly an artifact left from an upgrade, rather than a fresh install. going back up to the first paragraph in your reply Tom, do i need to do all that now considering i'm 'in' mandrake now anyway? or should i just skip it and do as stated below, delete the 'old' stuff from lilo and do all my updates to the 'new' install and just forge on? Sounds like all you've got left to do is get rid of the 'old' stanzas in lilo.conf. Actually you could'a removed them during the upgrade usin the installer's tool. Now just edit lilo.conf, delete them an re-run lilo. I believe you can also do this with a GUI in MCC. As to 'old' stanza's in lilo.conf, just delete them, an run 'lilo'. I believe MCC has a GUI for doin it too. If your /boot partition is gettin full, carefully delete old images (vmlinuz) an initrd's. They're the only files that use a lot of disk space, the links (system.map, config*, etc.) you can leave (or delete). Just be careful. If you have a spare partition to back up to, it's probly a good idea to backup /boot before you try any deleting. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Saturday September 6 2003 01:20 am, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Did you install a kernel capable of using that much memory when you did your upgrade? I believe you need to do the initial install with the standard kernel and then, afterwards, you can install the Enterprise Kernel to take advantage of the extra RAM. You need to specify a lower amount of RAM to do the initial install or it will not work. Once you have upgraded the kernel you can then specify the new (larger) amount of RAM, re-install your nVidia drivers, if that is what you used, and you're off to the races. Same thing I was wonderin. With 1 gig of ram I believe he'd be better off keeping the UP kernel and adding 'mem=860M' to lilo, or booting with 'linux mem=860M'. There's a significant memory management performance hit in the BigMem (enterprise) kernels in order to provide addressing = 4gig's of ram. I have an nvidia GeF2, but use the XFree86 driver. IIRC, there's issues with nvidia's proprietary driver and = 1 gig of ram and/or the bigmem kernels. I think the mem=860 restriction with the UP kernel would eliminate those problems too (if they still exist?). -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake 9.1 installation problem - Geforce4 recognised but doesn't work....
On Saturday September 6 2003 06:32 am, HaywireMac wrote: On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 12:07:32 +0100 Pete Stean [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: this will be my third attempt at installing the o/s - we all love to hate MS but I'm beginning to see why people don't venture out into the wild unknown of linux phew! Well, talk to Tom Brinkman about that. Not to excuse the lag in hardware support in Linux, but there is a very good reason. When a hardware vendor comes out with a new product, in your case I believe the display is the prob, not the Nvidia, they are lined up at MS's door to get software support, while Linux hackers have to beg and plead and hack and reverse engineer support for the latest and greatest. My point is, considering the way Linux is deliberately and egregiously shut out of the hardware advancement train with closed-source drivers and the like, it's a miracle that Linux developers are able to even keep up. These people are to be lauded and praised for their continues efforts, in many if not most cases for *free*. You don't choose Linux, as I think you implied, for the whiz-bang multimedia support, though it is fairly good for that too, you choose it because it is an alternative to the insecurity, instability, and wickedly bloodthirsty licensing and upgrade paths of MS OS's. Am I getting this right Tom? Tom? Wake up Tom! You did fine. Tho I'd stress blaming Bill Gates and his licensing agreements, arm twisting, and shady backroom deals, rather than the hardware vendors. M$ develops many windoze hardware drivers for, or in cooperation with the vendors, and forbids releasing any source in order to protect M$ IP. Yeah right. Truth is Billy Goat doesn't want the latest and greatest to work properly on any other OS's but his. M$ can dictate to the hardware manufactures because Windoze is over 90% of their market. The result is the same old poor cooperation with the open source community. What's needed is an open source spy to infiltrate TSMC (http://www.tsmc.com/english/default.htm). They make most of the chips hardware manufacturers and vendors use. Have all the plans and specs ;) EG, they make all the chips for both ATI and nVidia, most of the latest other video, sound, network chips, et al out there. Then Linux would soon have better drivers and hardware support than Windoze ; jus need to find someone willing to go to prison for a long time ;( -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake 9.1 installation problem - Geforce4 recognised but doesn't work....
On Saturday September 6 2003 08:12 am, ed tharp wrote: On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 08:42, HaywireMac wrote: On 06 Sep 2003 08:25:37 -0400 ed tharp [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: gee,, George Lucas, and Industrial Light and Magic choose Linux. AMD and NVidia just for that. the August Linux Journal has a great writeup about the Rackspace built linux powered ILM 'deathstar' render-farm. some 1500 AMD athlon 1600, on 750 MoBos, each with 2 gigs ram. ahhh to dream of such power... just wait a few years (like 20),, I swear I will have that much power. that's comparing apples and oranges. they are using Linux for the raw power, not too support an advanced flat panel display. there's a difference between computing power and hardware support, no? I betcha they still use Mac's at the end-user level, the Linux rendering farms are just for nuclear-powered computing at the level of drawing huge amounts of polygons in a short time (and without crashing, LOL!). the article does not say what sort of display they are using, only that use Kodak Cineon for film capture, OpenEXR (an Open Source Software released by ILM) as a new floating point image format, and does mention that Cinepaint (formerly Film-Gimp),Alais|wavefront Maya, pixar renderman and Mental Images Mental Ray as the software run. It does say however that the desktops are Linux, and that after everyone goes home, instead of shutting them down, they are included in the cluster for use as render nodes, considerably increasing the load that can be handled (some 70 terrabytes of info a day over the network). These large enterprises sign licensing agreements, and make deals for closed source proprietary hardware support. They'd need to in any event because of their specialized needs, regardless of OS. Something the open source community can't and won't do. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Graphical Log-in Problem
On Saturday September 6 2003 10:34 am, crak600 wrote: so anyway, how do i fix my screwups? the lilo screen now has all the regular options plus the old linux, old linux-nonfb, old linux failsafe, which those are the ones that i can't get anywhere in. do i just forge onward and remove those things from lilo.conf or can i fix what i screwed up? thanks! Mike I'm a little fuzzy on just what your video problems are. If you inherited the GeF card on a screwed mobo, it could just be that the card is compromised also. I believe I'd boot to lilo, an hit Esc, then, 'linux init 3 mem=860M' (check you current lilo.conf, you might need to add other parameters, eg, acpi=off) and as root run 'XFdrake'. Choose conservative video card an monitor settings to get started with. Probly 1024x768 @ 60Hz, 30-70 kHz HorizSync 50-120 Hz VertRefresh. 'lspcidrake' and 'ddcxinfos' will tell you which video card you have, and what your monitor specs are (HorizSync, VertRefresh) if the hardware has this info imbedded in it's firmware. There's another utility that reports onboard video ram, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. Vram shouldn't be a problem for configuring the Vcard an monitor tho. As to 'old' stanza's in lilo.conf, just delete them, an run 'lilo'. I believe MCC has a GUI for doin it too. If your /boot partition is gettin full, carefully delete old images (vmlinuz) an initrd's. They're the only files that use a lot of disk space, the links (system.map, config*, etc.) you can leave (or delete). Just be careful. If you have a spare partition to back up to, it's probly a good idea to backup /boot before you try any deleting. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Linux and Wireless Lan/Internet
On Saturday September 6 2003 11:02 am, Derek Jennings wrote: On Saturday 06 Sep 2003 3:03 pm, Jason Greenwood wrote: Ok all, I have decided to ditch the wires and go wireless for my ADSL Modem/router/Accesspoint and NIC at home. What is the guts of it?? Nowadays adsl modems and nic's almost always work with Linux (my Nokia Modem/Router and Generic NIC work great under 9.1/Cooker). What are the pitfalls to watch out for to go wireless? What websites for wirelss under Linux do you recommend? Any brands known to work, not work with Linux?? Right now on TradeMe.co.nz there seems to be a good deal on the item listed below (thoughts?): Benq AWL-700 wireless router 802.11b in perfect condition, as new still in box with manuals and cd WITH benq 11Mbps wireless lan pc card(AWL100) both work together great. I can get these now for NZ$230 Cheers Jason Greenwood There is a list of wireless cards and their drivers here http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html I know from experience that Mandrake works with anything Orinoco based works 'out of the box'. The Benq AWL100 uses the Prism 2.5 chip set which uses the wlan-ng driver which I know was not included in Mandrake 9.0 but I was able to get it working by compiling it. I do not know about Mandrake 9.1 HTH derek Derek, I'd reckon you know. I read lately that wireless at best only delivers about 80% of the connection speed. An that the further you get from the source, the percentage drops further. At 10 meters it's all but gone. True? -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Restoring Mandrake CDs as urpmi sources
On Saturday September 6 2003 01:26 pm, Margot wrote: OK, now I'm confused! This is what I got: [EMAIL PROTECTED] margot]$ df FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda5 49G 2.2G 44G 5% / /dev/hda6 8.1G 406M 7.7G 5% /home [EMAIL PROTECTED] margot]$ My HD is supposed to be 60G, but 49G + 8.1G = 57.1G, and for the first line 2.2G + 44G = 46.2G - where's the rest? Margot Your harddrive vendor lied to you ;) The difference is whether a K is 1000 bytes, or what it really is, 1024 bytes in hexdecimal, 2's complements that computers use. So (1000/1024)^2, or 0.9536743164 * 60 gigs = 57.22 gigs. Your slight difference, ie, 57.1 57.22 is due to 'df' rounding off to make the output human readable. http://eies.njit.edu/~walsh/powers/newstd.html http://www.riva3d.com/kibibite.html http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] deleting apps in Mandrake?
On Thursday September 4 2003 07:47 am, Tony S. Sykes wrote: Hi, just wondering: since I'm using Evolution now, I don't see any need to have Kmail sitting there taking up space; could someone point me to some beginner's instructions on how to go about deleting it? [and other apps that I don't think I'll be needing...] Unless you're using 9.2, you can't uninstall kmail. It's part of kdenetwork. In the coming 9.2 it's split out to kdenetwork-kmail, and you could uninstall that rpm with 'urpme' or 'rpm -e'. About the closest you could come to uninstalling kmail, is to do a 'locate -i kmail', and go around deleting all the files and directories that command returns. That's probly more trouble than it's worth, and could lead to disastrous results. For other apps, first check if they have their own rpm with 'rpm -qa | grep -i app'. If the app is in a separate rpm, then 'urpme rpm_name' is the easiest and safest way to uninstall. Where rpm_name is somethin like 'urpme kdenetwork-kmail' (ie, just the name, no version numbers). Hint: rather than havt'a type out that rpm find command each time, put this in the end of /etc/bashrc. alias frpm='rpm -qa | grep -i' (_with_ the quotes) Then when you start a new terminal, just typing 'frpm app' will do all the extra typing for you ;) If you don't wanna do any of that, I believe rpmdrake will uninstall apps for you in a GUI, but I don't use it ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.1 X server startup/shutdown slow - ReiserFS?
On Tuesday September 2 2003 11:41 am, Guy Rouillier wrote: I didn't think it relevant but I do indeed have a separate partition for /boot that is 100 MB, formatted ext2. I have a single swap partition that is 500 MB. That should be okay, right? 100 MB for boot's a bit much, but it's fine. See Charles' post that /boot can be ReiserFS, ext2,3 /boot is still needed for XFS. Charles' advice is always to be trusted too. I use 500mb /swap with 500mb ram, but actually only at least a 250mb /swap is needed. Even when video encoding or recoding 700 to 800 mb movies, I don't get into /swap hardly at all if ever. [tom /tom] $ free -m total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 502458 43 0 83125 -/+ buffers/cache: 250252 Swap:509 0509 -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] HD SATA
On Tuesday September 2 2003 10:35 am, Frankie wrote: OTOH, I don't believe SATA is that much if any improvement over ATA/133. I've read Net reports to that affect. Some Mandrake users have posted SATA hdparm -Tt numbers on various groups an forums, an they're all less then the numbers my ATA/133 puts out. Actually most of 'em were closer to what my ATA/100 drive gets. At the moment there is no real improvement over ATA drives because the SATA drives are really just ATA drives wtih a SATA interface tacked on.. when they start designing drives around the SATA standard, things will pick up and we'll have game on. rgds Franki Yes, that info plus some other stuff I didn't really understand was in the Net reports I've read. Also it was predicted that before SATA catches on, we'll be movin into PCI-eXpress ;) Now to my mind, that's where the improvement was always needed. IE, gettin off the old an tired 33mhz PCI bus. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] No sound in Games after running mplayer
On Wednesday September 3 2003 12:39 pm, HaywireMac wrote: I tried installing arts (urpmi arts), and restarted the sound service again, but in mplayer I still do not have the option to configure the arts sound driver... am I missing a step here? From the CL, 'mplayer -ao arts filename' will use aRts for the sound output. I made an alias for files alsa doesn't like (mostly Sorenson v3 QT movies). alias mpy='mplayer -ao arts' So 'mpy filename' plays usin aRts. Otherwise mplayer will use the default sound server for your snd chip. Run 'draksound' as root, an it'll tell you the default server, what you're currently usin, plus a drop down list of those you can switch to. Best to stay with your default tho, and only switch when needed on a temp basis, like my alias does. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] No sound in Games after running mplayer
On Wednesday September 3 2003 02:40 pm, HaywireMac wrote: On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:12:58 -0500 Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: From the CL, 'mplayer -ao arts filename' will use aRts for the sound output. In fact, even if I run the artsd when X starts, and play a movie the way you suggest (I do get sound), then when I quit mplayer, I still get no sound in games; but this is the really crazy part. If I restart the soundserver, I get sound in Unreal Tournament, Medal of Honour, but not iD games like Quake 1,2,3 or Urban Terror. WTF? Are you usin mplayer or gmplayer? Even the developers of mplayer dislike, disown gmplayer (see the mplayer list archive). Take a minute to learn the CL options for mplayer (man mplayer), and you'll never use the GUI again. As with many things, it's more featured, more reliable ... on the CL. There's many things you can adjust 'on the fly' on the CL, that aren't even in the GUI. If you are usin mplayer on the CL, loss of sound smacks of a problem with your system. If a logout/back into your WM fixes it it's probly software (the games?). Otherwise it's probly hardware. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] No sound in Games after running mplayer
On Wednesday September 3 2003 01:42 pm, HaywireMac wrote: On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:12:58 -0500 Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: From the CL, 'mplayer -ao arts filename' will use aRts for the sound output. AO: [arts] can't connect to aRts soundserver Could not open/initialize audio device - no sound. Audio: no sound the prob is, tho, the arts sound server is not running, do I need to be in KDE for it to run? and once mplayer has grabbed /dev/dsp, is there no way to get it back without rebooting? Do you have all of aRts installed? libarts1-devel-1.1.3-7mdk (might not need) arts-1.1.3-7mdk libarts1-1.1.3-7mdk (not necessarily those versions) Then check with $ ps -A |grep arts (and you'll see somethin like...) 9234 ?00:00:13 artsd $ ll /dev/dsp (should be somethin similar to this) lr-xr-xr-x1 root root9 Sep 3 15:34 /dev/dsp - sound/dsp (ie, _x_ecutable by by owner, group, all users) Normally artsd does run all the time, but only uses the sound service when needed, then releases. This of course depends on your configuration. Bruce it might be better if you read this, specially the part, non-aRts applications, .. suspends after 60 seconds, it doesn't for me? http://www.arts-project.org/doc/mcop-doc/artsd-faq.html an browse this http://www.arts-project.org/doc/manual/index.html I believe there's a way to reduce the suspend aRts time from 60s, but since I never needed it, I'm not familiar with it. Sorry. Facts are, there's no one Linux sound solution. Maybe one'a Linux's weakest points. Sound on Linux (Un*x) is a hodgepodge. Video's not a whole lot different. Better manufacturer support would probly go a long way to solve it and make it seamless for the user. Until then, Windoze is for games. It's gotta be good for somethin, no? ;) At least as long as M$ has the hardware manufacturers in their pocket. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.1 X server startup/shutdown slow - ReiserFS?
On Monday September 1 2003 09:19 pm, Guy Rouillier wrote: System Commander trashed my hard disk when I attempted to resize my Win2K NTFS partition, so I'm forced to reinstall everything, including Linux on that same drive. This time around, I decided to try out ReiserFS as my root file system. During setup, I configured boot options, but after doing so, the installation program never returned. I rebooted and used drakxconf to install my X server. When I start up X in KDE, it starts up very slowly, and actually never puts up the desktop icons. The cursor remains a clock for several *minutes*, but the system is not locked. I can log off of KDE (back to the boot up terminal session) without a problem. If I start up gnome, it starts up okay, including all the desktop icons. But when I try to log off, it won't. I try to log off about 5 times in a row. Eventually, something will get it to put up the log off dialog. Could this be ReiserFS doing this? Should I switch back to ext2? I played around with XFS in a different installation on this same hardware, and it didn't appear to have any issues (other than the fact that it defaults to read-only.) Thanks for all advice. I'd try another install. This time make /boot a separate partition, ext3. Make your other partitions ReiserFS. I've been usin ReiserFS since 7.2 beta's never a problem. If you opt for XFS, still make an ext3 /boot partition, 20 to 50 mb. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] HD SATA
On Wednesday September 3 2003 09:26 am, Eko Budiharto wrote: Hi Tom, isn't the 9.2 still beta? If not, can you tell me where you get the non beta version? It's not so much a Mandrake version deal, as it is kernel and driver. Promise recently released their SATA driver under the GPL, an I believe it's already in the latest kernels. That's the one I'd need, so it's the only one I've paid any attention to. I'm pretty sure 9.x would handle SATA, but I don't know which controllers are supported, if you'd need a newer kernel, or if you'd need to d/l a 3rd party driver for your SATA controller. OTOH, I don't believe SATA is that much if any improvement over ATA/133. I've read Net reports to that affect. Some Mandrake users have posted SATA hdparm -Tt numbers on various groups an forums, an they're all less then the numbers my ATA/133 puts out. Actually most of 'em were closer to what my ATA/100 drive gets. (Eko, you've got your mailer's 'reply to' set to yourself. You should leave the reply to configuration line blank. Thanks) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] HD SATA
On Tuesday September 2 2003 05:58 am, Eko Budiharto wrote: Hi, have anyone of you ever installed in SATA with MDK? Is HD SATA working with MDK? In 9.2 yes, I don't know about 9.1 an older. I have a SATA port, but no SATA drive. So I can't say how well it works. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Overclock!
On Friday August 29 2003 09:21 pm, Heather/Femme wrote: We are now going to do the adapter probings. Some adapters may hang halfway through; we can't really help that. Also, some chips will be double detected; we choose the one with the highest confidence value in that case. If you found that the adapter hung after probing a certain address, you can specify that address to remain unprobed. That often includes address 0x69 (clock chip). Next adapter: Velleman K8000 (Bit-shift algorithm) Do you want to scan it? (YES/no/selectively): y It hangs / stops there. Idea? help? Never done this before...rtfm? anything? FF What motherboard? IIRC, you've got a i875somethin chipset? Looks like sensors doesn't like it. As the error message suggests, did you try 'selective' probes? You might need to just keep doin that by trial'n error to see if you get thru the tests. OTOH, some motherboards don't support the i2c/SMbus (hardware monitoring). Many ready made or OEM boards don't. The acid test is if you see temps, fan speeds and voltages in bios. If you don't the board probly doesn't support monitoring. If you do, it definitely does. You might need to go to their homepage for more info http://secure.netroedge.com/~lm78/ -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] SCO reversal
On Friday August 29 2003 08:56 pm, David E. Fox wrote: So they've changed their minds then... surprise, surprise... http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/29/1062050642514.html hahahahahaa Now it's our turn. Isn't false presentment of legal action where no action is contemplated actionable in an of itself? I work in a collections company and it's possible for our company to be sued if we tell a person we are going to take a certain action and not have an intent of pursuing that action. If they've attempted (using that letter) to create a debtor-consumer relationship vis a vis the linux community or corporate users, SCO may have violated the law. That's what SCO said Friday mornin, later in the day they changed their tune ... again http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11273 -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Overclock!
On Thursday August 28 2003 04:25 pm, Heather/Femme wrote: On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 13:21, Tom Brinkman wrote: snip run the appropriate 'burn' module on your (her) system, it's not stable IMO. Many store bought (ready made) computers won't pass. Any laptop surely won't. There's no reportin, the system either stays up or fails. Usually just a spontaneous reboot. CPU temp monitoring durin the test is almost imperative. If it gets too high, Ctrl+C will abort the test. For ready mades an laptops, I'd suggest a lengthly run of mprime-17, the torture test. That's as close as you'll get. These tools, mprime an cpuburn, are old overclockers tools to test stability. Not really a check for Winblows faults. Hm...just went to the link you provided... I used a diff cpuburn program I guess. I found it originally thru google IIRC here: http://users.bigpond.net.au/cpuburn/ is that not the same program!? Confuzzled Femme 'urpmi cpuburn' The Mandrake rpm is on your CD's and on the mirrors. cpuburn-1.4-4mdk [tom /tom] $ burn burnBX burnK6 burnK7 burnMMX burnP5 burnP6 IIRC, you've got a Intel cpu, so use 'burnP6' -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Ethereal for Mandrake 9
On Friday August 29 2003 11:03 am, Nurv wrote: Can someone tell me where I can find a copy of ethereal for Mandrake? I looked on the cooker site, which is where Ethereal tells you to go, but I can find the file(s). Any help would be great. Thx, Nurv.. ethereal-0.9.13-1mdk should be on the cooker mirrors. If you're gonna try a cooker package tho, get the src.rpm and rebuild it on 9.0 -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Overclock!
Keep in mind my usual advice on this list is that hardware needs to be eliminated from any problems, specially if it's a ready made, in the first place. OC'd or not. OTOH, if it's there, RUN IT!! Windoze reviews: the current darlings are the nforce an newer KT 400a/600 chipset boards runnin AMD XP's. P4's are bitin the dust, still no decent chipsets to run on. OTOH, are these winsux reviews applicable to Linux? As far as chipsets go yes an no. nforce* chipset boards have several unresolved issues with Linux, gcc, an GNU. Forget anything SiS. As far as Winblows reviews on hardware sites, disregard, IMO, is usually the better idea. They have little to do with a real OS. So, just a report. I changed out a tired an old oc'd 1.4 Athlon (1.553g) on a Soyo KT133a chipset with sdram, for an XP 3000+ with Kingston DDR400 on an Aopen AK77-400 Max with a KT400a chipset. Didn't really wanna but the ancient (8 years!) ram was startin to fsck'up on the old mobo. Run hard, put up wet. Might'a been the cpu L caches anyhow... Pulled the case out from under the table, changed out the motherboard/ram/cpu. What'a heck, tryin boot. .. No problemo, harddisk recognized a differnet NIC (now onboard), different AC97, now 5.1 surround, and 9.2 cooker went about it's business. No disruption for aDSL or sound. HDD's love the new board /cpu/ram/ controllers. So went to testin and clockin. The Kingston ram was a convienice. I got it bundled with the cpu/mobo. It was a variable, even a concern since it's only sold by Mwave as Cas 3 DDR ram. After several weeks testin tho, the ram has performed flawlessly at Cas2.5, Ras/Cas 2, pre-Charge 2, at 2-bank, now DDR427. Way over it's specs. Ram is what'll do, an I'm not sure I've found the top of this Kingston yet. Still, I wish I'd gone to the trouble of gettin Crucial or Corsair. Currently (as I type), the XP is at 2301mhz (13x177, 354 FSB, PCI 35.2mhz) and rock steady. I keep inchin it up. Might go a bit or more further. I haven't tried reducin the multiplier and goin to a 200+ FSB yet. I reckon I'm better off stay'in with oc'd 166@ 177 since the PCI is only out'a spec @ 35.2mhz, an the AGP is just over 70mhz. Some view this mistakenly as overclocked. It's not. It's just out'a spec. Damn nVidia card was complain, but recent cooker updates to XFree86 cooled that off. (XFree86-4.3-19mdk) I know y'all believe memtest86 is _THE_ test, an I confess I run it first too. But it's a weak test. It sort'a sux. Better is mprime's #17, the torture test. Harder still, the acid test is, cpuburn's 'burnK7'. One or two passes with memtest is a breeze, run mprime's torture test thru test #1800 or so, run burnK7 for 25 minutes . then you know your hardware is stable. So far I am with an XP core at 2301, CL2.5-2-2-2 DDR427. So I gott'a XP Whatever (3600+?) that RUNS like a scalded ape. Glibc compiles are a lot shorter ;) No Winsux ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Making Linux Converts
On Thursday August 28 2003 04:34 am, Anne Wilson wrote: sir robin: Takes a _long_ time to load, but I got the animation in the end (that's with Mozilla). Have to say, after several attempts to get it, then the long load, it was disappointingly short Anne Konqueror works fine too. Yes it was short but cute. Sort'a like me ;) There was a similar clip a while back where the one penguin sticks his foot out real quick, and the innocent one trips over it. Ran a little longer. I reckon HaywireMac was involved in both episodes, but for the life of me I can't think of anybody to play the innocent one ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] XFS Mount
On Wednesday August 27 2003 12:13 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Tom Brinkman wrote: On Tuesday August 26 2003 09:54 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Miark wrote: It's possible the old mount setting in fstab is still active. Have you checked mtab to make sure the partition isn't already mounted? Miark There are no entries for either drive in mtab. mtab is generated from fstab, an shouldn't be fooled with Brant, try puttin your 1st CD in an check the partitions with the installers diskdrake. It could be that when you used diskdrake the changes were never made, or the partitions were never formatted for XFS, an they're still ReiserFS. Probly cause the partitions weren't unmounted. Also, with either ReiserFS or XFS, Civileme use to suggest a ext3 /boot partition. IME, it was/is good advice. I did exactly that and that is what I found. I posted my findings to the expert list last evening. I forgot to post them here as well. Well, jeez, I had that notion when you first posted the problem, but with the chronology mismatches in the lists, I often see responses before the original problem ;( So I was a little reluctant to jump in, since I was only seein others diagnosis of the problem. No sooner than I hit 'send', I saw a reply from you that you'd figured it out by yourself. Good for you ;) I don't believe it's a diskdrake bug tho. MOF, it's a feature to safeguard still mounted partitions. The only bug would be that diskdrake didn't tell you that nothin was done to disk, since the partitions weren't successfully unmounted to be reformatted. An I believe the developers are already aware of, an workin on that. I've been aware that diskdrake runnin from CD is much better than foolin with it on the booted system. Actually that's the resolution IMO, just always use diskdrake from the 1st CD. Then it's bulletproof ;) IIRC, you're runnin cooker. FWIW, RC1 iso's look like they're comin to the mirrors today. The beta2 iso's are gone, and so far the RC1 md5sum file is posted. So maybe ya want to wait for those before fixin your partitions. I saw that. Warly, from Mandrakesoft, released the bittorrent info for them: btdownloadheadless.py --url http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/torrent/MandrakeLinux-9.2rc1-CD1.i586. iso.torrent --saveas MandrakeLinux-9.2rc1-CD1.i586.iso Yeah an bittorrent sux for me. That's why I bitched'n moaned on the cooker list to get the iso's posted to ftp. bittsux has been workin on CD2 3 for almost 20 hours now, about 50% done. I've never been much of a p2p fan. Now I'm fixin to be an enemy of it. I shortened the url an took a look at the site first. All 3 iso's were there. Soon after I pasted Warly's CL into a term, it dawned on me the if I just changed the 1 to a 2 after both 'CD's, I could start a CD2 'torrent' (what'a misnomer). Same with 3. OTOH, we all need to get along, so I'm letin all three iso's to be uploaded from my connection. Even tho I'm givin far more than gettin. I'm gettin tired of Mandrake's increasing games as releases get closer to final tho. I was only amused when they resorted to false names for iso's, but this bitchtorrent method really sux. At least my complaint (maybe?) got Warly to post the 1st CD. It was d/l'd and burned within the hour. I only need the damn things for backup anyhow, and to take a look at the installer. I'm already past RC1. Be even further if the primary mirror (sunsite) ever straightens out. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Overclock!
On Thursday August 28 2003 08:55 am, Anne Wilson wrote: On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 1:41 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: On Thursday 28 August 2003 01:22 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: snip I know y'all believe memtest86 is _THE_ test, an I confess I run it first too. But it's a weak test. It sort'a sux. Better is mprime's #17, the torture test. Harder still, the acid test is, cpuburn's 'burnK7'. One or two passes with memtest is a breeze, run mprime's torture test thru test #1800 or so, run burnK7 for 25 minutes . then you know your hardware is stable. So far I am with an XP core at 2301, CL2.5-2-2-2 DDR427. Tom, I know you remember when I was having the spontaneous reboot problems? Well, you're right about memtest - I ran it overnight 2/3 different times and never found anything - cpuburnnow thats *another* story! Care to tell us more? My granddaughter's 1-year-old (win98) box suffers from recurrent problems, and I'm wondering if this test would help. So - what's involved in running it, how risky is it, and what sort of reporting does it give? Anne All three apps, memtest86, mprime, an cpuburn have Windoze versions. memtest is no risk, neither is mprime-17. Cpuburn OTOH, really takes the cpu/cache/ram/motherboard/buses to the limit, an then some. Read the warning http://users.ev1.net/~redelm/ An you can d/l the software. For Mandrake, it's on your CD's. Still if you can't run the appropriate 'burn' module on your (her) system, it's not stable IMO. Many store bought (ready made) computers won't pass. Any laptop surely won't. There's no reportin, the system either stays up or fails. Usually just a spontaneous reboot. CPU temp monitoring durin the test is almost imperative. If it gets too high, Ctrl+C will abort the test. For ready mades an laptops, I'd suggest a lengthly run of mprime-17, the torture test. That's as close as you'll get. These tools, mprime an cpuburn, are old overclockers tools to test stability. Not really a check for Winblows faults. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Overclock!
On Thursday August 28 2003 04:55 am, Michael Adams wrote: So what were you needing your newbie help with Tom? -- Michael It works both ways. I was jus' braggin an pontificatin ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Overclock!
On Thursday August 28 2003 06:21 am, ed tharp wrote: So I gott'a XP Whatever (3600+?) that RUNS like a scalded ape. Glibc compiles are a lot shorter ;) No Winsux ;) damn what a screamer... I am sure jealous. What became of the old box, or parts? Sittin in a box till I figure out what to do with 'em. The mobo and cpu were run hard. Probly not worth hardly anything anymore. The ram I kept tho is. 1, 256mb stick; 1, 128mb stick of Crucial Micron Cas2 7ns ram. (what y'all call good pc133) First one to ask can have the Soyo k7vta pro mobo and the 1.4 gig Athlon for the cost of mailin. Ah, heck, I'll throw in the ram too. My brother could use it, but he doesn't know that. 'Sides he considers somethin like that major surgery. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Overclock!
On Thursday August 28 2003 02:20 pm, mike wrote: I'll take them if ther not gone already Mike McNeese First one to ask can have the Soyo k7vta pro mobo and the 1.4 gig Athlon for the cost of mailin. Ah, heck, I'll throw in the ram too. My brother could use it, but he doesn't know that. 'Sides he considers somethin like that major surgery. I apologize to the list. Mea Culpa. I should'a specified off list responses. In any event, Darklord beat everybody to the punch. He's a good guy anyhow ;) Sort'a helpful around here. Sorry Mike, -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] XFS Mount
On Tuesday August 26 2003 09:54 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Miark wrote: It's possible the old mount setting in fstab is still active. Have you checked mtab to make sure the partition isn't already mounted? Miark There are no entries for either drive in mtab. mtab is generated from fstab, an shouldn't be fooled with Brant, try puttin your 1st CD in an check the partitions with the installers diskdrake. It could be that when you used diskdrake the changes were never made, or the partitions were never formatted for XFS, an they're still ReiserFS. Probly cause the partitions weren't unmounted. Also, with either ReiserFS or XFS, Civileme use to suggest a ext3 /boot partition. IME, it was/is good advice. IIRC, you're runnin cooker. FWIW, RC1 iso's look like they're comin to the mirrors today. The beta2 iso's are gone, and so far the RC1 md5sum file is posted. So maybe ya want to wait for those before fixin your partitions. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 Beta 2
On Sunday August 24 2003 02:23 pm, David E. Fox wrote: That's all done and running properly. 'date', xclock, what have you, all show the correct time. There was one time recently when the time was about 20 minutes off but I fixed it. It's the *KDE* clock display that's wrong. Right now it's fine but give it a while and it'll spontaneously change. Or maybe it won't. We'll see. I just did a urpmi --auto-select earlier this morning and I notice 160 new / changed packages. A few times after KDE cooker updates I've had to reset the clock. R-click on it, adjust time an date, make sure format is set to USA-english. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 Beta 2
On Sunday August 24 2003 01:56 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: How, specifically, are you adjusting your time zones? With ntpd? Just pick a time server in your zone. For syncing your software clock to your hardware clock see 'man hwclock'. EG, hwclock --systohc' -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 Beta 2
On Sunday August 24 2003 07:04 am, Lanman wrote: Since the release of 9.2 Beta2 I haven't heard or seen anything about it from anyone on the list. Is this because it's so amazing that list members are speechless? I've run cooker only since 7.2. Current cooker is solid, no problems on a overclocked XP 3000+. 2266 Mhz on a KT400a chipset with 512MB DDR 419, Cas2.5, R/C 2, preCh 2, 2-bank. I don't have or need a printer. I highly suggest you read this site, http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/CookerHowTo Or because they can't finish an install, and are therefore disconnected from the Net ? I tried burning and installing them, and it quickly went to hell. Several restarts later (this is the short version), I got to the end of the install. When it tried to detect my printer (Brother MFC4800), which is not supported by Linux yet, it displayed a message that it was unable to find printer.rpm and stopped there. That's it. All done. It simply wouldn't go any further. I'm considering re-doing the install without a printer attached to see if that solves it, but without the above-noted rpm, I doubt it will finish properly at all. Obviously, either the rpm is not on the CD's at all, or the path statement used by the installer is wrong. Either way, it's not happening. Get a connection and use urpmi to update to current. I'd recommend you first 'urpmi urpmi', then urpmi --auto-select. I use this alias to update several times a day, alias cook='urpmi.update -a -f --wget urpmi --wget --no-verify-rpm --auto-select -v' I'd also suggest you install the current kernel ASAP, $ uname -r 2.4.22-0.7mdk Mirrors have been screwed up lately, but since Sat. (8/23) they're in order again. OTOH, RC1 was due last Friday. Look for it to come out very soon (probly why the mirrors were froze ;) ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake-iso/i586 I suspect if you update to current, you'll have RC1 Any suggestions or similar situations out there in Mandrake-Land? I realize that it's a Beta, and that there may be bugs in it still, but perhaps there's a work-around? Also, didn't Mandrake announce that the new 2.6 Kernel would be added to Beta2? Didn't find it. FYI, I checked the md5sums of course. Just curious if anyone had something to offer about any of this ? Thanks in Advance,... Lanman Only issue I've had lately is with DM's. None of the Session Managers wanna work properly for me. So I boot to level 3 and 'startx'. Nobody else is complainin so I reckon I've got a borked config file. Level 3 is better for testing overclocking with mprime-17 and burnK7 tho anyhow ;) You didn't say anything about your hardware, other than your tree killer ; Some things like nforce2 chipsets have issues. Check the cooker ML archive (or LKML). http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cookerr=1w=2 has a good search engine. IMO, runnin cooker requires daily reading of the cooker and CHRPM (change log) lists. If your printer is still a problem, post to the cooker list, and if need be file a bug report on bugzilla. Hurry every chance you get, it's gettin late in the 9.2 testing stages. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 Beta 2
On Sunday August 24 2003 10:27 am, David E. Fox wrote: Lanman, see my other post to Tom on this. The upshot is that even with the missing rpm message, you can reboot and get a working install. It's nearly at the end of the install. RC1 (rumor unsubstantiated) is out. You could burn new images. Haven't got your post yet David. I don't see RC1 on the mirrors yet, just checked. I'm fairly certain current cooker is RC1. I'd just go ahead an update beta2 to current, rather than fool with the iso's. I just usually d/l the iso's for backup, or to take a look at the installer (upgrade an already current cooker). Then urpmi any missing rpms from the beta2 install. e's a work-around? Also, didn't Mandrake announce that the new 2.6 Kernel w= ould be added to Beta2? Didn't find it. FYI, I checked the md5sums of cours= Hmm. I have not seen it. I'm not about to try something that dangerous :). You might want to urpmi kernel to see if it shows up. AFAIK : 2.6 is not going to be shipped with 9.2. Whether it will or not, it's on cooker mirrors in /contribs (RPMS2). ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/RPMS2/kernel-2.6.0-0.test3.1mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm That's test3, test4 should be available shortly. I don't think 2.6 will be in mainstream distros till early next year. I wouldn't fool with it just now. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] 9.2 Beta 2
On Sunday August 24 2003 09:59 am, David E. Fox wrote:
I've run cooker only since 7.2. Current cooker is solid, no
problems on a overclocked XP 3000+. 2266 Mhz on a KT400a
chipset
It's *pretty* solid. There are still some issues I'm
experiencing. One is the timezone drift in kde's clock - my time
zone is 5 hours off. I have retried the fix multiple times with
no luck. The best approach seems to be to restart KDE. It is
getting better. With the last urpmi, it lasted nearly the whole
weekend and then all of a sudden it's five hours off. It thinks
I'm in SSY+ time now. If I try to adjust it the closest I can get
to my time zone is your time zone :). Maybe I should move to
Texas? :) ;)
I think I got that one reported to Cooker bugzilla recently.
Do you have your time set correctly in bios? Do you run ntpd ?
I have no time issues with 9.2 over two differnet sets of hardware
(motherboard clock RTC chipsets). http://www.ntp.org/ has a list of
time servers, ntp is in cooker (ntp-4.1.2-1mdk) I use, tick.uh.edu
(U of Houston, Central time). You'll need to have your time set
fairly close before ntpd can sync it with a server's atomic clock.
It uses a calculus algorithm to correct the error half at a time,
eventually approaching an exact sync. (n/2 0)
[root /tom] $ service ntpd status
ntpd (pid 1795) is running...I have a dynamic IP, an I shut the
connection off every once in awhile to get a different IP (for
security sake). ntpd doesn't complain when the connection's not up.
Then you might not have noticed bug #2, which I think is a show
stopper. I can't print. Printing here results in launching a Perl
process (used to be parallel:/dev/lp1, there also was a 'gs'
process) that will just eat all RAM swap. Since you have 512
megs of RAM yours might not fall over like mine, but there's no
indication that the Perl is not requesting infinite memory.
I don't have a printer. No problems here ;)
the install. When it tried to detect my printer (Brother
MFC4800), which is not supported by Linux yet, it displayed a
message that it was unable to find printer.rpm and stopped
Also, noatun and kaboodle no longer function. They haven't for
some time. OK, so there are other sound programs to use.
They work fine here. Onboard AC97 5.1 surround sound, uses alsa.
I did recently havt'a start usin aRts to play QT (Sorenson) .mov's
(mplayer -ao arts file.mov). That's a latest mplayer issue tho.
The latest alsa in cooker works fine for everything else. MOF, I'm
impressed.
Then there are the random unexplained seg faults in konqueror,
and in k3b (coastered cds.)
I wouldn't touch k3b with a ten foot pole. 'Sides, the CL is
quicker an easier for burnin CDr's than any GUI app. No problems
here. If you're stuck in a GUI, try simplecdrx. It won't fsck'up
your fstab like k3b wants to, and can.
Sig11's point as much to hardware (ram) as anything else. So
eliminate that first. Memtest86 is OK, but not a ram test. It uses
cpu/cache/ram (L1 L@ cpu caches and the ram). Run it without the
caches enabled ('c' for configure) to try and get closer to
checking installed ram. mprime is a better, harder cpu/cache/ram
test. Choose 17, the torture test. It should just keep on chuggin
along, no errors.
LX brought this up last weekend: How are you supposed to be able
to make a boot disk in cooker 9.2? The kernel image is too damned
big!
Support for all the crazy hardware people go out an buy, then
see if it'll work on Linux. Instead of the other way around. If
you're not usin XFS, then you should be able to compile a trimmed
down kernel and 'mkbootdisk $(uname -r)'. But why?... the first CD
provides rescue functions. I haven't bothered with a boot floppy in
ages. 'Sides my ancient floppy drive died some time ago anyhow ;)
Most of this admittedly belongs on cooker's list but I haven't
subscribed to it. I subscribed to changelog though.
That's you're first mistake IMO. Read the cooker list, or at
least daily check the archive. Which takes more time to do than
just subscribin to an readin the list.
Mirrors have been screwed up lately, but since Sat. (8/23)
they're in order again. OTOH, RC1 was due last Friday. Look
for it
Hmm. Well, I'm just running another urpmi.update -a urpmi
--auto-select just for good measure.
Latest (synthesis)hdlist is 8/23, 9:23 AM on the primary mirror,
with no files missing. Cooker should be updated daily.
to come out very soon (probly why the mirrors were froze ;)
ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake-iso/i586
I suspect if you update to current, you'll have RC1
RC1 is out? (yum)
An educated conjecture on my part. I expect the iso's on mirrors
any time now. Probly by Mon. or Tues. I'll let ya have first crack
at 'em ;) I'm already runnin RC1.
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
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Re: [newbie] Dell TFT 17Flat Screen
On Saturday August 23 2003 02:07 pm, John Richard Smith wrote: I think I'm going to wait till the right offer for a 19 1280x1024 at maybe 85Hz? is that about right for the refresh rate, eventually comes along. John That's what I'm doin ... waitin. Don't expect prices to come down, actually they're goin up. I'm waitin for better quality LCD's that don't cost a small fortune. FWIW, I wouldn't buy one on specs. You need to see it in a store's showroom. Then get the model number an buy it online after checking for Linux compatibility and performance. The one's you see in a store are runnin Winsux. Same for online reviews. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Rars PDF files
On Saturday August 16 2003 09:30 pm, Todd Slater wrote: On Sat, Aug 16, 2003 at 05:02:57PM -0600, Heather/Femme wrote: can someone email me on or offlist how to work with these files in linux pls? RTFM, instructions, URLS ..whatever welcome. I just know it has been discussed on here but I don't have the time to look through the archives at the moment. So forgive my laziness, lack of time, insert jab at me here. :) ty. Not exactly sure what you mean by work with the files, but if you've got a rar archive to unpack, you can do it with: unrar e file.rar unrar-3.20-1plf is on PLF. If there's multiple parts, then 'unrar e file.part01.rar' will start the process, and use all the remaining parts. OTOH, if you want to use a GUI, then 'cp /usr/bin/unrar /usr/bin/rar'and install File Roller. Clicking on the first rar part in a file manger (eg, Konqueror) will launch File Roller and then just choose Extract, and click OK. Try both the CL and the GUI, see which method you like the best ;) unrar needs to be copied to rar, because that what File Roller looks for and uses. So don't skip that step. 'Course you could also do it with a link. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] chkrootkit
On Thursday August 14 2003 05:22 pm, Chris wrote: On Thursday 14 August 2003 01:11 am, Inhabitant of Zion wrote: Running chkrootkit I get the following when searching for suspicious files and directories. Does this mean these are suspicious or just the ones checked? I think it may well mean they are suspicious. I get one on my system: Searching for suspicious files and dirs, it may take a while... /usr/lib/mozilla-1.3.1/plugins/jre1.3.1_02/bin/.java_wrapper Dunno what to do about it. Delete the files ASAP? Anyone else have thoughts on this? What exactly does chkrootkit check for in these files? I noticed most all the suspect files belonged to closed source proprietary applications. Namely StarOffice and Java. Use of closed source drivers and apps is always a security risk. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] M8.1 Shutdown fails
On Friday August 15 2003 12:04 pm, John Richard Smith wrote: Sorry about the delay, too many things on the go at once. No, completely hung , not even, ctrl+alt+f3] does anything, so it's a complete crash, swithch the power off at source. It then , of course, has to do a complete fsck as part of the bootup. http://www.google.com/search?q=raising%20skinny%20elephants%20is%20utterly%20boringie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8 http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/admin/arecov4.html#Freeze It's often not necessary to hit the 'panic' button. So what's with stopping kheader ? what does this mean , or is it something else really ? No idea but you're gonna haft'a eliminate hardware causes first. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Linux saves MS's butt.
On Friday August 15 2003 05:02 pm, Charles A Edwards wrote: On 16 Aug 2003 07:49:28 +1000 Stephen Kuhn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wonder if they're going to change their official stance on linux and OSS now that they've had to resort to linux to save their ass? No, once it has passed, they'll probably just fire the tech who set it up and disavow any knowledge of it. Charles Well someone please tell me how you'd run Microsoft-IIS/6.0 on Linux ?? ... or is the server just spoofed? -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Linux saves MS's butt.
On Friday August 15 2003 01:58 pm, Erylon Hines wrote: Yesand no. What I see is a cache server (akamai) running Linux. The MS site is an IIS server. It is a way for MS to use a third party to lighten the bandwidth load--having akamai serve up a cached copy of the Windows Update site. That still amounts to Linux savin their butt. Their main site, still comes back An error occured while loading http://www.windowsupdate.com: Unknown host www.windowsupdate.com and is down http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.windowsupdate.com -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] mp3 to wav to ogg to mp3 different bitrate conversion tool
On Friday August 15 2003 03:47 pm, Brant Fitzsimmons wrote: Michael Adams wrote: On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:36:02 -0400 Brant Fitzsimmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anarky wrote: is there like a audio conversion tool that can handle all different stuff like this (like saving as an mp3 with a different bitrate/stereo/mono, converting to wave, or compressing back)? Is there like an unified toool like this with some gui? Yes. http://rezound.sourceforge.net/ Wouldn't this be accumulating losses exponentially? Like 5% loss in original mp3. Convert to wav then 5% loss from wav to ogg = total loss of 25%. Of course i may be blowing smoke. I don't believe it would accumulate like that. I think that if you recompress an .mp3 to another lossy file format you *may* have a cumulative loss of quality relative to the original uncompressed .wav file. I think it depends on the compression format that is being used on both files. If you save an .mp3 as a wav file it will have the same quality as the .mp3 but with a much larger file size. It will not increase the quality of the file. It can't get any better than the file from which it is created (the mp3). It will sound exactly the same and will take up 5, 6, 7 or more times the space on your hard drive depending on the bit rate of the original file. To get the best quality you need to create compressed files directly from the original wav. Well y'all surely got this figured better than I can. I know tho if I take a 800mb movie an an rescale it usin mencoder input.mpg [or .avi or .wmv] -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -vop scale=640:480 -oac copy -o output.avi The output.avi MB's are cut in half, the quality difference isn't discernable. I can burn it to a CDr along with a smaller movie, whereas before it wouldn't fit by itself. I've yet to have a need to rescale mp3's or wav's tho. Cdr's are cheap, I already fit around 20 to 25 normalized wav's to an audio CDr, 100 to 125 mp3's to a data CDr ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] VMWare Workstation 3.2.0 Serial Number
On Friday August 15 2003 04:38 pm, Stephen Kuhn wrote: Look - sometimes serials numbers fall out of the sky especially when you're surfing around sites like http://www.astalavista.com - don't know where they come from, but you'd be surprised at the amount of random numbers that are generated that for some reason seem to work properly with applications that require things like serial numbers and CD keys...go figure HINT HINT HINT HINT HINT ...need any more hints? I believe there's a crack in this theory I gave up that theory of operation when I quit winsux 'Sides, the good cracks were gettin harder to find anyhow ; Linux has made an honest man out'a me Seriously -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] FS conversion/Partition resizing
On Wednesday August 13 2003 10:35 am, Haywiremac wrote: On 13 Aug 2003 12:27:37 +0100 Douglas Bainbridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: Can you shrink partitions in place? actually, I am curious about this myself. I stupidly divided my 60 GB drive into 30/30 for / and /home, but I would now like to shrink the / partition since I need nowhere near 30 GB for the system. any thoughts Tom? I don't see any options in MCC for this... Partitions can be shrunk. The tool would depend on the FS. BUT you'd still need to backup all data, 'cause it's a risky business. Better to delete partitions and re-create them. In Douglas' case this is necessary since they need to be re-formatted anyhow. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] hdd copying VERY slow
On Monday August 11 2003 02:49 pm, Heather/Femme wrote: WD 120 gb:[EMAIL PROTECTED] root]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.19 seconds =673.68 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.45 seconds = 44.14 MB/sec No idea if thats normal or good or bad.. i dunno what i'm looking for..so thought i'd throw this in ask. :) I ran the test 3 times too... thats the last reading. Average is important, over 5 or 6 runs. But those numbers are very good. Mine average 650/47. The highest I've seen is 698/48. OTOH, the latest hdparm-5.4-2mdk uses bigger, different tests. It measures T over 2 seconds, about 1200 to 1300mb rather than the old 128mb test. Similarly with t, it measures over 3 seconds, about 140+ mb's, rather than 64mb. So the numbers might not be all that comparable. I've tested with the old and new hdparm tho, and the t number, the important one, Timing buffered disk reads is constant ... 47+ mb/sec. I suspect the new hdparm is more accurate. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] hdd copying VERY slow
On Sunday August 10 2003 11:38 am, Anarky wrote: hi everybody ... me new ... I just had a very embarassing moment today. A friend came by with his hdd .. and I was copying about 1Gb of data from one hdd to another. My linux preaching was going pretty well .. and he was pretty much willing to give it a try too ... but then ... well .. copying from one hdd to another was SOO slow that I had to reboot in windows. very embarassing. anyway, now I've done some tests and copying with Krusader gave me some speed results: the copying starts off at a boooming nice 8Mb/second .. and then gradually by the time it copies 200Mb it's at like 1Mb per sec .. and my hdds are making a noise like they're going to die ... plz help. It can't be hardware problems because in windows it copies the stuff fast .. and at a constant speed (can't say exactly ... but I got a feel for the time it takes to copy 700Mb ... and it takes a LOT longer in linux) Now for my specs: I should mention that Im copying from on fat32 partition to another. running mandrake 9.1, no updates, the tested drive speeds are: [EMAIL PROTECTED] void]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.85 seconds =150.59 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.87 seconds = 34.22 MB/sec [EMAIL PROTECTED] void]# hdparm -tT /dev/hdd /dev/hdd: Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.85 seconds =150.59 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 2.87 seconds = 22.30 MB/sec both my drives are udma if I read the output of 'hdparm -i /dev/hda' 'hdparm -i /dev/hda' correctly: for hda: UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 udma5 udma6 and for hdd: UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 so that's not it ... umm .. what else: I've got 256Mb SD ... and I don't know the motherboard type exactly (kt133B?) ... anyway, the proc is K7 Athlon 550Mhz slot A he me ... please!!! greets thanks in advance to everybody [root /tom] $ hdparm -tT /dev/hd[ab] /dev/hda: (ata/133, udma6) Timing buffer-cache reads: 1232 MB in 2.00 seconds = 616.00 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 140 MB in 3.00 seconds = 46.67 MB/sec /dev/hdb: (ata/100, udma6) Timing buffer-cache reads: 1252 MB in 2.00 seconds = 626.00 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 122 MB in 3.02 seconds = 40.40 MB/sec Your hardware is a good part of the slowness. OTOH, you didn't say how you were transferring. I suspect it was with a GUI. If you'd have used the CL, Linux would smoke Winblows. Maybe not necessarily faster, but Linux does proper verification, Winsux slides over this. Google 'CRC checks' Also, if the files had been on a real file system, and not subject to M$ fragmentation, the transfer would'a been no problem. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] hdd copying VERY slow
On Monday August 11 2003 02:21 pm, John Richard Smith wrote: yes, I think I experienced this when we went through my own configuration with you a while back, and the conclusion I came to was that overdoing anything the makers recomend is a zero sum game to the degree to which you overclock, you get nothing for nothing, so I went back to makers recommended settings, and since I am not into gaming , blow it all. Not so fast partner ; I was referring to HDD performance. Somethin cpu/cache/ram intensive scales linearly up with overclocking. A glibc src.rpm or kernel 'make bzImage', 'make modules' compile for examples. Most all benchmarks. OTOH, I've always overclocked mostly like mountain climbers say, just 'cause its there. Besides, now'adays if your hardware isn't overclockable, you probly should'na bought it to begin with ;) If it isn't clockable, it probly won't run all that well at the specs the 'makers' set out. Dell is a good example ; -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation query: Passing multiple arguments to installer routine
On Sunday August 10 2003 02:42 am, Charles A Edwards wrote: On 09 Aug 2003 19:56:16 -0400 ed tharp [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if you are installing 9.1, there is no expert mode, like there was in 7.0-9.0, but in some sections (like configuring the network) you can chose an expert mode. There is still an expert mode. It is not avaiable from the default installation but has to be called from F1. # linux expert vga=normal or simply # expert vga=normal Yep. Charles I've sometimes got some good opinions ;) Charles has the right answers when you can get him to speak up ;) BTW folks, y'all should be made aware that Charles is a highly valued member and contributor to Mandrake's current development. Now an in the past. Often thankless an unpaid efforts. There are some situations were F1, options won't go tho. Some hardware, particularly with USB keyboards. I didn't have a USB kybd, but with my old hardware, F1 - expert, would not complete loading the 2nd stage ramdisk with 9.1. Default install loaded with no problem. Green gremlins were to blame ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] hdd copying VERY slow
On Tuesday August 12 2003 02:44 am, Anarky wrote: On Monday 11 Aug 2003 6:15 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote: Well, I'm reading this thread and seein the suggestions to use hdparm parameters in rc.local or harddisks with some wonderment. With Mandrake 9.x, you shouldn't need to configure any hdparm parameters. Mandrake does it automatically unless it detects known so, the idea is that I should leave my hdparm alone? And, well, following sugestions here I did a coulpe of commands ... did they remain active even after a reboot? and if so: how do I set them back? No, they don't remain active unless you put 'em in rc.local. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] FS conversion/Partition resizing
On Wednesday August 13 2003 02:56 pm, Haywiremac wrote: On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:12:58 -0500 Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] uttered: Partitions can be shrunk. The tool would depend on the FS. BUT you'd still need to backup all data, 'cause it's a risky business. Better to delete partitions and re-create them. In Douglas' case this is necessary since they need to be re-formatted anyhow. I am using Ext3, so what tool would I use? Would this tool allow me to simultaneously, or otherwise, shrink the / partition and *grow* the /home partition? ...and don't worry, I back everything up all the time, just cuz I'm usin a Maxtor ;-) parted, fips, some commercial ones http://www.google.com/search?q=ext3%20shrink%20partitionie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8 Returned quite a few hits. As I alluded to before tho, I'd delete existing partitions and re-create 'em. Specially since you can replace from backup. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] DSL connection (SBC)
On Wednesday August 13 2003 04:24 pm, Julien Sobrier wrote: Sabin, Matthew wrote: Are you using the correct cable? Cat5 crossover cable vs. normal cable? Your PC would have connected to the LAN with a normal cable, but the DSL/modem (misnomer) may require a crossover cable to connect to a PC. Yes it is a misnomer. It's not a modem as there's nothing to be modulate/demodulated (analog POTS digital) as the DSL input and output are already digital. It's properly called an ATU-R, (adsl transceiver unit-remote) but most everybody calls 'em modems out of old habits. The Telco's DSLAM is also called an ATU-C(entral). --Matthew The connection works under Windows, so I guess I have the good cable. THanks Julien Julien, try installing rp-pppoe. It's on your CD's. Run (as root) 'adsl-setup' (w/o the quotes) and answer the half dozen questions. Your user name should be the whole deal, ie, somethin like [EMAIL PROTECTED] For DNS don't enter any, enter 'server' (w/o the quotes). Typing (as root) 'adsl-start' should do it, 'adsl-stop' to quit See Roaring Penguin's site for more information and help http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe/ Also, Menu | Documentation | Howto's | DSL-Howto is worth a read. SBC DSL is easy to setup on Mandrake once you have a userID and password. FWIW, I've had SBC DSL for almost a year. A few weeks ago the connection abruptly slowed by over half. I soon found the problem. I had the DSL phone line running thru an APC surge protector, which normally is a good idea. Putting the line straight to the ATU-R immediately restored full speed. Also I sometimes (actually rarely) need to power cycle the ATU-R (unplug power, wait a minute, restore power). So try that if you feel you've got the connection properly configured, but can't connect. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] FS conversion/Partition resizing
On Wednesday August 13 2003 06:27 am, Douglas Bainbridge wrote: MD9.1. Two queries: Is it possible to convert ext3 to Reiser FS in place? No If not and you had to convert by re-installing the system, would there be any way of transferring or copying an ext3 /home into the new Reiser system ? Copy your user directory from /home to a storage partition. You do have one don't ya? After re-installing the system on ReiserFS, you can copy it back to /home, overwriting the user dir the install created. Any filesystem for the storage partition is suitable, but if you copy it to a Windoze partition, tar it up first to preserve permissions. Can you shrink partitions in place? I'm wondering about creating separate partitions for /boot and /var. Could you give me advice about appropriate sizes for those mount points? For /boot 20 mb is enough. Use 50 mb if you like to try a lot of new kernels. Use ReiserFS for all other partitions, but use ext3 for /boot **. For /var, do a 'du /var' to see how big it is now, then allow for some room. How much? I dunno. I've never made /var a separate partition. For most desktop users, /swap, /boot, /, and /home are all that's needed for a flexible system. There's no need to shrink existing partitions. Just delete them when you do the install, and make new partitions. You'll need to reformat anyhow to change to ReiserFS. .. ** Why, I dunno, but Civileme suggested it when ReiserFS or XFS is used for all other partitions. Civileme did extensive FS testing while he was a Mandrake employee. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
