Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
Civileme wrote: right click the ZIP Icon and select Eject or issue eject /dev/zip in a console. There is no Eject option if I right click on the Zip icon on the KDE desktop. Nor are there options for mount and unmount. I have not changed any icons that were installed by default. There is no eject/unmount option in Konqueror file manager, either. Is there a way to add such a thing? I also checked the Gnome desktop and there was no Zip drive icon, period. The only icons were for my Windows drives C, D, and E. Again--right click [the CD-ROM drive icon] and eject Alas, no CD-ROM icon on the desktop. No eject or unmount option in the file manager. It has to be done from a Run line or console. In general, my CD-ROM drive works by just pressing on the button. Refusal to open seems to be just an occasional thing and I haven't isolated the circumstances yet. though it has happened most often when I've been installing something from one of the two distribution CDs. I see others have also found no such icons on their desktop after a default installation of KDE. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
My /etc/fstab file is quite similar to yours, Dennis. I modified this line: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 like this: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs=vfat,user,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 and now I can mount and unmount as user. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
Sridhar wrote: Have you tried KDE's own help? Certainly. Let me tell you about KDE's own help. There is no search for a keyword. So effectively, you have to page your way through the whole thing trying to find a section that *might* pertain to what you're looking for. If you click on search in Konqueror's left panel when you have KDE Help in the right panel, when you type in a keyword and click on Search nothing happens. If you then click on Update Index, you get a screen telling you you need another program called ht://dig. I clicked on the link to the Web site, figuring I'd download and install it so I could get keyword searches for KDE Help. Alas--the Web site was totally confusing and apparently you need to _compile_ this program if you want to use it. No thanks. I know that true Linuxians love the idea of compiling code, but regular people don't. It seems unrealistic to expect new, non-techie users, who are most likely the ones who will be looking for things in KDE Help, to compile programs in order to do a search in Online Help. I realize that a working keyword search is probably on the agenda for future releases, but for now, KDE Help is difficult to use unless you just want to read through it or are able to pinpoint exactly where the information you're looking for may reside and then click on the hypertext. I don't mean to pick, but I hope you do realise that giving yourself all the permissions I could just defeats the purpose of logging in as a user. You are effectively using the machine as root. I was following suggestions given here about expanding permissions for user when user and root are the same person. If that's still not good enough, so be it. I'll take my chances. The firewall is working and my ports are all stealthed and I go online as user, not root, so I hope my system is not a good target for trojans and worms. su is a good command to use at the console. I do use it. I always have a second desktop with a root console and a Super User file manager open. Then when I need to do something as root that doesn't require a root login, I just switch to that desktop and do the deed. It's tolerable. Remember that I am not familiar with the names of programs I might want to launch as root, so I have problems starting the program in a console unless I either know or can find the program's name in less than five minutes. Today I found lists and descriptions of KDE programs in the KDE Online Help (no thanks to keywordsg). I'll print out those screens and keep them around as a cheat sheet until I learn the ones I use the most. For the full graphical experience, use kdesu. You can even make icons using kdesu, so you will be asked for the root password when you click it. For an example on how this works, go to the Mandrake menu - Applications - File Tools - File Manager (Super User Mode). Look at its properties. Well, first I had to figure out how to see the properties of Super User File Manager. There is no icon I can right-click on to check properties and I had no idea what the program file was called. But what I did was right-click on the K on the bottom left, Panel Menu, Menu Editor (aka MenuDrake) and found the Super User File Manager in the list of Applications. That showed me that the command word is kdesu konqueror (no quotes). I had no idea that this kdesu stuff you and others are talking about meant you were suppposed to type kdesu before the name of the command. That's exactly the kind of information newbies need but don't get and is another thing for John to include in his online book. It would be clearer for non-techies if someone said in a Run line (Alt+F2 shortcut), type 'kdesu plus the name of the program'. Have you tried refreshing the file manager's view after changing discs, or even opening another file manager window to browse the new disc? This can sometimes work. Yes, I did all of that. What I've found out is that you do have to issue either a umount or eject command for /mnt/zip, and before you can see the contents of another disk, you have to do a mount /mnt/zip command. Then it'll read the disk. I have some suspicions about the supermount thing that's used for the Zip, floppy, and CD-ROM drives. I read on MandrakeForum.com that people are finding supermount to be unreliable and troublesome. Is there a way to set up a Zip drive so that simply inserting a disk will mount it automatically, even after the ejection of another disk? I enabled mount and unmount for user by editing /etc/fstab. For both Zip and CD-ROM issues, try the command eject /mnt/disc. Replace disc with what you want to eject. CD-ROMs generally seem to work by just pressing the drive button. The times I can't eject them with the button have been when I have been installing something from my two distribution CDs. Maybe this is related to supermount, too. I just don't know. Thanks for your help. I'm doing a lot better with this latest reinstallation and slowly but surely learning how to
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
On Thursday 19 July 2001 06:38 pm, Dennis Myers wrote: On Thursday 19 July 2001 11:19, you wrote: My /etc/fstab file is quite similar to yours, Dennis. I modified this line: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 like this: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs=vfat,user,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 and now I can mount and unmount as user. --Judy Miner Outstanding, it is a nice feature that is missed when it doesn't function. I'm glad you were able to get it to work. It works like a charm. Roman Registered Linux User #179293 su is not the root of your problem but the start of a new journey
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
Judy, Yes, add the user option, which allows any user to mount. But I would also make a backup copy of fstab ;-) Mike - Original Message - From: Judith Miner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 5:43 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives Dennis wrote: once you do a umount on the zip drive you must place another disk in the drive and then type in console mount /mnt/zip assuming that is what it is called in your fstab file. so if you umount you have to then mount again. I thought I was doing that, but today I discovered that I was writing mount /mnt /zip instead of mount /mnt/zip. It was that extra space that was preventing the new disk from being mounted. So one problem solved. However, I can't mount and unmount zip disks as user, only as root. I checked my /etc/fstab file and found this line: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs-vfat,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 Should I put a user in there somewhere, or users so anyone could insert and eject zip disks? I read man supermount and man mount and couldn't figure out anything to solve my problem. I didn't want to experiment with editing /etc/fstab until I knew what I should put in, if anything. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
Judy, once you do a umount on the zip drive you must place another disk in the drive and then type in console mount /mnt/zip assuming that is what it is called in your fstab file. so if you umount you have to then mount again. This should work an unlimited number of times in any session AFAIK. Dennis M. On Tuesday 17 July 2001 16:07, you wrote: I reinstalled Mandrake 8, redoing my partitions, and that went well. I was finally able to se up tinyfirewall, which did not work on my previous installation, and I tested it at grc.com, sdesign.com, and scan.sygatetech.com. All my ports were invisible at all the sites. Yy! snip My questions have to do with removable media, such as Zip disks, CD-ROMs, and floppies. I have an internal ATAPI 100-meg Zip drive. It is automatically mounted by the supermount feature (I guess) and is /mnt/zip. If I put a disk in I can copy files. To remove the disk, I snip My eternal gratitude to anyone who can help me get these drives to work the way I want them to work! --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
I was able to change permissions for judy (user) with LinuxConf. I gave myself all the permissions I could. I still get annoying messages when I try to do things logged in as judy. Doing su at a console doesn't help alot because unless I know the command that brings up a graphical screen, I'm lost. But I'm plugging away. I may misuse the proper words here getting confused between linux and windows but I have been looking in the menu on kde.finding the target file...and thus I have the file name which is the command line. Linux doesn't seem to require the entire path of the file either which greatly surprised me. So to run kpackage I simply type kpackage after logging onto console as su. Tazmun
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
tazmun wrote: I was able to change permissions for judy (user) with LinuxConf. I gave myself all the permissions I could. I still get annoying messages when I try to do things logged in as judy. Doing su at a console doesn't help alot because unless I know the command that brings up a graphical screen, I'm lost. But I'm plugging away. I may misuse the proper words here getting confused between linux and windows but I have been looking in the menu on kde.finding the target file...and thus I have the file name which is the command line. Linux doesn't seem to require the entire path of the file either which greatly surprised me. So to run kpackage I simply type kpackage after logging onto console as su. We all misuse words at times, and I'm pretty much a newbie to. Just FYI, su stands for switch user. By default you switch to root, but you can type su tazmun to switch to user tazmun. So, I guess I'm saying logging on as su is not standard usage. YMMV. Also, you're right, Linux doesn't need a fully qualified filename for an executable if it's on the path. I should explain more about path, but you understand the general idea from your Windows days. For the specific differences, I'm learning those to. (The first one being that the pwd is not on the path, which is why you must use ./filename for an executable in the pwd (unless the pwd also happens to be on the path). It seems like I should say something profound now about being on the path. I'll have to think about it. ;-) Hope this helps a little, Randy Kramer
