Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
On Wednesday 19 November 2003 02:13, Greg Meyer wrote: On Tuesday 18 November 2003 06:44 pm, Melissa Reese wrote: It seems that I haven't properly configured my monitor and/or the X server thing. How can I go back and try this again? Can I just boot up with the first installation CD and start all over again? Yes, but we can probably fix it without reinstalling. There is a program called XFdrake that you can run from the console to help you get set up. Become root user and type 'XFdrake' (case matters, so be careful). Now select your monitor and video card and try to test it. BTW, what kind of monitor and video card do you have? Guy's there's an even better way: Just log in on the console as root or su and start the control center by typing mcc (without the quotes). It also works w/o X being configured! That way you'll be able to reconfigure everything you want in a gui which is fairly self-explanatory. If someone misses out on the X configuration, there's bound to be more stuff mis-configured. Good luck, HarM -- Registered Linux User #197998 FSF Associate Member #901 ICQ #146191606 Mandrake HowTo's more: http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
Melissa Reese wrote: Okay...I did install Mandrake, but I may have missed something crucial with regards to the X server thingy. It seems that I haven't properly configured my monitor and/or the X server thing. How can I go back and try this again? Can I just boot up with the first installation CD and start all over again? Of course you can start all over again, and maybe you ought to, just for experience, but linux offers you many solutions, you can run XFdrake from that root terminal instead, to configure your monitor and video card, and startX on bootup. John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi John, On Tuesday, November 18, 2003, at 11:38:43 PM PST, you wrote: Of course you can start all over again, and maybe you ought to, just for experience, but linux offers you many solutions, you can run XFdrake from that root terminal instead, to configure your monitor and video card, and startX on bootup. Thanks John... but I did sort this issue out hours ago. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to get the silly thing connected to the Internet! :-) Please see my other message: Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'll also add this (from the Mandrake Control Center hardware detection output): Vendor: Silicon Integrated Systems Bus: PCI Bus Identification: 1039:900:1043:80a7 Location on the Bus: 0:4:0 Description: SiS900 10/100 Ethernet Module: sis900 Media Class: NETWORK_ETHERNET Then, it also detects this: Vendor: USB Ethernet [pegasus] Bus: USB Description: Module: pegasus Media Class: Interface|Default At this point, I can't seem to get any connection working...not my usual cable connection, and not even the silly dialup! I am looking into a proper Ethernet card, so I can connect my external modem (Linksys cable modem) via the Ethernet cable instead of the USB, but until I get that sorted out, I'm feeling a bit stuck. Oh well. I'll keep trying. :-) - -- Melissa PGP public keys: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Body=Please%20send%20keys -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iD8DBQE/uy93jVbXUvsE8ukRAmGeAJwI7xAbyw5L+M8r4Kt7S8jGEkqi/ACg4PZn 2uydcRN+h0ACcsrtZ97p/EY= =H1Ss -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
Melissa Reese wrote: Hi John, Vendor: Silicon Integrated Systems Bus: PCI Bus Identification: 1039:900:1043:80a7 Location on the Bus: 0:4:0 Description: SiS900 10/100 Ethernet Module: sis900 Media Class: NETWORK_ETHERNET Then, it also detects this: Vendor: USB Ethernet [pegasus] Bus: USB Description: Module: pegasus Media Class: Interface|Default At this point, I can't seem to get any connection working...not my usual cable connection, and not even the silly dialup! I am looking into a proper Ethernet card, so I can connect my external modem (Linksys cable modem) via the Ethernet cable instead of the USB, but until I get that sorted out, I'm feeling a bit stuck. Oh well. I'll keep trying. :-) Cann't help the ethernet cards, no previous experience, nor cable modems. What sort of dialup modem do you have ? John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi John, On Wednesday, November 19, 2003, at 12:58:05 AM PST, you wrote: Cann't help the ethernet cards, no previous experience, nor cable modems. What sort of dialup modem do you have ? Well, here's a peculiar update. I was just over in Mandrake, and I finally at least got the dial-up working! I was able to receive your message in Kmail, but I couldn't send my reply from there. The error message said something like: recipient not accepted relay denied Do you have any idea where I've gone wrong now? Thanks! :-) - -- Melissa PGP public keys: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Body=Please%20send%20keys -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iD8DBQE/u0fajVbXUvsE8ukRAuJ3AKCzfdcOR3vJOKrCutaVuzG/WOuWrwCgyp4T ZZjLjru92WKZ9aBdtGT6Iu0= =+I3i -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
Melissa Reese wrote: Hi John, What sort of dialup modem do you have ? Well, here's a peculiar update. I was just over in Mandrake, and I finally at least got the dial-up working! Good, I was able to receive your message in Kmail, but I couldn't send my reply from there. The error message said something like: recipient not accepted relay denied personally I use mozilla, So your ISP bounced it ? But if so, I guess something isn't configured right in your connection for sending purposes. Are you able to send to yourself ? I cannot see why my message to you from list would be refused in reply so I guessing you have a commer of full stop in the wrong place or something similar ? John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
On Tuesday 18 Nov 2003 10:34 am, Melissa Reese wrote: Hi, I decided to give the installation a go by myself, figuring that if I messed it up, I could just abort and wait until my friend could be here to hold my hand. Here's the story so far (I'm pretty sleepy, so I hope I get this right)... I have two separate hard drives on this machine. The first drive (C:\) is where I have Windows installed (80 GB drive). The second drive (D:\) is where I want to install Mandrake (20 GB drive). The second drive is from my old computer, and I no longer need the data that is on it. Earlier today, I ran a check on the disk, and defragmented it. So... I read through much of the starter guide, but it didn't seem to mention the idea of installing on one of two hard drives. It seemed to assume that there would only be one hard drive to deal with on the machine. I decided to start up the installation to see if it would detect both drives, and give me a choice. I got to the partitioning section, and decided to abort the installation, because something worried me. I hope you can help... I was told by Dale Huckeby, in this message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...that the installation program, near the beginning, should detect both drives, so I could then choose the one to install onto. However, when I got to the partitioning section (and still no choice of drives yet), I was faced with three options under the DrakX partitioning wizard found the following solutions section: [] Erase entire disk [] Use the free space on the Windows partition [] Custom disk partitioning I was afraid to choose any of these and hit next without knowing *which* hard drive I'm dealing with. I can't afford to erase the drive that Windows is currently occupying, and I don't want to install Mandrake onto that drive anyway. At this point, I shut down the computer (only way I could find to abort the installation), and as it was re-booting, I removed the CD so that it would just boot into Windows. Question(s): 1) Did I just not yet get to the bit about choosing which hard drive to install onto? In the starter guide, the *next* screen that's supposed to show up *looks like* where I choose the hard drive (choose the partitions to be formatted), but it doesn't mention hard drive...only partitions...so I'm a little confused here. 2) If so, which of the three choices mentioned above should I select? (if the next screen mentioned above *is* where I choose the hard drive, I suppose I should choose Erase entire disk, right?) Or... 3) Are the three choices mentioned above an indication that only one hard drive was detected? (and I don't know which one, but I'm assuming it's the one with Windows on it, since it's offering to use free space on the Windows partition) 4) If so, it would seem that it's not allowing me the choice of hard drives, right? 5) At this point, what should I do? Thanks! Melissa - I haven't installed 9.2 yet, but I would imagine it's the same as every other Mdk install, so - Select 'Custom disk partitioning' There you should see your two disks. Choose the one you want for install, and make a partition for /home (so that if you get any data on it you will be able to re-install or upgrade without losing your data). I assume that since it is a whole disk you probably have plenty of room? Allocate 512MB to swap and create one bit ext3 partition for the rest. Mandrake will take care of everything else. Until you have completed this you have not written the partition table to disk and you will be able to back out - but I don't think you will feel the need. My advice is to keep the install fairly simple, just selecting the groups of applications that you are certain you need quickly. It's easy to add more as you are ready for them. HTH Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Have you visited http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org yet? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Anne, On Tuesday, November 18, 2003, at 3:22:05 AM PST, you wrote: Select 'Custom disk partitioning' There you should see your two disks. Choose the one you want for install, Thanks Anne. Here's a small update... This time around, I got to the next step of choosing the drive (and many other options for partitioning), and again I stopped...just to be safe. There were two tabs (hda and hdb), and the second tab did look like the 20 GB drive I want to install Mandrake onto (it said 18 GB, and Win98/Fat32, etc., which did describe pretty accurately my 20 GB drive). However... The first tab (hda) looked peculiar. It said Empty, then 7.8 MB, and a couple other things which seemed to indicate that it wasn't recognizing my 80 GB drive. Why would the installation not see this properly? Should I even worry about this if I'm quite sure of hdb being my 20 GB drive? In any event, I'm going to do more reading in the starter guide and also look at more online tutorials, then I think I'll still have my tech friend come here to supervise my installation. I guess I just don't feel quite enough confidence yet to do this entirely by myself. Thanks for you help. I'll be back! :-) - -- Melissa PGP public keys: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Body=Please%20send%20keys -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iD8DBQE/ugjejVbXUvsE8ukRAniFAJ40sbeRustawAVrxepOuNayzdtVmwCeO7Mj wk3g5axa/h/BdrMSEbdDFA0= =q+Mo -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
On Tuesday 18 November 2003 06:57 am, Melissa Reese wrote: This time around, I got to the next step of choosing the drive (and many other options for partitioning), and again I stopped...just to be safe. There were two tabs (hda and hdb), and the second tab did look like the 20 GB drive I want to install Mandrake onto (it said 18 GB, and Win98/Fat32, etc., which did describe pretty accurately my 20 GB drive). However... The first tab (hda) looked peculiar. It said Empty, then 7.8 MB, and a couple other things which seemed to indicate that it wasn't recognizing my 80 GB drive. Why would the installation not see this properly? I don't know what kind of computer you have but just a quick guess. Some of the proprietary computers like Compaq, etc. often create a small partition on the beginning of the primary hard drive and install extended BIOS, recovery routines to that partition. The partition is usually some odd type of partition, like a FAT 12bit partition or something of similar kind that is unlikely to be written or accessed by normal Windows OS. If you remove the partition, you suddenly find it is impossible to enter the BIOS setup routine without downloading a couple of diskettes from Compaq. It is possible that you have one of these extended BIOS partitions on the drive and Mandrake is just noting that the partition is of a type that is not supported by the kernel. Should I even worry about this if I'm quite sure of hdb being my 20 GB drive? I wouldn't. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hello Anne, Tuesday, November 18, 2003, 4:22:05 AM, you wrote: Choose the one you want for install, and make a partition for /home (so that if you get any data on it you will be able to re-install or upgrade without losing your data). I assume that since it is a whole disk you probably have plenty of room? Allocate 512MB to swap and create one bit ext3 partition for the rest. Mandrake will take care of everything else. I am soon going to try what Melissa is trying, so please bear with me for a moment. Are you saying simply to create a 512 MB partition named /home to store data in, as the 1st step during the installation? The one bit ext3 partition for the rest is a little confusing for me, so would you mind just going over that for a moment? - -- -=Nick Andriash=- -=Creston, B.C. Canada=- Using The Bat! v2.01.26 on Windows 98 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP SDK 3.0.3 iQA/AwUBP7ouV9rrL7k7yn3SEQJj+gCg5AzVf1H8Uh/ps0BogO3sDQyq9tIAoOe6 H9a2caYZCs+GIAuVjiIsASqP =GDjK -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Fw: Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 07:36:11 -0700, Nick Andriash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote about Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me: Choose the one you want for install, and make a partition for /home (so that if you get any data on it you will be able to re-install or upgrade without losing your data). I assume that since it is a whole disk you probably have plenty of room? Allocate 512MB to swap and create one bit ext3 partition for the rest. Mandrake will take care of everything else. I am soon going to try what Melissa is trying, so please bear with me for a moment. Are you saying simply to create a 512 MB partition named /home to store data in, as the 1st step during the installation? The one bit ext3 partition for the rest is a little confusing for me, so would you mind just going over that for a moment? Howdi Nick (And Melissa willkayakforfood), both from famous encryption lists ;-) I beat you to it by an 8 or 9 months: Linux is fun. What Anne said, was to create a 512 Mb swap partition (I chose 1024 Mb, `cause I have 458 Mb RAM with an aging Pentium II, it doesn`t matter immensely because I doubt I ever use all the swap), create one partition for your personal data: /home and put the rest of Melissa`s old 20 Gb drive in one partition of type ext3. Basically that`s not bad advice at all; for beginners excellent, in fact. But if you look through any Linux archives you`ll get umpteen variations of what is practical in sub-partitioning your various directories below `/`. If you haven`t already read it, you`ll find that all your Linux partitions get mount points below one `root`, no matter if there are virtual drives or hard drives. In fact your old windows partitions will hang on the same `inverted tree`, all in the branch called /mnt. IIRC Melissa uses WINXP, so if you don`t have any FAT or VFAT drives, you may wish to note that from within Linux you can`t write (or at your own risk; don`t!) to NTFS partitions. For that reason you may want to consider creating a smallish VFAT partitions on your system to interchange anything you`d like to take with you from a Linux session to a Windows session. Personally I have a derelict mini-windows `95 partition that I boot from and a couple of gigs in W2K space that I have to go to once a month to do some business with my bank via their win-type software. I have a few times used `explore2fs`, apparently without causing damage to my Linux system, which is a tool with which one can explore a Linux system and copy from it, but a friend of mine had lots of damage on his Mandrake Linux, so best be careful there. YMMV. Oh, and one more thing: if you happen to use Partition Magic to create a Linux drive (not that it`ll do you much good, but a nice way to start, have MD format it properly during install), please be forewarned that some versions of PM note partition table errors after installing a Linux system and PM will offer to correct the errors. Please do **not** take that offer. Let it be an error according to PM. Probably the warning will go away 1 or 2 PM sessions later. You`ll be glad you took the plunge. Ciao, =Dick Gevers= -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Encryption is an envelope - the contents are private. iD8DBQE/unPswC/zk+cxEdMRApNoAJ94EmoR1230P26Pvi/dYo4/0jerjwCgwXOj 4OfkUk8YvgKXdands/FBf2A= =r9Wx -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Bryan, On Tuesday, November 18, 2003, at 4:07:03 AM PST, you wrote: I don't know what kind of computer you have but just a quick guess. Some of the proprietary computers like Compaq, etc. often create a small partition on the beginning of the primary hard drive and install extended BIOS, recovery routines to that partition. This is a custom built computer, so I'll have to ask the guy who built it if he can explain what the MDK installation was seeing. Should I even worry about this if I'm quite sure of hdb being my 20 GB drive? I wouldn't. As long as I can be very sure that I'm only messing with my 20 GB drive, I'll be happy to stumble through some more trial and error myself, because if all I mess up is the fresh drive with no essential data on it yet, I can always just start over. However, there's another thing I'll have to decide with regards to how worried I should be about performing the installation without expert supervision... The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), I want to be especially careful messing about in there. At this point, it is this BIOS thing as much as anything else that concerns me. The adventure continues... - -- Melissa PGP public keys: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Body=Please%20send%20keys -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iD8DBQE/unvXjVbXUvsE8ukRAlgGAKDDhrlEP2uSHA8kuNuzlvN/PtYgmgCcDx97 HU080QYBNizHG438HMAFJ7A= =zn4G -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
Nick Andriash wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hello Anne, Tuesday, November 18, 2003, 4:22:05 AM, you wrote: Choose the one you want for install, and make a partition for /home (so that if you get any data on it you will be able to re-install or upgrade without losing your data). I assume that since it is a whole disk you probably have plenty of room? Allocate 512MB to swap and create one bit ext3 partition for the rest. Mandrake will take care of everything else. I am soon going to try what Melissa is trying, so please bear with me for a moment. Are you saying simply to create a 512 MB partition named /home to store data in, as the 1st step during the installation? The one bit ext3 partition for the rest is a little confusing for me, so would you mind just going over that for a moment? The 512 MB partition is for swap. The /home should be somewhat bigger, as it is where you store most of your data - actual size depends on the size of your hard disk. I assume that 'one bit...' is a typo and should read 'one big...'! Margot PS Please unset your reply-to - thanks. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:07:05 -0800, Melissa Reese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote about Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me: The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), I want to be especially careful messing about in there. At this point, it is this BIOS thing as much as anything else that concerns me. It need not necessarily concern you. I had the same worry for a moment when I installed 9.0 February last, and decided to try it first without changing the BIOS. It made no difference. If you should later find (not likely, but IANAE) that you do need to change that for any device, you`d only have to remember to change the setting at reboot time maybe, but chances are you`ll reboot less and less once you grow into Linux. Certainly not for hotfixes, secupdates and assorted other Redmond missives. And guaranteed never for a BSOD. Regards, =Dick Gevers= -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Encryption is an envelope - the contents are private. iD8DBQE/un+xwC/zk+cxEdMRAv8HAKCsa3VqSNi/w+8eBam/IbJdqjqU+ACeKcUe liORdpqZz+tRVTJtlzChyV4= =bZnt -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Tuesday 18 November 2003 1:07 pm, Melissa Reese wrote: Hi Bryan, snip This is a custom built computer, so I'll have to ask the guy who built it if he can explain what the MDK installation was seeing. As long as I can be very sure that I'm only messing with my 20 GB drive, I'll be happy to stumble through some more trial and error myself, because if all I mess up is the fresh drive with no essential data on it yet, I can always just start over. However, there's another thing I'll have to decide with regards to how worried I should be about performing the installation without expert supervision... hda would be the primary or master on the first IDE channel Melissa. If you're looking at hdb you're looking at the second disk on the first IDE channel. Your 20 GB drive in other words. hda is the first on that channel, hdc is first on the second channel, hdd is second on the second channel and so on. The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), I want to be especially careful messing about in there. At this point, it is this BIOS thing as much as anything else that concerns me. The BIOS is where the system gets it's first initialization settings. Most modern operating systems don't use much they find there but it still needs to be there. Just turn off plug'n'play aware OS since neither XP or any recent distribution needs plug and pray anyway. I'd suggest setting the boot order to CD-ROM, then IDE0. You should be fine then, just remember not to leave any disks in the CD drive on reboots. The adventure continues... As far as all the advice on partitioning etc, does it really matter? Most new converts find things they want to change on their second install. There will be a second install Melissa, _everyone does it._ I usually start all freshly caught victims...e...converts with basic partitioning by suggesting that you allow diskdrake to do it after choosing custom partitioning at that install stage. There's a button in diskdrake to clear the whole disk after selecting the second tab/disk (20 GB, aka hdb in your case) and start fresh. That would be a good place to start IMHO since you've already stated that you don't have anything on that disk that you want; and that it will be dedicated to Mandrake Linux. Once it's all cleared just use the Auto Allocate button in diskdrake and let the tools the developers built into the distribution take care of it. Won't have to figure swap size, root (/) size, or any of the other technical things. It should auto-magically make a separate /home partition for you and at first that's the only one you'll care about since all your personal stuff will be there. You can learn about custom partitioning later, right? (-; Just some thoughts. Welcome to the world of unlimited choices. Have fun! Charlie - -- Edmonton,AB,Canada User 244963 at http://counter.li.org Mandrake Linux release 9.2 (FiveStar) for i586 kernel 2.4.22-21mdk 13:23:02 up 49 min, 1 user, load average: 0.42, 0.32, 0.27 How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/uoQuG11CaRuZZSIRAg/zAKCou2L1V+qdHt3sh9lRkH2z9f17pQCgpLm+ OPptNy1Lgg8Qneedh8plZlc= =wOdM -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
Melissa Reese wrote: As long as I can be very sure that I'm only messing with my 20 GB drive, I'll be happy to stumble through some more trial and error myself, because if all I mess up is the fresh drive with no essential data on it yet, I can always just start over. However, there's another thing I'll have to decide with regards to how worried I should be about performing the installation without expert supervision... Exactly, so just go ahead and install on your hdb, the 20g drive. The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Such as ? Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), Bios, means Built In Operating System , and the most basic computer there is, On the whole I don't recommend you messing in there till you know something of what you are doing.That is not to say you shouldn't visit it and become familiar with the facilities that lay in bios. It's just that you can alter things in bios that will have a profound affect on opperating efficiency and until you know something more about it , best leave things alone, at least ask first. Don't be affraid of it but don't go around changing things just for the heck of it. I want to be especially careful messing about in there. At this point, it is this BIOS thing as much as anything else that concerns me. So what is it you want to do in there ? John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
On Tuesday 18 November 2003 03:07 pm, Melissa Reese wrote: Hi Bryan, As long as I can be very sure that I'm only messing with my 20 GB drive, I'll be happy to stumble through some more trial and error myself, because if all I mess up is the fresh drive with no essential data on it yet, I can always just start over. Linux has been unusually forgiving of me and I am a tinkerer that messes with stuff that he doesn't really understand quite a lot. I wouldn't think that you would be progressing as far as I usually do initially, especially since you appear to be demonstrating quite a bit more caution than I do, sometimes to my detriment. However, there's another thing I'll have to decide with regards to how worried I should be about performing the installation without expert supervision... Anne was right about committing changes. You will go through the entire process and then Mandrake will ask you before it commits the changes to the hard drive. The only change that might be significant is replacing the XP bootloader with lilo by writing to the Master Boot Record and that can be undone very simply with no problems at all. I have never had any issues with removing Linux and in my initial experimentations with a lot of different distributions, I did that many times. The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), I want to be especially careful messing about in there. At this point, it is this BIOS thing as much as anything else that concerns me. Shouldn't. You can always change things back and Windows is pretty tolerant of BIOS changes for the most part. I am surprised that it suggested you make changes, Linux ignores the BIOS in large amounts and actually uses its settings for small things that are configurable in Linux without making BIOS changes. APIC for instance which I initially turned off in BIOS but is configurable on the lilo load line. Why don't you discuss some of those suggested changes here and perhaps we can put some of your concerns to rest by explaining exactly what they are and what the likely effect on WinXP would be? -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Tuesday 18 November 2003 12:51 pm, John Richard Smith wrote: Melissa Reese wrote: As long as I can be very sure that I'm only messing with my 20 GB drive, I'll be happy to stumble through some more trial and error myself, because if all I mess up is the fresh drive with no essential data on it yet, I can always just start over. However, there's another thing I'll have to decide with regards to how worried I should be about performing the installation without expert supervision... Exactly, so just go ahead and install on your hdb, the 20g drive. The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Such as ? Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), Bios, means Built In Operating System , and the most basic computer there is, http://searchWin2000.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid1_gci213814,00.html It actually is an acronym for Basic Input/Output System. For any other acronyms you want to define may I suggest: http://whatis.techtarget.com/ There's an alphabetical list there. evil grin Charlie - -- Edmonton,AB,Canada User 244963 at http://counter.li.org Mandrake Linux release 9.2 (FiveStar) for i586 kernel 2.4.22-21mdk 14:06:16 up 1:32, 1 user, load average: 0.85, 0.40, 0.32 E.T. GO HOME!!! (And take your Smurfs with you.) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/uotRG11CaRuZZSIRApuhAKCPGJcgHYz2gttha7ThPDk/3cXH6QCeOOPC peGxvgax6bl51q04cjv1vA4= =5snq -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
Charlie M. wrote: Tuesday 18 November 2003 12:51 pm, John Richard Smith wrote: Melissa Reese wrote: As long as I can be very sure that I'm only messing with my 20 GB drive, I'll be happy to stumble through some more trial and error myself, because if all I mess up is the fresh drive with no essential data on it yet, I can always just start over. However, there's another thing I'll have to decide with regards to how worried I should be about performing the installation without expert supervision... Exactly, so just go ahead and install on your hdb, the 20g drive. The starter guide also suggests possibly changing a setting or two in the BIOS in order to make the installation smoother for MDK. Such as ? Since the BIOS is, as far as I understand it (which may not be very far), a system wide setting (affecting both hard drives, no?), Bios, means Built In Operating System , and the most basic computer there is, http://searchWin2000.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid1_gci213814,00.html It actually is an acronym for Basic Input/Output System. For any other acronyms you want to define may I suggest: http://whatis.techtarget.com/ There's an alphabetical list there. evil grin Charlie -- I stand duly corrected. Still I've seen it refered to as the other somewhere. It doesn't really matter. It's the most basic form of computer.You cannot get more first level than bios. John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Installation aborted - by me
On Tuesday 18 November 2003 06:44 pm, Melissa Reese wrote: It seems that I haven't properly configured my monitor and/or the X server thing. How can I go back and try this again? Can I just boot up with the first installation CD and start all over again? Yes, but we can probably fix it without reinstalling. There is a program called XFdrake that you can run from the console to help you get set up. Become root user and type 'XFdrake' (case matters, so be careful). Now select your monitor and video card and try to test it. BTW, what kind of monitor and video card do you have? -- /g Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book, inside a dog it's too dark to read -Groucho Marx Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
