danleff

Ok, let me ask one more question, maybe two! How is the computer connected to the internet, via cat5 cable to a router, or otherwise? Quote: The problem with using the Mandrake Control Center is that I don't have that, it is one of the things that never got installed. All I have is KDE. That is what automatically starts up and I don't see any way to get out of it other than to log out. OK, this is what KDE is, just as windows is. You log in to get the gui (desktop environment) and logout to exit it. What options for programs do you have? Are there icons for e-mail, Konqueror and others on the control panel on the bottom? Options in the start menu?

OK, from the same article; Quote: To use the SuSE Linux 9.0 LiveEval CD insert it into your CD-ROM drive and boot from it. The installation program will look for free space on your first hard drive ('C:') and create these files: suselive.swp: a swap file; only if you have less than about 160MB main memory suselive.usr: this will be your /home directory suselive.900: the current configuration If the installation program does'nt find enough free disk space your configuration will not be saved. This means, you'll have to go through the setup procedure every time you boot this CD. So, the promise controller will not work and if it did, if the first hard drive is totally NTFS, this will not work either.

I do not know too much about the SUSE live cd, but, did you use an option to install to the hard drive, or is it running only from the CD? The idea of the live cd is that it does not auto install to a hard drive, unless you specifically choose an option to do so, or used a method to install to the hard drive. Your bootloader is still BootMagic, or is lilo or grub installed? Either way, is there an option on the boot menu to choose SUSE vs. Windows, or not? If this is really a hard drive install, did you choose a partition (or did it give you a choice to install to the ext2 or ext3 partition)? From an article on the SUSE live cd; Quote: IDE RAID controller Do not use SuSE Linux 9.0 LiveEval on systems with a Promise IDE RAID controller. Linux has difficulties to recognize your Windows RAID setup. As long as you're using the Promise controller as a normal (UDMA) IDE controller, there are no problems, however. Here is the article; http://www.lankum.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=248

OK, what distro (distribution) do you have. Linux does not tell me much, is it RedHat, Mandrake, SUSE... Whether they work, may will depend on if the drivers are written for your particular distribution. This will also tell me if the vfat drive may be auto mounted by your distro. The driver that you downloaded, is it an RPM file or does it have a gz or bz2 extension on it? You will most likely not be able to write to and from the NTFS partition, as this is not fully supported in any Linux distribution yet. I suggest downloading your files to the home directory that your distribution is on, or the vfat partition. If you download to the linux home directory, then you will have immediate access to the files. Or is it that you can't connect to the web via the linux distro?

First, what distro (linux OS) do you have? Is this a gateway or Dell system? Desktop or laptop? What version of Windows? Fat32 or NTFS filesystem on the windows partition? In terms of the modem, see the following; http://www.modemsite.com/56K/bcm.asp Quote: Broadcom analog modems are software-driven controllerless solution. What this means is that you have a softmodem, or winmodem that is designed to run in Windows. Apparently Dell has released RehHat drivers, but the posts that I have seen show little success in getting them to work. http://support.ap.dell.com/ap/en/filelib/download/index.asp?fileid=R47114 See the posts; http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/99655

This is one quirk that Mandrake's disk partitioning utility has. When you install Mandrake, at the boot prompt when the install cd loads, type in expert. This begins the expert install. Then when you reach the menu for disk partitioning, choose custom partitioning. This prevents Mandrake from automatically assigning root to a previously populated ext2 or ext3...partition. You can then assign your previously formatted partitions to root, home or whatever. If you do not choose expert install, I found that Mandrake tries to install root to a previous linux partition. Fedora seemed to allow me to manually choose the designations. Debian gives you a menu list of available partitions, then you just choose the one that you want. Of course, make sure you know your partitions and what distros that you have on them/ where they are located. What I have noticed is that most distros, that generally use one main partition, allow you to chose a previously formatted linux partition for the distro. So, if you use qtparted or PartitionMagic to set up a linux filesystem ahead of time, you can use this partitin by choosing it during the install of the new distro.

Yea, I just got my SUSE 9 PRO disks from Linux CD (a Linux Compatible sponsor) and it detected all the partitions, set them up on icons and I installed the RedHat rpm for qtparted - all the drives and partitions are seen. Now let's see if I can break the system with KDE 3.2 and kernel 2.6.3.

Not an unusual problem. SATA is not supported in the stock kernels as a whole. If the system is set up with a SATA drive and it is enabled in the bios, Linux will have problems with it. Quote: I suspects that it has something to do with the Promis Fast Trak controller card but I'm not shure. So do youi have a controller card, or are you speaking about onboard? Quote: It's a dual boot with XP (Powerquest Bootmagic). This should not make any difference, since you are using the live cd. However, if you chose to do a hard drive install, Linux will not like BootMagic. You do have the boot sequence set to boot from the CDROM first?

The easiest solution would be to go into windows and write down what the device manager states that the card is. Then post the result back here. This way we can help you find the correct designation.

Quote: So all I have on there now is KDE So, you have the basic working system? The install went ok, as matttah said, what is installed depends what you told Mandrake to install at the main package screen. He is correct, you could have chose to pick individual packages (button at the bottom), but I guess the question is what specific packages are looking to install? Mandrake does not install all the packages by default. This is because many of them are not used by every user. Depending on the type of system that you chose at the main system selection screen, would depend if cd #2 or 3 would be needed. Now that you have the system up, you can install whatever packages that you need. Let us know what you are looking to add.

The issue about root vs. boot has always confused me. It should work, as long as the partition designations are correct. Anyhow, here is a screenshot of hda. My other distros are hdb and hdd, which hold other distros. See where I made some errors in laying out the partitions? http://home.nycap.rr.com/danleff/images/snapshot2.png And hdb, which has plenty of space left. http://home.nycap.rr.com/danleff/images/snapshot3.png Qtparted can't see hdd, but PartitionMagic can...hmm...

Sound like a challenge to get working. Although... http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php?product=250

I'll do the best that I can with grub, I am really better at lilo. I have 5 distros on my system, not including Windows, using lilo. What the issue seems to be is the age of the grub bootloader. I like to stick with the newest version, so that it is easier to track how to map the drives. Different distros and even different versions of the same distro may handle partitons and drive designations differently. Raid capable boards are a different story. Mandrake handled my raid capable board differently than Lindows, for example. Not necessarily using raid, but the designations that it gave my three drives, just using the third IDE interface (w/o raid mirrored drives). My old motherboard allowed the use of the its ist raid connector as an ide drive. The best way that I found to do this is to allow the install of the most recently installed distro w/o allowing a bootloader to be installed, or installing the bootloader to a floppy to test the system. This way you can add the lilo or grub entries to the already existing grub or lilo bootloader that you have on the MBR. Of course the best senario is to have the drives already present BEFORE installing any distros, so that grub or lilo has already done the core mapping of the drives for you. As you know, Dapper Dan, you can use Mandrake's partitioning tool or PartitionMagic to add your ext3 or whatever filesystems for the second distro install. Granted, during their installs, Mandrake or RedHat want you to use (or give you a choice) multiple partitons, or allow you to put all the files on ./, or one partition. Once you have your layout and know what the partitions are, you can add the entries for the latest distro to grub or lilo for vmlinuz and initrd. The newer distros will automatically add windows to the mix when they are installed. I don't know if this was an option in RedHat 7.2 yet. So, knowing what the boot/root designations are on the existing partitions will aide in adding entries to the already installed grub. This way snorlaxx can choose which distro to boot in grub.

Sure it is! As I understand it, you have RH 7.2's grub as the bootloader now? Post where each root partition is and what your grub.conf or menu/list is and we will walk you through it. Also, is the MBR on the first or second disk? You can also add windows to boot as well, if you really want to!

This is why I don't like upgrades. You can run into issues like this. Again, grub will fit on a floppy, as it only installs what it needs to read the boot partition and the grub.conf or menu file. Most of gruns files should be on the hard disk in the /boot/grub directory. What I was trying to get at, is that you are getting a Lilo boot message, I assume booting from the floppy. This is the LI hang message that you are getting. The issue, I believe is that you have corrupted lilo files on the floppy which are still trying to boot. Let's see if we can recover grub. If you use a floppy for grub, use a fresh formatted floppy, otherwise, install to the MBR, as you mentioned. I'll look at mine. Most likely, if recovery is possible, it will be from the rescue feature on the Fedora install disk.

Ahh...it's the laptop! Problems with the video! See the following; http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~dgupta/articles/linux-dell-8600.html Be careful. I've seen this before. There is a small diagnostic partition at the begining of the hard drive. This stores data that holds diagnostics and some XP features for the laptop. If you disturb this partition, Windows will need to be re-installed using the recovery cd. On some laptops, this space is also used to store bios data.

Be careful. If Lilo was/is installed in the master boot record, probably hda1 (the first drive on your system), then changing this partition will kill your Windows boot as well. I think that the problem was your video card, or monitor settings. If you did not get a GUI, only a command line, most likely xfree did not like the config. for the video card, or monitor. I assume that you did not try running startx at the command line, as was suggested? This would have told us something about what was going on. The problem was most likely not the bootloader, but a setting for the video card. fdisk /mbr does not always work and can be dangerous... you probably have to use the XP fixboot utility on the XP cd to restore the MBR, IF, XP is currently unable to boot. But, if Windows can be booted from lilo or grub (whichever bootloader that you are using), then you may want to leave it that way and research the issue more closely. This way your system is up and running and you can backup important files, in case something goes wrong in rectifying the problem.

The LI stop on boot is Lilo trying to boot, but it hangs because it does not like the geometry of the boot drive, or how it is set up. When you switched to Grub during the upgrade, did you attempt to install grub on the master boot record, or to the floppy? If you tried to use the same floppy that had lilo on it, this is most likely the problem. Also, the way that Fedora identifies the raid drives may have changed, so that the designation that it gives your raid setup is different. I've seen this happen when changes are made in the drive designations when a distro is updated and changes are made in identifying the drives. Raid arrays are also problematic and sometimes a bear to set up correctly. What happens if you try to boot without the floppy in the floppy drive? I'm going to guess that either you tried to install grub on the same floppy that lilo was on and you are trying to boot from this floppy. I'll have to look at my Fedora install and see what is in the grub directory. When changing bootloaders, I always use the same bootloader, or if I want to try grub, for instance, I install it to the floppy first to see if it works. A fresh floppy, not the same one that has a previous bootloader installed on it. It looks like both bootloaders are trashed though, but let's see what your response is first before we move on.

So, what you have is a player or recorder? What interface does it have to transfer the data> USB or audio? I guess what I am asking is what model is it? What you need is software to transfer the music files to the player/recorder, since this is not a standard cd to be burned. I have a Sony minidisc recorder/player, with the plastic encased mini-cd's. What I need is an audio card that can record the music via an analog or digital signal output. Have not tried ths yet with Linux, but I recently aquired a sound card that can do the digital transfer. Let's see what you have and perhaps someone has the answer.

Not to discourage you, this will not be easy for a beginner. If you already have a router that is near the box that we are speaking of, then it would be much easier to get a PCI NIC (network) card (wired) and hook it up to the router, until you get the USB working. Dapper Dan and I speak of this a lot. They can be had for about $10.00 and will save a lot of headaches, of course, if you have an accessible router. Look for one that is a Realtek or Syslink that should work well with your system.

Now you know what Dapper Dan was talking about! Be careful...I look like Bruce, well, at least the hair. When you run the autodetect for the sound, is one of the choices the intel sound - try choosing that over the nforce choice. Then make sure sound is not muted and turn it up all the way (the first slide bar on the left). If using KDE, type in a console aumix or kmix. Or look for the sound icon on the bottom right of the task bar and right click it, open the mixer and pump the sound up. I don't know if the alsa system is in redhat, but at a console, type alsamixer and see if the guide bar is set up all the way.

I'm just goint to attempt this myself on my notebook, so I can be off little help, since I am new to this as well. First, will the notebook handle Fedora? What are the system specs.? You may also want to watch the thread below. If this person gets his going, this may be of help. http://www.linuxcompatible.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1342

Boy, looking at this device, it is going to be a bear to get it going. Good post of the issue and instructions. Do you have any experience with wireless networking? I assume this is a laptop that you are using the device with? This may be over my head, but I found some other links that may be helpful to someone that has more experience with this. There appears to be neweer drivers that may work better. references; http://at76c503a.berlios.de/devices.html http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html http://at76c503a.berlios.de/ http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=59001&release_id=201712

...And if you go with Outstream's method, and you happen to have lilo as your bootloader, not grub, make sure to run lilo before rebooting/restarting the system. See step #6 at the following article; http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Compiling_K...ed_Systems.html

Could have been a variety of issues that caused it. 1. Bad DVD drive 2. incorrect assignment of the pinning that assigned one to master and the other to slave. 3. Some dvd cdrw drives insist in being master or slave. Could be Dell was aware of the problem and chose to replace it with a more compatible drive for the system. 4. Loose cable connection that was corrected when you swaped the drive and reseated the cable. If you did not have to send the old drive back, it would be interesting to see if it works in another system, one that has no current dvd or cdrw drive installed in it.