danleff

Let's take a look at the problem a little differently. Windows did not set up your DSL connection by itself. Either you were given an installation disk (as I was for Verizon, which did not work) or the technician set up the system for you. In either case, the settings that you needed were set up by the disk or by the technician. To give an example, I had to set mine up manually, so the following applies. **I needed to know my login name and password. When I asked the technician on the phone about the settings, he just said "Linux is not supported." Not true! **I needed to know if the IP was assigned dynamically or statically. I have found that depending what software I am using in any distro of Linux, sometimes static works, sometimes dynamic. Interesting! When you get the installation Summary in Suse, you need to know how to set up your settings. If needed, you can get these from Windows. If you are running XP, go to start-->Run... Type in cmd and hit the enter key. Then type in the console ipconfig /all...hit the enter key. This will show you all your needed settings. Write them down. Make sure there is a space between ipconfig and all. Go into Yast and pick Network..DSL. Run the DSL setup utility and fill in the needed information. Fedora, Mandrake and whatever distro that you use, still needs the same information, either during the installation, or once the system is up, if you mess up the settings during the installation. This is dependent on your ISP provider for DSL, which is why knowing if it is a dynamic or static is important. While running the DSL setup utility, options will be given to choose dynamic or static. If you have a dynamic ISP, just choose that and start on boot via DHCP. If your DSL provider requires you to login with a username and password, you need to have these handy. The only distro that set this up easily for me was Linspire. I just provided the username and password and Linspire took care of the rest. Nice! In Suse,Mandrake and Fedora, I had to tweak the settings a little to get them to work. This is not an easy task for newbies to Linux, but persistence pays off.

What version of Nero are you using? There is a slight difference between versions on the location of the burn image feature on the menu. Also, see the Nero faq page.

A couple of questions. During the installation, did you configure the video card at the hardware summary installation screen and test video? If not, then the card was not configured for your monitor. What monitor do you have? The easiest thing to do, would be a re-install and make sure that you configure the video there, especially if you have no knowledge of console work. In terms of the driver. I assume you got them off the NVIDIA site? Which exact file did you download, the 32 bit or 64 bit driver? Is your system 32 bit or 64? You don't need the NVIDIA driver for basic functioning, just 3D. Did you look at the installation instructions on the NVIDIA site? But, if you did not configure video during the installation, then your monitor settings may be off, or not set at all. This step is often missed during installation, as users miss the prompt on the hardware summary screen that the card is not configured. During installation video is just basic...no specific settings for your card and monitor. The video config tool sets the card type and specific settings for your monitor. If these are not set, then video can fail, especially with a LCD monitor. Mandriva will generally auto configure, as the config. screen, your settings. If you want/feel comfortable trying to do the settings at a console, let us know and we can walk you through it. But to summarize how to do it... login as root and run drakconf. Configure the X11 server in the "Display" category and exit. Afterwards, type in the console service dm restart.

Take a look at question 14 on the unoffical Fedora faq page.

You have asked multiple questions, which have varied answers. First, let's clarify...you have a boxed set for Mandrake 7.2 and you want to install it on your main system? If so, I agree, Mandrake 7.2 is too old and will not be a good choice. Most Linux distros come in free versions that you can download. Most also have Live cd versions that you can try first, to see how well they work on your system. Your system must have the ability to boot off of cdrom to use such live versions. You did not mention what your system is that you want to install Linux on. Giving some information would help...how much ram, processor on the system and what make video card would help determine what Linux distro (flavor) is best to try. You can format a second partition ahead of time, or allow the distro to take free space on the drive. if formatting first, make a fat32 or ext3 (linux) partition. Yes, install XP first, then defrag the XP partition before installing any flavor of Linux, so that you assure that any files that may have found there way to the outside portion of the partition are moved back and defragmented. The ability to use a USB keyboard at boot is a function of the bios and must be enabled in the bios for a USB keyboard to work at boot. knowing what system this is would help us determine if such support is available on your system. The newer linux versions will support most USB keyboards, as XP does, once the OS is booted. In terms of large file support, NTFS filesystems are needed for windows in files that are over 2 gig in size, say iso images. Linux filesystems don't really have this limitation. The issue is that generally you can't reliably write such large files to NTFS partitions from Linux. Giving step by step instructions to install Linux is not reasonable to expect on this thread, but such manuals are available online for each distro. Most newer distros are easy to install and don't need too much instruction to do so. However, reading up first on installing a particular distro is always advised, especially for a first timer. Dual booting XP and Linux should not be a problem, as most distros set up such an environment for you. Once you decide which distro to try out, then we can guide you more easily. Besides PClinuxOS, there are several others that are good for first timers, such as Mandrake 10, Linspire and Suse 10. If you want to try out a smaller sized distro, then Puppy Linux is a favorite of mine. Try looking at Distrowatch to get an idea what is out there.

Exactly! Any directory that has a dot in front of it is hidden by default. Go to your home directory usng the file manager. Use the dropdown menu...choose View--> show hidden... Then you can see the hidden directories. You will also be able to see the hidden root directories, as well, as long as you have the file manager open in superuser mode. The same logic as in Windows applies. Most average users have no need to fiddle with the hidden files/directories.

I know next to nothing about LVM, but this is odd. I bet hda3 is the /boot partition created by Fedora. Since it is not marked as active, it does not boot grub. I wonder if it picked hda3 (primary partition) thinking that it was the first logical partition that could be created. LVM recognitioin is via a kernel module, I think...hmmm..maybe not implemented in Suse 9.1? You are correct, you can use existing swap space. When you elect to manually assign partitions (expert assign partitions), edit the swap partition and mark it as swap space. Do the same for the previously created partition that you made for Fedora, except mark it as /, or the root partition.

Two ways to check easily. At a terminal prompt, type in uname -a or uname -r Second, use the file manager to look at the /boot directory. The vmlinuz file has the kernel version number in the title. If you have multiple running kernels (you updated the kernel), use the first example to see what the currently running kernel is.

I'll give it a try. Could you let me know the following; 1. What version of ndiswrapper are you using? RPM or source. Is it the one that is packaged with Fedora? 2. If you are installing from source, do you have the kernel-devel package installed? 3. Are you using the Windows XP drivers that came with the Linksys driver disk? 4. Did you follow the directions on the Fedora specific wiki page, located here if you used the source package?

Quote: Suse & original boot still intact. hda3, hdb2, hdb3 partitions created. There is no reason that an hda3 partition should be created during the installation, unless this is your swap space for Suse. Is this the case? Let me ask, what partitioning software are you using to delete your partitions? Rather than keep reinstalling Fedora, why not add Fedora to your existing grub file for Suse? If you know where the root filesystem for Fedora is, then you can modify your existing Suse Grub file to add Fedora. This will work. Do you know how to do this? I also never use the auto partitioning scheme to install additional distros. The differences between distros and how they do this can be problematic. In multiple distro installations, I pre-format an ext3 partition with PartitionMagic and then tell Fedora that I want to custom control partitioning, telling it to use the previously created ext3 partition for / (and if you created a seperate /home partition) that as well for home. Then, modify your Suse grub file (/boot/grub/menu.lst) file to add Fedora.

Good to see that you got it to work. Support for NIC cards, especially PCMCIA is much improved in the newer kernels and distros. Note that the start of this thread is over two years old and some users were trying to use the old 2.2 series of kernels. But, this is an excellent Gentoo tip and I hope someone does see it and benefit from it.

Simply put, Fedora will not automatically recognize this adapter. USB wireless is still not perfected in Linux. In order to use it, you would need to install one of tywo packages that will allow Fedora to see the adapter, either the Linxant package (which costs about $19.99 - it is a commercial product) or ndiswrapper. Then you can use the Windows drivers from your cd drivers disk to get the card recognized. These two linux packages are designed to work with the Windows XP drivers that came with the Linksys disk. Just as in Windows, you need to install drivers for the adapter to work. You also need to know what the settings are for your router... the essid name, and if you are using encription, the WPA or WEP key for the router or modem that you have. I actually have one of these cards (version 4) which is a little different, but I may give it a go this week. If you are interested, I will report back my (hopefully) success.

Are you using Fedora's grub, or are you still booting with the Suse splash screen, or do you get a Fedora splash screen? In other words, where did you install grub for Fedora during the install process? The MBR or a /boot partition? Also, if you did exactly what you said, one of the partitions on hdb is not good. The partition table is being reported as corrupt. Quote: /dev/hdb4 23046 77505 27447052+ 5 Extended Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Fedora should work, as long as the proper wifi packages are installed. Most people expect (rightfully so) that wireless will work "out of the box." The questions are; 1. What have you done so far to get wireless to work. Use the network manager to try and get the interface up? 2. Did you try to configure wirless (the network) during your installations? Or, did you configure the onboard or PCI LAN card on the system during the installations? 3. Did you configure your essid and or if you use it WEP or WPA? Wireless will not work if you have not set the essid and say WEP or WPA key of the router. 4. What distros did you try so far. On my realtek system, Linspire, Mandrake 10.1 and Fedora Core 4 work, but not without the above set. The new release of SuSE looks very promising (I use the beta version right now). The newest releases of Linux are getting better with these chipsets and assuring that the packages (drivers) are installed during the default distro install. Older versions of Linux need additional packages to get wireless to work, say ndiswrapper, or the legacy Realtek driver packages.

Originally posted by kcpaige: Quote: I am having a similar problem that I almost have fixed. The problem you have is that you installed the Grub bootloader on your MBR. This happens to erase your windows bootloader, so when Grub tries to tell windows to upload, it can't. IDK how to fix that problem but i hope this information is of some use. This is only partially correct. Grub replaces the Windows bootloader, but not the boot.ini file, which grub references/ looks for to boot Windows. Most likely the issue is that by allowing Fedora to partition your linux drive, it created a /boot partition, where the grub files are located. If you chose the /boot partition to install grub, not the MBR, then that partition needs to be set active to get grub to boot correctly. This is a common problem if you are not careful what you do - or just accept the defaults to install grub, rather than note where Linux suggested grub to be installed. There is a good deal of debate about this, but the issue usually is where grub was installed, to the MBR or a /boot partition created by your linux distro. The problem is fixable, if you know what you did during the installation. If you know where grub was installed, then you can fix the partition designation for booting either system, Windows or Linux. I always install grub to the MBR with no problems, but you need to pay attention to what you did during the installation. If you run grub-install during rescue mode, you need to assure that you have gone to sysroot before running the command. This places the Linux installation as it is if you booted directly into it, thus referencing everything correctly. If you see no grub.conf or menu.lst file in the root /boot/grub directory, then this is the issue. Or, you never really installed grub (told the installer not to install/use grub at all as a bootloader).

This should be a Realtek chipset model?? What have you tried so far?

g0kth, I just switched my system over to sata only. If you are still having the problem, I may be able to resolve it, as I have my drives set up close to yours. Are you still at the sata drive to be your first boot device? Please note that I will not be back online until Saturday am, as i will be on the road.

In order to answer any questions, we need to know a little more about your installation. What version of Fedora did you install? There was a problem in earlier versions of Fedora Core 2 and doing an installation on Windows machines with NTFS filesystems. If this is a Fedora Core 4 installation, move on. Is Windows XP on a NTFS filesystem or fat32. If you don't know, then it's likely NTFS. Did you defrag the XP partition before you installed Fedora? Most likely, Grub was installed on a /boot partition duing the installation, if you chose just to let Fedora partition your hard drive for ther installation. If this is the case, then the /boot partition needs to be set active. If you allowed grub to be installed to the MBR (Master Boot Record) then we can move on. I assume that this system has a sata hard drive? Just one drive or a raid array? If a single drive system (not two drives on a raid array); Boot the Fedora cd disk #1 (installation disk). At the installation menu, type in linux rescue (hit the enter key) If it finds your FC install, that went OK, and you probably don't have grub installed properly. Once the system loads, at the terminal prompt, Type in chroot /mnt/sysimage then type; cd /boot/grub this is where your grub files are. type cat grub.conf and note which hd it is referring to. If this does not work for some reason, type in df and this will show you where the root drive is, usually the first entry (line). Then type; grub-install --recheck/dev/xxx Wher xxx after the /dev/ is the drive that Fedora says that your hard drive is located. Leave out the numerical value. So, if cat grub tells you the drive is sda1, then type in; grub-install --recheck/dev/sda This may take a minute or so and should just return a command prompt with no errors. Once it does, type in reboot and see if grub comes up normally. I will be on the road until Saturday, so others can pipe in if needed until I get back.

Actually, are you referring to the issue with Mandrake 9.2 (not Mandriva) "killing" LG cdrom drives? This was an issue with Mandrake 9.2 and is no longer a problem. A copy of the article by NewsForge is located here. There was a firmware fix for the drives, but this is no longer an issue with the current releases of Mandriva.

Did you install the 64 bit version of FC4?

That's the ticket! Nice going. BTW, I did get the drivers going on my FC4 install this afternoon. The directions are a little off. Downloading the kernel source was the ticket for your problem.

Good job! Just as an aside, I just installed Linspire 5 on my wife's system, after she got a load of virus infections off a mailing list that she is on. This exact same card worked out of the box using DSL. I forgot that she had this card in her system! A new Linux convert! Clearly, the new distro versions that are coming out are making progress with wireless cards.

Great! I just finished up[censored] my kernel to the 2.6.14-1.1653 kernel, which worked for me. I needed to yum the kernel and kernel-devel packages. No need to manually build the kernel. I bet the modprobe.conf lacked the correct designation for the interface.

Can you be a little more specific? At what point is it failing? 1. During the installation of the NVIDIA package? 2. No usable screen after installing the drivers and editing your xorg.conf file...? 3. is this a 32 bit or 64 bit system? 4. What exact make and model card is this...or what system is it running on...Compaq, HP, self built...?

Do you mean WPC11? Linspire 5, Mandrake 10.1 and SuSE 10 will all work. SuSE 9.2 is too old and requires a little work. It will work "out of the box" if you set it up correctly. What are you using to connect, DSL, broadband...? Did you attempt to set up networking during any of the installations? BTW, if you are looking for a small distro, my vote is for Puppy Linux.