danleff

Two issues right off the top. An increase in ram would be useful, as 128 mb is bare minimum to run thse distros. 256 would be much better. Secondly, is the swap space being utilized at all? Is it in your fstab file? Finally, in the bios, is PNP OS disabled or off in the bios (PNP configuration)?

These cards are often made for Windows environments, so a "package" is needed, like ndiswrapper or madwifi, or whatever to detect the card. Manufacturers often neglect to have drivers available for their cards, or openly document what chipset is on the card, which would make things easier. If I remember, this is not an Atheros chipset on the lan card? Can you confirm the type of chipset on the wireless card via any documentation? I remember DapperDan had a link to a database that outlined each card and the chipset it has. Also note, that different versions of any given card could have a different chipset, so make sure that you are looking for a package that has support for your card and version (chipset onboard the card). Let's see if anyone has the information on this.

Does Suse recognize the onboard realtek LAN card at all? Although the best solution would be to pipe the connection from the LAN card to a router to the modem via CAT 5 cables, if the LAN card is detected, then hook the LAN to the modem, then the modem to the cable, minus the usb connection, which is troublesome with Linux. I suspect that newer distro versions will eventually solve this issue. Remember, a distro's support is highly dependant on the age of the distro version vs. the newer technology of the card. Otherwise, a driver is needed to update the detection, which sometimes is difficult as they are being developed, unfortunately, slower than the technology. Also, most of this hardware is built for Windows compatability with little attention to Linux distros.

Frankly, in terms of the "G" card series (I have 2) Linux has lagged behind in support. The only distro that I have that detected my Atheros chipset card was Linspire "out of the box." I just got my Fedora Core 4 test 2 install to detect my Ralink card with ndiswrapper, but it was not easy. I was able to get ndiswrapper to work on my Puppy Linux install, as well. The Sourceforge Ralink drivers worked in my other Fedora Core 3 install and Suse install on the same card. None "out of the box." As the new versions of distros come out, I think that you will see more support, but I agree with Dan, the "B" series seem much better supported.

I found this page that seems to have some drivers for Debian and RedHat, as well as source files.

How much video ram on this card? 8 mb? This is a server, so I don't thing 3D acceleration is an issue here. 1024x768 @ 60hz is what it needs to be set at. So vesa may work. Dan, do you know how to set this in x-org, or by the command line? Perhaps, redhat-config-display? Then also set the default depth at 16?

I think that you are correct, there are some special settings for this. however, get into alsamixer again and look to the far right and see if there is an option for surround]/b]. Pump up the volume on this. make sure (if it allows to to change the volume) or if it says "off" or "muted." If it says muted, hit the greater than key ">' and see if all the speakers work, once the volume is kiked up.

Are you using the rpm package that came with Mandrake, or the source package? Do you have the kernel-source package installed on the system? What kernel version are you runnng? Type in uname -r as root in a terminal window and post the results. What exact card model and version of D-Link card do you have? Is this a pci card or pcmcia D-Link card (laptop)? Also, see the installation instructions and also the FAQ pages.

Take a look at this thread and see if this gets you going. By default, alsa can be muted or the volume has to be adjusted to 100% in the alsamixer window.

Can you provide a link to the drivers that you downloaded?

You may want to follow this thread, as it addresses the same issue and asks some pertinent questions. I see that you posted another thread as well. Please stay with one thread, so we can follow the progress easier. You may elect to follow the link to the thread that I noted above and perhaps both users will get a common answer. We have some users that are using DSL, so they may offer a good solution.

The drivers are made for older releases of Mandrake. I'm not surprised that you are having problems. Did you look at the system requirements for the drivers before trying the installation? Look and see if your printer is really supported. The first problem is most likely that you do not have the development packages installed, which would have been an option given to you during the install. See the development package requirements on the Lexmark page here. Linux Kernel 2.4x or higher GCC 3.2 gtkmm version 2.0.2.4 sigc ++ version 1.2.4 make enscript magic GCC compiler version 3.2 CUPS development libraries SANE-Backend development libraries version 1.0.13 Most likely, you do not have the make, make.devel and CUPS development library packages installed. Go to the Mandrake package instllation (Control Center) and see if installing the required packages helps. Have you also tried to e-mail Lexmark about compatability with Mandrake 10? Finally, did you read the readme file for the package? I'm sure this will not be an easy task. Let us know what you have and we will try to help. P.S. Take a look at this post.

...as raid or straight IDE? If as a plain IDE channel, consult the users manual. This is a function of the bios or a jumper on the board. Some motherboards allow you to use the third ide connector as a plain ide drive. I remember trying this with an MSI board, that allowed IDE 3 (raid 1) to be used as a plain IDE channel. Mandrake saw the drive as hde, but also saw the hde drive as the primary drive on detection. I was using lilo at the time and had to tell lilo to reverse the drive designation. Since Mandrake saw thew first raid connection as the primary drive, I passed the ide=reverse command to lilo in the Mandrake boot options. There is also a way to do this in Grub, if this is what you are using as your bootloader. If you already have a hard drive in the #3 connector, go to a terminal window, as root user and type in fdisk -l (that is the letter l, not the number 1) and see what the designations are. In my case, it was the following; hda = primary master hdb = primary slave hdc = cdrom drive (secondary Master) hdd = secondary slave drive hde = drive connected to the third ide connector (raid)

Is your internet connection static or dynamic? Mandrake should have set up the connection, if you configured it during the install. I assume that there is a lan card on your system, connected to the router, noy via a USB modem? Go to a terminal window, as root user and type in ifconfig (hit the enter key) See if you get a response on eth0 and an IP address. If possible, post the results.

What about installing xchat from yast? Rather than installing from source, go to start-->system-->yast Once in yast, pick "Install and remove software." Type in "xchat" and see if it will install, assuming that you have your cdrom disks or DVD disk with Suse available.

..and the bios would have been the last thing that i would suggest to mess with. But, since you had a live update function and did not have to go though the tedious and dangerous floppy method to update the bios, it worked. Apparently MSI fixed some issues with the stock bios. It would be interesting to see what the changelog said on the updated bios. Since such live updates default to the default bios settings, this may have also done the trick. In any case, nice work!

OK, OK, I will give Thunderbird a try. Let's see if I can import my mail from Outlook Express. Even if I can import my mail from kmail would be fine. Anybody tried this? Importing from Kmail or Outlook Express?

Good to hear! Sometimes you just have to go or it. Nice work!

The two installs points (hopefully) to a couple of issues. One likes the video card (Suse) and one does not (Mandrake). The latter is giving you video issues. Installation problems are often due to burning the cd disks incorrectly. The installation hangs at some point durng the install. Make sure that you are burning the iso images correctly (if you burned your own). Se my quick quide here. I am just playing with my sata based motherboard (Asus) and Mandrake 10.2 (RC2) is giving it fits. The install failed multiple times, either to the sata drive or ide drive in the system. One most install attempts, the sata drive was found, on others, it was ignored. The point is that this may be the apparent hardware issue. If possible make sure that there are no USB devices plugged into the board, say like a USB pen drive or multicard reader. I plug in a pen drive (with sata enabled) and Mandrake goes nuts. On reboot, mandrake hangs and the bios does not recognize the sata drive on reboot detection. Get into the bios and look under PnP configuration and choose no PnP as an option - disable PnP bios. Do you have a sata drive in the system? If not also disable the sata setting in the bios for active raid. If you are installing (or attempting to) to a sata drive, let us know. I would also be interested if Knoppix, Mepis or one of the cd based distros work on your system. this will tell us something as well. Linux questions.org states that the motherboard should be fine and other references that i found state that the ATI card should work, as well. However, ATI crads, especially the newer ones, are problematic for Linux in general.

Thanks Dan, forgot that about fedora.... Just type in whereis name of command/utility that you want to use. That will give you the relative path that Dan spoke about.

Marton, it depends on your situation. If the bios in the system does not support booting from an external USB source, then you can boot using a boot floppy image that seeks the external cdrom drive and allows it to start the distro's install cdrom disk.

Have you tried to invoke these commands as root user in a terminal window?

Actually, there are three. I will keep the two up with responses, since LinuxCrusader's response was great and delete the third (with no response), just to decrease any confusion.

Two things about alsamixer. By default, the sound is sometimes turned off. I don't knmow why. Set the value(s) to 100%. Also make sure that in the description text on the top, the value does not say....master (off). If it does, use the "greater than" > key to change that. Just click on the bottom of the mixer bar that needs to be changed and apply the > keystroke. The other problem is that sound is not added as a group to user. Depending on the distro, you can add the audio group to your user account, by using the following command, as root user, in a terminal window (command line); adduser <your login name> audio (hit the enter key). So, for me it would be (assuming my login name is danleff); adduser danleff audio This adds your current login account to the audio group.

If you read the messages about the settings in the video config. utility, it should have mentioned that the x-server needed to be restarted before tha changes that you made took effect (the changes will take effect after...). If you either rebooted, or restarted the x-server, then the changes should have been present. When you change the monitor resolution, say to 1028x1024, then you need to make sure that the horizontal and vertical refresh rates are correct for your monitor and that your monitor supports this. Very often during initial install, folks select only one resolution and one single value. By up[censored], you essentually restared the x-server and the settings took effect. In some cases, the distro will detect only generic rates (if it does not exactly detect your monitor) and as you change the overall resolution, the overall rate will exceed the default values in the xFree86 or x-org files. What you need to do, is check what the rate ranges are for you monitor and input these values. These values can usually be found in the documentation that came with your monitor. Knowing what distro and version that you are using helps us also to know what utility, or file, to use to make the changes stick. BTW, chinkchink, please post only one thread. Posting multiple threads leads to confusion. Posting once allows the problem and answers to be in one place and are easier to follow as you seek a solution. These boards are very active and you will get a response.