danleff

Also check to see if alsa is not muted. Try as root user, typing in a console alsamixer and see if the settings are muted. Set the volumes all the way up and try sound again.

Please refresh my memory on what distro that you are using. Are you trying to run su or sudo?

Ok, which version of Debian are you using... woody, sarge or sid? Do you know if this is alsa or OSS sound on Debian that you have/trying to run? Alsa sometimes is muted by default and you need to go into aslamixer to unmute it. There is an alsa driver, but let's see what you have installed currently. BTW, what laptop is it?

Yes, by all means, use cdr's. They are more reliable with iso images and cdrom/cdrw drives for booting purposes, especially older cdrom drives. Let us know how things go with detection of the sata drives.

Hello; What motherboard is this that you are using and what distro and version of Linux...Fedora Core2, Mandrake 10.1? I believe a nFroce based chipset board? This information will help us guide you to the right drivers for the NIC.

From the ubuntu documentation page howto install k3b. You also have Synaptic in your distro, which helps install packages and resolve and dependencies that may crop up. This is a graphical front-end for apt-get. It is fairly easy to use and will help get you going. Once you get the idea with synaptic, then you can also play with apt-get at the command line. Don't worry about the newest and greatest kernel...just get used to the distro first and be comfortable with it. As you learn about what's going on, then you will be able to deal with any minor issues that exist on your system. In terms of video and wireless problems, what problems are you having? Post what wireless and video card that you have and the issues.

Is this Debian woody, sarge or sid? The driver should be there, perhaps the monitor settings are the issue. Do you have just a command line, or did KDE or Gnome come up OK? What did you pick as a monitor during the install? Since this is a laptop, did you choose LCD?

The most popular is K3b, which is included in most distros by default, or on one of the cd disks that you burned. It is also located here.

What partition tool are you using (did you use) to remove the swap file? If you have PartitionMagic, you can resize the free space, where swap once was, to take up the empty space. You can also use the Mandrake install cd to navigate to the partitioning tool, then resize the space under the expert mode. Then back out of the installer. Qtparted is a partitioning utility for Linux, but I have had some unexpected results with it and do not recommend it. In terms of commenting-out the entry in /etc/fstab, this is how I do it (other opinions will vary). 1. Go to a console 2. type in su (hit the enter key) 3. type in the root password (hit the enter key) You now have a root user console, which allows editing easily. 4. type konqueror (hit the enter key) When the file manager comes up, hit the back button once. This brings you to the main directory. Then navigate to /etc and scroll down to the fstab file and double click on it. When the file opens, look for the swap entry and place a # in front of the beginning of the line. This tells Linux to ignore the entry. Save the file and your done! If you decide to use it again, you can just remove the # comment. There is also a editing utility called vi which runs from the command line. But i find newbies find iit cumbersome to use. Takes a little getting used to.

And the old standards, gftp or kbear, one of which is probably included with your distro.

Try choosing the ne2k-pci driver in the selection for your linksys LNEPCI2 card. Reference

Could you give the link to the rpm file that you are using? Compiling support via the kernel has changed somewhat in the 2.6 kernel series. Are you trying to compile the kernel that came with Fedora or from kernel.org? If the stock kernel from Fedora, did you install the kernel image or sources as well? You can also try make gconfig or make menuconfig and see if the text displays properly. Menuconfig is the older less graphic menu, while gconfig is more graphical friendly and easier to navigate for most.

During the install, you can pass options to the installer to configure your network, say for a static connection. See the options here. You seem to have the correct installer. Are you tryting to configure the network after the install has completed, or during the install?

Did you also remove or comment out the swap reference in /etc/fstab? This may not be necessary, but will help to keep errors from occuring during boot..although you may not care!

Mandrake has the habit of mounting window partitions so that root user must be used to view them. Are you using KDE? Do you know where the partitions are on the hard drive? Are they fat16, or fat32 partitions? In other words, what version of Windows did you have on the system. I assume that when you did the Mandrake install, you did not allow Mandrake to over-write the windows partitions to make rom for Mandrake? Is it possible to post your fstab file, so we can look to see if they are already automounted? I have not used Mandrake 9.1 in a while, but I can check my 9.2 install and see how Mnadrake does it specifically. An easy way to see if they are mounted, is to type, in a console window; df (hit the enter key) This will show the auto mounted partitions and where they are mounted. So, if in fstab, you see an entry such as; /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos vfat........... then you know that the vfat partition located on the ist partition of the drive is mounted (on startup) at /mnt/dos. Others may differ in opinion, but I just do the following; 1. Go to a console 2. type in su (hit the enter key) 3. type in the root password (hit the enter key) 4. type konqueror When the file manager comes up, hit the back button once. This brings you to the main directory. Navigate to where fstab states that the vfat partition is ie: /mnt/dos Then you should see you vfat files on that partition. You can then make a desktop icon to show the mount point for the partition, or to bring up Konqueror as root user. More on that later. Some newer distros will do this automatically for you, like Mepis or Suse, so that you have a link to the partitions that are auto mounted.

You laugh about Linspire? Installs in less than 10 minutes. Great for the person who does not want to learn all the syntax and just have a solid OS. Tons of packages with CNR. Of course, I have been an insider for two years. I am testing the beta version right now. Of course, Debian for those of us who like to tinker.

Yes, when you used Ghost, it made an exact copy of the Win install and this included the master boot record. Good, you have linux on a second hard drive. I assume primary master? if so, you can try the rescue mode. Is Linux the only partition on the second drive, or the first partition on the drive? If so, try using the install disk to boot using linux root=/dev/hdb1 at the command line when it appears. If this works, you can restore grub to the MBR. If it works, I will look it up on my system in the graphical mode. Or try the following command in a console as root user; grub-install /dev/hda

Ahh...the Debian learning curve. I really like Debian, but it is difficult to get right. What image/iso did you use to install Sarge, the official one or another? Do you have the latest Debian install image? The older ones had some bugs. I seem to remember running into this on my sarge install. It seems that the grub device list did not add the floppy definition. Can you look in /bot/grub at the devices and see if there is an entry like (fd0) /dev/fd0...or something like that. You can install grub to a floppy fairly easily, if there is. So the newt install went ok, but now you can't connect to mirrors? Is this a dynamic or static connection to the LAN...on a school lan perhaps?

Looks like you have multiple packages for three seperate kernels orphaned. Were these packages installed by apt-get using repositories in the /etc/apt/sources/lst file, or installed otherwise? What kernel are you using right now...what does uname -r show? You ned to get rid of these orphaned files and start over, usng the package for your specific kernel and architecture. A good thread on apt-get and removing packages is located here.

I would also agree that before trying distro after distro, to get the hardware compatibility issues worked out. Rebooting issues with Linux can be related to a variety of hardware issues, funky memory, video card issues and general support for your hardware. Where did you get this board and could you post any links to the company's web page? Is this by chance a VIA EPIA-MVIA or like micro motherboard? Alternately, any chance on telling us what hardware is in the system, such as the video card, hard drive brand and size and other hardware on the system, as well as what OS you have on the system currently?

My suggestion. Stick with Grub until you get used to it, then decide if you want to move to lilo. They both use different syntax to boot, but have some common syntax. Grub us not the problem. This would have happened with Lilo as well, once you restore Windows, it re-writes the master boot record. Windows always wants to be first, so I assume Windows is on hda1, if you restored it. In order to rescue Fedora, you need to know what partition that root is on. Do you know this? If so, then after booting Fedora's cd #1, at the command prompt, type in linux rescue root=/dev/hdax, where x is the partition where Fedora has it root files. You can then use Fedora to restore grub to the MBR. this also asumes that you have Fedora on the same drive as Windows, and you have just one drive in the system (that both Windows and Fedora are installed on). You can then use the graphical utility in Fedora to restore Grub to the MBR. For that matter, if you wish to use lilo, then you should see that choice, as well (to use lilo rather than Grub). The question is, was this a fresh install of Fedora on the system, then Windows would not boot after the Fedora install, or did Windows really crash and you reinstalled Windows? Fedora Core 2 and other distros usng the 2.6 series kernel has a bug in the partitoning utility where the NTFS partition is read differently when trying to boot Windows from grub or lilo. This occurs when you use the Fedora partitioning utility to install Fedora next to a NTFS partition. So, thes econd question is, do you have windows XP on your system or another version of windows. This is not a problem with fat32 partitions.

If you are running KDE, try running apt-get install kdebase-crypto kdelibs3-crypto and see if that works to allow https support.

Ok, I see two, maybe three problems. The Evo, this is a desktop model? You are running two different speeds and brands (yes, I know Compaq and HP are now the same company) of ram? This may be an issue with stability and install issues. I would pull ome of the sticks out and see how the system responds. Are both these sticks certified to run on the Evo? In terms of the laptop, Mandrake will not run well on less than 128 mb of ram. The graphical install requires at least this much. The only distros that I have seen run Ok on systems with this amount of ram, are the lightweights, like Puppy, DSL... And beware. The recent distos, like Mandrake and Fedora with the 2.6 kernel series have issues installing next to MTFS windows XP partitions, where Windows becomes unbootable. So, I guess it's good that you have not messed with this laptop yet. What does the laptop have on it now as an OS? Also, Libranet might work. It does on my laptop, in fact well with 64 mb installed and using IceWM as the desktop GUI. The other issue are the ATI Radeon cards. A lot of folks have problems with these and Linux. This may be the source of any issues that you have with installing, or getting X up. I always use NVIDIA cards wich all work well in Linux. I also have one S3 card that works well with Limspire and Libranet.

Listen to what egorgry suggested. One of the first things that I do when installing a Debian system is to install synaptic. This grest utility helps to solve the dependency problems that you are running into. It has a graphical interface that really helps. If you just have a command line right now, installing synaptic will help you get up and running with X, KDE and other apps. I assume that you are just tring to install KDE, or do you have it up and running already? In other words, did you tell the Debian installer to install KDE, or looking to add development packages in order to compile/add other applications? Doing apt-get update assures that Debian has the latest packages in it's database, which will save headaches as you go on.

I think that Viper has hit on a possible problem...and your error messages tell me something. How are you formatting your partitions before every install, or are you just trying to overwrite each installation on the partition that had a previous install already on it? Are you allowing gentoo or the distro install utility to partition and format the drive? Are you using the entire drive for the install, or allowing one single partition to be used? Do you have Windows XP on the system? Also, post some specs. on your system, especially the monitor and video card that you are using? Posting the motherboard model or system type may help us sort this out as well. X problems often point to video card or monitor setting issues.