danleff

Quote: Now let me pull out some of my linux distro CDs... alright. I have freeBSD, mandrake 10.0, mandrake 10.1, Damn small linux (DSL), mandrake move, peanut linux, and ... gentoo. No wonder you are having trouble! That's quite a list! Don't expect Peanut or DSL to run well, from what I know abour your system so far. These distros are lightweight and don't have the features that you would need for a fully functioning system, especially for games and such. Mandrake will take care of the dependency issues for you if you use the control center/install software tool to add the apps that you need off the cd. The problems occur when you add apps. that are not included with Mandrake. This can be frustrating, but if you are not dedicated to learn the syntax, then it may not be worth it for you. Most of the apps. that you need are on the cd's that you burned, if they were not already installed during the install of Mandrake. Don't expect older distros to work well as well, since you have newer hardware. I would imagine you would have problems installing Windows 95 on your system as well. Maybe you can start with what you are looking to do on your system, then we can suggest ways to go. I would also look into the live cd versions of Linux. This way you get an idea of what a typical install has, without actually doing the install yet. Kinda like a preview of Linux. Knoppix and Mepis are both good ones.

Let's start with providing a little more information. What version of Debian are you running? Woody, Sarge, Sid? In terms of horizonal and vertical rates, it depends on your monitor. You don't need exact rates, just ranges. If X did not set up the monitor correctly, then you can alter the rates in XF86Config-4 , based on what your monitor specs. say are the ranges and what is recommended. What monitor is it? Do you currently have a gui/desktop up and running?

Quote: /etc/sand.d/epkowa.conf # epkowa.conf # # examples for how to configure the SANE EPSON KOWA Backend # # SCSI scanner: # scsi EPSON # # Parallel port scanner: #pio 0x278 #pio 0x378 #pio 0x3BC # # USB scanner - only enable this if you have an EPSON scanner. It could # otherwise block your non-EPSON scanner from being # recognized. #usb /dev/usb/scanner0 usb 0x04b8 0x0118 What happens if you uncomment; usb /dev/usb/scanner0

I know nothing about SLES9, but it sounds like a permissions issue. Try the following; type "xhost localhost" in a terminal window (without the quotes). This will grants the local system rights to the X sessions. Does this work? If so, edit your .profile file in your home directory and add it. Then you will not have to enter it each time you are prompted.

This tells me quite a bit and leads me to a second question...is the hard drive in your system an ide drive or sata? Forget what you know about Windows when it comes to Linux. If you boot your system often enough Linux does a filesystem check. You will see the count on an ext2 filesystem, for example, during boot. Linux will check the integrity of the filesystem. the newer filesystems, such as ext3 and reiserfs are very efficient and automagically adjust, so defrag is not needed. I give credit where it is due...Dapper Dan has noted that with 512 mb of ram, you really don't need a swap file. You have enough memory to swap data in ram effectively. It xan be disabled in fstab. Dapper Dan also likes IceWM as a desktop GUI. I have to agree. Not all the bells and whistles, but fast and efficient. I also like Xfce. It runs many kde apps well, but is small and quick. You will see a lot of opinions from users on what they like in the "lightweight" desktops, but in your system, you should have good performance with KDE or Gnome. You have the ram and processor speed to handle them easily. KDE has improved in speed a lot with the latest releases, as well as the new kernel series 2.6. But the new kernel series is still not totally stable with all hardware yet. This will improve as the bugs are worked out. The issue in your case is hardware. The processor, hard drive rating, motherboard chipset and such. Linux also is catching up with newer hardware, such as sata and newer processors. Again, opinions will vary. I always use AMD processors, which work very well in Linux. Performance issues are likely to be related to the ability of Linux to catch up to the newest technology.

Quick answer...there is no need to defrag in Linux, as defrag, so to speak is taken care of automatically. The issue could be the amount of ram on the system, the swap file size, or the size of the partition(s) that you are using for Mandrake. So, what processor are you using" How much ram is in the system? Mandrake works well in gui mode with ram over 128 mb, usually more is better. How large is the hard drive/partition(s) that you have allocated to Fedora? Finally, what filesystem did you choose? Or, did you allow the default, or pre-format the partition(s) ahead of time?

I just tried a neat application called Ghost for Linux on one of my test boxes. Essentially, I had a 20 gig hard drive and wanted to install a 40 gig which I took out of my wife's box (yes, I got her a larger hard drive). This utility allows you to clone data bit for bit to another drive, which is useful for upgrading the ol' hard drive. It is very similar to the windows/dos based Ghost application by Symantec. I downloaded the boot iso image, which is Linux based and used it to clone the new 40 gig drive. Worked great! I am now posting from the cloned drive in Linspire. The link to G4L is located here. Philipp previously posted a news story on another project called G4U and apparently there is some controversy over who has rights for each program, or who violated who's source code. Anyway, a thought on another tool in the linux arsenal.

Assuming that your boot drive is the first master drive on the system...can you get into RedHat now at all? Dis you make a boot floppy, or can you use cd #1 in rescue mode to get into the system? If so, go to a terminal window and get root by typing... su (press enter) enter the root password as prompted (press enter) grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda (press enter) See if you then can get into RedHat to start. Ideally, you should see an entry on the grub boot svreen for your Windows install as well. If not we can go from there.

Of course, you can also try Linspire.

A couple of issues can cause the problem. First, give us some idea what hardware you have on the system, especially your video card. Install fails like this can be related to hardware issues. Are you using cdrw media (was Mandrake burned on cdrw media or cdr media)? What speed did you burn the images at, or are these official Mandrake commercial disks? Are you attempting to boot from a cdrom drive or cdrw drive? Some cdrw drives will fail to boot correctly with iso images and also older cdrom drives will fail also, especially with cdrw media burns. Are you booting directly to disk 1, or did you bring up disk 1 in Windows, then follow the prompt to reboot? If so, do not use this method, as it does not work. A word of caution. The kernel 2.6 series and NTFS partitions have issues together. If you are installing next to XP (with NTFS as the filesystem on XP), I suggest that you partition ahead of time, using a utility like PartitonMagic. Some folks are experiencing problems with installing Linux with the 2.6 kernel next to XP using the Mandrake installer. This saves headaches later on related to booting to windows after the install.

How about this article?

OK, I re-read your posts. You have Mandrake 9.1 installed now? In terms of mounting your cdrom and cdrw drives, no, usually it goes like this; mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom Where /dev/hdc is the location of the device for the cdrom and mnt/cdrom is the location to mount to. Look in the /mnt directory and see what the folders are for the cdrom and cdrw. Do you see two folders, like cdrom and cdrom1? If not you need to find what they are or make the mount points. Let us know if they are there, I can't remember what mount points are in Mandrake 9.1 by default. We can try another method, if this does not seem right. And. you need to be root user to mount any devices. So at the normal console, type; su (hit the enter key) and you will be prompted for your root password, which I hope that you remember from the install. Then you can mount the cdrom or cdrw drives. What book are you referring to?

For the sound card, try the snd-intel8x0 (AD1985 and AC97). I just found this post regarding your motherboard.

I think that martouf hit it. I have never seen such confusion with specs. before. I did a google search. The Philips site does not even list this monitor. However, I found the specs. pdf file which interestingly enough, does not give the refresh rates. Other spec. pages are conflicting. However, it is listed as recommended at 1280 X 1024 at 85 refresh rate. Another lists it as 60 mhz max. Look to see if the XF86Config-4 is set at the following; Horizontal rate = 30-97 Vertical rate = 50-160 And try lowering the refresh rate, as martouf suggested, so you have 1024 X 768 @ 75 or 70.

A simle search on google points to a bug (at least in RedHat) and xfree86 and the bios call. Any way that you can post the horiz and vertical rates that the monitor is currently set at. Is this the stock monitor that came with the Dell?

Depends on the distro that you are using and if it has the capability of reading NTFS filesystems. The support needs to be loaded via the kernel or through ntfs drivers (modules). What distro (Linux brand) and version are you running? Generally you can get read support, but write support is really still new and not perfected. So, if you wish just to see what files you have and copy them elsewhere (say to the ext2 partition) this is possible.

This is one of the problems. If you have barely enough ram for the install (graphically) then some aspects of the install will fail. The text install uses less ram and probably is why it finally completed. Also, I suspect your processor speed is an issue as well. Remember, these two hardware requirements go hand in hand.

Where did you get the iso files from?

The last that I looked, the official dvd images were only available via jigdo or Bitorrent. How are you trying to download them now? Kbear, Gftp?

OK, then where did you get the cd's from? Are they official Mandrake cd's or other? I suspect a hardware issue. What are the specs. of your system? Brand/model of cdrw drive. This may actually be the issue. System model or motherboard model Processor type and speed Amount of memory installed Are you trying to boot directly from the cd disk 1, or did you open the install disk in Windows first, get the Mandrake screen, then try to reboot with the cd in the drive? Do you have another os on the system? how did you partition the drive for Mandrake? Did you use the Mandrake partitoning utility or another package, such as PartitionMagic/

Is this a Fedora Core 1 or 2 install? One thing that I noted is that the minimum memory requirements for a graphical install of Fedora Core 2 is 192MB. Are there any other os installs on this system? Did you attempt to partition the drive with the Fedora tool during install or another partitioning package?

Go into the bios and disable sata support and see if this fixes the problem. I assume you are not running sata drive(s)?

Ahh...this is an HP system? Although you may have an Asus motherboard, HP Asus motherboards are legacy boards, which generally mean that you need to flash it with an HP updated bios. In some cases flashing with just an Asus bios works, in other cases no. On some HP systems, the bios also uses a small partition on the hard drive (hidden) to store bios data. So, all the bios information is not necessarily on the bios chip itself. Contact the bios flash company and ask about this and get some assistance. It's likely that the new bios does not like the legacy board, as it is not a true Asus retail motherboard. If I am off base about this and you installed a retail Asus motherboard in the system, let us know.

OK, let's try this. Look at the cd's that you already burned. Did you burn just the iso image on the cd, or burn the image? A properly burned iso image will result in you seeing several directories and files on the cd, NOT just the iso image file itself. Most burning software has a choice of "burning image." This is what you want. For example, in Nero, use the dropdown menu-->file-->burn image. Again, do not just burn the file to the cd. You need to burn the image, which results in a proper boot disk (for cd 1..). When burning iso files, you should use a slow burning speed, not the top rated speed of the cdrw drive. Use 4X, no more than 8X burning speed. ISO files like to be burned at a slow speed. Occassionally, the downloaded iso file is incomplete.. especially when using modem speeds to download the files. This is why each iso file has a corresponding md5sum, which allows you to verify the integrity of the iso file. You must use the iso file to burn the cd. If the already burned cd's do not work, then there is something wrong with them, so there is no use burning from bad cd's. So, post back what you have found and what cd burning software that you are using, so we can guide you better.

Rather than write another response to a similar post, I will borrow from Dapper Dan. look at this post and answer the same questions on your thread.