fezblog

Hi, If anyone has successfully got their NTL broadband connection working using Fedora I would be very grateful if they would post copies of their etho-cfg and any other relevant instructions here. My connection through my ethernet card (a Compaq card which Fedora is recognising as an Intel chip - can read its machine address so seems no compatibility problem there) and TV digibox work fine in Win98, NTL know it can work but can't provide tech. support, and I've spent about a week wrestling with redhat-config-network, etho-cfg and have also tried ppp. I know it uses dhcp, but am not sure whether only the ethernet connection is needed, or whether it counts as ADSL, since NTL also supply our phone connection and I know the connection is upload/download asymmetric. Thanks. Long Live Linux! (when I can get it to work!)

hi Maillion and all: A slightly more helpful guy at NTL broadband support did his best to help me. Basically he told me their cable broadband is not DSL, so I only have to configure the ethernet card - the default script is eth0-cfg if I remember right (still in windows for net access!) Don't have to touch ppp or the other 'wizards'. He read back to me the NIC machine address they have got, and it is the same one that Fedora is reading when I press the 'probe' button in redhat-config-network or whatever the gnome wizard is called. Its supposed to be an absolute no-brainer - tick the dhcp option and your there - and it is - in windows ! So this is the kind of persistent niggly hitch which I think will - until its ironed out - prevent most ordinary non-techie types from deserting windows in droves for Linux (Fedora at any rate) cover discs. I am persisting because thereis an open source application - OpenCyc - which I really want to run and get to grips with, and it was either run it on Linux or upgrade win98 to XP. I am really in favour of the whole open source idea, and want to get involved, but its difficult when you can't even get your net access to work through the open source desktop. I had a RedHat (6.2 I think it was) cover disc lying around for ages, and I think a lot of people would like to try it, but it really will have to be just a bit more user-friendly still to attract and keep many more mainstream users from windows as their principle (non-gaming) desktop, which I would like it to be for me. So.... the fact that you connect through a cable modem and me through a digibox (containing a modem) should not make for any difference. Apparently the ISP reads the NIC machine address of the ethernet card which was registered with them at installation and 'opens the door' for the relevant speed connection being paid for. There is one discrepancy which could be causing the problem, now I think of it. Win98 correctly labels my Compaq Netelligent 10T card in 'Network adapters', but, Fedora, while reading its hex machine address correctly, labels it as ' #Intel Corp./825578/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100]. ' I was assuming that this referred to the chip on the card, but the last bit in square brackets makes me think that perhaps it is misrecognising it as a 100Mbps card when in fact it is only 10Mbps. I wonder if this could account for the glitch, and whether its correctable?

Hi y'all! I haven't been online for a couple of days, thank you all so much for your helpful comments... I can't actually paste my automounting lines here although I have got that working now, because of my other problem - still can't get my broadband connection working through Fedora. So I can see, read and copy linux apps. and manuals I have downloaded from windows from my fat32 partitions, but I can't of course read things like my fstab file from win98. I don't know exactly why it suddenly started to work, but I think as someone suggested it was to do with leaving enough space between the items of the lines. I've just remembered what I actually did to get it working - *I copied the spacing of the cdrom automount line* when typing my hda(whatever) lines below. I had been using TAB to space the columns, but realised that the other lines used only several spaces between items - this seemed to be needed to make them work. So thank you all, and if anyone has any thoughts on my network connection problem (broadband through a NIC) I've posted it here: http://www.linuxcompatible.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1212 Thanks again to everyone.

Not yet, thanks, but I'm still trying. If anyone has successfully got fstab to auto-mount the windows fat32 partitions of their dual-boot system in Fedora Core 1.0, would you please be kind enough to post a copy of the fstab lines they are using, also, where they have created the mount point directories (I have tried sub-directories under mount, or in root under /). Thanks.

The response when i put outstream's line: dev/hd*/mnt/*** vfat defaults 0 0 (modified with my partitions and mount point/directories in place of the stars) into my fstab file was as follows on reboot of Fedora: mounting other file systems: mount: mount point vfat does not exist (three times, one response for each of my three fstab lines, then starting automount: No mount point defined I've also spent another couple of hours wrestling with redhat-config-network, trying to get my ethernet broadband connection , which works fine in windows, working, but I'll leave that for another thread when I've got more time. Thanks for your response, Maillion, I've tried the various versions of the auto-mount line with a tab between the directories and vfat, and I even tried it with a tab between /dev/hda* and /mnt/******* as well, but that didn't work either. However Fedora's response does fit with your advice so I'll have another look at it. Thanks to anyone else who may respond, it will probably be a few days before I can get back to this and plough on trying to get things set up, hopefully with a bit more advice, and I'll also try the other forums you mention Maillion, thanks.

I installed fedora 1.0 dual boot with win98se after clearing some partitions. I am a mainstream (non-techie) user who sees the advantages of linux. I considered installing Mandrake, but as it now costs to post on their official support forums, and I happened to see the 'new' community supported redhat fedora advertised on a coverdisc I thought I'd try it, as redhat are the most well-known brand. The install went smoothly, but for about a week I have been wrestling with two crucial operations which I think would be important to get clear and smooth for wider mainstream uptake. I suppose I should and will post the second - persistent difficulty in broadband internet access - in the networking forum, but this thread addresses the first. I have found different versions of how to modify fstab to automount windows partitions. I eventually found the bash shell and used mkdr so that i now have three directories/folders in my mnt directory, (then realised I could have just used Gnome, like windows explorer). My current 3 new fstab lines which I added as 'root' using gedit are according to instructions in the redhat 9 manual: /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat auto,umask=0 0 0 where in place of 'hda1' I have put three of my windows partitions as labelled in the linux hardware browser:e.g. 'hda10', and in place of 'windows', I have put the name of each directory I created as a mount point, e.g. 'a10'. On rebooting, i saw a message scroll past, something like 'vfat - no such mount point'. I'm puzzled that fedora seems to think 'vfat' in the line is a directory when I assume by its position it is meant to recognise it as a filesystem instruction, unless there is some special way of indicating this that i don't yet know about. Previously I had tried a version from redhat 7 manual, pointed to in another thread - /dev/hda1 /mnt/vfat vfat noauto,owner,users 0 0 which also did not work. I'm now going to try the version recommended by outstream above in this thread - /dev/hda1 /mnt/CDrive vfat defaults 0 0 substituting my partition and mount/sub-directory names for his 'hda1' and 'CDrive'. although I recognise that his post was a general linux instruction not specific to fedora 1. I had high hopes for fedora from reviews i had read and when it installed so smoothly, so it is a pity about these persistent glitches. After registering on the mandrake site and finding i had to pay to post support queries i reasoned that this would be a deterrent to many new linux users, as it is to me. In order to make really significant inroads on the home desktop, a linux distro, in my view, will have to a) have free installation cds widely advertised/available (or be pre-installed on home pcs - but this is unlikely because most new games are designed for windows - the 'qwerty' catch22 legacy problem) have free, friendly support available in online forums c) be smoothly/easily installed as dual boot with windows (still needed for gaming and legacy file access) partitions and d)be easily configured for internet access. Fedora core 1 fulfills a) but has so far failed to fully deliver c) and d) for me after about a week's tinkering. After searching the fedora-list archives and trying IRC #fedora without real success I found this site, and it seems to fulfill - but of course this is not exclusive to fedora and applies to all distributions/brands. Good reports of Debian, but seems a little too tech. for me, I seriously considered Mandrake which seems to be ahead in things like pre-configured auto-mounting of windows partitions, but the much more successful flotation of Redhat and its pole position as a known brand means Fedora may have one of the best chances of mainstream home user adoption if the kind of lack of clarity/simplicity which has prevented me from getting online through fedora or mounting windows partitions can be cleared up and clear configuration instructions posted in prominent places. So I will now try your fstab solution, outstream, and report back here. Sorry for the long post, but it's my first on a linux site, and i wanted to express some of the frustrations and problems of a new non-technical would be linux user.