Admiral LSD

The trouble with the Stage 2 or 3 installs (particularly if you use the GRP along with them) is that while they may save you a bit of time you'll lose a bit of the flexibility (though admittedly this'll come out in the wash in the long run as packages get upgraded and recompiled with your custom flags) that makes Gentoo such a great distro. Stage 1 may take a while (anything up to a week for me although part of that is down to having to pull the packages down through a 56k connection. I can get it down to about 3 days if I carry the distfiles over from my previous install) but you have control over virtually every aspect of the process making Gentoo second in flexibility only to Linux from Scratch.

I've seen what Linux is like beyond Red Hat and there's nothing Red Hat or Fedora can do to make me want to go back, I'd be taking too much of a step backwards.

Quote: i got nvnet to work and whatever else was in nvidia's driver suite. It seems to work fine, so I think i'll leave it until i learn a little more about upgrading the kernel and recompiling the drivers into it. At least look into upgrading the sound system to ALSA at some point, it's on a whole different planet than the nvaudio driver nVidia supply. Quote: I looked at th /boot/config file and nforcewas not set. Did I mistakingly assume that they are not compiled into the kernel? I had a look through my on 2.6 config file and the only thing I could find in it that directly related to nForce was the nForce2 I2C module which is only needed if your board has a sensor chip that connects via the SMBus. As my chip (a Winbond W83627HF) connects to the ISA bus I don't need it and have it disabled. What does need to be present is support for AMD74XX IDE controllers (nForce2 IDE support is tied up in this driver) and AGP_NVIDIA (needed if you want hardware 3D acceleration though if you have an nVidia graphics card it isn't strictly necessary). SND_INTEL8X0 support also has to be in there as well if you plan on using the onboard audio. All of this stuff should be in there requiring you to only add the nVidia LAN and whatever drivers you need for your graphics card.

The 'build' directory in the modules directory is actually a symlink that points back to the directory containing the source that was used to compile the kernel. Have you checked it and verified that it points back to the correct directory (creating it if it doesn't already exist)?

My Windows partition is only 30Gb (with the remaining 90-odd Gb divided up between my Linux /, /usr, /home and swap partitions) so it's not like I'm burning space. And even if it were the other way around I'd still format the Windows partitions as NTFS simply because it's the best filesystem for that OS. I'd be losing more formatting them as FAT32 (performance, efficiency, security and reliability) than keeping them as NTFS.

You shouldn't need to recompile, depending on how that RPM was compiled every required for nForce chipsets should already be present save the LAN and graphics drivers. Both are available on nVidia's site but you'll need to patch them before they'll compile right under 2.6. You can get the patch for nvnet here and patches for the graphics drivers here.

Quite simply FAT, in all its forms, is crap. It was designed solely for 160K floppy disks and on anything larger than that (and even on those) it's hopelessly inefficent and unreliable. I'd rather have my Windows partitions formatted in the best fs available for that OS and only have read support in Linux than subject them to the horror that is FAT just to get write support.

Kernel 2.6 is probably the best for nForce chipsets but 2.4 can be made to work just as well, especially if you're using a later version such as 2.4.22 and up. Pick whichever one you're most comfortable with: 2.6 if you're interested in compiling your own kernel or 2.4 if you don't want to worry yourself with that just yet. ALSA is probably the best bet for sound on Linux regardless of whether you're using 2.4 or 2.6 (in the latter case the decision is made for you: OSS is deprected pending its removal entirely). FreshRPMs has Fedora compatible RPMs for virtually everything you need to set ALSA up (alsa-driver, alsa-lib, alsa-utils, alsamixer and alsaplayer) but you're probably better off compiling at least the drivers yourself to overcome any kernel version matching BS in the RPMs. Compiling the drivers is as simple as downloading their source from the ALSA Project site and running the following command in a terminal as root (after first extracting them into a temporary directory, usually /usr/src, and switching to that directory): Code: ./configure --with-cards=intel8x0 --with-debug=none --with-oss=yes --with-sequencer=yes make && make install adding the following to /etc/modules.conf: Code: # nForce ALSA portion alias char-major-116 snd alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0 # module options should go here # OSS/Free portion alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0 # card #1 # nForce ALSA portion alias char-major-116 snd alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0 # module options should go here # OSS/Free portion alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0 # card #1 alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss options snd-intel8x0 mpu_port=0x330 install snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || : remove snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || :alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss options snd-intel8x0 mpu_port=0x330 install snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || : remove snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : before typing modprobe snd-intel8x0 to activate the drivers. Deciding between nvnet or forcedeth again depends on whether you're comfortable patching and compiling the kernel or not. atm forcedeth is only supplied as a kernel patch so if you're trying to avoid a recompile nvnet is probably your best bet. And finally, the same drivers nVidia supply for their regular graphics cards are also compatible with the IGP so anything that applies to them should apply to your IGP as well. You'll want to grab these if you want decent 3D performance as the stock DRI drivers tend to be fairly disappointing in this area.

What's it trying to do when it panics, can you post the lines right before the panic message?

From what I remember from the last time I tried installing Mandrake creating a swap partition is exactly the same as creating any other partition except you just have to remember to assing it the filesystem "swap" (there should be a drop down list on the dialog). I could be wrong though, it's a really hazy memory I'm dredging up here I haven't even looked at Mandrake for over a year now.

His board has the integrated IGP graphics so he'll need to install the nVidia graphics drivers eventually if he wants to get that working so you should have left it as it was

Quote: Can I use the redhat 9 rpm for fedora from nvidia's website and install it on Fedora? What about installing redhat 9 with the driver and then upgrading (if possible) to fedora? Would that work? I wouldn't use the RPMs at all, they're nothing but trouble. Download the source tarballs, making sure you have both your kernel source (for the exact kernel your running, if it's not on your distro CD have a hunt around their FTP archive) and the development packages installed before following the directions in the nVidia README file on how to compile nad install them. nForce chipsets are fairly easy to get up and running under Linux it's just a lot of people wind themselves up into a whole lot of trouble taking what they percieve to be the "easy way out."

Quote: Admiral, thanks for clarifying this for me. This is a throwback to older distrios and needing to share my data in the Win XP partition. I guess the posts that I have seen with the new distros are due to errors where the bootloader is set to, rather than trouble with the NTFS partition and the bootloader. Now that I have a new larger hard drive this will not be an issue! Since you raised it, can I change the fat32 to NTFS in XP and re-install the bootloader? NT, 2k and XP all include a command that let's you convert a FAT volume to NTFS without reformatting. The syntax is: Code: convert driveletter: /fs:ntfs I'm not quite sure if you'll need to reinstall the bootloader after this or not but if you do, I posted a method of doing this in this thread.

I dual boot Linux and XP with XP on an NTFS partition, you're crazy if you persist with FAT32 on XP (Hopefully Longhorn will kill off FAT for good). Setting up the dual boot is no different than with FAT32: Install XP first, then your Linux distro and install the bootloader on the MBR.

Do you have the kernel source (for the exact kernel you're runnin) installed? It should be either some where on your distro CDs or on SuSE's FTP archive.

Gaim is probably the best MSN replacement you'll find for Linux. You might have to fiddle a bit to get it to connect to MSN though, MS recently changed the login mechanism and while Gaim can support this it needs some external files (mainly the Mozilla NSS stuff) to do it.

What are you disabling ACPI or APIC? They are two completely different things. Try disabling APIC as well, both in the BIOS and on the kernel command line (noapic nolapic) and seeing what happens.

Looking at the README it looks like just a simple matter of running make && make install in the top level of the source tree. You only need to fiddle with the makefiles if you're building for another architecture.

You're more than likely screwed. The drivers for the nForce2 LAN interface (at least the nVidia one, there is another, a 3Com one, but only one board I know of, the Asus A7N8X Deluxe, implements it) exist either as closed source quasi-binary modules or an open-source kernel patch, neither of which are likely to be on a bootable CD capable of installing Fedora. Your best bet is either to download or otherwise aquire a full Fedora install CD and then install the nForce drivers afterward or, if you really want to install a distribution over the net, looking into attempting something like Gentoo which supplies the nVidia nvnet LAN module on at least its Stage 1 installation LiveCDs.

/usr/src/linux isn't typically a directory itself, it's a symlink pointing to the directory the kernel source is actually in. It's set up this way because the standard way of identifying kernel source trees is to name the directory they're in after the full version of the kernel (for example linux-2.6.0-gentoo-r1) and since several programs compile against the kernel sources having a standard place for them to look eliminates the hassles of having to deal with an almost unlimited number of directory names. If you're interested in moving to 2.6 it might pay to give this a read: http://www.linux.org.uk/~davej/docs/post-halloween-2.6.txt As it details what's changed, what's going to change and what's currently broken in the 2.6 kernel. Also, make sure you're running the latest version of module-init-tools (which is 0.9.15-pre4 at the time of writing) as you'll need them to be able to load modules in the new format. Once you've made all the necessary preparations it's time to actually set up the source tree for compilation. Assuming you've already downloaded the source (and if not you can grab it fairly easily from http://www.kernel.org) open a terminal (you need to be root to do most of this btw so if you're logged in as a regular user use the 'su' command to temporarily elvate you to root priveliges), switch to /usr/src (which should exist as it's a standard location for unpacked source trees on Linux systems) and then unpack the source using the following command: Code: tar jxvf /patch/to/linux-2.6.0.tar.bz2 When that's finished you need to create the linux symlink so programs that need it can find your new kernel source. You do that using the command Code: ln -s linux-2.6.0 linux At this point, the kernel source is fully installed.

You can use the commands swapon and swapoff (using the name of the swap partition as an argument) to activate and deactivate the swap space on demand but if you really want to disable it the best way is probably the comment out the swap line in /etc/fstab. That'll prevent the system from mounting and activating it at boot time.

My bet is that DMA isn't being properly enabled on his hard drive (I had this problem with early test versions of 2.6 on my ATA133 controller and "slow" was an understatement. It paused to process something as simple as a keypress). Try opening a terminal as root (Mandrake should have a root terminal somewhere in its menus) and typing hdparm followed by the designation of the drive you have Linux installed on. Since it's a notebook it most likely has only one HDD so this should be /dev/hda: Code: hdparm /dev/hda Then copy and paste the results here.

If Fedora's installation kernel won't detect your SATA controller then there's not an awful lot you can do except look for another distro with support for your controller built into its installation kernel. It would help if we knew what sort of board (and therefore controller) we were dealing with as that way we could steer you in the direction of a distro that would most likely support it.

Are you loading the relevant AGPGART module for your motherboard and the nVidia driver module before you try and start the X server? Also, has the Direct Rendering Manager been compiled out of your RPM'd kernel?

I cut my teeth on Red Hat 5.2, it's definitely one of the better RH versions, later versions got steadily crappier after that. It wasn't exactly hard either, just different (Like Linux in general really, the rewards are there but you just have to be willing to put the time and effort in to find them). I'd be surprised if you were able to find a legal source of RH Enterprise for free, as RH are positioning it as their sole Linux product now (the desktop distro has been handed over to a third party project and re-christened Fedora) and are currently asking a fair amount of money for it ($1500-2100 here in Oz, whatever that is in your money). Even if you do, it's probably overkill (unless the dual Opteron box in question is actually a server and not a workstation). Gentoo's still probably your best bet if you're looking for a no-nonsense distro for that kind of hardware.