danleff

If you are using Win XP with a NTFS filesystem, I don't know. I have seen some issues with this posted before and the bootloader. I have a fat32 Win XP system and Fedora installed on a dual boot with lilo as the bootloader, no problem. Either way, XP needs to be installed first, then Fedora. Post whether it is a fat32 filsystem with XP or NTFS and lets see what the experts say.

I updated my bios at work in order to install more memory. It is a Dell Optiplex (don't laugh), using the same process that you described. It worked flawlessly (don't tell the IT dept. that I did this). The two precautions that I suggest. Make sure it is the exact bios revision for your system. Use the tag number to search and verify that the system and update files are indeed correct. Then go into the bios and verify the update version number. I did not find a recover possibility. I too was hessitant, since, unlike award bios updates, you can't save the old file, just in case. Do not turn off the system during the update. It should prompt you to reboot, or do so atuomatically when the update is finished. By the way, I hosed my USB card setup with Flonix, but the curret version is in English. I'm going to try again, to see how I got it to wotk the first time. My bios stalls on boot when the USB stick is in the slot, have to hit reset, then it boots correctly.

What is the error message that you are getting?

Got it to work! Flonix...all kinds of issues with the included packages though. Let me look around a bit and post back. Yes, in English too!

Are you using dialup or the NIC ?

Thank you for posting the fstab, this helps seeing how RedHat mounts partitions and drives. If you are using the command line, do so as root. So type in a konsole; su (hit the enterkey) You should be prompted for your root password that you selected during the install, not your user password. Enter the password and hit the enter key. Then try the mkdir command. Then try to mount the partition command. If you on't have multiple partitions or hard drives; and only have windows installed, then it is probably hda1.

As long as you are sure that the partition is a fat32, and not NTFS, you should be able to mount the partition. Linux will not allow sharing files with Win XP, if it is an NTFS filesystem. If it is not auto-mounted (you are not able to see the partition when you click on the correct /mnt folder in the file manager), navigate to /etc/fstab in the file manager, click on the /etc/fstab file and read the cooresponding lines that have vfat as the filesystem. Then see if it has a mount point in /mnt. This will tell you which partition the vfat partition is on. Then try to mount the partition and see if you can view it in the file manager.

Darn, I was hoping that it would be Debian. I don't have ReHat on my system, so I won't pretend to know the answer. But, it looks like an X-windows issue, or having the right permissions on the gdm.conf file. Perhaps the sysadmin has an answer. However, let me ask one thing that may help clarify a point. How did you replace the gdm.conf file, copy it using the cp command in root? Renamed it from the factory name to gdm.conf?

This is indeed interesting. Assuming that the distro does not demand swap space, I'll have to try this. I know that Puppy Linux runs totally in RAM. I know that it is a sized down distro, but it does run quite fast. So, if you have enough RAM...

That's the 1,000,000 dollar question! One of my Soyo board's bios will and one won't. If you can find a bios update that allows USB booting, this is the issue. What I have been fumbling with is what the bios will accept. I will have to look into it further, but, you are correct. Some suggest that you need to set the first boot option to USB ZIP (if it is available) and some note USB HD. I have tried both with little results. I will look at my notes, try again and see what happens. I can't remember which worked until I trashed it. Either way, once I could boot to a menu, but no options worked to actually reach a command prompt or GUI. There are a few, Runt and SBlinux and Puppy, but I will let you know what happens.

What distro do you have, and what version? Debian, RedHat, Mandrake?

Of course the best way to do this is to have a fat32 partition on the hard drive set up before installing Mandrake. Then Mandrake will auto add the partition in fstab. But, use a fat32 partition for a share drive. Save all your files that you would like to share in that partition. Again, if you already have an existing fat32 partition, then you can use this. Create a directory in the /mnt directory, say share. You can either use the file manager to do this, or at a command line type mkdir /mnt/share. Make sure there is a space between mkdir and /mnt. Mount the share partition by typing in a konsole, as root user, mount -t vfat /dev/hdxx /mnt/share, where xx equals the partition that is the fat32 one. Fore example, if the fat32 partition is on the "windows" c: drive, on the third partition, then it would be hda3. If you only have one hard drive n the system, then it will be hda, (whatever the partition designation is). Use your file manager to navigate to the /mnt/share directory and your files should be visable. Setting this up automatically, if you don't have an existing partition available is a little more tricky with Mandrake, but let us know what your system has currently.

Must be the week of the "Dan's." I just got one of these myself. The goal? Make a USb rescue stick! Looking at Puppy Linux for this now..

Try this. Go to the K menu icon on the bottom left and choose terminals, then X Term. Or, use the console that you already know is there, in your case RXvt. In the konsole window type su It will prompt for a password, Type in the password for root, that you should have chosen during the install. This would be the password for root, not the user password, unless you told Mandrake to use the same pasword for root and user. then type in hdparm /dev/hda. Look for a line that says using dma = 1 (on). Note if it says on or off and post the result here. It also looks like you have 4 partitions and I wonder if swap space got initialized during the install.

The only thing that I would add to Dapper Dan´s suggestions is the defragment the windows drive before installing. This will hopefully move any fragmented files that you currently have away from the end of the partition. And yes, back-up any important data on the Win drive, just in case. The reason I asked about pre-formatting drive space, is that depending on the software/method you use to do this, I have seen installs choke.

A couple of things. Did you pre-format space on the hard drive, before the attempted install, on the hard disk? Did you burn the iso image at faster than 8X speed? What burning software did you use? Did you by chance, try to install Mandrake using a different CD drive than the one that you burned the image on? In other words, burn it on a cdrw or cd-r and use a secondary cdrom drive to try the install? I have also found that using cdrws can cause problems. Burning on a newer drive, than trying to read from an older, secondary drive can cause issues. If you did try to install with the same cdrw drive that you burned the image from, try burning the iso at a slower speed, say 4 or 8X then try the install. Use a cd-r if you originally burned to a cdrw disc.

Provided that this is Mandrake 9 or above, try this. After su into root in a konsole, then, at the konsole, type konqueror and see if you can browse your files. Remember that NTFS is read only, you can't write to NTFS in Linux.

Try posting what steps you are using to try to connect and what the exact problem or error messages are that you are receiving, so we can help to troubleshoot. Also, take a look at the FAQ at the following site which may offer some insights into the problem. http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/hcf/faq.php?PHPSESSID=eebc1e06fa11832789cb836c9fbccde8

Two possible issues. The chipset on your motherboard and the modem. Since you are new to Linux, you may want to decide how much time to put into this. The nForce chipset has drivers available for it, but this takes some patience for those new to Linux. The speed stream modem is reported to work, but again, the details are probably worthy of some time and effort. What I suggest is to do a search on this form for nforce and read the posts. If you feel comfortable with trying to get it going, then the NVIDIA drivers are available. See this link; http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.0-0261.html Then do a search of the modem on google, such as linux speed stream modem and get an idea of what it all involves. Again, from what I read, it will not work easily out of the box. I know Dapper Dan knows something about these boards and he may want to respond.

Take a look at this article; http://www.frozentux.net/kodak/

What happens when you try to login root with no password?

Take a look at the following site and see if it helps; http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/

Digital cameras get recognized as either a usb storage device, or need a frontend to gphoto to retrieve the photos, such as Digikam. This depends on how Linux recognizes the camera. Let´s try something. Make a directory in your user home directory. Name it something like pictures. Click on the camera directory, go to edit, select all, edit, copy and copy the files to the directory that you created. See if you can see the images in that directory, or click on one and see if it comes up.

Here is my take on the process. If it ain't broke, don't fix everything. 8.1 is fairly old, in Linux terms. But, if you have a computer system that is older (2 years or more), then 8.1 should meet your basic needs. I would try the system out and see if it meets your needs. If you do the online update, look for the entries in red, usually these are security and important updates, choose these. The others in black are updates of packages and the kernel. Ditto on the NVIDIA drivers. I have not done this yet, as I do not need a gamer's environment. At first, stay away from up[censored] the kernel packages and skip NVIDIA, unless you need 3D video. These are not for the faint of heart. Once you get comfortable, or feel the need to update the video drivers, you can experiment later.

Provided you allowed the ID of installation media, or through the web resources on install, you can install all the game station packages, or individual packages (games) using rpmdrake. Go to the start (K) button, choose the configuration menu, then packaging, install software. After typing in your password (root), you will get the rpmdrake window. Choose install packages. When the screen comes up, pick the right arrow next to workstation on the left software area and check the game station box. Or, choose the individual games dropdown by clicking on the side arrow to the left of the game station choice. This will give you the list of available games.