Frequently Asked Questions and How To's Latest Topics

How to report bugs to Mandriva

Wed, 16 May 2007 21:39:34 +0000

All information on bugreporting to Mandriva can be found here and also here.

Please remember to examine the bug-database first in order to reduce the number of duplicate bug-reportings.

CL-09: Compiling C or C++ Programs

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:33:17 +0000

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CL-09: Compiling C or C++ Programs

It is undeniable that the success of the Free/Libre/Open-Source Software movement has largely been due to GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection. Since Richard Stallman -- the founder of GNU -- released The GNU C Compiler to the world in the late 1980s, it has seen many improvements; the support for many many more languages, and a plethora of architectures.

After reading this FAQ, you should be able to:

Compile C and C++ programs
Get the compiler to warn you about stupid mistakes
Link your programs with the required libraries.
And finally, optimise your binaries.

This FAQ will not cover the C or C++ languages, they require their own book!

The Compilation Process

For compiling C and C++ programs, there are two separate compilers to use,

gcc and g++, respectively.

Using the famous 'Hello, world!' example (in C) -- hello.c:

#include 
#include 

int main(void)
{
   printf("Hello, world!\n");
   return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

We would compile this file into a binary, named 'hello', with the command:

 gcc hello.c -o hello

This command calls 'gcc,' specifying an input file (you can of course have more than one of these 'translation units'), and an output file -- specified after the -o flag -- called 'hello'.

Similarly, in C++ -- hello.cc

#include 

int main(void)
{
   std::cout << "Hello, world!" << std::endl;
   return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

We would compile this file into a binary, named 'hello', with the command:

 g++ hello.cc -o hello

Very simple, don't you think?

Mistakes, and how to catch them

We all make mistakes, there's no doubt about that, so having a good way to catch them can make our lives a lot easier. gcc and g++ both provide facilities to do this, the use of a few compiler flags.

Both gcc and g++ accept the following flags

-W
-Wall
-ansi
-pedantic

-W will enable warnings to help protect you against common mistakes.

-Wall will enable extra warnings, if you like.

-ansi Will make the compiler reject most features that are not part of the ISO C90 standard (By default GNU extensions are enabled.)

-pedantic Will ensure strict conformance to ISO C90, giving no mercy for non-standard features.

It is typically a good idea to use all of these flags when compiling your programs, they really do help you discover many possible problems with your code. More information can be found within the gcc man page ('man gcc').

To link, or not to link, that is the question

If you ever want to make any interesting programs, it is likely that you will need to use the linker to link with the libraries of the APIs that you make use of. GCC provides two main facilities to do this.

-l
-L

Quite intuitive indeed, but what's the difference?

-l will search in the default directories for lib.so

-L can be used to give an absolute path to the library you want to use, or to add another directory for gcc to search in.

A very common usage of -l is to link with the math library in C and C++ programs that use functions from the header and respectively.

To link such a program with the math library, assuming a source file 'program.c', one would issue the command:

gcc program.c -o program -lm

Easy as that!

Optimisation, the double-edged sword?

gcc and g++ are optimising compilers, they can be used to increase the speed or size of your compiled binaries. Typically, code that you will be debugging should disable optimisation, but in release-code, you will probably enjoy its benefits.

Enabling optimisation is a simple matter, all we need to do is pass an -O (Capital 'Oh'), which has a few main variants.

-O0, The default, optimisation-less compile, this is redundant.

-O1, Basic optimisation.

-O2, More optimisations enabled - this is probably the most-used.

-O3, Even more optimisations.

-Os, Size optimisations, this may decrease the size of the output binary.

Of course, specific details of these optimisations can be found in the gcc man page.

I hope you've enjoyed the FAQ, feel free to ask me any questions if you have trouble.

What does ... mean?

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 22:17:05 +0000

ALSA

The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI functionality to the Linux operating system. Refer to http://www.alsa-project.org/ for more information.

Anaconda

Anaconda is the installation program mainly used with Fedora Core /Red Hat based dstributions. During installation, Anaconda identifies and configures the system's hardware, and creates appropriate file systems. Anaconda also allows the user to install the operating system software on the system. Optionally, it upgrades existing e.g. Red Hat Linux, Fedora, Vidalinux (and other) installations. Anaconda runs in a fully interactive text or graphical mode, or in a kickstart mode, which allows the owner or administrator to automate installation for unattended operation. Refer to http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/anaconda-installer/ for more information. Anaconda requires at least 64 MB RAM on your system

apt

The apt (Advanced Package Tool) utility is a dependency tool developed for use with Debian Linux dpkg packages. The apt-rpm utility extends apt for use with RPM packages. There are many alternatives to apt like yum, urpmi or packman.

BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing which downloads from multiple channels at once. Refer to http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ for more information.

Bugzilla

Bugzilla is an online database for recording flaws, or bugs, in software, documentation, and other projects. When you encounter a problem with a Linux distribution like Mandriva, you can help the community fix the problem by making a record in Bugzilla. This procedure is called "entering a bug."

CPU

The Central Processing Unit, or CPU, is the "brain" of a computer. The rest of the computer is organized around the CPU, so people often refer to computer systems by the type of processor inside. Examples of CPUs include Duron, Athlon, Transmeta, Pentium-4, Athlon64, and PowerPC.

cron

The cron system executes automatic jobs on behalf of the system or an individual user on a schedule. An example of a system cron job might include running an update manager nightly to update the system.

CUPS

The Common UNIX Printing System, or CUPS, is a cross-platform printing solution for all UNIX-type environments, including Linux and Macintosh OS X. It is based on the Internet Printing Protocol and provides complete printing services to most printers. CUPS drivers are available at http://www.cups.org/windows/ which allow Windows systems to use printers shared from Linux systems. Refer to http://www.cups.org/ for more information about CUPS.

eth0

The eth0 name represents the first discovered Ethernet interface in a Linux system. If your Mandriva system has more than one such interface, the others will be numbered eth1, eth2, and so on.

Ethernet

Ethernet is the most common type of network technology for small computer networks.

ethtool

The ethtool utility is a Linux network driver diagnostic and tuning tool for a Linux 2.4 or later kernel. The ethtool utility obtains information and diagnostics related to media, link status, driver version, bus location, and more.

ext3

The ext3 file system is a method of organizing data on storage devices. It is based on the older but still vital ext2 Linux file system. Most users do not need to understand file system internals because Linux translates this system into understandable concepts such as files and folders. Refer to http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/, however, for more information on ext2 and ext3.

FAQ

A FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. It will help you feeling comfortable with your new operating system.

FDL

The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) is a means of ensuring freedom for program documentation. As is the case with all freedoms, the FDL carries both rights and responsibilities. You have the right to modify and redistribute FDL materials, or create other works based on them. You then have the responsibility of licensing any such material under the FDL as well. In this fashion the FDL guarantees that documentation cannot be made less free by a recipient.

FHS

The File Hierarchy Standard, or FHS, is a collaborative document that defines the names and locations of many files and directories on a Linux system. The FHS also sets standards for the types of files that should inhabit specific system directories. Refer to http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ for more information about the FHS.

fsck

The fsck utility is a command line tool used to check and repair file systems. It is normally used with Linux file systems such as ext3, but also has the ability to make repairs on some Windows file systems.

fsh

Remote command execution via a cryptographically strong method such as lsh or ssh is often slow, especially if either of the involved computers is slow. The process is slow because the client and the server must perform a series of complex calculations during connection establishment.

The fsh utility uses lsh or ssh to establish a secure tunnel to the remote system. This process takes as long as a normal connection establishment. Once the tunnel is established, however, fsh reuses it to start new sessions on the remote system almost instantaneously. With this process, fsh combines the security of ssh and the speed of rsh.

GIMP

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program and the most widely used image manipulating software in Linux. The GIMP is graphics software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The GIMP will read and write graphics files in a variety of formats, including JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF. It will also import some proprietary image formats from other graphics programs. Refer to http://www.gimp.org/ for more information about the GIMP.

glibc

The GNU C library, or glibc, is used as the C library in Fedora. Most software programs for your system rely on glibc for basic common functions. Refer to http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/libc.html for more information about glibc.

GNOME

GNOME is the short name for the GNOME Desktop, a product of the GNOME Project. GNOME is a complete, free and easy-to-use desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems and the default desktop in systems like Fedora, Ubuntu or Novell. It is also a powerful application development framework for software developers. GNOME provides a complete set of human interface guidelines, which means that GNOME strives to have a consistent look and feel for all its applications. Read more about GNOME at http://www.gnome.org/.

GNU

GNU is an acronym that stands for "GNU's Not UNIX," and is pronounced "guh-NOO." GNU was originally intended to be a complete UNIX-like operating system. It has become a broader term describing free software licensed under the GPL. Because the kernel and much of the other software in a Linux system are licensed under the GPL, many people call that system GNU/Linux.

GnuPG (GPG)

GnuPG, the GNU Privacy Guard, is a complete and free replacement for PGP, Pretty Good Privacy. GnuPG software allows you to digitally sign or encrypt data using public key encryption methods. GnuPG is OpenPGP compliant, so data signed or encrypted by GnuPG can be exchanged with almost any computer user. Refer to http://www.gnupg.org/ for more information about GPG.

GPL

The GNU General Public Licence, or GPL, is a software license designed to preserve users' rights to share and modify software. The GPL does this by restricting anyone from denying you those rights. Use of software is usually subject to the terms under which it is licensed. Many software licenses restrict you from copying, sharing, or even examining the software they cover. The terms of the GPL, however, allow you very broad rights to share, modify, and redistribute software. In return the GPL requires you to give others those rights if you share the results. The GPL encourages software programmers to learn and contribute to each other's work. Refer to http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses/gpl.html for more information about the GPL. For a FAQ about the GPL, refer to http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html.

GRUB

The GNU GRand Unified Boot Loader, or GRUB, is a program which enables the user to select an operating system or kernel to boot. It also allows the user to pass arguments to the kernel. Refer to http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ for more information about GRUB.

i386 (i486, i586, i686)

The entire set of computer processors that are compatible with the Intel x86 platform, including Intel Pentium and Celeron, AMD Athlon and Duron, and VIA C3 CPUs, are commonly referred to as i386. The i386 term is often used as shorthand for the distribution set of files meant for this line of computers or processors. Just like i386, i486, i586 and others are a reference to the architecture type of processors and corresponding software. Some systems can run from i386 upwards (very compatible), while some systems require at least an i586 processor (like a Pentium II, thus limited compatibility).

Instant messaging, or IM, is a real-time, text-based form of communication. You can use IM to have conversations with individuals or groups. America Online, an Internet service provider, popularized IM in the 1990's, but many other providers such as Yahoo and Google offer similar services. Most distributions have programs such as gaim that allow you to use IM to communicate with other Internet users.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics illustration program. It uses SVG as the default file format. For more information about Inkscape, refer to http://www.inkscape.org/.

XD-04: Konqueror FAQ

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 13:26:13 +0000

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XD-04: Konqueror FAQ

This FAQ will introduce you to some of the neat features available in Konqueror, the KDE Web Browser and File Manager.

I will be discussing Konqueror 3.4, found in KDE 3.4, so if you have an older version some of the features discussed here may not be available to you.

Tabs

Tabs are the greatest thing since sliced bread, they can make browsing multiple pages at the same time simple, and at the same time keep them all easily accessible; another bonus is that they use less memory than opening a new window.

There are three ways to open a new tab:

Click on the "Location" button on the menubar at the top of the screen and then select "New Tab".
Click on the "Window" button on the menubar and then select "New Tab".
Press Ctrl+Shift+N

Split Views

Yet another great innovation, this feature allows you to look at multiple pages in the same tab (If you were wondering, you cannot make more tabs inside a split view.)

You can split views Left and Right or Top and Bottom.

To do this, click on the "Window" button on the menubar at the top of the screen and then select "Split view Left/Right" or "Split view Top/Bottom" to split the view however you want to, as many times as you wish.

The Navigation Panel

Last, but certainly not least, I will discuss the Navigation Panel, a feature that you are likely to find useful.

To Show/Hide the navigation panel, click on the "Window" button on the menubar at the top of the screen and then select "Show Navigation Panel" or "Hide Navigation Panel", or just press F9.

Let the fun begin! You will find tabs here showing:

Your Bookmarks
System Devices
Your Browsing History
Your Home Folder
The Sidebar Media Player
FTP archives and web sites
Your Root Folder (A tree view of the filesystem).

And the last tab is worth a bit more discussion.

Here you will find a highly useful "Audio CD Browser," that you can use to extract music from your CDs to both WAV (Uncompressed) and OGG (Compressed) files; it even downloads the name of each track for you from an online database (freedb).

There are also several browsers:

A device browser
A font browser
A LAN Browser
A print system browser, which displays connected printers, current jobs, and so on.

Of course, there is always more to find in the "Konqueror Handbook" which you can access through the Help menu, or by just pressing F1.

Access Keys

Access keys are a feature that can potentially speed up your web-browsing (Note that I'm now using 3.5, this may not apply to 3.4).

Pressing the right or left 'Ctrl' key while browsing will enable the use of access keys. Access keys map keys on the keyboard to all the hyperlinks contained in a page, so if you press a key associated with a link, Konqueror will follow it.

Vi(m) Movement Keys

Vi(m) fans may be pleased to know that the vim movement keys, h, j, k, and l can be used for navigation around websites. For those that are not practicioners of Vi(m), these keys correspond to the following movements:

h - left (it is the key on the left.)
j - Down (sort of looks like an arrow down.)
k - Up
l - Right (it is the key on the right.

I hope you enjoyed this FAQ and most of all that you learned something, thanks.

SI-04: How To build your own Live CD with mklivecd

Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:01:37 +0000

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SI-04: How To build your own Live CD with mklivecd?

Step 1

Install a 'basic' Mandrake 9.2 (individual package selection, concentrate on one DE) on a separate partition. Or as the only OS on your PC, does not matter. You will need a ~5 GB partition. And a swap partition, you can use your already existing swap. 250 MB should be fine. Create one user with a password, and root of course. If you have a multi-boot box, tell the installer to write lilo to /, not to the mbr. Modify your lilo in your main install to call lilo in your new partition. Or do what you use to do in this case ;-)

Step 2

Boot your fresh MDK. Run immediately menudrake - and choose menustyle - second choice: mandrake menu. Save it. Now you won't get the menu bug and you don't have to install all these updates.

Get the following rpm's from a mdk 9.2 contrib mirror:

kernel-tmb-2.4.22.21
busybox
cloop-utils

Get the latest stable cvs version of mklivecd (mklivecd-0.5.7-0....noarch.rpm) here:

http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfi...p?group_id=1149

Install the kernel on the new partition. Urpmi or MCC. Uninstall the old kernel, dito. Reboot and make sure everything is ok. I had no problems. Install the rpms busybox, cloop and mklivecd on your new partition.

Step 3

Remove all stuff using mcc-softwaremanagement, that you don't need. Hints: python, gimp etc. Don't remove the gnome-libs, mdk config tools need them. Check in a terminal how big your used space is:

# df

Hint: clean /usr/share/doc and /usr/share/man and /usr/share/wallpapers (~200 MB)

Install additional stuff from contrib and plf etc.
You iso should have a maximum of 700 MB to fit on a cd. Your used space should be < 1,7 GB. The compression rate is ~ 41 %

Step 4

Make your desktop look nice. Configure everything - your live cd will look and behave almost exactly like your installed system. Don't forget to clean your browser cache, the cookies, your trash can ... stuff in your home dir, or the add. rpm's.

Once again:

# df

Step 5

Open a terminal, su to root :

# mklivecd --help

Here you'll find all options to run the script.

Most simple is:

# mklivecd .iso  (where  is your choice)

This will create an iso file in your current directory.

This is what I am using:

# mklivecd --verbose --keyboard=de --fstab=rw,auto --splash=no rainbow.iso

Explanation:

--verbose

You can see, what the script is doing. Very nice!
--keyboard=de

Default is the US layout, so this is my keyb for the live cd.
--fstab=rw,auto

Default creates the script a fstab without mounting the partitions on the hd. This option creates a fstab with read-write mounted partitions, Windows and Linux part., exception NTFS (you have to mount it manually to an already set mount point)
--splash=no

This will create a live cd without the Mandrake bootsplash and the background while booting. I've set it this way to get rid of it. When you have your own bootsplash theme, and you want to use it, dont set this option. Default is with bootsplash.
rainbow.iso

This is the name of the iso file, that the script creates. Your choice.

There are many options you can use like: writing the iso to a different partition, excluding dirs and files from the creation, using a different /tmp dir for the whole process ... One of the most interesting is: you can install the script to your *main* OS and not into the new partition, so you would build the iso from 'outside'. But I am not familiar with it.

How long does it take: on a P4, 2 Ghz with 256 MB RAM and a swap of 250 MB it took me 7 minutes to create a 230 MB iso from a used space of ~600 MB.

Step 6

Burn the iso - to a cd-rw (or cd-r). Or copy it to a different partition where you have your burning application.

Step 7

Boot your cd. And tell us about it.

SE-03: Using applications needing root privileges

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:22:15 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [SE: Security, firewalls...]

SE-03: How do I safely allow regular users to use utilities requiring root privileges?

If you happen to have the need to allow regular system users to use privileged utilities, you usually have the following routes laid for you:

[1] Make the user member of the group owning the utility.

While this is the easiest way, this is also not recommended as it is the most unsafe practice. Say for example that you need to allow a the user 'juan' to have the rights to start/stop the web service in the box. This means that the user needs to be able to execute the scripts located in /etc/init.d/ and those scripts are owned by the group 'root'. If you made 'juan' a member of the group 'root' then you virtually gave the user access to all utilities owned by the group which is not wise.

[2] Use the setuid/setgid bit of the utility.

Setuid is a file permission bit that allows the binary to be run using the permission of its owner. Setgid is its counterpart for group ownership. This means that if the useradd utility has its setuid bit set and an ordinary user executes it then it will be executed under the privileges of root.

How can this be dangerous? It is only dangerous if the utility with setuid has been found to have a bug that is exploitable to gain access to your machine.

For more information about setuid/setgid, you can refer to this

webpage.

[3] Use the sudo package to grant specific users access to privileged utilities.

While this is not an end-all solution, the approach taken by sudo is by far the safest of the three options because it refers to a configuration file that dictates which user has access to which utilities. MandrakeSecure has an excellent tutorial on how to use sudo effectively.

IM-15: How do I make my NTFS partition writable?

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:03:34 +0000

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IM-15: How do I make my NTFS partition writable?

In a nutshell, you can but support for NTFS writing in Linux is still marked as experimental. Refer to this FAQ entry for more information.

WM/DE-05: Fluxbox

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 09:15:52 +0000

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WM/DE-05: Fluxbox

Original html version, for those who are interested. This board one is the same thing cept it went through find and replace for formatting.

http://aslan.no-ip.com/~iphitus/iphitusv3/fluxbox.php

Unofficial Fluxbox FAQ

Making Fluxbox easy

----------------------------

This FAQ applies to the current development series of Fluxbox, it was written using 0.9.10. If you dont have the developmental series you will find that many answers here will not help you. To find out what version of fluxbox you have, open a command line and write:

fluxbox -version

0.1.14

This is the current "stable" version of fluxbox. It is no longer maintained. This is now out of date, it was released in late 2002, and I recommend you update to the latest in the 0.9.x (0.9.9 at writing) series.

0.9.x

This is the current development series of fluxbox. This is much much more feature rich than the older 0.1.14 series and is what I cover throughout this FAQ. It has newer features such as, transparency, pixmap themes, extra theme options as well as many many new additions to functionality, and speed. The 0.9.x series in my opinion, and in my experience, is more stable than the venerable 0.1.14 release. This is currently not considered the official stable release as it lacks in some documentation, translations, still has a handful of bugs to squash and new features to add.

How do I set my wallpaper?

To set wallpapers in fluxbox, you need to use a special tool. Open up the command-line and type

fbsetbg /path/to/wallpaper.jpg

fbsetbg doesnt set the wallaper itself, it uses other programs to set it for you. The purpose of fbsetbg, is to pick the most appropriate program available to set the wallpaper. Not all wallpaper setters support transparency, so fbsetbg picks ones that support transparency over others. If you find that transparency is not working, do a fbsetbg -i and it will tell you if the wallpaper setter you have available doesnt support transparency.

Replace "/path/to/wallpaper.jpg" with the location of the image you want to set as the background. fbsetbg has an array of options, and they are passed:

fbsetbg -fctial /path/to/wallpaper.jpg

The main options you can pass to fbsetbg are below, you only need to pass one:

-f - Set fullscreen wallpaper

-c - Set centered wallpaper

-t - Set tiled wallpaper

-a - Set wallpaper maximised with preserved aspect.

-i - Tell the user the program it is using to set the wallpaper and any pitfalls it might have.

-l - Set last wallpaper

WM/DE-02: KDE

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 16:58:48 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [WM/DE: Window Managers and Desktop Environments]

WM/DE-02: KDE

KDE is a desktop environment; the K Desktop Environment to be specific. The K can mean anything you want it to mean, Killer, Kruddy, Krazy, etc. As was explained in WM/DE-01 (add link when moved) desktop environments provide much more functionality than simple window managers.

Rather than convince you why KDE is the DE for you we'll attempt to help you decide for yourself by aiding you in the installation and configuration. What you use it for, and whether you even use it or not, is totally up to you :D

Installation

Installing kde via Mandrake's rpms is a simple task.

Just open up rpmdrake as root and type in kde in the Search bar and hit the Search button.
You can then chose which apps you'd like to install individually.
To instead install everything at once do the following command as root
```
urpmi kdeutils kdeaddons kdemultimedia kdeadmin kdeartwork kdegraphics kdebase kdenetwork kdepim
```
urpmi will do its thing and take care of the necessary dependencies
If you'd rather take build kde from source (which I recommend) check out this page: http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/obennett/html/d...build-kde3.html

Configuration

KDE is known for its configurability (and awesome eye candy but we'll get to that later) because they realize that not all users are the same and will probably want to change the default to suit themselves. KControl is the main method of configuring your KDE setup

First thing I usually change are the Icons and Fonts. Crystal's cool and everything but I'm in Nuvola mode for the forseeable future ;-) And as for helvetica... no comment, it might come out wrong.

There is an automated app in the form of the Desktop Settings Wizard which allows you to quickly personalize a new installation of KDE.

To run it press [Alt]+[F2] to get a Run... box, then enter kpersonalizer.

Using the Desktop Settings Wizard is a good way to attempt to get back to normalcy if your settings happen to go haywire while "tweaking" the desktop to your liking.

It's possible to modify your mouse theme from the KDE Control Center.

All you have to do is untar themes into your ~/.icons. I've no idea why this isn't ~/.cursors but I've long since given up trying to make sense of what developers do.

You can also install the cursor_themes package if you have a contrib repository among your urpmi sources. These mouse themes will be available globally (to all users) instead of locally.

To change the cursor theme open up the KDE Control Center and go to Peripherals > Mouse. Choose the Cursor Theme tab and select from a theme.

If you then put your cursor over the section where the cursor previews you will get a live preview of how each cursor behaves, animations included.

You can also configure the current resolution of the desktop or the resolution you want KDE to start up with. These options are present under Peripherals > Display.

Some people may want to change the default browser from konqueror o_0

You can do this by going to Components/KDE Components > File Associations > text > html and adding the browser or moving it to the top of the list. Whichever browser is at the top of the list becomes the default.

Newer versions of KDE have a Component Chooser which makes it easier to change the default browser. It's in KDE Components > Component Chooser

In KDE 3.3.0 the KDE control center has a module for scpecific window settings in Desktop -> Window-Specifc Settings. It's not to look at by default but becomes useful after you've saved window settings there. I'll use KSensors as an example of how to set this up.

My current desktop setup looks like this

If you look to the right you see that the Kasbar (pager thing in top right of the screen) doesn't take up the whole of the screen. I decided to use ksensors to fill up that space but it didn't turn out quite right at first.

pretend image is here...

So then I removed the window border/decorations by doing [Alt]+[F3] -> Advanced -> No Border and resized using [Alt]+[F3] -> Resize. Kasbar doesn't like it's space being invaded so to move the ksensors window in the space under it I used the [Alt]+drag technique to move the window. The end result was this.

pretend image is here...

Now that I have it how I want it's time to save the settings. [Alt]+[F3] -> Advanced -> Special Window Settings.... I chose the Use window class (whole application) option at first.

In the window that pops up I went the Geometry tab and selected the Position and Size options. I selected Apply Initially in the dropdown boxes. Then I hit OK and thought I was finished. I quit KSensors and restarted to check that everything was ok and got this:

pretend image is here...

As you can see it's not quite what I'd expected. I had forgotten about the border settings and the position was a bit off (told you Kasbar didn't like to share). And worse, even though you can't see it the all ksensors windows were in the same position at the same size. Definitely not optimal.

I went back to the Desktop -> Window-Specific Settings in the control center and started modifying things. I went to the Window Extra tab and under Window title: chose Exact Match in the dropdown box. Then I moved on the the Geometry tab. Apply Initially didn't seem to be what I wanted so I chose Remember. Moving right along I went to the Preferences tab and clicked on the No border option and chose Force. Everything seemed in order so I click on OK, Applied the settings in the control center, and restarted ksensors.

It still looked like it did in the previous shot, but now the setting only applied to the sensors window specifically. The Window title: setting in the Window Extra tab was the only one that worked as expected :-(

I went back to the control center and started modifying the window settings again. This time I chose Force for the Position and Size entries in the Geometry Tab. When I went to the Preferences tab I saw that I had forgotten to select the radio button beside the Force option and did so. Hit OK, Apply, restart ksensors again and...

Pretend there's a picture here...

Voila! Exactly what I'd wanted. Awesomeness. It takes a bit of playing around (took me more than 3 times to get this) but it does work.

There endeth the configuration section but stick around a while, there's more yet to come.

Themation

Theming in KDE is pretty simple. Want to install an Icon Theme? Download the zip or tarball (tar.bz2 or tar.gz) file that it's provided in and blaaaaaaaaaahhhh...

Styles, themes and KDE specific (and not so specific) backgrounds for KDE can be found at KDE-Look.org. How's that for redundancy?

SuperKaramba/Karamba themes can also be found at at kdelook. It's good stuffs (sic).

Useration

This section will be filled in by you, the user :D

Just like the K in KDE, it can be anything you want it to be. Ciao.

IM-03: How do I get more software for Mandrake?

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 04:02:03 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [IM: Installing and Configuring Mandrake]

IM-03: How do I get more software for Mandrake Linux?

::::Finding sources::::

Urpmi Sources are mirrors of the MandrakeLinux's ftp tree. To add extra sources to urpmi you have to find mirrors.

You can get a list of mirrors by going to the Easy Urpmi Webpage

::::Adding sources using the command-line::::

You can do all this using the command line and like most things done on the command-line/console it is usually faster.

The syntax for adding sources a la console is

urpmi.addmedia name_of_source url_of_source  with  hdlist_of_source

Using the Easy Urpmi Webpage makes adding sources from the command line really simple. All you have to do is:

1. Read the directions on the webpage. They are quite easy to follow and the information on this page will not always be up to date.

2. Select your operating system.

3. Select an architechture (the default is what most will use).

4. Select a mirror for each source which is close to you. Most people will want to add contrib and plf sources. Jpackage contains rpms of java programs.

5. Paste in the text which appears in the box below 3) Type this in a console as root

As an example I'll show you the sources I've added using the console method.

These are cooker sources which are unstable. I did this to make sure that no one just tries to copy this word for word. Using a little grey matter is a good thing sometimes :)

1. Log in as root by typing

su

in a console, then entering the root password

urpmi.addmedia jpackage ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/Mandrakelinux/devel/cooker/i586/media/jpackage with media_info/hdlist.cz

3. Now logout of root by typing

exit

I've just added a source using the console. But wait... there's more :)

::::Adding sources using a GUI::::

It's a relatively easy task to get more free software for your Mandrake Linux box once you know what to do.

Unless you're in the Mandrake Club, there are 2 main rpm-based resources available to you for use:

2) PLF RPMs

3) Contrib RPMs

These two sources should give you the oppurtinity to add things like DVD players, DVD rippers, extra games and artwork to you Mandrake Linux box which for one reason or another could not be added to the official discs.

We will now look at how to add these sources using graphical utilities. The first thing you will need to do is open up the Mandrake Control Center. It will be in your menu under Configuration or on your menu panel. UPDATE ME

1. Once open, click on the Software Management icon.

2. Then click on Software Sources/Media Manager.

You will now have to find add urls to describe the path to you new rpm resources. I usually add http sources because I find them to be faster. You have the option of adding either http or ftp servers. I'll show you how to add both.

3. Click the Add...

The "URL" will be

http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/linux/distributions/mandrake/9.1/rpms/

and the "Relative path to synthesis/hdlist" will be

./hdlist.cz

4. Click Ok and wait for the sources to be added to the urpmi database. If all goes well (check for typos) you will have just finished adding your first unofficial source. Next we will do ftp sources for plf and contrib packages.

5. Click on Add... For ftp servers a login and password can be added if necessary. We won't use any servers which require that here.

Let's do plf first so for the "Name" you can put

plf

The "URL" will be

ftp://plf.time4t.net/pub/plf/9.1/i586

and the "Relative path to synthesis/hdlist" will be

../hdlist.cz

*Note that there are two dots before the slash this time.*

Again click Ok and wait for the source to be added to the urpmi database.

6. Finally we will add our contrib source, again from ftp. The "Name" will be

contrib

The "URL" will be

ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrake/9.1/contrib/RPMS

and the "Relative path to synthesis/hdlist" will be

../../i586/Mandrake/base/hdlist2.cz

Click Ok one last time and wait for the source to be added to the urpmi database.

Congratulations, you are now able to download software from all these sites using Rpmdrake or the urpmi command.

::::Advanced Tricks::::

Here you'll learn a couple of tricks which are best and I think only possible with the command line. First is adding gpg keys.

Rpmdrake has a security feature which asks you if you want to install which does not have a recognized gpg signature.

On the main plf page is a neat little trick to import their gpg key into the root user's keyring. To download and install the plf gpg key go to this link for instructions : http://plf.zarb.org/packages.php

Another useful trick is trying to find out which mirrors are close to you so that you can get the best download speeds. The closeness of a mirror isn't the only factor influencing downloads (how many other people are downloading is also a factor) but it's a factor that is easily determined. To do this we will need the traceroute command.

If you don't have it installed:

1. Open up a console and login as root

urpmi traceroute

3. Once installed you use traceroute like so

traceroute url_without_http_or_ftp_prefix

traceroute plf.time4t.net

My rule of thumb is that, "the mirror which takes the least number of hops to get to you is the closest." The "hops" are numbered so it is pretty easy to figure them out.

Oh yeah, before you forget, log out of root :)

Want to know some mirrors so the you can find out how close they are?

Go to the Easy Urpmi Webpage and check out the different mirrors there or go to the Mandrake Linux download page http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3

WM/DE-04: XFCE

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 19:30:37 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [WM/DE: Window Managers and Desktop Environments]

WM/DE-04: XFCE

Many, many thanks to Andrewski for this FAQ

Many Gnomers are disillusioned with the bloated look and performance of 2.8. Xfce, while not a replacement in all respects, is a worthy successor; it is much more modular and is quite zippy!

Basic Configuration and Installation

(Note: I don't know of a location for 4.2 beta RPMs.)

The best way to find Mandrake RPMs for Xfce is to install from Charles Edwards's site: http://www.eslrahc.com. If you get a chance, thank him for his contribution! (Xfce used to be in the Mandrake main repository but, for some reason, is no longer.) See the RPM tutorial on this site for how to add a collection (like this one) to your urpmi database.

A note on which RPMs to install: Similar to Gnome, not all packages available are necessary. There are plenty of plugins for the panel that, mostly because I use GKrellM, I have never wanted to install. Also, there is a session control program that I also don't like; I prefer to have Xfce start up by opening my symlinks in my autostart folder (something its default xinitrc does for you). It means one less program running and one less system tray icon.

Once you have the repository set up, you can just `urpmi xfce` and the dependencies will be calculated for you.

Basic Setup

Most of the basic setup involves the startup script. Instead of editing the "standard" xinitrc, Xfce uses a script to launch its own xinitrc. By default, the script reads from a global file (somewhere like /etc/.../xfce4/xinitrc). The basic setup it provides is OK, but probably has some things you don't want and misses others you do. So, copy that one to ~/.xfce4/xinitrc. (The script will then execute your user's file before it tries to execute the global one.) Make sure it is executable! (chmod u+x xinitrc); otherwise, it will not be run and the global one will be executed as a fallback (a known bug that won't be fixed until the 4.2 release). Once it's copied, you can open it up in your favourite editor and customise to taste. Most of the commands are commented fairly well so you know what's happening when, but a few additional notes thereon:

You can change the path to your ~/Desktop/Autostart folder if you choose; I much prefer ~/desktop/.autostart so my folder is hidden and so I don't have any folders with caps.

Don't put any commands after the xfce4panel section or they won't get executed; the panel is the controlling application, i.e. killing it kills your Xsession. Thusly and therefore, it is the last command executed.

Once you have it customised to taste, the included script to start is startxfce4 (in xfce4-utils). I suggest, even if you normally use a DM to log in, that you use this script the first few times to catch any output, error or otherwise, that your xinitrc will give. I use the following command to do so, which will catch the standard output as well as the error output and output it to a file xfce.log in my home directory:

startxfce4 &> ~/xfce.log

You'll get output from your X server and from Xfce, so not all is applicable (but that is a good way to debug your X output, if you haven't already!).

The RPMs should automagically add Xfce to your display managers, so once you start it up it should already be listed in the available sessions.

Theming

Xfce is good. It utilises GTK themes for widgets, since it's pretty good-looking and since there is already a large user base contributing to the themes (from Gnome). Thusly, you can find any GTK theme you like and download it (or use the one you used to use in Gnome). Unzip it to ~/.themes/ (or at least provide therein a symlink to the appropriate folder where the theme resides). It will then be available for selection in the Settings -> User Interface. (Make sure you have the appropriate GTK engine installed for the theme you choose! otherwise it will just look plain.)

If screenshots are important to you, then here are some that showcase the actual features of Xfce:

http://www.xfce.org/index.php?page=screenshots

http://xfce.lindesign.se/db/viewtopic.php?t=171

I'm not going to duplicate information that's already out there, especially if this hasn't sold you yet. So here are some good resources for the Xfce user, or if you'd just like to read more about it:

Xfce homepage

Xfce Documentation - Though lacking in some cooler tricks, it covers the basics for everything

Xfce forum - Has some good information; peruse the archives!

Xfce Goodies - Plugins and such.

I particularly recommend the forum since, not to toot my own horn but, I'm a moderator there (same username) and I try to answer all the questions. Our userbase is still small enough that this is feasible. :)

Updated 11/09/04

NT-06: How-To set up Samba Networking

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 20:31:47 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [NT: Networking]

NT-06: How-To set up Samba Networking

Installing Samba

The first thing we need to do is get some wizard action going. As root

urpmi drakwizard

After all that's done open up Mandrake Control Center

mcc

then go to Server Wizards -> Configure Samba. Say yes to any questions which get asked till you get to something similar to this screen.

Then hit Next and enter a name for your Workgroup.

Hit Next two more times and choose an Access level

If you selected My rules you will now be given the option to refine which computers are allowed on your network.

When at the Enable Samba server step DO NOT check file sharing area. You will not be able to finish the wizard.

Continue through the wizard. If you had chosen to share printers, a configuration screen will be available to you.

Once this is done, you will need to configure your users. You will need to add your Windows logon id (XP only, I think, the Administrator users will be added by default for Win2k) to the users list. To do this, open a console and su to root. Then type:

smbpasswd -a USER

where USER is your Windows username. You will be prompted (twice) for a password for this user. Enter one you will remember. You will need it when you access your shares from your Windows PC, at least the first time.

Networking

:: Linux

To use samba between linux computers one needs to be a server (configured above) and the other needs to have smbclient installed. To do this

urpmi libsmbclient

The computer with only smbclient installed will be able to access samba shares.

The computer with smbclient AND the samba server install will be able to both serve and access shares.

:: Windows

To enable sharing in Windows open up the Control Panel and go to Network Connections.

Right Click on your connection and select Properties

Make sure that both Client for Microsoft Networks and File and Printer Sharing are checked.

Then right click on My Computer and go to Properties

Go to the Computer Name tab and click on the Change button.

Select a sensible name for your computer And change the workgroup to the same one that made when you configured the samba server. It doesn't have to be the same, but it's neater this way.

Configuring Shares

Now comes the hard part, and for this we go to the Samba Configuration file.

Open up /etc/samba/smb.conf and scroll all the way down to the bottom. Read the comments and select the type of share which you would like.

Then modify the examples to fit your specific needs.

For example, If I only want the user Illogic-al to be able to access my musiz share I'd change

# A private directory, usable only by fred. Note that fred requires write
# access to the directory.

;[fredsdir]

; comment = Fred's Service

; path = /usr/somewhere/private

; valid users = fred

; public = no

; writable = yes

; printable = no

to this

# A private directory, usable only by fred. Note that fred requires write
# access to the directory.

[fredsdir]

comment = Mah Muzak

path = /mnt/Music

valid users = illogic-al

public = no

writable = yes

printable = no

illogic-al, of course, needs to be created using smbpassword, as stated above.

The /etc/samba/smb.conf has more examples of potential sharing situations which users may want so go check it out.

For those longing for a Graphical approach the samba-swat package or webmin package may be for you. Be awars however that after using samba-swat the comments in the smb.conf file will be gone. The comments provide useful information so I recommend backing up or making a copy before editing via SWAT. I'm unfamiliar with webmin and whether or not it too erases the comments.

To install SWAT

urpmi samba-swat

urpmi webmin

Security

There are varioius security options which are available to samba. Some are commented in the /etc/samba/smb.conf and many others are documented via man or info page.

man smb.conf

info smb.conf

to access them.

Two of these options will be demonstrated. Be very careful however as these options will make more insecure.

The first smb.conf we'll look at the security = option.

To allow access to certain shares (e.g. read-only public shares) without any logging in, change the option

security = user

in /etc/samba/smb.conf to

security = share

On Windows XP accounts are created by default without a password. Other account normally don't have passwords (e.g. the Guest user). If a user is added using smbpasswd samba will expect that user to have a password (even if you entered no password for the user). Therefore if you a a remote user from a Windows computer which has no password they won't be able to log in as samba will keep asking for a password.

to disable this security option put

null passwords = yes

in your /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

Enabling Changes

After any changes are made to the smb.conf file the samba server needs to be restarted to load them. To do this simply type as root

service smb restart

Accessing Shares

:: Linux

There are various which are used to access samba shares.

urpmi smb4k

is a good start.

If you use konqueror or nautilus you can access samba share bye typing

smb:/

in the address box. In konqueror it looks a little something like this

It is also possible to use command line tools to access samba shares. These tools are available w/ the samba-client package. To install

samba-client

This package provides smbmount which can't be used to mount shares. Usage of smbmount is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

:: Windows

You can browse your Samba shares by going through Network Neighborhood. Simply click on it, browse to "Computers in my Workgroup" and you should see your Samba shares. You will be prompted, at least the first time, for your username and password. Alternatively, you can mount them as network drives. Right click on My Computer and go to Map Network Drive. Choose a drive letter, then click on the Browse button. Find your shares as above and mount them to your heart's content.

/***************************************************************************

This FAQ has been brought to you by iillogic-al and LiquidZoo

Updated By illogic-al

Proofread by Steve Scrimshire

***************************************************************************/

FAQ's Table of Contents

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 14:30:58 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

FAQ's Table of Contents

Last update: 2006-07-12

This Forum currently(*) has 80 FAQ Topics divided in 16 Sections.

BL: Bootloaders
BL-01: LILO Configuration
BL-02: Will LILO boot a second Linux Distribution?
BL-03: GRUB Configuration
BQ: Board Questions
BQ-01: I have a FAQ, how can I post it into the FAQ Forum?
BQ-02: How do I link directly to a specific post?
BQ-03: I need a language translator!
CL: Command Line Questions
CL-01: How can I edit a file in command line?
CL-02: How do I move/rename a file from the command line?
CL-03: What is the size of a directory?
CL-04: How can I use shortcuts in the command line?
CL-05: How do I check if my CD/ISO is not corrupted (md5sum)?
CL-06: How to burn data cds from the command line?
CL-07: Understanding And Moving Thru the Directory Structure
CL-08: File Creation
CL-09: Compiling C or C++ Programs
CL-10: Basic Shell Scripting
GE: Games-Emulation
GE-01: How do I install Unreal Tournament 2003 for Linux?
GE-02: How to install WineX from CVS
GE-03: HOWTO: Arcade Emulation
GQ: General questions not covered in the other sections
GQ-01: How do I find (additional) help?
GQ-02: What do I do when my system stops responding?
GQ-03: How do I copy and paste between two applications?
GQ-04: How do I remove Linux to reinstall windows?
GQ-05: WTF does WTF mean?
GQ-06: History of Linux
GQ-07: How To Connect to IRC
GQ-08: How to Create an ISO Image From a CD
GQ-09: What are the benefits / why use Linux?
HW: Hardware, drivers...
HW-01: How to install the nVidia driver
HW-02: Using Hauppauge WinTV PVR with Mandrake 10
HW-03: Lucent Winmodem drivers mdk10 Kernel 2.6
IM: Installing and Configuring Mandrake
IM-01: How do I install Mandrake from the harddrive?
IM-02: How to Configure Mandrake/Where is the Control Panel?
IM-03: How do I get more software for Mandrake Linux?
IM-04: How do I disable/enable supermount?
IM-05: How do I mount music CDs in Linux?
IM-06: read and write permission on Windows partition
IM-07: How do I start programs at boot?
IM-08: What Linux software corresponds to Windows software?
IM-09: Filesystem Layout Partitioning
IM-10: Dual-Booting with Windows
IM-11: Copying And Burning CD's with K3b
IM-12: How To Participate in the MDK Cooker Project
IM-13: How to Make a Boot CD
IM-14: Creating CD's from the FTP Tree
IM-15: How do I make my NTFS partition writable?
KC: Kernel Compilation
KC-01: How do I compile a kernel?
KC-02: How do I compile a SRPM kernel?
KC-03: How do I apply a patch to the kernel?
LT: Laptops
LT-01: PCMCIA Wireless access for your Laptop
NT: Networking
NT-01: eDonkey 2000 under Linux
NT-02: KaZaA Lite under Linux
NT-03: LimeWire under Linux
NT-04: How to configure Shorewall (the default firewall)
NT-05: How to permanently set the hostname with MCC
NT-06: How to setup Samba Networking
RPM: About rpm usage (urpmi, rpmbuild...).
RPM-01: How can I recompile SRPMs as normal user?
RPM-02: How to use Urpmi And Solving RPM Dependencies
RPM-03: synthesis.hdlist.cz and hdlist.cz
SE: Security, firewalls...
SE-01: What is msec, and how do I use it?
SE-02: Linux Security Overview
SE-03: How do I safely allow regular users to use utilities requiring root privileges?
SI: Software Installation
SI-01: How do i install tar.gz's and RPM's?
SI-02: How do I IM Windows Users?
SI-03: How do I Install Java?
SI-04: How To build your own Live CD with mklivecd?
SI-05: HOWTO: Personal Video Recorder
TR: Troubleshooting
TR-01: How do I kill programs without killing linux?
TR-02: How to restore a lost menu
TR-03: How can I rebuild my RPM databases?
TR-04: umount says: "device is busy"
TR-05: How to Troubleshoot problems
WM/DE: Window Managers and Desktop Environments
WM/DE-01: X, WMs & DEs
WM/DE-02: KDE
WM/DE-04: XFCE
WM/DE-05: Fluxbox
XD: XFree86, desktops, Gnome, KDE...
XD-01: How do I install/add new icons to KDE?
XD-02: How do I add resolutions or change refresh rates?
XD-03: How do I move the X pointer without using the mouse?
XD-04: Konqueror FAQ

(*)Last update: Tue Jul 11 22:00:03 UTC 2006

This TOC is automatically updated every day at 00:00 hours (local time) through mubfaqtoc

$Id: mubfaqtoc,v 1.8 2006/06/25 08:01:21 aru Exp $

If you find something wrong on this post please PM any of the FAQ-Maintainers.

WM/DE: Window Managers and Desktop Environments

Thu, 08 Jul 2004 03:33:54 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

WM/DE: Window Managers and Desktop Environments

WM/DE-01: X, WMs & DEs
WM/DE-02: KDE
Gnome - Still Waiting
WM/DE-04: XFCE
WM/DE-05: Fluxbox

WM/DE-01: X, WMs, and DEs

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 13:01:03 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [WM/DE: Window Managers and Desktop Environments]

WM/DE-01: X, WMs & DEs

Linux is like a stack of papers, it is layered. Different layers do different things. The bottom layer is the Kernel, it is the core, manages memory and provides an interface to devices. It does much more, but that is out of the scope of this faq.

Above that is X, the X Window System, X11. X is the blank canvas of an artist. It provides simply the ability for GUI applications to run. It not only provides the screen, but the ability for programs to receive and interpret key presses, mouse movements and clicks. Programs which run on X are 'X Clients', they connect to the X Server, it gives them the screen real estate, and they start.

On top of X can go Window managers and Desktop Environments.

What are Window Managers

Window managers (WM) are X Clients which provide the border around the window. The WM, controls how an app looks, border, titlebar, size of a window and the ability to resize a window. Many Window managers provide other things like, places to stick dockapps (www.dockapps.org), a menu to start programs, menus to configure the WM and other usefull things. Fluxbox for example has the ability to tab windows.

Window managers generally dont provide things like desktop icons. These are commonly seen in Desktop Environments, though it is possible to have icons in a WM through another program (http://idesk.timmfin.net/).

Because of the lack of 'extras' WMs are much lighter on system resources.

What are Desktop Environments

Desktop Environments (DE) are different to the Window Manager in the fact they provide much more, a whole environment. DEs are a bringing together of a range of different X clients, including a Window manager, often a panel for applets, starters and menus, icons and an integrated file manager are common. For a WM, GNOME uses Metacity by default and KDE inludes its own KWin. This WM can be changed.

DEs are much easier to use but are unfortunately heavier on system resources.

TR-05: How to Troubleshoot problems

Sat, 29 May 2004 21:36:21 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [RPM: About rpm usage (urpmi, rpmbuild...)]

TR-05: How to Troubleshoot problems

Here's a list of useful links to check out and things you should know, should something go wrong with your beloved PC.

My second favorite troubleshooting hangout (no. 1 being here) is on IRC.
Check the connecting to IRC how to to see how to connect.
Freenode (an IRC network) hosts a large no. of open source project channels where you can get help.
Usually all you have to do is type the name of the project preceded by the hash sign (#), e.g. #kde, #qt, #xchat, #nvidia.
Some linux distributions have unofficial channels in freenode as well where you can go for help, e.g. #mandrake, #slackware, #fedora, #gentoo.
There're also channels aimed at more general non-distro, non-app(lication) specific help, e.g. #linux, #musb. Be forewarned though, some of these channels are pretty crowded so you may have to ask your questions more than once.
Troubleshooter No. 2 for me, which really should be the first, is the manuals/documentation which comes with most distros.
The Linux Documentation Project is an excellent source of these. Also any distro worth its salt will have it's own documentation and help manuals. They are available with boxed (bought) products, online or both. More often than not these manuals/how tos have the answer to you're exact question.
Provided documentation that comes with applications (not distros, but the apps themselves) can also be useful in troubleshooting.
Provided documentation that comes with applications (not distros, but the apps themselves) can also be useful in troubleshooting.
These can be accessed from man and info pages, the documentation found in the /usr/share/doc directory and in the Readmes accompanying source files. Man pages for a certain program can be accessed at a terminal by typing
```
man name_of_program
```
Similarly, info pages can be accessed by typing
```
info name_of_program
```
Documentation in the /usr/share/doc ($DOC) directory usually have names which somewhat correspond to the app being looked for e.g. $DOC/php_manual_en/ or $DOC/NVIDIA_GLX/. Information is usually obtained here in the form of webpages (html) or READMEs (text files).
The README files accompanying most source packages, a.k.a tarballs, may also contain useful troubleshooting information.
GOOGLE! < insert angelic harmony here >
For the experienced troubleshooter, google can be the first thing to head for when in trouble or a last bastion for the hopeless. Either way, it is an invaluable resource.
Whatever problems you're having, chances are somebody else has had them before. This means you can search for it on Google and be damn near guaranteed of finding something on it, including but not limited to solutions for the problem.
Google also has a linux specific search engine called, imaginatively enough, Google Linux :) which can be found @ www.google.com/linux.
For troubleshooting you can paste in parts of an error message to get results on sights with similar messages. Chances are a fix will be floating around somewhere. Google is also useful for solving rpm dependencies.
N.B.: www.google.com/linux is NOT the same as www.google.com/linux/. Notice the trailing slash at the end...
RPM stands for Redhat Package Management (or something like that). It is an alternative method to installing applications, much like exe(cutable)s as seen in windows.

You may have noticed that most of the troubleshooting methods documented here involved a working system of some kind. Either the internet has to be working or you need to have bought a boxed product to get available documentation. Sucks if it's your ethernet card or modem that you're having problems with, don't it?

Lesson for today? Buying a boxed product of you

SI-05: HOWTO: Personal Video Recorder

Tue, 11 May 2004 12:00:10 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [SI: Software Installation]

SI-05: HOWTO: Personal Video Recorder

Software Needed:

For watching and recording TV: Freevo

For grabbing TV guide listings: XMLTV

For video-editing: GOPchop and mencoder

Money

If you are like me and have an electricity bill going through the roof you'll be glad to find out that you can save money by doing away with your VCR (and when you don't mind a small screen even with your TV :) ). A computer and TV card are all you need.

Freevo

For watching and recording TV I use Freevo. It's in 'Contrib' so installing is 'urpmi freevo'. That will take care of all the dependancies.

Ugly hack:

The Freevo version in 'Contrib' is 1.4.1-12mdk and I couldn't get the recording to work. (I use a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 and the 'ivtv' driver). However later versions from CVS and the 1.5.0-pre1 worked fine (I haven't used 1.5.0-rc1). So if you use the ivtv driver I suggest you use the freevo 1.5.0 series.

-Just leave the 1.4.1 installation in place and download freevo 1.5.0.

-Untar it and copy the Freevo folder to /usr/local/.

-Edit /etc/freevo/boot_config (FREEVO_HOME="/usr/local/freevo")

-To start the 'good' Freevo version you will have to give the complete path /usr/local/freevo/freevo.

The 'local_conf.py':

This file in you $HOME/.freevo folder contains all the settings and you will have to edit it to get freevo working. This is not easy :(. It took me quite awhile to understand what it was all about so I sugest you take your time with it. I'll post below some of my settings as a pointer, but it will still be difficult.

CONFIG_VERSION = 5.06

# ======================================================================

# General freevo settings:

# ======================================================================

AUDIO_DEVICE = '/dev/dsp' # e.g.: /dev/dsp0, /dev/audio, /dev/alsa/?

# AUDIO_INPUT_DEVICE = '/dev/dsp1'    # e.g.: /dev/dsp0, /dev/audio, /dev/alsa/?

# MAJOR_AUDIO_CTRL = 'VOL'    # Freevo takes control over one audio ctrl

#    # 'VOL', 'PCM' 'OGAIN' etc.

CONTROL_ALL_AUDIO   = 0    # Should Freevo take complete control of audio

MAX_VOLUME = 90 # Set what you want maximum volume level to be.

DEFAULT_VOLUME = 70 # Set default volume level.

TV_IN_VOLUME = 90 # Set this to your preferred level 0-100.

VCR_IN_VOLUME    = 70 # If you use different input from TV

START_FULLSCREEN_X = 0    # Start in fullscreen mode if using x11 or xv.

CONFIRM_SHUTDOWN = 0    # ask before shutdow

MENU_ARROW_NAVIGATION = 0

# ======================================================================

# Plugins:

# ======================================================================

# Use this ivtv_record instead if you have an ivtv based card (PVR-250/350)

# and want freevo to do everthing for you. TV_SETTINGS must be set

# correctly. To use you need the following two lines in local_conf.py:

plugin.remove('tv.generic_record')

plugin_record = plugin.activate('tv.ivtv_record')

MPLAYER_ARGS = { 'ivtv' : '-cache 5000'}

TV_SETTINGS = 'pal television europe-west /dev/video0'
TV_VCR_SETTINGS = 'pal television europe-west /dev/video0'

# if using the persitant record_server

TV_RECORD_SCHEDULE = '%s/record_schedule.xml' % FREEVO_CACHEDIR

TV_RECORD_SERVER_IP = 'localhost'

TV_RECORD_SERVER_PORT = XXXXX

# Settings for ivtv based cards such as the WinTV PVR-250/350.

#

# XXX TODO: Add descriptions and valid settings for each option.

# bitrate in bps

# stream type

# Options are: 0 (mpeg2_ps), 1 (mpeg2_ts), 2 (mpeg1), 3 (mpeg2_pes_av),

# 5 (mpeg2_pes_v), 7 (mpeg2_pes_a), 10 (dvd)

TV_IVTV_OPTIONS = {

#    'input'    : 4,

   'resolution' : '720x576',

   'aspect' : 2,

   'audio_bitmask' : 233,

   'bframes'    : 3,

   'bitrate_mode' : 1,

   'bitrate'    : 4000000,

   'bitrate_peak' : 4000000,

   'dnr_mode' : 0,

   'dnr_spatial'   : 0,

   'dnr_temporal' : 0,

   'dnr_type' : 0,

   'framerate'    : 0,

   'framespergop' : 15,

   'gop_closure'   : 1,

   'pulldown' : 0,

   'stream_type'   : 10,

}

VIDEO_GROUPS = [

VideoGroup(vdev='/dev/video0',

   adev='/dev/dsp',

   input_type='tuner',

   input_num=4,

   tuner_norm='PAL',

   tuner_chanlist='europe-west',

   tuner_type='internal',

   desc='TV kaart',

   group_type='ivtv',

   recordable='True'),

]

# FREQUENCY_TABLE - This is only used when Freevo changes the channel natively.

# This is only the case if you are using V4L2 and any of the following plugins:

# timeshift, ivtv_record, ivtv_basic_tv.

# For the standard frequancy tables see src/tv/freq.py. To add your own just

# replace tuner_id in the following example with a valid tuner id (ie: '5' or

# 'BBC1') and a frequency in KHz. You may have as many entries as you like,

# anything here will simply override a coresponding entry in your standard

# frequency table and you can also have entries here that are not present i

# there.

FREQUENCY_TABLE = {

   '11-'   : 216000,

   '6+' : 184000,

   '7+' : 192000,

}

#

# The TV_CHANNELS-list can look like this:

#

TV_CHANNELS = [('1.tvgids.nl', 'Nederland 1', '11-'),

('2.tvgids.nl', 'Nederland 2', '6+'),

('3.tvgids.nl', 'Nederland 3', '7+'),

('4.tvgids.nl', 'RTL 4', '12-'),

These quotes from my local_conf.pyare only a help . Best is to start Freevo from a terminal the first few times and watch the error messages you get. These can help you find a solution more easily.

The Freevo recordserver:

This is a service that is needed to start and end a recording.You can find it in the MCC. However when you start it from there it won't work. (It's the 1.4.1 version). It must be started manually. Just like Freevo, start it the first time from a terminal as root (/usr/local/freevo/freevo recordserver).When it works use 'Alt-F2' (as root).

Stability:

I have the recordserver on 24/7 now for more then 2 weeks without problems. The same goes for Freevo. It's on one of my 4 desktops and I only shut it down when I exit X.

XMLTV

To get tv listings you need a grabber. Add Thac's RPM's as one of you repositories and do 'urpmi XMLTV'.

To use it open a terminal get the grabber for your country:tv_grab_XX --output /tmp/TV.xml --days X. The --slow option will give you more information (what a movie is about etc), but it's... slow :).

Freevo expects the TV.xml in /tmp

Video editing

There isn't a really good video editor for Linux yet. KdenLive and Avidemux don't work with MPEG2 files and Cinelerra is unstable. The only program usuable for me is GOPchop. I use it to cut commercials and bits at the beginning and the end of a program. There is no RPM that i'm aware of so you have to compile it yourself (./configure-make-make install straightforward stuff)

For compressing a file there is mencoder (urpmi mencoder). The commands I use are :

mencoder *.mpeg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 -oac copy -o outputfile.avi
mencoder *.mpeg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=2 -oac copy -o outputfile.avi

But if you're making a DVD use of course the MPEG2 file.

Conclusion

It is possible to use Mandrake as a PVR. With the steps I have described you can turn your computer in a television and VCR. I haven't gone into the use of Freevo but it has many nifty features. One of the things I use most is listing a program as 'favorite'. That means Freevo will record the show every time it's on without me having to do anything. The only thing I need now is more time to watch all my recordings :)

IM-14: Creating CD's from the FTP Tree

Tue, 11 May 2004 06:44:03 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [IM: Installing and Configuring Mandrake]

IM-14: Creating CD's from the FTP Tree

Okay guys, here's the deal. I downloaded the full official tree. It took about a day and it came in at over 5 gig. The full tree includes the usual mandrake, 3 gig of extra apps under contrib and 330meg of java apps under contrib/jpackage.

After downloading I have successfully created 4 versions including the Hard Drive Installation.

1) Hard Drive/Network/FTP Install (same thing)

2) 10 CD version including everything

3) 5 CD Version (use to be 4 CDs. This will eventually be the ISO download)

4) 2 DVD Version which includes everything int the 10 CD Version.

Additionally I have discovered that Mandrake is stressing everyone for no apparent reason. The much talked about 8 meg boot.iso file that is needed to be able to boot and chose your method of installation, is no different from the regular boot files that come on CD1 of any version.

The only thing you have to do is to edit the file "isolinux.cfg" in the isolinux folder. Inside the file, remove all instances of "automatic=method:cdrom" and save the file. Then create the images for whichever "version" of mdk10 that you choose. To create the different versions that I have listed above you have to do 2 things first:

edit the "hdlist" file in the "Mandrake/base" folder. In this file you will find a list of all the hdlist.cz files needed to build a particular version. Remove the 3 lines for "SRPM" files. Now depending on which version you want to create, the 10CD and the DVD versions will have 3 lines.
- hdlist.cz Mandrake/RPMS Installation CD
- hdlist2.cz Mandrake/RPMS2 Contrib CD
- hdlist3.cz Mandrake/RPMS3 Jpackage.org
take note of the paths above. if you downloaded the whole tree like I did, you will have these folders. The RPMS folder is the standard 4 or 5 CD download version. The RPMS2 and RPMS3 folders aded to the RPMS folder make the 10CD and DVD version. So to make the 5CD version, remove the last two lines. Dont forget to backup the original "hdlists" file.

[*] To make the 10 CD or 2 DVD version, use the "mkcd"command below. Use 716800000 discsize for the 10CD version and 4000000000 for the 2 DVD version. When the command finishes, the images will be in the directory you specified after the -t option.

To make the 5CD version, move the folders "RPMS2" and RPMS3" someplace safe and don't forget to remove the last two lines in the "hdlists" file as described above. The RPMS2 and RPMS3 folders are only links so it should take no time at all to move them. Then use 716800000 discsize and run the "mkcd" command. Don't forget to move the RPMS2 and RPMS3 folders back to their original location when you finish your 5CD images.

Also rememeber that you will need plenty of disc space if you wantto keep all the images for all version on your hard drive. I have the 10CD, 5CD, 2 DVD and the HD install files all on my hard rive and they take up 23GIG.

mkcd --discsize 716800000 -t ./5CD-Version -a -s ./hdinstall

--discsize is the size of the image you want to make in bytes. the above figure is for a 700M CD. I used 4000000000 (9 zeroes) to make 2 DVDs.

-t

-a means automatic creation based on the hdlist files and the downloaded directory structure. It keeps you from having to use many other ugly options on the command line.

-s this is the top fodler not thr RPM folder. This top folder will have the "Mandrake" folder in it.

I hope this info is useful for someone out there. If you have any questions, email me at linuxguru@operamail.com. I check my mail more than I check this forum.

enjoy

iomari

GE-03: HOWTO: Arcade Emulation

Mon, 03 May 2004 20:23:20 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [GE: Games-Emulation]

GE-03: HOWTO: Arcade Emulation

Always wanted to play those old arcade games again? Want to relive your youth by playing 'Galaxian', 'Pole Position' and 'Jungle King'? Here's a HOWTO....

Getting the emulator

To play these games we have to use an emulator and the one I like best is xmame. Go download/untar the source.

Compiling the emulator

To compile the program we have to edit the 'makefile.unix'. I won't say much about this because it's different for each and everyone but if you're not sure just follow the defaults. When your done editing you give 'make -f makefile.unix' and watch xmame being compiled.

If everything goes as it should go you'll end up with an 'xmame.x11' file. I don't bother with installing so I sugest you don't either :).

Installing the GUI

Next we need a GUI. You can use the command line but I find that this soon becomes very tedious. The best GUI I have found is KAF. Download the binaries or the source just as you like. Both work fine. I don't bother installing KAF either. Just put a link in your $PATH and your set.

How to set PATH

Path can be set in the file ~/.bash_profile. Below is an example of assigning things to PATH:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

To add entries to PATH, you append them to the end of this line after a colon. For instance, to add the directory '/randomdirectory' to your path (just as an example), you would do this to the previous line.

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/randomdirectory

Now we need the game information. Download the 'mameinfo.dat' from here.

Getting some games...

Last we need the games. This is a bit difficult. There are some legal questions about using ROMS. If you're not sure about the legality of this I suggest you stop here :(. Otherwise, you can find some games on the xmame site, you can buy CD's with games or you can try Suprnova.org. They usually have (X)MAME roms on offer.

The games come in zip files. You don't need to unzip them.

We now have evrything to get started so fire up KAF, press F8 (or choose mame, paths and make sure all the paths are correct (xmame=/home/yourname/....../xmame.x11, same for the dat file, roms, etc etc). KAF will now begin to build a gameslist and after that's done you only have to load the games by pressing F5 (searching for available games).

You're ready now to play. You can edit the options (rapid fire is always usefull :), fullscreen or windowed etc etc) but it's not really neccesary (with esc you end the game if you're stuck fullscreen :))

Happy Playing

(**Warning** There are 'adult' games (it's a category). If you download roms better make sure you get what you want and nothing more)

HW-02: Using Hauppauge WinTV PVR with Mandrake 10

Mon, 03 May 2004 17:52:47 +0000

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HW-02: Using Hauppauge WinTV PVR250/350 with Mandrake 10

As I having nothing else to do today I decided to write a little HOWTO install the ivtv driver used by the Hauppauge WinTV PVR250/350 tv-cards.

Getting a new kernel

First, I found that I could not change channels when I had compiled the ivtv driver using the standard Mandrake 10.0 2.6.3-4mdk kernel so we need the 2.6.4 (that's the one I used). In Contrib we find the 2.6.4-1.tmb.6mdk kernel (you may see another but it shouldn't matter) and that's the one we are going to use. Download the kernel-source with urpmi. (I'll assume you know how to compile a kernel. There is one important thing. The ivtv driver actually comes with this kernel but it didn't work form me. Make sure you don't build it when you compile the kernel).

You can find more information about compiling and installing kernels here.

Getting the "ivtv" driver and firmware

Second, we now need the driver. You can download it from the ivtv website. Make sure you download 0.1.10pre2. Untar the source and change to the 'utils' folder.

Third, we need the firmware. With 'wget http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/pv..._21288.exe' you can download it. Login as root and with './ivtvfwextract.pl pvr250_17_21288.exe' we install it. Now cd to the 'driver' folder.

Building and installing the driver

Fourth, we have to build the driver. First make sure we are using the correct Makefile by 'mv Makefile2.6 Makefile'. Login as root and give 'make'. You'll see the driver getting build probably with a few errors. Ignore them :).

Fifth, install the driver by 'make install' (still logged in as root).

Sixth and seventh, load the drivers by 'modprobe ivtv' (it didn't work for me so I'll assume it won't work for you either. To make sure do a 'modprobe r ivtv' and try again with 'make reload' (still in the drivers folder logged in as root). Test if it works by a 'cat /dev/video(0)'.

If you see a lot of funny things happening it works. If you get an error message post it and I'll try to help you. :) Hope you could use some of my advice.

To watch TV I advise Freevo (Tvtime, Xawtv don't work with this driver).

Maybe I'll write another HOWTO about getting Freevo to work.

HW-03: Lucent Winmodem drivers mdk10 Kernel 2.6

Mon, 03 May 2004 04:00:24 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [HW: Hardware, drivers...]

HW-03: Lucent Winmodem drivers mdk10 Kernel 2.6

Some of you may use a Lucent Winmodem like I do with Mandrake. When I used Mandrake 9.2 I would just grab an RPM for Kernel 2.4 here or here and they installed with ease.

However, when I installed Mandrake 10 Official with Kernel 2.6.3.7mdk, I couldn't find any RPMs that worked with a 2.6 kernel! I finally found this page which had source I could use here. But as a newbie, how could I do it? I had compiled programs from source before, but this wasn't working! I would receive an error when I tried to compile. So I asked for help and received some excellent advice which I followed and found to work without problems! Hooray! Thanks to Tormented's post in this thread on linuxquestions.org (from which I will now quote), here are the step by step instructions:

Downloading

Get this file before you begin, it's what you'll compile using the instructions below. I copied it into /root/ and it compiled correctly, otherwise in other directories it gave an error. Of course you need to extract the contents of the file before you begin. :)

** Quote begin: **

1. Make sure you have the kernel-source rpm installed.

2. Edit the modem driver's Makefile and change:

KERNEL_DIR := /usr/src/linux-2.6/

KERNEL_DIR := /usr/src/linux/

3. Become root and type make.

4. Type the following commands:

mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/other
cp -v *.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/other
mknod --mode=0640 /dev/ttyLT0 b 62 64
depmod -a
modprobe ltserial
ln -vs /dev/ttySLT0 /dev/modem

5. Add these lines to /etc/modprobe.conf

install winmodem /sbin/modprobe ltserial
alias /dev/modem ltserial
alias char-major-62 ltserial
alias /dev/tts/LT0 ltserial[/color]

6. Add this to the end of /etc/modprobe.preload

winmodem

** Quote End **

After all the above I rebooted my system (even though I may not have needed to, I did it anyway) and installed KPPP. When I ran KPPP my modem was found without any problems. I hope this helps some of you Lucent Winmodem users who may be having trouble getting yours to work with Mdk10 and Kernel 2.6.

CL-08: File Creation

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 03:42:58 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [CL: Command Line Questions]

CL-08: File Creation

This FAQ is to tell of some of the command line ways to create a file. There are many, and I won't say that this list is in any way complete; but here are a few:

Using a test editor (vi, vim, emacs, nano, etc.)
The Touch command

Let's start with the first one. I will go from the vim standpoint, because that's what I use. It's easy, but some people prefer other editors. That's what's great about Linux, though; everyone can have their choice. We're not forced into using 1 program over another.

The it's easy to create a file using vim. Just cd to the directory that you want the file in and

vim newfilename

If the file doesn't exist in the directory, it will be created and the editor (vim in this case) will be opened for you to edit the file.

Now, say you want to create a file but you don't want to edit it for whatever reason. For that you would use the touch command. For you to do this, it's easy. Just cd to your directory and

touch newfilename

This will create a file, with your users permissions, wherever you are in the directory structure (provided, of course, that you have the proper permissions).

There are other options for touch. Some of them, along with a brief description can be found here:

-a
--time=atime
--time=access
--time=use
 Change the access time only.

-c
--no-create
 Do not create files that do not exist.

-d
--date=time
 Use TIME instead of the current time. It can contain month names,
 timezones, `am' and `pm', etc.

-f
 Ignored; for compatibility with BSD versions of `touch'.

-m
--time=mtime
--time=modify
 Change the modification time only.

-r FILE
--reference=FILE
 Use the times of the reference FILE instead of the current time.

-t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]
 Use the argument (optional four-digit or two-digit years, months,
 days, hours, minutes, optional seconds) instead of the current
 time. If the year is specified with with only two digits, then CC
 is 20 for years in the range 0 ... 68, and 19 for year in 69 ...
 99. If no digits of the year are specified, the argument is
 interpreted as a date in the current year.

You can also see the manfile on touch for more.

GQ-09: What are the benefits of / Why use Linux?

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:53:10 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ forum] [table of contents] [FAQs] [contribute] [GQ: General Questions not covered in the other sections]

GQ-09: What are the benefits of / Why use Linux?

Ok, first of all, just as tyme mentions: the real first message of this topic was written by sitor, and the foreplay and idea came from Darkelve, as you can read here.

As I was just the one posting a hint to start a fresh topic, my message ended up on top - you can read it below, I left it here for completeness.

The real idea, as Darkelve already hinted, is not to state why you don't use/like MS, please open a topic in the offtopic subforum.

So please, post the reasons why you like linux, how you got started and what you feel is good about it. Take sitor and Darkelve's posts as examples. And I will add my story as well, though you can find a lot of my opinion on my website...

aRTee's comments

==============Original message===================

sitor, great arguments, why don't you just start a new topic with

This is why linux!

as a topic subject, and paste your info in there.

I agree with loads, but will add my own comments, as soon as this new topic gets opened. Just reply here with the link to it, I'm tracking this one....

Also: yes I agree Darkelve, that antims link is just enough reasons to know why not to use any MS stuff, Linux has a lot more going for it - most of what I think is on my switchsuccess page, but that was written a year ago, and I'm not the same person anymore... nor is linux the same linux anymore.. :P

sitor's comments

Before I go, first a little history on how I became hooked on Linux:

Being at work as a project manager in IT, I felt that I should learn some basic stuff on UNIX (not having the least knowledge of it at the time). As UNIX trainings were quite expensive, it each time got postponed. At a certain point in time I heared that Linux was a type of UNIX that could be run on a normal PC which you can download for free. So I started to install it on a test PC. And that is how it started. Today I have my desktop at home in dual boot Mandrake Linux 10.0 CE with the Windows XP that came with it (which I still barely use). When the time comes that I will need a new PC I will for certain buy one that comes without M$ tax. I will not install M$ software illegally either.

So here is my list:

1. Ease of Operating System (OS) installation: I use my PC quite a lot and love to try out new softs. This means that in my Windoze days I needed to reïnstall Windoze about every year. It took about two full days to install and configure the Windoze box with all the soft I require. This include the installation of most of the softs I use (Office, Winamp, Winzip, ...) next to the OS and changing the basic settings to my liking, but without the really detailed finetuning. When I reïnstall my box now, it is not because I have to, but because a new version came out. Installation of Mandrake Linux and softs takes less then 1 full day (again without detailed finetuning).

As mentioned Windoze becomes unstable after time, especially when often installing and removing new software. I do not use this as a pro-Linux argument, because with Linux I change the whole system when a new version comes out, not only the software running on it. So I have no experience myself how Linux behaves in this respect. I never had the same installation long enough.

2. Ease of application installation: On most OSes, installing software has become a piece of cake. However what I find particularly nice in Mandrake Linux is that if you want to install a bunch of new softs, you just indicate which ones you want in the Mandrake Control Center (MCC), and it all gets installed automatically in one go. No need anymore to install the different softs one by one.

Removing applications is as easy and again, you can do lots of them in one go. I never had bad experiences regarding stability.

3. Choice: For anything that runs on your PC there is choice. If you are scared by that, don't, just stick with the Mandrake defaults and you'll be fine. If not and you like to try out stuff, there is tons you can try. Ranging from the way your desktop behaves (desktop manager), the way the application windows are presented (window manager) up to different applications (different applications of the same task, but even different versions of the same application).

4. Availability: It is so easy to start doing new things in Mandrake Linux. You just open the MCC and do a search on keywords relative to what you want to do in the packages descriptions. You get a list of applications that have something to do with those keywords and their descriptions. Just indicate the package that look like they seem to meet your needs and install them all in one go. After that you just try which one suits your needs best. No need to go to a shop first. You want it, it will be downloaded for you.

5. Problem solving: I'm the typical Community Edition guy. I want the newest and the latest that is not really development anymore. If I want to do something, and it does not work, I'll take the time to try to get it working. With closed source stuff (even the stuff you paid hard €'s for), if you ask the owners to help you, most of the time you get: "Only bought a license, no support contract? Sorry." Or: "Yes I know you have a support contract, but that is not a supported feature." Or: "Yes, that is a known bug. We will let you know when it is resolved." I experienced that I you request help from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community, that often the responses come so fast that you cannot follow the pace. I actually had a case of a bug in video editing SW. The mean time between my message and return message from the author was about three times faster then the other way around (I tried to respond as fast as I could, but I'm a full time working man with children).

6. Evolution: Everything is going so fast! When I started a little more then a year ago, certain things were only possible in command line interface (CLI) (which I'm not afraid of, but I much prefer Graphical User Interface (GUI)). So much things that I needed then and postponed or did in CLI, can now be done via a very good GUI.

7. Ethics regarding licenses: I do not want to imply that using proprietary SW would not be ethical. However using illegal copies of SW is not. And I have yet to meet the first home user that does not use FOSS and that does not use any illegal SW on his PC. I don't, I use FOSS.

8. Ethics regarding the less rich: FOSS is a great thing for the countries where they do not have the money to buy software. Mostly when you use FOSS, you give something back to the community (even if it is only that the more users there are, the more important it is for vendors to support Linux / FOSS). This way the people who need to use FOSS from necessity (lack of money) get a better experience and can get more done thanks to FOSS. Of course giving back in the financial form to the organisations that create FOSS or by really helping other people are even much better.

9. The feeling to belong: Maybe that is more this board then Linux, but when you are into it, you really get a good feeling that you belong to a nice group of people, even if you never see any of the others (which would even be impractical, because the live often at the other side of the planet).

10. Study: If you would want to know how certain things in IT work, Linux is great. Just start playing with it. If you don't know anything about the subject yet, you'll have problems. Google your way out of them. Install stuff, read manuals, get the satisfaction to get it working and learn,.... for free!

11. Get rid of the fear: Stop fearing viruses, trojans, worms, spyware and all that kind of stuff. I'll not say that it doesn't exist in Linux, or that it will never exist (wow, that would probably start some debate). But in practise, at this moment, you do not have to care. I never heard any Linux user have problems with it yet.

12. Be in control: Anything in Linux can be changed. From the way it boots till the fonts it uses to display you something.

13. Live Distro's: A live distro is a Linux distribution (distro) that is put on one CD. You can download the image of that CD and burn it. There are a couple of live distro's that combine certain sets of software (like all kinds of video and audio software, educational games, ...). If you stick CD in the CD reader and boot the PC from the CD, it will start the distro from the CD without that you need to install anything on the Hard Drive. Cooool man! Some of them have the capability to get info from USB sticks. So they store your data and settings on the USB stick. Next time you use it (on any PC with a CDROM and USB port), just use your own desktop to work on your own data!

14. Tools: There are so much nice tools on Linux that are sitting there, just waiting to be used by you. Whenever you get bored, just start a small discovery. You'll notice there are things that allow you to do things that are so handy, without having thought about the fact that it could be possible before in your life.

15. Safe to let anyone use your PC: By default there is a root user that is the only one allowed to do the risky stuff. Your normal user can not mess up too much (except his own data). In Mandrake Linux this is very intuitive and not disturbing. But you can allow your 4 year old to play games on his own, without having to fear that he will by accident render your system useless. It is possible to make Windoze safe like this, but by default it is not. You can get Linux unsafe but the good distro's are safe by default (there are some bad distro's that are unsafe as well though).

16. Specific for Mandrake Linux: Know what you are doing: Most of the time when (in the GUI) you need to make some decision on how to configure something, you will get a basic explication on what a good choice would be. This gives the good feeling that you know what you are doing.

17. Lower Hardware (HW) requirements: For the same type of experience, it is my experience that you need less heavy HW then with e.g. Windoze. In the case of Windoze the HW requirements go up with every version. In the case of Mandrake Linux, the 10.0 version actually runs faster then the previous one (9.2). That means that you need less HW to make it run as well.

18. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The price of course. If you can contribute, you should of course (I paid for a Mandrake Club membership myself). But you can without any problem download it for free and use it. If you like what you get, it is appropriate to pay something (if you have the means to do so), otherwise you are a considered as freeloader. But even if you pay quite some, it will always be much less then the amount you would have spent to get the same kind of software in a FOSS-less world.

OK, that's it for the moment. I'm anxious to see what other things come up. But it seems that the list could get very long.

Ciao,

Sitor

Darkelve's comments

Ok, here's my list.

EDIT: This whole section is going to be revised, as I am on the brink of using Linux more full-time (still waiting for SuSe 9.1 Pro). And as bvc showed me, I need to voice my arguments more clearly, maybe get some things clear in my own head before I start blattering about them. Read it if you want, but it's going to be updated soon to better reflect my reasons for using Linux.

Darkelve

MY BACKGROUND

I have always been interested in technology, since I was just a kid I was learning to work with computers (those old yellow monochrome things with the big square floppies back then).

I went from Dos to using about every version of Windows. Somehow, I didn't feel quite at ease using the OS and software I was using, so I decided to explore. One day, a short while after I started to learn Html on my own, I discovered a link to one of said "anti-Microsoft" sites. Curious to learn more, I read about any article/discourse on the web I could find about it and compared the reasoning of all sides (anti-Ms, Neutral, Pro-Ms). However, I quickly had to admit the 'anti'-MS people seemed to hit the nail right on the head. I also had the 'pleasure' of experiencing this live while learning Html and coding for different browsers. One of the more interesting things in there, were the alternatives for M$ OS/software. I got very interested in Linux by then. It appealed to me because I was -still am- an idealistic person. It also appealed to me because it was so popular and seemed very mature. It promised to be able to work with my existing hardware. And, not at all unimportant, it was free and within my grasp. So shortly after, I started downloading a Linux distro and a few hours later, I burned my first coaster :D). After some searching online, I found instructions for burning ISO's and was on my way.

WHY I USE LINUX

Before I start with the list, I want to give a remark here: a very important reason I started using it was because it was 'free'. However, at this time, the being free does not really matter to me that much. I will be glad to pay money for a Linux distro that suits my needs for the following reasons:

1. I can decide what to do on my own machine

If I want to use browser X, I can. If I don't have to, I can just ignore it, or uninstall. It's all up to me. Because at the end of the day, this is my system, and I see no reason why I shouldn't be in control of it.

Oh yeah, and it doesn't spy on me or want to learn my habits.

2. Linux acts nice to my hardware

The first year I seriously started exploring Linux, I never used more than 5 Gigabytes for all I did with it, despite of the dozens of software programs I installed. I felt really comfortable knowing I did not have to worry too much about disk space. Another thing I noticed is that my surfing and downloading things from the net is going much more fluid, especially when doing several of these things at the same time. One time, when I was experimenting and installing Vector Linux, in text mode, I had to go through a really long step (I think choosing packages or partitioning). So I was curious if after a few minutes, some kind of screen saver would show up. I was delighted to find out that, yes, it did. Call me a purist but it was these little things that showed me that yes, Linux did care for my hardware.

3. Broad choice of applications

Tell the truth, when I first started using Linux, the applications I really 'wanted' were either not there yet, or not mature enough. However, major improvements were made in this by OpenOffice.org, K3B, the different Desktop environments & Window Managers, distros themselves... Right now I've got any program I need.

4. Security

I don't really have to worry about viruses anymore. I can go on the internet with peace of mind. Hacking is of course still a problem (although not nearly as big as in Windows), but with only a little effort this too can be done.

5. Customizable

I can make my system look *excactly* the way I want. If I like Apple, I can make it look like OSX. If I like BeOS, I can do that too. Just about every element of my desktop is customizable.

6. Features

Virtual desktops, tabbed browsing and chatting, split window view in the filemanager (konqueror), ... all of these features and more make the use of my computer a real pleasure.

7. Linux is social

I would have never imagined it, but the Linux community, which I know especially via the internet, appeared to be really helpful and much bigger I originally thought. It is also I nice way to get in touch with people from all over the world, discuss opinions etc. It gives choice to developping countries and/or schools on a budget. Now who said we were just a bunch of hippies ;)

8. Linux is good to my data

With Linux, I am sure that I will still be able to read in a few years, the things I create today. I am never forced to upgrage a program just to be able to read an old document or continue to use a certain function (cough* MSN Messenger*cough*).

Conlusion

Linux offers everything I need to use my computer on a day-to-day basis. It gives me peace of mind and a satisfying feeling I am contributing to something beautiful. Linux gives me the possibility to make my own choices. With Linux, I am in control.

All that said, these reasons are nice also:

http://www.geocities.com/urifrid/whylinux.html

gmac's comments

What might also be interesting is how many are using or investigating linux because they are computer geeks, nerds, whatever, and how many are users of computers for work purposes and started looking at alternatives to windows from that perspective.

In my case it was the office suites that got me started as I looked in to an alternative to MS office professional.(sad isn't it. As a student I dropped computing science as an option because spending a career designing accounting and production control systems struck me as being very boring the sort of stuff I could but didn't find interesting)

basically the attraction boils down to

1) choice of software and not being tied to one office suite with ever spiralling costs.

2) reliability I can stop my computer crashing so often but I learned the hard way.

3) Cost, £450 or free or £50 star office,, its a no-brainer tried star office and got hooked (I really do need the database not just spreadsheets)

4) usability, I can take my skill level to what I need, I like to fix things myself and know what's going on. Windows is like looking for a goldfish with rubber gloves on-you know its there but can't really work out what's going on and just hope you've got it and its a relief when you do..

5) I might not bother acquiring that level of skill-its not how I make a living, but its nice to have a choice if I choose to take it.

6) cost to experiment is low.

7) I can get help if i need it without paying the earth or being patronized(mostly)

8) the ethos has become an attraction, in particular this site is interesting beyond any immediate needs for information on linux. I like the diversity.

On short its usability but if I can't get it doing what I need i may be stuck with windows, most issues i can now work around but for some things I am stuck with windows.

what's putting me off at the moment

1) scanning software-I am well on the road to a paperless office I need linux to be able to do that

2) remote access to my home computer-not yet but give it another year or two

3) remote back up. the industry I am in off site storage will be an issue that i have to deal with. Most such services I know of use windows, I need to be compatible.

4) striking a balance between spending my time experimenting, making a living and studying for some professional qualifications I need to acquire.

Like I said it might be interesting. I am curious that's why I mention it.

One thing hat strikes me about linux advocates on this site and others asking why people don't try linux is they sometimes miss the interest that others show.

Give you an example, I was at a networking meeting, software consultant prattled on about thin client servers, remote access, intranet working blah blah, In reality most of the people will use such things if not now then in the not too distant future or now if they knew they could. He lost potential clients because he talked about what he did rather than them.

Nobody cares if microsoft is a rip off they know they need it so give them an alternative that's relevant to what they are actually doing with the computer

cybrjackle's comments

I use Linux because it's the BEST OS for "ME" :D

Yes, I've used

Windows Yes, I think they all suck, again, for "ME"

Mac

All the BSD's

Solaris 6-10beta < good server/ desktop sucks>

HP-UX

You all can call me a Linux Zealot all you want, because I am B)

And I can back it up because I have used all the other OS's a lot more than most people. Windows, I know it better than most of the SA's that work on it were I work, doesn't matter, "I" still think it sucks.

:lol:

IM-13 How To Make a Boot CD

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 18:27:08 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [IM: Installing and Configuring Mandrake]

IM-13: How To Make a Boot CD

Like many recent distros, the kernel for mdk9.2 is too large to make a bootable floppy. My previous post dealt with how to get around this problem by making extended floppies using fdutils:

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=9014

This is an alternative method for creating a bootable cd for kernels that won't fit on a standard floppy. It works by creating a 2.88MB image on your hard drive to which you copy the necessay files like you would normally have on a bootable floppy then converting that image to a bootable iso image which you can burn with k3b just like any other bootable cd.

Here's how:

1. Open a console and creat a directory in /home/ called test and navigate to test:

$ mkdir test
$ cd test

2. "su" to root and create an empty 2.88MB floppy image called 288boot.img:

$ su
# 
# dd if=/dev/zero of=288boot.img bs=1k count=2880

3.Format the image you just made to msdos:

# mkfs -t msdos 288boot.img

4. Install the bootlader, syslinux on the image:

# syslinux -s 288boot.img

4. Create a directory in test called "floppy" to mount the image:

# mkdir floppy

5.Mount the image using loop:

# mount -t msdos -o loop 288boot.img floppy

6. Open another console, su to root and fire up konqueror:

# su

# konqueror

7. Navigate in konqueror to /home//test/floppy. If the above went correctly you should see a file called "ldlinux.sys". That's the syslinux bootloader that you installed to 2.88boot.img which is now mounted on /home//test/floppy. The way 288boot.img was created with the "dd" command makes it act like a simulated 2.88MB floppy drive. That's why you were able to format the image file and mount it, just like an ordinary floppy drive.

8.From konqueror, copy and paste the vmlinuz and initrd files from /boot to the floppy directory in test. The ones that came with the download edition are "initrd-2-4.22-10mdk.img" and "vmlinuz-2-4.22-10mdk". if you've updated your kernel or are using a nonstandard kernel, you'll have different numbers.

9. In your /home//test/floppy directory rename the initrd and vmlinuz files to simply "initrd.img" and "vmlinuz".

10.Create two empty text files in floppy and name them "syslinux.cfg" and "boot.msg". These will be your text configuration files for the bootloader. In boot.msg copy and paste the following text:

Press (or wait 10 seconds) to boot your Mandrake Linux system from
/dev/hdxx. You may override the default linux kernel parameters by typing

"linux ", followed by if you like.

In syslinux.cfg, copy the following text:

default linux
prompt 1
display boot.msg
timeout 100
label linux
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/hdxx

In both instances "xx" should correspond to the location of your root partition for mdk9.2. also, if you have any drives running under scsi emulation you should add "hdx=ide-scsi" to the append line in syslinux.cfg for each drive. Do not put the append line in quotes like you do for lilo's append line.

11. Close konqueror and the console that opened it and unmount 288boot.img in the remaining open console:

# umount floppy

12.Delete the floppy directory in test:

# rmdir floppy

13. Make the iso from 288boot.img:

# mkisofs -r -b 288boot.img -o bootcd.iso /home//test

Note, you must be in the "test" directory when you run mkisofs and you must designate the full path after "bootcd.iso". This will create the bootable iso "bootcd.iso" in the /home//test directory.

14. Burn bootcd.iso just like you would any iso with your favorite cd burning program. If all went well, the cd you burn should work just like a boot floppy but it will load much faster. The above procedure is adaptable to any linux distro that has a kernel too big to fit on a floppy.

SE-02: Linux Security Overview

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 21:25:07 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [SE: Security, firewalls...]

SE-02: Linux Security Overview

The first thing to understand about security, is that it is an on going, ever changing evolution. Security is not about a particular piece of software, it is not an OS, it is not a particular piece of hardware. Security is a process. Security is as much education as implementation.

Linux offers great flexibility and power in the area of security, so lets look at how.

1.Permissions: (chmod)

Chmod has often been confusing for newbies. Each file has a set of permissions, and each directory also has a set of permissions, these permissions are set through chmod. Whether a file or a directory they all have three (3) groups. Each group has a set of permissions. The groups are broken down as follows:

u: the owner user (the one who created the file or directory)

g: the owner group (belonging to the same group as the owner of the file or directory)

o: others a.k.a world (everybody else)

Each group has permissions. The permissions are:

r: read

w: write

x: execute

So if I said a file had rwxrwxrwx, that would mean that the owner has read, write and execute abilities. The group would also have read, write and execute abilities, and so would everyone else (others/world).

Chmod is expressed in a numerical format called hexadecimal. The above example would be expressed as 777. How did we get that? Each permissions is a binary bit, either 1 or 0. The 0 would indicate the permission is turned off. In the above example, all the permissions are turned on.

For the owner we have rwx.

Which translates to 111 in binary bits.

For the group we have rwx.

Which translates to 111 in binary.

For the others we have rwx.

Which translates to 111 in binary.

Maybe you don't know binary. A brief lesson in binary.

0=0

1=1

10=2

11=3

100=4

101=5

110=6

111=7

We'll stop here on binary, since thats all that is relevant. So now we can see how we got to 777. 7 for the owner, which again is read, write and execute (rwx). 7 for the group, which is read, write and execute (rwx). 7 for others/world, which is read, write execute (rwx). These set of permissions may not be what you'd want your files or directories to be set at, but then, i can't determine that for you. Only you can do that. All you have to do is determine who has what permissions.

2.Firewalls: There are many firewalls out there. Some are scripts, which can offer some of the greatest control over a firewall, others are GUI's or frontends. Frontends are great for beginners as it offers a way to quickly and effectively configure your firewall. Some of the firewalls I like are; Firestarter, and Guarddog. Some scripts i like are; Arno's firewall, and IPkungfu.

3.Services: Always, always, always, turn off any unnecessary services.

http://www.cae.wisc.edu/fsg/linux/linux-security.html

cron, anacron- Cron is responsible for running scheduled system jobs and anacron is responsible for running any missed jobs due to system downtime. Some versions of Linux use these two services to perform housekeeping chores, so they should be left on.

ftpd- This is the File Transfer Protocol daemon that allows a FTP server to run. If you do not have an FTP server or do not know what that is, turn it off.

httpd- This is the HTTP daemon that allows a web server to run. If you do not run a web server on your machine, turn it off.

iptables- One of the major Linux firewall tools. Since it is used to implement many of the standard firewalls, this service should be left enabled.

isdn- A service for people using ISDN to access the internet. If you do not use ISDN, disable this service.

lpd- The Linux printing daemon. If you do not have a printer, turn it off.

nfs, nfslock, portmap- Three services required for the old style Linux Network File System format. Unless you are using this format, disable these three services.

pcmcia- The services for controlling laptop pcmcia devices. Disable this service unless you are running Linux on a laptop.

samba, smb, smbd, nmbd- Various services related to Samba servers for allowing Windows machines to connect to printer or disk shares on your machine. These can be turned off unless you would like to access your Linux shares from Windows.

sshd, sshd2- These two services allow remote access to your machine from the SSH and SSH2 protocols respectively. If you would like to remotely access your machine, we recommend that you leave sshd2 on and turn off sshd, otherwise both can be turned off (Please note that OpenSSH appears as sshd even though it can use the SSH2 protocol, so if you want to use OpenSSH, leave sshd enabled).

telnet, telnetd- These services all you to remotely access your machine through telnet. This is very insecure and we recommend disabling telnet.

4.Securetty: This is a file in the /etc directory (/etc/securetty). This should be commented out. It allows a person to remotely login as root.

cat /etc/securetty
#
# This file contains the device names of tty lines (one per line,
# without leading /dev/) on which root is allowed to login.
#
tty1
tty2
tty3
tty4
tty5
tty6
# for devfs:
vc/1
vc/2
vc/3
vc/4
vc/5
vc/6

This is what an uncommented securetty file looks like. Simply put a # in front of tty1-6 and vc/1-6. If you want to login in as root just lease tty1 and vc/1 uncommented.

5.Xserver: Xserver is a part of Xwindows and while it has its function and purpose, if you don't absolutely need the server function in X, then you should disable that.

cat /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers
# $XConsortium: Xserv.ws.cpp,v 1.3 93/09/28 14:30:30 gildea Exp $
#
#
# $XFree86: xc/programs/xdm/config/Xserv.ws.cpp,v 1.1.1.1.12.2 1998/10/04 15:23:14 hohndel Exp $
#
# Xservers file, workstation prototype
#
# This file should contain an entry to start the server on the
# local display; if you have more than one display (not screen),
# you can add entries to the list (one per line).  If you also
# have some X terminals connected which do not support XDMCP,
# you can add them here as well.  Each X terminal line should
# look like:
#
#       XTerminalName:0 foreign
#
# Note: The vt07 is required to start the local X server on the virtual
#       console 7. This avoids conflicts with gettys of /etc/inittab.
#
:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X     -nolisten tcp

This will stop Xserver from acting as a server. By leaving this active anyone with the knowledge and ability can literally see/watch what you are doing.

6.Updates: Regularly keep your system up to date.

For further study:

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/docs/LDP/Secu...k-security.html

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO/

Book: "Hacking Linux Exposed 2nd Edition"

LT-01: PCMCIA wireless access for your Laptop

Sat, 31 May 2003 07:56:03 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [LT: Laptops]

LT-01: PCMCIA wireless access for your Laptop

Having Wireless access for your laptop is really easy to set up. Here's what you'll need:

Wireless PCMCIA adapter
Wireless access point or Router

I went with the Siemens Speedstream PCMCIA 802.11b adapter. You can get any you would like, but I went with this particular adapter because it said on the box that it worked with Linux. I also picked up a Netgear ME102 Wireless Access Point. Thinking back on it, I should have bought a router, or a different access point. The only way to set up this particular access point is through a USB connection with Windows. This only has to be done once, though, so if you don't have Windows yourself; find another computer you can use to configure the access point. It only takes a few minutes and the only things you need to change are

The ESSID (This is the "name" of your access point)
The Key password and type (only if you want to encrypt your access point so you're not sharing it with your neighbors)

Then we can set up the PCMCIA card. Open up a console and as root type

/sbin/cardctl ident

This will produce results like this:

[ liquidzoo ]# /sbin/cardctl ident

Socket 0:

 no product info available

Socket 1:

 product info: "Siemens", "SpeedStream Wireless PCMCIA", "", ""

 manfid: 0x02ac, 0x3021

 function: 6 (network)

[ liquidzoo ]#

What we're looking for is the product info and the manfid. Write them down, or leave the console window open so you have them. Next, we need to edit some config files, you can use whatever editor you want. Since I'm already in X when I'm doing this, I use kwrite. As root, in your console type

# kwrite /etc/pcmcia/config

Somewhere in this file, near the end where cards are defined, you will want to put in the following info:

card (This is just so you know what card it is for)
manfid (this is what came from the output of /sbin/cardctl ident)
bind "orinoco_cs" (This tells the kernel which module and driver to use)

Use the existing entries in this file as a guide for formatting.

Save and exit that file.

Next, you have to reboot (I know, but it has to be done). Once you have rebooted, it should recognize your card, but it might give you an error because it is not configured yet. Once you have brought up X, go into the MCC. Go into the Hardware section and choose HardDrake. After it detects your hardware, you should see an entry under Ethernetcard for eth1. Select that and click on run config tool. This will bring up drakconnect. Set this up just as you would normally set up your network, choosing autodetect and expert mode. You will get to the eth1 config tool, where you can set the mode of the wireless card. I choose Auto for WIRELESS_MODE and Any for WIRELESS_ESSID. This will let you connect to any available wireless network. If you encrypted your Wireless Access Point, you will need to enter the Key in WIRELESS_ENC_KEY. Once you have that set up, you are all set. Say yes when it asks to restart the network. Once that is done, check your internet connection by firing up your favorite browser and heading to this board!

Additional Information

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=9865

GE-02: How to install winex from cvs

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 01:49:49 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [GE: Games-Emulation]

GE-02: How to install winex from cvs

1. Go to the Transgaming Website

2. Scroll all the way down and hit I Agree if you do.

3. Open up a console.

4. Type

cvs -d:pserver:cvs@cvs.transgaming.org:/cvsroot login

When prompted for the password enter "cvs" then, again in the console type

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:cvs@cvs.transgaming.org:/cvsroot co winex

5. Change into the new winex directory

cd winex

6. Now to set some config options. Since this is the first time I'm doing this, for no particular reason, hear are mine:

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-x --enable-opengl

I tried adding --enable-sdldrv but got an error after installing libSDL1.2-devel and then just gave up.

[*]Note: I came back to this and found that I had to do the configure step as root to have sdl-config work. The ammended command while logged in as root was

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-x --enable-sdldrv  --enable-opengl

7. You may need to install some devel and other rpms, here's the list of what I had to install:

byacc
flex
libxfree86-devel
libMesaglut3-devel
libalsa2-devel (for Alsa drivers)
kernel-source (for OSS drivers)
libfreetype6-devel
libfontconfig1-devel

8. After taking care of dependencies it's time to start the build. I did

make depend && make

and waited.

9. After all that niceness

make install

brings it all home and finishes out the install.

10. I suppose now you'll want to configure wine to install games. Unfortunately there are different install methods for different games so you'll have to look to google for an answer to that one

CL-10: Basic Shell Scripting

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 05:17:04 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [CL: Command Line Questions]

CL-10: Basic Shell Scripting

This FAQ will cover basic shell-scripting techniques in BASH (Bourne-Again SHell), the default shell on all (or at least 99%) of all current Linux distributions, and probably for many years this will remain the case.

BASH is a very powerful shell, and bash scripting can introduce users to concepts used in all computer programming, which I will talk about briefly in this FAQ.

A program is just a collection of instructions to carry out a task. Finding efficient ways to do these "tasks" is what programming is all about.

To program in BASH, you need slight knowledge of different Linux terminal commands, as that is essentially all BASH scripting is, instead of writing several commands to do a specific task, you can combine them all so they can all be done through one command with BASH scripts.

I will begin with a simple example:

Create a file called firstscript.sh, using the command

touch firstscript.sh

Now open that file with your favourite text editor and type the following code into the file.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Hello, What is your name?"
read NAME
echo "Nice to meet you, $NAME"

Now save the file. Now, before you can use this program, you must first make the file executable, you can do this like so:

chmod 0755 firstscript.sh

chmod +x firstscript.sh

Now you are free to run the program, like so:

./firstscript.sh

I will go over the different lines of the program, so this will make more sense (hopefully).

#!/bin/bash - This tells the computer that the program is a BASH script.
echo "Hello, What is your name?" - "echo" prints the contents between double quotes (also known as a String Literal) to the screen
read NAME - This line introduces the concept of a "variable", a simple analogy for a variable would be a pocket, it is a storage space which can hold a variety of things, in this case the words entered by the user. In other words, The program stores anything you enter, into the variable NAME, and things can be done with that variable, which will be covered soon.
echo "Nice to meet you, $NAME" - The only new content of this line that you haven't seen before is "$NAME", as you may have found out out by running the program, when used with "echo," prints out the contents of variable NAME. The "$" can be interpreted to mean "contents/value of", so with
```
$VARIABLE
```
you would be referring to the contents, or the value, stored in the variable, named VARIABLE .

Evaluating expressions

Evaluating an expression can be done through the use of square brackets ([ and ]).

A simple way to explain this would be through making a rudimentary calculator, so write the code below in your favourite editor and save it as "calculator.sh"

#!/bin/bash

echo "Finding X * Y"
echo "Enter X:"
read X
echo "Enter Y:"
read Y
echo "X * Y = $X*$Y = $[X*Y]"

You can run the program by making it executable as shown before, and executing it. (./calculator.sh).

As you can see, the $[X*Y] returns the value by multiplying the values stored in the variables X and Y. You should take note that if you have many variables, you should use parenthesis '(' and ')' to show the order you want the expressions evaluated. As an example:

"$[((X*Y) / (X + Y)) - X]"

As you should know from maths, the contents of the brackets will be evaluated first.

If and Else Statements

If and else statements are useful in the way that you can get a certain block of code to be used only if a condition is true.

To show this as an example, make a new file called "ifandelse.sh", you can copy the code from "calculator.sh" to take a slight shortcut, and modify the file to look as it is below:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Finding the greater number"
echo "Enter X:"
read X
echo "Enter Y:"
read Y

if test "$X" -gt "$Y"; then
echo "$X is greater than $Y"

elif test "$X" -lt "$Y"; then
echo "$X is less than $Y"

else
echo "$X is equal to $Y"

fi

A few new things were introduced in this script, and I'll go over each.

The "if" statement - This tests if the "expressions next to it are true, I'll cover these soon. and if thy are true, the code under them will be "used". After that code has been executed, the script continues from after the "fi" statement.
test "$X" -gt "$Y" - This uses the GNU command "test" and tests if the value stored in X is greater than (-gt) the value stored in Y.
The wonderous semicolon ( ; ) - Like many programming languages, BASH can use the semicolon to separate statements (NOTE: The semicolon is only needed in BASH if you have more than one statement/command on the same line, otherwise it is optional, unlike many other languages where a semicolon is needed to separate every statement.).
then - This statement is used after "if" and "elif" (It is not used anywhere else.) to tell it to use the code under the statement, if the condition is true.

An easy way to think what this code means
```
if test "$X" -gt "$Y"; then
echo "$X is greater than $Y"
```
is "If X is greater than Y, "then" print the contents of the double quotes in the echo statement to the screen.
elif - (short for "else if") This tests another condition if the previous condition was found as false, if the previous condition was found as true, this elif statement, and the rest of the code until after the "fi" statement, is ignored. If the condition here is found true, the code below it is executed (as with the "if" statement).
-lt - (less than) This is another argument to the "test" command that tests if a the value stored in a variable is less than another. You can find out about the different options that the test command offers you by using the command "man test"
else - This is used to test the last condition between the "if" and "fi" statements. As you can see, "then" isn't needed after the else statement.
fi - This shows the end of the if/else statements.

Looping with "while" statements

Usually, "program flow" in a shell script goes in the order "top to bottom". If you want a certain piece of code to be used a certain amount of times, there are a few different statements you can use, this part of the FAQ will cover the "while" statement.

The way the computer uses "while" statements is like so:

while condition is true, execute code between the "do" and "done" statements over and over until the condition becomes false

A good example is getting the computer to show you that it can count up to ten. So create a file called "while.sh", and write the following code into it:

#!/bin/bash

X=1

while test "$X" -le "10"
do
echo "$X"
X=$[X+1]
done

If you run the script you will get the following output:

As you can see, using loops (with "while" statements in this case) is much more efficient than writing 10 different "echo" statements to get exactly the same output.

Loops are a very important part of all programming and most programs that you will ever write are very likely to contain at least one loop.

As with other examples, this one also introduced new ideas.

X=1 - This stores the value "1" in the variable named X, quite simple. NOTE: You cannot have spaces between X and the equals sign ( = ), and the equals sign and 1, otherwise they are all treated as separate statements.
while - As said before, this is used like "while condition is true, execute/process code between the "do" and "done" statements.
-le - (less than or equal to) Tests if one expression/value is less than or equal to another.
do - If the condition in the while statement was true, the do statement shows where to start processing the code. "do" is used with while, until and for statements. (both of which will be explained shortly.)
X=$[X+1] - This increments the value stored in variable X by one every time this code is encountered.
done - As said before, this shows the end of the "while" statement. Behaves in much the same way as "fi" does for if/else statements.

Exercise: Now you can try making a script that counts down from 10 to one using your gained knowledge of shell scripting. If you really want, you can even send me a PM and I'll mark it for you ;).

The "until" loop

Something that uses the opposite logic of "while", but has the same syntax is the "until" statement which is quite self-explanatory, though i will provide an example anyway.

#!/bin/bash

X=1

until test "$X" -gt "10"
do
echo "$X"
X=$[X+1]
done

This executes the code between "do" and "done" until the value stored in the variable X is greater than 10. This script has the same output as the previous example.

The "for" loop

"for" loops have quite a different syntax from that of "while" and "until" loops. The best way to explain these differences is by example, so create a file "forloop.sh", And write the following code into it:

NOTE: The code below contains only my opinion, I mean no offence to anybody whatsoever, if you don't agree with it you can substitute values for your tastes.

#!/bin/bash

for food in chinese italian korean vietnamese japanese thai cambodian
do
echo "$food food tastes good"
done
echo "But indian food does not"

I will go over the new parts in this script.

for - "for" statements have the syntax "for in ...". I will explain parts of this now. you substitute for the name of a variable you want to access/use inside the for loop. "in" stores the strings and/or values after it into . are the values or strings that you want to store.

For example, the first time through the last "for" loop, the value stored in the variable food would be the string "chinese", the second time through, "italian" and so on. The value of is one of the strings/numbers after "in" each time through the loop. The loop finishes when all of the numbers/strings after "in" have been used.

If you are confused over what was just said (I wouldn't be surprised), you should run the script and the code should be understood quite easily.

The alternative "for" syntax

If you have ever come across some programming in C or C++, you are likely to have seen that the syntax of the "for" statement is quite different to what has been shown in the previous examples. This other way of using for loops will be introduced now:

for (( i=0; i<10; i++ ))

For loops contain three parts, each one separated by semicolons. The format of this is:

for ((initialisation;condition;increment))

I will explain each part now:

initialisation - This part creates, and sets the value for one or more variables. In the above example, "i = 0" Creates the variable 'i' if not previously created, and sets the value that 'i' contains, to zero.
condition - This part tests one or more conditions, just like the if/while statements do. Using the above as an example: "i<10" would test if the value stored in 'i' is less than ten. If it is, the loop will run, if not, the loop will be ignored.
increment - This part is used to alter the variable(s) that were previously created. In the previous case "i++", The value stored in 'i' is incremented by one each time the loop has run through.

A new thing that you may have noticed is the increment operator (++). This will increment the value stored in a variable by one. There is also a decrement operator that can be used (--), which will decrement a value by one.

Time for a proper example of it's use, note that the output will look familiar.

for ((i=0, f = 10; i<10, f > 5; i++, f--)); do echo $i;done

This certainly isn't the most efficient for loop, but it demonstrates what they can do quite well.

It can be "read" as saying, "Initialise 'i' as 0 and 'f' as 10, while 'i' is less than 10 and 'f' is greater than 5, carry out the loop (printing each value of 'i' to the screen) between the 'do' and 'done' statements, and at the end of each "loop", to increment 'i' by one, and decrement 'f' by one." The loop will give the following output:

The "seq" command

This command prints out a sequence of numbers, and as quoted from the "seq" man page, takes these arguments.

   seq [OPTION]... LAST
   seq [OPTION]... FIRST LAST

   seq [OPTION]... FIRST INCREMENT LAST

I'll give an example of each use, even though they are quite easy to understand.

seq 20

That would print out the numbers 1, to 20, being incremented by 1 each time. Though if you are wanting the numbers to count up starting from 0, you will need to use the one of the last two formats of the "seq" command, as shown below.

seq 0 20

That would display the numbers from 0 to 20, again incrementing by one each time.

If you want to change the amount incremented, you will have to use the third format of the seq command, for example:

seq 0 3 50

This would display the numbers one through to 50 with an increment of three each time (as compared to the others where "seq" only incremented by 1 each time.

Counting down with the "seq" command is also possible, to do this, you would have a negative "INCREMENT", prefixing the number with a "-", like so:

seq 400 -20 5

This would count down from 400 with a decrement of 20 until the number 5 is reached, as you will be able to see from these examples, "seq" is very easy to use, and you can find out a little more about it from it's man page. "seq" can be used in your shell scripts like all other commands, and as you may see, is much more efficient than any loop to do the same task.

Thanks to aru for telling me about the seq command and the ability of using C's syntax in for loops.

If you have any ideas, comments etc. for this FAQ, you can PM me.

BL-03: GRUB configuration

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 02:45:50 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [BL: Bootloaders]

BL-03: GRUB configuration

GRUB stands for "GRand Unified Bootloader" and is one of the many bootloaders available for Linux and other OS's. One thing that must be noted about grub, is the device syntrax. GRUB counts starting from zero. For example, hda is seen as (hd0). The partition hda1 would be seen as (hd0,0), hda2 as (hd0,1), hdb3 as (hd1,2), etc. Under Mandrake, the GRUB configuration file is "/boot/grub/menu.lst". Other distributions may use /etc/grub.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf though.

Here's an example of a simple configuration

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
i18n (hd0,0)/boot/grub/messages
password linux
default 0
fallback 1

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi resume=/dev/hda2 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title windows
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Simple list of options:

timeout # : The amount of time, in seconds, for the bootloader to wait before booting the default section.
color foreground/background/highlight : Specifies what color to display the menu in. You can prefix blink- to foreground if you want a blinking foreground color.
i18n (partition /boot is located)/path/to/msg-file : Specifies path to a text file that will display in the boot menu.
default # : The default entry to boot. Note to start counting entries from zero, not 1. The default in the configuration would be "linux", which is called as "0'.
fallback # : The entry to boot if the default entry fails.
title string : The begining line of a boot entry. String is what will display in the menu for that entry.
kernel (partition)/path/to/kernel kernel options : this specifies the kernel image to boot from. kernel options is the line that is passed to the kernel at boot.
initrd (partition)/path/to/initrd : The ramdisk image too load at boot.
root (partition) : Specifies
chainloader +1 : Mechanism for loading unsupported operating systems by loading another boot loader. It is typically used for loading DOS or Windows.
password : To specify a password for a lock function.

Examples:

title Mandrake
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 vga=788 devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi splash=silent
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

This example will be labeled "Mandrake" and will load the kernel image (vmlinuz) and ramdisk (initrd.img) image from hda2. root=/dev/hda1" tells the kernel the "/" partition is /dev/hda1 (note it's not using the GRUB naming convention because GRUB does not use this, but only passes it to the kernel). "vga=788" tells the kernel what size Framebuffer to run. The are rest are kernel specific options. In this example, devfs=mount to mount the devfs filesystem, hdc=ide-scsi tells hdc to use SCSI emulation (usually used for cd-burners), and splash=silent instructs bootsplash to hide the booting messages (other option is "verbose").

title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

This example will have an entry labeled "Windows XP" and will chainload off of hda1. Windows must be chainloaded so that it may boot itself.

Note on Security:

Because of the way GRUB works, it can be easy for someone to pass bad or harmful options to the kernel during boot. To secure GRUB, a password entry can be used. Firstly, run the command "grub-md5-crypt" to generate an md5sum encryption of your password. For example, the password "linux" md5sum'd can be "$1$AUHMA0$lhDHRrJrV0kAkY7QQw0lW.", and would be entered into menu.lst like so...

password --md5 $1$AUHMA0$lhDHRrJrV0kAkY7QQw0lW.

The password entry could also be a non-encrypted password if you desire, by not appending the --md5

password linux

To make a boot entry require a password to boot, just insert "lock" after the title section. For example, say we want to lock windows from being loaded without a password.

title "Windows"
lock
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

There are many more options available for GRUB. Please refer to the GRUB Manual for more info on these options and features.

It is possible for GRUB to use a splashimage for the menu. Unfortunately, Mandrake's rpm for GRUB isn't patched for this. Please refer to http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/grub-images/ for more information on GRUB splash image support.

Please PM me if you think a feature should be added or noted.

SI-01: How do I install tar.gz's and RPM's?

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 01:30:53 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [SI: Software Installation]

SI-01: How do I install tar.gz's and RPM's?

There are as many ways to install software on linux as there are penguins in antarctica, but in this FAQ I will describe the two most simple ways, RPM's and .tar.gz's/.tar.bz2's.

RPM Installation

RPM (Redhat Package Manager) is the packaging system that Mandrake, Red Hat (of course) and some other distributions use.

To install a RPM that you have downloaded off the net:

In the console:
```
	rpm -ivh /location/of/package.rpm
```
You will have to substitute "/location/of/package.rpm" for the location of the package.

For example, if you have a GAIM RPM for Mandrake 9.1 in your /home directory, you would install it like so (assuming that the user has the name bob, substitute for your username.):
```
	rpm -ivh /home/bob/gaim-0.74-1mdk9.1.i586.rpm
```
And to upgrade an RPM that you currently have installed, you substitute the -ivh argument for -Uvh, so to upgrade a version of GAIM to 0.74 (as an example), you would use the following command, like so:
```
	rpm -Uvh /home/bob/gaim-0.74-1mdk9.1.i586.rpm
```
In a GUI File Manager (Like Konqueror, or Nautilus):

To install a package using the File Managers is simple. All you need to do is
click/double click (depending on your configuration) on the rpm and Mandrakes' (I'm assuming that you use Mandrake) gurpmi tools will choose whether to install or upgrade (depending on if you have the package installed already), tell you any dependencies that the package has (I will talk about these later), and of course, install the package.

Useful rpm command-line arguments:

There are many arguments for using "rpm", too many to list here in fact, so I will summarise some of the most useful options for installing and upgrading RPMs.

-v This will print verbose information to the screen when installing an RPM.
-i This installs an RPM package.
-U This upgrades an RPM package.
-h This prints 50 hash marks (#) while package archive is unpacked.
--nodeps This tells "rpm" to not perform a dependency check before installing an RPM.
--oldpackage This allows an old package to replace a newer one.
--replacefiles This makes "rpm" install files even if they replace files from other packages.

You can get a Complete summary of the options by typing "man rpm" at the command line.

RPM dependencies

Dependencies would probably be my most hated part on RPM installations.

You get dependencies when a package relies on some other package to be able to function. The only simple solution to RPM dependencies is URPMI. (Refer to LiquidZoo's FAQ for information on how to use URPMI, which you can find here.). Otherwise you will most likely end up searching for days on the net, which is a huge hassle.

.tar.gz Installation

.tar.gz's come with many different contents, from binaries, to source packages, i will cover the default installation of both types, so you should be able to install most of the .tar.gz packages you find on the net, and if not, there should always be a README and/or INSTALL file with installation instructions.

.tar.gz Source Installation/Compilation

First you must extract the .tar.gz

To do this, you use the command "tar", like so:
```
	tar -xzvf /home/bob/compressedfile.tar.gz
```
This command would extract the contents of the file "compressedfile.tar.gz" into the current
directory. If you didn't issue this command from the "/home/bob" directory (substituting "bob" for
your username of course), "tar" would try and extract the contents to whatever directory you are in, showing an error if you do not have permissions to the directory. You can find the current directory you are in with the command "pwd" (Present Working Directory).
Now you "cd" into the location of the source code

For example, MPlayer 0.91 when extracted creates a directory "MPlayer0.91/".
So, to go into this directory wou would use this command:
```
	cd MPlayer0.91/
```
This should be similar to any other software that you download (with, of course, a different name)

Compiling & Installing it

Most Linux software follows the same conventions when packaging their software, and with most
software, only four commands should usually be needed. They are used in the order shown below:
```
./configure
make
su
make install
```
The configure command, oddly enough, configures software for your computer and checks if you have everything needed for it to build.
The make command compiles the software.
The su command allows you to log in as the root user (all powerful admin).
And finally, make install installs the compiled software as the root user.

NOTE: Sometimes when using ./configure you get an error that you are missing some "devel", or
"development" packages, for example, I got the following error compiling Gaim (gaim.sourceforge.net)
```
	*** GLib 2.0 is required to build Gaim; please make sure you have the GLib
*** development headers installed. The latest version of GLib is
*** always available at http://www.gtk.org/.
```
Sometimes, the ./configure script will tell you where you can find the missing package (as above), sometimes it will, not, if not, you can either search for the rpm, there are some useful sites for doing this like:
pbone.net
rpmfind.net

Development packages usually have the -devel suffix in the filename

The Mandrake (or whatever distribution you use) cds you have contain many of the development packages that you should ever need. The net should only be a last resort for finding packages

You will usually find more accurate and extra information in the README and/or INSTALL files

contained with the software about the different compile options.

.tar.gz Binary Installation

Some software packages, with realplayer as an example, distribute their binaries in a .tar.gz and not source code, these are much easier to install, first you extract the contents of the tar.gz and then run the binary like so:

./nameofbinary

As you can see, you precede the name of the binary with './'

NOTE: Sometimes, if you can't use "./nameofbinary", you will need to make the file executable, you do this like so:

chmod +x nameofbinary

.tar.bz2 Software

Bzip2 files use a newer and much better compression algorithm than gzip (.gz) and are just as simple to use.

You uncompress them like this (as an example):

tar -xjvf /home/bob/compressedfile.tar.bz2

And you can follow the same instructions as for .tar.gz's for installing/compiling the software.

If you have any suggestions, comments, corrections etc, you can send me a PM.

SI: Software Installation

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 01:25:34 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

SI: Software Installation

SI-01: How do i install tar.gz's and RPM's?
SI-02: How do I IM Windows Users?
SI-03: How do I Install Java?
SI-04: How To build your own Live CD with mklivecd?
SI-05: HOWTO: Personal Video Recorder

RPM-03: synthesis.hdlist.cz and hdlist.cz

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 23:44:43 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [RPM: About RPM usage (urpmi, rpmbuild...)]

RPM-03: synthesis.hdlist.cz and hdlist.cz

It seems that many people dont know this but when adding sources to urpmi's list you have two choices.

You can either use a file called hdlist.cz which contains a list of all the rpm files which should be on the mirror. In addition to this it also contains information on these rpms, such as descriptions of the programs and files it contains.

synthesis.hdlist.cz on the other hand is a much slimmer, less bandwidth intensive alternative. If you have dialup access or downloading hdlist.cz just takes too much time for you then synthesis.hdlist.cz is for you. The synthesis also contains info on which rpms should be on the mirror, but is doesn't have other information which saves a lot of space, leading to it's smaller size and hence smaller toll on your bandwidth IN TURN leading to faster download times for our broadband challenged users. whew! That was a mouthful.

The hdlist file usually (relatively) located in the ../base/ directory whereas the synthesis file usually in the same directory as the rpms, i.e. ( ./ relatively speaking). As a matter of fact if you provide no hdlist location when adding urpmi sources, urpmi will automatically attempt to download a synthesis.hdlist.cz file.

One final word of wisdom from our resident sage bvc, if synthesis.hdlist.cz is used urpmf is useless and can not help in resolving rpm dependencies. Google will be all you have left. Well that and the forum.

If this or any other "perl"'s of linuxly wisdom have helped you or your grandmother, please consider giving back to our fine community... Adopt a scad!

RPM-02: How to use Urpmi & solving dependencies

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 08:59:43 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [RPM: About RPM usage (urpmi, rpmbuild...)]

RPM-02: How to use Urpmi & solving dependencies

I know many people out there pull out there hair with RPMs.

They can be so easy if you know what to do.

The first thing you should do is setup urpmi

1) Urpmi

Urpmi is the Mandrake Package management tool. It's job is to make the installation and removal of RPMs (see glossary) simpler.

It does this by, 1 having repositories or sources where all the rpms are and secondly by automatically getting all of the rpm's a program requires

To use urpmi, open a command line and su to root*, then:

[root@localhost]# urpmi program

eg:

[root@localhost]# urpmi xmms
[root@localhost]# urpmi bluefish

* - To su to root: type 'su' (no quotes) and hit enter

type in your root password when you are prompted to, note that the cursor will not move, and hit enter.

However urpmi is only capable of doing this if you add sources.

The easiest way is Easy URPMI.

a] To use Easy URPMI, point your browser here: easyurpmi.zarb.org (or local mirror www.mandrivausers.org/easyurpmi).

b] Select your version of Mandrake in the first dropdown. Then select your CPU architecture in the second. If you are unsure, pick i586.

c] For each of the dropdowns, select the location nearest to you then check the checkbox next to the dropdown. Once you have done this, click 'Proceed to step 3'

d] Open any command line (konsole, aterm, rxvt, gnome-terminal) and copy the things in the black box into the command line. Do this by selecting it and middle mouse clicking or left and right click at the same time in the command line. Hit enter.

Congratulations, you have now added an urpmi source.

2) other rpm sources

Not all the time are we lucky enough to have our favourite XYZ program or a particular ABC rpm that we need in our sources. In these terrible times we need to visit the following web sites.

a] http://www.rpmseek.com

b] http://www.rpmfind.net

c] http://rpm.pbone.net

d] http://www.google.com

When using these sources try to get a Mandrake rpm for your version of Mandrake. If there isnt one and there is a cooker (see glossary) one, get that or the nearest version of mandrake. As for src.rpms (Source rpms) avoid them, unless you know what they are and how to use it. See below for instructions.

We found rpm XYZ on one of the above sources, now what do we do with it?

[joe@localhost]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost]# urpmi /home/joe/downloads/XYZ1.2-3.i586.rpm

Usually we will be lucky and all of rpm XYZ's dependencies will be in the sources and it will install. But today, we aren't lucky

[root@localhost]# urpmi /home/joe/downloads/XYZ1.2-3.i586.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        ABC = 9.8.7 is needed by XYZ1.2-3.i586.rpm
[root@localhost]#

So we need to go and get ABC from our sources. If we are unfortunate we might enter dep_hell (see glossary).

Other times we might get this response:

[root@localhost]# urpmi /home/joe/downloads/XYZ1.2-3.i586.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
        ABCDEF.so.0 = 9.8.7 is needed by XYZ1.2-3.i586.rpm
[root@localhost]#

How do we know what package ABCDEF.so.0 is in? COuld be anything from libABC to libXYZ, so we go and ask rpmseek. www.rpmseek.com

We select 'Package Contains File' then put ABCDEF.so.0 in the search box.and select an appropriate rpm from the list given to us.

3) Updating & Upgrading

You've finally got all the software you want but it's been a few weeks/months since you installed it all. To update it all, all you need to do is

[root@localhost]#  urpmi --auto-select

This however may give you some complaints about GPG signatures(see below) on the files.

To automatically ignore this, instead of the above use:

[root@localhost]#  urpmi --auto-select --no-verify-rpm --auto

To upgrade to the next version of Mandrake without using the installer, remove your sources and add new sources for the next version of Mandrake. Then perform the above command and the below command. This can sometimes mess up the system and often causes bloat by installing many extra packages.

[root@localhost]#  urpmi kernel

Excluding Packages

If you are upgrading versions of Mandrake through urpmi (not really recommended, but it can be done) or you are running a 'bleeding edge' cooker system that you update frequently, you may run into a package or packages that are broken. This happened to me recently with a package in cooker. In my case, and probably yours as well, installing the earlier version of the package cured the problem. Because of this, I want to exclude that package from further urpmi --auto-select commands. This is pretty easy to do. You need to be root, so open a terminal and su to root. You will need to edit the file /etc/urpmi/skip.list Use your favorite text editor to do that. It's pretty self-explanatory. You just add the packagename, or the begining name of the package like this:

package1.0.1.mdk
package2
package2-devel

And so on. Save the file and the next time you run your update, those packages will be excluded from the file listing.

- Section added by LiquidZoo

4) Glossary

GPG signatures: Often you will be asked whether or not to install an RPM because urpmi can't verify the signature. Most of the time this its fine to install it. I always do.

RPM

The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) is a powerful command line driven package management system capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, and updating computer software packages. Each software package consists of an archive of files along with information about the package like its version, a description, and the like.

Source RPM

A source rpm is just like a standard RPM except it contains the Source code of an program/package. TO use these the appropriate development packages such ass GCC, and any development libraries must be installed. You can use a source rpm with the following command:

[root@localhost]# rpm --rebuild foo.src.rpm

A rpm will be generated and put into /usr/src/RPM/RPMS/i586/ for installation by urpmi or by rpm -ivh.

dep_hell

Dep hell is when an rpm requires another rpm which requires another one.... and on it goes or a particular required rpm is hard to find. Resolving dep_hell situations can often be futile, slow and painful.

Should you need any more help feel free post on the board here.

Any questions about this FAQ should be sent to me via PM (Private Message) or emailed to me, iphitus, at iphitusau@yahoo.com.au

Good Luck!!!

iphitus

BL-01: LILO Configuration

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 06:44:00 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [BL: Bootloaders]

BL-01: LILO configuration

LILO stands for "LInux LOader". It is one of the many Bootloaders for Linux, and the default on most distributions.

This FAQ will cover the configuration of LILO.

The File /etc/lilo.conf contains the information that allows LILO to "know" where to boot your Operating Systems/Kernels.

Below is an example of my /etc/lilo.conf file.

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
       label="linux"
       root=/dev/hda6
       initrd=/boot/initrd.img
       append="devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
       read-only
other=/dev/hda1
       label="windows"
       table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
       label="floppy"
       unsafe
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.13mdk
       label="linux2"
       root=/dev/hda6
       initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.21-0.13mdk.img
       append="devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
       read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
       label="failsafe"
       root=/dev/hda6
       initrd=/boot/initrd.img
       append="failsafe devfs=nomount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
       read-only

Summarising the options:

boot=/dev/hda This is the device that will be booted. It will almost always be either /dev/hda or /dev/sda, depending on your Hard Drive.
map=/boot/map This is a file that contains the specific locations from where your kernels are booted. You should never need to change this option.
vga=normal This sets LILO's resolution, your distribution should set it up on install, and you should not need to change it. vga=791 is 1024 x 768, vga=788 is 800 x 600 and vga=normal is 640 x 480.
default="linux" You can set a default kernel to boot here. This corresponds to one of the label="*****" options.
keytable=/boot/us.klt To be honest i don't actually know what this line does, and if someone can inform me that would be appreciated. For a guess, i think that this would load the default so-called "keymap" that "tells" the kernel what your keyboard layout is.
prompt Tells LILO to display a prompt where you can select which kernel to boot.
nowarn With this i also have no idea of what it does. If anyone can inform me, this would, again, be much appreciated.
timeout=100 Tells LILO how many tenths of a seconds to display the prompt (after which the first kernel is booted).
message=/boot/message I do not know what this does, either should you need to know it. Anyone know?
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw I have no idea how to modify this, nor should you ever need to, i am guessing it corresponds to the colour of LILO's prompt, but i am not too sure. I'd say this line is only applicable for a text-based LILO, not Mandrake's graphical stuff.

Now the options for the specific boot options:

image=/boot/vmlinuz This tells LILO which linux kernel image to boot, by default, Mandrake's kernel is stored in the file /boot/vmlinuz .
other=/dev/hda1 The "other=" prefix tells LILO that this is a non-linux kernel to boot. In my case here, a windows kernel (*gasp*, NOTE: I do not use is, it's for my mother ;) ). The "/dev/hda1" part shows the device to boot the kernel from. This may vary for you, depending on your configuration.
label="linux" The text to type/select at the boot prompt to boot the kernel is contained within double-quotes. In my case here, "linux" of course :D
root=/dev/hda6 This points to the root partition ( / ) that the kernel must mount at boot. NOTE: This option is only applicable for Linux kernels, not Windows.
initrd=/boot/initrd.img This points to the so-called "Initial Ramdisk". I do not know much about it, but you should not need to modify this, ever.
append="devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off" This passes options to the kernel at boot time (the stuff in the double quotes). Using mine as an example, the devfs filesystem is mounted, the kernel is "told" to enable SCSI emulation for cd burners (Thanks to HJ for this correction) and it is "told" to turn off ACPI. You will rarely need to change this, the only case i can think of would be when compiling your own kernel from source, but i have never needed to change this.
read-only This option specifies that the root filesystem must be mounted "read-only" initially. You should not need to change this.
table=/dev/hda Only applicable for Windows, this points out where your windows partition is (my guess is that the option is called "table=" because of Windows' filesystem being FAT, a.k.a File Allocation Table.) I do not know what this line would look like for an NTFS partition, sorry.
unsafe I do not know what this option does, you can probably always keep this "as-is".

Configuring LILO to boot a "custom-kernel":

Since i have never done this using LILO, i will just improvise, and please, someone correct me if i'm wrong here.

WARNING: Though you may feel the urge to kill me if a custom kernel doesn't boot properly after using the instructions outlined below, i will point out now that you are doing it at your own risk, and i take no responsibility for what happens with your "custom kernel". Use these instructions at your own risk.

You can copy one of the sections for the kernel you are using, e.g

image=/boot/vmlinuz
       label="linux"
       root=/dev/hda6
       initrd=/boot/initrd.img
       append="devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
       read-only

to the bottom of the file /etc/lilo.conf. then you can edit the options for the new kernel image (most likely a bzImage file). You should only need to modify the "image=" line and "label=" line, and in some special cases, the "append=" line. Also, in some cases (RPM install for example) you will have to edit the "initrd=" line.

For example, a 2.6.0 kernel would have a setup something like this:

image=/boot/bzImage-2.6.0
       label="Linux2.6"
       root=/dev/hda6
       initrd=/boot/initrd.img
       append="devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
       read-only

After making any changes to LILO, in lilo.conf, you must run "lilo" in the terminal to make the changes take effect.

If you have any corrections, suggestions, constructive-critisism, please, pm me.

BL: Bootloaders

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 06:16:08 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

BL: Bootloaders

BL-01: LILO Configuration
BL-02: Will LILO boot a second Linux Distribution?
BL-03: GRUB Configuration

GQ-08: How to Create an ISO Image From a CD

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 09:33:15 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ forum] [table of contents] [FAQs] [contribute] [GQ: General Questions not covered in the other sections]

GQ-08: How to Create an ISO Image From a CD

How do I make an ISO image of a data CD?

here's two ways you can do it from the command line...

1. Use the "dd" command.

a. Pop the CD into your CD-ROM/DVD/CD-RW drive
b. then run the command...
```
dd if= of=cdimage.iso
```
will be your CD-ROM device. This should be "/dev/hdc" for a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive, and "/dev/sr1" or "/dev/sg1" for a CD-RW device.

c. Now you'll have an iso image of the CD you put in your drive.

Now sometimes, "dd" just won't work. It'll end with a really small file that obviously isn't the image. So, this is where mkisofs comes in handy.

2. Use the "mkisofs" command.

a. Pop the CD into your CD drive, and make sure it's mounted. Also make sure you know the mount point. This is usually "/mnt/cdrom". Just type "mount" to look at all mounted devices.
b. Then run the command...
```
mkisofs -o cd.iso -lR /mnt/cdrom
```

c. Now you'll have an iso cd image of the mounted CD

On another note, you could also create an ISO image from a group of files and/or folders in a directory using the mkisofs command. Just substitute the CD mount point with the dir of the files you want to make the image out of.

For example, if you want to make an image out of the files and folders included in the dir "/home/bob/stuff/" ...

mkisofs -o stuff.iso -lR /home/bob/stuff/

You'll then have an ISO image "stuff.iso" which contains the files from that directory. You could then burn using cdrecord or your favorite GUI cd burning app.

Note that if you need to make an image of a bootable cd use the dd method. mkisofs won't retain the bootable information.

GQ-07: How to Connect to IRC

Sat, 13 Dec 2003 20:34:34 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ forum] [table of contents] [FAQs] [contribute] [GQ: General Questions not covered in the other sections]

GQ-07: How to Connect to IRC

Setting up

We'll be using X-Chat2, with all it's anti-aliased, clean looking goodness as the GUI client we use to connect. If you have X-Chat 1.x you can choose to upgrade or just figure it out. It shouldn't be that hard. Otherwise to get it just type in

urpmi xchat

at the console while logged in as root.

When you start up xchat 2 for the first time you'll be greeted with a window that has a list of names.
Since most open source projects are located on Freenode, scroll down, locate it on the list, then highlight/click on/select it.

There should be an Edit mode checkbox near the bottom. Click on it. This will allow you to do various things. You can:

add channels which you frequently visit so that xchat connects to them on startup.
add commands which you want to run on startup always, such as nickserv identification, if/once you register a nickname.
choose a nickname, secondary nickname (in case someone has your's already) and real name (should you choose to divulge this info).
also choose whether or not you want to see the box at startup. If no, when you start xchat you'll connect to the last server you were connected to before closing.
N.B. Server does not = chat room. You'll only join chatrooms in the autostart list, you will not join the rooms you were in last upon reconnecting. It would be a nice feature though.

For now, just choose a nickname, alternative (in case someone already has it) and Connect.

For those who want to use CLI app for IRC irssi seems to be the app of choice around here. To get it type in

urpmi irssi

as root in a console. Once you've got irssi installed log out of root and in your console type

irssi

to start it up for the first time.

the command

/server add -auto freenode irc.freenode.net:6667

will add and automatically connect to freenode.

Chatting in IRC

Now you need to do a couple of IRC commands to join a channel (chat room) and start talking. I'll give you a couple to get you started but for a comprehensive list try here or search on Google for IRC commands.

Once connected to freenode (or any other server) type /list in the text input box to get a list of all the available channels.
Once you see one you like type /join #name_of_channel to join. e.g. to join our chatroom on IRC you'd type
```
/join #musb
```
To join #musb while in irssi you can either use the join command above or you can do
```
/channel add -auto #musb freenode
```
Also you can do
```
/save
```
to save your settings for each time irssi is opened. This will ensure that you are automatically connected to freenode and #musb whenever you start irssi.

Now you're in a channel and ready to chat, query and cajole.

Once you're ready to leave the channel type /part #name_of_channel to leave just that channel. You don't have to be in that actual channel to leave. As long as you are in a channel that is one the same server (e.g. freenode) as the one you're trying to leave it will work.

If you want to quit both channel and server at the same time just use /quit and that'll do the job.

Miscellaneous IRC commands

Once you're connected to IRC there are other commands at your disposal

/who #musb

gives you information on everyone in #musb.

the /me command makes it seem as if you're speaking in the third person or as if you thoughts are transmagically being transmitted to everyone in the channel.

/me is crazy

will like something like *illogic-al is crazy

A little known IRC fact fact newbies is that the @ before the names of some people means that they are channel ops. That means that they possess powers of cyber life and death. Don't mess with these people. ;-p

/whois Tomm

You get some info about Tomm or whatever nickname you entered.

/whois yournick

This is some info others see about you.

/nick newnick

Changes your nick to "newnick"

/msg Tomm hi there.

Only Tomm sees your message (you don't need to be on the same channel for this to work).

/ping #musb

Gives information on the delay (round-trip) between you and everybody on #musb.

/ping Tomm

Gives information on the delay (round-trip) between you and just Tomm.

/dcc chat MaryN

This sends MaryN a request for a dcc chat session. MaryN types /dcc chat yournick to complete the connection. DCC chat is faster (lag free) and more secure than /msg.

/msg =MaryN Hi there!

Once a DCC connection has been established, use the /msg =nick message format to exchange messages (note the = sign). DCC does not go through servers, so it are unaffected by server lag, net splits, etc.

/quit good night!

You quit IRC completely, with the parting comment so that others see "*** Signoff: yournick (good night!)".

This is a basic list, but will help in the begining and always try /help to see what's available in your client. 8)

[Credits]

Additional information pointed out by Liquidzoo and provided by cybrjackle. Info on how to connect using irssi from LiquidZoo.

[References]

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=8704

http://irchelp.org/

TR-02: How to restore a lost Menu

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 10:53:09 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [IM: Installing and Configuring Mandrake]

TR-02: How to restore a lost menu

Have you lost your KDE menu after adding something to it through Menudrake? I know it has happened to me before, and I can bet I'm not alone. Here's a quick FAQ on how to regain your lost menu.

First things first: We need to backup your existing ~/.kde folder. There are 2 ways to do this and I will explain them both now:

Command Line:

Open up a terminal in your home directory. Enter this command:

cp -r .kde/ .kde-old/

And that's it. That will copy the entire contents of your ~/.kde folder to a backup copy (~/.kde-old)

GUI

Open up Konqueror (since we're in KDE) in your home directory. Go to the View menu and make sure the Show Hidden Files option is checked. Create a new folder called .kde-old After that is created, go into your .kde folder and highlight everything that is there. From there, go to the Edit menu and select Copy. Then navigate back to your ~/.kde-old folder and click on Edit -> Paste

After you have backed up your ~/.kde folder, it's time to delete it. There are 2 ways to do this too. So here you go:

Command Line

Open your terminal, cd to your home dir (if your not there already) and issue this command:

rm -rf .kde/

There will be a few files that cannot be removed. These will be symlinks that are located in the ~/.kde folder. cd to that folder and type ls to get the names. Then type

rm filename

without the @ at the end of the filename. It will ask you if you want to remove the symlink. Say yes and continue for each of the rest of the files. After you have removed all of the symlinks cd back to your home dir and issue the

rm -rf .kde/

command again to remove the folder.

GUI

Open Konqueror and once again make sure you are able to view the hidden files. right click on the .kde folder and select delete and answer yes to any questions that pop up. If you get errors, open the .kde folder and delete each individual file by itself.

After this is done, you need to reboot. I know this is Linux and you shouldn't have to, but trust me on this one. After your reboot, start KDE the same way you normally do. You will notice that everything is set back to default. We will fix this. Use your preferred method to copy the ~/.kde-old/share/icons/ ~/.kde-old/share/fonts and ~/.kde-old/share/config folders into ~/.kde/share

After that restart KDE and you should be ok. You may notice that you are still missing some things. That's ok, they are all located in your ~/.kde-old folder. If you use Konqueror as a web browser, you will need to copy your bookmarks file from ~/.kde-old to the new ~/.kde

Edit

This came in a PM to me and I thought it was a great suggestion. After you have gotten everything back to the way it normally was or to an appearance that you can deal with; it would be a great time to backup your ~/.kde folder incase this were to happen again. That way, you can restore the whole thing from a backup that you know works. Just zip it into a tar.gz file using Ark and store it in a safe place. Thanks to Gowator for the suggestion.

I hope this helps some people out. I know it works, because I helped aranoke do this very thing tonight in #musb

New Update

Since I just lost, then recovered my menus in Gnome 2.4, I figure I will update this and tell you how I did it.

I am using Mandrake 9.2, so this will be specific to it, but should work for other versions of Mandrake as well.

Open a terminal and type

menudrake

and hit enter.

Once menudrake loads, hit the save button when it is on all environments. You can tell which environment it is on by looking just above where the menu is listed graphically.

Go to the Environment menu and change it to your environment (KDE, Gnome, etc)

Once you have done that, hit save again. The saving does take a little bit of time.

IMPORTANT

Please remember to save your configuration the next time you log out or you will have to do this again!

Please remember to do this as your normal user, not as root otherwise it will not work.

This worked for me. If you know of another way, please pm me and I will be happy to include it.

TR: Troubleshooting

Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:13:10 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

TR: Troubleshooting

TR-01: How do I kill programs without killing linux?
TR-02: How to restore a lost menu
TR-03: How can I rebuild my RPM databases?
TR-04: umount says: "device is busy"
TR-05: How to Troubleshoot problems

GQ-08: How To Migrate from Windows to Linux

Sun, 26 Oct 2003 20:25:45 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

GQ-08: How To Migrate from Windows to Linux

OK, this is it. I've been meaning to, and now I've finally gone and done it. The definitive guide, remember that as you rip this to shreds.

Prep Work

This guide was made under the assumption that the people reading this are solely Windows XP users who want to switch to or try out the Gnu/Linux operating system (OS). All this means is that the instructions are XP-cific. Heh, I made a funny. The users of other Windows OSes can still follow and generally be guided in the right direction.

The first thing to do is to get some info on your system's innards.

Boot up into Windows. When you're finally logged in and on the desktop find the My Computer icon.
Right-click the My Computer icon and from the menu that pops up select Properties (on the bottom).
When the System Properties window pops up click on the Hardware tab and then the Device Manager button.
You should now see a tree view of all the hardware that is recognized by the OS.
Write down the name and model of the
- Video Card
  Sound Card
  Modem/Ethernet Card
  Monitor - You should also have/get the horizontal and vertical frequencies of your monitor (available in user manual) although you may not need it.
  Any hardware you stuck in there. e.g. TV Card.

Now I've heard that you should defrag your hard drive because unless you have a second, you'll have to partition your drive. I usually skip the defragger and just use Partition Magic. There are also other alternatives (more on this later).
If you choose to defrag, depending on the size of your hard drive, you'll have a (long) while to wait.
After you finish defragging do it again. This is just because the provided Windows app never does it totally properly the first time. Speaking of the defragger it can be found in the Start Menu at All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Obtaining Linux

If you have a dial-up connection I suggest you buy or borrow a copy from someone.

If you have high speed Internet access and a CD burner you may download ISO files which can then be burned as CDs. As always I recommend starting with Mandrake Linux because its easy to install and use (and looks good). Redhat and SuSE are other downloadable options.

If you like it after you try, then by all means buy a boxed copy when you see it in a store. Boxed versions have more software than is available for downloabable edition,come with support and for good documentation (in the case of Mandrake and SuSE). I've never bought a boxed Redhat product :-/ Let's recap.

If you don't have a CD burner, buy or borrow the disks.
If you do have a burner:
Get to a download site and get the ISOs. ISO files are CD images, i.e. they are replicas of CDs which can produce new CDs when used with a CD burning utility.
The FAQ section has how tos on CD burning IM-13: Copying & Burning CD's with K3b or CL-06: How to burn data CDs from the command line?

Space

If you can afford it, get thee a new hard drive. A 20 gig 5400 rpm Hard Drive probably is around $40 now. It's pretty cheap.
If you can't afford it then you'll have to repartition. If you use Mandrake (MDK), they have a partition app that works with NTFS and FAT32 formatted disks. Be careful however. Defrag then back up all essential data. Shit can still happen.
There are also commercial and free partition resizing programs available. The best IMO is Partition Magic, but there is also the Ranish Partition Manager, which is free.
Set aside at least 1 gig for Linux, 2 if possible, 5 at best.
If you can get that 20 gig HD I'd recommend 9.x gigs for Linux and 10 for a FAT32 formatted disk (you actually only get 19.something gigs from a 20 GB HD).
The FAT32 partition is for stuff like Documents, Movies and Music to share between Windows and Linux. You see, Linux can see Windows data but Windows can't see stuff in Linux, (it's just not that advanced, and 'cuz windows sucks!)

Installing Linux

If your computer is old, you may need to go into the BIOS and enable the computer to boot from a CD-ROM first (as in before anything else). The motherboard/computer manual should tell you how to do this. In case you've lost it, the manuals are usually available online as well.
Pop the burnt CD into the CD drive and wait for the magic to happen. On the MDK CD1 are webpages walking you through the install process. You can view these in Internet Exploder (IE), or a proper browser like Netscape, Mozilla or Opera.
Once you've started the install just read carefully and follow the instructions. The installer will ask for confirmation before making any earth shattering changes to your PC.
Don't bypass adding a normal user account and password for that account, even if you don't want to have to type it in everytime you log on. That would kind of defeat the whole security aspect of Linux. You can always select to automatically log in when booting up, thereby bypassing the log in screen, but those not physically on your computer will have a hard time getting in without that :)
Also don't forget to add a root user password.

Migrating

This is the fun part! I guess I could've called it "Gettin' the hell outta Dogde!" but I thought that was a bit much. Now that you've used Linux and fell in love with it you'll eventually stop using Windows and want to get rid of it (after all it's taking up valuable mp3 space). Let the migration begin.

Once in Linux you can set it up to migrate a lot of (or a little of, or all of, depending on what you have) your important data from Windows. You'll have to be able to read data from your Windows partition. MDK 9 and above will be able to set this up automatically.
To learn how to do it manually drop by mandrakeusers.org and use the search button :P It's been asked a couple of times. Also it may be in the mandrakeusers.org faq section now.

.:.Bookmarks.:.

Practically all major Linux browsers are capable of importing IE bookmarks (Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla).
The IE bookmarks for XP, 2000 can be found in:
C:Documents and Settings%username%Favorites
If you were using Mozilla, Netscape or Opera in Windows the bookmark files can just be copied to your $HOME directory where $HOME=/home/name_of_user.
Linux doesn't have Program Files directories instead it has hidden directories where these files are usually stored. These directories have a . before them. e.g. The mozilla directory is
```
.mozilla
```

.:.Address Book.:.

It is possible to copy your address book info to Linux. Both Kmail and Evolution are able to do this. To my knowledge KMail (which is a part of KDE) does it better.

Kmail can import from Outlook Express 4 and 5 folders, Eudora's address book and MS Exchange PABs, while Evolution AFAIK can import Outlook Express 4 .mbx files.

.:.Documents.:.

Programs, Programs, Programs

Now that you've copied those .doc, .ppt and other files you'll probably need to need to open and edit or at least look at them sometime. Linux has multiple solutions to this problem.

I've found out that there's already a site that does this so I'll link it but give my list too anyways. I spent too much time makin' it look pretty to just let it go like that!

Anyhoo, I'll list the main ones that I use here. Feel free to e-mail to get a prog added to my list. Oh yeah, and just because something isn't on my list doesn't mean that there isn't a Linux analog. It just means I don't know about or use it.

And now, without further ado, THE LIST:

Office Software

Staroffice/OpenOffice (OO.o) Microsoft Office
OO.o Writer Word

OO.o Presenter PowerPoint

OO.o Adabas D Access

OO.o Calc Excel

Kmail/Sylpheed Outlook Express/Eudora

Kontact/Evolution Outlook

Kmail/Evolution Exchange

Quanta 3.2 Frontpage

Dia Visio

Audio Player

XMMS Winamp 2.xx
juK Windows Media Player (WMP)/RealOne

RealOne/Realplayer RealOne

Amarok Winamp

Zinf WMP/RealOne

and much much more

Instant Messaging

GAim/Kopete All in one Messengers, eg. Trillian
Gaim/Kopete Aim

aMSN/Kmerlin MSN messenger

Gaim/Kopete/Licq ICQ

Gaim Yahoo Messenger

Multimedia

Webbrowser Plugins
Mozplugger Active X plugins

Flash Flash

Adobe Acrobat Adobe Acrobat

Real Real

Not yet Shockwave

Video Players

Xine/Mplayer/Ogle WinDVD

Xine/Mplayer Quicktime

Xine/Mplayer, et al DivX Player/WMP

Graphics, 3D Renderers

Blender Bryce
Gimp/Gimp 1.3 Photoshop/Paintshop Pro

Web Browsers

Mozilla/Opera Browsers w/ Integrated Mail
Mozilla Internet Exploder (IE)

Konqueror IE

Opera IE

Mozilla Netscape

Miscellaneous

IRC clients
XChat/KSirc/Konversation Mirc

FTP clients

Gftp/Kbear CuteFtp/WS_ftp/

FTP Servers

Pure-ftpd/Proftpd War FTP

Web Servers

Apache/Apache2 Nuff Said

::References::

I^3

Yeah I know, it's a shameless plug.

IM-12: HowTo Participate in the MDK Cooker Project

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 14:45:57 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute] [IM: Installing and Configuring Mandrake]

IM-12: HowTo Participate in the MDK Cooker Project

Post contents taken from MandrakeLinux.SA

Release 10.1 in Progress

10.0 is the current stable release for Mandrakelinux. Cooker is under active development for the next Mandrake release scheduled for September of 2004.

Background

One of the most common criticisms of the Mandrakelinux development process is that there is not enough time during the beta testing process for users to get involved in the process before the next release is rushed out the door. After much discussion of this subject on the Cooker mailing list, it quickly became apparent that there is a lack of understanding in the general Mandrake Community about how the Cooker process works. The truth of the matter is that the Mandrake beta testing period is almost three months long, but most users don't get involved until the very end of the process, and therefore are under the impression that the testing phase is too short.

The purpose of this document is to give interested ordinary users the information they need to get involved in testing the next Mandrakelinux release earlier in the release timeline. This will allow feedback from those users to make it back to the Mandrake developers within a timeframe that is useful.

Invariably, users install the second release candidate, and then post all kinds of messages for the Cooker mailing list and into the Bugzilla database requesting (sometimes demanding) new features for the current release. Unfortunately, at that point it is far too late to add features or new applications to the distro. If that decribes you, then the information in this document will be very helpful to you.

What Cooker Is

MandrakeSoft's development version of the next Mandrakelinux release is called Cooker. The purpose of Cooker is to improve the Mandrakelinux distribution by permitting a better interaction between the development team and the Mandrakelinux users, both for debugging and adding new features. It is an entire distribution unto itself, that is constantly in progress and sometimes cannot even be installed because it is broken itself because of incompatibilities.

Be careful: the term Cooker is used interchangeably for the Cooker Mailing List (as discussed on Cooker), the Cooker Distribution (I'm running Cooker), the RPM repository (that package is in Cooker) and the Cooker Way of Life (I'm a Cooker, which may lead to an early demise due to the bleeding edge style).

What Cooker Isn't

Cooker is not the place to get all the latest releases of software for the stable release. You should not try to install Cooker packages on a stable release. Cooker RPMs are incompatible because they are compiled against libraries that are not available on your stable release installation. In addition to being incompatible, many of the packages may be very buggy because of packaging errors or the software itself.

Ways To Participate

There are many ways in which one can participate in the Cooker project. The most common way is to install one of the ISO releases during the beta test cycle, but you may also contribute software and ideas.

Expectations

First of all, you need to remember that Cooker is a development distribution that is not well tested and is likely not to run properly most of the time. If you run it, it may mess up data, configurations, etc. It is not meant for a production environment. You have been warned.

Running Cooker is exciting, though, because you get to be the first to see the new enhancements that are being introduced into the distribution. If you give feedback on your experiences with running Cooker, either through bug reporting or through the Cooker mailing list, you will be influencing the development of the next Mandrakelinux release.

Installing Cooker

The first step in participating in the Cooker is to get it installed, and as with any GNU/Linux distribution, there are multiple ways of doing this.

Via FTP from a Public Mirror

Make a boot disk from the network.img file available on any of the public Cooker mirrors. The file should be located within the cooker/i586/images/ directory of the mandrake-devel tree on the mirror. If you are already running Linux, you can use dd to copy it to a floppy disk.

dd if=network.img of=/dev/fd0

If you are not already running Linux, you can use the rawwrite utility to make the boot disk in DOS or Windows. This utility is normally located in the /cooker/i586/dosutils directory of the mandrake-devel tree.

If your system has no floppy drive, you can burn the image (network.img, pcmcia.img, or whatever) onto a bootable CD-ROM.

 mkdir image
cp network.img image
mkisofs -b network.img image > network.iso
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 network.iso
rm -fr image

Installing from ISO Release

ISO releases (disk images of Cooker that can be burned to CDROM) are snapshots of Cooker that start coming out about 3 months before Cooker is considered stable and forked into the next release. The first release is generally referred to as the Cooker Snapshot. Following the Cooker Snapshot release, every two weeks or so a new set of iso's are created and released for testing up through the final release date. The approximate schedule for Mandrakelinux 10.1 can be found here, but can be summarized as:

Cooker Snapshot - mid July
Beta 1 - End of July
Beta 2 - Begining of August
Release Candidate 1 - Mid August
Release Candidate 2 - end of August
Final - Begining of Setptember

Many people like to install and test from these ISO releases, which is why they exist. If you test from the ISO releases, though, make sure you're testing the latest version.

Also, it is possible that an additional release candidate will be released if there is still work to be done to get the release stable. 9.1 and 9.2 had 2 release candidates and 9.0 had 3.

You can get the ISO images from the mandrake-iso subdirectory of most Mandrake mirrors; or, by using BitTorrent, you can download them from everybody else in peer-to-peer fashion. Check the Main page for a link to the official BitTorrent file and instructions on how to download beta iso images. If you are having trouble with BitTorrent, check out the Bittorrent FAQ over at the MandrakeClub site.

Keeping Your ISO's Up to Date Without Re-Downloading

When you test the ISO releases, you are unfortunately faced with the task of downloading a new set of ISO images every two weeks. This can take up a lot of bandwidth, and is absolutely out of the question for dial-up users. You can drastically reduce the amount of bandwidth your iso downloads take by synching the images using a protocol known as rsync.

I'll edit and incorporate this document later, but for now, here is a link to it: Using rsync to Update Mandrake ISO Images

From a Local Mirror

If you have about 6GB of diskspace available, it is faster and easier to install from a local mirror on your hard disk or on a local server. There are even scripts available to make a set of ISO images that can be burned to CD to install in the traditional way. Use fmirror or rsync to create a local mirror and keep it up to date.

Add stuff here about how to use fmirror or rsync

To install the rpmsync utility for Cooker:
```
urpmi rpmsync
```
Running gendistrib

If you keep a local mirror, often times the hdlists get screwed up, so it is a good idea to run a script called gendistrib before you update your urpmi sources. To run the script, you must have write access to the directory tree that contains the dist tree. Navigate to the directory that contains the root of the dist tree and then type
```
 gendistrib --distrib
```
Via NFS Over the Local Network

Use the network.img image to create a boot floppy using one of the methods described above and select NFS instead of ftp.
Via Hard Disk Install (from a local mirror)

If your local mirror is on a partition that is on the machine you intend to install Cooker on, use the hd_grub.img floppy image to create a boot floppy using one of the methods described above (get it from the install/images directory of a mirror). Then, follow the instructions from http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/hd_grub.cgi to create a GRUB menu.
Via Hard Disk or Network with No Floppy or CD-ROM

Some machines nowadays do not have a floppy drive or a CD-ROM drive. We have found a solution for that too.

Copy the necessary files from the isolinux directory to /boot/
```
 cd /path/to/mirror/install/isolinux/alt0/
cp vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz-all
cp all.rdz /boot
```
Make an entry in /etc/lilo.conf if you use LILO or /boot/grub/menu.lst if you use GRUB

Example entry for LILO bootloader
```
 image=/boot/vmlinuz-all
label=all-install
root=/dev/ram3
initrd=/boot/all.rdz
append="ramdisk_size=32000"
vga=791
read-only
```
As always, after you have finished editing /etc/lilo.conf, you need to run /sbin/lilo before your changes take effect.

Example entry for GRUB bootloader
```
 title all-install
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-all root=/dev/ram3 ramdisk_size=32000 vga=791
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/all.rdz
```
Via Hard Disk Install (from ISO images)

The disk install can also use ISO images from a local hard disk (put all ISO images in the same directory). There are many ways to use these ISO images:
- you can get install/images/boot.iso from a mirror, burn it to CD and boot on it
- you can copy the install/isolinux/ directory from a mirror to a local hard disk, then use http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/hd_grub.cgi to create a GRUB boot disk (see Via Hard Disk Install)
- if you already have a linux system, you can add a bootloader entry to boot on the installer (see Via Hard Disk or Network with No Floppy or CD-ROM)
Once the installer is started, it will ask the hard disk, the partition and the directory were the ISO images are located. If this directory contains more than one bootable ISO image, the installer will ask which one it should use.

Making CD's with MakeCD

MakeCD is a wrapper script that runs mkcd, and it will create a set of iso's for you to burn to CD. If you have a local Cooker mirror, it is quite easy to make you own set of disk's.

If boot floppies don't contain your driver

Two main problems (maybe others): first, if you have an old SCSI adapter, we might have not included the driver in the boot floppies, so if you can't boot off the CDROM (old SCSI bios don't provide booting capability) you're trapped; second, if you need a proprietary SCSI driver or network driver (nvnet.o for example). That problem is solved that way:
- create a traditional boot floppy (cdrom.img if you plan to install from cdrom, network.img from network, etc)
- also create an ext2 floppy with command:
```
mke2fs /dev/fd0
```
- find your driver and copy it (uncompressed) on the ext2 floppy with the command or its equivalent for another driver:
```
 zcat /lib/modules/BOOT/kernel/3rdparty/dc395x_trm/dc395x_trm.o.gz \
> /mnt/floppy/dc395x_trm.o
```
- also copy (uncompressed) the dependencies for that module (such as scsi_mod.o for example; there might be others, check in the modules.dep file)
- boot the traditional boot floppy, hit F1 and then type "linux expert", it will allow you, a while later, to put the other floppy and load the modules from there, in dependencies order of course (scsi_mod.o first, etc)

Keeping Your Cooker Installation Up to Date

URPMI is Your Friend

Defining a cooker urpmi source

One of the most useful tools developed for the Mandrakelinux distribution is the easy urpmi script that was written by Oliver Thauvin. It can be found at http://urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php

You can also use a GUI, called urpmi.setup. Install the package urpmi.setup, and launch it. It will query the list of mirror on a website, and then allow you to choose the mediums to add to urpmi. In order to save bandwidth, you should use a rsync enabled mirror ( their url begins with rsync:// ).

If you have a favorite mirror that is not listed in the easyurpmi script, or if you have a local mirror, you can create the command line yourself with the following syntax:

urpmi.addmedia   with

You can find a complete list of the up-to-date and broken mirrors at http://manu.agat.net/mandrake/mirrors_state.html

Once you have urpmi sources set up for your Cooker installation, you can keep the package lists in the individual repositories updated by running the urpmi.update command. This is handy for the stable releases when the only thing that changes is the updates repository. Try

urpmi.update

It is easier on a Cooker system, where all the repositories change daily, to keep all of them up to date by running urpmi.update with the -a switch. This updates all package sources.

urpmi.update -a

This updates your urpmi configuration files with the updated hdlist.cz files that will be available on the mirrors. If you do not do this step, urpmi will not know about any of the package changes that have taken place on the mirror and you may get an error like "everything already installed" even thought you know there were lots of package changes on the mirrors.

Once the sources are updated, run

urpmi --auto-select

to update all installed packages. Essentially, urpmi checks all installed packages and determines if there is a newer package in one of the source repositories. If a newer version of the package exists, it will be installed along with any required dependencies that may have been created.

Starting with version 4.4, urpmi supports transactions. This means that packages are downloaded and installed in small related groups, instead of all at once. You will no longer have to resort to dirty tricks when you have a small /var partition. Also, since version 4.4-41mdk, urpmi updates itself first and restarts before updating any other packages.

You can also use the --auto and --no-uninstall switch ( on a recent urpmi version, > 4.3-13mdk ) to do a fully automated upgrade. Nothing will be uninstalled, and all questions will be skipped ( with a good default answer ).

To update your kernel you have to run

urpmi kernel

This is required because the name of each kernel is unique so a previous kernel is never uninstalled when installing a new one.

The last step is to update the configuration. During the update several .rpmnew files might have been created (you normally get a warning, but one easily misses those). etc-update can help you updating those config files.

Good Bug Reporting

If you think you have found a bug, there are some steps to take before reporting it into the Bugzilla database.

First, make sure that you are up to date with Cooker for the relevant packages, this will allow you to see if it has already been fixed. Cooker changes daily, so if you think you find a bug in beta2, and it is a week post release, there is a good chance that the package has been updated several times since the iso release. The easiest way to update to the latest packages is to make sure you have your urpmi sources set up properly and and either urpmi packagename, or make sure the entire system is current with urpmi --auto-select. Detailed instructions on this are contained in the previous paragraphs.

Second, make sure it is a reproducible problem. The developers will often dismiss a reproducible problem as a user error or a configuration problem. Therefore, if you can reproduce the problem, even on another machine, it will be very helpful in getting your bug report looked at.

Third, search through the Cooker mailing list archives and Bugzilla to see if the bug has already been reported. If it has been reported, you can add additional information to the existing report to help sort it out. There is no sense in adding a duplicate bug report to the database.

As for the role of the Cooker mailing list in comparison with the role of Bugzilla, use the Cooker mailing list to discuss whether something is a bug or not, use Bugzilla to report it.

Good bug report etiquette states that you need to be precise in bug reporting. Putting "Package XYZ is broken!" without giving a clear description is not wise. Give the failing package's name, a brief description of the problem, and some revelant information about your host, and anything that we need to do to reproduce the problem on our boxes. Also provide whatever other information that you may think is useful, including, but not limited to, configuration files of the package.

How to Use Bugzilla

Bugzilla is the master database for bug reporting In order to make a bug report, you need to get a valid Bugzilla account, which is very easy. You just navigate with your browser to qa.mandrakesoft.com and click on the "Open a new Bugzilla account" link and enter the information requested.

Normal accounts have privileges to add bugs, add comments to existing bugs and change the status of bugs that weere created with that account. Before a new bug is posted, Bugzilla will perform a search of the database looking for similar bugs and will prompt you make sure you want to post a new bug.

How Bugzilla Works

The web interface is the way most users interact with Bugzilla. The Mandrake Bugzilla is located at http://qa.mandrakesoft.com

There is a mail interface to Bugzilla that makes it easy to add additional comments or change the status of bugs if you have the appropriate level of access.

What the Various Bug Statuses Mean

These define the state the bug report is in.

UNCONFIRMED - the bug is new and no developer or other user has confirmed it yet; until then, it stays unconfirmed
NEW - the bug is new
NEEDINFO - a developer has asked more details to the reporter in order to understand what's going on with this bug
FIXED - the bug has been fixed
INVALID - the bug was considered not "real"
WONTFIX - for whatever reason, hopefully explained well in the comments, this bug will not be fixed (often considered non important, or we can't fix it)
LATER - the bug has been acknowledged, but is not going to be addressed until sometime later in the development process
REMIND -
WORKSFORME - no one could reproduce the problem, we see normal behaviour, so we can't do much about it...
OLD - a bug in this status is no longer relevant either because the software package in question has been updated, or because the package has been removed from the distro.

Voting for Bugs

Bugzilla maintains a voting system for helping users validate bug reports. It is supposed to be used so that people can indicate that they have duplicated a bug and feel it is important, while hopefully reducing duplicate bug reports.

The Cooker Mailing List

Because the cooker mailing list is a very high volume mailing list (it will often get over 1000 messages a day late in the development cycle) it is important that you be careful about how and when you post to the list. To reduce the noise level, it is a good idea to search the list archives for your issue prior to posting. Searchable archives are available at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/ and http://gmane.org . To maximize the chances of your message being seen, help minimize the level of noise on the list by keeping idle chatter down and restraining yourself from making offtopic posts.

The List is where discussions take place on how to implement things, the results of testing or whether something is a bug or not. Bug reports themselves should be reported in Bugzilla.

If you cannot follow cooker but still want some insight of the discussion, you should see the CookerWeeklyNews. But if you run cooker, you should follow cooker, at least search the archives when you have a problem ( http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/ )

TestZilla

Through the Testzilla pages on Bugzilla, you can follow procedures to report successes or bugs on Bugzilla components.

To be able to perform hardware testing, you must first upload your system configuration to TestZilla. To do so, install the hwdb-clients package and run hwdb_add_system . Then you will have access to the various hardware validation procedures from the Testzilla pages.

Consult TestZilla if you want to contribute procedures or see how the whole system works.

Contributing Patches

If you develop a patch that corrects a bug in one of the Mandrake developed tools, send your patch to the Cooker mailing list and to the maintainer of the package.

If you develop a patch for a software application that is packaged and included in the Mandrakelinux distribution, send your patch to the maintainer of the package and also submit it upstream to the software project itself. Mandrake packagers often patch sources to fix major bugs, but the sources themselves should be fixed by the project. Not all software projects have MandrakeSoft employees that work on CVS, so submitting a patch to Mandrake does not guarantee that the fix will find its way into the project sources.

Glossary of Terms

Alpha Release - Also referred to as a cooker snapshot. It is probably broken and most likely quite badly but would really like you to test it as an assembly (distinct from testing the parts). The developers are still willing to make significant changes (bumping versions etc) to make everything work well, so now is the time to squawk loudly if your pet package or feature looks like being left out.
Beta Release - a beta is an ISO release of Cooker that is meant to test the functionality that has been or is being added to various components of the distribution. It's probably got some serious bugs, so you don't want to use it in production but please feel free to use it for light duties. At this point, the package maintainers are generally unwilling to nudge package versions but will do so to fix problems. Minor problems that a lot of effort to be fixed and/or may upset other things in the fixing are now at risk of being left as they are.
Release Candidate - a release candidate, or RC, is an ISO release of the distribution that is released for the purpose of finding show-stopper bugs in the features and packages that have been included. During the release candidate phase, no new packages or features may be added, but bug fixes may be committed if they are major. Please subject it to very heavy testing. If it works well, it will be blessed and submitted to the publisher for manufacturing the boxed sets and the iso images and distribution tree will posted to the mirrors for immediate download. The package maintainers won't nudge versions at all except as necessary to fix a showstopper. We won't fix anything if it's much less than a showstopper or security update unless it's dead easy and carries no risk of breaking anything else. It is useless to make a feature request at this time as no new features can be added.
Contrib - packages that are not part of the main distro, but that are important because someone has packaged them and contributed them.
Freeze - no feature adds can be made to any Mandrake software and no updates can be made to packages except for major bugfixes.
Deep Freeze - Only showstopper bugfixes and security flaws can be upgraded.

Other references are:

IM-11: Copying & Burning CD

Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:52:17 +0000

Browse: [About the FAQ Forum] [Table of Contents] [FAQs] [Contribute]

IM-11: Copying & Burning CD's with K3b

This How-to covers the steps to take to setup K3b to allow you to use K3b as a user (instead of root) to copy cd's from one drive to another, and burn data or audio cd's from files on your harddrive. The emphasis is on the setup, not how to use it.

Prelim: Burners like to be the master device on your ide cable (flat, grey data cable) just like the harddrive you boot from. This guide assumes your harddrive is master on the primary ide (/dev/hda) and that your burner is master on the secondary ide (hdc). If you have another cdrom or dvdrom drive, it should never be on the same ide cable as the burner, thus leaving /dev/hdb (primary slave, same cable as your harddrive) for it (your reader device). Note that all drives use a little jumper to know whether they are master or slave. Also note that masters go at the end of the ide cable (furthest from the motherboard) and slaves go in the middle. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to post. If everything worked ok in wino-dows, chances are you'll be fine. Most errors when copying a cd come from the reader being on the same ide cable as the burner.

The primary master is hda & slave is hdb; the secondary master is hdc & slave is hdd.

Sections Overview

Setting up Reader Device
- Modifying /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf
- Changing /dev/cdrom symlink
- Modifying /etc/fstab
[*]Running the K3b Setup as root

1. Setting Up Reader Device

Note: You can skip to section #2 if a) you only have one drive (I assume a burner or you wouldn't be reading this) or B) you don't want to ever burn from one drive to another

a) Modifying /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf

The first thing we will do is edit /etc/lilo.conf (the default bootloader) or /boot/grub/grub.conf (if you specifically chose to use the grub bootloader instead of the default lilo). We do this because we wish to tell the kernel at boot time to use scsi emulation for the reader device.

Open a terminal (konsole, RXvt, eterm, xterm, etc..)

For lilo

$ su

Enter Password: [enter root password]



# vi /etc/lilo.conf

Under the "Append" section for booting mandrake, you should see hdc=ide-scsi. Hit 'i' to enter Insert mode and add hdb=ide-scsi so that it now looks like this:

hdc=ide-scsi hdb=ide-scsi

Now hit ESC to leave Insert mode, and type :wq to write changes & quit. Send your changes to the boot record by typing "lilo". Reboot by typing "reboot"

For Grub

$ su

Enter Password: [enter root password]



# vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

On the "kernel" line for booting mandrake, you should see hdc=ide-scsi. Hit 'i' to enter Insert mode and add hdb=ide-scsi so that it now looks like this:

kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz hdc=ide-scsi hdb=ide=scsi other_stuff_untouched_by_your_meddling

Now hit ESC to leave Insert mode, and type :wq to write changes & quit. Reboot by typing "reboot"

Everybody

When mandrake boots back up, a wizard should detect that an ide drive has been removed and a new scsi drive has been installed. If you like wizards doing it all for you, accept all the guff it gives ya and log back in - skip to section #2. If you'd prefer to do it by hand to know your system better (and it's two short steps anyway), cancel the wizard changes and read parts b and c. I recommend doing by hand because if something fails to work you can post exactly what you changed and we can easilier help you - not that easilier is a word, but you get the picture.

B) Changing the /dev/cdrom symlink

Chances are you have a soft link /dev/cdrom pointing to /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/cd (where your reader was). We'll need to change that because as far as linux is concerned, your reader is now aboard the scsi train, not ide. Do as many "ls" and "ls -la" commands as it takes to find what we're looking for on your machine.

$ su

Enter Password: [enter root password]



# cd /dev

# ls -la cd* 

[analyse the ls output to see where your cdrom and cdrom2 links are pointing. cdrom2 should be the flashing, broken one. We want to fix the broken one]

# rm cdrom

# ln -s /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/cd ./cdrom

[if you watch dvd's, or would like to eventually with your dvd drive, there's one more - check to see if you have a dvd link already]

# ls -la dvd

# rm dvd (if it's there)

# ln -s /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/cd ./dvd

Fhew! That was easy... as long as you were careful to find the right stuff.

Now anything that was looking for /dev/cdrom still sees the same drive. One more step before we reboot:

c) Modifying /etc/fstab

/etc/fstab is the "filesystem table" of where your kernel should mount which filesystems. It typically wants to mount /dev/cdrom to /mnt/cdrom, /dev/cdrom2 to /mnt/cdrom2, and so on.

$ su

Enter Password: [enter root password]



# vi /etc/fstab

It should look something like this:

/dev/hda2 / reiserfs noatime,notail 1 1

/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0

none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdb,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0



none /proc proc defaults 0 0

We want the /mnt/cdrom line's dev=/dev/hdb to now be /dev/cdrom instead... change that as root of course, just like above (& don't forget to :wq to write changes before quitting). Then reboot by typing, yep, you guessed it, "reboot".

2. Running the K3b Setup as root

Once logged back in, open up your prefered terminal. We will now run the k3b setup.

$ su

Enter Password: [enter root password]



# k3b

The setup window should pop up. You can "Next" your way through it, but remember to set the proper max write speed for your burner to get the quickest burn. Be sure you add you user to the list of users who are allowed to use k3b. Allow k3b to edit your fstab so that it can add these two lines:

/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/cd   /mnt/cdrom/   auto   ro,noauto,user,exec   0 0 

/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd   /mnt/cdrom2/  auto   ro,noauto,user,exec   0 0

Exit k3b when it opens up after the setup dialog (because you're still root and you won't be running it as such). Now open it again as your user, and in the menu at the top there is a k3b - Configuration (as opposed to Setup). Quick scan through that to set your options/preferences for your user and you're done!

CL-07: Understanding the Directory Structure

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 18:16:31 +0000

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CL-07: Understanding & Manuevering Through the Directory Structure

(I couldn't really name this anything else, but man! It's so long! I had to chop it to fit in the subject line)

The purpose of this article is to aid your understanding of the way the linux filesystem, or directories (folders), are laid out, and to help you learn the basics of manuevering through them, along with the methods on manipulating files within your linux domain.

Understanding the Directory Structure

Without covering every directory, here's a metaphor to help you understand the directories (folders), are laid out.

/ is the yard, and the directory /home is the house where you keep your stuff. In /home, there can be (and will be) different directories (rooms) for the different people who live in the house.

Let's say Joe, the owner of the computer, is going to let his little sister Jen use his computer. There's a room in the house for both Joe and Jen; /home/joe and /home/jen. That is where each of them can keep their personal stuff, and neither of them have rights to the other's directory. You see, in linux, every file, like an mp3, and even every directory, like /home/joe, belongs to somebody. We'll see how great this can be for security and stability later.

The directory /dev is the garage where the devices are kept. Within /dev there's /dev/cdrom (for your CD drive), /dev/fd0 (for your floppy drive), and so on. However, these are more like files that define the device drive rather than what is on the cdrom in the drive, say.

/mnt is a special directory. Distributions usually mount devices in /dev for you, but here's what is happening. To use a device, i.e. to be able to see files on a cdrom, you need to mount the /dev/cdrom to /mnt/cdrom. Now, if you look in /mnt/cdrom, you will see the files on the plastic disc in the drive /dev/cdrom. Picture /dev/cdrom as the engine, and /mnt/cdrom the running car. Which would you rather get into? The same goes for your floppy disks - /dev/fd0 usually gets mounted to /mnt/floppy.

So let's recap the filesystem layout:

/ - the root directory - every other directory is contained within / (and that is why we usually write their names preceeded with a / - it's the root of the filesystem.)

/bin - This isn't a bin for trash! This is where system binaries are kept. Binaries are executable files that you can run, and they are for programs that run the operating system.

/boot - All the files for booting up your computer and loading the OS are kept in here.

/dev - All your devices, like CDROMs and floppy drives, are in here

/etc - this is where the system configuration files are kept (the way the OS is setup, so to speak)

/home - Within home, there is always a directory for each user. If your name is Joe, you are only allowed to download and save files (or change existing files) in /home/joe (sometimes called ~)

/usr - this is where applications go. Inside /usr looks very much like a mini / but the difference is instead of OS binaries or configs, it's the binaries or configs for applications not vital to the OS such as office or games. All users are allowed to run apps in /usr , but they aren't allowed to alter or delete the files there in any way.

- /usr/bin - binaries for apps like office or games

- /usr/etc - configs or setup for them

- /usr/src - source code for the apps (preinstalled packages)

/var - If you're running a server, the files that you are serving other people on the internet (like music or webpages) would be contained in here.

Using the Command Line

OK, now onto command line fun. And it is fun, so don't leave now! It may take more than one reading to grasp it all, but a million mile journey starts with a single step. Throughout this tutorial, I will give commands in quotes; You don't type the quotes, I just do to avoid confusion between command text and tutorial text, capice?

When we talk about going "into" a directory, like opening a folder in a graphical user interface (GUI) with your mouse, we will be able to view the contents of it. "ls" (for list) will list the files and directories within your current working directory (CWD), that is, the directory you are currently sitting in. When you first log onto the computer, or when you first open a "terminal" in X windows (X windows is a GUI incredibly similar to microsoft's GUI called windows), you are at the command line, and your working directory is usually /home/joe to start (if your name is joe - and for now IT IS >:| )

Let's look at the command line. It looks kinda funny, doesn't it?

[joe@joes.computer joe]$

looks really funny! What this is telling you is joe is logged into (joe@) the computer, which happens to have been cleverly named "joes.computer". joe@joes.computer makes sense, doesn't it. The last joe is telling you the current working directory, /home/joe (it always only shows the last directory name of your CWD.) Not so funny anymore, is it? The command "pwd" will print your working directory to the screen. It will look like this:

[joe@joes.computer joe]$ pwd
/home/joe

[joe@joes.computer joe]$ _

O.K. joe, your home directory /home/joe)

[joe@joes.computer joe]$ cd ..

[joe@joes.computer home]$ _

"cd .." again would take you up a directory to /

[joe@joes.computer home]$ cd ..

[joe@joes.computer /]$ _

Every directory has two special directories in them; "." and ".." ; "." means "this directory" and ".." means "the directory above me" or "my parent directory". The only exception is / has no parent directory there is no /.. to "cd" to.

Remember ~ being the same as /home/joe? Well "cd ~" from anywhere will take you straight to /home/joe. Also, "cd /" will take you straight to the top, /. From /, you could type "cd home" and do an "ls" just to see

[joe@joes.computer /]$ cd home

[joe@joes.computer home]$ ls
./
../
jen/
joe/

[joe@joes.computer home]$ _

Directories are shown in blue and have a forward slash after their name. Executable binaries are shown in green, installable rpms are red, text and unknown types are white, pictures are purple, links (like shortcuts) are a light aqua, etc.

Now lets cover some basic commands that you would use everyday. In X windows, people often right click to select cut, copy or paste, to make a directory or link (shortcut), or to move or remove (delete) a file. Believe it or not, these tasks go faster using the command line interface (CLI)! Some commands take arguments to understand exactly what you want to do, like "ls -l". The "-l" is the argument and tells "ls" to list the files in the directory using the long, detailed format, showing you the file sizes and attributes. You can check the options or the syntax for a command in the manual for that command by typing "man command" (e.g. "man ls"). For even more detail, you can type "info command".

Command Quick Reference

cd = change directory
ls = list directory contents (show files)
cp = copy
mv = move/rename
rm = remove/delete. Use "-R" argument to remove an entire directory and all of it's contents. Use with Caution!
su = switch user (without an argument means switch to root, the superuser/administrator)
pwd = print working directory
mkdir = make a directory
ln -s = make a soft link (shortcut)

Examples

cp song.mp3 ~ => Copy song to /home/joe

mv ~/song.mp3 ~/newname.mp3 => rename song in /home/joe to newname

cd ~ => change directory to /home/joe

mkdir downloads => make a new directory "downloads" within the current working directory.

ln -s is awesome. It works like a shortcut in windows. Let me explain how I use this to my major advantage.

I use some applications (well, games ) in both windows and linux, so instead of having the files installed twice, I can link to the windows files.

ln -s /mnt/windows/KlingonWOF/gamedata /usr/games/KlingonWOF/gamedata

Now everytime my linux looks at /usr/games/KlingonWOF/gamedata it's actually following the link and looking at the file on the windows partition! This works for entire directories, too. You can "ln -s /path/to/directory ~", and from then on "cd ~/directory" will take you into it!

Permissions

Earlier I mentioned that users don't have access to other's files. This is because each file, as well as each directory, has permissions. There are read, write, and execute perms. You need write perms on a something before you can modify or delete it, and you need execute perms before you can execute a binary (executable). Let's do an "ls -l" and examine the output.

[joe@joes.computer joe]$ ls -l

Permissions  Owner Group  Size

drwxr-----  1 joe  users    0      Jan 1 1970 ./

drwxr-----  1 joe  users    0      Jan 1 1970 ../

drwxr-----  1 joe  users    0      Jan 1 1970 Desktop/

drwxr-----  1 joe  users    0      Jan 1 1970 Documents/

-rwxr-----  1 joe  users    32     Jan 1 1970 music -> /mnt/windows/My Documents/My Music/

-rw-r-----  1 joe  users  1,000    Jan 1 1970 picture.jpg

-rw-r-----  1 joe  users   64      Jan 1 1970 readme.text

-rwxrwxrwx  1 joe  users   64      Jan 1 1970 readme_from_windows.txt

-rw-r-----  1 joe  users 2,345,255 Jan 1 1970 zinf-1.0.i586.mdk.rpm

Because permissions for files and directories requires a lengthy explaination, I'm going to short-hand this a little to give you more of a general knowledge rather than an "administrative guru" status on the topic. It isn't a tough subject, there's just a lot to talk about.

What we are seeing in the first column: Directories have a "d" as the very first character, followed by the permissions for the owner of the file or directory, permissions for users in the specified group, then the permissions for everyone else.

According to the output, Joe has read and write access to every file and directory, and execute rights on every directory (and the link "music"). Anybody who belongs to the group "users" can read every file and directory, and anyone else has no rights. The one exception is "readme_from_windows.txt" - a file copied over from a windows partition - which gives everyone full rights to the file. This can be dangerous!! Insane punk-clown hackers can do what they please with this file!

To change the permissions of a file (for instance - Joe sees his "readme_from_windows.txt" file permissions and has a conniption fit so decides to do something about it) you use the command "chmod". WTH that stands for beats the fudge outta me, but I sure know how to use it. Each of the permissions, read, write, and execute can be represented by a number to "simplifiy" things. :roll:

read = 4
write = 2
exectute = 1

In other words, right now "readme_from_windows.txt" has permissions of 777 (4+2+1 ; 4+2+1 ; 4+2+1). You can give everyone full permissions to a file with the command "chmod 777 filename"; however, most of the time you would rather give more restricted access. So here's how.

Let's say Joe decides he wants everyone who belongs to the "users" group to read "readme_from_windows.txt", (but not write to it, i.e. change or delete it). He might issue the command "chmod 640 readme_from_windows.txt". Now user joe has read(4) + write(2) = 6 ; group users has read(4) = 4 ; and others have no rights = 0 ; therefore, 640. See? This will get clearer as time goes by.

Conclusion

Now you know how to move around at the command prompt, view the files in the directories and their permissions, copy and move files, and read the manuals for new commands as you hear about them.

GQ-06: History of Linux

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:56:21 +0000

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GQ-06: History of Linux

Linux is an OS (operating system) kernel created by Linus Torvalds when he was a student at the University of Helsinki. To say that Linux is an OS kernel means that it's meant to be used as an alternative to other OS's like MS-DOS or the various versions of Windows.

When Linus Torvalds was studying at the University of Helsinki, he was using a version of the UNIX OS called "Minix". Linus and other users sent requests for modifications and improvements to Minix's creator, Andrew Tanenbaum, but he felt that they weren't necessary. That's when Linus decided to create his own OS that would take into account users' comments and suggestions for improvements.

This philosophy of asking for users comments and suggestions and using them to improve computer programs was not new. Richard Stallman, who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had been advocating just such an approach to computer programming and use since the early 1970's. He was a pioneer in the concept of "free software", always pointing out that 'free' means 'freedom', not zero cost. Finding it difficult to continue working under conditions that he felt went against his concept of 'free software' he left MIT in 1984 and founded GNU (which stands for "GNU's Not UNIX"). The goal of GNU was to produce software that was free to use, distribute and modify; so they wrote the GPL (General Public License), which protects software licensed under it. The GPL basically states that any sourcecode licensed under the GPL is freely available (open) and allowed to be modified by anyone, so long as the software's derived sourcecode is also open and licensed under the GPL. This OSS (Open-Source Software) is therefore protected from being taken and used for closed source, proprietary software.

Linus Torvalds' goal 6 years later was to produce an OS that not only took into account its' users' feedback, but allowed them to help eliminate bugs (errors in the code). So, in 1991, we had the ideal conditions that would create Linux. To make a long story short, Linus Torvalds had a kernel but no programs of his own; Richard Stallman and GNU had programs but no working kernel.

So, combining the necessary programs provided by GNU in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a kernel, developed by Linus Torvalds in Helsinki, Finland, Linux was born. Due to the physical distances involved, the means used to get Linus' kernel together with the GNU programs was the Internet, then in its' infancy. We can say then that Linux is an OS that came to life on the Internet. The Internet would also be crucial in Linuxs' subsequent development as the means of coordinating the work of all the developers that have made Linux into what is is today.

By late 1991, Linus Torvalds had his kernel and a few GNU programs wrapped around it so it would work well enough to show other people what he had done. And that's what he did. The first people to see Linux knew that Linus was on to something. At this point, though, he needed more people to help him. Here's what Linus had to say back in 1991.

"Are you without a nice project and dying to cut your teeth on an OS you can try to modify for your needs?... This post might just be for you."

People all over the world decided to take him up on it. At first, only people with extensive computer programming knowledge would be able to do anything with that early Linux. These people started to offer their help. The version numbers of Linux were getting higher and higher. People began writing programs specifically to be run under Linux. Developers began writing drivers so different video cards, sound cards and other gadgets inside and outside your computer could use Linux. Nevertheless, throughout most of the early 90's Linux did not get out of the 'GURU' stage. For some reason, though, Linux hasn't yet completely shaken off that 'Gurus only' image that it took on at the beginning. That is mostly the result of articles in the popular, non-technical press written by people who have not kept up to date with recent versions of Linux.

As mentioned before, Linux is in the UNIX family of operating systems. UNIX is primarily designed to be used by multiple users, and often professionals. You will have to learn some UNIX concepts, but that doesn't mean that Linux is a professionals-only operating system. Quite the contrary; Most major versions of Linux are designed to be as user-friendly and as easy to install as any other operating system on the market today.

IM-10: Dual-Booting with Windows

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:02:29 +0000

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IM-10: Dual-Booting with Windows

OK listen up: I have the best way to dual boot hands down. You'll have to reload windows, though, 'cause partition resizing causes poor performance ever after in windows. The sizes I mention are relative, here I am talking about an 80 gig drive. As my friend floyd pointed out, you can easily dual-boot if you have two drives - install windows on the first drive and linux on the second. The main focus of this how-to is partitioning a single drive so that people with one drive don't shy away from linux.

Always read a tutorial before going through with the procedure. I recommend this because, for instance in Step 4, if you aren't sure how to do it, you're stuck half-way through the installation without a PC to read another How-To!!

Step 1

Pop in the Windows cd. Reboot. Delete ALL partitions. Make a partition big enough for windows + apps, like 20GB. Make another HUGE one for keeping all your music, downloads, movies, pictures, etc... leaving enough free unpartitioned space for linux (say 20GB at the end of the drive).

Step 2

Choose to install on the first part (20GB) as NTFS full format (not quick).

Step 3

Boot into windows when done and select the HUGE partition and right click - format full as FAT32, NOT NTFS. This will now be writable in both OS's!! Great for listening to the same MP3s in either, etc.

Step 4

Pop in mandrake (preferably the newest stable version) and reboot. Select the left over free space for / (or divvy it up for /, /usr, /home). Create another 800Mb partition for swap (on another harddrive if possible - You'll get a bit better performance / stability this way).

Note: If you aren't sure how to partition your harddrive (or have no idea what I'm talking about) be sure to read this Filesystem Layout Partitioning How-To.

Step 5

Be sure to install mandrake's boot loader to the MBR (master boot record). All done!

A perfect system. Now if you EVER have to update/upgrade either OS, all your music, downloads, etc stay! Enjoy!

I promise this system won't let you down. I say do it right the first time and enjoy everafter. Trust me - you'll want to upgrade both OSes eventually, and windows more often 'cause it always degrades slowly...

In the case where you reload windows, it'll write over the boot record and boot straight into win. Don't be afraid, linux isn't gone. You just boot off the first mandrake disk, press F2 and type rescue. One option is repair the bootloader/MBR. Done!

IM-09: Filesystem Layout Partitioning

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:44:04 +0000

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IM-09: Filesystem Layout Partitioning

by static

Many people wonder how the harddrive should be partitioned at install time. This guide will help you understand the linux directory structure, how it corresponds to the filesystem layout, and help you make an educated decision for which filesystem types to use for the different partitions.

Your filesystem is the base of your computer. It is a structure in which all your files are kept, ranging from files that run the operating system to files such as e-mails or mp3 music files. Rather than keep every file in one giant mess, they've been sorted out into groups of files that belong together and kept in directories, or "folders" as they're called in other operating systems. (Think of it this way, if you went fishing and caught a salmon, a pike, a bass, and a minow, you wouldn't want to keep them all in one tub, would you? Of course not! That would be insane! You want a different tub for each fish. The fish are the files, and the tubs are the directories.)

Without going into too much detail, here's what you need to know to install linux.

/ - Called the "root" (and that is why we usually write directory names preceeded with a / - it's the root of the filesystem. Not to be confused with the system administrative god, who's login name is also root!)

/bin - This isn't a bin for trash! This is where system binaries are kept. Binaries are executable files that you can run, and in this case they are for programs that run the operating system. This directory will

/boot - Where all the files necessary to boot the system are kept. If you choose to create a separate partition for this directory (explained below), it must be the first partition you create (i.e. at the forefront of the drive). It doesn't need to be larger than 20 megs or so.

/dev - All your devices, like CDROMs and floppy drives, are in here.

/etc - This is where the system configuration files are kept (the way the OS is setup, so to speak)

/home - This is where user's directories are created. For example, /home/static is where files for the user static are kept by default.

/usr - This is where general applications usually place their files.

- /usr/bin - binaries for apps like office or games

- /usr/etc - configs setup for them

- /usr/src - source code for the apps

/sexygirls - I can't tell you what I keep in here (but I can tell you that they don't think I'm funny when I tell them I'd "give them access to my harddrive")

/var - If you're running a server, the files (like music or webpages) that you are serving other people on the internet would be contained in here.

When installing linux, you have the option of dividing up the space on your hard drive into separate sections (or parts) called partitions. This can be handy, as it can improve the stability and security of your system. Here's an example: Your operating system tends to begin operating poorly if it's running out of space. You could, therefore, take your 10 Gig harddrive and divide it into 2 partitions (let's say 5 gigs each to keep it simple); one for / and one for /home. Considering anything you download will end up in your home directory (/home/joe for example), if you try to download more than 5 gigs of that Amish dance music you like so much, you'll be told you're out of space; however, the operating system is still as happy as a pig in the mud, because his space hasn't been invaded by your gigs of Amish dance music.

To take that example and apply it to your own linux installation, let's first consider a few things. First of all, downloading music won't be the only thing you'll want to do with your PC. You will want to install applications and games, and these get put into /usr. You should create separate partitions for the major directories so that you've got a safety net for the OS. This way, you have a partition for / (the OS), one for /usr (for applications and games like Klingon Wheel of Fortune), and one for /home (for the Amish dance music).

Also, linux (like other OS's) uses Swap space - which is just used like imaginary RAM. The difference with linux is it likes to keep another partition solely for the Swap. Another OS, we'll call it "wino-dows", just uses a swapfile on the same partition as the OS. Note this can make things unstable, though, if the swapfile needs more space - but that space is already used up by the OS, the wino-dows version of Klingon Wheel of Fortune, and your Amish dance music! So, you see why multiple partitions is a very smart idea (thank you linux, thank you).

So, when installing linux, you must decide how big to make these partitions. One of the most common partitioning practices is to have 4 partitions: /, Swap, /usr, and /home. With this sceme, use about a gig for /, twice your RAM for Swap, a third of what space is left over for /usr, and the rest for /home.

I personally make /usr a little bigger though, because almost anything I put into /home/static I end up burning onto a CD or DVD anyway, and I'd like to have the extra space for installing apps and games.

IMHO it's also good to spread the partitions over different hard drives.

For example I have my swap partition on separate harddrive, and I noticed significant speed increase (especially while using VMware with WindowsXP), my hard disks don't "grind" so much anymore. Accessing two hard drives at the same time is much faster than accessing one (I think up to twice as fast).

I'll try to explain the filesystem types briefly.

First I need to subdivide the fs types into two categories: journaling and non-journaling.

Journaling filesystems include: xfs, jfs, reiserfs, and ext3. There might be one more but these are the major ones.

Non-journaling filesystems include: ext2, swap. The swap is a special partition type so I don't know if it really counts or not, just threw it in for completeness. It IS, however, it's own fs type, whether you use reiser or whatever, swap is swap.

The difference between journaling and non-journaling filesystems is that journaling fs's keep a log, or a journal, of bits written to the disk. This is also called a meta-data system, because in effect, data is stored bout the rest of the data on the disk. The benefit of keeping a log/journal of the rest of the info on the disk is for safety. Look at it this way:

Newbie lets his server run all day and all night. Once in a while the power goes out and resets his computer. With a non-journaling fs like ext2 he may lose data and may experience filesystem corruption when the machine resets because the disk isn't properly finalized and unmounted safely. With a journaling filesystem, the filesystem compares the dates on the log with other info on the drive, replaying the log to repair/replace lost data. Did I mention it's really, really fast too? Ext2, in the event of a crash, forces fsck to run. Fsck is the filesystem checker utility that checks/repairs partitions much like scandisk on windows. Journaling filesystems don't require a fsck very often, if at all. They replay their logs and keep going.

Now that you understand the benefits, let's examine the advantages/disadvantages of each journaling filesystem. You'd be wise to choose one based on what you need.

Reiserfs:
A. Benefits
1. A very efficient filesystem that journals metadata. It also uses very small blocks so it's even more efficient, because if a tiny text file is just a few bytes, and there are many, they'll all get packed into one block rather than written as separate blocks.
2. Journals metadata. This can be considered a partially true journaling filesystem, because it's not redundant. A true journaling filesystem actually mirrors the data in a sense. Reiser does not.
3. Very fast with huge files. Because of the way it journals, it merely moves pointers in the log rather than physically moving gigantic (1gb or more) files. I'm not 100% sure about this but you can do your own research :smile:
4. Better than ext2 for the filesystem performance and journaling alone.
5. Large maximum file size. Ext2 is limited to 2gb, Reiser is limited to 4gb.

B. Disadvantages
1. Not a true journaling filesystem, so it doesn't protect you 100% from losing data.
2. Not good with lots of medium-sized files.
3. Not 110% stable with older 2.4.x series kernels. Personally I have never had a problem with it but other people with other distros have.
4. Not easy to recover data from like ext2, there just aren't any tools.

JFS:
A. Benefits
1. A true journaling filesystem. Not only does it log but it more or less mirrors data (jounals).
2. Large filesize support. Again, ext2 can only handle a 2gb file, JFS can handle between 512 terabytes to 4 petabytes. That's a big file. :wink:
3. Developed and supported by IBM, used for many years across many systems and there are lots of server people familiar with it, but...

B. Disadvantages
1. Although it's mature on other systems, some linux people believe it's still too cutting-edge. Not a great idea for a primetime server. Still needs work under linux.
2. While it's a true journaling FS, that journal comes at a price. Performance isn't as quick as Reiser or EXT2.

XFS:
A. Benefits
1. Very, very fast. SGI has been using XFS on their IRIX boxes for years, and considering what they do for a living, they need filesystem speed above all else. This has made it popular for linux as well.
2. Very large files supported. Again, EXT2 is stuck with a 2gb limit while XFS can handle between 16-64 terabytes. Gigantic. In the future when linux adopts 64bit disk I/O, this number scales to over 1 million terabytes.
3. Dump/restore tools come with XFS and they work as expected.

B. Disadvantages
1. Not a true journaling filesystem. Like Reiser, it sacrifices true journaling for speed. Not a bad tradeoff actually.
2. Some people believe SGI isn't serious about Open Source, or at least not as serious as IBM. Their motives are questionable at this point. Not really a disadvantage but support for XFS in the future may/may not continue.

I've used Reiser for a couple of years now and have grown to trust it and enjoy its' performance, even on crappy older computers. I've never experienced corruption like others have mentioned on the net so personally I recommend it. I've also used XFS and JFS, and I'm torn on which one to put above the rest. They're all pretty equal IMHO but I've used Reiser for the longest so I can testify to it's reliability.

I was reading Afro's great filesystem comparison but he didn't go into detail for ext3, the default (which is basically the old ext2 filesystem with journaling). This makes it a tiny bit slower than ext2, but it's rock solid, and hence the default choice. I use ext3 for the ultra important system partitions and the speedy Reiserfs for data partitions (like /usr and /home).

Now you have enough knowledge to successfully and confidently install a linux distribution to your harddrive. We recommend Mandriva linux, of course!

IM-08: What Linux software corresponds to Windows

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 02:53:06 +0000

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IM-08: What Linux software corresponds to Windows software?

This question often arises for new users who come from the Microsoft Windows world. They would like to find software that is similar in functionality to their accustomed Windows software.

There are many linux software products to choose from when looking for equivalent software.

Check this link for a table of equivalent software.

You may also want to look on Freshmeat or SourceForge for software based on keywords.

Finally, you can learn to master Wine. Wine is an emulator that actually allows you to run original windows software under Linux. However, this can be touch and go in terms of success.

BQ-03 : I need a language translator!

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 05:54:19 +0000

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BQ-03 : I need a language translator!

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IM-06: read and write permission on Windows partition

Tue, 06 May 2003 00:54:02 +0000

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IM-06: read and write permission on Windows partition

As you probably know, there are two filesystems commonly used on Windows: Fat32 and NTFS. The first part of this FAQ covers Fat32 problems only. See the second part for information on NTFS support.

I use VI to edit files via the command lines. HERE is what you have to know about VI.

Open a console, login as root and edit /etc/fstab. Look at the line where your Windows filesystem is. That should be something like this

/dev/hda5  /mnt/win_c  vfat  defaults  0 0

Now modify the above line so that it look like this one (ie, add umask=0,quiet after defaults)

/dev/hda5  /mnt/win_c  vfat  defaults,umask=0,quiet  0 0

Now save and quit the file. Finally, remount (umount and mount the partition) by typing

umount /mnt/win_c

mount /mnt/win_c

If you get umount: /mnt/win_c: device is busy, check at XMMS or Konqueror. Something is within /mnt/win_c and prevents you to umount the partition[1]. If that worked, you should now have read and write access by all users.

Note that you can organise your /etc/fstab file so that it look like THIS one (user Cannonfodder). You can put spaces between each line. The ONLY thing that matters is the order of things within one line. The order is

Look at 'man mount' and 'man fstab' for further details about that.

Reference:

man mount

man fstab

[1] More info about solving that particular problem at: 'IM-07: Umount says "device is busy"'

TR-01: How to kill programs without killing linux

Wed, 14 May 2003 22:21:58 +0000

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TR-01: How to kill programs without killing linux

I'm sure many of you have heard that "linux is more stable than windows" but are somewhat surprised when that odd program takes over and you have no recourse but to hit the reset button. Well I'm hear to tell you that that reset button may not be necessary.

There are many ways to end errant programs without killing linux (reset switch) which many times will run perfectly once that program is dealt with.

I'll start with X (XFree86 Windowing System which provides the GUI) and work my way down to the console methods.

::X gonna give it to ya::

If you use KDE and you experience problems with a program which doesn't want to close (in spite of you pressing the close button) you first recourse is something provided by KDE.

1. If you press Ctrl+Alt+Esc-clicking on a window will also get rid of the skull.

2.I've found this method to be quick but rather messy at times as the program is still using up resources. You can open KDE System Guard from the menu Kmenu -> Applications -> Monitoring -> KDE System Guard button to see the updated list of applications.

There may be more than one of the programs with the same name listed. Instead of clicking on them all you can choose the Tree view to kill the top-most (parent) application which will then kill the rest. The Tree view is obtained by clicking on the box next to Tree.

You can also sort programs by there memory usage which is especially useful if you don't know a program's name. Programs that have gone bad will usually use a lot of memory and show up at the top when sorted under User%. You can then select this program and kill it. This is good if it is a child process which has frozen and not a parent (with other children who are ok).

3. There is also the option of using XKill which is provided in the default Mandrake installation under Kmenu -> Applications -> Monitoring -> Xkill-clicking anywhere on the desktop.

4. There is also a kill-clicking on the window decoration.

5. If an application is using up so much resources that your PC is too slow for you to bring up the menu or wait for KDE System Guard then there is always the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace combo which will kill X itself.

::Killing a la Console::

You can also kill apps from the console using the kill commands.

1. To kill programs using the kill where username is your user name (since, unless you are root, you cannot kill other users' programs).

2. The killall

3. I also use top to kill the program. If it's still alive after that I repeat, only this time i use 9 as the signal. Occasionally signal 9 doesn't work and I've always wondered why.

*[3] Why can't I kill a process with -9?

One of the early things people learn about Unix is that a "kill -9" is

invincible- that a process must die if you send it a KILL (-9).

However, that's not entirely true:

A process can be sleeping in kernel code. Usually that's because
of faulty hardware or a badly written driver- or maybe a little of
both. A device that isn't set to the interrupt the driver thinks
it is can cause this, for example- the driver is waiting for
something its never going to get. The process doesn't ignore your
signal- it just never gets it.
A zombie process doesn't react to signals because it's not really
a process at all- it's just what's left over after it died. What's
supposed to happen is that its parent process was to issue a
"wait()" to collect the information about its exit. If the parent
doesn't (programming error or just bad programming), you get a
zombie. The zombie will go away if it's parent dies- it will be
"adopted" by init which will do the wait()- so if you see one
hanging about, check its parent; if it is init, it will be gone
soon, if not the only recourse is to kill the parent..which you
may or may not want to do.
Finally, a process that is being traced (by a debugger, for
example) won't react to the KILL either.

See SCO TA 104438 for more details.

::Terminal Death::

Before you ask no this isn't the same thing as the previous section. I can see that some clarification is necessary so I'll explain. In the context that I'm using it the console is what you use when you log in without X (i.e. that big black screen asking you to log in). The terminal on the other hand is what you use inside of X when using konsole or Eterm, etc. (Any *n*x gurus out there who know better feel free to correct my terminology :D).

First off, you can use all the methods used in Killing a la Console commands need to be done as root.

1. In case of a total freeze as oppose to intense system slowdown it may be time for the Alt+SysRq sequences.

2. If only X has frozen (usually you can only move the mouse) you can get away with not doing all the SySRq sequences. This works for me

At this point X sometimes dies a horrible, painful death. If not The next one is sure to do the job and always drops me to a console
Alt+SysRq+I.
While doing some research i also found that Alt+SysRq+K fails this should work.
When i get to the console all i do is login as root then init 1
Whew, well that's it. Happy exterminating.

::References::

[1]Information provided by paul

[2]Provided by tyme