ianw1974

Boot to Windows, then right click My Computer and click Manage (if Windows 2000 or XP). Then go to the disk manager, and you should be able to see both disks. If not, then you need to reboot and press DEL to go into the bios, and then go to IDE Hard Disks, and auto detect to make sure both primary and secondary drives have been detected. If you were able to format it in your system before, then you should be able to see it in the Windows Disk Manager.

I've never installed NVidia drivers, but I've installed Intel ones, and the way I had to do that was from the CLI, so that it uses the kernel source for compiling so that OpenGL will work for you. They normally recommend this is done without X running, and then just startx after you've completed the instructions for installing the driver, and then you should be fine. To test, from the CLI type glxgears - it'll run a little prog to check if it's OK. One other things, ensure something like MESA is installed, so that you have the OpenGL libraries. I usually make sure they are installed prior to installing the video driver.

Yes, you can click the advanced button, (or let me choose where to install), and then you can set the partitions on the second drive. The first drive will have LILO installed to the MBR, so that you can select to boot Windows, linux, etc, etc. I've never installed additional distros, but would expect that it will append to the LILO menu, so that you have Windows, Linux A, Linux B, Linux C - the latter letter corresponding to whichever distro.

OK. The easiest way is this. Boot from your Linux CD, and the install process will ask you to configure the disk during installation. You shouldn't need to partition with any other software prior to installing Linux. You may get asked about installing the LILO, make sure this goes to the MBR.

With the second hard drive, is there any reason as to why it's all set to FAT32? Or have you removed this now, and configured EXT3 partitions for /, Home, Swap, etc?

Additionally, if you were able to connect and now can't, there will be a reset button on the router to set it back to the factory defaults.

Usually, they set the default IP address to something like 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. Have you been able to connect to it at all? If not, this may be why. If it's ethernet based, then it shouldn't be a problem providing you have the correct IP range, and you can use a web browser to connect to most of them. Hope this helps!

Another alternative is to type one of the following commands at the prompt: uname -a uname -r the -a gives more information, the -r just lists the kernel.

My apologies, I didn't realise it was a pirated version. I won't link anything as such in the future!

When you boot, how are you booting? I used failsafe from my LILO menu, and then went from there with the login stuff I mentioned before. I've just had a play around and I've managed to copy and overwrite the files once I used su to get root privileges.

I know when I installed MDK 10.0 Official on the following spec: that I had to have a large swap drive because it ran like a dog if it was any smaller. It maybe because MDK 10.x wasn't designed for this type of machine. I expect when at CLI it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but when in KDE it was sooo slow. You couldn't even run the game Frozen Bubble! It wouldn't load. :o And when monitoring the memory, you could see it was all maxed out! That was with a 520MB swap.

I booted single mode today for a problem I had. I just typed login ian supplied my password and then carried on in the normal way using su to get into superuser mode and do everything I needed to. Try the similar to this and let me know how you get on, or have you done already and still got problems?

What are you logged on as? If you are logged in with your username, do the following commands: su [return] enter password for root account. Then copy the file into place - cp is the command for copy.

You don't need to use Partition Magic for the Linux stuff. I am guessing, you resized the Windows partition to free up some disk, or already had it spare. Then all you need to do is leave the rest of the disk empty. Don't use Partition Magic to create the partitions. When you install Linux, you will do all the disk config on there. You can choose the option to let me choose what to do, and then go from there. If you want Linux permanently, then configure / partition, home and swap. An example: / = 60GB HOME =38GB SWAP = 2GB Then for upgrades, you can leave Home as it is, and just replace the / partition with the new Linux OS.

Do you have anything else installed on the system? If not, when you see the disk representation, first have your EXT3 partition set up as big as you want it to be, then to the right of it, configure the swap. If you have Windows on it, then Windows will be first, then EXT3 for data, and then the Swap. If you have the system permanent, then there's another way. Windows first, then EXT3 for /, then EXT3 for HOME, then Swap. This is so if you upgrade, you don't lose your data in /HOME. It's entirely up to you how big you have the EXT3 partition. But make sure is EXT3, so that you get the added features of journaling in case of a system crash. It will help recover for you then! You have 100GB free, so if you want to give 99GB to Linux EXT3 and 1 GB to swap, then that would be fine. Maybe 2GB for swap would be best though. Depends if you want to use the rest of the disk for something else! Note, you can't see Linux partitions in Windows, but you can see the other way around. Just in case you want to use some of that 100GB for Windows. Hope this helps.

This sounds to me like the graphics wasn't configured during setup, and so X wasn't installed, and which is why you can't get into KDE. You would still be able to login to the system with your username or the root user from the CLI prompt. If you're new to Linux, then best thing would be go through the install again (don't upgrade - new install), and then when you come to one of the screens listing config for screen, network, etc, etc, check that the graphics is marked as configured, and not configured. My laptop does this on install, so I have to ensure it's configured for everything to work straight after install. On reinstall, make sure that LILO is installed in the MBR and nowhere else. Did Linux detect your video card OK?

As a rule, the doubling only really applies when you have < 1GB, which is how I normally do it. If you have 1GB or more then you can do it differently. Example, my laptop has 1GB of RAM, and my swap is 512MB. This is suffice for anything I do on it, but if you heavily use your system, then you may want to have 1GB for the swap. It depends if the install you're doing now is a permanent solution or not. If just for messing, you can set it to anything you like, but if permanent, go for 1GB it'll be enough.

This is true in case you need to rebuild. If you're just mucking around with Linux and unlikely to have data there, then just two partitions would be fine. So, if you're planning on keeping the install as a permanent thing have /, HOME and SWAP partitions. Mine is just / and Swap, but then I just mess around with it mostly on my laptop. My desktop has the 3 partitions because its a permanent solution! The laptop is for learning, rebuilding again and again if things go pear-shaped. Bit like a testing system perhaps!! :P

Yeah no problems, Linux can access NTFS partitions, but it cannot write to them. At least, not in the conventional manner. If you want to be able to save to the partition, convert it to FAT32 (you will need Partition Magic to do this).

How big's your hard drive? Bear in mind you need a swap partition also, and the usual way is to have it twice your RAM. So, if 256MB ram, then 512MB of disk space for Swap.

I thought I would try it just to learn a bit more, and feel like I contributed more to my installation! Sad to say it wasn't that great. It would work fine, in the sense that if you didn't set the OS to autoload XOrg. If you logged in at CLI and then ran startx, it was fine. When you shut it down however, you had a real bizarre yellow border around the edges of the screen about 2 cm wide. But it worked. When you set it to autoload at boot, then you couldn't log in because you couldn't type in the login box! But you could shut it down OK, etc. In the end failsafe, and a urpmi to thac and it installed some stuff, overwriting of course and away we go again without a rebuild which is great. KDE 3.4 I think I will leave for the time being, cos after two days of downloading updates and XOrg etc, I just want to enjoy myself relaxing that it works, than attempting updates and failing with it :P Either that or I really need to get a faster link, 128kbps is OK for download, but something else would be much better when rebuilding!

Were they changed/updated in the last few days then? I think I did my KDE upgrade attempt on Weds, rebuild Thurs with all updates applied and then XOrg upgrade today (I did try from the source and compiling but it failed partially and I then ended up downloading Thacs rpms anyhow!). So now I'm at the stage of MDK 10.1 OE with updated kernel of 2.6.8.1.24-1-1mdk and XOrg 6.8.2.

It's OK now. I solved it :D Booted failsafe, did the following: service network start urpmi the source for thacs rpms, and then installed Xorg over the top of what seems to be my partially failed compilation. When I rebooted normally, I could get in fine. Seems something went amiss somewhere, don't know what, but I'm back to normal! And no rebuild either, cool :P

Huge huge problem now!!! I decided to go into the MCC gui, and changed it so XOrg runs automatically. Now I've done this, the mdkkdm screen will not let me type in it or anything. Sounds like the xorg has got screwed somewhere. Before this however, I was loggin on getting to the CLI prompt and then typing startx and all was fine. I can run failsafe, but I don't know how to turn off the run XOrg automatically option. What's gone wrong to stop me logging on the GUI?

Well, it seems to have compiled and installed OK so far. I guess it must all be OK!!!!! :P