jboy

Well, since you asked, I will give you advice based on the approach I would take - but it may be controversial and you will may get sharply different advice from others. At this point, I suggest you leave your current Windows XP boot loader alone and not try to overwrite it with lilo or grub. If I were you, I would have the lilo or grub boot loader written to a floppy diskette, /dev/fd0. Then when you want to boot into linux, you do so from the floppy. Get your feet wet with that first. It's not clear to me how serious you are about linux, how often you plan to use it. It sounds like XP is your main OS and you're kind of experimenting with linux and trying to learn it. At this stage, I would not risk messing around with changing the MBR of the SATA drive. Get comfortable with linux first, get familiar with what you're doing and why, get some solid experience with linux, then think about writing the boot loader to your hard drive if that's what you want to do. Before you overwrite the MBR of that SATA drive, ask yourself these questions: (1) Do I have the XP CD so that I can use it to reset the MBR if necessary; (2) do I know how to do that, (3) do I have a Windows boot floppy configured so that I can boot Windows from it if I bork the MBR while installing lilo or grub, (4) do I know how to recover the drive's partition table if I bork it. Note that although an option of the Mandriva install CD rescue mode is to restore the Windows boot loader, I have had that fail on me and therefore had to the use the original XP install CD. As I said, you'll get different advice on this one. The advice I'm giving you is what I consider to be the most fail-safe situation for you right now, and it is the advice that I personally would take in your situation.

Terrific article, a fascinating read, and also a little troubling because of the numerous challenges facing the X system's future.

OK, I think we need to step back a minute. You're currently using the lilo bootloader; scarecrow is suggesting that you instead install the grub bootloader and set up booting with that. So, at this point, I'm going to try to address your questions above and then we see where we go from there. Based on what you've posted, /dev/sda represents your SATA drive. When lilo shows /dev/sda in it's list of options, it's referring to installing the lilo bootloader on the Master Boot Record (MBR) of that SATA drive. Likewise, /dev/hdc would mean that lilo is to be installed on the MBR of your IDE drive. Which one does the system boot from? I assume it's the SATA drive, but you may have selected the IDE drive in the BIOS. Now as far as your linux root (or / ) partition, from what you've posted that is probably on /dev/hd5 (the first logical drive in the extended partition on your IDE drive). But you also have /dev/hd7 (the 3rd logical drive in the ext. partition), so it's possible it could be that. You can see all your partitions on all your drives by opening a terminal, and then as the root user, issuing the command: fdisk -l Now what is urpmi? Uprmi is Mandriva's software installation/update tool that underlies the MCC graphical software installation/update tool. If you use urpmi, you do it from the command line as the root user. Here is some good info on urpmi: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...498entry85498 Next, let me mention one thing about what I said in a previous post about the lilo timeout. The part I mentioned about the trailing zero in the timeout parameter applies only if you are editting lilo.conf directly. Since you're using MCC to configure lilo, you put in the actual seconds you want and it will take care of writing it to lilo.conf. Now, where do you go from here? Scarecrow is suggesting that you install grub and use that to manage dual booting between linux and windows and has mentioned a couple advantages that it has. So he is saying to go to a command line as the root user and enter the command: urpmi grub That will install the grub package. Then he is saying to go to MCC and configure the boot loading to use grub instead of lilo. Hope that helps some.

Hi scarecrow. Thanks for that krusader tip. I saw it in a message you posted earlier today (the one about splitting and combining large files using krusader) and so I downloaded it. That is a very nice app. I also downloaded kdiff3 and krename because it mentioned that it uses them during the initial configuration screen. Thanks. Great tip!

Sounds like you're editting /etc/lilo.conf directly. You could also do this using the Mandriva Control Center Tool (MCC), available from Menu -> System -> Configuration -> Configure Your Computer -> Boot In /etc/lilo.conf, for some strange reason and I don't know why, the timeout number needs a trailing zero. So, if you want 30 seconds, you put in 300 for the timeout value. If you want 60 seconds, put in 600, etc. And I think it adds a few seconds on to whatever you put in -> that's why you were getting 6 seconds instead of 3 when you put in 30. On the default setting, you use the label for the OS you want booted. So, for example, if the lilo section for windows is: other=/dev/hda1 label="windows" table=/dev/hda then the default line should be: default="windows" If this doesn't work, post your /etc/lilo.conf, and someone should be able to help out.

Here's a procedure for Installing LE2005 from .iso files on the hard disk that someone else posted previously. Procedure is nicely written and quite detailed. Can't vouch for it, though, I've never tried it. http://home.mindspring.com/~rolfpedersen/M...%20Install.html If you try it, let us know how it works. And if you have problems, post them and hopefully someone can help out.

I can help with the first question. No clue on the second. Right-click on the desktop -> Create New -> File -> Link to Application ... Then you can fill in the name you want for the desktop icon link in the General tab and the command info in the Application tab.

In a terminal, as the root user: hostname <your_new_hostname> Alternately: Menu -> System -> Configuration -> Configure Your Computer -> Network & Internet -> Alter Miscellaneous Internet Settings -> Host Name The following commands executed in a terminal should now show your new hostname: $ uname -n $ hostname The HostName setting is stored in files /etc/sysconfig/network and /etc/hosts.

Do you have the Java Runtime Environment installed? If not, go to http://www.java.com where you can download and install. Follow their instructions. If you have java installed, do the following to find it. $ su <enter root password> #updatedb #locate java | grep bin This should show you the directory where the java runtime files are installed. If the above locate command returns nothing, then you probably don't have it installed.

Great tip! Definitely much snappier performance. Thanks.

Say, arctic, could you post that info on optimizing OpenOffice to make it start faster. Would be interested in any tips you have.

I'm a lame-brain when it comes to games and a retard besides. Every now and then, I might play a few minutes of mahjongg or pinball but that's about it. Love crossword puzzles but I do them from the newspaper. So I'm afraid I'm flunking this quiz.

I mostly use KMail although occasionally I use Evolution on a different distro. My email/news needs are very simple.

I also get Destination Host Unreachable trying to ping 193.83.19.241, so that's inconclusive. They're probably just blocking ping requests. Why the three separate sets of DNS servers (193..., 198..., and 209...)? The repeated values for 193... and 198... especially look suspicious, with only the first octet being different. nameserver 193.83.19.241 nameserver 193.83.19.244 nameserver 198.83.19.241 #kppp temp entry nameserver 198.83.19.244 #kppp temp entry Presumably, from /etc/ppp/resolv.conf, your ISP's DNS servers are: /etc/ppp/resolv.conf: nameserver 209.244.0.3 nameserver 209.244.0.4 Very possibly those 193... and 198... initial entries in /etc/resolv.conf are interfering with the DNS lookup to your ISP's DSN servers at 209... Thus, preventing you from getting name resolution and hence being unable to surf. I would clear those 193... and 198... entries, assuming they are incorrect. I also suggest that in the kppp configuration for the DNS tab, you try Automatic for the Configuration and check the box for Disable Existing DNS Servers During Connection. If that doesn't work, and you know for sure what your ISP DNS IPs are, then you could check the Manual Configuration button and enter those IPs.

The java runtime environment files are probably in subdirectories off /usr/java. For example, mine is shown below: $ cd /usr/java $ ls -al drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jul 16 15:10 jre1.5.0_04/ Then there will be a lib/i386 sub-directory off that. If that doesn't work, repost and we'll give you other commands to locate it.

I can't say for sure, but I bet this just means that the system could not identify the PCI ID for that device in its list of known PCI Device IDs. See this for more info on PCI Device IDs that the system knows about: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...ndpost&p=197714

I highly recommend that you install abiword from the LE2005 repositories. It's in the contrib repository. Use the Easy-Urpmi tool listed at the top of this page if you don't have contrib configured. I don't know if it's on your DVD, but it is definitely in the contrib repository. This way the mandriva software installation/update tools will automatically take care of your dependencies and updates for you.

At a minimum, you should be able to select the VESA video driver with XFdrake, which would give you 800x600. If you post your video card and monitor, maybe someone will have experience with them and could give you some tips.

Boot to a command line (see below) as the root user and enter the XFdrake command and then re-configure the video options as needed. Be sure you select the Test menu option after configuring your video card and monitor options to make sure you get a positive test screen pattern. Then reboot by entering the command: shutdown -r now To boot to command line: Select the Failsafe option from your boot menu. This will take you to a command line as the root user. Alternately, you could press the ESC key at the boot menu and enter the command: linux 1

Well, the route command output above shows that you have no default route to the Internet. There should be another line, like the following: default 63.215.29.17 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0 So kppp is not configured properly. Try the following: Edit the kppp entry for your dialup ISP. There is a Gateway tab. There is a checkbox for Assign the default route to this gateway. Make sure that's checked. In the Configuration frame on this Gateway tab, the radio button setting should be set to Default Gateway. You are getting domain name resolution, so that's good. It may be that the default route is the only missing link that you need.

You might also look at the hwclock command hwclock is a tool for accessing the Hardware Clock. You can display the current time, set the Hardware Clock to a specified time, set the Hardware Clock to the System Time, and set the System Time from the Hardware Clock. It's in /sbin or /usr/sbin See: man hwclock EDIT: also see the info in the link below http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/MandrivaLinux...gureTimezoneGMT "GNU/Linux manages time in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and translates it to local time according to the time zone you selected. If the clock on your motherboard is set to local time, you may deactivate this by deselecting Hardware clock set to GMT, which will let GNU/Linux know that the system clock and the hardware clock are in the same time zone. This is useful when the machine also hosts another operating system."

Here's some ideas in this topic thread: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=15454

You probably have your TimeZone set differently in Linux than in Windows. You can set your timezone in Linux by (1) right-clicking on the clock in the bottom right-corner of your screen and selecting Adjust Date and Time, or (2)running /usr/sbin/drakclock. You'll be prompted for the root password in both cases.

Yes. During the early stages of the install, you'll be presented with several options such as to use all free space, letting the OS automatically partition the drive for you, or if you want you can choose Custom to specify the partitions you want and their sizes. See this LE2005 slide show for screen shots of the install process: http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slidesho...ion+screenshots Depending on the size of your hard drive and whether you might want to multi-boot different OS's, you may want to leave space for other OS installs.

There's been a good topic on this recently with lots of info on moving an install to another partition/disk. https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=27341