FoulPlay

Yes make the file executable (rightclick, properties, accesrights, check executable). Open a console and type: ./<file name>

 

Good luck.

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Thank you deveries. Doing so gave me the following errors:

error: cannot open lock file ///var/lib/rpm/RPMLOCK in exclusive mode

error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm

Something I need to 'unlock'?

EDIT:

doh, I forgot to log in a root.

Ok, so I wanted to get Java Virtual Machine installed on the system so I went to Sun's site and downloaded the RPM version. I went here to try to follow the instructions to install but it calls for a file with a RPM extension. The download from Sun is "jre-1_5_0_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin". How are BIN files installed? Do they need to be extracted first?

Good job, FoulPlay!

 

And please stick around and participate further.  You may find that this is a great spot to enrich your knowledge and enjoyment of linux.

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Heh, trust me. I'm not going anywhere. ;)

So, to my own surprise, I managed to install Firefox on the first shot. I used a terminal to extract the tar file then I opened the folder and ran the shell script to install it. Anyway my crazy question is this. Where do you tend to install your apps? It asked me where I want to install it so I just created a 'apps' folder in /home/brian/.

Now I'm a bit anal when it comes to file organization and it bothers me for it to be there. I'd rather reserve /home/brian/ for my downloads, documents, etc.

On the same note. Do you have to do anything special to unistall an app or can you just delete the folder?

Thanks.

Well, I got the GRUB bootloader working the way I wanted it. I followed your instructions and used the easyuprmi to install all that stuff, went back to MCC and set everything up and it works like a charm.

You guys are awesome. I can't thank you enough.

Thank you for your suggestions, but I think I'd still rather boot these regularly. Once I adapt to the learning curve I hope to use Linux and my primary OS. My roomate however isn't all that well versed in computers in general but he understand the basics with Windows (downloading spyware, trojans, etc lmao ;] ) so I want to make the "Turn on the computer" experience as easy as possible for him.

Losing everything is not a big deal for me if it does happen. Trial and error taught me everything I know with Windows so I'm fine with using the same tactics for Linux. Everything that's important to me is backed up to DVD's anyway.

So what do you suggest about that "boot" value.

I appreciate you guys being so patient with me. Thank you.

jboy, in response to your post. Yes my SATA Drive is my Primary drive. My current setup has My SATA drive as one partition and that is used soley for Windows XP. I also have a IDE drive which was initially had two partitions, one I use a a storage drive and the other I installed Mandrake on.

I will try your suggestions and see where that leaves me. I still am curious about one thing though. In the MCC there is an option called 'boot' and lists all the partitions. Which one should I be selecting in this case. When all is said and done I want to specify Wndows as the primary OS (so that when the computer is turned on and an OS is not manually selected it will boot WinXP after the countdown).

Thanks again.

No... the proper way to use grub is using urpmi and "urpmi grub", and then using MCC, AKA Mandrake Control Center (assuming that you do use Mandriva) to set the bootloader.

LILO needs running /sbin/lilo after modifying your boot record, while gurb doesn't. Grub also offers interactive boot, while LILO doesn't.

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*sigh* and just when I thought I've reach the peak of my frustration...

What is uprmi?

I'm really really trying to get a grasp of Linux. I'd consider myself a smart individual but this is totally beyond my understanding thus far.

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.

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Hello jboy. No, I havent manually editted that file, I've just been using the MCC.

Does "/dev/sda" represent my SATA Partition? Because I have my XP Pro installation on that one. With that that I assume "/dev/hdc" is my Mandrake partition?

Please excuse my ignorance. I'm fairly well versed in Windows but this is my first experience with Linux. If it's helpful I will post that file (I'm pretty sure I can find it, lol)

Thanks for your time.

Reinstall LILO (or even better GRUB) at your  root ( / ) partition, not the MBR, and use that one to dualboot:

gag.sourceforge.net

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Thank you scarecrow. I have some questions though. I'm fresh out of boot when it comes to Linux. Can I just go into the KDE System configuration and change it to grub from there? And as far as the "boot" variable (Where I can select from the available partitions), does that specify the "Primary" OS?

Thanks again.

I downloaded the Mandrake 10.1 Official DVD, burned it and had it use some unpartitioned free space on one of my drives...no problems, installed fine. At the end of the installation the last step is to reboot, I did so....boot straight to Windows....ok(?). After trying over and over again I finally managed to get the LiLo bootloader up so I could select the OS to boot. I boot into KDE and start looking around and getting a feel for it.

Anyway now I'm back configuring the boot loader cause it's not working exactly how I want it. I had LiLo (Graphical Interface) selected and boots to "/dev/hdc" (more on that in a moment) with a 10 second delay at first. Now I want to make some changes to it because it's not quite what I want.

Firstly I changed the boot delay to 30 seconds and applied the settings but the bootloader now had a 6 second delay...right, it was 10, then when I changed it to 30 the bootloader auto-selects in 6 seconds...go figure. Not the problem at hand though. I click next, Modify the Windows boot and select it as default. I assume the "Default" OS is the one it will auto load to if one is not manually selected, no? At any rate it still defaults to Mandrake despite the default being set to Windows and I need to change that.

Anyway here may lie some useful information. The boot loader lets me pick from the following partitions:

/dev/hdc

/dev/sda

/dev/hdc2

/dev/hdc5

/dev/hdc7

/dev/fd0

Right now I have it set "/dev/hdc" FYI. Don't ask me why, that's what it was set at default.

So could someone give me some pointers here or please slap me with the Common Sense stick? Thank you.