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Anyway, thanks for the help guys. Knoppix has failed me :( You see the thing is I am scared stiff of doing anything with this computer like running recovery console or installing more programs because I have an extremely important presentation to do in a week. If my laptop gets screwed up (instead of just the external hard drive), I have backups but the time it would take to get things back on track (esp. as I haven't even finished the presentation)...I'd be in really really really really really big trouble. Not only that but I'm currently quite sick, so I really don't have the time to risk anything with this laptop. Anyway, I think I'll leave it here for now and get back to it in a week or two when I have the time (and the leisure of not having a big deadline coming up) to work things out.

Well, now that I've calmed down a bit, I can look at the brighter side of things. I was worried that I was running out of space on the HD. I guess *that* won't be a problem anymore :)

I've run diagnostics with the software tools provided by Maxtor when you buy their "One-Touch" series. It keeps on saying the drive is in perfect health.

I seem to be an attractor for weird problems, and not just in computers. You don't know how many times I've had to explain a problem and it starts with, "Well, it's a long story..." :) As for your second point, that's why I thought it might be the kernel. I'm not in Linux right now so I can't check - I'm in Windows downloading Knoppix, hoping that by some miracle I can "see" the data using Knoppix and transfer it to another hard drive. But I remember looking at the list of "updates" and they were the normal stuff like X11, openssh, etc. that always seem to require security updates. The only thing I can think of, that is obviously connected with filesystems is the kernel. I updated to kernel-i686-up-4GB-2.6.11.13mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm which I think is the last kernel update to Mandriva 2005LE. It seems to be working fine (well except for the whole external hard drive thing which may not be its problem). I didn't even mount the drive, at least not that I know of. I usually let Linux do everything automatically. I had no intention of using the external hard drive while I was in Linux anyway so I didn't really care. It may have been mounted automatically by Mandriva, but then Mandriva should have unmounted it automatically when I rebooted the computer right (soft reboot, not hard reboot)?

I think you are confused. There is no "another computer" involved. There is only one computer - my laptop which is a Windows/Linux dual-boot. And you're getting what happened confused too. 1. Working perfectly fine in Windows for 1 and a half years, no problems. 2. I boot into Linux for the first time in months. 3. I do security updates on Linux including the kernel. 4. Reboot computer back into Linux (because of kernel). Do some work for 2 hours. 5. Reboot into Windows. 6. Windows can only detect external hard drive as "no filesystem." Now, either by some amazing coincidence, this external hard drive which had been working perfectly well for over a year suddenly decided to destroy itself in the two hours I was in Linux for the first time in over 6 months. Or it was something to do with Linux. Note that when I was using both Linux and Windows regularly over 6 months ago I was regularly booting in and out of Linux with the same external hard drive attached and turned on (sometimes 2-3 times a day) and this never happened. The only thing that changed was dadadum was the security updates I just installed in that 2 hour bracket when the hard drive stopped working. The exact same hardware, the exact same installations of both Windows and Linux with nothing changed but...the security updates in Mandriva I applied in that 2 hour window. Well, obviously I applied security updates to Windows for the last 6 months as well. But that doesn't seem to have caused any problems for the last 6 months. And no, I'm not that stupid to ever try to write to an NTFS partition in Linux. So as I said, we have two choices here, an amazing coincidence. Or some changes in Mandriva with the security updates did something.

OK, here's a brief run-down of the situation. On my laptop I have a dual-boot Windows XP Professional/Mandrake 2005 LE system. I needed to do some work in Linux for the first time in a while so when I booted in today I did a lot of updates including a new kernel (don't know if this is the cause of the problem, just some info). Now I have an external USB2 hard drive. Formatted using NTFS. Contains all of my movies and music plus a lot of photos and other personal stuff. So I would love love love to be able to get it back working. It was working perfectly fine before I booted into Linux. Linux doesn't see the hard drive, but that's OK. It's always had problems with external hard drives on my system anyway. I did the updates, rebooted the computer, entered Linux again, did my work, no problems, rebooted into Windows and it can't detect my hard drive!!! No, wait, it can but it keeps on saying, "This drive is not formatted." Did Mandriva just destroy my external hard drive and all my data with it?!!! Note I pulled out another external hard drive and using the same cable and connection Windows had no problems with it. It's just the hard drive that was connected to the computer (and turned on) when Linux was running. One issue I can think of is that LILO never liked external hard drives. If I start the computer from a cold start it was OK. But if I did a reboot, it would go "Duplicate volume detected" and the hard drive wouldn't be detected in Windows. But if I turned the drive off and back on it would be detected so no problems. But it makes me think that this might be a LILO problem. I've tried turning the drive off when the computer is starting up and then turning the drive on when I log in to Windows but same "The drive is not formatted" problem. And no, Mandriva can't see the drive either so I have no idea whether the data has been destroyed or not. I'm currently downloading Knoppix, but honestly, I'm really disappointed with Mandriva. How can it possibly destroy a hard drive just by doing security updates??? I thought it was bad enough once when Fedora locked me out of my own system because of a bad security update, but that was easily fixed. Please help! EDIT: OK, I plugged the other USB 2 NTFS external hard drive into the laptop with the same cables, in the same USB slot and rebooted the computer so it had to go through LILO too. And Windows detected it perfectly. So it doesn't look like a LILO problem. It looks like Mandriva's security updates really did destroy my data. Damn you Mandriva!!!!! You destroyed hundreds of gigs worth of my data - movies, music, photos, personal letters!!!! With security updates!!!!! EDIT: trying to get into the drive using Windows command prompt it says that there is no recognizable file system on the disk. Damn you Mandriva!!!!! Your security updates corrupted the file system on my hard drive!!!!!!

I've already tried all this. I've tried both the rpm and tar.gz multiple times. Tried deleting the .Adobe folder in my home directory. Tried deleting all the files Adobe puts on with the tar.gz (well, it's the only way you *can* uninstall the tar.gz). Tried running as root as well as normal user. I would like to stress that the problem is not the plugin as I can get Firefox to recognise it easy so I don't need instructions on installing the plugin. The problem is that the program itself (acroread) simply doesn't work. You run it from the command-line - it doesn't work. You open konqueror, right-click on a pdf file and use "open with...acroread" it doesn't work. You use the Firefox plugin, it doesn't work. Each time the splash screen comes up and nothing happens. Presumely it crashes but you get no error messages whatsoever (including on the command-line). I've even tried turning off memory checking in the startup script (the acroread in the Adobe folder is actually a startup script, the real binary is elsewhere), because it's supposed to allow a buggy acroread to at least *start* and it *still* does exactly the same thing as every other time. *Sigh* I always get the weird, obscure, bugs that no-one seems to have heard of I must have bad Linux karma...Maybe it's my punishment for having a Dell As I stated in my initial post, I *am* running acroread from the command line. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> try to uninstall the Acrobat, and delete all its folders ( usr/local/Adobe/.... ) and also its config. file under your users name, then install it again . I made today a new install for my MK 2005 LE and installed again Acrobat 7 ( German Edition ) and everything went well, I used the tar version, do not install the Firefox plugin, there is a certain script under Adobe Acrobat which do the same Process, try to run it and then do this : How do I install Acrobat Reader on Linux? To install the Acrobat Reader plugin, copy nppdf.so to your Mozilla plugins directory, and make sure a copy of (or symlink to) the acroread startup script is in your PATH. Note: Adobe Reader 7.0 includes a script for installing the browser plugin, although it is not run by default when you install it. If you installed Adobe Reader 7.0 to the default location, this script is at the following location: /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/Browser/install_browser_plugin Hope this will work with you... FreeEagle <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As I stated in my initial post, I *am* running acroread from the command line.

Actually I *do* have libstdc++5 installed. I know because I had to install it using urpmi to get Matlab to work. So no, libstdc++5 is not the source of the problem. What on earth would 3D acceleration have to do with Acrobat reader?

Hi guys I just installed Mandriva LE2005 tonight. I applied all the updates. Then I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader 7. I tried both the rpm and the tar.gz, both of which I personally downloaded off the Adobe website. However, everytime I tried to run acroread I see the splash screen and then it crashes. Even better it doesn't give a single error message, just dumps me back to the command line with absolute nada. I got the plugin to register with Firefox. When I click on a pdf link the splash screen comes up and I get a blank white page so obviously the same thing is happening. I tried this as root too with the same results. A google search shows up nothing. So any ideas?

Just before I download the Mandrake 10.1 DVD iso and possibly destroy my download quota for the month, I was wondering if Mandrake 10.1 still had that bug in 10.0 that rendered Windows XP unbootable (yes I know it's Window's fault and it's reading the disk geometry badly etc. but you know what I mean). Note this only occurs IF you use the partitioning tools in the installer to write the partition table to the hard drive so please don't respond with "Yes it worked fine for me" unless you (1) started with a Windows XP installation and no Linux partition and (2) used the Mandrake 10.1 installer partitioning tool to create the Linux partitions since this is the only time the problem occurs. Otherwise your assurance that it works fine is misleading.

Yes, I did everything as stated. *Sigh*. Oh well, at least Mozilla is working...Thanks a lot for all the help!

Still get a blank white page unfortunately :(

Well, this sounds like all the stuff I did before. But just to be sure I redid the Opera stuff as you said, and it still doesn't work (still the blank white page). I was going to redo Mozilla as you said, but I checked the symlink I made in /usr/lib/mozilla-1.6/plugins and it seemed to be OK so I fired up Mozilla and suddenly the plugin is working there. I have no idea what's going on here, as I have not changed a single thing (and yes, I closed and restarted Mozilla a half dozen times before so it's not that). Still I don't know what's going on with Opera.

Yes. And it has the right path to nppdf.so as well.

Hi guys I have a problem getting the Acrobat Reader plugin to work in Opera and Mozilla. I installed Acrobat 5.0.9 (the latest version) in /usr/local/Acrobat5 (the default directory). I added the path to .bashrc so I could just type in "acroread" from the command line and it is working fine. Pdf files in Konqueror also run acrobat reader fine. However I can't get the plugin nppdf.so to work. The plugin is located in /usr/local/Acrobat5/Browsers/intellinux. I run Mandrake 10 (Official) with Opera 7.54 and Mozilla 1.6. Everything is up to date. I added the path to the plugin in the Opera list of directories to look for plugin. I also made a symlink called "nppdf.so" in /usr/lib/mozilla-1.6/plugins and ~/.mozilla/plugins (just to be sure). In Mozilla however it always loads the xpdf plugin! This is despite the lines in ~/.mozilla/pluginreg.dat: /usr/local/Acrobat5/Browsers/intellinux/nppdf.so:$ :$ 1085163496000:1:5:$ :$ nppdf.so:$ 1 0:application/pdf:Portable Document Format:pdf:$ So clearly it is detecting it. Opera detects the plugin (it is listed in the list of plugins). However when you click on a pdf file you get a blank white page (if you choose "Save As" from the File menu you can save the pdf file). Any ideas?

Well these are VCDs not DVDs so there is no concept of "language". The "language" options are really a fudge. "Hey, they won't mind if the sound isn't stereo right? This means we can use the left channel for one language and the right one for another". As I mentioned in my initial post, I did try using kmix - however as I pointed out there are problems with using the mixer. I want a proper Mono Right/Mono Left where the sound comes out of both speakers (just mono sound instead of stereo) and where one side is entirely cut out, not just damped down (and yes I do turn kmix all the way to the right/left).

Hi I want to watch some VCDs on my Mandrake box. I'm watching "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" which like many Chinese VCDs has Mandarin on one of the two stereo audio channels and Cantonese on the other. The idea being that you turn off stereo and do Mono Left or Mono Right. Anyway, the best I can do to imitate this on a computer is to turn the volume balance all the way to the left or right. First of all, you can still hear the other channel (albeit more faintly) and also it means all the noise comes out of one speaker (if you use a standalone DVD player it comes out of both speakers as mono sound). Is there any way in mplayer or xine to immitate how a standalone DVD player handles the sound (i.e. a proper Mono Left/Mono Right)? Thanks!

Well, yes I did install libdvdcss. But you need that to even read the DVD (well any css encoded DVD i.e. practically everything!). But: 1) CSS has nothing to do with region coding. Region coding is just a single bit on the DVD saying what region it is. CSS is actually encrypting the content on the DVDs. Two totally different things. 2) I thought all DVD drives in the last couple of years were supposed to have region coding in the hardware (i.e. automatic checking in the hardware) to stop the old programs that used to get around region coding. Libdvdcss is software only. I'm not disappointed. In fact I am very happy! But I just thought it was really weird and was wondering if 2) was incorrect and Linux in general just ignored region coding. EDIT: Googled for more info. It does seem as if libdvdcss can bypass region coding afterall. Well I guess it teaches me to talk about things I know nothing about. So 1) Does this work for all DVD drives? 2) How on earth DOES it work if the region coding is built into the hardware? 3) How are you supposed to play CSS encrypted DVDs in Linux w/o libdvdcss? Is going illegal the only way? (Not that I mind about legality, just curious) Well, I guess it's lucky for me that it does work!

No. It's definitely not this either. I've every swapped in and out DVDs of different regions half a dozen times at least and nothing failed - but just to prove this, I did the following sequence (note I use a different DVD each time - yeah I have a decent number of DVDs and they are legitimate DVDs bought in department stores/Amazon/EB etc. eg. X-men, Walking with Dinosaurs, Ever After, Star Trek, and are region encoded according to the cases): Region 4 Region 1 Region 4 Region 1 Region 4 Region 2 Region 4 Region 1 More than 5 changes and it still has no problems with different regions. Combine with my previous experimentation and we have around 15 different changes of regions. Of course this is in Linux (Windows, yeah, as soon as you start up PowerDVD for the first time it goes, select a region, you can change the region 5 times etc.). This (combo with CD-RW) drive definitely does not have any region coding in the hardware. Can't find any information on this Liteon (the brand name) drive on the internet though...well, at least pertaining its region capabilities. EDIT: If I try to do this in Windows, yeah, it gives me the old, Change Region, you have X number of changes left. But in Linux it really does seem you can change regions any number of times. So people are saying this is not normal in Linux?

I don't think this is it. After reading your message I panicked as when I tried PowerDVD in Windows it forced me to choose a region setting before letting me play the DVD. Did this screw up the multiregion capabilities in Linux? Apparently not as I just tried and can still play my region 1,2 and 4 DVDs. Maybe I just have a strange (in a good way) DVD drive? EDIT: The xine webpage you pointed me too also said that some drives refuse to play unless you set a region first. This is not the case with this drive as I tested it in Linux first before trying in Windows and it played w/o problems in Linux. EDIT: Oh yeah and this is a new DVD drive. On the box it says things about some late 2003 awards from PC magazines so I guess that's when it first came out.

I finally got my first DVD drive (I didn't actually mean to get it but - well, it's a long story). Anyway installed the windows software. The usual regions apply blah blah blah. However in Linux, xine totally ignores regions! I've tried Region 1,2 and 4 DVDs and they all work fine. Is this something common with playing DVDs in Linux? I'm not complaining (I think it's great!). I thought that the region coding was set into the hardware of the DVD drive and was expecting to have to flash it to make it multiregion. So is region coding set in the software of the DVD player?

Hi. I just had a look in Konqueror and it looks fine. I am using the Konqueror with Mandrake 10 (v3.2) though.

Hi I have a command-line login program for an in-house university system. Say the program is called "foo". I run foo from the command-line ./foo Then it asks for a user-name and password. Is there anyway I can write a bash script say "bar" that runs foo and automatically puts in the required user-name and password? Yes, yes I know the security risks as I'll likely have to put the user-name and password in a plain text file, but everything is passed to the server in plain text anyway so security is already practically non-existent (and this assumes that the server is up and running - god it sucks). I have to log in every day and it gets annoying having to type in my username and password several times a day.

With acrobat reader you can get it to use kprinter by replacing "lpr" with "kprinter". I'm sure there's a similar trick with Open Office that someone mentioned on this board (do a search).