Gowator

Hey aRtee, You didn't have to wait, theres a company in France (Keynux) being doing this for a while. On HP, I'm not sure. HP once really screwed me. I bought a scanner advertised as (on the website) compatible with and Adaptec AHA-2940(UW) SCSI controller. I had the controller and it was worth more than the scanner (at the time) so it really pained me that they wouldn't work together. Anyway, upshot was I called their support line (which for 'other devices CD's,Scanners) was a Dutch number for the whole of Europe. I got someone who didn't know the difference between a SCSI ID and SCSI termination. So I wrote it down and emailed it for her to pass on. The email I got back said that HP wouldn't support it with anything but the supplied symbios very cheap win-scsi card. (win-scsi like win-modem or win-printer) I wrote back saying but its SCSI, how can it not work. They replied HP SCSI is may be different ... Now I hate anyone who corrupts standards .... Really HATE. So I phoned Adaptec. Although the support went through to Belgium it was a UK number so I didn't have to pay (as I did with HP) for an extended international call. Adapectec basically said, OH - HP - yeah ... look buy the Adaptec UW->SCSI II converter and cable, throw away the HP one and if it still doesn't work well refund the cost. All in all it was about 30$ so no big deal. They also sent me a bios upgrade, just in case. Aparently the pins weren't terminated on the HP converter ... Adeptec were used to doing HP's support for them. I plugged in the Adaptec stuff, and voila --- the thing worked straight away. A second example of HP is their printers. OK its fairly common knowledge that the cheaper printers are built with a single point of failure to stop people using them commercially. Its also usually designed (very well) to fail just after your warranty runs out. My HP LaserJet5L for instance. Its just one wheel different from other more expensive models in the drive mechanism but they just subsitute a very soft plastic wheel. If you have access to plasma or laser cutting tools (what not everyone does) you can make a new wheel out of steel. Everything else keeps working, its designed to be easy to relace because HP WANT it to fail and either you buy another or they charge you to replace it. They already know what's wrong ... they built in the fault. Still not convinced. Back in the UK I have an official HP reseller maintainance book. The more expensive lasrer printers have a special software failsafe. You can set the printer to just die in software after a certain number of prints. Then it flashes and says CALL HP maintainance engineer. So engineer comes out, switches off machine, holds dowbn some keys in cryptic order, dials in the number of copies until he wants paying $500 for the same job again and leaves a $500 invoice. I'm sure its illegal to do that, in at least one country HP markets so its a closely guarded secret. So: I'm glad Mandrake are getting a mass distributer. I rather hope they won't follow their business practices though. Luckily I learned a lot in my scanner relationship with HP. Thatis their customer care SUCKS if you don't take out a service pack or in my case your a personal customer. I took great pleasure in turning down a contract for HP to supply just under 600 PC's for my company on technical grounds. My logic, if thats how they treat a customer I don't wanna be a customer. Coming as it did with getting rid of a load of HP-UX machines which needed replacing anyway that really stung them :-). We could in principle have upgraded our HP Unix stuff but hey, they should have been nice when they had the chance. I won't even go into how the salesman tried to bribe me when I told him why he wasn't even considered for the contract.

I saw that tyme pointed it out in another post this week sometime. I was just trying to sus out the market. Any personal experience etc...

Hey sparky. You don't need to actual unconfigure them just turn the off from starting. The DHCP issue is slightly more involved but not much. Anyway, one tip- when your configuring something keep a notepad open. A basic test editor (I use kword) and a screen capture prog are a great help ... That way you can redo something but know how you did it the first time that worked. Win98 vs Linux. A few words. When you start win98 you are starting a graphical interface. thats about it. When you start Mandrake your starting lots of server applications like a web server, ftp server etc etc etc. So since were talking 97-98 vintage comapre to NT4 with IIS and all the server side stuff. My PC at work takes a good 15 minutes to boot in the morning and its a P500. So if you want Win98 performance, not NT4 performance you need to be realistic about which services are running. That said you can get away with quite a few if they are omptimally configured. The Mandrake configuration is often not optimised becuase they chose the safest options that would work most commonly. So one you tune em up its not really a big deal. Take shorewall, I'd honestly reconfigure it with the shorewall configuration. You need to edit a few files by hand but it works much better. Display in Windows. For a moment we'll discuss Mac's. Take OS-X. Windowsd take longer to load becuase OS-X pre-renders them into postscript. When Windows opens a window it opens it first and then starts to try and fill it. Sometimes it doesn't becuase its busy. Result, those ghost windows that carry the graphics from behind or redrawing your desktop as you pull the window round. In effect Microsoft has used a 'trick' to make windows appear to open faster. In effect you can't actually type until theyre refreshed but it feels quicker. The same is true for booting, Microsoft went to great pains to being the user interface up quickly. But the system is still paralysed whilst it finishes loading everything else. Linux does the opposite, the window system is the last thing to be started. Everything else is already started. When I start kde I can actually be doing things whilst the desktop is loading. In fact, you could switch to a text terminal in the startup sequence and do anything you don't need X for. So, a lot of it is just perception. Microsoft figured that they would rely on things feeling fast instead of actually being fast. Unfortunately they failed. It was still pig slow so they compiled the Window system into the kernel. This does make things faster. It also means that a error in the Windowing system can crash the whole PC. Virtually impossible in Linux (unless your using xv video) Also consider, Windows supports a single user at a time. Your linux system will support lots. Its a full multiuser OS. So that said, I think if you wanna maximise the performance then your going to have to reduce the variables down so you can identify any mistuned apps or services. . Ive been through and noted ones to turn off and add incrementally (*) and others you can start when needed (+) So your services devfsd *dhcpd dm *fam hardrake *internet i*ptables keytable kheader +linuxconf *lisa *named netfs network nfs nfslock partmon portmap postfix - I turned off random rawdevices - I turned off *rwhod saslauthd - maybe I don't need this *shorewall *smb sound *sshd switchprofile syslog time +webmin - maybe I don't need it on all the time? ''xfs (unless your using an xfs filesystem) xinetd So these fall into the following groups: smb (samba) - shorewall ipchains etc. These are for the Windows clients to use. Samba allows windows PC's to use your filesystem. Shorewall controlls the routing and firewall through ipchains. If these are misconfigured then they could cause speed problems. So I recommend turning them off until you get the system working the way it should and then add them one at a time and see if theres an impact, if there is its probably just the configuration, but at least you know which configuration your messing about with. DHCP - its not really needed, it just gives out IP addresses to the clients. In factI had a well configured dhcp and It didn't effect anything but the MCC configured one did. I didn't stop to fiind out why cos I didn't need it, I just gave my other PC's static IP's Webmin, netconf.... No real need top have these running all the time, they can be started from a command line anytime. httpd - Well, unless you have something iin your home intranet no need to run it by default. Whilst your at it check your video support. In /etc/X11 is a file called XF86Config-4 . Find and post the section Device: Heres mine Section "Device" Identifier "MATROX CARD 1" VendorName "Matrox" BoardName "Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead" Driver "mga" VideoRam 32768 BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Option "DPMS" Option "AGPMode" "true" EndSection Well just check your using the accelerated video driver. Otherwise its the same as using the one Winblows uses in safe mode. In order to reconfigure your dhcp (or get rid of it...) First type ifconfig (note I presume you have a USB DSL modem, if not post back and Ill change this, i.e. you only have one network card) Now write down, paste into a handy text editor the IP address for eth0 We'll use the one its got now cos its quicker. Choose the Internet/network wizard. When it opens click on Expert type (or paste) the IP address you copied into IP address Make sure the netmask is 255.255.255.0 Boot protcol is static Start on bott 'Y' Just OK at this point. Go back and close the wizard. as root type /etc/init.d/network restart. This should restart all your interfaces. If it was set to DHCP it shouldn't have been cos it shouldn't allocate itself an IP.... This would cause delays. Now you can turn off dhcp altogether in your MCC. Later you will have to go to the windows PC's. Choose the same IP but with a different last number. For instance if you had 10.0.0.1 your other PC's will be 10.0.02 10.00.3 etc- the netmask should always be 255.255.255.0 That should be it, DHCP gone. Later if you feel like it you can set up a DHCP server yourself, it will probably be better but right now you don't need it. Until shorewall works you won't have internet access from the PC's Stop shorewall wth (as root) shorewall clear Try a few apps to check if theres any difference. I'd really try and get rid of rlisa etc. and start off with a base. Do a bit off testing and adde one at a time.

Here's what I got off an old thread. Linux handles things in a much more generic way than windows which is why some models just work. If you open Mandrake Control Centre MCC you can go to the Internet/Network If you go through the wizard you have an option to autodetect. If you do uncheck any boxes except the modem. If it can't autodetect the modem then STOP and post back on here. Well try a different approach. If it does autodetect it then follow the instructions and hopefully voila... If it hangs at some point, especially detecting your internetnet conneciton or testing it just be patient...its probably just connecting and not giving feedback. If it hangs and doesn't try and document what you did, which choices you made and post it. GOOD LUCK

Somehow I can't help but M$ they were involved somewhere. It smell like them, sounds like them ... I just can't see how. The whole eliteist linux sub thread thing happens becuase M$ get into say forbes and start telling people about the cancer invading society and how their kids will grow up in a world of chaos if it isn't eliminated. M$ sows the seeds but it does so indescriminately. They chuck em on the stony ground, on the fallow fields and more or less everwhere hoping a few will stick. When they see something like the SCO thing I'm sure theyre not beyond chucking in a few bags of fertiliser and high tech irrigaiton equipment to help out. One thing I'm sure they love the most is when they manage to split linux users..... Here Sun Tse Whatever becomes their guide with the Art of War. The more they can get the enemy to scabble amonst them selves, the better . p.s. Bill isn't Georgies lover he's his banker. I forget quite how much they donated tot he presidental elections but it was significantly more than you'd give to a lover. More a long term investment loan. :wink: Hell, Al Gore said it right. The election was decided on the other bills zipper... You can't seriously think he's going to throw all that away for a quick fling with Gatesy What else would he have left. tyme: Emoticons added as requested when playing around :wink:

check your firewall settings. I find the easiest way is to get everything working WITHOUT the firewall. Once its working you can turn it on. Mdk uses shorewall... the best debugging commands from a root prompt are shorewall clear shorewall start Once your sure it works and it must be your firewall you don't end up changing everything at once and going in circles. Additionally you can check your routing with linux route win$ route print

Anyone got any experineces, Good, bad or indiffernt. I need to set up something but it seems everyone is doing it now. Some are charging ... others are free and others are free for the basic service but pay for more. What do I stand to gain by paying ...

I'm stuck then... I keep meaning to install LDAP at home so meanwhile I didn't bother setting up NIS. I just mentioned it becuase its easy to forget the make .... Ive done it myself, several times ...

i read a lot of the comments on CNET download. People either love it or hate it. I think its to do with expectations... I don't wanna run any apps just a few daemons like http and basically use it as a firewall, no monitor/keyboard/screen. Possibly using the webmail part. Thats all I really want it to do. I read lots of negaitve comments ranging from it not having any games to it wasn't Microsoft so must be crap but non of them seemed relevant to what I expected it to do.

The creative one should work, there was a post the other day ... So your in luck, Follow what tyme says and we'll sort it out ...

Hi, You can find out which processes are using which resources and then decide if they are needed or optimise them. For instance if you aren't using HW acceleration on your graphics card then the processor is doing it. The standard way to do this is in a console: just type 'top' These is also gtop which does the same thing in a graphical way. Look for what is using your cpu/memory. If something seems to be using a lot it might just be misconfigured or you might have services running that you don't need. If you see a process and don't know what is it then man is your friend. Usually 'man <process name> ' will tell you about it. If your confused then ask here. Good look

Yes what I meant is repushing the maps after changing it in pam.

I could give you a long list of why you should bother but hey, you already took that step. First off - MandrakeUsers aren't affilaited in anyway with Mandrake although they do have a link here and let em use their logo. So other than the fact we all want to see Mandrake succeed thats it. OK: On with some HELP.... First off, modem support is a tricky issue, not least becuase the 9.1 version was lets say a little rushed and there are lots of updates. Course this gives a bit of a catch-22 situation. However, help is at hand. So: What version of mandrake (although you don't say it was I presume thats how you ened up here) are you using, is it download or boxed set. (If it isn't Mandrake don't worry, well still help :-)) I have a working modem but its so old you probably couln't buy one but its pretty rare for a controllerless modem not to work. Sometimes, especially if your a noobie it can be easier to reinstall before you spend time customising, that way the installer takes care of everything ... but wait .. not yet. Post up your version and modem spec first then we can ask you to type some stuff and post it. Good luck and once again WELCOME What modem did you buy

Anna, Ive been trying to steer clear of that one, obviously its fixable somehow but it might just be quicker to .... (whisper reinstall) I have to admit, Ive done it before ... specifically for this kinda thing.... If your going to doit anyway though you might try the depmod -a first :wink:

GuoJing If this isn't a problem with the graphics card .... Can you confirm which login manager is running: Just type ps -ef |grep dm Post the results back... The job of dm (kdm,gdm etc) is to bring the user automatically to a login screen and restart x. If you 'temp' disable it you can switch between graphical mode and console just by killing the Xserver with ctrl+alt+bkspc If you are having problems with it then the first thing to do is disable it becuase if you keep using the power button sooner or later you'll loose data. No only that but its much quicker if you don't need to reboot all the time....

Well, Ill give it a 'limited' trial It was recommended by a friend. Really all I need is a zero maintainance router and fw that will run on a P100. If you have any specifics to help me make up my mind though please post em...

Thanks AA, as it happens Ill be installing e-smith tonite Its on a P100 so we'll see how it performs.

Did you remember to remake the nis map and push it. Its a long time since I did this and it was on a Solaris NIS server but I remember you have to redo a make which then pushes the new NIS mapping out.

Ok, that would have been tooooo easy. I'm on my NT machine at work so I can't really do much definitively by way of comparision. I think your problem might be in automagically creating the new device. You should check you have /sbin/hotplug Then you should have a file in /proc/system/kernel/hotplug Also , just checking but what kernel are you using.... You should have a /etc/hotplug directory (This is a desperate measure... It might mess something else up.... but. The modules.conf and modukes.usbmap are created by depmod. You can recreate them with a depmod -a but please read the man first) Also: Check you have your usbutils intalled, if not you can urpmi them. Hope this helps, I can be more specific sat at a linux box :-)

Well, its shameless adveetising but anyones welcome to come and look I'm still building the 2 first PC's and router... Actually I should be doing that now... So anyone going to the South of France .... 100% Pure Linux .. http://www.mappy.com/PlanPerso/slord/0 1 Rue Cambacères Montpellier France

mtweidman.... What modules have you got... try posting an lsmod output ??

Hi anna depmod is the program which makes the makefile used by modprobe to load the modular kernel drivers at runtime.... Yours should be created when you installed. I can see you have usb-storage but its unused. Actually you have it twice (both unused) You could try a modprobe usb-storage it should then be picked up (in theory) and hopefully clean the redundant copy. then you ca redo the lsmod. It should be picked up by hotplug ahhhh ... disgregard.... You don't have the fat or vfat modules loaded. Your Camera will probably act like a FAT/12 filesystem so you need these to access it. Check you have it: /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.13mdk/kernel/fs/vfat/vfat.o.gz If you do try an insmod vfat :-)

How about posting the output from a lsmod ??? Hers mine (edited usb stuff left in) ]Module Size Used by Tainted: PF lusb-storage 51952 1 sg 31276 0 (autoclean) (unused) st 26740 0 (autoclean) (unused) sr_mod 15096 0 (autoclean) (unused) sd_mod 11788 0 (autoclean) scsi_mod 90372 5 (autoclean) [usb-storage sg st sr_mod sd_mod] ohci1394 16812 0 (unused) ehci-hcd 14472 0 (unused) usb-uhci 21676 0 (unused) usbcore 58304 1 [usb-storage ehci-hcd usb-uhci] If your depmod is correct you should get the usb stuff with insmod usb-storage

Hmm, used for SPAM ... perhaps they just want to control more market. For me consider this: I pay a fair amount per month for a phone line ... I pay again for my 1/2Mb DSL I get included 100MB webspace, 5 email adresses etc. etc. I get to use their DNS server, mail server, proxy server, other stuff I can do for myself in Linux. All I want is a DSL line and switching. I can use any DNS, I can do my own mail. I NEVER use the phone, only my portable and theres no point phoning cos there aint one plugged in. I did try but I got so many wrong numbers/telemarketing I just unplugged it. I don't want ANY of those services except the switching onto the internet. AOL are probably targetting emails originating from home becuase they loose market share. Between MSN and AOL blocking emails from private residences they get a pretty big share of the whole market and foce everyone to using their version of the internet. Whilst were at (budding lawyers) whats the legal situation concerning blocking perfectly legal NON SPAM mail. If you publish your routes so that the worlds routers pass mail through you then you block someones email deliberately and without reason. Is it the responsibility of the person sending to cleat their name, what if its a business loosing orders? Keep us posted qeldroma .....

See topic on FORUM DISCUSSION. This is the sort of post i thought about. Its informational... p.s. Just backing up with an example :wink: