timelord100

Once again you go off on a rant about everything under the sun without even properly reading my post. Actually go to the google cached page you linked from your own post (https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=32931&st=75#) and read it. As I pointed out in my last post in the section "Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64" it has a link to the ISO images on the mirrors "Mirrors for Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64". The page is obviously a mistake and a temporary one at that, right before they implemented a new website design. It wasn't like that earlier in the year and its not some sneaky or malicious attempt to hide the free ISOs from people because the link is right there on the page!

Gowator I think you need to follow your own advice and not call other people liars without being very sure. If you actually look at that cached version you'll see a whole section titled "Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64" and a link that says "Mirrors for Mandriva Linux 2006 CD & DVD ISO images for i586 and x86_64". I don't know why it also says "look in a few weeks in the other section of this page" but given that they've completely changed the design of the website its more than likely they just stuffed the site up during the transition. How did you get to that page? Did you go from www.mandrivalinux.com and click 'Downloads' or did you just click it as a link? It looks like an old page which is still on their webserver. If you go there now it only has download links for 2005LE - http://www.mandriva.com/en/downloads/otherdownloads/mirrors. And BTW nowhere did I call you a liar. I just think you're wrong and I'm trying to point out why, so don't get so defensive.

I still don't understand what you're talking about. Goto www.mandrivalinux.com, click on the link that says 'Downloads' and its all there. Its been like that since they released the 2006 ISOs way back in November. Yes they had that ~1 month period where the ISOs weren't there but 2006 was but they were quite open about that - they always delay the free ISO release.

The Kernels on the pay-for version are the same as the ones available on the free version and the main mirrors. The Kernel SRPM is what the kernel RPMs are built from. What are you talking about? When did they lie? The ISOs weren't on the mirrors until about a month after the release, that's what they announced, that's what they linked to on their website. Huh? What did they lie about?

Get the kernel SRPM, not the kernel-source binary RPM and you can rebuild the exact same kernel. The kernels don't match what? Mandriva are sure of what the status of supermount is - see the links in my 2 previous posts. ?? Its well known that they wait a month or 2 before releasing the free ISOs after they release the distro to the club members. Their original release announcement specifically states that you have to do a network install or join the club, the 2nd (a month later) announces the free ISO images are available. See http://www.mandriva.com/en/community/news/(offset)/10

It is a proper, clean gvm based solution and it does work for me and I'd say a lot of other people too with many different custom kernels (2.6.13, 2.6.14, 2.6.16, 2.6.17) without any fiddling. I don't know what might be causing the problems that some people have, all I can see is it works fine for me. I'm not making excuses for it but my point was that it works for most people, just because there are posts in a forum from people who it doesn't work for doesn't prove its less reliable than other distros (which also have many posts in their forums from users who it doesn't work for).

Hopefully they will update this in 2007, its been a while that 2006 has been out - hotplug was probably the way to go then. We've been through this on the other threads. Some users have trouble with their own kernels, some do not. Mandriva only uses supermount for floppy drives and some tape drives because they don't provide notifications to the kernel when media is inserted: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-c...4304570&w=2 They use the proper hotplug/udev/hald/gvm system for everything else. I's one of the most common problems posted about any distro

What does Ubuntu use that's superior to hotplug/udev/hald/gvm? (http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main...eRemovableMedia) My 2 cents is that Ubuntu does seem a bit more polished than Mandriva, certainly simpler than Mandriva to use (eg. not having to know about easyurpmi to have the repos setup). The 6 month release cycles are also good - Mandriva does start to look a little dated near the end of a year release cycle, although it is very stable :) Still I prefer Mandriva because it seems to have 'more', it seems aimed more at power users by default than newbies, but that's just my impression. Also the whole ubuntu/kubuntu split along desktop lines really bugs me. I like distros to give a choice of which desktop, or both, to install and most importantly to have the best applications for each task installed by default. Eg. don't not install k3b by default in Ubuntu just because it isn't a GTK or GNOME app. App decisions based on religious 'this desktop is better' ideology is a Bad Thing IMHO :) Also I don't think Ubuntu has any great advantage in hardware detection. I've had 5.10 not work on a desktop PC that Mandriva 2006 worked on by default. Then again maybe with the 6.06 release they are ahead again because of the newer kernel and drivers, until Mdv releases 2007.

I never said anything about a 4th CD :huh: All I meant was that you download the packages from the main repo if you have to use Mandriva offline and don't have a pay-for 'Powerpack' DVD version. You'd goto easyurpmi anyway to setup your repos so its not something hidden, although it is not properly advertised by Mandriva. It'd even work better on a crappy internet connection because you're downloading a whole lot of small files instead of a few big ones - much easier to pickup the download again without losing things.

Sorry I don't understand what you're saying? Gowator said he downloaded the 3CD ISOs by a begged/borrowed/stolen (;)) internet connection. I'm just saying if you can download 3CDs (~2GB) you could just as easily have downloaded the whole main repository and one install CD (~4-5GB) and had all the software available to you when you're offline again, including the devel tools.

None of that would stop you downloading the main repo instead of the CD - in fact it would be easier because downloading lots of smaller files is much more tolerant to connections dropping out all the time and having to burn it to CD bit by bit (if you only have limited storage space). But yes it is something that you have to know and unfortunately if you're going to use any modern Linux distro completely 'offline' its probably something you have to think about. Modern Linux distros are definitely meant to be used on a computer with an internet conn., but there's no reason you can't use it offline if you take a couple of extra steps.

What weren't available? The repositories? They're all listed at easyurpmi, there's plenty of them if a few go down.

So why didn't you download the full repository when you had access to that DSL line? That's the point I was trying to make in my previous post: if you had a connection capable of downloading 3CDs you could just have easily downloaded the full repository plus the first CD or even just the boot CD.

I'm talking about the standard Mandriva software install tools that everyone uses, not some super-hack that only experts and 'old-timers' know about. If you have an internet con. capable of downloading 3CDs (~2GB) then you have one capable of downloading the dev tools or even the entire main repository (~4GB) for later offline installation of stuff. Or if you bought the CDs instead just put up a few more $ for the DVD or 6-CD version. I don't realyl see the problem here?

I kept asking because it doesn't make sense that you'd get supermount errors if you hadn't specifically patched it into the kernel, I also suggested the only other logical possibility is that it was a problem ooutside the kernel. You can hardly conclude its a fluke that it works for me just because you and a few others have the problem. Sounds like any typical bug - it affects some users and not others depending on their environment/configuration.

I think its you that needs to read posts more carefully. What I was saying is that if you didn't do anything to the kernel then it can't be something to do with buildign the kernel. This was a couple of posts ago now (https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...mp;st=105) I'm telling you that I've had no trouble compiling my own kernels with Mandriva with any patching or problems with apps afterwards. It sounds like something specific to your, and a few other people's, configuration or environment. I've never said its not a problem but it sounds more like a bug that affects a few people rather than an over-arching design fault.

Mandriva doesn't make any money out of leaving the dev stuff out of the 'Free' edition CDs. All you have to do is goto easyurpmi and setup your repos - Mandriva puts all their software (except for the closed-source and proprietary stuff) out on the Internet for free in pakcage repositories.

But supermount is not included in the vanilla kernel. If by compiling a kernel you've introduced supermount then its something that you've done. Or (if its not something you've done when compiling your vanilla kernel) its something outside the kernel that Mandriva has done - some configuration or some modification to some other package.

I don't think this has anything to do with the kernel, after all how can it be a problem with the kernel that you're getting supermount errors when you haven't even patched supermount into the kernel? It must be something else, the fact that you've tried multiple kernel compiles all with the same result shows that it has to be something outside the kernel. And as I said before I've had absolutely no trouble with custom compiled kernels with no patching required so I don't think that Mandriva is any harder to compile kernels for than any other distro.

I mean that it was confusing for the average user seeing Mandriva Online in their panel by default they will think that that's the way that Mandriva has to be updated. That page says nothing about the availability of updates for free using the default control centre update thingo. A Linux distro that requires payment for updates would put a *lot* of people off.

These 2 seem to contradict each other - Mandriva includes xine and its frontends Kaffiene (for KDE) and Totem (for GNOME) as the default player. Installing mplayer as well violates the 'multiple applications per task' rule, although in this case it might be good to make an exception since mplayer can often play things that xine can't (some Real Media videos in my experience). Still all this stuff is in the repositories. All these packages are in the repositories, they just aren't on the 3CD 'Free' edition since otherwise it would be a lot more than 3CDs. They are giving free updates - see the Update program in the Mandriva Control Centre. Mandriva Online is supposed to be a pay-for service that is better (I'm not sure how). As usual Mandriva have confused people with this - they see the Mandriva Update applet started by default in their panel and think Mandriva has gone to a pay-for updates system, like Red Hat Network for eg. Otherwise some pretty good points. Maybe some of you guys should join the cooker mailing list and discuss your suggestions there - you'll usually get a direct response from the actual developers that way. Now's the time to suggest changes, they probably won't change anything once the beta process is underway.

That is very strange, it may have something to do with the fact I don't have a floppy drive in this laptop so supermount was never "enabled" in whatever way it does that. Still I had no trouble compiling kernels on it and they work, perfectly with no 'supermount-hangover' :) Give one of them a try (http://linuxonacer5020.sourceforge.net/), it'd be interesting to see if you still get the supermount problems.

I disagree, Ive had no trouble compiling my own kernels with Mandriva's .config and no kernel patching. The resulting RPMs and SRPMs are on that page I linked to before (http://linuxonacer5020.sf.net). My CD/DVD and USB mounting works perfectly out of the box. You still haven't said where the supermount error appeared? Sorry that was a reply to another poster, 2 posts seemed to get mixed together.

What mentioned supermount for the CD drive? your fstab? That's got nothing to do with your kernel compile - you must have put that in there somehow. I compiled fine from raw, unpatched kernels from kernel.org with the Mandriva .config file. The kernels I made had no supermount and no bootsplash. If you have supermount or something still showing up it must be because of something you did outside the kernel (eg. the fstab file). Did you look in the spec file before you tried to rebuild the RPM, eg: # this flag build kernels for: # i686-up-4GB # i686-up-1GB # i686-smp-1GB %define build_test 0 %define build_enterprise 0 %define build_BOOT 1 %define build_secure 0 There are a lot of build options in there for all the different kernels the SRPM can build. Its also possible that you didn't upgrade the kernel RPM, which has to be done manually with the urpmi command (http://www.mandriva.com/en/security/kernelupdate), whereas the kernel-source RPM gets upgraded automatically when you do updates. This leads to a mismatch between the kernel installed and the kernel-source and not surprisingly Nvidia drivers and stuff won't install. IMHO its one of the most stupid things they do but there are no secret kernel patches or anything like that.

http://www.mandriva.com/en/security is their page for security advisories. They do keep Firefox and anything else in the main repository up to date with security and bugfix patches. They could do a better job of explaining the whole backports thing though (a FAQ perhaps?).