diehl

I am using Amarok 2.0.2 with KDE 4.2.2 with Mandriva 2009.1. I would like to play a single music file that is not in my collection. I used to do this as follows: Select Amarok->Play Media... and select a file and click OK. Now when I do this: ... nothing happens. Similarly Playlist->Add Media... add a file, and then ..nothing.. Now I can only play music which is in "my collection". Is this a bug or a feature? Am I missing something?

Well quite probably I could run k3b without root privileges, but since k3b advises you to do this, I would prefer to do it, to minimize producing toasters. Somebody who has k3bsetup on there system could do this: $ which k3bsetup # will output something like: /usr/bin/k3bsetup $ rpm -qf /usr/bin/k3bsetup #will tell you which rpm has k3bsetup All I can say is that k3b-1.0-3mdv2007.1 which is Mandriva 2007.1 installs does not have this program.

Thanks for info. Next dumb question - how do I get k3b to run the setup wizard? I do not see any menu options for it in the k3b program, nor any setup programs packages in the k3b rpm, nor any packages called k3b-setup or similar. I looked for a ~/.k3b* folder to delete (and perhaps induce the setup program), but found none.

I just upgraded from 2007.0 to 2007.1 and now k3b says it should be run with "root privileges". I do not know what k3b wants me to do. I tried activating the suid bit on k3b (chmod +s /usr/bin/k3b) but then k3b will not run at all (as an ordinary user). I suppose I could run k3b from root, but this is not convenient and generates many warnings. Just what "root' privileges does k3b want?

Thank you for the info. I had gotten to the same menu through kcontrol. Unfortunately, I do not see any options in that menu which seem to relate to pushing a window to the back while moving. I had the bright idea to reset all options to the defaults, but this still had no effect on this annoying behavior. So, I am still baffled about why I have this behavior, and have no idea how to change it. ...After more playing around I think I have figured out the pattern. It seems that clicking on the window title bar toogles the window to the front/back (back => window is put behind the others). So if the window is on top and I move it the window will be put to the back while moving. If the window is partly hidden the it toggles to the front and stays in the front while moving. Eventually, I noticed that the KDE window behavior->Actions->Title bar and frame allows you top set the action of the mouse buttons on title bar. Indeed my left mouse button was set to toggle raise/lower which I changed to "raise" and "activate & raise" which fixed my problem.

I run Mandriva 2007.1 (though I had this same problem/feature in 2007.0). When I move a window in KDE it gets sent behind all other windows so it becomes completely/partially hidden after moving (also during moving) - a most annoying feature. How do turn off/configure this? There is an extensive panel in Kcontrol->Desktop->Window Behavior but none of these controls seem to control this behavior. I have 2 other Mandriva boxes which do not have this behavior and I am puzzled how this feature became activated on one box. This same box has another feature I have not seen before - a little button on the top left corner of the window bar, which if pressed causes the window to appear on all desktops. I don't mind this feature, though I'd disable it if I could since I don't personally find it useful, but I cannot figure out how to turn it off. [moved from Software by spinynorman]

(I posted this in "software" but perhaps this is the more appropriate location) For managing wireless profiles in Mandriva, I highly recommend not using "network profiles" which in my experience are very cumbersome to use (see below), but rather use wifi-radar which allows very simple connection/changing/editing of wireless profiles without needing the root password. Here is how to set wifi-radar up. 1. Install wifi-radar rpm (I'm using wifi-radar-1.9.4-1mdv2007.0). 2. Give ordinary user "sudo" access to run wifi-radar. Edit (as root) /etc/sudoers -- you must use visudo: $ visudo -f sudoers Hit "i" to go into "insert mode" Add this line to end of the file: <username> localhost = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/wifi-radar where <username> is the user who needs the wifi access. Hit <ESC> :wq to save file and exit. 3. Now user <username> can run wifi-radar without root access as follows: $sudo /usr/sbin/wifi-radar 4. Of course, a panel icon can be created. In KDE right click the screen and select Create New -> Link to application. This opens up a Properties dialog box. In the dialog box, change icon and name in the "general" panel. Then select the "Application" panel and enter "sudo /usr/sbin/wifi-radar" in the "Command" box. Then hit OK to close the Properties dialog box. Finally, drag this icon to the KDE launch panel. Now you can start wifi-radar by clicking this icon. 5. Wifi radar lists any wireless networks it finds and has buttons to connect/disconnect/edit setting, etc. Very simple to use, and with sudo access you can do all of this as an ordinary user. With wifi radar using wireless connections is a breeze, which not the case when you use the Mandriva "network profiles". I have just a "default" profile which is ethernet DHCP. Then, if I unplug the ethernet cable and plug in my wireless card, I use wifi-radar to connect to wireless networks. I never change my network profile. I have to say, that the Mandriva "network profiles" concept is ill-concieved and buggy. First, as far as I can tell there is no easy way to give ordinary users the ability to change networks/modify settings, etc. The only thing an ordinary user can do is bring a certain network interface up/down which is of rather limited usefulness. To use network profiles you must enter the root password one or more times every time you change anything (I say several times, because if you use the Mandriva KDE network applet, you have to enter root password for every separate operation). Then you must go through many dialog panels of the network wizard to enter new settings. Of course, you can only edit the "current" profile, so you must be careful to create new profiles and switch to them, otherwise you overwrite your current settings. Then, after entering settings, I typically found for wireless settings, the wizard does not actually start the connection (despite claiming that it has), and I still must start the "wireless connection" wizard and select and connect to the wireless network I've just configured for. So really I wonder what Mandriva engineers were thinking when they designed this tool. For fixed network connections it is fine, but for wireless it is a PITA. Also, on Mandriva 2007, for some reason, my X-windows session is killed when I try to change profiles. Specifically, if I run /sbin/set-netprofile directly as root (this is the script to change network profiles) I see that it first turns off a whole bunch of services, resets the profile settings (which can be many different settings beside network), and then restarts everything. However, in my case, it only shuts everything down and never starts it up again for unknown reasons.

I posted a message to the tight-vnc email list and got a response to that VNC must not be able to find the file which defines colors. I looked in my VNC log file in~/.vnc. The first line was: Couldn't open RGB_DB '/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb' Poking around I saw that on Mandriva 2007 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 was a symbolic link to /usr/lib/X11 and that there were no files called "rgb" to be found in that directory tree. I then saw that I had an rpm installed called rgb-1.0.1-2mdv2007.0 which included a file /usr/share/X11/rgb.txt which looked like the file VNC wants. In has lines like (which look like color definitions to me): 255 250 250 snow 248 248 255 ghost white 248 248 255 GhostWhite So I made a symbolic link which fixed the VNC color problem: ln -s /usr/share/X11/rgb.txt /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt I will send a bug report to Mandriva.

On a Mandriva 2007 system I have tried to run the nvu html editor. I get this error: /usr/lib/nvu-1.0/nvu-bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/nvu-1.0/components/libgfx_gtk.so: undefined symbol: pango_x_font_map_for_display I remember I got this error intermittently on Mandriva 2006 when trying to run nvu. It was really strange, sometimes I'd get this error, other times not. Any suggestions how to fix this stupid problem? By the way, I do have some package called "pango" installed. It describes itself as: A library to handle unicode strings as well as complex bidirectional or context dependent shaped strings. It is the next step on Gtk+ internationalization. I don't know if this has anything to do with pango_x.

I'm afraid I do not quite understand your problem - are you saying that it takes 2-3 minutes to start applications? Please, clarify your problem.

I have a problem wth VNC under Mandriva 2007. If I try to run emacs from a terminal in a VNC session I get the error "Undefined color: black" and emacs fails to open in a new window and run. I can, however, run emacs in console mode (i.e. "emacs -nw"). I've gotten similar "Undefined color" for some other X-windows programs when run from within a VNC session. I do not get these errors when running the same programs on the same computer directly from X windows. I have no idea what "undefined colors" emacs is complaining about. Earlier versions of VNC on Mandriva did not have this strange behavior. So the problem is some something to do with X windows running in a VNC session. Some sort of "colors" are not defined. I should note that the VNC session looks normal - there is no obvious problem with colors, per se, only colors that X wants to use when opening a new window for an application. Also I should mention that many X apps run fine in VNC, such as Firefox.

If you are a Mandriva user you can enter the wireless config using mcc/drakconf (as root). Define a new "network profile" and switch to it. The do "Set up a new network interface" and chose a wireless one, and enter the required SSID, WEP, etc in the appropriate boxes. When you are done you can just activate this network profile whenever you want to connect to this specific wireless connection.

I run Mandriva 2007 on a Sony GRV550 laptop. It would really be nice to be able to change network settings without having to enter the root passwork one or more times. On the KDE panel there is a nice network applet which shows if the network is connected, and which allows one to change network settings. The problem with this tool is that for most operations you have to enter the root password (once per each specific task, even if you click remember password). I find it easier to just su to root and run mcc/drakconf. This way I only have to enter the root password one time. Is there any way to configure the network applet to allow any ordinary user to change network settings without having to invoke the root password? I don't think enabling sudo for the network commands will help because the network applet does not invoke the network commands with sudo (unless this can be configured). I also thought of making a "network" group and changing the group ownership of the required network commands, and assigning the user to this group. I'm not sure if this would work. At any rate it is rather stupid that laptop users seemingly must log in as root to change network settings. This is very inconvenient.

FYI - I am not running X as root, though of course one needs to enter the root password one way or another to change network configurations. At any rate, my problem seems to have been fixed by commenting out these lines in xorg.conf: # Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,NONE" # Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "1" Of course, it is completely obscure why these lines would cause a problem with network profiles. I had tried out the "3D effects" at one point and discovered that they only sort of worked on my laptop so I got rid of them, but maybe one or more of these lines got left in xorg.conf. At any rate, I can now clone and change network profiles without losing X.

In response to both respondents: => I do not have networkmanager installed. => Here are the files you asked to see: /etc/resolv.conf: search physics.lsa.umich.edu nameserver 141.211.211.180 nameserver 141.211.125.17 nameserver 141.211.96.15 /etc/hosts: # generated by drakhosts 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost /etc/X11/xorg.conf # File generated by XFdrake (rev 57713) # ********************************************************************** # Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of # this file. # ********************************************************************** Section "Files" # font server independent of the X server to render fonts. FontPath "unix/:-1" # minimal fonts to allow X to run without xfs FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled" EndSection Section "Extensions" EndSection Section "ServerFlags" #DontZap # disable <Crtl><Alt><BS> (server abort) AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does no t work #DontZoom # disable <Crtl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching) EndSection Section "Module" Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension Load "v4l" # Video for Linux Load "extmod" Load "type1" Load "freetype" Load "glx" # 3D layer Load "dri" # direct rendering EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Keyboard1" Driver "kbd" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2" Option "Device" "/dev/mouse" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "SynapticsMouse1" Driver "synaptics" Option "SHMConfig" "on" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "monitor1" VendorName "Generic" ModelName "Flat Panel 1280x1024" HorizSync 31.5-90 VertRefresh 60 # TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output. # 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630 # 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "device1" VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc." BoardName "ATI Radeon" Driver "ati" Option "DPMS" Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,NONE" Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "1" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "screen1" Device "device1" Monitor "monitor1" DefaultColorDepth 16 Subsection "Display" Depth 8 Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "4 80x360" "320x240" EndSubsection Subsection "Display" Depth 15 Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "4 80x360" "320x240" EndSubsection Subsection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "4 80x360" "320x240" EndSubsection Subsection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "4 80x360" "320x240" EndSubsection EndSection Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "layout1" InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer" InputDevice "SynapticsMouse1" "AlwaysCore" Screen "screen1" EndSection