banjo

Thanks for that pointer. I had no idea that the enclosure was a problematic one. I read the reviews at the vendor site and they were mostly positive. I still have some things to try before I give up on it, but I might just have to write this one off and try again. The problem is how to avoid this in the future. I just looked again at the "specs" on the vendor web site and there is nothing there about chipsets etc. Go figure. So, if I buy another one, how do I know?..... As for upgrading my Mandy 9.1, that was going to be my next question for this board. My problem is that, after two years of outsanding performance, my Linux system is being used daily (all day!) by four people. Down time is very difficult to get, and Heaven help me if I try to upgrade and break it.... or lose files. So, my next question was going to be...."How the heck do I upgrade this thing safely?" I have even pondered doing a virgin installation on a new disk and then copying /home over to it. Good idea? Bad idea? Crazy idea? Thanks for the help. Maybe I will get some fooling-around time with the enclosure this weekend. I will report back what I find out. Banjo (_)=='=~ P.S. My enclosure is striclty USB, not Firewire so the chipset issue may not be so horrific as was indicated on the blog link.

pmpatrick, Thanks for the info. The disk is, indeed my old Mandy 9.1 installation. I let the installer partition that disk so you may be right about the way the scsi system is designating the partitions. I will check it out. Maybe I am just looking in the wrong place. My other USB devices are designated /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1 etc. in the order that they are recognized. So that is where I looked for this one. I will plug it in again and see if I can find out some more info. The more I think about it, the more it looks like usb-storage did recognize it and I just couldn't find it. I will poke around some more and report back what I find. I am learning a lot about how USB devices work. Banjo (_)=='=~

I just picked up an external disk enclosure to use with an old Western Digital 40 gig disk that I have lying around. The enclosure is a Bytecc ME-320. I mounted the disk into the enclosure, plugged it all in and got...... nothing. The disk spins up and the LED goes green red green indicating that the IDE has recognized the drive. But my Linux system does not see it. I am running Mandrake 9.1. I suspect that it is a driver problem. Here is the relevant output from /var/log/messages: I am confused by the last three statements, which indicate that something has happened to set this device up with SCSI emulation and driver "usb-storage". What am I missing here? What do these messages really mean? Has a driver really been assigned to this device and I have done something else wrong? Nothing shows up as /dev/sd<anything> and attempting to mount devices such as /dev/sda1 etc. results only in messages to the effect that there is no such device. What is currently on the disk is an old Mandrake 9.1 system that I do not use any more (I upgraded to a larger disk a while ago). If I remember properly, there are three partitions on the disk with ext3 file systems on two of them. Something should be mountable. BTW, my daughter's Western Digital external drive (FAT 32) works fine on my system as does her pen drive and my Uno card readers. So the system can work if I feed it the right equipment. I believe that usb-storage is the driver that gets assigned to those devices. So, all you USB experts out there, should I just give up on this device and give it to my son to use on his XP laptop? Is there any way to get this recalcitrant USB device to work on my old system? Hints? Tips? Suggestions? I am running Mandrake 9.1. Would an upgrade of my system to Mandy 10.<something> solve these issues, or would that be just another expensive waste of time? Thanks in advance. Linux rocks. Banjo (_)=='=~

Software bloat seems to be one of the worst problems in this industry. Good apps die from becoming feature-fat and unusable. And it is from adding features that most people don't use. Banjo (_)=='=~

Mine is intermittent, as is much of fnWindows. Normally Firefox works fine. BTW, I have never seen this problem on my Linux computer. Firefox has crashed on me on Linux, but it has never become a CPU hog. Banjo (_)=='=~

I have seen Firefox do this on my Win2000 platform, but not on Linux. My CPU would go to 99%. I shut things down until it quit and found out that logging out of Yahoo mail stopped it. I was blaming Yahoo, but it may be some strange interaction between Yahoo mail and Firefox. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK this just keeps getting weirder. I went back to the MCC again to see if I could run the program from there (after a few reboots.... unrelated) and I ran the program labeled "Change your screen resolution" and it just crashed. Then, as I was about to quit, I noticed that an icon for XFdrake sits right next to it. So I ran that, and it works........ and it lets me set the screen resolution. That, obviously, is the same program that I have been running from the command line. Now I am wondering what that other program is and what it is for and why it crashes.... and why there are two of them there that do the same thing. But I guess it isn't really important because the XFdrake seems to work and do what I need. Thanks to all the fine (patient) people on this board for helping me figure this one out. Banjo (_)=='=~

adamw, Thanks for the info. I am familiar with the file, but not the program. I will see if I can trouble-shoot it. Perhaps the file itself is not precisely correct (although the X system is running fine) Banjo (_)=='=~ Edit: OK here is where it gets weird. I made a backup copy of XF86Config-4 just to cya (in case I really screw things up) and cd to /etc/X11 and run XFdrake as root. It runs fine. Go figure.

John, Thanks for the info. As a matter of fact, I just remembered that we did upgrade the Nvidia driver a few months ago to get a program to work. I wonder if there is now some incompatibility with the MCC. Maybe we need yet another upgrade. I will look into it. Anybody know what program the MCC runs to do this work? I really don't like wizards. They make everything "invisible", which is fine until it no longer works. Banjo (_)=='=~

I am trying to use the MCC to set the screen resolution on my monitor. I ran the MCC, went to Hardware => Change your screen resolution The program waited for a few seconds and then popped up a Warning dialog that said "This program has exited abnormally". No error messages. Anybody know the name of the program so that I can run it in a terminal and see what errors are coming out? Or perhaps where the error messages might be saved? I have no idea why this quit working. None of the hardware has changed since I installed the system two years ago. Mandy 9.1 Nvidia graphics card & drivers. Thanx in advance Banjo (_)=='=~

Getting back to the subject at hand, did you figure out what is wrong with your hard drive? Banjo (_)=='=~

ARRRRGGGhhh!!! My browser went nuts and I am posting multiple replies.. My apologies to this board! How do I fix this? Banjo (_)=='=~

If you can get your hands on a Knoppix CD you can boot that and have lots of tools to see if you can recover the disk. What kind of file system is on it? Is it journalled? Banjo (_)=='=~

In case anyone is still interested in this thread I thought that I would post my fix for this problem. I finally did get escputil to read my C84 printer and report the ink levels, and here is what I did. First I read as much as I could online about escputil and mtink and ttink to find out what was going on. According to the chat boards, this is a known problem that is fixed in version 4.2.7 of the gimp-print. I did not want to attempt an upgrade to all of gimp-print in order to fix this one problem because everything else seems to work fine and I don't want it to stop working enitrely from a mismatch ( I have read such horror stories on the web). After all, my Mandy 9.1 is getting a bit old now (2 years!). Finally I downloaded the source code for gimp-print 4.2.7 from sourceforge and took a look at it. It turns out that escputil is pretty much a stand-alone program that rides along with the rest of gimp-print. It would be nice if this program were available separately. I compiled escputil manually using the command: > gcc escputil.c -o escputil (I come from the era of iron men and wooden boats; I don't need no stinkin' makefile ). After some minor modifications that allowed the compiler to find the appropriate include files and get around some minor compile errors, it compiled fine. It runs and works against my C84. The permissions for /dev/usb/lp0 are crw-rw----, so only root has permission to write to the device. I cannot figure out how to change the permissions on this file since it comes and goes automatically when the printer is turned on and off. So I will simply run the program as root. To "install" my version (hack) of escputil I put a shell script wrapper around it called "checkprinterink" which contains the following: #!/bin/sh /usr/local/bin/escputil -i -u -r /dev/usb/lp0 I copied the script and my new escputil binary into /usr/local/bin. To use it I just su to root and type: # checkprinterink and it works. I realize that this is a terrible hack, but short of diving into some serious upgrades to my system, I don't know how else to fix this. If I decide that I need to perform any of the other utility functions that are provided by escputil I will create new scripts to run my program and ensure that I have the switches correct. I did not have to touch any of the installed software to make this work. It is isolated in /usr/local/bin whereas the original escputil is in /usr/bin. I will not distribute this because it is a hack and not suitable for public consumption. However, if you want to try this yourself, feel free. I am probably the only Linux hack on the planet who is too stubborn to do a proper upgrade. Can you imagine even attempting to do something like this in fnWindows? Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

I tried Mtink and it just reports errors communicating with the printer. Thanks for all the help anyway. If I manage to fix this I will report back to this thread what I did. There is a patch available to fix the escputil problem, but it is for 4.2.6 and I have 4.2.5. I also have no idea what to do with the "patch" LOL. It is a .bin file, whatever that means. Do you run it? or copy it someplace? What is a "patch" in Linux? For now, I have a working printer, and this other stuff is optional. The printer will report to me when a cartridge is low, and I can figure out which cartridge it is using the buttons on the front panel of the printer. Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

RJ45 socket? I'm not sure that I could figure out how to do that physically. How big of a hammer do you need to jam the connector into the hole? My only glitch in this thing now is that escputil is telling me that it cannot parse the printer output when I ask for ink levels. I guess the C84 is too new for this software or something. Looking for a solution to that issue. Do you know if it is possible to use *both* the usb and the parallel port on the printer? I have a Win98 sitting here with a parallel cable that I could hook to it and then just do the printer maintenance from there. My Lexmark laser works that way. Banjo (_)=='=~

spinynorman, Thanks for the info. It worked like a champ. I have found it right in /dev/usb/lp0 after all. The issue was really one of old dogs and new tricks. I come from the olden days of Unix when printers were passive bit-buckets that existed because we set them up and then they were just there in /dev. In this case, I had to turn the printer on before it showed up in /dev/usb. When I turn the printer off. Zap. Gonzo again. So I guess I still have a bunch to learn about how USB interacts with Linux. Evidently the device files come and go based on whether or not the device is on. That makes sense considering the hot-swap capabilities of USB. :o I must say, that I am very pleased with the way this printer went onto the system. Mandy autodected the printer, asked me what I wanted to do, hooked it in with gimp-print, and I was up and running. Easier than fnWindows. I did have to tell it that I had a C82 because of my antiquated gimp-print. But it works. Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

I just installed a new Epson C84 printer on my Mandy 9.1. I used Mandrake Control Center, and it went in like hot butter. It works fine right out of the box, but I understand that the Epson utilities in escputils need to have the real printer port supplied, and I cannot find it. Can anybody give me a pointer to where USB printers get installed. Nothing shows up in /dev/usb. My laser printer, through the parallel port, is at /dev/lp0 as expected, but the USB printer location was down in some USB directory somewhere. It flashed by too fast for me to grab it. Dang! Thanks in Advance Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks, I will give it a shot. Banjo

Thanks. Any hints about how I would recognize the win32 codecs? Banjo (_)=='=~

I have a little Sony Cybershot camera that will shoot short mpeg movies. When I try to show them using Xine, it shows a second or so of the movie and then glitches and stops. It doesn't crash or anything, it just stops showing the movie. The movies appear to be OK because I can show them just fine on my fnWindowsXP box. I have not been able to get any details from the camera docs about mpeg versions or anything, so I don't know much about what I am trying to view. I have Xine running on Mandy 9.1. It plays DVD's and CD's just fine. I wonder if I need a different codec or something. My web searches took me to libxvidcore, but I am not sure if I am on the right track or not. Here is the spew from the console that I ran it from. The relevant part is the last 20 or so lines after xine_play. Can anybody give me a pointer in the general direction of what might be wrong? Thanx in Advance Banjo (_)=='=~

There is always that aspect of it. On some days, I would just as soon let the wannabe's toil with the Blue Screen and let us remain a dark and fearsome band of esoteric specialists...... But then, I fall into that bog of alphabet soup..... and sometimes.......just sometimes..... I would like it to be just a tad easier to deal with. Banjo (_)=='=~

A very entertaining rant. I had a similar rant on this board a few weeks ago when I tried to correct a simple bug in an application by upgrading the application. I was tossed into a bog of alphabet soup and dependencies which, in the end, indicated that I had to manually find and load hundreds of upgrades, or simply upgrade my entire OS...... to fix a simple bug in one application. I opted to find a workaround for the problem instead, which fortunately is possible on Linux. I am perfectly comfortable with the CLI, having used it on Unix systems since 1978. However, I agree that it makes it nearly impossible to sell Linux to a less experienced population as their desktop of choice. It is just too terrifying. I am 100% Linux at home now, and I will not go back to fnWindoze. But if the Linux community wants to own the desktop, they have to make some improvements in the way they do business, for example: Make the admin tools more intuitive. Make the apps easy to upgrade without having to upgrade the entire system. Provide better documentation on how to use the apps. Stop terrifying newbies with hideous jargon. Just my two cents. Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

LILO That is what came with my Mandy 9.1 and it has never failed me. Banjo (_)=='=~

We are running both Quake 3 and Doom 3 on our Linux computer. I must admit that they were not simple to install, but they work just fine. The only bug is that I keep getting killed right off the bat. Banjo (_)=='=~