banjo

Thanks for the info. I think that my next move will be to try lilo again with the new disk as /dev/hda. I am suspicious that my last attempt, where the new disk was /dev/hdb, somehow wrote the new MBR into the void (or, horrors, onto the other disk). But at the point where I ran lilo, /dev/hda was not mounted at all. So, I don't know where it went. I have already edited /etc/fstab on the new disk, so the mounts should happen if I can get lilo to work. Being an old Unix hack, my fingers know vi. :D I don't even have to think about it. Heck, I have done whole projects using ed, which begat ex, which begat vi, which begat vim, which begat gvim, which..................... well you get my point. BTW, do you know if "active" is the same as "boot"? My part1 is marked as "boot", but I could not find "active" anywhere in cfdisk. Thanks again for the help. Banjo (_)=='=~

I am trying to create a new boot disk which is a copy of my current, smaller disk. I have not cloned the disk because the new disk is larger and I have restructured the partitions to make the new disk a bit more friendly to the way I want to use the system. So I am constructing the new disk manually. Here is the partition info for the new disk: part1 is / part5 is swap part6 is /home part7 is /usr Here is what I did: I installed the new drive as the primary IDE slave along with the primary IDE master in order to do the copies, etc. so the new disk showed up as /dev/hdb. I booted knoppix. I partitioned the new disk (cfdisk), made part1 bootable, made file systems, and copied all of the files. Everything looks to be in good order. I then attempted to install lilo on the new disk. > umount /dev/hda (just to be safe) > mkdir /mnt/newroot (shows up in the knoppix RAM disk /mnt) > mount -w /dev/hdb1 /mnt/newroot > mount -w /dev/hdb6 /mnt/newroot/home > mount -w /dev/hdb7 /mnt/newroot/usr > cd /mnt/newroot > sbin/lilo -v -v -r /mnt/newroot Everything seemed to go well, and I was informed that the Master Boot Record had been written. I then opened the box and attached the new hard drive as the only drive in the system and as primary IDE master, jumpers set appropriately. I checked in CMOS setup and the new disk was recognized properly. When I continued the boot, the computer went through the POST and then froze with a black screen and a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. No boot. No errors. No messages. No nothin'. Nada. Zilch. Black screen of death. So I googled. The explanation for the problem that I have found in the docs is that either no lilo is installed at all in the MBR or the partition is not "active". I must be missing something important in how to use lilo. Here are my questions: What is an "active" partition? Is that different from a "boot" partition? How do I specify the active partition in cfdisk? I don't see a flag or menu for "active" in cfdisk. The lilo.conf on the new disk refers to /dev/hda as the boot disk because that is where the disk will reside when I reboot. Does lilo.conf have to refer to /dev/hdb at install time since that is where the disk sits when I install lilo? Should I install the new disk as primary IDE master and *then* boot knoppix and run lilo? Does it matter? What does mkswap do? If I have already defined partition 5 as a swap partition, is that enough? I don't remember running mkswap. Many thanks to the fine folks on this board for all the help. My hope is to know enough one day to answer these kinds of questions for others. Linux rocks! (if I can just get it to boot....) Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the info. My MOBO is an Intel D845PESV which I bought in May of last year. I will see if I can find out whether the old cylinder limit is fixed in it. I want to be sure that I don't run into any problems in the root directory, if you get my drift. Mandrake set me up with a root partition of 5.8 Gig, and I have now used about 3.6 Gig. Last night I did some du's and found out that 3.3 Gig are used by /usr and about 0.3 Gig are used for the rest of it. So I thought that I might make a separate partition for /usr and set it up as it is now for the rest of it (with larger partitions, of course). That avoids the mystical 8 Gig limit on root and gets me all the space I need for /usr. And yes, I plan on putting most of the partitions into a large extended partition to avoid that yet-another-ridiculous-limit of four partitions on a disk problem. Funny story: Way back in the early '80's a friend of mine was at a football game when a scrolling advertisement came across the scoreboard. The bank ATM's were brand new then, and the ad was something along the lines of: "Baybank ATM's. Now serving 255 locations!" My friend said that he started laughing so hard he fell out of his seat. The folks around him could not understand what was so funny. We figured that some poor software weenie lost his job that day............ or got promoted to Management. Banjo (_)=='=~

The issue with the "small" 8 Gig root is that my son wants to install some fairly greedy game programs later. I have heard numbers as large as 3 Gig for a program.... :o (remember when a 10 Meg drive was huge?). Two or three of those things and my "small" 8 Gig root partition is looking full. So, the issue is not that I cannot get it working without a huge root partition. The issue is that the root partition may become huge later, and I don't want to run out of space. The reason I flagged /usr for a link to a larger space is that I was under the impression that most of the user apps are installed there. Perhaps I am wrong. I still have some more studying to do about how the file system is laid out. What I want to do is to link the directories which are going to grow huge out to a very large space. Maybe I need to step back again and go back to basics. Does anybody know how I can find out if the 1024 cylinder limit on the boot sector is still an issue? I continue to ponder. Banjo (_)=='=~

Well, I am certainly learning a lot about how Linux hangs together. This board is a great resource. I have downloaded a copy of Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy.pdf and I am now studying it. When I figure this out and get it done I will post my final answer on the board. (Could be a while.... I am a slow reader... and my finger gets tired). :D One of the great things about Linux and Unix is that there are many ways to get the job done. We are limited only by our creativity. Banjo (_)=='=~

That makes sense. But I wasn't thinking of mounting it on a different disk. I was thinking of just creating a symbolic link of /usr to /home/usr. That should leave the original /usr intact but unused. If I copied all of /usr over to /home/usr before creating the link the system should not see any difference on reboot. Since all of my partitions will be on a single hdd, if the hdd dies I am toast anyway. I am assuming that the OS would not care that the /usr was actually a link rather than a real directory. Sometimes the low level stuff can treat a link in a slightly different fashion. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK. Here is another crazy idea I had. We used to link /tmp to /home/tmp when root was too small for the huge temp files we were creating. It worked great. Suppose that I did a smallish (say, 8 Gig) root partition as the first primary partition and then, once I get it going I could link /usr and /var to /home/var to get more space (copying current contents over, of course). Has anybody ever tried to skirt the size issue doing something like that? Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the feedback. It was making me nervous to put root and /home on the same partition, but I wasn't sure why. I suppose that if it ever became necessary to wipe the / partition it could get ugly. I did not want to re-install on the new disk in order to avoid having to reconfigure all the apps. But that may be the quickest thing to do after all. I will go do some more research before jumping in. Thanks again. Banjo (_)=='=~

I currently have a disk situation which I am trying to solve. The problem is that my 40Gig disk is making a noise when it spins up, so I have procured a new disk that is 120G to replace it. So far, so good. Mandrake partitioned my 40G disk at install time in the following manner: Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on part1 /dev/hda1 5.8G 3.6G 2.0G 65% / part2 extended partition part5 /dev/hda5 swap 494 Meg part6 /dev/hda6 31G 1.9G 29G 7% /home This is on a home system used primarily for the usual email and browsing functions. So this works fine for me, except that the root partition is getting a bit full, and my son wants to install some large games later. What I want to do is to partition my new disk in a more friendly fashion, giving more room to root for these large installs. Then I will copy the contents of the old disk to the new one and make it bootable. I have studied lots of tutorials on how to do this, but I still have some questions for which I have not found answers. So I thought that I would post them on this board. I am thinking of partitioning the new disk in the following manner: part1 /dev/hda1 500Meg /boot part2 extended partition part5 /dev/hda5 swap 500 Meg part6 /dev/hda6 119G / By putting all of root (including /home) on one partition, I avoid the unanswerable question, "How big do I make root to avoid running out of space and yet avoid wasting space I could have used on /home?" Basically, most of the disk would be a single partition similiar to (oh GAG!) fnWindows. The root directory can then use as much space as it needs. The reason for the small /boot partition is that I read somewhere that the bootable partition cannot be larger than about 8Gig to make it all adressable by the BIOS. That might not be big enough for the memory hogging games. Hence, it is just /boot, not root. Here are my questions: 1). Is it still true that the bootable partition must be less than 8 Gig? I have a new Intel 2 GHz motherboard procured last May. I understand that the size limit is a BIOS limitation. Can I simply partition the disk as the old one is now and just make a large, say 40G, root partition? If I do it that way, I should not have to change the config files. 2). Is there an overpowering reason for having /home on its own partition, separate from / ? I see nothing but negatives from having to guess how much space to give the root partition instead of simply letting it have whatever it needs of the disk. I do not do system backups of partitions, being of the mindset that it is quicker and easier to reinstall the system on a new hard disk than it is to do hours and hours of system backups over the life of the disk just to save a couple of hours to reinstall. User files are backed up separately. Am I messing up if I put root and /home on the same partition? 3). When I partition the new disk, what do I name the partitions? I will partition the new disk installed as /dev/hdb and then copy the directories from /dev/hda to /dev/hdb, then install the new disk as /dev/hda, run lilo and reboot. /proc/partitions shows the partitions as part1, part2, part5, and part6. HardDrake shows them as devices hda1, hda5, and hda6. Do the partition names matter? I assume that the new disk partitions will be mapped to /dev/hdaX by the BIOS regardless of partition names when I install the new disk as IDE0 master? Is this correct? Thanks in advance for your help. If I get this to work I will publish what I did on the board. Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the help. This will probably never happen again; my Mandy 9.1 is pretty stable. But it is nice to know what to look for anyway. Banjo (_)=='=~

I had a strange thing happened on my Mandy 9.1 last night. I was on line using KPPP on KDE when I closed down Mozilla, and the launcher bar at the bottom of the screen went away with it. Everything was running fine, except that I no longer had the task bar with the icons in it so I could no longer de-iconify KPPP to hang up and log out. I did a ps -ax in the CLI, and the launcher processes seemed to be running, and KPPP was still connected and working. I just wanted to display the KPPP dialog box so I could hang up. I tried to kill the KPPP process, to see if that would hang it up, but it did not work. So, I logged out, and it hung up. Problem fixed, but I am curious whether there is a way from the CLI to cause the launcher to redisplay its task bar or to force iconified programs to display their dialog boxes. Is there a way to tell the KDE WM to do this? What is the name of the KDE WM process? This is not a big deal because it was easy to get around it, but I am curious about how the desktop hangs together (this KDE is not your grandfather's WM). Thanks in advance Banjo (_)=='=~ P.S. Linux rocks

Last May I built a PC from parts and put Mandrake 9.1 on a virgin disk. This computer has never seen fnWindows. It runs great. The Linux computer sits next to a Dell with fnWin98se on it. We get the blue screen of death several times every day on the Dell. The Linux computer has not crashed even once yet since I built it. I have had to crack the Dell box several times to wiggle wires and get it working again. The hardware in it is crap. The single hard disk is not mounted in a bay, but bolted to the front panel, and is connected with a tiny, non-standard IDE cable that barely reaches it. The floppy drive is a non-standard config with no facia and no button, which are integrated into the cheap plastic front panel. The floppy is also connected with a tiny, non-standard cable. The mother board and power supply have been rewired by Dell so that you cannot replace the mother board with a standard board without also changing out the power supply or you will fry the board immediately upon power up. I am done with fnDell and done with fnWindows. Linux rocks. Banjo (_)=='=~

I feel better already. Mandrake rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ :D

But with RedHat pulling their desktop product off the market, what does that do to Mandrake? Isn't Mandrake based on RedHat? Banj(_)=='=~

Sorry to hear that you are disappointed. I paid just over 80 bucks for the whole shootin' match. And that includes all the apps that I use, some of which are way better than the fnWindows apps that I was using on the fnWindows box. I have run into some bugs, but so far there have been no showstoppers. I think that Mandrake was worth every cent that I paid for it. This does not seem like overcharging to me when compared to the hundred$ of $$$ that I have spent on fnMicrocrap that crashes all the time and spams me with my own equipment. Just my $0.02 Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the pointer. I think that the internal workings of this are starting to gel in my mind (a scary thought). Banjo (_)=='=~

So, then all of this is owned by root? And then you go in and mess around with the source code as root and rebuild? That makes me nervous. I don't like to play around as root. It appears that this rpm system is designed mostly for grabbing the source and building a package as is, and not so much for folks who want to make changes. Am I still missing something? (sorry to be such a pain....) Banjo (_)=='=~

So rebuilding the package extracts the source from the tar.gz down in /usr/src? I guess I assumed that installing it would do that. Ah, me. So much to learn.... so little time. Thanks for the info. I am not at my Linux box right now, so I will have to try this when I get home. Banjo (_)=='=~

I have a real nOObie question this time. I downloaded and installed a source rpm called abcm2ps-3.7.11-1.src.rpm The install went OK as far as I can tell. But now I cannot find the source anywhere. Where did the source code go? I suppose that this is in a tutorial somewhere, but I can't find that either. If I want to modify the source before building it, where do I look for it to do that? Do I have to get a tar.gz? I know that I must be missing something obvious, but I am having a brain cramp or something. A pointer to a tutorial is fine if there is one that covers this subject. Thanks in advance. Banjo (_)=='=~

It is all about the money. I dumped fnWindoze for Linux last May. Since then, my Linux box has never crashed. The apps are mostly better than M$ apps in MHO. The viruses are no longer a worry for me. The documentation about the way the apps and the OS really work is far better than M$ docs, which cost big $$$$ from M$. I can fix it myself without re-installing the OS. ... and for all of this I didn't have to give up a single dime to M$. ... and I will upgrade my OS when I am ready.... not when M$ decides that I owe them some more $$$ ... and I don't have to report my hardware serial numbers to M$ and beg them to allow me to run the OS that I paid for....... yes... I paid for the Power Pack..... ... and it's worth every dime. Need I go on? The corporate world is starting to feel the pain, so they are trying more dirty tricks to keep their stranglehold on American greenback. I am sooo glad that I made the switch. (sorry for the rant) Banjo (_)=='=~

Well, I finally got my attachment from the email. Suspecting that something was wrong with the headers in the original, I edited the other message (the one that worked), deleting the base64 code that was there and replacing it with the base64 code from the errant message. So, if all is well, I should have the .pdf data stored in the other message using the other file name etc. Then, I used munpack to extract the new data. It worked fine, so I changed the file name back to a .pdf file and I can read it using Adobe. :D I did not figure out exactly what is wrong with the MIME headers in the original message. I guess I won't because I have no idea how to start debugging something like that. But I have my file. Do I get to stop being a NOObie now? :lol: Banjo (_)=='=~

Just in case anybody else is interested in this I thought I would post my progress trying to unpack an errant email with an invisible attachment. I captured the email in a .txt file so that I can mess with it. After a few hours of research I found mpack-1.5-9.i686.rpm and installed it. This installs mpack and munpack, which are tools to pack and unpack MIME parts. These are old CLI tools from the dark ages of email. I ran munpack against my text file like this: ~/apps/mpack>munpack raumail.txt Did not find anything to unpack from raumail.txt This is consistent with what my readers are telling me................ that the attachment is not there. But when I open the text file and scroll down to the section where the attachment resides, the MIME part is there along with all the base64 codes and 2.2 Meg of junk. To test a bit further, I sent myself a different email with an attachment of a zip file. I converted that email into a text file and ran munpack against it. It extracted the .zip file just fine. So, now I am off to compare the two email files to see why the Mac-generated file thinks that it has no attachment. They both look very similar in content. I am learning a lot about the nitty-gritty of the innards of email. Pretty scary. Banjo (_)=='=~

I recently received an email from a Mac computer. The email has a .pdf file embedded in it in MIME format, and Kmail will not display it as an attachment. If I view the email in plain text format, I can see the MIME section, so I know that it is there. It starts out like this: --MS_Mac_OE_3147240150_3640249_MIME_Part-- --MS_Mac_OE_3147240150_3640249_MIME_Part Content-type: application/pdf; name="Rau_Fall_2003.pdf"; x-mac-creator="4341524F"; x-mac-type="50444620" Content-disposition: attachment Content-transfer-encoding: base64 JVBERi0xLjQNJeLjz9MNCjM1NCAwIG9iag08PCANL0xpbmVhcml6ZWQgMSANL08gMzU2IA0v SCBbIDIyMDcgMzM0IF0gDS9MIDE3MTIyODcgDS9FIDM0MTQzNSANL04gNSANL1QgMTcwNTA4 ..... etc............... After the header I can see the MIME encoded data. The other parts of the email are MIME types that are text/plain and text/html, and Kmail has no trouble decoding and displaying them. Does anybody here know if I can use some other tool to decode this document? I am not familiar enough with the innards of email and MIME to figure it out. Thanks in advance Banjo (_)=='=~ BTW, I found out quite by accident (I went for shift key and bumped the 'v' key...... don't ask) that Kmail will show the actual text of a message by selecting the message in the message list and typing the 'v' key. Very kewl

I learn the coolest things on this board. Thanks for the tip about /etc/ppp/ip-up.local. Does it run as root? My computer will not update the clock unless I am root. I will give it a try when I am at home (I am forced to use fnWindoze here at work ) I did have another question about the time servers though. I went through the list of stratum 2 NTP servers at the NIST web sites, but every one that I tried to connect to refused my connection. I am so confused. I thought that they are supposed to be more accessible than the stratum 1 servers ??? So, I have temporarily gone back to time.nist.gov, which appears to accept my query with no problems. Banjo (_)=='=~

Well, I did install it......... and then I didn't know where it was... I did eventually find the links to the directory right there in the KDE menu under Documentation So there you go. Re. the differences in file structures...... being an old Unix hack I do tend to poke around and cat out all manner of things just to see what is in 'em. One of the best places to look is in the /proc directory, which did not exist on the Unix systems that I first learned on. A lot has changed since 1976......... ... oops............. did I say that out loud?.... Well, this old dog is learning new tricks every day. I am soooo glad that I am bailing out of fnWindoze. Banjo (_)=='=~