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

(_)=='=~