banjo

Great links. I guess I will go find a new time server to use with my rdate command. My goal is really just to keep my crappy PC clock synched up enough to be on time for dinner, so the more complex updating schemes are a bit of an overkill for me. Besides, my wristwatch synchs up with WWVB every night at 1 a.m, so I can always manually set my clock using my wristwatch for better accuracy. I just think that it is really cool that I can update my system clock (more or less) with a simple command. Ain't technology grand? Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

I just found out how to update my system clock using the Cesium clock out at NIST. Find and install rdate-1.3-2mdk.i586.rpm if you do not already have it. Then, as root, type rdate -s time.nist.gov This will read the clock from the NIST site and update your clock to match it. To get automatic updates, put it in cron (assuming that you are online all the time). If you just want to see the time, type rdate time.nist.gov You don't have to be root to see the time. Ain't technology grand? 8) Banjo (_)=='=~ (There is probably a fancier way to do this, but I like to keep it simple) Mandrake 9.1 rocks! Linux rules!

Is it just me, or is this directory a well-hidden secret? /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/HTML/en The directory has a tutorial in it for everything! It has taken me months to find this! I do not remember reading about this in my NOObie docs. Or maybe it just takes a while for me to "get it". Anyway, any NOObies out there who need a tutorial on just about any subject can probably find it in there without spending the rest of your life in Google. Doh! :roll: Banjo (_)=='=~ P.S. If this is common knowledge, I am accepting dopeslaps.

Thanks to all for the help. I do have a system which will boot from the CD. So after all of this, it appears that the solution was at my fingertips all along. But I also learned a heck of a lot about how Linux boots while I was researching this. 8) Banjo (_)=='=~

Kmack, Thanks for the links. Maybe the CD is the way to go. I suppose this old dog is still stuck in the past with floppies and all. Can't fit much on one of those things any more. I will check it out. Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks. I guess I was on the right track. Maybe I will try again some other time when I have more time to wait. If I could just find a rescue image that I could dd to the floppy this would be a lot easier. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK I give up....... All I want to do is to make a rescue floppy. That ought to be pretty simple. Please don't send me out to Search, I have done that for months, and I have read all of it three times. I am a novice at Linux, but I have been using Unix for years (very little sysadmin tho'). So, I can understand instructions in unix-speak. Here is what I have tried: I made a "Rescue Floppy" at install time. But since I am using 9.1, the bug in the MCC made a floppy that does not work. OK fine. So I searched and got vectored off to the bootdisk-HOWTO document which has 52 pages of stuff to do...... starting with building a kernel. I read it, I understood most of it, but I really do not have time to do that right now (someday maybe after I get some more time under my belt on this thing) I just want to make a rescue floppy. OK fine. Another source told me to update MCC and that will get rid of the bug. Just how is that done? I went to the Control Center and I clicked Software=>Update, and my computer went off into internet Hell downloading "something" (it doesn't say what) and cannot be cancelled. Thirty minutes later I had to hang up on it. Just what is it doing? How do I get this update? (I hate fnWizards!). OK fine. So I went out to the mirrors for the Mandrake CC updates and I was faced with a huge number of packages to download with no real indication (at least to my ignorant eyes) of which ones I need to fix this bug. The page says it is better to do this "automatically" using the MCC, but........... how?.................... ...where?...................didn't I just try that trick? OK fine. I searched out minimal floppy systems on the net, but the docs on them are so vague that I have no idea whether or not they will work on my system (I have ext3 file system.... most of them tout ext2.......... will I be able to mount my hard disk using them?....) OK fine. End of rant. So here are my specific questions. 1). How exactly do I get this MCC update so that I can make a rescue floppy? I suppose that is the cleanest approach. I am on a modem, so terabyte downloads are not going to work for me. .........or................ 2). Where can I find a rescue image that I can be fairly well assured will work with Mandy 9.1 and my ext3 files? I don't want to damage my system messing around with outdated stuff. One page said that Mandrake has such an image on its download page, but I can't find it. 3). What the heck is MCC downloading when I click on the Update tool? Thanks in advance to all the great folks on this board. Sorry for the rant, but I am sooooo confused.. Banjo (_)=='=~ P.S. My goal is to learn enough so that I can answer these questions for other folks....................but for right now......... HELP!....... :shock:

Well, I feel better. As long as they are not mucking with the software to pull the fnWindows scam on us, let 'em advertise. Just don't turn Mandrake into fnMandrake...... Keep smilin :D Banjo (_)=='=~

Here is the scary part: The ads are pretty worthless to the buyers if they are easy to defeat..... which they are now. Who is going to pay for an add that is just going to be deleted as the first step of every install? So, what is Mandrake doing to the distro to make it more difficult to defeat the adds? If they are mucking with the software to enforce these adds and bookmarks, then color me gone. I joined the Linux community so that I will own my own system and not be dragged about by clandestine software that directs my attention where the vendor wants it to be. The fnWindows community seems to think that fnGates still owns my computer even after I have paid for it. That is not the case with Linux...... or at least it wasn't the case.. So, how do we know that they have not modified the software in the distro to enforce these adds? If I have to go into a Mandrake distro and recompile everything in order to get control back, then I will go find a cheaper distro or a free download and go from there. As I said, for the free downloads, be my guest. But if I pay for a distro, it should be add-free. Just a rant. I am still very very happy with my Mandrake 9.1, and I have no intention of bailing out now. I just hate to see this thing going in the wrong direction. Banjo (_)=='=~

Adds are OK for a free download, but if you pay for the distro it stinks. I am bailing out of fnWindows completely because they do this sort of crap, trying to take over my computer in order to SPAM me with their adds. I bought the PowerPack for 9.1. I am very very happy that I made the move. Mandrake is the best, but if this stuff goes into the PowerPack for 9.2, I will not be making that purchase. So, how do we find out whether or not this junk is going into the purchased distro? Banjo (_)=='=~

So, after all this time I have finally figured out what Kmail is doing with the clock. Doh! After poking around at the system clock again I found that the computer was set up for UCT instead of Eastern Time Zone. So it was adding the four hours to translate into "local" time. I know that I told Mandrake to use Eastern time zone at install time!!....... I could swear that it asked and I said "Eastern"......but I guess it didn't take............... Anyway, I set the clock to Eastern time zone, and it works great now. Thanks to all for the help. Linux rules! Banjo (_)=='=~

That is the same RPM that I had downloaded and tried before. I got errors when I tried to install it. So I tried what you suggested: rpm -Uvh sodipodi-0.32-1mdk.i586.rpm and that seems to have worked. So it appears that updating the package works, but installing does not ??? One of these days maybe I will understand what just happened..... The 0.32 version of sodipodi is much better than the 0.31 I was using. And I also am now able to export the PNG file while logged in using KDE. Another thing puzzling me is that earlier I had downloaded the source code and attempted to build the program, but the configure script gave me errors.... Package gtk+-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk+-2.0.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'gtk+-2.0' found .........which implies that my system is missing something..... But the update worked anyway, which implies that all is well........... ??? Oh well. I am very happy that the tool works now. Thanks for all the help. Linux rules! Banjo (_)=='=~

I just use Yahoo! and it works fine. No fnWindows is involved. Linux rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~

Hmmmmmm. I downloaded 0.32 and tried to install it, but it just barfed out the message "error registering local packages" Maybe I will go try it again and see if I can get the new one installed. I am new with RPM. Any ideas of what the above error means? Can you tell me exactly which RPM I should use for 9.1? Perhaps I downloaded the wrong file from sourceforge. I am running on a Celeron chip, and I am not sure where that resides in the i586 i686 chain of processors. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK. Never mind. I figured it out. I was running sodipodi under KDE, which is my normal desktop. I decided to try it running Gnome and it works just fine. I got my PNG. Yay. I guess that is why I am the GNUbie. Funny thing is that the rest of sodipodi seems to work fine under KDE. So it was a rather deceptive problem. Thanks again for the help. Banjo (_)=='=~

zero0w, Thanks for the info. Nice image. I have the Export Bitmap dialog up on the screen with "test.png" in it. I still cannot get any file to come out of it. When I click on Export, nothing happens. One curious thing is the the Bitmap Size area at the bottom of the screen has the Height box empty and grayed out....??? Is there something else I must do to the image before I can export it? What version are you using; maybe there is a bug in mine. I am running .31, which came with the Mandrake 9.1 distro. Thanks in advance Banjo

OK. I give up. I need a usable vector graphics program for my 9.1 system, and I cannot get there with what I have found so far. I need to be able to create icons for my web work, and while The GIMP is a wonderful pixel editor, I cannot do this work with a pixel editor. I have tried Kontour (Karbon 14) but that tool does not have Bezier curves. There is only so much you can accomplish with circles and stars. So, I tried Sketch, which works, but I cannot get the text to do anything but tiny tiny tiny fonts. So, I installed sodipodi, which seems to be just what I need....... only to find out that I cannot export my work to anything but SVG, which is readable by next to nothing! (There is a tool to export to PNG, but no matter what I do it stores nothing.... no file is created). I have sodipodi .31, so I downloaded version .32 and tried to install it.... I just got the error error registering local packages I would be very thankful for a pointer to a working vector graphics program, or a way to get sodipodi to actually store a PNG file for me. Is there a trick to that? If I can get a PNG file out of sodipodi then I can take The GIMP and run with it. Help help, oh help.......... Banjo (keep smilin' :? ) (_)=='=~

Thanks for the pointer. I am new at Linux, so I am just finding my way around. Should I unistall the Vim that is there before I install a new one, or can I just update? Any tips or a pointer to a HOWTO would be appreciated.

My Mandrake 9.1 came with Vim that was not compiled for the graphical UI. I would really love to get gvim running on my computer since that is my editor of choice. Anybody know where I can get an rpm that has gvim enabled. I know I can build it from source, but I have no real desire to do that if I can just download it and install the bins. Thanks in advance Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the feedback. My clock seems to be OK and correct. At least, that is what it is showing in the corner of the screen. Also, the outgoing messages are correctly timestamped. The incoming messages also seem to be correctly timestamped by the sender. It is just the "recieved" time in my inbox that is off by four hours. I am not sure that I really understand what that number is supposed to mean anyway. Received by what? There are numerous receipt times in the headers. Maybe the GMT offset is being used incorrectly or something. I tried reformatting the timestamp output, but that just reformats the incorrect data. Not a big deal. I will simply ignore that field for now. Thanks again Banjo (_)=='=~

Here is a noobie question. When I receive messages in Kmail, the receive time has four hours added to it. The sent times in the messages seem to be correct, given their locations of origin.I cannot find anywhere to set a locale in the settings dialogs. I assume that it is adding four hours to my system clock. Any ideas or clues about what I can do to fix this. Thanks in advance Banjo (_)=='=~

Great web sites! I was not aware of those. Thanks for the pointers. Banjo (_)=='=~

Content! Content! Content! It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools. I prefer to spend my energy on the creation of my images than on comparisons of the tools. I have just started using The Gimp, and it appears to me that the toolset is rich enough to keep me busy for many years........ but then, I have not used PhotoShop either........... I think that I will stick with The Gimp until I come up with some radical ideas for images that cannot be handled by it........ which will be a long time from now, and then perhaps I will go look for a better tool. Banjo (_)=='=~

I figured out the answer to my own question. After uploading a file, Quanta saves the upload time in the project file (proj_name.webprj) in the following format: <item upload_time="1059915573" url="archives.html" /> Newly added files are saved like this <item url="archives.html" /> No upload time is mentioned. So, I made a backup of the project file and then edited it using Vim. Using global search and replace, I added the same upload_time value to every line where there was none. Now, Quanta is convinced that I uploaded all of my files at the same time. When I invoke the Upload Project dialog, all of my files come up unchecked. The automatic time stamp detection feature should now work as advertised. Banjo

I am a new user of Quanta. I am porting the maintenance of an existing web page from Windoze to Linux, and I have now created a project in Quanta to handle it. Quanta is a great tool. My problem is uploading the site to the server. My web page has megabytes of files already uploaded, but Quanta does not know that. So each time I upload, it assumes that *all* of the files have "changed" and it therefore flags them all for upload. I have to unselect all the files and then reselect the one or two I really need to upload to avoid sending the whole thing up at once. This defeats the capability of the tool to determine for me which files need to be uploaded. I do not want to waste hours of upload time to upload all of the files that are already there just to satisfy Quanta that they have been refreshed on the host. Does anybody know how I can go in and tell Quanta to update all the timestamps on all of the files in the project so that it will assume that they have already been uploaded? If I could do this, it would save me loads of time. Thanks in advance