banjo

I just installed 2008.1 and have it working OK now. The system keeps pestering me to upgrade to 2009.0, but with all the issues I have read about KDE 4, I would rather stick with my current desktop. Is there a simple way to upgrade the OS to 2009 without upgrading the desktop to KDE 4? This is a multi-user computer and I would prefer to have a stable desktop. Thanks Banjo (_)=='=~

It seems a bit nutty to me to have the word "kernel" in the names of packages that do not contain a kernel. For example, the packages listed such as nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-2mnb contain the nvidia driver for that kernel, not the kernel itself. I suppose that there is a reason for the naming convention, but it confused me for a while. Banjo (_)=='=~

I first started working with Unix in about 1976....yeah....I know...how do you spell "O-L-D"? Anyway, I used to know this stuff cold, but thanks to all the fancy GUI stuff we have now I have neglected my CLI way too long. I guess I am suffering from CRS now too. :blink: I wondered why "Turn Off Computer" showed up in my logoff dialog even when logged in as me. Go figure. My system is working great if I can remember how to work it. Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks. I will try that next time. I suppose that I could have looked that up in the man page :blush: if I had figured out which man page to look at. Banjo (_)=='=~ P.S. After poking around a bit, I think "halt" is the command I used to use and could not remember.

I have a funny glitch going on in my Mandy 2008.1 with KDE. Sometimes (not always) when I try to turn off the computer from the login screen it drops me into console mode at a login prompt. The first couple of times this happened, I thought I had clicked the wrong menu item, but I was watching it last time, and I definitely clicked on "Shutdown" which posted a dialog box where I clicked "Turn off computer". Instantly I got the console mode with a login prompt. :huh: My question is how do I get back to the graphics or optionally finish the shutdown from the command line? Here is what I have tried. I logged in as me and ran "startx". That brings me back to my own graphical login, kewl, but the right click on the desktop posts a dialog box with only one option in it, "Log Out", which puts me back at the console. D'oh! There is no longer any option in the dialog to turn off the computer. So I logged in on the console as root and typed, "shutdown now", which killed off a bunch of processes and left me in single user mode. My CLI skills are so rusty after all of these years I am not sure how to get the computer to shut off. Can I just power down at that point? What I finally did last night was to log in as root, enter "reboot", which rebooted back to the graphical login, logged in as me, right click the desktop and the dialog has "Turn off computer" in it.... which worked. But that takes way too long when I am ready to go to bed. What is the magic? This ought to be an easy one, but..... :blink: Thanks Banjo (_)=='=~ [moved from Software by Greg2]

The scanner on my F380 worked right out of the box after installation. But then I am not trying to share it either. Banjo (_)=='=~

I did get a printer/scanner installed and working. It took me a while to get around to this because I still have that Day Job which eats up so many hours of my life. What I did was "borrow" my son's HP F380 All-In-One which is reported to work with the HPLIP that is already installed on my Mandy 2008.1. I plugged it in and the system detected it. After a couple of false starts because of the error "urpmi database is locked" I rebooted and continued to install the printer with both CUPS and Sane. It took a half hour or more to install the printer because it was downloading some packages from the repositories and would hang on each dialog box waiting for something. I suspect that the mirrors were busy. Anyway, the installer finally came back and said "Done". I found the HP control panel with no trouble and printed a test page. Here's the best part. This printer has been sitting in the corner of the room idle since sometime last Spring, so I expected at best to hear the head moving and see the paper go through, but I expected a mess to come out on the page. The printer put out a very nice test page. Yay! I turned the test page over onto the scanner and scanned it back in using Kooka and it worked fine. I might be an HP fan again after seeing that performance. I had given up on HP printers after my $350 HP 660C was the worst POS I had ever owned. But that was a long time ago, and this printer seems to work fine. Thanks to everyone on the MUB for helping me solve this problem. Banjo (_)=='=~

I was finally successful in my effort to install the GeForce 9600 GT Nvidia card, although I cannot explain how it got done. So I thought I would report back to the Board to let folks know what happened. First of all, I tried the steps that Aussie John suggested. Uninstalled every Nvidia driver on the system Rebooted the computer. Shut the system down to init level 3 Ran the Nividia proprietary installer. sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.80-pkg1.run The Nvidia installer once again found no precompiled kernel interface, so it compiled it's own. The compilation reported no errors, however, when it tried to link the new interface into the kernel I got the same error as before: -> Kernel module compilation complete. ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.ko'. This happens most frequently when this kernel module was built against the wrong or improperly configured kernel sources, with a version of gcc that differs from the one used to build the target kernel, or if a driver such as rivafb/nvidiafb is present and prevents the NVIDIA kernel module from obtaining ownership of the NVIDIA graphics device(s). Please see the log entries 'Kernel module load error' and 'Kernel messages' at the end of the file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for more information. -> Kernel module load error: insmod: error inserting './usr/src/nv/nvidia.ko': -1 Invalid module format This left me with no Nvidia drivers installed at all. I still do not know what is missing here. Strangely enough, the system continued to boot to a graphical login. I have no idea how that works or what it means WRT the attempted nvidia installation. The card did not work properly in that mode because the OpenGL was running on the CPU, not the card. Giving up on the Nvidia installer, I next followed the suggestion given by medo3891, to try and find a newer driver in backports. I followed the directions at: Updating_proprietary_drivers_from_backports I enabled the Main Backports and Non-free Backports repositories (they said nothing about the PLF backports). I installed the ldetect-lst package and then rebooted (to detect the hardware again). I ran XFdrake, which now reported a new set of Nvidia hardware "6100 and newer..." OK fine. The previous installed drivers said they were for "9300 and newer...", so that looked like a step backward to me. My son said "That's it", so we went with it. I am suffering from nomenclature failure here, because I cannot map "6100 and newer" to GeForce 9600 GT, whereas "9300 and newer" might fall more easily into that category. I am so confused. Nevertheless, I fired off the "Doit" button and the system fell into "Package Installation Hell". The computer started downloading packages and would just hang there for the longest time without apparently doing anything. It would hang for 5 or 10 minutes on one dialog box. We have Verizon DSL, so we were not waiting on the net bandwidth. I suspect the mirror was busy. After about a half hour, the system had downloaded about a dozen packages. One of them that went by was a kernel package. Somehow it downloaded Yet Another Kernel (YAK). After the system said, "OK, done" I rebooted and the sweetest thing happened. Ever since we had plugged in the graphics card, the system had been really loud. The fan on the graphics card just screamed all the time. Nvidia has a reputation for making loud cards, so we thought we would just have to get used to it. Once I rebooted, the card got quiet. It is sitting here running as quiet as a mouse. My son speculated that the card was running the fan at 100% speed all the time because it had no driver to tell it otherwise. Go figure. The card works fine now, but I have no idea what I installed or how or why there is YAK or what any of the alphabet soup means or why we needed YAK. I went to /proc and cat version now and get: Linux version 2.6.24.7-desktop-2mnb (qateam@titan.mandriva.com) (gcc version 4.2.3 (4.2.3-6mnb1)) #1 SMP Thu Oct 30 18:03:14 EDT 2008 and previously I had Linux version 2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb (qateam@titan.mandriva.com) (gcc version 4.2.3 (4.2.3-6mnb1)) #1 SMP Mon Jul 28 15:12:10 EDT 2008 All of that is the same except for "2mnb" instead of "1mnb" and the build date. The nvidia drivers that are now installed are: [root@localhost proc]# rpm -qa | grep nvidia x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-173.14.12-2mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-2mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-desktop-latest-169.12-1.20081031.4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-doc-html-173.14.12-2mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-2mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-desktop586-latest-169.12-1.20081031.4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 dkms-nvidia-current-173.14.12-2mdv2008.1 [root@localhost proc]# This is showing drivers with version 169.12 except for x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-173.14.12-2mdv2008.1. The 169.12 drivers were the ones we had installed before that did not work. Once again, I have no idea what happened that made this work, unless it was the new kernel or maybe the x11 driver is the important one???. If I can believe the build date on the new kernel, it was just created last Thursday. I apologize for writing such a long message, but I thought some other folks might be interested in what happened. Maybe someone out there can educate me on what all of this means and remove the mystery of it. I am not a novice computer user (25 years of industrial GUI design) but I am lost in this Linux driver world. Thanks to everyone on the board for the help. I would not have ever been able to get this working without the MUB. Banjo

Ok. I'm starting to get it. I do have the kernel source installed as well. kernel-source-2.6.24.7-1mnb-1-1mnb1 I installed that when I had to compile the kernel interface for the driver. I guess that was overkill, but it worked for the compilation. I assume that I am booting into kernel-desktop-2.6.24.7-1mnb since it can now see all of my 2 Gig of RAM but I don't know yet how to tell for sure. I would like to find out how to look at Grub to see what is actually going on. I was booting with LILO in the past, so I am on a steep learning curve here. I will do some more research on that issue. I have little time to work on this problem because I still have that day job that takes away so many hours. So if I go away for a day or two I have not given up, I am just doing that work thing to pay for this fancy new computer. Thanks for all the help. Banjo (_)=='=~ P.S. OK, duh. I just went to /proc and cat version and I get Linux version 2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb (qateam@titan.mandriva.com) (gcc version 4.2.3 (4.2.3-6mnb1)) #1 SMP Mon Jul 28 15:12:10 EDT 2008

John, I did the initial install from the Mandriva One CD, which apparently has a different kernel on it since it could only see 800 Meg of my 2 Gig of RAM. So I followed the instructions in the errata to install a different kernel and it now sees all of the RAM. When I did that it instructed me to replace a bunch of modules, which I did. When I search MCC for installed packages with "kernel-desktop" I get tons of stuff..... It does look similar to your list though....but much longer, and with a lot of nvidia stuff in it. Here are the kernels. kernel-desktop-2.6.24.7-1mnb - Linux Kernel for desktop use with i686 & 4GB RAM kernel-desktop-latest - Virtual rpm for latest kernel-desktop​ kernel-desktop586-2.6.24.4-1mnb - Linux kernel for desktop use with i586 & 1GB RAM​ kernel-desktop586-2.6.24.7-1mnb - Linux kernel for desktop use with i586 & 1GB RAM​ kernel-desktop586-latest - Virtual rpm for latest kernel-desktop586​ ​ What's with all the kernels? There are about 18 Nvidia drivers installed, and I don't know what they all mean. x11-driver-video-nvidia71xx-71.86.04-4mdv2008.1 nvidia96xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb-96.43.05-4mdv2008.1 nvidia96xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb-96.43.05-4mdv2008.1 nvidia96xx-kernel-desktop586-latest-96.43.05-1.20080729.4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia71xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb-71.86.04-4mdv2008.1 nvidia96xx-kernel-desktop-latest-96.43.05-1.20080729.4mdv2008.1 nvidia71xx-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb-71.86.04-4mdv2008.1 x11-driver-video-nvidia96xx-96.43.05-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia71xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb-71.86.04-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-desktop-latest-169.12-1.20080729.4mdv2008.1 nvidia96xx-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb-96.43.05-4mdv2008.1 nvidia71xx-kernel-desktop586-latest-71.86.04-1.20080729.4mdv2008.1 x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-169.12-4mdv2008.1 nvidia-current-kernel-desktop586-latest-169.12-1.20080729.4mdv2008.1 nvidia71xx-kernel-desktop-latest-71.86.04-1.20080729.4mdv2008.1 Yikes! I tried to install the same Nvidia driver that you have, but it will not install because of the error I posted previously. If I remove the other nvidia drivers, will that link error go away? Sorry for the noob questions, but I usually don't delve into the world of drivers much. Thanks for the help. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK. That is something that I have not tried yet. I am not at my Linux computer now, but I will give it a try when I get some time on it. Thanks again for all the help. Banjo (_)=='=~

I just checked, and the highest version I can find in the 2008.1 repositories is 169.12, which is the version that is installed on this computer. According to Nvidia, the 169.12 does not support the GeForce 9600 GT, which is the card I have. I also tried using drakx11 and it only displays older cards. So I am stuck unless I can compile in the new driver. I downloaded the newer driver, 177.80 and attempted to install it. The installer said the I had to compile a kernel interface, which I did. The compilation worked fine, but I get errors when I try to link it into the kernel. It looks like we might have to uninstall the current drivers to get it to go in. Here is the specific error I get when it tries to link in the kernel interface. ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.ko'. This happens most frequently when this kernel module was built against the wrong or improperly configured kernel sources, with a version of gcc that differs from the one used to build the target kernel, or if a driver such as rivafb/nvidiafb is present and prevents the NVIDIA kernel module from obtaining ownership of the NVIDIA graphics device(s). What is rivafb/nvidiafb? Does any of this ring a bell? Should I uninstall the current drivers in MCC and then try to link in the new driver again? I am over my head with this. Any help on how to resolve this would be much appreciated. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK. Cool. B) I have, indeed, set up the repositories and have managed to install many apps successfully. I remember seeing Nvidia-latest -package or something similar in the list of uninstalled packages along with a bunch of other stuff that did not make much sense to me. Maybe I will give that a try. Sorry for all the noob questions, but drivers are a bit confusing for me. The confusing part is that my system already has a bunch of Nvidia stuff installed. Is there anything else that must be done to install the driver after the package has been installed? Thanks for the info Banjo (_)=='=~

I am trying to install an NVIDIA graphics card in my Mandy 2008.1. When I did the initial OS install some video drivers were installed that made the card work, but poorly. Graphical programs are now compute bound. So I want to install a more up-to-date NVIDIA driver, which I downloaded from the NVIDIA page. I installed from the Mandriva One CD, but I replaced the kernel in order to get it to see my whole 2 Gig of RAM. I am having difficulty getting the driver to finish its installation and would like some help figuring where to go from here. I am kind of stuck. I am installing a PNY GeForce 9600 GT graphics card. I followed the directions on wiki.linuxquestions.org to put the computer into init3 level and then followed the directions on the NVIDIA site. I went to init3 level and ran the nvidia file sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.80-pkg1.run The NVIDIA installer unpacked itself and ran. It did not find a precompiled kernel interface either on the system or on their ftp site, so it compiled its own. I installed the kernel sources to allow that compliation to happen. Here is some of the output in the /var/log/nvidia-installer.log -> License accepted. -> Installing NVIDIA driver version 177.80. -> No matching precompiled kernel interface was found on the NVIDIA ftp site; this means that the installer will need to compile a kernel interface for your kernel. Then it compiled the kernel interface OK but had an error installing the compiled driver. -> Kernel module compilation complete. ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.ko'. This happens most frequently when this kernel module was built against the wrong or improperly configured kernel sources, with a version of gcc that differs from the one used to build the target kernel, or if a driver such as rivafb/nvidiafb is present and prevents the NVIDIA kernel module from obtaining ownership of the NVIDIA graphics device(s). Please see the log entries 'Kernel module load error' and 'Kernel messages' at the end of the file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for more information. -> Kernel module load error: insmod: error inserting './usr/src/nv/nvidia.ko': -1 Invalid module format When I cat /proc/version I get. cat /proc/version Linux version 2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb (qateam@titan.mandriva.com) (gcc version 4.2.3 (4.2.3-6mnb1)) #1 SMP Mon Jul 28 15:12:10 EDT 2008 Then I checked the version of gcc: rpm -qa | grep gcc libgcc1-4.2.3-6mnb1 gcc-cpp-4.2.3-6mnb1 gcc-4.2.3-6mnb1 manbo-mandriva-files-gcc-4.2.3-6mnb1 gcc-c++-4.2.3-6mnb1 manbo-mandriva-files-gcc-c++-4.2.3-6mnb1 It looks like there is no discrepancy between the kernel compiler and the compiler that was used for the nvidia kernel interface. I suspect the problem is that another driver is installed. The MCC Hardware Manager shows the following for the video card: Identification Vendor: nVidia Corporation Description: Unknown Media class: VGA compatible controller Connection Bus: PCI PCI domain: 0 Bus PCI #: 1 PCI device #: 0 PCI function #: 0 Vendor ID: 0x10de Device ID: 0x0622 Sub vendor ID:0x196e Sub device ID: 0x0545 Misc Module: Card:NVIDIA GeForce 9300 and later The MCC Software Manager shows the following nvidia packages installed: nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb - nvidia-current driver for kernel 2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb - nvidia-current driver for kernel 2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb nvidia-current-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb - nvidia-current driver for kernel 2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb nvidia-current-kernel-desktop-latest - nvidia-current driver for latest kernel-desktop nvidia-current-kernel-desktop586-latest - nvidia-current driver for latest kernel-desktop586\ nvidia71xx-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb - nvidia71xx driver for kernel 2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb nvidia71xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb - nvidia71xx driver for kernel 2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb nvidia71xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb - nvidia71xx driver for kernel 2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb nvidia71xx-kernel-desktop-latest - nvidia71xx driver for latest kernel-desktop nvidia71xx-kernel-desktop586-latest - nvidia71xx driver for latest kernel-desktop586 nvidia96xx-kernel-2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb - nvidia96xx driver for kernel 2.6.24.4-desktop586-1mnb nvidia96xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb - nvidia96xx driver for kernel 2.6.24.7-desktop-1mnb nvidia96xx-kernel-2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb - nvidia96xx driver for kernel 2.6.24.7-desktop586-1mnb nvidia96xx-kernel-desktop-latest - nvidia96xx driver for latest kernel-desktop nvidia96xx-kernel-desktop586-latest - nvidia96xx driver for latest kernel-desktop586 x11-driver-video-nvidia-current - NVIDIA proprietary X.org driver and libraries for new cards x11-driver-video-nvidia71xx - NVIDIA proprietary X.org driver and libraries for old cards x11-driver-video-nvidia96xx - NVIDIA proprietary X.org driver and libraries for most GF2/3/4 class cards There are a lot more NVIDIA packages that are not installed. I don't know what to uninstall or what to install or what much of this stuff means. Any help in resolving this issue would be much appreciated since the performance of the card with the currently installed drivers is abysmal. Is there something in the repositories that I can use? I am afraid that all the options in the MCC Software Manager have me perplexed. Thanks in advance Banjo (_)=='=~

My son has an F380 that he had in college and it is sitting in the corner of his room right now. According to the HPLIP web page it is supported by the HPLIP that I have on this computer, so I think I will set it up. The good part is that I was in WalMart this afternoon and I saw ink cartridges for that printer. I also found them online at the HP web site. So if I can get that printer to work, I should be good to go. I will also look into the PSC 2355 just in case he wants his printer back. Thanks to everyone for the help and ideas. Banjo (_)=='=~

Wow. I'm trying to have a technical discussion here and I'm being called arrogant. Maybe I have not put enough smiley's in here. :) :) Let me explain my technical issue here. 1) I go to the store and buy a printer 2) In the box is a CD 3) I plug the printer into a fnWindoze box and it says "I see it. You have a CD?" 4) I say, "Yep. Here she is" and I put it into the cup holder. 5) fnWindows either says BLUESCREEN or "There ya go" and it works. I never have to compile anything. This will happen on Win98, WinNT, Win2000, WinXP and Vista. That's about10 years of fnWindoze versions. Same printer. Same CD. You see, the driver comes with the printer, not with the OS. I am trying to do the same thing with my new Mandy 2008.1 and it isn't working out so smoothly. I have a Lexmark laser printer that currently works with Win98SE, Mandy 2006, and Mandy 2008.1. I have owned this printer since September 10, 2001 (ask me how I can remember that date). I would like to do that with a little color printer/scanner. BTW, I bought Powerpacks for both 9.1 and 2006, so I did pay for it, and it was worth every cent because I didn't have to pay for any fnVirusScan or fnAdwareScan or fnMalwareScan or any fnCrappletScan....etc....if you get my point. And, no..... I will not go back fnWindopes because this is just a bump in the road on my way to Linux bliss. Geez you are hittin' me hard for this one. :sad: I just want to get a color printer working. Maybe I will just steal my Son's F380 and stick it on here. Can you still get ink for those things? Linux Rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ BTW, I have managed to compile HPLIP on this computer, but I need to have a printer before I can take that effort any farther.

Mandriva 2009.0 carries with it a bunch of baggage that I do not want to step into, such as KDE4. I have heard nothing good about KDE4 yet. An old distro? :huh: . Until a couple of weeks ago 2008.1 was the latest version they had short of the experimental releases. That makes it old? Wow! Things move fast these days! :blink: I am not asking for "support from mandriva". I am trying to find a device driver for a printer so that I can install one on my system. When did getting a device driver constitute support from the OS vendor? Device drivers were invented for the purpose of allowing hardware to be plugged into existing operating systems without having to rewrite the operating system. It seems odd to me that Linux now has the drivers so intimately coupled with the OS release that the only way to get a device driver is to update the entire OS. Welcome back to 1968! :o I am not trying to be argumentative, but I keep getting slammed against the wall for being hesitant to toss out my entire OS just to hook up a printer. I understand how it works, but I don't necessarily agree with it. It makes no sense to me. A device driver comes with the device on a CD/DVD/Web Page from the vendor of the device. You install the device and the driver goes in and it all works. At least, that is the way it used to work. When did device drivers become part of the OS? I am so confused. Banjo (_)=='=~

John, Thanks for the pointer to the Epson. I still have a bad taste in my mouth over Epsons. I had two Epson C-84's for about a year. They installed and worked OK for a while, but then the black ink heads died on both of them within weeks of each other. I spent more time and ink and paper just trying to keep them printing than I acutally used printing. I don't print much in color and I don't scan much either. The spit printers are bad for my situation for the reasons you state, but I don't think anything else is available at a reasonable cost for my occasional need for color or scanning. My computing area here is so crowded already that I don't have space for separate printers and scanners. Maybe what I really need is a new house. Banjo (_)=='=~

I have been around the block a few times on this and I always end up back in the same place. It seems that printing is a weak point in Linux since I see lots of complaints online and few answers. HP supports their printers on Linux with their HPLIP drivers. However, the Mandriva repositories seem to be one step out of date with the printers that are still available for purchase. For example, Mandriva 2008.1 comes with HPLIP 2.8.2. That will support the HP 4180, which is no longer available, but will not support the HP 4280, which requires HPLIP 2.8.5. As far as I can tell, the only way to get a later version of HPLIP out of the Mandriva repositories is to upgrade the entire OS up to 2009.0. Well I do not want to jump into KDE 4 and all of that stuff right now, not to mention the time it would take me to do the upgrade (three weeks after I installed Mandy 2008.1) ... so I am stuck. My options seem to be to build HPLIP from source and see if I can get it to work, or try a different brand of printer that is known to work with my distro (and is actually available for purchase). The problem with building the driver from source is that I have to actually go and purchase the printer and try it in order to find out if it will work. The problem with finding a printer that will work is that I have not heard of any so far. If anybody knows of an all-in-one printer/scanner that is known to work with Mandy 2008.1 out of the box, I would like to hear of it. If anybody has been able to build HPLIP from source and make it work, I would like to hear about that as well. Thanks to all for the support and suggestions. Banjo (_)=='=~

I am looking for an inexpensive all-in-one printer to put on my new computer. I have just installed Mandy 2008.1 and I need to find a printer-scanner that will work with it. I want a cheap printer because it will get only occasional use, so I don't want to sink a lot of money into it. I have been looking at the HP line because they claim that HPLIP makes their printers work with Linux. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a simple way to install a compatible HPLIP on this brand new computer. So I am turning the question inside out and asking what kind of printers will work with this box. Thanks in advance Banjo (_)=='=~

I thought I would keep this thread alive for a bit more just to see if I can give back to the community after my snippy answer yesterday. Before I go and upgrade the entire OS just to get a newer printer driver I thought I would see if I could download the source for HPLIP and build it from scratch. This is not a simple thing to do since it depends on a bunch of development tools that are not normally installed. I took my directions from here: HPLIP Installation Instructions for Mandriva I went for the manual installation instead of the automatic since I dislike downloading a script and then giving it my root password and let 'er rip! It would not have worked anyway because some of the packages in their list are not there or failed to install. I did manage to get the driver to configure and compile after a couple of hours of work. I basically ran ./configure iteratively and then took care of one error at a time as it bailed out. Here is what I had to install for dependencies: I installed foomatic-db since I knew it was required for operation. ./configure --disable-network-build --disable-pp-build --enable-fax-build --enable-dbus-build --enable-gui-build --enable-qt3 --disable-qt4 --enable-scan-build --enable-doc-build --enable-foomatic-ppd-install --disable-foomatic-drv-install --disable-hpijs-only-build --prefix=/usr I answered each problem by installing the following through Mandrake Control center: error: "cannot find libjpeg support" - installed libjpet62 error: cannot find net-snmp support (or --disable-network-build) - installed libnet-snmp-devel libnet-snmp-devel-5.4.1-5.1mdv2008.1.i586 it failed, so I disabled network-build error: cannot find libcups support - installed libcups2-devel error: cannot find libusb support - libusb-devel error: cannot find python-devel support - Installed libpython2.5-devel-2.5.2-2.2mdv2008.1.i586 python-imaging-1.1.6-3mdv2008.1.i586 error: cannot find sane-backends-devel support (or --disable-scan-build) install libsane1-devel-1.0.19-3mdv2008.1.i586 error: cannot find dbus-devel support: No package 'dbus-1' found libdbus-1-devel-1.1.20-5.1mdv2008.1.i586 I am installing this over a Mandy 2008.1 from the Mandriva One live CD. When I ran 'make', the drivers compiled with no errors. I have not actually installed the drivers yet because I still have not chosen a printer. I also have to understand more about how installing something from source will be related to the package database, for example, do I have to uninstall HPLIP 2.8.2 before manually installing this compiled 2.8.9. Thanks to all for the expert help here. My P.O. for that Mac is on hold again Banjo (_)=='=~ Pls don't mark this [solved] because I don't have a printer working yet. I will update as events unfold.... unless I trash this computer... and then I will be disconnected. :blink:

Mandriva released 2009 one week after I finished upgrading my system from 2006 to 2008. Given the lengthy errata list I decided to stick with 2008.1 since I am looking for stability instead of bleeding edge. It took me a couple of weeks to do the upgrade to 2008 because this computer is a computer in daily use by several people and not just a plaything for keeping on the bleeding edge of Linux. The reason for buying a newer printer is that the older printers disappear from the shelves after about 6 months and are no longer available. I find it both discouraging and encouraging that the answer to the question "How do I upgrade my printer driver?" is "Upgrade your entire OS". It is discouraging because it takes two weeks (or more depending on disasters) to get the upgrade done. It is encouraging because it means that our little enclave of specialists is not going to be invaded any time soon by a bunch of Mom an Pop households who just want to print stuff. The longer we can push off the Linux takeover of the desktop the longer we can enjoy our exclusive situation and the lack of adware, malware, and viruses that come along with mass acceptance. Sorry if this sounds a bit bitchy, but I bother with Linux in order to use it not just to own the latest and greatest stuff. The Linux community still seems to believe that the point of Linux is just to mess with it. Every Linux upgrade I have done so far has been a long and painful project. It involves some steep learning curves for the family who have to relearn a bunch of stuff every time I do it. I don't have the patience to do that every couple of months. Hmmmm. Maybe I will go research old printers. Perhaps I can get one really cheap because nobody wants them any more. Thanks for the help anyway. Linux still rocks, but I am thinking about buying a Mac. Banjo (_)=='=~

Now that I have my new Mandy 2008.1 I am in the market for a color printer. I have installed HPLIP and plan on buying an HP printer. I had Epson printers before, and I will not by another one because they were nothing but a PIA. I spent more paper and ink cleaning their heads than I ever spent printing. I had two C-84s that died in the same way withing weeks of one another, and since it was the built-in print heads that died, the printers ended up in the trash. Anyway, I want a small all-in-one since I will use it rarely and I will also be replacing an old scanner with it. I do my heavy printing on my Lexmark laser, but it is not a color printer. I looked online and came up with the HP 4280 as a possible option. A brief search of hplipopensource.com revealed that the 4200 series requires HPLIP 2.8.5, and my brand new Mandy 2008.1 has 2.8.2. I waited to replace the printer until I had the upgraded system so that I would have drivers for a new HP. But it seems that the repositories are always a couple of revs behind what is required for the printers that are still on the shelves. So here are my questions: Can I get a binary of a later HPLIP and just install it? Do I really have to build one from source code to upgrade? :wacko: Will the printer limp along with an older driver with partial function? Is there a better (more compatible) all-in-one printer to get? Drivers always throw me for a loop. Thanks in advance for anyone who can help. Banjo (_)=='=~

It could be that I just completely bolluxed up the whole copy. The copy that I did using Konqueror got about 20% of the way through the copy before it hung up. So it was not a user uid:gid problem since that would fail right away. The way the FAT disk has worked in the past is that the entire disk looks like it is owned by the user who mounted it because there is no ownership implemented in the FAT system. The Linux file system works out some phony permissions so that it looks right to the Linux OS. So I was theoretically copying files owned by the user who had mounted the disk to the same user. I suppose I could have run into a bad file or something during the first copy and then the second one hung up because I had already hosed the file system with the first copy. I guess I will never know. My wife also has some files with funny file names that makes the FAT system throw errors when I do the backups. Maybe it was one of those files that it choked on. The funny icon on the Documents folder is gone now as well. Sigh. I should keep better records when I run into this stuff. Thanks for the information. The system is working fine, so this was just an information question for me to learn more about the system. BTW, I back up to a FAT disk in case I need to move something to an fnWindows environment in the future. I am beginning to rethink that decision. Banjo (_)=='=~

I did search for this problem before posting, but so many threads contain the word "documents" I could not find the answer. Be gentle. Here is my question. I recently installed Mandy 2008.1 and that went well. The problem occurred when I moved our files from the old computer with Mandy 2006 to the new computer with Mandy 2008. My wife used the Documents folder on the old system, which I had backed up onto an external USB hard drive with a FAT 32. No problem with that. But when I used Konqueror to copy the files from the external USB drive into the new Documents folder, the process locked up so badly I could not kill it. The ps command flagged the process status of "D" (uninterruptible sleep waiting on I/O). I thought it might be a KDE problem so I opened a CLI and did the same copy using the cp command, e.g. cp -R /mnt/drive/home/yada/Documents /home/yada/Documents/ Once again, the process locked up so tightly that I could not kill it. Same status, D. I decided to reboot and try again. When I rebooted, Linux froze with the error message that it could not mount the root file system. No boot. It was hung. After a rant, I realized that the USB drive was still plugged into the computer, so I yanked it out. I rebooted the new system again and, yay, it came up. I mounted the disk on the old system, and the old system could see everything normally, so nothing was wrong with the external drive. I renamed the Documents directory on the external drive to "mydocuments' and mounted the drive. Then I copied the files again, cp -R /mnt/drive/home/yada/mydocuments /home/yada/mydocuments/ Hooray, the copy went normally. I told my wife not to use Documents any more. And for good measure, don't use Pictures or Music or Videos or any of those other strange directories that reek of fnWindows folders. My question is "What happened?" What is so different about the Documents folder that caused it to lock up my system? When I show the disk in Konqueror the Documents directory has a little green icon on it. What the heck is that? What is going on here? The problem is fixed and my new system is fine, but I am still curious about what is different about the Documents directory. Thanks in advance. My Mandy 2008.1 is cranking on my new core-duo and I'm lovin' it. Linux Rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ [moved from Software by spinynorman]