banjo

Thanks for the info. If 2006 will be better I can definitely wait. My old Mandy

9.1 is working fine, so an upgrade is an optional thing for me to get some of the

newer stuff all at once.

 

I will keep an eye on it and see what happens.

 

Thanks,

Banjo

(_)=='=~

I have an old Mandy 9.1 which is now 2 1/2 years old. It works great, but it is

difficult to upgrade the apps for bug fixes and new features.

Therefore, I have been considering updating the system.

 

So I went out to the mandrivastore and now I am confused about what all

these different versions are. Here is what I found:

 

At Mandriva:

2005 Limited Edition - 1 DVD - about $65

10.1 Power Pack - 6 CD's - about $85

 

Then, on Edmunds-enterprises I have found:

2005 Limited Edition - 4 CD's - about $11

2005 Limited Edition with KDE 3.4 - 6 CD's - about $13.50

 

Now, 2005LE is marketed as the upgrade to 10.2 from 10.1 but it costs less

than the 10.1 power pack. Also, 2005LE has no support included according

to the site, whereas 10.1 Power Pack does get some limited support. There

is no 2005 Power Pack listed anywhere. But I have heard that 10.1 is buggy.

 

The versions on edmunds-enterprises are obviously the download versions.

 

So, what it the difference between the edmunds download, and the official

2005LE? If there is none, then the price differential is fairly large

considering that the official 2005LE gets no support just lke the download

version. Are the contents different between the download version and the

boxed version of the same thing?

 

What is in the Power Pack that is not in the official version? Is a Power

Pack for 2005 going to be released?

 

And then there is the future 2006. What is in that? Will that be a Power Pack?

 

If I get a download version from edmunds for 11 bucks, will that have

everything I need to run, or will it be short a bunch of apps and drivers making

me spend hours in Dependency Hell downloading patches and apps?

 

Is there a package list somewhere for these diferent distros?

Mandrake used to have a page which listed all of the packages in the distro.

 

This is all very confusing, and I do not have a clue which direction to go.

 

My Mandy 9.1 is a Power Pack, and it had in it everything that I needed to

get up and running right from the CD's. If I bought a new Mandy and then I

got stuck doing hours of downloads to get it working, I would not be happy.

Do I really need to look for a Power Pack, or is the standard release fine?

 

Also, I went out to distrowatch.org and looked at their listing and they show

that 2005 and the future 2006 have a bunch of apps in beta. Is that right?

Are these releases stable with a bunch of beta apps in them? What gives with that?

 

I am sooo confused by all of this....

 

Any Mandy experts out there who know what is in these things?

 

Which one sould I get? I am not in a hurry, so I can wait for 2006 if that is the right answer.

 

Thanks in Advance

Banjo

(_)=='=~

 

[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

Thanks for the pointer.

 

That is exactly the sort of thing that I am looking for.

So far I have not found the right remote commands to do things like reload a page or go to the home page.

But it is a good place to start looking.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=!

I am trying to make the multimedia keys on my new keyboard work with Firefox.

I have xbindkeys running, which allows me to bind a function key to a command.

I have this working with aumix to control the sound volume using commands like:

 

/usr/bin/aumix -w +10 &

/usr/bin/aumix -w -10 &

 

Is there some way that I can control a running Firefox program with command line commands

to do things like refresh a page, go to the home page, etc? I need to bind a keysym to

a command in order to make this work.

 

I would also like to hook up the email keys on the keyboard so that I can fire up Kmail

and control it from the keyboard.

 

Has anybody done anything like this?

 

I am running Mandy 9.1.

 

Thanks,

Banjo

(_)=='=~

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

I am in need of a new keyboard myself, having worn the letters

off of the original one. Have you ever dealt with cheapbytes?

Are they reliable?

 

Thanks

Banjo

(_)=='=~

What brand of thumb drive is it? Not all USB devices work with Linux.

 

Go out to http://www.linux-usb.org/ and check whether or not your

device has been reported as working or not working.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

I am just finishing up a six year project programming an industrial

user interface in Java. I have found Java to be a joy to use and a

wonderful tool for my purposes. Yes, it is interpreted, but I have seen no

performance problems that I could not get around, even though we run

the interface on a 1 MHz POS fnWindows 2000 box. The interface

was written using Java 1.2.2.

 

A few months ago I took my interface home and tried it on my Linux

computer (Mandy 9.1 with Java 1.4.2 installed). After about an hour

of work resolving file names (because Linux is OCD about case

sensitivity and fnWindows is not) I had it running. The application now

has about 1800 files in it, so it is not a small app. It is just as snappy

on my 2 MHz Celeron as it is on the 1 MHz Pentium at work.

 

On the other hand, I also recently downloaded Jftp on my Linux

computer to try it out. It is so slow that it is unusable. It takes 5

to 10 seconds for it to display a menu. I find this confusing since

my larger app works fine. The Jftp window also does not refresh

itself properly after posting the menus.

 

I don't know what the problem is. However, I must say that my

experience using Java has been a positive one. It beats the crap

out of trying to use MFC or any of that other M$ junk.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Hmmmmm. So if I delete the sugar and add honey, deprecate some of

the hops....

 

Then I will run "make beer" and see what comes out.........

 

Kewl

 

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Can you post what is in your /etc/fstab? That might help us figure this out.

 

Post a before and an after.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

There is always unix2dos and dos2unix as well.

 

I also use gvim as my editor on both platforms, and it will read both formats.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

It sounds perfectly horrid to me....... they add 4 kg of sugar to 10 kg

of malt extract.....?? ... ewwwww. :P

 

The beer I make has only pure malt extract and 100% clover honey.

Corn sugar is what they make cheap American beer out of. Yech!

 

...... and caffein?.....

 

Homebrew is the secret to longevity.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Thanks for the pointers.

 

I found some answers in the HOWTO. I guess I will have to install the

kernel source to get the other documentation since it is not on my

system right now.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Thanks for the reply. I have been searching for the list of arguments and

I cannot find a document which details them. Perhaps that information is

available only to those who dig around in the kernel source. I might go look

there if I cannot find the info elsewhere.

 

Now all I have to do is go find the kernel source.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Thanks for the pointer. That looks like a very interesting site.

I will check it out.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

I have a mandy 9.1 system using the ext3 file system.

 

I am curious about what the journal actually does for the file system.

Can anybody point me to a document that has the details of how the

journal works? I would like to understand what it is that I am running here.

 

Thanks in advance

Banjo

(_)=='=~

I have been recently looking at /etc/lilo.conf to see if I can to make a change

to the way the kernel is booted. I understand how to use lilo, but I was

wondering what the meaning of the kernel arguments are, for example, what

exactly does "quiet" mean? These are the arguments that are specified in

the append= command in lilo.conf.

 

Can anybody point me to a document or man page that describes what all

the kernel arguments are? I looked in the lilo man page and the lilo.conf man

page and did not see it. They tell me how to specify the append= command

but not what the arguments mean.

 

Thanks

Banjo

(_)=='=~

That certainly is a unique and interesting method for backups. Unfortunately I am

making my backup on a FAT32 system, and there is no facility for any

kind of links at all, much less hard links. It doesn't even store ownership or

file permissions.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Thanks for the tips. I am considering how to use the tar files effectively

to do these backups. I am still trying to keep my backups portable.

I also like having the files visible on the drive instead of buried in

a tar. The other people using this computer can cope with a copy,

but might not want to deal with extraction from a tar. There is

only one Linux guru in our family....

 

The files in my Mail directory are being rejected by the FAT32 because of

invalid characters in their names - I think it is a colon. But, if I tar them off,

I will only be able to extract them back to a Linux box.

But that is OK because they would be useless on a WinBox anyway.

So I might do that.

 

I now have a script that I use to do the copies for me. It asks me where

the USB disk is mounted and then it reads a list of directories from a file,

which I call ~/.backupdirs, and copies them -R over to the external

drive. Other than the glitches I mentioned before, it seems to work fairly well.

I might add some code to look for the Mail directory and tar.gz it

just in case. I will never go back to fnWindows permanently anyway, so

that should do the job.

 

I still have some permission glitches, but I might be able to get around

those by running the script as root. Since ownership is not stored on the

external FAT32 that should not be detrimental for any user's ability to retrieve

the files.

 

The search goes on.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

I thought that I would add an update to this topic since I am discovering

things that I did not know before.

 

When talking to a FAT32 partition, there is no facility in the file system to store

Linux style file attributes. The only ones that it can save are read/write

and perhaps the create and/or modification dates.

 

This makes perfect sense if I had just thought for a minute about how

the FAT32 has worked in the past. It is simply a really lame file system.

 

What is confusing at the surface is that Linux fakes up the ownership

fields by using the mount properties of the device and displays them

for all the files. Hence, the output of ls presents file ownership for the

user who mounted the external FAT32. That ownership information is not

preserved anywhere.

 

I have confirmed this by logging in as another user, mounting the external

drive, and then seeing that all the files on the disk now belong to that other user.

So, of course, chown will not work. D'uh.

 

More discoveries to come, until somebody tells me to shut up.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but never ever ever never ever try to back up

a Linux system onto a FAT32 file system. It works great for transferring files, but

there are so many problems with file incompatibilites that it is not worth the effort.

 

1). Links are not copied since they cannot be created on the FAT32.

2). Mail cannot be backed up because the file names have invalid characters in them.

3). File ownership is not preserved during the copy, and chown on the FAT32 is not allowed.

4). The FAT32 uses more space to store the files than ext3 (because of cluster issues, I suppose)

 

I am just about to give up on this and wipe the disk and start over. Or maybe I will give this

one to the kids for their fnWindows laptops and get a newer, bigger one for me.

:D

 

Anyway, if you are thinking of using a FAT32 system as a backup disk, think again.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Ah, me. I fgured this one out.

 

:blush:

 

I started using Unix in about 1975, and cp was just about the second command that I

learned after learning cd....... so you would think that I would have it under control

after 30 years, but............

 

Did I mention..... :blush: ?

 

Here is what happened in the Case of the Missing Files.

 

If you use a command such as

 

cp -dpRu /home/user/stuff /mnt/storage/home/user/stuff

 

to copy a directory to an external drive, it copies the entire directory "stuff" to the

destination.... including the directory file itself........ OKfine. That

makes perfect sense.

 

But the first time I executed the command the destination file, /mnt/storage/home/user/stuff

did not exist yet.

 

It appears that if the target directory does not exist, cp is happy enough to copy the

entire directory one level up... into.... /mnt/storage/home/user, thus creating the

target directory itself. So I ended up with the intended result, /mnt/storage/home/user/stuff

with the rest of the directory tree beneath it.

 

The second time I executed the same command, it did find the directory called

/mnt/storage/home/user/stuff, so it copied the source directory /home/user/stuff

into /mnt/storage/home/user/stuff thus giving me /mnt/storage/home/user/stuff/stuff

where the entire directory tree was duplicated.... including the "missing" new files.

 

I simply did not notice that the new duplicate had been created and therefore I

could not find the new files.

 

The solution to this embarrasing problem is to issue the correct command to

the cp program, which is:

 

cp -dpRu /home/user/stuff /mnt/storage/home/user

 

with no "stuff" on the end. This works with the intended results first time and every

time thereafter since all it needs to do is to copy the source directory into

the destination directory.

 

Thanks to the MUB for your patience with this 30 year, veteran n00b as

he stumbles through the use of basic commands.

 

Linux rocks!

 

:blush:

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

 

P.S. I also put this into the wrong forum since it is a software issue anyway.

:blush:

I have an interesting problem with using cp -u.

 

I have an external USB drive with 40 Gig FAT32 (for portability).

I plan on using the external drive to keep some backups.

I am doing my backups by simply copying selected directories

to the external drive.... nothing fancy.

 

I am writing the files using "cp -u" to make the copies a bit faster

(the -u switch causes it to copy only new files and files that have

newer timestamps than the destination file).

 

I wrote a bunch of my directories to it last night to see how it would work.

This went very well for the most part, and the files were copied OK.

But there were problems with files that had the same names and only different

capitalizations (FAT32 is case insensitive). So I changed the names of some

of those files to avoid the problem and did the "cp -u" again.

 

The "new" files were not copied over. I tried this a couple of times with

the same result. The last time I tried it, cp returned immediately without

really accessing the drive, as though the information had been cached

or something. The renamed files did not show up on the external drive.

 

Questions:

How does cp decide what is a "new" file?

Does changing the name leave the modification time untouched?

Do I also need to touch the files?

Does cp cache file information?

How can it know the timestamp of the destination without reading the

external drive?

 

I am running Mandy 9.1 on a ext3 copying files to an external USB with

a 40 Gig FAT32.

 

Thanks in advance

Banjo

(_)=='=~

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

pmpatrick,

 

Thanks for the tips on upgrading.

 

I will look into that in the future. I do have Knoppix and

I have used it on one occasion to save my butt (after I

had changed something that made my system unbootable).

 

Right now, I am thinking about how I want to reformat my

new (old) disk to use as a backup.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

I AM IN!

 

I have mounted my old disk using the Bytecc enclosure!

 

The problem was that I had the jumpers set on the drive

incorrectly. Inside of the enclosure there is a sticker

that says "You must set the drive to Master or it will

not work."

 

So I downloaded the WD setup documents and set the jumpers

to "Master". I should have read further because there are

two Master jumper settings for the Western Digital drives,

Master with two drives and Master with a single drive.

I had jumpered the drive as Master with two drives.

Evidently that does not work when it is the only drive

on the IDE.

 

After Googling the net for a while I found a reference

to this problem on comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage

from Francis Hartojo:

 

WD drives that I've used have basically 4 settings:  single, master,

slave and cable select.  If it's the only drive on the bus, then

it should be set as a single, usually by not installing any jumpers

on the relevant pins.  Just for giggles, I tried jumpering it as

a master drive and it wasn't recognised by the system.

 

So, the Western Digital jargon for "Master" when it is

the only drive on the IDE controller is "Single".

 

I put it all back together and it worked like a charm.

I was able to mount it and read my old files. Yay.

 

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

 

 

==============================

::: Additional Information :::

==============================

 

In case there are any noobies (like me) out there who are dealing

with USB problems, I thought that I would put some of the information

that I dug out while trouble-shooting this problem

into this topic. This is fairly detailed stuff, so if you already

know it or are not interested, just quit reading now.

 

I plugged in the Bytecc and hooked it to the USB and then turned it on.

 

Then I looked at /var/log/messages to track the registration of

the USB device. Here is what a healthy message log

looks like when the device is recognized properly:

 

Jun  8 21:56:15 localhost kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:1d.7-5, assigned address 2

Jun  8 21:56:15 localhost kernel: usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x402/0x5621) is not claimed by any active driver.

Jun  8 21:56:18 localhost /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: Setup usb-storage for USB product 402/5621/103

Jun  8 21:56:18 localhost kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

Jun  8 21:56:18 localhost kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage

Jun  8 21:56:18 localhost kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

 

 

Then I went to /proc/bus/usb and printed out the devices

file to see what the USB had done for me. That file contains

all of the nitty-gritty kewl information about the hardware

and where it is mounted. In the extensive output below,

my device is described in the section that starts with

 

T:  Bus=04 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=04 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=480 MxCh= 0

 

This tells me that the USB device is assigned to Bus 4

at Level 1 (the computer's internal hub is at level 0)

and Port 4 and device 2. It also tells me that the

speed is set to 480 Mbits, which is USB 2.0 speed.

 

Here is the entire output, which shows all of the USB

devices, including the internal hub...........

(this is not for the faint of heart).

 

[root@localhost mnt]# cd /proc/bus/usb

[root@localhost usb]# ls

001/  002/  003/  004/  devices  drivers

[root@localhost usb]# cat devices

T:  Bus=04 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=480 MxCh= 6

B:  Alloc=  0/800 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0

D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=01 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1

P:  Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 2.04

S:  Manufacturer=Linux 2.4.21-0.13mdk ehci-hcd

S:  Product=Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller

S:  SerialNumber=00:1d.7

C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr=  0mA

I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=  2 Ivl=256ms

T:  Bus=04 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=04 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=480 MxCh= 0

D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1

P:  Vendor=0402 ProdID=5621 Rev= 1.03

S:  Product=USB 2.0 Storage Device

S:  SerialNumber=00042222200000249785

C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=  0mA

I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage

E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms

E:  Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms

T:  Bus=03 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2

B:  Alloc=  0/900 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0

D:  Ver= 1.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1

P:  Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 0.00

S:  Product=USB UHCI Root Hub

S:  SerialNumber=ec00

C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr=  0mA

I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=  8 Ivl=255ms

T:  Bus=02 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2

B:  Alloc=  0/900 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0

D:  Ver= 1.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1

P:  Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 0.00

S:  Product=USB UHCI Root Hub

S:  SerialNumber=e880

C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr=  0mA

I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=  8 Ivl=255ms

T:  Bus=01 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2

B:  Alloc=  0/900 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0

D:  Ver= 1.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1

P:  Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 0.00

S:  Product=USB UHCI Root Hub

S:  SerialNumber=e800

C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr=  0mA

I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=  8 Ivl=255ms

[root@localhost usb]#

 

The interpretation of all that spaghetti can be found

at http://www.linux-usb.org/ if you are interested.

 

After I saw that the usb-storage driver had been registered

and the device was there I went looking for the drive.

 

[root@localhost brian]# ls /dev | grep sd

ptysd@

sd/

sda@

sda1@

sda2@

sda5@

sda6@

 

Those devices are the normal partitions that should be there

for a disk that has a Linux installation on it. So I attempted

to mount the drive:

 

[root@localhost mnt]# mkdir /mnt/oldhome

[root@localhost mnt]# chmod 777 /mnt/oldhome

[root@localhost mnt]# mount -r /dev/sda6 /mnt/oldhome

 

The -r switch mounts the drive readonly (just to be safe).

 

After that, I could read my old files by "cd /mnt/oldhome/brian"

and there they were.

 

Finally, I unmounted the drive:

 

 

[root@localhost mnt]# umount /mnt/oldhome

 

and turned it off. Success!

 

I hope this information is useful for someone who is

trying to deal with the USB system. It took me a while to

figure out where to look and what to look for.

 

Thanks to all of the great members of this board

for helping me through this.

 

Linux rocks!

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Just as an aside, does anybody know how I could find out what chipset my

system is trying to talk to on that device? Is it in /proc somewhere?

 

Thanks again

Banjo

(_)=='=~