ac_dispatcher

I use MDK 9.1 cause it just works with no problems. Very easy to use and learn on. Now I have a dual boot MDK / Gentoo. With gentoo I can go bleeding edge and try new stuff to learn with. If I break it - oh well. I have tried Slackware / Yoper / RedHat / JAMD / and now Gentoo with the extra partition just to see the differences and benefits of each. My personal ranking (no flames please):

Mandrake (it just works)

Gentoo (acpi with stock kernel )

RedHat (apt-get is cool)

Slackware (great learning tool)

JAMD (Red hat offshoot)

Yoper (tried emerge and it broke)

I learned alot with all, but I always have Mandy as a primary Distro. Due to the fact of being able to download just about all distros free it makes the process fun. I settled on MDK and will now buy my next distro (9.2) from them.

Something really odd happened this morning. My wife's mouse stopped working so I gave her mine (USB mouse). I hooked her mouse (USB) to my MDK laptop and booted. I got alot of errors (module - HID) on boot. To include the "cannot read ext3 file system, not supported by the kernel". It gave me alot of errors that I had invailid option in my fstab. Also gave me alot of invaild lines in my /etc/modules.conf file (alot).

At first I thought it might be a config file in /etc. Booted to my Gentoo partition, mount all my MDK partions and they mounted fine - no errors. The only thing I could see a was a blank XF86Config file. After checking a couple of files I decided that I really would not know for sure if a file was setup wrong. Thankfully I had a backup copy of my complete /etc directory that was about a week old. So I replaced the whole /etc directory so be safe. - Same big time errors on boot.

The only other thing I could think of was my kernel. I had a MDK boot disk so I tried it out. On boot it said that it had no ext3 support so I could not get into my /home directory. I did get into a working root desktop (no lan). This makes me believe some how that putting a "faulty" USB mouse messed up the kernel? Weird thing is the mouse would not work in Windows / MDK / Gentoo as a USB, but would work connected to a ps2 port with an adapter.

Some info:

/boot (ext2)

/ - reiserfs

/usr - reiserfs

/home- ext3

The "25mdk" kernel. (Sorry not at home.)

I have not deleted the partions yet so Im thinking of a chroot and recompile a kernel. But to be honest I have never gotten a MDK kernel to work yet. I have taken the source copied to my /home took the stock config file recompiled a loaded it to /boot. On boot to my new kernel I would get the neverending reboot., with nothing changed from the stock config. Ive got a gentoo kernel working many times. I had a generic 2.4 kernel to work with an unchanged MDK config. But no luck the the MDK sources.

Additonal note: on boot my laptop keyboard will not work until it boots to graphic mode. Unless I type "nousb" (but its a usb mouse) or tap on the keyboard during boot which does not work some times. Only way is to hard boot and try again. Would turning the computer down during a boot mess the kernel up?

I did the GRP 2cd install this weekend. Took 2 tries but it turn out great. ACPI worked great. They main problem I had was my natsemi network driver. It would work until my first install reboot (to emerge KDE). lsmod would show it loaded no errors a boot. Could not find the problem quickly so I decided to recompile the kernel (genkernel --config) and had the natsemi loaded in the kernel. From there no problems. I must say I was pleased at ACPI working. Besides MDK it has been the only distro Ive used that came stock with ACPI working (Slack , Yoper, Red Hat, JAMD).

I did "cheat" on alot of stuff. .. I copied my XF86Config file from my MDK9.1 parition -worked great. Did the same with alot of /etc files. Alot of things that MDK did for me I was able to apply to Gentoo and save some time. Im now running "emerge -u system" to get it current. My MDK is a little bloated but the Gentoo distro just rocks with shear speed.

One Problem I have ran into with Gentoo:

When emerge large files my system will go into a "kernel panic". No cntrl-alt-back - nothing. The keyboard lights just blink like a bad booting kernel panic. To avoid this with large emerges, I have to - rc-update del xfs default - then reboot and emerge with no graphic interface. Ill try to recompile a kernel later and try again. Ive got my MDK distro they way I want and everything works. This gentoo install will give me a chance to really try some stuff out.

Don't think this has been posted yet. Found this quick sheet for commands cross referenced for Linux/HP-UX/AIX/FreeBSD/SOLARIS/Tru64.

http://www.unixguide.net/unixguide.shtml

or goto the main web page and click the PDF link for the .pdf version

http://www.unixguide.net/

Have Fun

Found this on the Mandrake Forum. Might be worth a look

http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?s...sid=451&lang=en

I may be showing my Noobiehood but,

How do you apply the "CFLAGS" to a MDK distro? I know that in Gentoo it is input in the "make.conf" file. Where and how do I apply this for a MDK distro?

Here is how I did a complete system update with no problems:

Installed the system

First boot I applied the easy URPMI :

http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/

Added the gpg keys:

http://www.pclinuxonline.com/gpgkey.html

For the PLF:

in console (as root):

lynx -source http://plf.zarb.org/plf.asc | gpg --import

After that in the same terminal(as root) typed:

urpmi.update --all (to update urpm base list)

then:

urpmi --auto-select (installed a boat load a packages)

---

I may have done an update via the MCC first after I did the easy urpmi but I cant remember. I think when you enter "urpmi --auto-select" all updated packages to include security updates will happen (not totally positive though). A "urpmi.update --all" may not be needed after you just input your sources via easy urpmi but for future use it wont hurt.

OK did a complete repartion/format/install with the PLF disk. 8)

Inserted the PLF disk first and the install went OK until the last step of updateing. The install locked up on me. After a shutdown & reboot it started OK with some wierd errors like "line 1 in ***.conf error eE@!@#$%. My network/internet would not load and had alot of stability problems. Then I realized I did not check the MD5Sum. - It was a messed disk, Redownloaded & Installed with the PLF disk. My suggestion to all is to always do a individual package listing / install. The PLF disk has alot to look at.

By reading this forum I learned to do a "update" during the install. Stability increased...

Used a XFS file system. Nice and fast so far..no problems yet.

Of course did the "easy urpmi". then typed " urpmi kdebase " and updated to KDE 3.2.1. Works great so far.

So far my use of the PLF disk has had no ill effects and produced a better more robust MDK9.1 - I suggest using it.

:lol:

Thanks Alot. :D I plan on Reinstalling MDK9.1 in the next day or two. I will also post what I thought of it.

For the record: nothing is wrong with my MDK9.1 I just installing darn near everything the last install with updates and my system is very bloated. I plan on doing a minimal install then doing the easy URPMI install and installing my favorite packages. (Also redoing some partition work)

Has anyone ever used the PFL disk #1 for a MDK 9.1 install? Im looking at reloading MDK9.1 and would like some input. :D

http://mirrors.zoreil.com/plf.zarb.org/iso/

Go figure I see the post on File system layout after I post my message. Well in any case the link has some more good info to compliment aru's post. :?

Sorry If this has been a topic so far. I have not seen something like this yet.

I was looking at reformating/partitioning my system and starting from scratch. Wanted to know what file system others use. I am torn between ReiserFS and XFS. Found this good .pdf link to File system info that I thought Id share.

http://www.vmars.tuwien.ac.at/courses/akti..._Menedetter.pdf

Currently use EXT3 but on my MDK9.1 Laptop. From what I have read Reiser or XFS would be a upgrade in speed. I have read anything on the stability of XFS yet. I have seen good reports on ReiserFS. Anyone use XFS?