peckinpah

My suggestion may not work in Mandriva (which I'm not running ATM). However, I had the same (or a similar) problem in Suse 10.2. What I did was right click on the task bar button and choose "switch to KDE menu style". That got rid of the ridiculously large and useless menu.

During installation, did you reply "yes" to the question of whether you wanted the installer to configure your x-server settings? If so, which card did it select? Whichever one should be the correct one. If you did not get that question during install, try uninstalling, then run the installer again with "-e" at the end. That will allow you to confirm each step of the install process.

OK, sounds good, will do. Thanks again for your help!

So, 17 posts later, the solution is to do what?

My goal was to prevent a regular user from accessing Windows partitions, and if that was not possible to block all access from any account. I guess I will not be posting this in tips and tricks. Thanks for all your help.

OK Here it is: NO DOWNLOADING ACTITY: Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:2208 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1942/hpiod tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:10026 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2970/master tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2498/portmap tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2808/X tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:34097 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2071/python tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2776/cupsd tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2970/master tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:33147 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2654/rpc.statd tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:7741 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 3011/lisa tcp 0 0 :::6000 :::* LISTEN 2808/X tcp 0 0 :::631 :::* LISTEN 2776/cupsd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32768 0.0.0.0:* 2657/avahi-daemon: udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32770 0.0.0.0:* 2654/rpc.statd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:7741 0.0.0.0:* 3011/lisa udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:710 0.0.0.0:* 2654/rpc.statd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5353 0.0.0.0:* 2657/avahi-daemon: udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* 2498/portmap udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:631 0.0.0.0:* 2776/cupsd udp 0 0 :::32769 :::* 2657/avahi-daemon: DURING DOWNLOAD ACTIVITY Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:2208 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1892/hpiod tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:33700 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2124/python tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:10026 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2970/master tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2452/portmap tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2825/X tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2823/cupsd tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2970/master tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:7741 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 3011/lisa tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:44541 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2594/rpc.statd tcp 0 0 :::6000 :::* LISTEN 2825/X tcp 0 0 :::631 :::* LISTEN 2823/cupsd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32768 0.0.0.0:* 2639/avahi-daemon: udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32770 0.0.0.0:* 2594/rpc.statd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:650 0.0.0.0:* 2594/rpc.statd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:7741 0.0.0.0:* 3011/lisa udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5353 0.0.0.0:* 2639/avahi-daemon: udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* 2452/portmap udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:631 0.0.0.0:* I suspect the Firefox Quality Assurance Application may have something to do with it. The activity came back and the Firefox Quality thing came up several minutes later.

Sure, here it is: /dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs nls=utf8,noexec 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda8 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0

Just installed the latest ATI Linux driver 8.35.5 released a few days ago. I'm pretty impressed so far. Install was a breeze, as easy as with the NVidia driver. No black screens. And my biggest gripe has been fixed, which was blurry, muddy-looking fonts on my notebook's 15.4" screen. Previous drivers always gave be problems with that. Now finally I have clear readable type. I admit I have not tried any 3D stuff yet, but considering some of their previous drivers, this is a huge step forward just to be able to install them in under 5 minutes and actually have them work. I encourage people who might have given up on ATI to try these drivers and see what you think. BTW, I downloaded the driver to my desktop and then installed from init 3 in command line. EDIT: I tried the new driver on my desktop system with an X800 Pro, and it pretty much hosed it. The X-Server won't start and when I type in the command to uninstall the ATI driver, it says "file not found". Oh well, maybe half a cheer for ATI. I guess I will be reinstalling Mandriva this weekend. Sorry for the enthusiasm, it was all a terrible mistake. EDIT #2: So I reinstalled Mandriva, but I this time installed both kernel source and libstd++5 first, since I saw an error message saying something about the installer being unable to find libstd. This time it worked, and I have a working ATI Catalyst Control Center applet. However, when I try to run "glxgears" it does not work, so there may still be a problem somewhere. EDIT #3: I installed UT 2003 on the X800 system. Game would not run due to an open GL error. So there is definitely a problem. Out of fairness, I should also mention that the notebook on which I installed the ATI driver successfully is running SUSE 10.2 not Mandriva. Sorry if my advice caused anyone to wreck their system, though it does not appear that this thread is generating much interest anyway.

As I said earlier, I'm unable to edit my fstab file. Can't do it as a regular user due to lack of permissions, and I can't do it as root because no program that runs under the X-Server will let me access it. And finally, I can't access the file in command line because I don't know the command to "edit" a file from the terminal. I did find a way to limit access to the Windows partitions. Go into Control Center/Mount Points/Create Delete, and Resize Hard Disk Partitions. Then click on the Windows partition, and toggle to Expert Mode and click Options Uncheck the box that says, "mount the file system in read only" and also check the box that says "Do not allow execution of any binaries on the mounted file system." I also unmounted the Windows partiton, just to be safe. After I did these three things, I was unable to access the Windows partitions as a regular user. Thanks for all the help. I'm not used to people even responding to my questions, so thanks for your time and let me know if you see anything wrong with what I did. If it looks OK, I will go ahead and post the info in the Tips and Tricks section.

I could play around with it and experiment. I'm guessing you just change the value to a number between like 1 and 5, right? How would I access the file though? When logged into the X-Server as root, I don't see an option to open and modify system files. I know there is a way to bring up and edit files through the CLI, but I can't remember it offhand.I used to use it to change my X86 Config file when installing the Nvidia driver. Once I figure this out, I will post it in the tips and tricks section, in case anyone else needs it.

/dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda8 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0 [root@localhost ltd]# OK there it is, thanks in advance!

Thanks! Will do.

Should I run the command when I get the downloading activity? Or do you think it would be helpful to run the command when the activity is absent? I'm not having any downloading activity at the moment. Maybe I could run it once now, and then again while I'm having the problem, and post both outputs.

Well, the phantom downloads continue. After about an hour online, I can't load web pages anymore because all my 3.5 kbs bandwidth is used up by this still-unidentified downloading process. I don't feel too good about this, and so I guess I will probably be ditching this distro if I can't figure out a way to control my system's download activity. It's kind of sad since the people who designed Mandriva did a lot of things to make it secure, but apparently this problem was not one of their priorities.

I ran the command /etc/fstab from the terminal as su and got "permission denied". I would not have known what to do from there anyway. In Suse, I just log in as root, then right click on the Windows partition and choose properties, then set permissions as "forbidden" for the 3 types of access to the partition. I know it's irrelevant, but just thought I'd show off my tiny bit of "knowledge". Couldn't resist. Thanks for the help though. I'll play around a little more (armed with your assistance) and try to figure out a way.