Counterspy

Since I had download caps imposed I need to be careful about downloading large iso's so I will wait for Texstar's version to get more updated software. it will be interesting to see if either follows the Knoppix footsteps and creates a script for a hard drive install. On the Knoppix site last night I was amazed at how far custom, specialized applications are being developed around Knoppix. There were two for medical purposes, one for managing a general practice and another for collecting a comparing medical imaging such as MRI's CAT scans, PET scans and good old Xrays. It looks like this is the way to go for getting Linux on desktops that we would never thought of before that first Knoppix disk. Counterspy

YOu have installed all of the Mandrakesoft KDE updates from this site's download area by now, haven't you? Counterspy

You should get rid of boot magic since it is more of a problem than a solution. Even so, it is unlikely to be the cause of the current problems. There are several questions that precede the point you are at now. 1) Did you turn off plug and play (and possibly apm and anti-virus) in the bios? 2) Did you run scandisk and defrag on your install drive? 3) Did you run md5sums on the downloaded iso's before burning them? 4) Did you burn image at the slowest possible speed? Post back with the answers to these questions and we work from there. Counterspy

Phoenix is talking about doing away with the bios as we now know it. Tonight, MSI, my motherboard manufacturer updated my bios live in Windows but not before the program demanded a backup floppy unless the live install went awry. I have half a shelf of 51/4 disks and have been thinking about getting a drive from a second hand computer store just to make sure I don't throw away something I'd rather not do. Counterspy

I was not clear in my post but I have Grub only on my floppies. Counterspy

I assume you expanded the hd.img file with rawwrite or its equivalent. I did the same thing and then looked at the contents of the floppy with a sector editor. There was one occurrence of the string 22-10 and nothing referring to 22-21. I would suggest you scan the net for a sector editor and see if you get different results. I could not take the experiment any further since I discovered it wanted the iso in vfat format and my iso's are in NTFS, so I guess we found out one thing. If you do get 22-21, then it may be possible to suggest a workaround that really shouldn't take much time. Counterspy

The real issue with SCO is the computer media's slavish repetition of every press release no matter how ridiculous being victimised by a well-orchestrated plot by SCO to keep this issue front and center. Without this coverage, the SCO issue would die on the vine because by the time it reaches the courts everyone will have forgotten all about them. Counterspy

It would probably be a good idea to update the kernel from one of the update mirrors. The kernel source is in the update list. Counterspy

My two machines are set up with CDROM>Floppy>HDD0 and I use a floppy to boot Mandrake 9.2. Counterspy

Change that 2.88 setting back to 1.44. There was once a 2.88 floppy drive but it never gained any acceptance and that is there for those who did have it as a legacy drive. Even with a program for higher formatting in Windows, there are none that will work over 2.0 mb. Counterspy

One thing that puzzles me is the constant whining from Mandrakesoft that they need volunteers and never say volunteers to do what. Since returning here from a board where most regular participants run more than one and often more than two distros, what is striking is the level of hardware that is being used. The same is true here. People are using hardware that Mandake fails to detect properly and it is often not the fault of the hardware manufacturers refusing to provide drivers and support. Much of the hardware listed here is certainly less than two years old and much is one year old or less. As a group we are in a position to test out different hardware configurations Mandrakesoft could never hope to do with their existing base. But, as always, they remain stubbornly stuck to control, control, control. Without a significant change in attitude, this resource will never be used. When seen from outside in a world with many competing distros and high end hardware, the full potential of this distro will remain unfulfilled. It's really too bad. Counterspy

IIRC, the kernel in 9.2 loaded as default is 22-10 and the update on the mirrors is 22-21. It appears that the hd.img has been corrected to load the corrected kernel without the LG problem. How you get around this problem I don't know since I have not seen a source for these .img files anywhere else but on the first cd. Someone who is a club member may have the correct file but I would be surprised if the hd.img had not also been fixed on their bit torrent version. Hopefully another poster will be able to solve this problem. Using a sector editor from Windows might allow the hd.img to be corrected if there is not another way to rebuild this img. Counterspy

I am from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. You might be interested to know a little history here and the extended partitioning first became an issue with the release of Windows 3.1 when Microsoft formatted the disks to 1.6 Mb. This lead to a flood of formatters that would go up to 2.0 Mb. some of which are no doubt still available on the net. Oh, BTW, thanks for the permission. It is now posted there. Counterspy

I would agree with what you say in general terms but as one who has used Fedora shortly after its introduction, as a distro it is not a significant improvement over Red Hat 9.0. If I had unlimited finances, I would open a men's hat shop across from Red Hat's home office and offer red hat's at a discount. The resulting legal nightmare would let the courts decide if you can trademark ordinary English words, something which should have been disallowed by the dolts in the Patent Office in the the first place. Counterspy

My compliments on an excellent piece. Do I have your permission to post it at http://www.linuxiso.org/forums/index.php in the Mandrake section? Counterspy

With the exception of the Knoppix/Debian install, I have followed a formula for each of the others in part as a result of installation instructions as a guide. This results in hda and hdb for primary Windows XP. For Linux, each distro gets 1-3 Gb. for / , 4-6 Gb for /home. 4-6 Gb. for /usr and 1-2 Gb. for /var. Since I have dumped Red Hat 9.0 and Fedora Core 1, once I finish a separate Debian install and Gentoo, I will try Slackware and Suse (now that you can dl it for free) just to have a look at them. I have one 120 Gb. and a 40 Gb. on my main machine and twin 30 Gb. on my backup machine. The backup machine will soon get Mandrake 9.2 so I can set up a Lin neighbourhood. It presently has Windows SE. I usually partiton and format in advance with PM8 on floppies. From what I have seen here, I like the idea of a separate /tmp and /share. Counterspy

Upgrading from 9.1 to 9.2 is a more difficult issue because of the large number of fixes that must be downloaded and installed with 9.2. At one end, if you have highly customised and well-working 9.1, particularly with third-party additions, then maybe you should give 9.2 a pass. At the other are the improvements in hardware detection and newer versions of some software in 9.2. If you decide to go with 9.2, the first thing you should do after you install it is to go directly to a download mirror and get and install the updates so you won't even see the reason for them. Doing it this way means that you do need to pay closer attention to what you are installing so you don't waste time downloading unnecessary updates. I always lean toward clean installs preserving the /home directory but others have successfully done upgrades. As with most things the final choice is up to you. Counterspy

I am not sure if you get a trial membership in the Mandrake Club with the Discovery Edition but if you did, you can get access to the Quick Start Guide or better still the Starter Guide from the Club. If you did not get a trial membership you can still use the the documentation for 9.1 available from this site: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/fdoc.php3 . For installation purposes there is little practical difference except you will not have some of the advanced install options available with the higher packages such as the Download Edition or the Power Pack. After you get Mandrake installed you can look at this online book: http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/index.html.gz . Soon it will be out-of-date but for now it is a good text for both new and experienced users alike. You should also file away in your bookmarks after you are on the net the Linux Documentation Project at http://www.tldp.org. For your current situation, you want to downsize the Windows partition and install a "/" root partition, /home partition and a swap partition. Allow about 1.5-3 Gb for /, 3-5 Gb for /home and 500 Mb. to 1 Gb. for swap. You could look at the Partitioning mini-How-To at the LDP mentioned above if the Mandrake information is insufficient for you. Counterspy

Under international copyright law, there is something called prior use. Red Hat is behaving as if this does not apply to them. To fully appreciate the situation, you need to put this issue in personal terms. If you had written an article or created a project only to have someone else come by a few years later and seize the use of it then you would appreciate the totally unethical nature of the Red Hat action. For this first time in a long time we are seeing a return to ethical behaviour in the executive suite of major international corporations because they don't want their previous greed to lead to a retirement behind bars. Personally, I will not support businesses and other organizations who act unethically. Counterspy

You've got me by three years. Counterspy

Coming from the board where I do most of my posting surrounded by most of the available distros, I have decided to cut Mandrake some slack on this one despite an initial horrified reaction. Since I have dumped Red Hat and Fedora and since Mandrake is now almost alone in distros for new users who are not yet ready for Slackware, Debian or Gentoo, I see the importance of Mandrake and this board as increasing significantly. Only here will users get the answers they need bypassing the softheads in the executive suite and the club. This release is a fiasco I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy and was clearly a management decision who mistakenly thought that the release of Fedora and Suse 9 would eclipse the release of 9.2. The were proven right for the wrong reasons. I sincerely hope this does not impact their arrangement with HP and the forthcoming decisions of the bankruptcy court in January. Maybe support here will prove to be a small factor in these much larger arenas and I want a 2.6 kernel in version 10 of Mandrake. Counterspy

Are you sure they just deleted packet writing or modified in such a way as to avoid the LG problem. I upgraded as part of my upgrade everything before using policy. I also wonder if they they made other minor changes to the kernel. Counterspy

I will no longer have anything to do with Red Hat because of the following: It 's too bad. Red Hat might have dome something interesting with Fedora but not on this user's box. Counterspy

Go to the site of the manufacturer of your drive. There you should find a utility that will rescan the drive and clear it, what some call a low level format. Most such utilities do mark bad blocks to be skipped as part of this process. Try this and post back with our results. Counterspy

I have a K7N2 Delta model MS 6570 and had no trouble installing with the N-Force chipset. I have a D-Link NIC card connected to my D-Link DI-704P router, a TI4200 Nvidia Video Card and a Sound Blaster 5.1 sound card. Memory is 2 512 Mb. DDR 400 with an XP24000 CPU. I have disabled the onboard equivalents of the above cards and have had no trouble with the Nvidia N-Force chipset. I did have trouble with 9.1 getting on line and that is when I switched to Red Hat 9.0. My only problem now is with no sound and I suspect that is just a matter of proper configuration. I would go ahead and try the 9.2 install with the caveats rasied bu others firmly burned into my brain watching out for anything that goes amiss. Counterspy