null

I posted the df results after the 2nd install (at the end of the original thread). I selected "Guided Partitioning" with the option of separate /home. It made its decisions and I said OK go ahead and write changes...

yes, I was hoping the "failed to fetch" was the fault of the mirror, and not my sources.list... will play around with it when I get home from work tonight. For everything multimedia, is the "debian-multimedia.org" source enough? Do I need any other sources, such as marillat ? another question: I let debian use the entire hard drive the second install and make its own decisions, and I think it gave itself less than 300 MB for the / partition. Is that normal? seems small.

I want to add non-free and multimedia sources to my sources.list file. I have already successfully added debian-multimedia.org (and the gpg key). The problem is adding non-free. I have googled this, and found several debian non-free help threads. ... problem is... they all say to do different things... or at least they all use different syntax... the place I am looking at now says to add this: deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/etch main non-free contrib deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main non-free contrib deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main non-free contrib Many places substitute ftp.us.debian... or ftp.fi.debian... or just ftp.debian... also some places word the end part like this: main contrib non-free other places word it like this: main non-free contrib I have tried three ways, and when I do an apt-get update, it gives an error on the above sources. "failed to fetch..." (not found) seems like a simple thing to do, I added non-free under FC several times, and mandriva. Would be nice if debian help sites would give consistent advice. :huh:

all finished with the reinstall. I did everything about the same as before, except this time I let it take the entire disk. It seems to have went through without any issues. This time X worked right away, no need for installing kb & mouse modules. They must have corrected that since the first install. After it was all done, I used apt to install some stuff: firefox (got iceweasel instead), thunderbird (got icedove), and the entire bloated kde, which took forever. But everything is working fine. When I have any post-install questions, I'll start a new "post-install" thread. here's what df shows this time: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 264445 155279 95513 62% / tmpfs 258528 0 258528 0% /lib/init/rw udev 10240 68 10172 1% /dev tmpfs 258528 0 258528 0% /dev/shm /dev/hda9 182447916 221208 172958812 1% /home /dev/hda8 381138 10314 351146 3% /tmp /dev/hda5 4806904 2215924 2346796 49% /usr /dev/hda6 2885780 1013248 1725944 37% /var

ok thanks. I already came to the conclusion that a re-install of debian would be the easiest. And letting the installer have the entire disk this time. I was just asking before about resizing stuff, wasn't sure about the hassle-factor of doing it. Since I'm intending to wipe out mandriva's /home anyway, might as well just reinstall debian and let it have the whole disk. I'm looking forward to having a "rolling distro" for the first time.

can I reformat the old mandriva /home, and then make most of it a data directory for use with debian, as you mentioned before? Then use some of it so I can resize / in debian. Are you allowed to resize / ?

i remember installing a couple games, and also the "auto update" icon at the top right prompted me to update a couple times. As i mentioned a few posts ago, i also tried to install kde (the whole thing) but it errored out right away with a "not enough room" message. Oh yeah, I just remembered... I tried to install the "america's army" game, and it installed all the way through... but it would not run afterwards. can't remember the message. I bet that caused the problem... How do I uninstall AA? It was a download of an executable program I think. Do I just delete the file? thanks! edit: I posted the above with my win2k box. Now I'm back on my debian machine. It logged in fine this time, into gnome, and is working normally... Now I'm confused... :huh: but still, as you say, I need to make some room.

the gnome login won't let root log in (it did under mandriva... or maybe the newer gnome does not let you). So I changed the session to "failsafe terminal" and that worked ok. Did su at the prompt, then ran apt-get auto-clean. worked good. ran firefox from the cli, and here I am. Here's the df output: (I can't copy & paste in the failsafe terminal window) FS 1K-blocks Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda6 2854112 2672592 36536 99 / tempfs 258488 0 258488 0 /lib/init/rw udev 10240 92 10148 1 /dev tempfs 258488 0 258488 0 /dev/shm /dev/hda8 6846744 986172 5512768 16 /home

new problem: can't log into debian anymore. Throws me out immediately and says some "session" thing doesn't have enough space. I can't believe 10.5 GB isn't enough space for a minimum linux install to run for more than a week or 2. I tried changing sessions. Tried gnome failsafe, tried gnome. failsafe let me into a blank x screen, but I had no idea what to do with a completely blank screen. It's still basically the minimum "net install" (workstation). I've hardly installed anything since then. a couple small games, and the installation thing called ...? its like synaptic but called something else. Besides that, not really anything. Can't believe it has wasted 10.5 GB of space already.

ok, I may play around with those suggestions tonight... I'm sure if I goof something up, it can be fixed by editing some system file... That's what's good about linux. As I mentioned before, I backed up 90% of my mandriva /home files (mostly mp3s) onto DVD-RWs (it took 14 discs) before installing debian. So if I just can't get the above suggesions to work, I suppose I can reformat the old mandriva /home as a debian "data" directory (as you suggested) and then later just copy the DVD-RWs into it. thanks as always!

I like this idea: that is what I will do. Even though I before said that I would just wipe out mandriva, there's something I forgot about. My email history. It's not THAT important, but if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to bring it over to debian. My email under mandriva was thunderbird, but I installed "ice"-something under debian. It looks like thunderbird, smells like thunderbird and tastes like thunderbird... my debian currently only has around 10.5 GB total space, so how do I copy /home stuff over to debian? 80 GB won't fit into my limited debian space... I tried to install kde the other night under debian (apt-get install kde), not just the -base stuff... and it errored out... "not enough space in apt-cache..." or something like that. I'm not asking about installing kde here... After I get the mandriva stuff finished and wiped clean, then I'll start another thread about any debian post-install questions. thanks!

dd@debian:~$ df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda6 2854112 2496460 212668 93% / tmpfs 258488 0 258488 0% /lib/init/rw udev 10240 92 10148 1% /dev tmpfs 258488 0 258488 0% /dev/shm /dev/hda8 6846744 174996 6323944 3% /home

Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 13 104391 83 Linux /dev/hda2 14 2053 16386300 83 Linux /dev/hda3 24257 24321 522112+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda4 2054 24256 178345597+ 5 Extended /dev/hda5 2054 22985 168136258+ 83 Linux /dev/hda6 * 22986 23346 2899701 83 Linux /dev/hda7 23347 23390 353398+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda8 23391 24256 6956113+ 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order

I'm in no hurry for this stuff, so even if I post something for help.... no hurry. didn't know you were a journalist... what kind of journalist?

yes I will... I'm just at work now goofing off...and just posting my thoughts... B)

I like Tux Mag, I usually got something helpful out of each issue. Especially the old issue that had the article about setting up your mandriva box to be able to print to a printer connected to a windows box. I followed the article, and after a little trial & error got it working perfectly. (the Zone Alarm on my windows box was not allowing the connection at first... but I figured that out myself...) things like that article, about stuff that all home users may want to do, are very helpful. I find the general linux mags (at the bookstores) too technical. Linux format is better, but too dang expensive in the US.

I think I own the boxed windows CD of Doom I and II (called complete Doom, or something like that). Will Q4 play OK on my "average" linux box (see sig)?

I'm stuck at work now, but.... I think I want to keep my debian testing install. I think I will like it, and I've never been one to have to have the latest updates quick quick quick. I probably would only do the apt upgrade every other month or so.... unless there was something particular I wanted quickly. I'm kind of confused on sharing /home. I have googled this several times, and everybody basically has different thoughts... some are, "yeah, go ahead, but have to do it correctly" some are "don't do it, too much trouble, you will bork something" some are in between. 1. I don't want mandriva anymore. As discussed in the first page of this thread, arctic helped me to resize my mandriva /home to give debian approx 10.5 GB of space. 2. I would like to wipe mandriva's space and make it available to debian... but first there may be some mp3s in mandriva's /home that I did not back up, so I'd like to boot into mandriva one more time to grab those files. 3. after that, then I'd like to wipe mandriva's space and make it available to debian. thanks for all the help!! this is my favorite linux board, and luckily there are members here that know something about every distro out there. I'd like to stick with debian for quite a while.

ok will try that later today. Note: the first few times I booted into mandriva after installing debian it booted into mandriva fine. This was a couple days ago. The only reason i would want to go into mandriva is to maybe get some files I did not back up. I would like to make a shortcut on my debian desktop to my mandriva /home files. or else just wipe most of mandriva's space, and re-use it for debian.

ok, I spoke too soon. It's not quite solved... I booted into mandriva a while ago, and when I got to the log in screen, the kb & mouse did not work. restarted, and then when booting again, mandriva would not boot... just get "filesystem errors" and it asks me if I want to correct Y/N. I said No, and restarted into debian. Debian boots fine. I don't really care too much if mandriva is trashed... but is it really trashed or not? I did back up what I wanted, before installing debian... so it's not like I'll lose anything. I kind of wish that I had let debian use the entire disk...

If a linux users wants to play Quake 4, Doom 3, or others such as HL,HL2.... do they buy the retail box (windows)? and then screw around with copying files, and then d/l a linux program? or are there boxed versions that work on linux? I was at EBGames today with my son, and I was looking at boxes of Doom 3, Quake 4, HL, and HL 2, but there was no metion of linux on the boxes (of course).

I marked this thread Solved, thanks arctic, gowator, and ian, and others. So far I really like debian, or at least the newer gnome. I plan to only boot into debian after I am sure I can get to all my mandriva /home stuff. Its mostly some docs, lots of family pics, and tons of mp3s. What I want to do eventually is to wipe out the mandriva partitions completely and make the space available to debian. However I will probably leave 10-12 GB of free space in case of me wanting to do a test install of a future linux distro. I'll start a new thread when I'm ready to do something...!

yay!! I guess that's all it was. installed the kbd and mouse modules as arctic said, and now here I am using debian. X works fine now. Weird that the install doesn't install those. I've installed several distros, including mandrake, RH, three of the FC releases, and ubuntu one time, and I think the kb, mouse, and X worked on all those post-install. Anyway, so do I now finally have a "rolling distro"?? It's good to see that I'm using firefox 1.5 now, instead of 1.0.6 under mandriva. grub has debian as the first boot option, which is what I want. (btw, how do I give myself a few more seconds of time to make a boot choice?). Some other questions: 1. want my /home stuff under mandriva accessible under debian. would like a shortcut mandriva home folder on my debian desktop. I'm using a diff username under debian than under mandriva as arctic said. 2. I have tons of folders/bookmarks on my firefox bar under mandriva. can I grab (import) those to my new firefox under debian? I think I am going to like debian. Fortunately, since I used FC2, FC3 and FC4 for quite a while, I remember some things about using apt. So hopefully the learning curve will be very short. Plus I know there is tons of help for debian on the web, so I will be googling when I have questions, and I'll bookmark some of the better debian help sites, so I don't bother arctic too much! ;)

what I've done tonight: 1. the update / upgrade / dist-upgrade. all finished ok, no errors. 2. used nano to look at my xorg.conf file. Note: actually its /etc/X11/xorg.conf, not /etc/x11/xorg.config. there are lines with Driver "kbd", and Driver "mouse" that are causing problems. my nvidia card and my samsung lcd monitor appear to be identified correctly. 3. also did the dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg from the # prompt. Tried the sudo way, but I guess I'm not in the sudoers file, so I have been reported... :P some errors after booting are: Warning, couldn't open module kbd Warning, couldn't open module mouse No devices detected No screens found

ok, I did the apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nv as discussed above, a couple nights ago. It appeared to finish correctly, no errors. However, there is no diff in X not working. Still doesn't work.