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Last night I started the debian installer on my win2k box, just to see what it was like. So far, at least up to the partitioning part, it seems pretty much the same as other distros I've installed. At the partitioning part, I exited out of the install since I wasnt' yet ready. I need to delete alot of junk on my D: partition, and then I suppose do a defrag before installing debian. On the "detecting network through DHCP" it failed. The win2k box has a usb2 wireless adapter for connecting to my wireless router. I didn't think debian would detect it correctly and I was right. My question is, if I connect an ethernet cable to my win2k box before installing, instead of using the usb adapter, will debian recogize the connection thru DHCP then? Since I d/l the "net install" CD of course I want a working internet connection during install. After install, I can again use my usb wireless adapter, and try to get debian to recognize it correctly, or maybe it will automatically after the "full version" is installed...

the whole 160 GB drive is NTFS. win2k is on the C partition, which is only 28 GB. I'd like to change it to about half the drive, or 80 GB. I have already downloaded the small "net install" debian Testing CD for amd64 architecture. I'll install it to the D partition, which is currently NTFS and approximately 132 GB. I'll let the debian installer make all of D ext3. I probably need partition magic to non-destructively re-size these partitions. I own PM 7, but I can't find the cd... Is there a freebie partition manager that's similar to PM?

No, I don't mean sharing back and forth. I mean I want to learn video capturing ONLY on the debian side, and/or only on the windows side. Don't really care about sharing between the 2. Already formatted the "C" half of my 160 GB last night as NTFS, and re-installed win2k on it. Now I'm gonna get one of those freebie "disk shredder" progs that gowater & others recommended to me in the Talk-Talk winXP thread and shred the "D" half tonight. Then I will put debian testing on that half (probably ext3). So I was wondering if 80 GB ext3 and 80 GB NTFS was enough for capturing up to 60 minutes of video. I will probably only be capturing around 30 minutes at a time however... I have ended up reinstalling win2k about every 1.5 years, not necessarily due to probs, but mostly due to me wanting to "wipe everything and start fresh".

regarding my XP / win2000 probs, I'm gonna just re-install win2k, and completely re-format the entire 160 GB H-D. I'm giving the XP back to the guy who gave it to me. Then I'm going to install debian Testing. I'm planning to play around with video capturing & editing in win2k AND debian, so if I let each OS have half of the drive, or 80 GB each, will that be enough for capturing, say 60 min. of video? I hate to have to buy another HD.

yeah, I read about this. Sounds handy. My earlier comment about my wireless usb adapter for my internet connection VS. using an ethernet cable instead... was related to the netinstall option... I don't have to have the bleeding edge latest and greatest stuff. Testing should be fine. Want to learn on it, plus it gets really great reviews on the linux distro review sites. This is going to go on my win2k / XP machine, which is currently in limbo due to XP install probs.... see other thread in talk-talk. When the smoke clears from the win2k/XP fiasco, I'll be gung-ho to install debian, just to screw around with.

after d/l dvd iso's several times, and always getting mis-matched md5sums, I'm gonna just buy a dvd set from one of the cheap CD places, probably MadTux.org. Most places have the "official" release, which is older than what I want. If I install the stable Sarge release, it will just be a matter of editing the sources file to point to "testing' repositories, and then doing an update, then a dist-upgrade... is that correct? Some things I am wondering about: stable sarge is pretty ancient. the box I'm putting it on has a usb wireless internet connection. will sarge even recognize an internet connection with this...? or maybe before installing sarge I should connect the eth cable back to my machine (which still has the card inside) - maybe sarge will pick that connection up better. I won't worry about nvidia and multimedia stuff until I get up to "testing". I think sarge uses xfree, but testing uses xorg... I am just gonna play with this after installing, don't care about screwing up... gonna learn somethin' edit: after being on mandriva for around 7 months, I kind of miss my favorite forum - Other Linux Distros...

ok, looks like the ftp.caliu mirror is giving the problems. I changed to a mirror in Texas where I am. Working good now. Thanks!

Lately whenever I do anything with uprmi, I get this: ...retrieving failed: curl: (9) FTP: access denied ...retrieving failed: curl failed: exited with 9 or signal 0 It happens when I use urpmi to install a prog, ie: #urpmi progname and it also happens when I do: #urpmi.update -a

the "md5sum" at the command line gave the same results and what k3b displayed - different than what debian.org shows. I d/l the first dvd amd-64 iso again tonight, and once again got a bad md5sum. Don't know why, I usually have good luck with iso downloads... I'm gonna wait a week or 2 to try again. There's a message on the testing iso d/l page about "the weekly builds of testing are currently in a state of flux... normal service should resume soon..."

Yeah, my sony (the model before yours, only 4x) was about the same price a few years ago. Today I bought an LG H10L 16x DVD+/-R/RW, dual layer & lightscribe for $82 at Worst Buy, I mean Best Buy. Couldn't find it at newegg.com or amazon.com. Burned my first lightscribe label just now, looks like...s**t. Takes a little practice with what type of images to use. Besides that, I burned a "Grandma's Boy" label on my 40 yr old virgin disk... oops. that's called DISCT@2 I think. Yamaha developed it.

I now have all 3 DVD iso's of debian testing. When I open the iso images in k3b, and when k3b calculates the md5 of each iso, the md5's that k3b displays are completely different than the ones shown on the debian website. ???

over at cdfreaks.com, they are pretty high on LG burners, so I'm going to probably get an LG H10L, which has lightscribe capability. Even though linux doesn't yet support lightscribe, if I burn a lightscribe CD or DVD in linux, I can just do the label later in windoze. Seems about all drives now have riplock, but it is supposedly easy to remove by firmware change, although you probably don't really need to, at least I may not even want to bother. I made an order with newegg 4 days ago (my first order with them), I used paypal, but I used an "unconfirmed" address... so they VOIDED the order right away... Unfortunately, they took my paypal payment anyway, and now 4 days later they still have not returned my money. I have emailed them several times, and did the "live chat" with a rep, and they always say "we'll put a rush on your refund...". It was for a 2nd HD for my win2k box, for a dual-boot debian install. I'm pretty turned off on newegg at this point.

I'm d/l the debian dvd iso's now, with ftp. It's going along pretty quickly... 136 KB/sec. I wonder why there's 3 debian testing iso DVDs ? Seems like one would be enough.

I was just browsing the new Tux issue, and I saw a letter called "A Troubled Reader Needs Help Using Kino". I thought, "wow, perfect timing...". I've been screwing around with kino since late June. Then I noticed the guy had the SAME name as me... Oh yeah.... that's something I sent to the mag about a month ago....I forgot all about it... wooo ! I'm published ! Too bad I sound a little retarded... oh well. At least I figured out Capturing video last month on my own... Still stuck on Exporting to mpeg for DVD burning though... haven't read the article yet. Hope it helps. edit: Just read the kino article. Its too basic and simplified. Nothing I didn't already know... Looks like its just telling people what's out there, and letting them figure it out themselves.

I'm having a hard time with how these "linux CD" places sell CDs & DVDs of all the distros for a pretty good chunk of money.... I mean, they are making money off other people's hard work... it goes against my way of thinking. For example linuxcentral.com sells the 3-dvd debian unofficial 3.2 set for $30. That seems like alot of money for someone else's work. Is "3.2 unofficial" the same thing as "etch - testing" ?? This guy at NewsForge really gives a glowing review of debian testing: http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/...42&from=rss Can't wait to get it and play around with it. Hopefully my FC experience with FC2,3 & 4 will help alot with debian.

ok maybe I'll try BT again this weekend. How do I know if I'm configured right.... ports and all that stuff ? yeah, I read that when I was reading about jigdo. Pretty handy idea.

I'm gonna try out jigdo this weekend. I may end up paying for the debian dvd from one of those cheap CD places, and maybe donate a couple bucks to debian...

I need to get debian testing ("etch") DVDs and after visiting debian's website I decided to try bittorrent for the first time ever. Supposedly its "faster and less trouble"... So anyway, now a couple of hours later... I was at 1.5% and had 3 days remaining for the first iso. I was blazing along at 21 KB/s... so what is the deal with bittorrent? Its a total joke. Useless. I can get a CD or DVD downloaded with ftp or http in a few hours. hmm... lets see, should I use bittorrent for 3 days per CD, or ftp for 3 hours per CD... decisions, decisions.... I never tried jigdo. Is it any better than bittorrent? can't be any worse. Is it faster than ftp? Is there anywhere that has the amd-64 testing DVD ISOs for download by ftp/http? I didn't see any when I was checking. Am I doing something wrong with bittorrent? I'm doing it on my win2k box, since my only working dvd burner is here. Haven't put another one in my mandriva box yet. I may just buy the testing dvds for amd-64 if anyone's selling them.

no you misunderstood. the old burner in my windoze box died... the burner in my mandriva box is pretty new and works great... well, at least when I stick it in my windoze box Since I know what I'm doing during backing up dvds on my windoze box, when the old windows drive died, I pulled out the "good" drive from my mandriva box and am now using it in my windoze box. So my mandriva box has a gaping hole in the front of the case... Gonna buy a new drive soon, they are pretty cheap now. Going to buy a DVD burner, dual-layer, with LightScribe capability, bitsetting capability, and all that fancy new stuff. Will put it into my windoze box, since linux doesn't do lightscribe I bet, then I will put the other good drive back into my linux box... and start my Great Linux DVD Backup Experiment again....

well, I just tried to backup one of my DVDs with k9copy, but as soon as I click the "copy" button, I get the dvdauthor error... Tried acidrip on the same dvd, at least it starts doing something... the dvd drive light is flashing and the HD light also... and it says "encoding film" edit: .... an hour and a half later... lights are still flashing on and off... still says encoding film... but the Status dialog box still shows encoding speed 0 and Time encoded 0:00. So I guess its not really doing anything.... I don't know why there's great "free" progs for windows that do this stuff easily, but in linux... forget it. maybe its mandriva, I don't know. Need to try these programs under another distro. DVDshrink and DVDdecrypter under windows aren't exactly "simple simon" programs... but I figured them out quickly and have not ever had any trouble with them. Some of these linux progs, such as k9copy and xdvdshrink, have way simpler interfaces than the 2 windows progs mentioned above, but they still don't work, at least for me. edit: My Great Linux DVD Backup Experiment is officially ended now anyway. The old sony DVD burner in my windows box died tonight, after many years of service. So I had to pull out the burner from my mandriva box to stick in my windows box. No burning on mandriva for a while until I can pick up another drive.

yeah, me neither. I haven't had one on the last 3 machines I've owned. guess they're handy for utilities though, as ian mentioned. <-------------------floppy-free since 2002

oops, I meant "xdvdshrink". when you do #urpmi dvdshrink, it installs xdvdshrink, and puts a menu entry in for "dvdshrink". Confusing naming, but it looks like a nice, simple GUI...

I mean crashed, 'dead' HDs - that are out of the machine, and laying around your house.... I bash 'em with a hammer to get the case pried open, then gouge up the disk with with a screwdriver or whatever. Thanks for the tips on eraser, nuke disk, and dban though - since I was also wondering about what utilities there are for wiping disks while still in the machine... are those freebie progs ?

do you mean 'xdvdrip' or 'acidrip'? I've tried both. @Lex - I installed gmencoder last night. Looks similar to acidrip (both are GUIs for mencoder). Haven't tried it yet though.

my k9copy now works also. Doesn't crash anymore at the beginning. Haven't tried to backup anything yet though. ian - did you every get to check your xdvdcopy?