mikeoneil

What is your video card?

The video card is built in to the nForce2 chipset, I believe it is a GeForce 4 MX. I also have a Shuttle made AGP card that simply provides a DVI connector. Until now I hadn't considered AGP problems so I will look into that this evening, as I recall once during boot an error with agpgart.o. (whatever that is).

I'll do a fresh reinstall, and keep a detailed log of any problems as I realise my error descriptions are a bit unspecific, though if anyone has more suggestions they'd be welcome!

Some problems I have with 9.2 (retail Power Pack edition) on a Shuttle SN41G2 (nforce2).

1. Froze 4 times during install at different points, reset button the only cure.

2. Finally installed, but failed to detect DVI connected monitor and network. Fixed easily enough by editing XF86Config-4 and installing freshly compiled nForce (nvnet) drivers from nvidia.

3. Started updating from official site a few packages at a time. At some point all menu items were lost, had to issue update-menus to get them back.

4. All the above were easily fixed, though had this been my first introduction to Linux I would not have got past point 2.

5. My / partition is 5GB and is 88% full! I cannot see where this space is used. Also a partition /photo has no files but is 8% used! (hidden files option on). I noticed I had used ext2 instead of ext3 so I decided to reinstall from scratch.

6. To make updates a bit easier I downloaded the entire update/rpms directory from an ftp site to burn on a cdrom. During burning (k3b) the system froze, again reset button the only option. During normal use I have had 3 random freezes where the only way out is the reset button.

I'll give it one more try before moving back to 9.1 which by the way was almost flawless on this machine.

I just wonder if anyone else has had these sorts of problems particularly with nForce boards. The most troublesome problem is the apparently random freezing, how can I track down the possible causes?

I cannot play CD's digitally as in M$oft. I hav'nt hooked up a CD to a soundcard for years because of that feature but I cannot find a way to do it in Mandrake 9.2.

I just looked into this the other day and my result was to install xmms 1.2.8 which has a new option to ¨digital extract audio¨ under the cd audio player config tab. I don´t have the cd audio cable connected either. I am using mandrake 9.1 but xmms 1.2.8 must be available for 9.2 somewhere.

m.

Very similar to ACDSee is PixiePlus. The home page pixieplus seems to be out of action but you get it from here (RPMSeek)

M.

Not sure about XCDroast, but with K3B there is an option to set the cdparanoia mode. My audio cds were taking forever until I changed this value from 3 to 0. Mode 3 has most error checking (slowest) whereas mode 0 has none so is faster.

M.

My original problem has now been solved simply by RTFM (well using the 'whats this' mouse click help)!

Just before audio cd copying, open the advanced options tab, then set the value of cdparanoia mode. O is fastest but with no error correction, 3 is slowest with most error checking. The default was apparently 3.

Not all my time was wasted as in the meantime I now have both my drives as scsi emulated, and disabled supermount. k3b now sees them both and works great! I might reinstate supermount as it was working quite well.

Maybe something to do with SCSI emulation? Do you have that enabled?

Yes, I have scsi emulation for the cd/rw. I'm trying to first read the audio cd in the cd/rw, then swap it for a blank disc for writing. But with k3b this is extremely slow (<2x). Using grip, I can get the wav files at 20x.

I also have a cdrom/dvd reader in the same machine. k3b gives the message you mention as apparently it only recognises scsi drives. I tried to emulate scsi on this drive also, but so far no progress. I don't mind at all using the same drive to read then write the disc, but the speed is a problem!

M.

I use k3b 0.10 on mandrake 9.1

When I choose 'copy cd' with an audio cd it takes forever (seems to read at no faster than 2x) to make the image on the hard disk. Often it just hangs before it has finished reading.

If I use grip to write the .wav files it takes only 3 minutes, then I can burn using k3b just as quickly.

My question: is it normal that copying audio cd's using k3b takes so long? k3b 0.9 was also just as slow. Can I use a different encoder plug in with k3b? (I think grip was using cdaa2wav.)

Mike

If SCO has a death wish, their wishes might just come true..

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030807/tech_ibm_sco_1.html

I installed 4496 last night with no problems. You could try in XFConfig-4

"ConnectedMonitor" "CRT" (for a VGA monitor) or

"ConnectedMonitor" "DFP" (for a DVI flat screen monitor)

Note: I think you need to type OPTION before this code?

I had this error message many times trying to set up Twinview, I still can't get a DVI and VGA screen to co-exist, but using the ConnectedMonitor options I can choose between 2xVGA or 1xDVI.

M.

This is a common problem if you have Mandrake 9.1 or any recent distribution. It is probably something to do with the glibc version.

Have a look in the Borland newsgroups under Kylix, you'll find lots of possible answers. (re-ordering the includes, installing 'compat' libs etc) Also, search this board with 'Kylix', there should be a few posts..

http://newsgroups.borland.com

This link is to a set of 'fixes' for the problems you have. I have not tried it yet. Also, you may have to register at Borland (free and virtualy nno junk mail afterwards) to access it.

http://codecentral.borland.com/codecentral...isting?id=20136

check out this file:

/usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README

I have this file in printed form and have been all the way through it. It was a great help (along with Dolsons tutorial, thanks!) in getting as far as I have. I have a fully working twinview setup with two RGB screens. My main screen, on its own, worked using the DVI input. So far, I have been unable to get it to work on DVI with twinview enabled. The second screen is RGB only and a different resolution.

Here is the relevant part of my XConfig-4 file

Section "Monitor"

   Identifier "monitor1"

   VendorName "Plug'n Play"

   HorizSync 30-82

   VertRefresh 50-85



   # Sony Vaio C1(X,XS,VE,VN)?

   # 1024x480 @ 85.6 Hz, 48 kHz hsync

   ModeLine "1024x480"    65.00 1024 1032 1176 1344   480  488  494  563 -hsync -vsync



   # TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.

   # 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync

   ModeLine "768x576"     50.00  768  832  846 1000   576  590  595  630



   # 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync

   ModeLine "768x576"     63.07  768  800  960 1024   576  578  590  616

EndSection



Section "Device"

   Identifier "device1"

   VendorName "NVidia"

   BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"

   Driver "nvidia"

   Option "DPMS"

   Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT, CRT"

   Option "TwinView"

   Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-60"

   Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "57-75"

   Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"

   Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024 @1280x1024, 1024x768 @1280x1024"



EndSection



Section "Screen"

   Identifier "screen1"

   Device "device1"

   Monitor "monitor1"

   DefaultColorDepth 24



   Subsection "Display"

       Depth 8

       Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

   EndSubsection



   Subsection "Display"

       Depth 15

       Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

   EndSubsection



   Subsection "Display"

       Depth 16

       Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

   EndSubsection



   Subsection "Display"

       Depth 24

       Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

   EndSubsection

EndSection



Section "ServerLayout"

   Identifier "layout1"

   InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

   InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"

   Screen "screen1"

EndSection

Without the line "ConnectedMonitor", X crashes as it does with anything except CRT, CRT. The error was something about screen not usable.

Hopefully someone can help!?

Mike

I have an Nvidia G4 ti4200 which has 1 DVI and 1 RGB output. The driver is the last but one, ie. 4349. I used to have my LCD screen connected to the DVI and all was fine.

Now I want to add a second LCD to the RGB port and use TwinView.

After many hours editing XConfig-4 I can only conclude that TwinView only allows two RGB connections and not 1 DVI / 1RGB.

I can only get a twinview working if I add "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT, CRT" to the config file. If I try "DFP" X crashes on startup. Other times I've had only the 'second' monitor working. How does X know which port of the graphic card is the main monitor and which is the second?

Can I use the DVI connection on the main monitor whilst using TwinView?

Mike

I don't know about JBuilder but Kylix, the Linux version of C++Builder/Delphi, does not work properly with Mdk9.1 or any new distribution. It is due to an incompatibility problem with the latest glibc libraries. There are ways to fix this by using 'compat' libraries and tweaking a few things. In my opinion Borland should just spend a little bit of time and release a patch or updated version, but their support for Linux seems limited. You can look through the Borland newsgroups for more info. http://newsgroups.borland.com

M.

I've just paid for the download edition. I'll try and install it tonight. Check the comments on the Mandrake Club page before you try and order. The price, for the download version, instead of 59.99 shows up as 71.99. (+tax). There is a comment that tells you how to correct this.

M.

For Mandrake club members there is a $30 discount.

Win4lin 5.0 will be sold to our members for $59.99 (electronic license) or $69.99 (boxed edition)

I've tried repeatedly to follow the links on the club page to www.netraverse.com but but get a site not found error. Can anyone else get to this site?

Mike

The difference in price between a preloaded XP PC and one with Mandrake must be quite small.

I hope that HPs advertising notes that for an extra $0 the Mandrake option will give you virtually all the applications you could possibly need, and that the same applications with XP will set you back $100's if not $1000's extra.

M.

I've just joined seti@home (and the Mandrake Users Board group) a few days ago and have been running this version, setiathome-3.08.i686-pc-linux-gnu, for a few hours a day without problems so far. I start it manually with the -verbose option, for the moment, using Konsole.

Did you recently change something to your system?

Mike

MDK9.1, KDE, AMD Athlon 2100+.

Thanks bvc, I'll look for this line this evening. In general, is it a good idea or not to increase the priority of X? With it set to -2, I did not notice any skipping with xmms nor any problem with mplayer dvd playback, so answering my own question, I guess if it seems to work I should try it!

Mike

The "Resolution" didn't seem to change things, though increasing the threshold has improved the accuracy for slow movements with acceleration set to 2.

The mouse, as I mentioned, seems to stutter as I move it, very slightly, enough to be annoying but not critical.

I assume the mouse is handled by X windows and it's almost as if it there is a few milliseconds delay switching tasks when I move the mouse. With this in mind I increased the priority of the X process (temporarily with KSysGuard). I tried setting the Nice value for the X process to -2 from 0 so increasing it's priority (almost every other task has nice 0). In my opinion it seems smoohter now.

If I left priority of the X process higher than the others would I cause any other problems? I rarely use anything approching 100% CPU even playing DVDs only uses max 25%.

If I am not doing something really stupid, how can I make this priority permanent?

Edited: Forgot to mention, I boot to a console then type startx to launch KDE.

Mike.

but something about it is odd to me. Almost like it doesn't stop exactly where I where I want

My mouse is the same, it's almost okay, but there is some subtle difference to it's behaviour in Win98 that I can't quite explain. It's almost as if it doesn't quite stop exactly when I want it to. As Steve said it's perhaps only a few milliseconds delay, but often causes me to move backwards and forwards a couple of times to select something small on the screen (xmms controls for example). I can live with it, but apart from the KDE (which I use by the way) control settings and xconfig file are there any other things that can be adjusted for the mouse? What about settings at a lower level such as the driver?

Mike

Who else bought the official boxed set, if so where (mail order (just joking your probably still waiting) or Store.

I pre-ordered the Powerpack edition of 9.1. It was delivered (within France) a few weeks ago and I have had no problems at all installing. All hardware was correctly detected and all my chosen packages installed without problem. I couldn't have been more impressed with how well the install went. I know some (maybe lots) of people have had problems with Mandrake Store, but this is the second time I have ordered from them and had no delays or faulty goods. BTW, the CDs themselves were perfectly circular :D

M.

I haven't actually installed it yet. I was wondering if it was worth installing. They have a Mandrake/Red Hat RPM so I think I'll give it a go later on and report back here.

Mike

I was just looking at the Emusic site and wondered how well the Linux client works. If I understood correctly the only way to download the songs is with the so called DLM. Can you also listen to samples with Linux? Some people on the Emusic forum seem to have some problems with the service using Linux. Is it working well now? I'll sign up for the free trial soon I think, but only if the Linux client is working!

Mike

One more thing, i've just wasted another two hours to find this out..

I was trying to get another win 98 machine to use the linux printer. I removed all installed printers, waited for spool32 to crash then rebooted!

Now, when you install a printer and select network printer don't browse to the printer but type it in manually in capitals ie HOSTNAMEPRINTERNAME

For me at least, everytime I selected the printer from the network browse window it messed up and would not print. As soon as I typed it in as above during the printer install it was fine.

A good place to see what may be going wrong are the log files in /var/log/samba

Mike