tux99

I can do Italian, if you still need it PM me.

it works for me in mdv 2008.1, I just tried it to confirm. This is how it is intended to work by the makers of Mandriva, of course you can do it anyway you want, but by doing it the 'official' way, you ensure it will survive updates and upgrades.

actually the proper way to do this is to add fuse as a secondary group for each user that is allowed to use fuse. If you look at /dev/fuse it's configured like this: crw-rw---- 1 root fuse 10, 229 2009-01-18 14:03 /dev/fuse So if you add the users to the fuse group in /etc/group, those users will be able to use fuse, for example: grep fuse /etc/group fuse:x:110:user1,user2

I found the post very useful, I think it fits very well in the Tips and Tricks section, it will save me a lot of research time if I decide to pursue the Xfce route with mdv 2009.1 (that's if I decide to pursue the mdv 2009.1 route rather than the PCLinuxOS 2009 with KDE3 route...)

Have you ever successfully played back DVDs with that DVD drive? I mean under Windows or an older/different version of Linux? If not then maybe the drive is really defective. Open a terminal window and do "tail -f /var/log/messages" as root user before attempting to play back a dvd next time, so you can see if it generates any system error messages. If you can get hold of a external USB dvd drive, try connecting that and playing back DVDs from that, if that works then at least you know that your software and libraries installed are ok and therefore the problem is with this particular drive.

It will do a complete 'write/read back' test of your entire disk byte by byte with 4 different patterns ((0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, 0x00, so basically 4 write cycles followed by 4 read and verify cycles) that are chosen to highlight any defects, so yes it can take a very long time (depending on the speed of the ATA/SATA interface and the speed and the size of the disk) If you type "man badblocks" on a terminal or console window, you get more information about it's options and what it does. As long as you get only the normal progress counter no errors are dedected. If it starts displaying sector numbers one per line, then those are defective sectors, like this: 254678 256789 256790 256791 345678 If the first pattern pass was complete without errors you can be reasonably safe the disk is ok, but if you can afford the time I would let it run the full test, I have had once a (second-hand) disk that started showing errors only with the 3rd pattern. Now was it all pointless? It depends, if you value the data you will put on the disk I thinks it's very much worth it to invest even 24-36 hours (can be much less depending on size of disk and speed) for peace of mind that the disk is flawless, you only have to do it once at the beginning of the life of the disk anyway.

great, that saves me the effort of having to put my rpm online.

I have no experience with FL Studio so I don't know it's capabilities, but for Linux a good midi+audio sequencer is Rosegarden. You can get it from the Mandriva repositories, via the install software tool. Also Qtractor ( http://qtractor.sourceforge.net/qtractor-index.html ) is quite promising, but it's not currently available as rpm for Mandriva (I have made a rpm package for Mandriva 2008.1 and will make it available shortly).

Adam, Greg, thanks for your suggestions but unfortunately they didn't solve the problem. I tried all of your suggestions in various combinations but the compilation always bombs out with the same errors related to lib/kross/api as mentioned previously. I guess no koffice for mdv 2009.0 then...

It's not your site and it's content they are interested in, but the PCs of the visitors of your site. Their aim is to place viruses on as many websites as possible (doesn't matter if it's a mom-n-pop website or bbc.co.uk) that will then infect any unsuspecting visitor's PC (running Windows obviously). Usually websites get hacked into by automated scripts that look for known weaknesses of the most popular CMS systems which haven't been patched yet. Those scripts won't distinguish between your site and a major known website. Therefore they normally don't do any noticeable damage to your site but to the visitors of your site (your potential customers!). There are many many thousands of websites that are compromised like this and most of the time the website owners aren't aware of it at all, while their website is merrily spreading malware to unsuspecting visitors. You need to take this seriously from day 1 as it can have legal implications for you too (someone could sue you for infecting their PC via your website) and cause damage to your reputation (if you run a business website).

I would be careful with those ready-to-use content management systems, especially the ones based on php, as they are quite prone to bugs that get exploited all the time by hackers to spread malware. If you use any of those you will have to always keep it patched to avoid any issues. Drupal is also a very popular CMS, that's reasonably easy to learn to use. http://www.drupal.org but same warning as above applies.

install Seamonkey and use the Seamonkey Composer, it's a WYSIWYG gui html editor. If you need dynamic features (php, javascript) then I wouldn't know, I myself would use a plain text editor for that.

I tried to build koffice 1.6.3 from the 2008.1 srpm on 2009.0 now, the spec file is complex (44 kbytes big) and I have little experience in building rpms so I'm not at all sure what to change, I changed all %_... to %_kde3_... but the rpmbuild still bombs out after a long time when it's building the kross/api/ subdir with some errors like this: undefined reference to `Kross::krossdebug(QString const&)' I have made sure that I have no kde4 packages installed and all dependencies to build koffice are there (at least I checked all the ones defined in the spec file and I get no errors with regards to missing build dependencies). This is all on a fresh unadulterated 2009.0 install in a vmware virtual machine. Where are those %_kde_... definitions defined? Am I supposed to have them in my ~/.rpmmacros file or where else? So with my limited rpm building knowledge I'm stuck, unless you have any suggestions I will have to give up.

Adam or anyone else doing official Mandriva packages, is there any chance that the current koffice 1.6.3 could be packaged up for Mandriva 2009.0? I would do it myself if it wasn't such a large software suite that needs to be packaged up into dozens of rpms... I'm pretty sure there is demand for it, I doubt I'm the only one missing it. P.S: I actually tried to install the koffice 1.6.3 packages from 2008.1 in 2009.0 (throwaway test install under vmware), the installation went fine but they don't work apparently because of the changed path structure of kde 3.5 (/opt/kde3), they can't find some libraries, I tried to fix that with symlinks but had no luck and things were getting very messy...

Yes, I read about that, while that could be a good idea, I don't really care, KDE 3.5.10 is next to perfect, who says that software has to constantly change to be better? All it needs is that it still gets bug fixes and that distros still offer it as package, after all you can still even get the ancient unmantained fvwm2 as an official Mandriva package!!

Well I wasn't suggesting that you get a FX5200 now, just that if the ancient FX5200 is fine for everything but complex 3D games, then any current card will do speed wise. Therefore I would look for a modern nvidia card with 2 dvi ports (for dual monitor support) that is passively cooled (even if that means it's not as fast as the top of the range ones, as it will still be more than fast enough)! I'm not sure what you mean by stable, reliable maybe? I don't believe you have to worry about that, it's sold as an enterprise drive and therefore it comes with 5 years warrranty and if you get 2 and use them with Linux software raid you have perfect reliability. Just run a complete "badblocks -svw /dev/sdX" test of the disk before using it, I always do that on any new disk I buy and that allowed me to spot defective disks and RMA them before I even had used them for my data. All disks that passed that test have lasted me for more than 5 years. See here for details of the VelociRaptor (150 or 300GB): http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=495 The VelociRaptor is perfect as an OS boot disk, if you need larger capacities for data storage I recommend the WD GP drives, I have 4 of them in a raid5 combination, they are extremely quiet and run very cool. I used to prefer Seagate in the past, but the current generation of WD drives is IMHO better than Seagate and Seagate has recently cut it's warranty to only 3 years (doesn't inspire confidence in their reliability...).

I was refering to the following: "Meme 1: What is the future of 3.5? This year, as with most years since KDE3 emerged, there have been huge deployments of KDE 3 based software. These deployments will not shift for years to come, no matter what KDE4 is. This is because large institutional deployments (government, corporate, educational, etc) typically have 3-7 year cycles (sometimes even longer) between major changes. Patches and security fixes? Sure. Major revamps? No. This alone ensures that KDE3 will remain supported for years. Why? Because there are users. That is how the open source dev model works: where there are users, there are developers; as one declines so does the other. The developers tend to be a step ahead of the users for software that is progressive, but you'll also find that they have a foot in the here and now too (as well as the past, often). KDE3 is still open in our svn so that bug fixes, security fixes, etc. can continue to be made. KDE 3.5.x is a rather solid desktop system and really doesn't need a huge amount of work given what it is today;" http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html To be honest I consider dropping KDE 3.5 from Mandriva so soon a big mistake (especially if it wants to aim more for corporate customers), I can understand that Mandriva has limited resources, but the fact that KDE 3.5 is not changing anymore (apart from bug fixes) should mean that little work is required to keep it packaged up for new Mandriva releases, at least in 'Contrib'. This is one of the problems with Linux and a reason why it struggles to become mainstream on the desktop, developers want 'cool' but unstable bleeding edge, software which is still work in progress, while normal users just want a reliable stable familiar looking desktop. The posts by 'blackbelt_jones' match my thoughts exactly: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967253 I might be exploring PCLinuxOS (the upcoming 2009 release) more too, as they are still committed to KDE 3.5.

This is not meant to be a criticism of your post, far from it, I'm just using it as a starting point for my thoughts aboout graphic cards. I have never understood the craze of the latest 4-5 years of these insanely fast 3D graphic cards, that consume 40>150Watts of electricity (more than my whole PC including 5 hard disks!) and generate more heat than an average kitchen oven. I have an AGP 8x Nvidia FX5200 dual DVI output graphics card (passively cooled with a simple heatsink and consumes no more than 15 Watts), which is ancient by todays standards but is still perfect for desktop use and even Compiz is usable with it (I don't use it but I tried it). It has plenty 2D power to drive my two 1280x1024 screens via DVI and even glxgears (simple Linux 3D test/benchmark program) still generates a respectable 1160fps (and still 100fps full-screen). The only thing this cards is too slow for, is complex 3D games, so fair enough if you are a gamer you need the latest 3D oven (I mean gfx card) in your PC. Other than that, the current crop of 3D cards is completely overengineerd for 90-95% of the PC users, which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't generate so much heat and therefore energy wastage and noise from the fans trying to keep them cool. My dream card would be a modern version of the FX5200 updated with the latest HD video decoding completely in hardware (and supported by the Linux drivers!), that's what more people would find useful, rather than over-the-top 3D performance. Therefore if I was you, I would be looking for a PASSIVELY COOLED low end Nvidia card with 2 DVI outputs, rather than worry about the best 3D performance. Even the slowest current card is probably way too fast for you unless you are a gamer. For excellent performance I would rather invest in 2 fast hard disks (WD VelociRaptor) and run them mirrored using Linux md-raid, this will make much more of a practical noticeable performance increase, than a top of the range 3D card.

Thanks for the information. Could it be possible to install koffice 1.6.3 packages from mdv2008.1 in 2009.0? Has anyone tried this already? I guess I will have to look for alternatives then, it's a shame because KDE 4 is not KDE anymore so it shouldn't replace KDE 3.5... The only other desktp environment that I consider almost as good as KDE 3.5 is XFCE. What would happen if I upgrade a KDE 3.5 mdv2008.1 or 2009.0 box to 2009.1, will KDE 3.5 be automatically replaced by KDE 4 or would I still be able to use the KDE 3.5 present from the previous version of Mandriva?

I'm missing the Koffice suite in KDE 3.5.10 on Mandriva 2009.0, is there a chance that it will still be packaged up (at least in contrib)? I sincerely hope that Mandriva won't abandon KDE 3.5 in future releases as KDE 4 is not really a successor of KDE 3 but rather a completely new and different desktop environment that should really have been named differently and from what I read KDE 3.5 will still be supported for several years by the developers. Personally KDE 4 is not an option for me, I tried it and it doesn't suit my way of working at all, just like Gnome never suited me either, I'm not saying it's a bad desktop enviroment, it's just not for me. I also think KDE 3.5 and KDE4 should be grouped separately in RPMdrake in the 'Graphical desktop' section, it's very confusing having them both together under KDE. ---- Edit: just to clarify, I don't want this topic to be a KDE4 versus KDE 3.5 argument, I'm just interested in koffice for KDE 3.5 and the future of KDE 3.5 in Mandriva in general

File a bug report. https://qa.mandriva.com/

To answer my own question: All that needs to be done is add the nfs mount to /etc/fstab with the 'noauto' and 'user' options, the storage applet will then instantly detect this mount point and display it on the task bar, as long as 'Mounted NFS share' and 'Unmounted NFS share' are ticked in the storage applet config. After that the nfs share can be mounted and unmounted from the popup menu on the related storage applet icon on the task bar.

here is my dual-screen desktop, I've had xearth as background since my first Linux install in 1995!

As long as you always have a mechanic on standby... Honda CBR=indestructible Triumph=british made, need I say more... (no offense, but with regards to cars and bikes that's unfortunately how it is...)

How can you actually do anything else with your PC than stare at the background with that picture??!! :P