Cannonfodder

yep...missed me by 20 miles

Sorry bvc, I thought houston was several hours away from San Antonio? I camped for the night about 2 hours east of Houston (I think) and then drove on through to San Antonio :) Next time I'm in Texas, I'll look you up! I will be posting some picts soon! I'm now in Calimesa (40 min from Palm Springs, CA) and staying with my Aunt and Uncle. I'll also be staying in the mountains near by in a cabin up in the forest and also out in Santa Barbara while I job hunt and study. Big changes.. my dog thinks so too!

Hey stopped in San Antonio where Mysti and I went out to dinner and she also took me home to meet family. I suspected she wanted to play more with my dog though Had a great time Mystified! Thanks for the hospitality... I know I've gone through a few places where other members are (houston/bvc) but I'm kinda in a rush to get to California now... Dad's bday is on Sunday!

Currently in Boone, NC visiting relatives. This place is pretty nice and the folks are well folksie, but in a good way :) Leaving for Atlanta and then New Orleans and then on to San Antonio, TX where I'm hoping to meet up with Mysti so she can kick my ass!

Thanks Guys!

I'm actually delayed a little (half a day). I'll be taking a southern route. Despite what I told mysti in email, I may still be able to swing by.. Mysti I'll buzz you about a couple days out and let you know what's going on. I was recently reminded that since I was taking a trip and am out of a job, I could just take my time and stop worrying about getting to cally in a shortest time :)

Just wanted to let you guys all know I'll be out of touch for a while while I drive coast to coast (well almost ). Hope you all have a very productive and linux inspiring week and try not to rag anon and mysti too much eh?

Might not be something you can fix (per some of the google articles)

Why don't you copy your /etc/fstab file to a floppy? Format the floppy under your windows system and then see if you can mount it under linux.

Also, if you can use cfdisk to get your partition layout, it would be helpful.

You can try here..

http://www.linuxvoodoo.com/resources/howto...ete/system.html

This problem has been around forever for various reasons.. Do some googling on

mandrake linux backspace term

So what you are saying is that on the login screen, root isn't an option although everyone else is? Might have to do with your security setting. Try typing mcc in a console and play with the settings there..

ps If your gnome settings are screwed, try renaming the .gnome folder to something else and relogin. Might rebuild everything.. Worst case scenerio, you can restore from the backup..

You can also use fdisk with 2k/xp. It's a basic mbr that points to the first partition on the first drive.. eh eh?

I'm sorry, I don't understand what an extended partition is.  And, when you say to stay away from the Windows disk manager, you mean don't mess with the Disk Management tool under XP?  It's still safe to just use the HD under Windows, right?  I mean, normally, without messing with partitions.  Daily use.  You know.

A partition table is a sector on your hard drive that contains information about what partitions exist, their OS, and their start/end locations on the hard drive.

Originally, hard drives only supported 4 partitions maximum. Then someone had the bright idea of supporting more partitions by designating one of the 4 primary partitions as an extended partition. Within that partition, you can make as many partitions as possible. They are in a sense, called virtual partitions. You can only have one extended partition plus 3 primary partitions. Thus you can have C:, D:, E:, F:, G: so on... in windows. or have multiple mounted partitions in linux.

This scheme has stuck around for backwards compatibility and also I think because we are still using BIOS to start up our computers.

Windows has a scheme for designating a primary partition to be used as a extended partition. In the partition table this is an entry with certain identifiying codes.

Linux also has a scheme for designating a primary as an extended. However, it uses different codes and formats in the primary table. Given a hard drive though, a linux disk utility will understand how to manipulate and deal with a windows extended partition or linux extended partition.

Windows Disk Manager, however, does not know how to deal with a linux extended manager and if you use it to make changes to your hard drive, it will try to either fix it or simply misread what it means. The end result is that when you reboot, your partitions are no longer accessable because it screwed up the partition table information.

Thus, if you share windows and linux partitions on the same drive, you should refrain from using the windows disk manager from making changes. This also applies to win98's fdisk.exe application. This does not apply to using

fdisk /mbr

which simply replaces the master boot record (restores it) but doesnt make any changes to the partition table.

-I don't know if Mandrake actually created a partition.  All I know is that it resized my NTFS drive, and did -something- to the 10 gigs left over.  If I boot from MDK CD1, then I should be able to see what happened, right? 

If Mandrake resized your partition, then its possible that it either..

1. made changes to your partition table that windows doesn't understand. In other words, made and extended partition.

2. Simply didn't format that 10 gig and thus windows will not mount it. Probably this one.

3. In any case, until you know what is happening, you should not use the disk manager from XP.

The only problem is that I don't want to do that.  Even if there is a patch...I mean, I spent like 4 hours on the phone about tech support to get the CD drive replaced.  I'm just...ah, I know it makes no logical sense, maybe, but MDK 9.2 just left a bad taste in my mouth.  I'd rather do something where I know there's absolutely no risk, if you see what I mean.

 

-Incidentally, are LG CD-RW/DVD drives affected by the bug?  I have one that I suppose I could connect, but only if they 100% are definitely not affected.

From what I understand, LG drives and also a few other brands cut some corners with their disk controller software and Mandrake updated some code that asks the CD drives to do something they should have been able to do but ended up screwing up the drives. The screw up is fixable with a firmware patch though. You didn't need to buy another drive.

I recommend you search this board for some links on the LG issue and then follow through to other links on google so you have a good understanding of the issue.

-Will another Linux distro CD recognize what Mandrake did?  I'd like to install Linux (just not Mandrake...) but for now, I will stay with Windows and try Linux on one of my older, non-critical PCs.  So...Do you know of any distro CDs I should try for this, and are they capable of 1.  getting the partition table into a format XP can recognize and/or 2. formatting that partitioned off area into FAT32 (so XP recognizes it?)

I would recommend downloading 9.1 (I'm using that right now). It didn't have this issue period. Then you can boot off of CD1, go to custom partitioning in the installer and see what happened. If it didn't do the format, then you can continue with the install into that 10 gig partition or format it as FAT32 (vfat in linux) so that it shows as a 10 gig drive in windows under D:.

Doesn't

 

fdisk /mbr

 

work from a Windows rescue disk, cannonfodder?

Steve, that command (as you know :) ) will replace the master boot record with the default win98 boot. But I didn't think he had a problem booting into windows. Just has a problem with a missing 10 gig?

Couple things..

1. When linux creates an extended partition (let me know if you don't know what that means), by default, it uses its own extended partition format in the partition table. Windows doesn't recognize this. Linux recognizes both linux and windows extended partition formats. Therefore, after rewriting the partition table, its good advice to stay away from windows disk manager. If you try making any changes, you stand a good chance of totally scrapping your partition table and you will have to start over with everything.

2. Why are you uninterested in a firmware patch? It would have fixed your LG drive (LG right?).

3. I may be wrong about this, but only Mandrake had this issue with the LG cd rom drives. Maybe you should try a different distro. Otherwise, you need to boot off of CD1, restart the install, and when you get to the partitioning screen, yoiu can remove the 10 gig partition mandrake created. You can also try to find a linux boot CD from another distro and do it there.

4. Usually, I recommend a second drive to experiment with linux. This way you will not take any risks with your windows partitions. I've blown mine away a number of times until I caught on about the extended partitions issue.

Hey what happened to kernow?

Generally, the 1024 cylinder issue is no longer an issue.. not sure when it is.. maybe older systems or older linux kernals?

Just consider that if a partition fills up, as mentioned earlier, a directory link to a new partition can be created. You can look on your old system and determine where most of the space is being used. My root is only about 600 meg. Very small. Everything else is farmed out to new partitions.

Trick is to remember to make the entire drive and extended partition so you do not run into the maximum of four primary partitions.

Also, if you need to copy any partitions from one drive to another, hook em both up and use

cp -pax source dest

Have fun :)

I believe mplayer has a settings file where you can define looping behavior... gotta read the manual and do some googles..

If you give up on Mozilla, I also recommend opera. Small advert aside (never notice it), its very customizable and has very fluid mouse gestures. M2 mail is good too. You can create views to look at emails that match a boolean statement. Deleting the view doesnt' delete the emails..

I suppose it would depend on your file system for that partition?

The file /etc/lilo.conf contains the settings. After you make changes, you type in

lilo

and it processes the file /etc/lilo.conf and updates the bootloader. About as simple as that... take a peek at the file..

I have a funny feeling the partition is hidden... its a byte in the partition table. Not sure how to unhide it.. might be a fdisk (linux fdisk) option?

Are you sure you need the upgrade? Check your model against the models that require the upgrade (don't ask me, find a readme somewhere :) ) Don't think all the models required the firmware upgrade.

Just to be a "show it all" like those two..

Basically you are running the applications in the background (ampersand symbol) vs the foreground.

If you run a foreground process and press ctrl-z twice it goes to background (manual method)

After this, type jobs to see a list of background processes. Type fg in the console and the background process becomes a foreground process again.

Read up on it if you are interested..

Are you gung ho on emulating it? Otherwise, try www.bootdisk.com and get dos..

Just do one cd.. and get the routine down..

Download the ISO

Do a checksum on the ISO

Burn the ISO

If you don't know what checksum's are, suggest you read some of the faqs. You are looking for a little program called md5sum. It will validate for youi that your download is 100% correct byte for byte.

Does webmin have a feature for remote access? Meaning you have to setup the remote access with a password so on? It might be preventing you from using 10000 as a security measure unless you specifically state you want webmin to be used that way... I'm guessing ..