wilcal

I've been tinkering with 2006 since it was first released on Cooker as ISO's on 2005.07.23 as 2006 0.1 http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/MandrivaLinux2006 I have a removable hard drive test system and can A <=> B hard disks and Operating systems at will. My real on line system was 2005 LE and that stayed that way till I fully understood 2006.0 and the kinks got worked out of it. I even made a couple contributions to BugZilla. Once it realeased as a 3-CD free Distro on 2005.11.14 I got serious and educated myself on transitioning everything from 2005 LE -> 2006.0 and did that on 2 Jan 06. Some general comments are that 06 seems at this point at least as stable as 05 LE was. It boots about twice as fast and that was one of the new features. Traditionally Mandriva/Mandrake lags somewhat in the revision level of the packages but none of them are more then about 6 months old. My first system was 8.2 running on a Compaq P-350 DeskPro I bought for $250. Now that's running Ubuntu 5.10. The biggest change for me was that httpd (Apache) does not default to running with public_html as did 05 LE. You have to install drakwizard from urpmi then set up your FTP and Apache webserver using MCC. Once I had done that it was off and running. All of the features and functions I need are running fine. As was with 9.2, 10.2 and 2005 LE you can seriously screw it and it'll all come back. As in jerk the power cord out of the wall and as it comes back watch it check the file system for errors, correct them and reboot back to proper operation. I highly suggest installing the Webmin 1.222 that is specific to Mandriva. That will give you a great tool to manage it locally and/or remotely. I've started the whole process all over again for 2007 using 2006.1.03 as a starting point but I don't expect much until the middle of the year.

Have you been following the progression of Damn Small Linux? DSL. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ that one is absolutely fascinating.

I almost consider playing around with different Linux Distros a hobby. I'm eager for the nest post on http://www.distrowatch.com so I can download this or that ISO, burn the CD and give it a whirl. Strange hobby. One of the principle challenges you have when you do this is if there are still bits and bytes of whatever used to be on the HD the new OS your trying to load may in fact see it and do sometimes strange things. Especially if it sees something in the MBR (Main Boot Record). "Formating" does not always zero (literally) all of that out. Mandrake is no different. This is especially true when doing "upgrades". I use two programs to ensure myself there is nothing left on the HD that will make the install of the next OS skidderish. The free to download version of: http://www.killdisk.com/ wipes a drive completely clean to zeros from bit one to bit last including the MBR. It takes awhile for big drives but you can rest assured that there is nothing left. I have never harmed a drive using this application. I also use the Ranish Partition Manager (RPM) http://www.ranish.com/part/ to identify whatever FAT and OS file structure a particular OS lays down on the HD. Using RPM I can then prepare a HD for either a single OS installation or up to 30 separate, discreet and bootable partitions. Some Linux Distros treat the HD awfully. They insist on screwing up the MBR regardless of what you want it to do. I those cases you always have to wipe the HD first and the only OS you can put on the HD is the one your playing with at the time. Mandriva 10.0 and newer are very moldable OS's in that you can pre-prepare a HD with ext3 and swap Linux partition(s) and install to that specific partitions without effecting any other partitions on the HD. This is an EXTREMELY valuable feature as it gives you the opportunity to Play with the same OS in multiple copies and set ups on the same HD. I wish all Linux OS' were the same. Interestingly enough WinBlows XP Pro is also well behaved. You can install it to a NTFS partition and it will not screw with anything else on the HD. And even intermix it with Linux partitions on the same drive. Also once installed to one partition that partition can be bit copied to another of identical size for backup or testing. The Partition Manager in MCC is very usefull and well behaved. Do note that Ubuntu, even though a very nice OS, is not so well behaved at install. It likes to hog the entire HD and screw with the MBR regardless of what you tell it to do.

I have identified a bit of a wrinkle in the playing of a DVD using 2006.0, Gnome and Totem. It seems that if the screen saver is active that while playing a DVD the screen/user locks up at the point in time that the screen saver would activate. If you are in full screen view mode there is no way out other then external control, I use webmin and from another machine on the LAN reboot the system. At first I thought there was something intermittant but then I recognized that the lockup occurred right at the time the screen saver was set to kick in. Prior to playing a DVD, and using the Gnome configuration tool, I set the screen saver off. But, that does not seem to always work. So I also, using the Gnome system monitor, kill the process called xscreensaver. Don't end it, kill it. To reactivate the screen saver again use the Gnome configuration tool or exit the user and reenter. Has anyone else here experianced this?

I'm going to assume that you are using Mandriva 2006. Go to http://rpm.pbone.net Do an advanced search only on Mandriva 2006 Search for: webmin-1.220-9mdk.noarch.rpm You will have to restart the system to get it up and running. During Mandriva installation when you are presented with this screen: http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slidesho...se=472&slide=12 I always select Security level low or none whatever that is. I use the external hardware router to block ports from the WAN. Also https://localhost:10000/ is only for the computer that Webmin is installed on. Something like https://192.168.0.6:10000 will work from another computer on the LAN. Something like https://66.234.192.56:10000 will work from the Internet if you allow that port throught the Router. I change my Webmin port to something odd like 12532 so from the Internet I would go to: https://66.234.192.56:12532 As funky as it is webmin is a good tool to monitor your Mandriva webserver. awstats has had some security problems of late so I have stayed away from that.

If you do a normal install of Mandriva ( 2005 LE or 2006 ) the default top page of the http server page will be at: /var/www/html/index.html I would suggest, under root, copying this file to index_tmp.html and creating your own if you wish. But, do not use this directory for your webpages. Create users and put html content in their own public_html directories. Note. There is a very big difference between how http is handled between Mandriva 2005 LE and earlier and Mandriva 2006. Due to transgressions in the past Mandriva has made http default not installed and running for users as against default turned on in the past. In fact back at Mandrake 9.2 the proxy was default turned on opening that version to zombie attacks. Believe me I know having been through all of that. Install 2006 in it's default modes including Apache httpd. Set up your contrib, main and update urpmi sources. Using MCC install drakwizard. That will put a new tab in MCC titled Share. Using Share you can set up your Apache httpd 2.0 and FTP servers for users. Use the default User directory public_html. I end up with something like this: http://66.159.200.93/~wilcal/ or in your case: http://redtiger.game-server.cc/~gamers/ but in a very controlled environment. The spiders, hackers and crackers will go after 66.159.200.93. In your case: http://redtiger.game-server.cc So you can put into /var/www/html/index.html how much or how little you want somebody to know about the website(s) on your server. Monitor very closely: /var/log/httpd/access_log /var/log/httpd/error_log look at all of the hits on your server noting especially things like Windows server attacks and cracks. I also use webmin and on a daily basis track all of the traffic through the sites and the number of errors returned ( 400 errors ). If the number of errors increase dramatically or you cannot account for the bandwidth your httpd server is using you have a (BIG) problem. Right now I am measuring about .045% unaccounted for traffic. That traffic is hack and crack attempts. A couple years ago I was using Mandrake 9.2 with Apache 1.3.28 which had default left an open proxy running at install. After about 8 months running clean my server was discovered by a Chinese hacker who started to use it as a way to proxy false click through traffic. Quite an interesting scam. Anyway I, and many other Mandrake Users, discovered the open Proxy's and turned it all off. IMO. Be very carefull running an Apache server on your Mandriva server. You _WILL_ be attacked agressively and constantly. Use a hardware firewall router with only Port 80, and maybe 21, open to the world. Also weekly make sure your system has all the latest updates.

That worked wonderfully well. Perfect. Solved. Thanks

Interesting that I am still struggling with this. I have used the following RPM's: xine-win32-1.1.1-0.1.20060plf.i586.rpm win32-codecs-1.7-2plf.i586.rpm xine-plugins-1.1.0-8mdk.i586.rpm in all different installation sequences and I still keep coming up with an error. That being when I attempt to install xine-win32 the error reported is "some package requested cannot be installed xine-win32-1.1.1-0.1.20060plf.i586.rpm (Due to unsatisfied win32-codecs)" If I attempt to play a WMV file I get the following error: "Windows Media Video 9 is not handled. Install additional plugins" Interestingly enough the Live-CD PCLinuxO runs'em just fine. Over the weekend I'll take a look at the lib file structure in that.

Thanks bunches

My question is where to put the Windows codecs so that the default video player for Gnome (Totem) can play WMV files. The sources as I see it are one of two: windows-all-20050412.zip 15-Apr-2005 00:33 11.6M windows-essential-20050412.zip 15-Apr-2005 00:33 9.4M With the "all" file containing just more codecs. The Readme.txt file says to put them in the: /usr/local/lib/codecs/ or /usr/local/lib/win32 or /usr/lib/win32 directories none of which are there. Do they all just dump in there ( dll + acm + ax + drv + qts + vwp + ax )? There's like 105 of them. Can I create one of these directories and put them in there? Thanks

Ya know when automobiles first came to market in the early 20th Century that's exactly the way they were sold. You chose a chassis with engine from one company and a "coach" from another.

I still have a mixture of XP/Win98/Linux boxes for a variety of reasons. The Linux (Mandriva) boxs are the every day work horses. One is a webserver and workstation at the same time. It never gets turned off. A second box, the highest performance box, features a removable SATA hard drive system. I presently own 5 removable drives that can be used in that system. One of the drives from first sector to last contains Windows XP SP2 with all the latest and greatest updates. I paid for the license for this XP when I bought the box so it's a legitimately installed and maintained version. This drive I use to test to make sure whatever I do on my Linux server is completely compatable with Microsoft's most common platform(s). Other removable SATA HD's for the second box contain a wide variety of Linux OS's. The Ranish Partition Manager allows me to slice an SATA HD into as many as 30 partitions/OS's. Another old box contains Ubuntu 5.10 always a very good fall back backup system. And one box has another install of Windows XP SP2. That box is dedicated to Multimedia capture and edit an area where Linux is still far behind the Microsoft platform on. I use Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing and there is nothing in the Linux world that can compare to that package. Another is Avid which is even way over an above Premiere Pro. An old working Win98 box doubles as a table for the removable HD system. This box contains one of the ATI All-in-Wonder boards and doubles as a TV and video capture. This box is rarely even turned on. FWIW: I use a D-link KVM switch to navigate around this pile of boxes.

I suggest that over the next 18 -> 24 months we are going to see some VERY dramatic events in the desktop workstation environment. OS's like Mandriva, Suse and Red Hat are going to position themselves with the very best offering they can produce. Expect to see Mandriva go though another cooker to release about this same time next year. All leading up to the release of "Vista". When that thing hits the streets it better be damn good and bug free. If it stumbles the little Lion Cubs are gonna eat it alive. FWIW My first Mandrake box was an 8.2 running on a Compaq Deskpro P350, 192MB, 5GB HD. That thing ran wonderfully. It's now loaded with Ubuntu 5.10 and it's completely revived that ole box.

All sorts of stories running around the web today about the problems that the new releases of Suse and Mandriva 2006 are running into. I suspect that it'll take a week to get all the story(s) all straight. IMO 2006 (cooker) is a fun thing to tinker with but seeing all the bugs in there the last go around (Ver 0.5) I'm sure there's still a lot of clean up to do. Even on this first release. Mandriva LE 2005 continues to be fully supported and remains one of the most stable and reliable platforms anywhere. [moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

Well I am going to respectfully disagree a little with AussieJohn on this one. Better put it should be To replace(upgrade) Any Linux OS it should NEVER be necessary to uninstall the OS being replaced(upgraded). But being the animals they are OS's can be nasty things and sometimes replacements don't behave properly. Upgrades can be worse. Most of us have only one PC and one OS so when going through the exercise of replacement and/or upgrade we kinda put everything at risk. I have found over the years that to be absolutely sure and avoid conflict with little left over nastys here and there a complete wipe of the hard drive with all zeros and an install from scratch works, at least to get a proper install. That NEVER guarantees that the replace/upgrade will work. It may crash miserably. But by wiping the HD clean at least you are starting with a clean slate. First and foremost backup to something your critical data. Put it somewhere where the unknown next OS can't get to it. Give the Upgrade a shot then reload your backed up data. I use a bootable floppy or CD with: http://www.killdisk.com/ on it and completely wipe the HD from beginning to end. The HD looks just like a brand new drive and is loaded from end to end with "0"s. Then I do a full install letting the OS (at least the first time) do whatever it wants to do to get going. You would be amazed at what some of the Linux Distros do, or don't do, or insist on doing (sometimes stupidly). Anybody here remember the bad ole days of Windows when you would have your Win 3.1 system running as best it could then you would install an off the shelf commercial program? You'd go through the load, then Windows would come up and inform you that the program had installed properly and is it ok to Reboot? You would answer Yes. The system would reboot and completely crash and freeze. Everything blown out and gone. Those were fun times.

Skype rpm versions? Looking at the www.skype.com website skype-1.2.0.11-1.mdk10.2.thac.i586.rpm (what I got off http://rpm.pbone.net/) skype-1.2.0.17-mdr.i586.rpm (on www.skype.com)

I have been successful to install the Skype Mandriva Linux RPM in LE 2005 but it's doing something strange. skype-1.2.0.11-1.mdk10.2.thac.i586.rpm Using the Skype window I can create a new user ID with an associated PW and the program logs in and runs. But, if I exit the Skype program then reopen it if I try to reopen that same account with its correct IP and PW the program says Login Error. The Skype program has an option to have your IP and a new PW sent to your e-mail address which I do and get that new PW. But, when I use that IP and PW combination I once again get a "login Error" message. The only time I can get Skype to work is on the very first time I create the account and PW. After that no matter what I do I can't get back in. Is this possibly something to do with the latest Mandriva RPM? I read everywhere that Skype is Port independent but see references to Port 80 & 443. Port 80 is open in my LAN to the WAN but Port 443 is walled off from incoming stuff. I gotta believe a lotta people are successfully using Skype on Mandriva LE 2005. Thanks

By mistake I set up a 7.5MB (MegaByte) partition on one of my removable hard drives a couple days ago and attempted to install Ubuntu 5.10 to it. That thing klanged and clattered for about 30 minutes spewing error notices all over the screen but being unaware of the microscopic space I had alloted to it I just let it go on. When that thing booted it did all kinda strange stuff. Time for a new puter Dude.

Yes, this is the right place for cooker comments and questions. > For the last 2 months I was using Mandriva 2005 LE > and last week I changed to mandriva 2006 RC2. It was > a fresh installation. But I am facing some problems here. 2006 RC2 ( as in Release Candidate 2 ) > The first one is I am unable to share any folder.... The number of bugs fixed from RC1 -> RC2 was nearly 200 and the number of changes was 3616. Since the release of RC2 I suggest that Mandriva Development team is doing some soul searching on their schedule. I myself found one serious bug in RC2 and that has been acknowledged. But all has gone silent since I submitted my thing. Best is to get involved and understand how to use: http://qa.mandriva.com/ I'm still learning how to navigate around in it but I understand enough about it to find out if what I found others found the same. I recommend staying on Mandriva 2005 LE. It's a stable, reliable and robust platform. Give the 2006 thing time to work itself out before committing your important applications to it. 2006 "cooker" is not better then 2005 LE. It's the lets test it and find the bugs version of the next Mandriva release. And there are bugs.

If your looking to do just Audio http://www.live365.com/pro/index.html has been around for quite some time. It's been awhile since I checked their pricing. Have fun.

WOW! Thank you VERY much for sharing your dream. Your application, the streaming of live real time Video/Audio over the Internet is real and widely held by many. I have been dabbling in the technology for about 5 years now and watching the progression of the various supportive technologies. Hopefully I won't embarrass anyone here. The Church application is big time high on the list. The ability of a Congregation to live cast services to a limited audience is a huge opportunity. By "Limited" lets put that at no more then 100 viewers at any given time. The second market is the Adult entertainment market who are somewhat using small pieces of it now. The one frame per second and terrible audio is pretty widely spread and installed at this time. Regardless of how you may feel about this market if you are looking for something to test your hardware/software on this is the (unfortunate) place to do it. As I mentioned in my previous message I was able to sustain a streaming video (no audio) 4 hour long live webcast to about 400 viewers. All at the same time. The technology is being pushed on two fronts. They are. 1) Video - Network Cameras, the proliferation of them and the technology and the post 9/11 effects. Examples of companies that offer good solutions in this market are: http://www.axis.com/ http://www.beausoft.com/ http://www.tomsnetworking.com/network/20020923/ Most of these solutions offer "Network TV" applications that can support a limited audience. The really good news on this one is virtually all of these cameras use embedded linux. I own a: D-Link DCS-3220G http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=351 that works wonderfully well for both Video and Audio, can be set up in minutes and viewed by about an Internet audience of 10. BIG caveat, you better have a very high bandwidth upstream connection. The DCS-3220G uses embedded Linux. Go to www.google.com and search on: "Network Cameras" 2) Audio - without going into the whys and wherefores upstream live audio is very hard to do and expensive. There are many services on the Internet that offer Internet Radio services. Pricing is based upon viewer count, and quality, and can be crippling. I see what http://www.skype.com is developing as an alternative to this technology. Already you can set up a free teleconference of 4 people using the Skype technology. This technology is at least 3 -> 4 years behind the video side of things. Soooo...if you want to set up a small audience, lets say 50 viewers, Internet television system for your Church Congregation then I suggest contracting with one of your local security camera companies. I also recommend the www.axis.com products. Outstanding. You can see these techniques right here and now at: http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/ You must have Flash and Java properly installed in your computer. The defalt image stream (no audio) is CAM4. This technology is fairly easy to implement and so long as you have the support and understanding of your ISP fairly inexpensive to do. CAM1 is an example of live streaming Video/Audio. Sorry it's a ActiveX application so you will need to view it on XP/IE with all the latest plugins. But, as an example of what can be done to a limited audience it's pretty good. IMPORTANT!!!!! If you implement a sustained upstream multimedia chain of data (audio or video) make sure your ISP knows you are going to do it. Otherwise they will see it as a Denial of Service attack or that the computer in your venue (Church) has been compromised and is being used to spew spam. This whole technology is in its very early stages and we'll see lots of exciting things to come out of it in the not to distant future.

Very important technical point, at least to me. A "real time audio" stream to me means live Internet Radio. You set up a studio with a microphone and server and you stream audio to either 1, x or an unlimited number of listeners. If you commute to work in the morning and you turn on your car radio and listen to a live talk show you are listening to a "real time audio" stream. Is this what you are looking to do? A fair quality "real time audio" stream by my definition is more difficult to achieve then a video stream that is just barely good enough. I have been able to demonstrate a "real time video" stream using a portable source computer/camera and a remote buffer server. That buffer server has sustained as many as 400 viewers all at the same time viewing the same video stream. All in sync. Live Internet TV. Is this what you are attempting to do with audio, which again, is more difficult to do then video?

I would be very interested in the frame rates and sizes of video stream capture your get. Examples: 640x480x30 frames raw AVI 320x240x15 frames Mpeg-1 800x600x30 frames Mpeg-2 ???

I agree and I have become very sensitive to that. I have narrowed down my burning process to only use 2005 LE latest and greatest with updates using K3b and a verify pass. So far it's been perfect. I burn a lot of OS's to CD-R/W mostly in Live CD's. Latest have been the Ubuntu and Knoppix stuff. All are successfull. All burns are at 4x max. The OS's test system is as follows: Server Truman ---------------------- Intel, P4 530J 3.0 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2, LGA 775 GigaByte GA-8I915G Pro" i915G Marvel Yukon 88E8001 Gigabit LAN Intel High Def Audio, Azalia (C-Media 9880) Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (on Intel 915) Kingston 1G(512MBx2) DDR400 PC-3200 Maxtor 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA (one partition 2005 LE) Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA ( ten partitions, various OS's ) Maxtor 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA ( two partitions ) Ranish Partition Manager KingWin HD Rack/Tray subsystem Sony CD/DVD-RW DW-D26A

Early in boot get into your BIOS and make sure that the BIOS sees that second drive.