coccodrilletto

Thanks Tymark, I would have gone for the solution you proposed; only, I wasn't immediately able to find sources for libncurses.4 around... in the meanwhile, a friend suggested me to try a (dirty enough) workaround which, much to my surprise, turned out to work. I created a soft link from the existing libncurses.so.5 to the (missing) libncurses.so.4, and then installed the rpm with --nodeps. The program is happy with the libncurses I gave it, it doesn't seem to notice any difference. The program is e2defrag, which I wanted to test. Unluckily, it defrags only ext2 formatted with 1 kB blocks, while the default is 4 kB blocks. So it's useless. But I managed to test it on an image file which I formatted with mke2fs -b 1024 image then mounted loopback, then intentionally fragmented by copying and deleting many files, then umounted, and e2defrag defragged it happily :-) Thanks again, Cocco

I have not extensively checked it, but it works for me. MDK 10.0, and WXP Home with sp2 on a NTFS partition. I manage to mount rw the NTFS partion under linux, write to it, and find the files when I boot to WXP again. It seems to me that captive is "sluggish" at writing (took some 30 sec to cp a 20 MB file from my /home to /mnt/captive_win/), but then again I have performed only a few checks. And "sluggish" is much better than nothing! Please forgive me if the following observation looks plain silly, but it _did_ happen to me, more than once... (actually, it happened to me also while not using captive, but just writing from linux to a FAT part). Well, if I hibernate WXP, boot to linux, modify whatever filesystem WXP mounts (FAT or NTFS), and then resume WXP, all the modifications will be lost. I guess, for WXP the filesystem has been mounted all the time, hence it was somehow cached, and upon resume from hibernation that cache is synced back... So, if I plan to use captive, I must really shutdown WXP (not just hibernate it). I do not know about the newer system files... captive-install-acquire found a few system files it needed, such as ntoskernel.dll, and asked me whether I meant to use them or it should keep searching for better ones. I said, "go for them", and it works... Coccodrilletto

Hi everybody, is there a way to install multiple versions of the same library? Thanks! (Details) I'd like to give a try to an "elder" program, there are both rpm and tar packages for it; both require libncurses.so.4. MDK 10.0 installs the newer libncurses.so.5. So, the program install fails (failed dependencies if I use rpm; configure error if I build the tar package). If I try to install libncurses.so.4 urpmi/rpm tells me that can't be done for it conflicts with the installed version, which is needed by something else.

Thanks! but I had already perused that site. I seems that people decide to post there only when at last their installation is perfect. Which is good, but it takes some time, and in the meanwhile, manufacturers issue new products. I have been looking for a Sony Vaio I intended to buy, but only older models are reported there, no more available in shops. I was sort of hoping that someone here at Mandrakeusers had, by chance, just bought a laptop, installed with success, and was willing to share her/his luck. If anyone is in such a situation, please post! I don't expect a full report like "linux-on-laptops", only a "buy this one, it works OK for me" Thanks anyway, Cocco

Hi everybody, I'm about to buy a new laptop, as my Toshiba motherboard is fried. Can anybody suggest a Mandrake friendly machine, recent enough to be available in shops ? From what I know, the most difficult piece of hardware is the modem; I've never managed to have it working under linux in my old laptop. Does anybody know of a laptop with a modem which will work under Mandrake ? Thanks, Cocco

Oh sorry, I hadn't understood the point. Yes, make install will update the softlink vmlinuz (and initrd,...) in /boot/ to the newly built stuff, whatever it's named, and run lilo. If all the entries in lilo.conf point to the link /boot/vmlinuz , and the new image won't boot, it's troubles. One might add an entry in lilo.conf, which points not to the softlinks but to the actual files (of an old and safe kernel) in /boot/ . But then you're right, it's easier to install the files by hand... Cocco

make install use to/or could be a bad thing. Last time, and one of the few times (for fun), I tried it it worked and didn't overwrite the old like it use to. Which wasn't good if the new kernel didn't boot. Can't believe it was ever like that, but it was. In my experience, that only happens/happened (never tried with 2.6) when compiling exactly the same version of an already installed kernel: the vmlinuz image and also the modules directory will have the same name and be overwritten for that reason. A way out was to edit (by hand, with vi eg.) the makefile and modify the line EXTRAVERSION =-nnnmdk (nnn=some number) to EXTRAVERSION =-nnnmdk.myownnewkernel or something like that. Then the newly built vmlinuz and modules will not have the same names as the already installed ones, and won't overwrite them. Cocco

Hi everybody, a friend's going to buy a laptop, planning to spend about 1800$ (1500 Euros) or less. He would like to choose it knowing it will be linux friendly, and asked me in advance to help him installing MDK. So I would like to ask for suggestions; brands and/or models that you know work OK. I know (from my own laptop) that mostly they come with winmodems and that's a pain... Does anybody know of a recent (still available in shops) laptop with internal modem, which will work under MDK ? Thanks ! Cocco