bigjohn

It looks like the device has died on me! I even tried going to an aquaintance and installng the windows based software on his system, but even that doesn't "see" the device, all the "stuff" at Rios' site is irrelevant, I'm gonna take it back to the shop and get an exchange or money back. (That'll be the 3rd time!). Annoying really, as they seem to get good reviews etc. Ah well! Erm, by the way, does anyone know of an mp3 player (preferably, not a hard drive device) that has linux support ??? regards John

Ah, well, it's a good thing I'm not in the US then, otherwise I'd have to go to the nearest police department Anyway, I've just checked and I'm not getting anything listed with libmp3lame. I've got lame installed, but checking both install and remove rpmdrake, I can't see it. It's not one of those packages that is only available on certain mirrors is it? (cos I do the logical thing and use the nearest one (Warwick University for the UK). I've just put a CD in too see if I can get it ripped as mp3, with some of your suggestions (grip didn't want to encode it, some sort of error showed up). But here goes, I'll post back. regards John

I've got this Rio Carbon mp3 player, originally the device supported oggs and flacs, but apparently not now. My install will see the device (I think I'm right in presuming that the system is seeing it as a USB mass storage device), and I can mount it. It appears that I can even drag/drop, but while apparently the windows based "Rio Music Manager" software will handle oggs and flacs, the actual device won't i.e. if I look in the /mnt/CARBON directory, I can see the ogg track I've tried to copy, the actual device says "no tracks"! After surfing around to see what I get with "Rio Carbon + Linux", I suspect that it means that the damn device will only actually support mp3 and wma files. So, although I've been happily ripping my CD's with the "Sound Juicer CD ripper", it seems that it will only rip in flac and ogg formats, so which is the best of the CD ripping apps that will rip in mp3 format ??? Or does someone know if I can make the Sound Juicer rip mp3's ??? regards John

Cheers for that devries, that's what I was looking for! (HA! I get chided everywhere for always wanting to use GUI facilities, so it confuses the hell out of me on the odd occassions that I actually try to do stuff with CLI :D ). Again, thanks for the tip regards John

When I installed this 2005LE I just told the installer to go use the "usual" places i.e. /dev/hda1 = /boot, /dev/hda2 = /swap, /dev/hda3 = /root and /dev/hda4 = /home. Last night I was trying to point someone in the right direction about grub, and when I went to find my grub.conf, I couldn't find it. Checking in the /boot gives me this, If I then try locate or whereis, I get this and I'm probably being really thick, but where else the hell is it likely to be? as I definitely, during install, told "it" to use grub, and it shows a perfectly normal OS choice boot dialogue screen??? regards John p.s. and yes I did have a look at the /usr/sbin/grub, but most of that file isn't humanly readable, and the bits that are, don't tell me where it might be?

Well, I've managed to start swat, and run through the options putting stuff in various boxes (after checking any help files that might be available), but I still haven't managed to get anywhere (no suprise there!). Looking at the NT-06 samba FAQ/Howto, I saw the bit about smbpasswd -a USER, but I just got "smbpasswd not valid command". Ho Hum! ????? regards John

Ok, that sounds simple enough (sounds being the operative word :) ) I'll post back with how I get on. Many thanks so far. regards John

Well, so far, I've had to follow the tried and trusted (NOT!) method of "hit and miss". V scarey and nerve wracking! The howto, is trying to be helpful, but as is often the problem with linux documentation, it presumes a lot of prior knowledge. I _THINK_ that I may have got the windows setting right (can't tell though), but the smb.conf is proving a real headache. I've tried by opening the /etc/samba/smb.conf but that's no help, as I really haven't a clue as to what I'd need to edit, even with the bits of the howto as guidance. I've got swat installed, but can't work out how to start it in the first place. Using swat as a command starts something then hangs. Trying the LAN IP :901 won't open, just errors with "connection refused by server" (thats with http and https). I was expecting to be able to get a log in request "a la cups" but no such login dialogue box was forthcoming. Why is this so hard to do? I see shed loads of references to people using samba - am I just being thick ? or am I missing something here ? Any help or assistance is much appreciated regards John

I'm trying to follow the howto at the FAQ for samba. Forgive me if my questions are stupid, I know absolutely nothing about this kind of thing. My laptop doesn't have a "network connections" icon, only "network" - is there a difference? How can I identify which is my connection? as I just get a list of stuff thats installed i.e. "Client for Microsoft Networks", "Intel PRO/100 Mobile Adapter 16", "TCP/IP->Intel PRO/100 Mobile Adapter 16", "File and Printer sharing for Microsoft Networks", amongst others that are to do with the infrared adapter and port ?? Is the entries that I've just mentioned the same thing? Then if I look at the properties for "My computer" I get the box with 4 tabs (general, Device manager, Hardware Profiles and performance). Theres nothing that mentions "computer name" - would that be somewhere else as I can't find anything that mentions workgroup etc. Again, sorry if these questions sound really stupid, but as I say, I've never done anything like this before, but I don't want to screw anything up - I've done that too many times before by trying the "hit and miss" approach. regards John

Blimey, thanks spinynorman. I was looking through the faqs to see if there was something like that. It must have been staring me in the face! At least it'll give me something to ask stupid questions about when I get stuck! thanks again. regards John

I have a laptop (W98SE) plugged into my tiny network. I understand that Samba is whats used to manage file and printer sharing. My main "box" has a parallel port printer plugged into it, also theres a network laser printer plugged into my hub along with the above laptop. I've installed everything that I can think of (samba related), and read the SMB howto (but most of it's meaningless). It goes on about shares, daemons and other weird stuff that I've never heard of. Could anyone point me towards a nice, easy, idiot level set of instructions that explains what I need to do once I've got samba installed (from both a linux and windows point of view)? as I haven't got the faintest idea of what to do. regards John p.s. Oh and yes I did find some O'Really stuff from one of their Samba books, but again I didn't understand any of it!

Ok, so I've managed to get rid of everything that relates to firefox, except the tar.gz and have unpacked the tar.gz in my home directory. So I've just "su'd" to root and then cd'd into /home/john/firefox-installer, and then from there, done ./firefox-installer and the install graphic has started. So, as per theos linked post, I've told the installer that it should be going to /usr/share/firefox (which incidentally doesn't/didn't exist, so the installer asked if I wanted it created, - yes). In the terminal, it says this it's also opened firefox on the firefox start page, but the terminal has hung and only changes when I hit enter. He then says about making /usr/share/firefox, well obviously I've already done that, so I skip that, then as per the instructions I do ln -s /usr/share/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox and yes it's enabled me to be able to start firefox from a terminal. I'd like to have it as a desktop shortcut, but If I try to make a link to application, I'm getting an error that tells me "Access denied. Could not write to /home/john/Desktop/link to Application.desktop." How would I change it so that I can make the link to application ??? regards John

The weird thing is, that even though I'm getting a big load of stuff now when I do locate firefox for the life of me, I can't find an executable to start firefox. So how would I get rid of everything except the tar.gz and start from scratch ??? regards John

as you can see, the first check just dumped me back at a $ prompt and the second query, well, No such file........... etc. Would it be worth deleting everything and starting from scratch ????? regards John

/usr/share/firefox only contains a sub-directory called firefox (/usr/share/firefox/firefox) and thats empty. regard John

Well, I did this...... but as you can see, nothing is "erroring" out. I used one of the many "suggestions" that said it's sensible to put it in /usr/share/firefox, which now has a seperate firefox directory (i.e. /usr/share/firefox/firefox), but that doesn't have anything hidden or otherwise in it - in otherwords, no executable of any sort. I must be doing thing wrong somehow, but for the life of me i can't see how ??? regards John

in fact, I've just tried to follow the instructions in the first link that theo posted, but all I've got is the empty /usr/share/firefox directory. So I'm still stuffed! Damn! regards John

Well, if any of the other stuff answered my Q, I wouldn't have posted the question in the first place theo. Sure I get a nice "firefox-installer" directory, but I get that if I unpack the tar.gz with ark anyway. If I then run the firefox-installer, it goes through it's nice clean graphic install routine, then promptly gives me an empty directory with no executable to start firefox. Normally stuff gets installed and ends up being called (for example) mozilla-firefox or mozilla-thunderbird, but not in this case. As I already mentioned, it (the system) doesn't want, or can't find it with locate, whereis or find - plus I certainly don't know enough about "this linux thing" to know what I'd write if it's some more complicated command to make it run from "link to application". Hell, I'm make the mandrakised rpms myself, if I had the faintest idea of how! Also, I'd like to be able to install "it" globally - but again, something doesn't seem right, though I'm probably just "missing something" here! Hence any idea/suggestion is very much appreciated. regards John

Ok, well I've sort of made some progress. I went to install Opera 8 as well, and when I downloaded that (apparently an rpm for mandrake 10.1), it installed a libstdc.5.??? as well. This has enabled me to run the "firefox-installer", except now I can't find/locate/whereis to try and add it to a menu or make a desktop icon for it? Any ideas ??? regards John

After having moved back to Mandrake/Mandriva after a couple of mega stressful weeks at "gentoos house", I'm experiencing problems installing firefox 1.0.4 locally. [root@localhost john]# cd /home/john/firefox-installer [root@localhost firefox-installer]# sh firefox-installer ./firefox-installer-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No suchfile or directory [root@localhost firefox-installer]# I'd try "Thac" rpms if I knew what I need to use as a source (ha, if I could find them in the first place). Perhaps someone could advise me how I "get round" this ?? regards John

To the best of my knowledge (it's been a while since I used the "standard" download version), the third cd for the download edition is usually the various part's of source code etc, plus some of the rpm's for various app's that they can't fit on the second. If I remember correctly, you'd just go through the install routine, and when it ask's for disc 3 you take the option for not having it. Then if whatever you want to install happens to be on the third disc, you just get it from one of the mirror's. I use the powerpack dvd (disc only because it's cheaper) boxed set, but during install, I tell it not to install the updates until i've followed the instructions for "easy urpmi" (sorry, can't link it, as it seem's to be down at the moment). But anyway's, i follow "their" instructions to set my "sources" to the mirror's closest to me and then do the updates. Both of which will be irrelevant if you have dial up, and you can't get the modem running under linux!(which is a possibility). regards John

Yup, I sort of intend to get round to looking into that John. I figured that there's got to be some nice stuff around after looking at (and getting confused by) the bootsplash.org site! regards John

That seem's to have done the job. I tried Chris Z's answer first (it looked the easier option). When I tried to just switch it on, as per, I got a little dialogue box saying something about video mode resolution in frame buffer mode and selecting it in lilo. So I hit OK and went back into the bootloader config section and in the advanced dialogue box, I found the bit about video modes. It was set to 100x80 (or vice versa), so I've selected the 1024x768 in frame buffer mode. When I rebooted, the only difference was that the text was a lot smaller. So, I started checking into devries answer. The initrd was there for the kernel version, and when I looked at the /etc/lilo.conf, I just added the splash=silent to the append line, there was already a vga= line further down (vga=791) so I didn't bother putting another one in the append line. reboot and bingo, it's working. Thank's very much for all who have helped. Very much appreciated. regards John. p.s. don't forget - <mantra>graphic is good, graphic is good, graphic is good, etc etc.</mantra>

Ha ha! I've only been taking reading and watching lesson's B) In truth, well I don't do anything with a terminal unless I have too! - <mantra>graphic is good, graphic is good, graphic is good, graphic is good</mantra> regards John p.s I don't suppose you know how I'd switch the bootsplash graphics back on do you Norm?

Just installed amaya from the "rpmdrake+" facility. If I select it from the star(t) menu, it won't start. I've also tried starting it from a terminal using "amaya", but all I get is bash-2.05b$ amaya *** Amaya: Irrecoverable error ***bash-2.05b$ So how or where, do I look to try and find out why it won't start (and yes I did install the suggested dependencies, as per the prompt)? regards John