lakelover

I'm sure you're right about the "person in front of it." It wasn't a friend who worked on my computer. I took it to a computer shop in a nearby town (I live in the boonies). I got socked $91 for an hour's work rebulding the boot loader. I was under the gun on a project and needed my computer running, otherwise I would never paid to have somebody screw it up. He did get the boot loader working and, as I said, he freed up something like 5 gb of space. I'd sure like to know what filled it back up in one day. Jerry

I have the partitions so screwed up now, I think the only solution is to wipe them and start over. If I do that however, I'll probably switch back to XP. Sorry to say that but I've invested all the time I can trying to get Mandriva to behave. I tried using e2fsck to repair the problem and I think I just corrupted things more. If you have any thoughts let me know. Jerry

I can't do an upgrade install because there's no room on the disk. WOW! I should've known. So, I'm going to take some room from the hda7 partition (/home) and give it to hda5 (/). If I can just get back to KDE perhaps I can figure out what going on through MCC where I can get that llog window out of the way. For now, I'm watching the Super Bowl. Okay, I'm back. Here's what I found when I did an error check on hda5, using ParitionMagic: "error 1201 -- ext2 superblock contains illegal information." I did a bit of google searching and found a number of reference but no solutions. Any ideas? Jerry

Well, I wish I knew how that 5GB got eaten in one day. I still think is has something to do with the backup being written directly to the hda5 partition. I'm going to dig out the 2006 disk 1 and do an upgrade install and see what happens. If I loose everything I'm going to borrow a shotgun and blast the hell out my computer, suck my thumb for awhile and then swear off computers for life :P Whoops!! A wrong word in the previous note is getting me in trouble. I meant to say: "without your help."

The backups are created in MCC, through the backup whizard. Making a /tmp partition is probably a good idea. I've become liery of manipulating partitions, however. It seems that everytime I've messed with partitions I've screwed something up. If I make a /tmp partition will it be automatically be recognized for /tmp files or do I have to do setup for that. As you can plainly see, I know zip about all this. By the way what is a sda1 partition? That shows up on storage folder list. I don't think it's the IOMEGA. If it weren't for some critical files I need for a project, I'd just do a reinstall, or revert back to XP. This is all taking too much time. Nevertheless, I'd be even more lost with your help.

Okay, I tried your suggestions and still can't get on KDE. I did the "urpmi clean cache" and I used "tmpwatch --atime -s -t" I think the base problem may still be that the backups are filling up the ext3 partition. This is what happened a few days ago when I had a computer place "fix" the bootloader. While repairing the bootloader, he discovered that backup file were going on to the ext3 partition rather than on my external drive (Iomega). He deleted a whole bunch of old backups which opened up gigabites of space. One file, alone, had 9.9 g. In trying to fix the problem myself I resized the XP partition giving the extra space to ext3. When I restarted the computer, my guess is, the backup program seeing the change backed up the whold ext3 partition, again. I have no idea how the guy accessed the backup files. I've look for them on hda5 & 7, but cannot fine them. Perhaps they are not filling the linux partition, but something is. I had over 5 gig unused space Thursday. Friday, it was filled. That doesn't make sense. Any ideas on what I should do next? Is there a way that I can prevent the log window popping up on MCC? It blocks the menu and I can't move the log window out of the way.

Thanks all. I'll go to work on this in the morning. I did get into mcc but the log window covered the menu and I couldn't move it or select actions because of the log window location. Anyway, I'll take another stab at all this in the morning. Jerry

I can't get into KDS to access MCC. Is there a way I can do that from the terminal?

Thanks, Artic. . . I tried tmpwatch and go this message: "problem reading hdlist or systhesis file of medium update-source. When I load tmpwatch I get a list of commands but I have no idea which commands I should use or what they mean. I'll do some researc on tmpwatch commands but. Can you give me an idea which I should use and how to apply them ?

This is weird and I really need help. After using Mandriva 2006 for sometime, one day I couldn't boot it. I found the ext3 partition was full. So, I resized the xp partition to give Linux more but in the process I lost the boot loader. Got that fixed (paid a guy too much), and he found that my backups were going on the linux partition and filling it. I have an external drive where I thought the backups were going. No so. He cleared all the backups to give me 9.9 g free space. Everything was working find -- for one day. This morning when I turned on the computer I got the message that " /tmp " was full and KDE could not be opened. I don't know what's going on or how to correct it. How do I clear "/tmp?" I can get to root and cd to /tmp, but I don't know where to go from there. And how do I prevent my partitions/files from filling? How do I examine the partitions and eleminate unwanted backups from the consol, and how do I do the same for /tmp? This is all pretty elementary, I suppose, but I'm not knowledge about finding my way around Mandrive and managing files and partitions, though I learn more each day, the hard way. Jerry

I have my problem partially solved. I hate to say this but I paid a computer place $91 to get the boot loader working. The reason, I have a couple of projects demanding attention and I couldn't take the time to fiigure things out myself. There are still some problems, however. I resized the xp partition to give more to a linux partition becuase it was full. The computer guy discovered that all my back ups were going on the same partition. I have an external IOMEGA drive that I've been using for backups, and did not realize that it was not being used. He couldn't give me an answer to why the backups were going on the linux partition. I have temporarily disabled the backups (I hope). By the way, one backup file was 9.9 g, and dated the day I resized the partition. I'm guessing that seeing a change in the partition Mandriva backed up the entire partition. I also have a problem with shutting down. Mandriva doesn't want to shut down. I'll appreciate all suggestions on these two issues. How do I setup and make sure the backups are going on the IOMEGA HD and not on the linux partition? And how do I correct the "no-shutdown" action. It seems that all my problems started with the backup files and was then exasperated when I resized the partitions. Jerry

Can you be more specific. I went to "Mount your partitions under /mnt," which gave me the message "/mnt ready." I then cd'd to /mnt then to /etc but could not find lilol.conf. Where do I go from here? I failed to say that this problem came up after I resized my windows partition to give more to the linux partition. However, I was able to boot mandriva and to windows after the resizing, until a day after. Also, after resizing the partition linux would not closed down properly causing me to manually turn off the computer. I really appreciate your help.

I used the rescue method and the option to reinstall the boot loader.

I've read many of the Q&A on boot loader problems. Following advice, here, I got out the Mandriva 2006 installation CD, went to "reinstall boot loader" and got this message: "run_program can not output in /ropot/temp/.drakx-stderr.1347 (mode'>') lilo failed: at /usr/lib/libDrakX/boot loader.pm line 1238, <STDIN> line 1." do I do now? Jerry

I've been using KFTP Grabber and Quanta Plus to manage my web site. All of a suddent neither will log on to the site. I can, however, go over to XP, and log on with both SmartFTP and with html-kit. So, there appears to be something wrong on the linux side. I'm running Mandriva 2006. I've had some reocurring problems with Quanta Plus logon, but have managed to get it working without too much effort. KFTP Grabber has worked find until tonight. Weired. Any ideas, anyone? Jerry

Here's an update. I got PartitionMagic v-8, today, and found that my ext 3, partition was full. So, I resized the xp partition giving the free space to ext3, and now all is well. I have only a 30g hd, though I thought that should be adequate because I don't have huge photo files and no music files. I guessed wrong. Jerry

Thanks for the suggested fix. I tried them but didn't get anywhere and I think there may be a couple of causes. I went to http://wiki.x.org site and it says the error indicates that one or more of the font servers is no responding and that the "xfs server" is buggy. They advise loading the fonts directly and give serveral lines to add to the "files" section of xorg.conf file. Well, I tried with VIM and emacs but I'm so unfamiliar with both that I couldn't get the job done. I apparently have another BIG problem. One of the messages on loading 2006 is to make sure there's enough disk space. So, I went to windows and with PartitionMagic looked at the partitions and it said all particitions, except the swap was full. But I know they're not because when I go to Windows system info, it says there are over 7 gigibytes free on the Win partition but I couldn't resize anything. Then I discovered on the MS web site that my version of PartitionMagic 6, has issues with ntfs files. So, I've order version 8, which is supposed to handle ntfs files. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back into Man-2006 without loosing my stuff. Jerry

I hope somebody can help because my computer just spit at me. It's been running perfectly. Went over to XP, then back to Mandriva 2006, and here's what I got: "X keboard keymap compliler outpub file "/var/temp/server/-o, xkm removed. Could not init font path element unix /:-1, removing from list. Fatal server error. Could not open default font "fixed" X10 fatal IO error 104 (connection reset by peer on) xserver ":o.o I have no idea what all that means. Can anybody help? Also, I've been getting "nfs locking failed" on every shutdown. Jerry

My Mandriva 2006 usually performs great but occassionally, it seems to trip on something, and grand to a halt. Tonight I was going to update a website using QuantaPlus, and it wouldn't load the web site. Then, as I started closing tabs on Firefox, it hung up for awhile before closing. It has taken minutes to clear the screen recently. Still I can go for several days with everything working as it suppose to. Any ideas on what's going on and how I might correct this? By the way, "spell check" doesn't work for me on this forum. Jerry

Thanks for the info. I'm tied up most of today, but I'll follow your directions the first chance I get and let you know what happens. Jerry

John, I'm not going to be of help but I am offering my sympathies because I'm in the same boat. I've been trying for a month to get my Mandriva 2006 printer accessible to my wife's winXP laptop. I've used Samba, Webmin, and smb4k. Nothing works. I've done Google searches for "simple directions" without success. Sometimes I wonder why I'm struggling with Linux, but I been a light user of Linux for years. I hate to say it but WindowsXP networks easily between my desktop (booted into XP) and my wife laptop. I don't understand why Mandriva has to be so convoluted and mysterious unless one has an advance degree in computer science. I'm sure that there is a simple configuration issue that I'm missing in Mandriva. The problem I see is that there are too many methods of configuring a printer and networks and I'm building conflicts between them. I'll keep watching your posts to see if you fine a solution. Jerry

I solved my email situation by switching to "gmail." I also subscibed to a DSL line, and my telephone company has an email client that has an effective spam and antivirus service that eliminates my need to look on the server for bad stuff. I use "gmail" for general email traffic and my DSL service provider for personal email stuff. It all works for me. Jerry

I reinstalled Webmin, and now everything is working fine. All I have to do now is learn how to use Webmin properly. Thanks for all your help.

There must be something wrong with the webmin that I have installed because none of the root commands bring up webwin. It acts as though it's loading from the Konsole but then reverts back to my root prompt. I ran " ps aux | grep webmin " and got a four line response. I guess I'll remove webmin and reinstall it.

Okay. . . I got connected to address 127.0.0.1. I've been typing "https://localhost:10000/" It doesn't connect but no error messages. When I type "webmin" as root I get a message: "not a command" or "not such file or directory." Webmin is in the "etc" directory, and I can cd to webmin but don't know how to launch it from there, if that's possible. I tried opening port 10000 both as a "tcp" and as "upd." neither helped. I don't know what those two types mean. I do appreciate your help with this. My patients is wearing thin. I've tried configuring SAMBA without success. Really, all I want to do is share my printer on my home network, and after a number of days I'm still where I started. I read that Samba is simple, but it's still Creek to me. I thought Webmin might help. Jerry