theYinYeti

Did I mention, that my post is not only theory? My wife and I actually use the computer this way. In fact we go even further, by sometimes using an old laptop as a X terminal (dumb mouse+keyboard+screen connecting to the main PC's GDM and power). That was to encourage you :) It can be done !

Many software can be compiled to install in your home directory (./configure --prefix=$HOME). "Expect" can deal with input/output of any application, hence also ftp. Yves.

You may find additional help here: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=3040 http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=1661 Yves.

I'm a little lost about what you have and what you did. I suggest we start from a clean base. First configure your computer in the standard way, with no autologin, and nothing special in .xinitrc, in /etc/sysconfig/desktop, in .bashrc, and in .bash-profile or whatever... In short, no startx command, no -- :1, and so on. (even more: delete .xinitrc and .bash* from your home directory, and your fiancee's) So when you start your computer, you should end-up with a GUI login screen on CtrlAltF7. You should be able to see virtual consoles on CtrlAltF1 to F6. There should be nothing from CtrlAltF8 to CtrlAltF11, but there may be a log screen on CtrlAltF12. Is all that OK? So let's continue. Edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop, or create this file as root if it does not exist. Inside this file, just make sure DISPLAYMANAGER=Gnome (or gdm, it should be the same). Now reboot (restarting X may not be enough). You should have GDM as a login screen. Is that OK? Does everything work as usual at this point on your single X server? Can you login and work as usual on your single X server? If so, all should be fine. Login as usual. Now look at the menu. Somewhere inside "configuration", or "system", or (I don't know, I have the Mdk8.1 menu, and what's more, it's in French), there should be a menu item stating something like "login with another user using GDM" (I can't tell the exact phrase). Click on it, and a new login screen should appear on CtrlAltF8 (your session is still alive on CtrlAltF7). Your fiancee should be able to login to her desktop without problem. And you should be able to switch from your session to hers and back using the CtrlAltF7 and F8 key-combinations. This all should work especially well, if you use Gnome as your desktop. But it should be OK whatever the desktop you use, though in truth, I once happened to notice display-refresh errors, when switching between a second X server and my session on Fluxbox. One note though: whatever method you choose to start two X servers on the same machine, be it through GDM, or startx, or... there will always be something you'll notice: all devices belong to the first user who logged in, so for example, the user on the second X server won't be able to access /dev/mixer, or /dev/usb/scanner, or... Except if you run a chmod after the 2nd user logged in. Tell me if you have a problem. And more importantly, tell me where/when the problem occured. Bye, Yves.

True, I also believe Mandrake is stable. But when OS are compared for stability, an OS is said to be stable if it is able to have 99.99% uptime per year. Yves.

You're not misspeaking :) You actually start a second X server. When you use startx to do so, then it is better to provide the command: startx /path/to/graphical/command -- :1 or to set your .xinitrc file (in your home directory) the way you want. But is this really what you want? I mean, wouldn't you prefer if you only had to click an item in the menu to have a second X server open right to the login screen? This is possible simply by replacing the KDM login manager with GDM (you can still use KDE thereafter, no problem). To do that, edit the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file, and replace (or add) the line DISPLAYMANAGER=... with DISPLAYMANAGER=gdm While you're at it, in the same file, the line which says DESKTOP=... defines what is started by default by startx (you can use Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox...) I hope this helps. Yves.

How do you start the second X server ?

Hello! Phuni, I agree. Counterspy, I disagree. I also think it does not look like XP. Like windows, yes, but not XP. Last time I looked at XP, I was horrified! Nothing in the GUI could hint the user as to what is clickable, and what is not (Am I understandable :? ) But I also think that Windows and Macs address some issues that Gnome/KDE/*box/*WM* still don't. Specifically, I find this project's file explorer to be wonderfull. I think that's how things should be presented to the user :!: It's all very logical, IMO: - There's a top-folder for Trash - There's a top-folder for inside the computer (My computer) - There's a top-folder for outside the computer (Network) - And finally a shortcut for the most-used place: Home. And the computer's inside is also well organized, IMO: - Each removable media gets its own directory - The whole unified filesystem is refered-to as local disk (even better than windows ;-) ) - And the control panel to configure it all (the computer, the outside, and the whole universe) (Only catch is: I don't quite get what "shared documents" and "ttm's documents" are. The latter may be Home, but then what is the difference with the top-level element "My Documents"?) I think the Windows GUI isn't that bad. Many UI professional worked on it (until before XP, that is), and it shows. It's only too restrictive (both in capabilities, and in customizability), and the underlying OS is not my taste. But this GUI taken as a base, with the addition of all Unix goodies ("native" virtual desktops, customizability, solid underlying OS, X11 tranparent remote networking) may very well become the killer desktop-environment. ... If only they took more attention to http://www.freedesktop.org/... Because a non-standard desktop environment is not good, as it cannot inter-operate with applications for drag'n'drop, copy-cut-paste, menus... Yves.

how do you use a swap when power is down? thanks!The swsusp project is a kernel patch that enables you to halt the computer "to-disk" without using any APM- or ACPI-specific feature. Thus it is usable with any hardware. You can leave all your applications open, etc...Roughly, when shuting down the machine, the state of the machine, and the whole memory are copied to swap. At start of the computer, the patched kernel looks at the swap to see if a previous state is to be restored. If so, then the state is restored as it was before shutdown (X, open applications...), else the system is booted as usual. I'd like to try this patch, but I've heard that it is not trivial, so, as I never even compiled a kernel... Yves.

There's no problem with sharing the /home partition. For the swap partition, no problem either (even sharable with win!) EXCEPT if your swap partition is used when power is down, if you use the swsusp kernel patch (software suspend to swap).

As Paul said on Cooker ML: "less is more or less more, but a bit more (a.f.a.i.k)" :P :lol:

This may be possible. I have an idea, but for that you'll have to ensure that your P166 is well booted, networked, and equiped (in software). This last point is impossible with a simple floppy-distro. So I suggest you find, or adjust, or create yourself, a floppy-based distro with at least a ssh deamon, and a NFS client. Configure this distro to mount as much as possible by NFS from BigPC. Test it on BigPC until this works, then boot P166 with this floppy, and connect via SSH. So you are in control of P166 via SSH, and P166 is equiped with all the software from BigPC, thanks to NFS. Based on that, I'm sure you can follow the instructions on http://linuxfromscratch.org/, because their instructions are to make a linux distro on a partition, by using the tools from an already-installed distro. If you want to use a regular distribution, such as Mandrake, then NFS is also your friend (or maybe FTP, I don't remember), because then a network install is possible with a simple boot floppy, whose image is provided on the install CD. Yves.

Yes. I'm sure you'll find what you need on this page: http://old.lwn.net/Distributions/ Yves.

Cool! This "dnotify" thing seems to be interesting. Indeed, it could be made to execute: chgrp -R shares /home/shares provided all shares' users have a umask of 002, and that dnotify is run by root or an ID belonging to shares. Another solution is to create a FAT32 partition, mount it under /home/shares with uid=0,gid=<shares' gid>. Yves.

That must be the explanation. I always get latest Fluxbox by rebuilding the Mandrake-specific src.rpm from "more downloads..." on Fluxbox homepage. The resulting RPM is automatically inserted in GDM and KDM, the proper way. Yves.

That's strange. The only explanation I see is that your fluxbox script is not started by GDM in the standard GDM way... Yves.

The program you're talking about is only for Gnome 1.4, and it won't work in Gnome2. Besides, it is replaced with EvolvedOpenOffice, which is at: evolvedoo.sf.net (if project is not dead). I suggest you try WMoo, a WM/Fluxbox dockapp, which is able to run in a window if no dock is available. Yves.

Else you can use Windows Media Player, using CodeWeavers' CrossOver Plugin (commercial, but surely affordable, and it helps finance the Wine development) Yves.

Basically, you've got two problems: 1- start applications at startup of window manager 2- start dockapps specifically Here's my solution (I'm currently using Fluxbox): 1- For the first problem, I did not find a ready solution, because, as someone already said, .xinitrc is only read when X is started from the command line. If you use GDM, you can follow my advice: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...p?p=11808#11808 It's easy, really. Then you can execute anything you want from the executable .Xclients so that they execute in the background). 2- Now dockapps. The problem is that some won't run if they are started before the window manager. The solution is to write that in the .Xclients( # no & at the end of next line! sleep 15s /path/to/dockapp1 & /path/to/dockapp2 & # and so on... ) &[/code]If 15s is too much time before startup of the dockapps, you can try to shorten it, eg to 10s... I hope this helps. Yves.

There was an old trick for Netscape, years ago. I don't remember why, some people wanted a file to remain empty in netscape's directory. The solution was to delete that file, and then to create a directory with the same name. So the directory cannot be deleted (unless the -r option is given to rm), nor can it be overwritten with a filename. Maybe you can do something similar... Yves.

I'm sure psutils can be used, but I don't know how...

chgrp: You have to be a member of the group you want the file to become owned by. preset permissions: You can achieve this result in a directory, by chmod'ing this directory the way you want, then placing the s bit. Eg: In Dir/, let's say I want all files to be -rw-rw----. Then I'd issue this command: chmod 6770 Dir/ or chmod ug+rws,o-rwx Dir/ Then any file created in this directory would have the permissions 660. Unfortunately, the s bit of Dir/ is not transfered to new directories inside. So this trick only "one level-deep"... So you have to chmod any new directory with the s bit. Yves.

Many "V92-ready" modems are actually V90 modems, that can be updated with a new driver, so that V92 is used instead. It may involve flashing the modem's "bios" (don't know how it is called). Anyway, I think you have to wait for your modem's manufacturer to provide an update for Linux. Yves.

GDM is the login manager, not the window manager. You can use GDM and KDE with no problem (many people actually prefer GDM to KDM, even though they prefer KDE to Gnome). As was already said, replace KDM with GDM, and you'll be able to open a new graphical login window from the standard menu. Yves.

Wine does not need Windows at all, nor fat32 filesystems. I don't have Windows, and I once installed and used Excel98 on Wine/Linux alone (no Windows). Besides, I currently have STew (a Win32 Atari emulator) installed and running fine, still without Windows. Nevertheless, many things still don't work with Wine. I'm still waiting for the day, when my prefered game (which I purchased) (Mc Rae Rally) runs on Wine, because until that day, I can't play :-( Yves.