ramfree17

cool, ill give that a spin next week. right now this work week is officially over and i can go back to wii gaming. :D ciao!

err.. according to their download page, the fluxbox edition is the smallest which weighs in at 513MB. thats too big to download from the office network. :D DSL-N should have been a perfect fit if not for the problem with virtualpc. the standard DSL distro is too bare. i was hoping it would have the standard debian package management tools but it has its own extensions. at least DSL-N is written to have apt and dpkg. ciao!

hi. i currently have a lot of free time in the office and playing with virtualpc since that is the only virtualization software that i can get away with installing in the office (dont ask ). i am currently trying to install a debian-based system on the virtual machine but need something small to download without making the net admins take notice . i already tried DSL but the stock kernel is just too old and its hard to install the extensions. DSL-N should have been the logical choice except it has a bug with the VirtualPC network interface that would probably be left unsolved indefinitely. i am mulling about doing a debian net-install but for bandwidth reasons, i want to stick with something light and small. i have some ulterior motives why it should be small and light. why debian? because my laptop is already running mandriva and my desktop is running archlinux. this is a good enough chance to get acquainted with debian. ciao!

i usually get that error here in the office (a windows environment) when switching monitors (21" to 17") and the settings are not supported by the smaller replacement. the way we get is that we don't see anything on the screen except for the out of synch message so i just switch them momentarily to the original monitor and then bring down the resolution to sane values (like 800x600) and then do the switch again before tinkering the resolution values to acceptable settings. works like a charm everytime.. ciao!

does python packages also have corresponding devel packages? it wont help in the current problem but i am meaning to ask so sorry for hijacking this thread. :) ciao!

what ix said. :) doing the tarball route is nice when you have no package made specifically for your distro. fortunately there are tools like checkinstall which can help you create a rpm from tarballs which means the resulting package can be safely integrated to your package management framework. ciao!

i read about this first from an article from ars technica and i find it very disturbing and funny at the same time. disturbing because of the greed, and funny because of the stupidity. i dont use clamav but i say go barracuda! kick trend micro's butt. ciao!

hi adam, did what you told me and now my modprobe.conf looks like this: blacklist prism54 alias eth0 b44 alias sound-slot-0 snd_atiixp options snd-ac97-codec power_save=1 install scsi_hostadapter /sbin/modprobe usb_storage; /bin/true install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe ohci_hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci_hcd; /bin/true #alias eth1 prism54 install ide-controller /sbin/modprobe atiixp; /bin/true alias wlan0 ndiswrapper and these are the listed items from ndiswrapper -l [root@Lala ~]# ndiswrapper -l Unknown line at line 2389 prisma00 : driver installed device (1260:3886) present (alternate driver: prism54) i don't know what file to look at for line 2389 since the ndiswrapper perl script is only up to 1023 lines and i don't know any perl to start reading it. :( rebooting the machine froze after ALSA was shutdown so I don't know which ones of these are the culprit (from /etc/init.d/rc3.d) but my bets are either on contestant number 18 or 24. S18sound S24messagebus S25haldaemon S26apmd the startup sequence has shown that the missing wlan0 device message has been replaced with this one (copied from a piece of paper) Error for wireless request "Set encode" (8B2A) Set failed on device wlan0; Invalid Argument in the desktop i still dont have a wireless connection but clicking on the "Wireless Networks->(Name of our router)" enabled my laptop to get an IP Address but no internet access. The reason I found out is because it connected to one of the non-encrypted routers in the area. Clicking on the "Manage wireless networks" launched drakroam and after a few retries i was able to connect to our router. this problem seems to be half-solved but for the issues below: why is my shutdown freezing after the ALSA server has been shutdown? this might be related on the Radeon driver mentioned by ix so ill try changing to the default one to try isolating the problem. what did the boot-up wlan0 message mean and how can i solve it? - currently looking at google for some answers. how do i tell drakroam or whatever the sequence on the wireless networks to connect. i am looking for something like in windows wherein there is a primary or preferred router and then a ranked list of routers to try. ciao!

i already tried both and ill take anything that works. in 2007 i was using prism54 but in 2007.1 i needed to use ndiswrapper. as it looks in 2008 ndiswrapper might be my only choice since using the prism54 configuration does not enable me to list the available wireless routers. thanks. ciao!

yeah since it was the default and the X server seems fine. is that the cause of the missing keyboard input whenever i shut down the wired connection? ill try switching to the default driver by tomorrow as i am finishing some document that relies too much on excel macros. :( any suggestion on the wireless problem? i know it can connect but the problem is how to do it consistently. thanks. ciao!

hi, the gist of the post is this: i still haven't figured out how to keep my wireless connection. doing the setup works somewhat but it is not permanent and the workaround is not reliable. I don't want to keep on doing it everytime and tear what is left of my hair. The loss of the keyboard input is killing me. for the long story i am not going to hash the entries in my blog so i will just post the links: * Day one, with matching giddy feeling * Day two, shock starts to settle in. * Day three, straws are piling up on the camel's back. i have started with mandrake since around 2002 so this operating system has a special place in my heart. aside from some short flings with Arch Linux, I haven't really gotten around to using any other distro. I hope somebody can suggest a way to fix my current troubles, ciao! [moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

i know of a burger shop in the philippines that is named "hungry hippo". :) ciao!

hi john, just for clarification, did you mean the actual file in your Download directory is shrinking? if it is then i would say that the server you are downloading from does not support resuming so d4x is restarting everytime its connection gots cut off or something. you might fare well with another server, preferably one that supports resuming. the increasing time could mean two things: your internet connection is degrading or the server you are downloading from is getting hammered with requests. i would say the second one is more probable since mdv2008 has just been released and there are also some distros that have released new versions recently. i am downloading via torrent but i am pushing more upwards than getting content. i am not really complaining but with 379 seeds and 738 peers i am expecting something greater than a measly 10.3kbps. i dont leave my laptop running all the time but right now after 3 days of downloading utorrent still estimates 2d14h until completion. :( ciao!

i am a technologist so i will use whatever is available without having os bias. the data (and implicitly the information) is more useful to me rather than idealism. :) thanks for the link. :) ciao!

thanks, ill check it out. ciao!

hi, can anybody recommend a utility for verifying the playability of audio files? i have two dvds worth of audio files (podcasts, music files, interviews, etc.) and i have found that some of the files have either become unplayable or have some areas that skips. as some of these files can last for more than an hour. playing them one by one is probably not a good idea. i just need something that will read and verify the files as much as the available processing power can give. thanks for any tip or links. ciao!

hi, open a command terminal and change to root using "su -". enter the password for root. after that you can execute the "passwd" command to change the password of the root user. then after that you can use "passwd <username>" as the root user to change the <username> password. alternately you can just login as the <username>, open a terminal and then invoke the "passwd" command. more information can be gleaned from the passwd man page (from a terminal invoke "man passwd"). ciao!

provide more information to increase the chance that somebody can pinpoint the problem. you can start with a description of what setup you have, what distro version, what did you do, what you expect to happen and any errors you encountered along the way. and please avoid using all-capital letters in posting as that is tantamount to shouting (and thus not a good way to invite volunteer help). i know your pissed-off meter is already way high but we didnt have anything to do with it so there is no reason to vent it on this board. :) stab in the dark to your problem. i am assuming you have an external USB enclosure for hard disk drives. cycle the power of your enclosure and then plug it in on one of the free usb ports. after doing that, fire up a terminal and run the diskdrake utility. you will have a tab named sda or something. click on that and you will see the partitions in your drive. click on the partition and set a mount point (i.e., /mnt/enclosure) then go to the advanced options and then select the option that will allow normal users to mount it. close diskdrake to save the settings. when you are back on the terminal, set the command mount /mnt/enclosure then navigate to the enclosure directory. if the partition was ntfs then you will have at least read permission. i heard ntfs-3g allows write but i havent tried it yet. if the above doesnt solve your problem then the more the reason to provide more information. :) ciao!

in defense of scarecrow, i think he was not mad at them (as stated in the first sentence). he should have separated the second sentence to make it clear that he is stating an opinion that is entirely different than the first sentence. and to adamw, even if i dont use the packages affected. :)

yes, for the first time. but my needs are special since i want to have access to java in both distro that i am using, or i dont want to reinstall it everytime i update my distro. since it falls cleanly in the "unzip, include in path, and use" category then it only makes sense for me to put it in a separate partition that dont get formatted everytime i reinstall. i can place it on my /home partition but i dont share that between distros. eclipse is another example of what lives in my /opt partition. :0 Arvin, invoking urpmi java should list all possible package options in your configured repositories. i haven't tried using urpmi to install java though for the reasons mentioned above. ciao!

aside from my personal preference to put the java installation in /opt, which in my machine is in a separate partition so i can share it among multiple distros (or skip partitioning it when i do a reinstall) then this thread should be in the tips and tricks/faq forum. i put most of my "unzip and use" applications in /opt to save installation time. :) any mods care to move it (or suggest other improvements)? ciao!

hi granmammie... buy a new mouse? a trackball would be better to minimize the possibility of having RSI (with your old age, brittle vampiric bones and dusty bloodless veins). if its a built-in on the laptop, buy a USB one. if this happens on both windows and linux then its either the mouse is already faulty or your mouse port is already having fits. you may want to try adjusting the mouse sensitivity if it helps. other than that, no idea. :) ciao!

i like angband as much as well i like playing nethack. you have to have a great imagination to appreciate them. but less than playing paper-based rpg. :) wish i could play more, or at least play anything. Hopefully after May 10 when work in the office become less toxic. :( ciao!

i would like to have the drakjoy for configuring joysticks/gamepads. i have a generic usb gamepad that i still couldn't make to work in linux. i can get input from it since it produces garbage in a console when i press something but i couldnt make it integrate with the game emulators. caveat: i havent played anything for more than a year and havent touched the gamepad for more than 2 so things might be different now. :) ciao!

good call. i was going to put in that since you only need an external hdd then go for the laptop drives (e.g., 2.5") since majority of those can be powered off the usb port. the 3.5"/5.25" enclosures require a separate power brick since it is not guaranteed that the usb port can supply enough juice to power both the enclosure and the contained drive. with that said, i have a 3.5" matrix enclosure which is almost as generic as you can get and it works in linux. i havent tried booting off it though since i know my old workstation bios doesnt support it. i got the 3.5" enclosure because i have a couple of old hdd that would serve well as transport floppies but i should have gotten a 5.25" enclosure so i can put in a cd/dvd writer and make it portable. im planning on getting one though that is generic in make this baby only costs around 900 pesos (or roughly US$19). ciao!