pmpatrick

Also, you don't generally have to reboot; just restart eth0 by running this in a console as root: # ifdown eth0 # ifup eth0

The project is dead AFAIK as Boreland classifies kylix as a "Classic" product, i.e. no further enhancements or support. I'm not sure the last version will even run on current linux systems but the open version of kylix 3 can still be downloaded: ftp://ftpd.borland.com/download/kylix/k3/kylix3_open.tar.gz The listed supported linux versions are mdk 8.2, rh 7.2 and suse 7.3 which takes you back quite a ways.

Mr Pot, I'd like to introduce you to Mr Kettle.

Try editing /etc/modprobe.conf instead.

I don't think the order makes any difference but if you are concerned about it, you can put the whole thing in rc.local, i.e. add this: modprobe kqemu mknod /dev/kqemu c 250 0 chmod 666 /dev/kqemu or whatever order you like. Since rc.local is the last init script to run, no other init script will change what is done there. That's the nice thing about rc.local; it allows you to change things around at the very end without going through all the other init scripts to find the portion(s) you need to change to get the effect you want. By the way, /ect/modprobe.preload will always be run through an init script before rc.local, i.e. one of the init scripts that runs early in the boot process will read modprobe.preload and load the modules listed there.

rc.local is the last init script to run. That's why it's often used for this kind of hack.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do but: # if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda should zero fill hda, i.e. it should competely wipe all data from hda and write zeros to every sector of the drive. The fact that the dd command is locking up now could mean that it is encountering a lot of bad sectors which is usually indicative of the hard drive starting to go. If you can determine the manufacturer of the hard drive, I would recommend paying a visit to their website and downloading the manufacturer's diagnostic utilities; all the major hard drive makers now have them on their websites. They usually come in the form of a bootable iso image or a bootable floppy. Just boot up with the diagnostic utility and put the drive through it's paces. Most of them also have a zero fill utility built in which is a lot more robost than using "dd" as it can handle bad sectors much better.

Nice one John!!! And yes, this should be posted in tips or faqs.

The main kde development package is libkdebase4-devel-<version no.>. See this link: http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idp...k.i586.rpm.html The development packages in mandrake/mandriva almost always hav a "lib" in front and a "devel" toward the back.

It might be a supermount problem. The floppy is the only thing that still uses supermount in mandriva. You might try disabling supermount and manually mount the floppy drive to see if the speed improves. It might also be that kat thing.

There's several ways to do it but I would try editing /usr/X11R6/bin/starticewm first to something like this: #!/bin/bash # JMD: add icewm-desktop so that icewm can be integrated with rox, dfm, # or another program that adds icons to the desktop <insert path to idesk> & if [ -e /usr/X11R6/bin/icewm-desktop ];then /usr/X11R6/bin/icewm-desktop else /usr/X11R6/bin/icewm-session fi Make sure to put the "&" after the path to idesk in the above. This is a direct edit of the starticewm script on LE2005. As noted in the comments above, you can also create your own icewm startup script and call it icewm-desktop and place it in /usr/X11R6/bin/. That would probably look something like this: #!/bin/bash <path to idesk> & <path to any other program you want to autostart> & /usr/X11R6/bin/icewm I'm not sure of the distinction between "icewm" and "icewm-session". You might want to try both in your icewm-desktop script.

Scarecrow, I couldn't have said it better myself. I just want to add that sid has been going through a pretty rough phase over the last several months with the xorg update and the change to the new QT libs, among other things. As a result sid has been particularly unstable lately but it all seems to be calming down now.

Something may be resetting the perms back after the init scripts run. I'm not sure what that is; it may be the udev configuration. Take a look at the files in /etc/udev/rules.d and see if there is any reference to nvram. Other possibility - it could be a driver issue. Please post the output of: # lsmod I believe you should show a module named "nvram". Check the files /etc/modprobe.conf and /etc/modprobe.preload and post both files. Here's my thinking - For nvram to be properly created, and used, you need it's driver module, nvram, loaded first. If nvram is in modprobe.conf, it may not be loaded in time for udev to pick it up when the init scripts run; I believe if you put nvram in modprobe.preload instead, udev will pick up nvram before the init scripts run and create the device file. Then your chmod in rc.local will work. It might just be a timing issue.

Usb zip drives are always designated sda4 in my experience; have no idea why. I guess it's just the way they are set up. It does not indicate that there are any other partitions on the zip disk. The first and only partition on the zip disk is sda4.

One thing you can try is creating the nvram device file manually in rc.local and set the perms to 666. You do that with the mknod command and your ls -l output gives you all the info you need. Remove your chmod line from rc.local and replace it with this: mknod -m 666 /dev/nvram c 10 144 Hopefully that will stick.

I'm stumped. The only thing I can think of that would account for that is that /dev/nvram does not exist at the time rc.local is executed. Can you post the output of: # ls -l /dev/nvram right after you boot up. I assume you are using a recent 2.6 kernel with udev, in which case there may be some triggering event which makes udev create /dev/nvram like for usb devices. I'm not that familiar with your hardware; I assume nvram stands for non-volatile ram. Exactly what is it used for and what is written to it? Does /dev/nvram have an entry in fstab?

Post your rc.local.

Unlike fedora, mp3s will play out of the box. Wmv files are proprietary MS formats and you will need to install the "win32 codecs" package from plf in order to play them. Commercail dvds have a weak encryption and you need to install a library called "libdvdcss" in order to play them. This is also available from plf. These packages cannot be included by mandriva for legal reasons.

Add your chmod command to the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local, i.e. put this at the end of rc.local: chmod 666 /dev/nvram The rclocal script runs with root permissions at every boot and is the last init script to run. The perms you set there should not be reset by anything else.

Put your chmod command for the device file at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local. That's the easiest way to do it without tracing through everything to see if anything is changing the perms back. Rc.local is the last init script to run so nothing else should mess with the perms.

DVI can be a problem in linux but shouldn't cause a reboot I would think. You can try using the standard vga instead of dvi if your monitor supports both, most do.

I don't know for sure; I don't have a sata optical drive to test. But my preliminary googling indicates that you may have to wait for kernel 2.6.14 to get good support. Mdv 2006 uses a patched 2.6.12 kernel and I don't know what stuff from later kernels mandriva backported into its kernel. You may want to do a little research on your own but there seems to be significant kernel development going on in sata optical drives. I'm farly sure it's a kernel issue however.

Optical sata drives like you apparently have have only recently been available. The support for such devices may not be there in the stock LE2005 kernel. You may want to upgrade to a newer kernel or to 2006.

A lot of the broadcom cards will work with ndiswrapper. Ndiswrapper is a program that allows you to use the windows driver for the card in linux.

Ubuntu is easy for me describe - if you like gnome, you will love ubuntu; if you don't, you'll hate it. Ubuntu is very gnome centric so if you like kde, go elsewhere. There is a kde spinoff of ubuntu, kubuntu, but it's not nearly as tight as ubuntu/gnome. Re newbie friendliness - ubuntu is OK but it lacks the graphical config utilities that you find in mandriva, suse or mepis. If that's important to you, try one of the foregoing. I also hate ubuntu's sudo approach to security. Re your old hardware - you are a little on the light side on ram(192 MB) for most modern graphical linux systems running gnome or kde. It will run but it will be a little slow/unresponsive. Ram is your main limiting factor; not cpu. You may want to try a more lightweight window manager like icewm if you find gnome or kde too slow. Re your present problems with ubuntu and graphics config - I don't know what utilities for configuring your graphics are available with ubuntu. I'd just try something else, i.e. mepis, mandriva, or suse. Mepis would probably be the easiest as it comes with the nvidia driver for your P4 box and is also a live cd so you can test it out before you install.