pmpatrick

Either something is wrong with your post or my browser, but I have no idea what your talking about. What shortcut are you referring to??

We can create symlinks back to the /dev/ide/host0/blah,blah which mcc>hardware>hardware list gave you as the appropriate file for your cdrom. Before doing that, let's check for the obvious. If you dual boot, does your cd drive work OK in windows? Just want to eliminate any hardware problem before we start. If you don't dual boot, try inserting Mandrake install CD1 and reboot to see if you get the install screen. This will give some indication that the drive is functioning hardware-wise. All the links I asked you about are links that exist in my /dev for each of my cd drives. You apparently have none of them. All of these diferent links point back to the appropriate /dev/ide/host0/busx/targetx/lunx/cd for the drive in question. I just tried explicitly mounting the /dev/ide/host0/blah,blah thing as root and it worked. Before we go creating a bunch of symlinks to this file, put a data cd in the drive and try mounting it as root like so: # mount -t iso9660 -r /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd /mnt/cdrom # ls /mnt/cdrom If it works, you will have to unmount the drive as follows to get your cd out: #umount /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd Also, if this does work, post back we can create the appropriate symlinks to the file. There may be an easier way of doing this so if anyone knows feel free to chime in.

Keep following it back. Where does /dev/hdb point? From your prior post it should be pointing to /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd.

Read it and weep my friends: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/...esoft/news/2405 I'm not familiar with French insovency laws, but it's described as a Ch 11 style bankruptcy filing. Used to do a lot of Ch 11 work when I first got out of law school. The above press release makes it sound like a friendly bankruptcy, i.e. one done with the support of Mandrake's main(i.e. secured) creditors. They should have plenty of leverage with their creditors since the company has little value except as a going concern. If they fold, everyone will get stiffed so you may as well let them roll the dice. The only other way to get value out of the company from a creditor's point of view is to sell the entire company to some interested party(United Linux??). It's all very speculative, but I've got to beleive they've got some deals lined up, probably some handshake commitments for capital infusion once they screw all the unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy and get out from under their debt burden.

I think the sym links for hdb might be screwed up, at least that's my theory. To test it, as root try mounting hdb directly with the following command: # mount -t iso9660 -r /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom Obviously, do so with a data cd in hdb. Also, do you have a link in /dev named "cdrom" and if so, where does it point?

With that much RAM, I'm surprised that you are going into swap very much at all. How is your performance, i.e. do applications take a long time to come up, is the system slow and unresponsive, etc ? The reason I ask is that if your RAM and swap are really maxed out, you will experience some real performance problems. If you are not having performance problems, you are probally misinterpreting the readings from your memory utility. For example, you say kde control center reports 8 Kb free. I'll bet if you look closely, you will see a large part of that RAM is reported as cached RAM. Although technically "used", cached RAM is available. It's used to increase performance by keeping the necessary info for an application in RAM which reduces the start up time of the app since it doesn't have to be read from the hard drive at a much slower rate. That's why the second time you start say a browser, it starts much faster than the first time. However, the operating system will clear out the cached ram as other apps need it. It's really nothing to be concerned about unless you are having performance problems.

Look in /dev/cdroms and see if there is a link called "cdrom" there which points to /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd. There should be.

How much ram do you have and how are you checking your memory usage? If you are not seeing pretty drastic performance drops when all your swap is being used, it may just be that your swap virtual memory is being cached somehow. Try checking in KDE Control Center>Information>Memory.

Please post your /etc/fstab file. This file sets the permissions for all your partitons and cd drives. Also, do you have supermount enabled?

Check the following link. It's not an answer, but it is an explanation: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&....com%26rnum%3D2

Just a few suggestions: 1. If you downloaded Md 9.0, you should check the md5 checksums on the ISOs to be sure you have a good download; 2.You can do a minimal install using only CD1. For type of installation, choose expert mode. In expert mode, you are asked during the beginning of the install which CDs you have; just tick CD1 and go through the install picking whatever packages are available. You can boot into KDE with this minimal install. If you get that far, put CD1 back in and reboot but this time choose upgrade mode install and see if you can get additional packages installed. 3. What type of CD drive do you have? From your post, I assume it's not one that connects through the PCMCIA slot. If it does, post back. There are certain things you have to do to get the install to go.

I don't know if this applies to you, but I found that if you mount the drive as root, you can only unmount as root. This inadvertantly occurs when you use the software management utilities in Mandrake Control Center. If you are asked to insert one of the install CDs while trying to install some software package, the inserted CD will be mounted as root. If you close mcc after completing the install you can't get the CD drive to open. To release the CD you either have to reboot or unmount in a terminal as root: # umount cdrom

Linux installation tools partition and format with linux utilities and, accordingly, the resulting extended partition will be a linux one. The formatted linux partitions will be invisible to windows and should cause no problems.

Easier said than done I guess. Did a quick search and found several people reporting similar problems with this MB: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kinetiz+...orld.com&rnum=8 http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kinetiz+...ogle.com&rnum=5 http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kinetiz+...ogle.com&rnum=8 Didn't see a solution posted anywhere. I'll try to dig a little deeper tonite if I have time. Check out the above as a starting point.

It may be a kernel problem since you have the same symptoms with Md 9.0 and Suse 8.1 which use kernel 2.4.19. Redhat 8.0 uses 2.4.18. Try googling along the above lines and see if others are experiencing the same problem.

I have a Sony VIAO Z505. In my bios setup, under the Power tab, I can set several options one of which is having the system hibernate on closing the lid. This works fine for me. I don't know if you have the same options in your setup, but if you do I would reccomend using the bios rather than ACPI which I found to be problematic

Try setting up your hibernate options in your system bios setup. That's the way I do it and have had no problems with Mandrake 9.0.

If you don't have a /dev/dvd file in /dev you can create a link as follows: # ln -s /dev/hdx /dev/dvd where you substitute the correct letter of your dvd drive for "x" in the above. Xine sets up dvd input to /dev/dvd by default so it won't work without linking your dvd drive to /dev/dvd.

The scsi hard drive and cdrom might cause problems, kind of wierd on a budget system. Also, check the compatability of the SIS grapics adapter; if you have to spring for a new one, it might not be such a bargain.

If you haven't already done so , go to Penguin Liberation Front and download and install xine-d5d plugin. You must have it to break the encryption on most commercial dvds. Mandrake can't include it for legal reasons. Here's the link: http://plf.zarb.org/ The site also supports urpmi and packages rpms specifically for the Mandrake distros.

Please list hardware configuration. Also, you can do a minimal install using only Disk 1. Choose Expert Install option; when you are asked to identify the disks you have, choose only Disk 1; choose the packages you want that are available. When the install is complete, go into Mandrake Control Center>Software Management>Software Sources Manager and add your additional Disks to the sources and see if you can choose additional packages you need from these sources. Either the foregoing, or you can try running the install again after installing with Disk 1 and choose the Ugrade option and see if you can install the desired additional packages.

I beleive your motherboard uses Intel's 845E chipset. This chipset has real problems with kernel 2.4.19 used in Mandrake 9.0 and other recent distros. See this thread for further info: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...=639&highlight= The syptoms you describe are exactly what I experienced when trying to use Promise Ultra 100 IDE controller. More details are in the above thread. If you can disable raid, you might be able to get the install to go but you will not be able to enable dma. It's purely a kernel problem. You have to upgrade to kernel 2.4.20 to get things right. I know of no way to do this during the install. The strategy will have to be do whatever it takes to get the install to go (disable raid?), update the kernel per the above thread, and then try to renable raid and reconfigure your hardware.

I use the Motorola SB4100 and have no problems with it using ethernet. Never could get it to work with the USB bus in linux however and wound up getting a NIC and using ethernet. After getting the NIC, setup was a breeze in mcc>Network&internet>Connections. Just clicked on the wizzard and the thing was configured without a hitch. I just bought a Linksys router(model BEFSR41) at Radio Shack on sale for $60 after rebate. Did the initial setup/configuration of the router in windows after which everything just worked in Mandrake 9.0 without further configuration. This router comes with a built in firewall which is pretty nice.

I'm not certain, but I beleive you can get DVDrip from Penguin Liberation Front: http://plf.zarb.org/ If your not familiar with the above, they package a lot of stuff specifically for the Mandrake distro which Mandrake can't do for legal reasons. They also have urpmi available which can help a lot with dependencies.

I think hdparm is on the install CDs. Try installing using mcc>Software Management>Install Software.