Rowan

Because I am using windoes to write this I am unable to copy and paste but I was typing as follows: urpmi kernel-2.6.17.11mdv just as you said. I double checked it and this is how. Did I do it wrong ?

I tried what you suggested but got the answer " no package found ". I then tried this urpmf --name kernel | grep 2.6.17 and I got quite a list of kernels with 2.6.17 in their names. I tried a couple of others eg 2.6.17.13-4 and 2.6.17.14-3 and even just plain, old 2.6.17 and they all came up as " no package found ". Am I using the wrong syntax or maybe the lines are down (always a good backup excuse) or maybe I have just shagged my system to the point where it can't load a kernel ?? My step-daughter has just told me that some of her university assignment papers and notes are trapped on 2006 and she has told me that I will be lampshade material if anything happens to them . Any suggestions welcome.

OOPS! Somehow I managed to post this item in the wrong section. Are the mods able to transfer it to the correct section ? Please accept my apologies for this mistake.

Last night I decided to use the command line to download updates for my 2006 powerpack. I have had problems using MCC in the past so I decided to use the command line and so I input the following: urpmi.update -a && urpmi --auto-select. I then went to bed to let it do it's thing and upon checking this morning I noticed that most of the updates/rpms that were downloaded had '2007.0' as part of their name. I rebooted my system and found that linux would not load properly - I have the bootloader and then the screen turned blue/grey with the penguin and the progress bar along the bottom but after that KDE would not load and all that I got was a black screen asking me for my login and password. I entered MCC and checked that my graphics card etc had not fallen over but everthing seems ok. I read somewhere about entering 'startx', which I tried, as SU, but I only got a red screen with a warning that I should not proceed any further. If I try startx not as SU I get just the usual blue/grey background with the cursor as an x but nothing else. I am thinking that maybe the updates with 2007 in their names have corrupted my 2006 system. Is anybody able to cast any light on what might have happened and also how it get KDE back again ? I don't want to have to do a complete reinstall as I have some business items that I don't want to delete. I suspect that whatever is wrong is only a minor thing because of have a partial boot up. Many thanks in anticipation. [moved from Cooker by spinynorman]

I have previously installed Quake4 by going ¨Run¨ then entering ¨kdesu Konqueror¨ and that allowed me to copy over the necessary files but I then had to log in the same way to play the game - that got a little tedious at times and I still couldn't figure out why discs 2,3 & 4 would not read. I think that I will just give up on the problem because I have retried other multi-disc games and I was able to read all their discs. Thanks for the thought anyway. I think he would have already used the installer, you just download and install the patch/point release, there is no Linux installer on the disc as far as I know, you then have to copy over the required .pk4 files to your install directory. I think his is where he is having trouble, he can not access the files on the other discs, to copy them over. What if you try copying the files over as root, what I do when I need to be root to copy/edit etc anything is, I have a shortcut I call 'KingKonq', which basically opens up Konqueror as root, I then do what I have to do, all in GUI.

I am trying to load Quake4 into 2006 Power pack and I am having problems with accessing my disc drives. The first disk is read OK and I can copy over the required files but when I try to access discs 2-4 I get the answer that ¨Could not enter folder /mnt/cdrom¨. When I go through the Home folder to mnt the disc drive icon has a padlock over it and I get the answer ¨You do not have enough permissions to read file:///mnt/cdrom¨. I have previously been able to copy over and play Doom3 quite ok so I am at a loss as to why I am not allowed to access these discs. Is anybody able to offer any explanation as to what might be causing this headache and why ? I have not changed any access permissions. Many thanks in anticipation.

Thanks for the advice. It worked first time. Excellent instructions. Rowan

Hello all I installed Mandriva 2006 Power Pack recently and I think that it is quite good - a bit different to 10.1 but still good. I have installed several of my favourite games (Doom3,Quake4,Serious sam SE) and I have a little problem that I would like to solve. Doom3 and Serious Sam SE have appeared in a 'Games' folder in the Start menu and a folder has also appeared on my desktop. I have no entry in either for Quake4 and I would like to know how I can put an entry in the Start menu folder to make it easy to start - the other two entries seem to have appeared as part of their respective installation processes. Many thanks in advance Rowan

Hello all I am considering updating from 10.1 Official to 2006 and I have just one important question. Do the ATI drivers that come with 2006 automatically install and configure OR would I still need to muck about doing it manually ? I ask because my system uses a Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card and I would like to play games ( UT2003, Doom3, Quake4 etc ) but trying to install the drivers manually has been a bit of a nightmare and so I gave up in frustration. All the reviews that I have read so far have been glowing so I want to get an official factory pack with manuals to get away from download iso's that always have read errors for me. Any opinions will be gratefully accepted and considered before I proceed.

Thank you for your advice. I had endless problems getting access to fstab and still it wouldn't play ball so I just did "chmod a+rwx /mnt/floppy" and now it works. My cdrom and dvdrom seem to have come right so I will just let it sleep. Once again thanks for your help.

Hello all Recently I found that I am unable to get my floppy to mount. It was going ok but now it won't play ball at all. I normally wouldn't worry about such small things but I need it for my job. I have searched the archives and tried some things that I found but none have worked and I am afraid that I may have buggered something unknowingly. I am running 10.1 official and it is otherwise running reasonable well. Here are the contents of my fstab file. # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details /dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom iso9660 umask=0,user,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0 /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 iso9660 umask=0,user,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,users 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto umask=0,user,iocharset=utf8,sync,unhide,noauto 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0 Also my cdroms have been playing up recently so if anybody can cast any light upon what needs to be corrected (and how to do it) I would be very grateful. The floppy and cdroms work ok in Windows. Many thanks in anticipation. [moved from Hardware by spinynorman]

Hello Scarecrow Yes I was trying to use the CUPS admin module in a browser. I took your advice and finally managed to fumble my way on to the correct answer. Many thanks.

Hello Ramfree17 Thank you for the above tip on how to gain access to the system. I am currently trying to configure a new printer but part way through the configuration process I am asked for for my user name and password. The problem is that I have only ever put in one username when I first installed 10.1 OE and have never put in a password. Is there some default set that I can enter or how do get around this password request ? I have searched in various places for ideas but to no avail. If you are able to assist I would be most grateful. Rowan.

Hello all I have been useing Mandrake for about the last year - firstly 9.1, which was a little slow but totally bulletproof, and currently 10.0 Official. I have found that 10.0, well my installation anyway, is rather fragile and different things either freeze or won't open. In the last month I have had problems with the following things: Open Office, Mplayer, Control Centre, Totem, Mozilla, Epiphany and CUPS to name most of them. Sometimes the program will freeze so that I am unable to close it and start again and I am being forced to reboot my whole system just to do one small job. Sometimes things will just not open at all. I have had to reconfigure my printer and CUPS several times recently and, as a self-employed small business person, I often need my system quickly but I am becoming quite disillusioned with 10.0 and so I would like some advice (any advice) that will help me to cure these tantrums. Any help or advice will be gratefully received but please make it simple to understand. Rowan PS I am still a newbie after all this time and I am happy to stay that way. To be honest I can totally understand why Windows is still so popular - it might be bloated and be as holey as swiss cheese but my bootleg copy of XP has never given me these headaches.

Hello all Thank you to all those that replied. I attempted to read the file under Windows XP and it told me that the file could not be read so I will assume that the file is corupt and will need to be rewritten. Once again thank you to all those who offered advice. Rowan

Hello all I have just tried to open a pdf file but I keep getting an error saying "Thje desktop entry file /mnt/floppy/xxx.pdf has no Type= ...entry." Can anyone cast some light on what this means and how do I correct it ?? I have tried to use Ghostview but to no avail. This fil;e is my wifes' CV for a job application and I suspect that I will be in the brown smelly stuff is a very big way if I can't open this file VERY quickly. Any helpful replies should be as simplistic and detailed as possible because I have been useing mandrake for about a year but I know next to nothing about how to alter things. Any suggestions or help that get me past tomorrow will be gratefully received. Rowan

Thank you gnome and nchancock I followed your pointers and the installation went flawlessly. It is a bit of a pity that the system didn't tell me that it needed the gcc etc when I tried the first time. Once again many thanks and I apologise for being such a beginner. I also forgot to say that I am running Mandrake 10 Official. Rowan

Hello all I have been trying to do my first installation from a tar.gz file. All was going well until the 'configure' stage where it rejected. I have been trying to install the new HP 'printer for Linux' programme at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16846 and the item is called hplip-8.0.4 . Here is the reject message that I received. checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for chkconfig... found in /sbin checking for install_initd... no checking for rpm install... no configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating Makefile configure: configuring in prnt configure: running /bin/sh './configure' --prefix=/usr '--prefix=/usr' --cache-file=/dev/null --srcdir=. checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking for gawk... gawk checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for gcc... no checking for cc... no checking for cc... no checking for cl... no configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH See `config.log' for more details. configure: error: /bin/sh './configure' failed for prnt [root@localhost hplip-0.8.4]# Is anybody able to cast any light on where the trouble lies and how to fix it ??? I have my HP PSC1210 running ok but it would be noce to have dedicated systems. Many thanks in anticipation. Rowan

I put in what you suggested, Steve, but with no apparent effect. I won't worry about going any further and so I will just live with what I have. I am beginning to feel that all this toing and froing is not worth it. Thanks for trying to help anyway.

Mine looks slightly different to yours. Where do you suggest I do any editing ? Do I have to delete something ? I don't want to shag my system. image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent" vga=788 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux-nonfb" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6" read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="failsafe" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 devfs=nomount" read-only

Thanks Steve Unfortunately I have no idea where you are talking about to get to the 'append' line. I told you that I am a complete novice. I understand only a very little apart from configuring my system as it is used for business purposes and I have never needed or wanted to dig beneath the skin before now. Please elaborate about this append line mod.

Sorry for the delay - work gets in the way. My system goes LILO, then a wait of about 1 minute with just the blue band and then the band says "booting the system - press Esc for verbose mode". What is happening in the middle period ? The system does not react to any key pushing.

Thank you for your replies but I think that, upon reflection, I owe you an apology for getting confused about what I was asking for. Let's try again. What I was really trying to ask about is the time period AFTER lilo selection when the screen just sits there with a blue band across it for no aparent reason before deciding to boot up. What is this waiting period for and is it possible to get rid of it ? It just seems to be a waste of time.

Hello all I am a complete green horn as far as the list goes so I will give it a try. I have been using 9.1 for about the last 18 months and I recently changed to 10.0 Official but I want to edit the lilo to reduce the timeout time at the beginning of the boot cycle. I have found the appropriate file (etc/lilo/config) and I want to know - can I just edit the timeout from 100 down to 2 or 3 and then reboot or is there more involved ?? Many thanks for any advice PS. What is timeout there for anyway ?