Crashdamage

After watching this thread for a while, I understand the original point about standardizing configuration tools and their file placements. But in the overall scheme of things I don't think this is a really serious problem, just pretty annoying. I don't think linuxconf can be considered the solution for standardizing anymore, it just hasn't been kept up to date. Maybe Webmin, but many IT admins won't consider running a webserver to use Webmin, not that I can blame them. But WTF, different tools, different distros - sure, it's a hassle for casusal users to learn or for admins with mixed systems, but one with decent skills can deal with that stuff. For a Linux IT admin, as long as they can use the same simple tools for the whole network, like vi (vim) they can deal with everything else. The root problem is HOW these different tools are being implemented. File placement is a problem, but it gets worse than that. For example, Suse is now using XML instead of plain text for some config files, requiring use of their GUI tools or for one to learn XML to manually edit the friggin' things. Yeah, I know XML is "text" and can be hand edited, but why go through all the extra verbage of XML, and the increased possibilty of typos, even if you do know how? Most users, home or pros, will say "screw that" and use the Suse GUI tools so they can get things done. Fine, I guess that works (in a M$-kinda way) but to me, this is the start of Suse trying for M$-style vendor lock-in. Make it so that you *have* to use their GUI crap to do simple tasks. I can only see this getting worse now that Novell owns Suse. Bigger companies need bigger sales. At least Mandrake has resisted crap like that, and I believe (or hope) they will continue to. But it's scary to think where this may lead with other commercial distros like RedHat, Xandros or Lindows.

No offense intended VeeDubb, but I gotta set this straight. This stuff gets out on the web, people Google it and get the wrong ideas... VeeDubb said: This is simply wrong. It's true that vmware is slow, but properly configured, it's not THAT slow. Win4Lin is another story. It's FAST. It will boot Windoze in about 10 sec on any reasonably quick machine, say about a 750mhz processor and 256MB of memory. Once up, it runs 99.9% of ordinary Windoze apps at roughly native Windoze or even better speeds - yes I said or better! Some apps actually run faster under Win4Lin. Both kinda right and very wrong. To start with, vmware was written as a development platform, where speed was not the primary concern, but the ability to run multiple OS's was. As such, it has no real equal and is well-suited to the task. Almost any OS from DOS to Linux to XP can be run with vmware. Win9x under vmware is a little shakey - ie, normal - but Linux or WinNT etc are pretty stable. On the other hand, Win4Lin was intended for regular, normal use, and as such is terrific for running M$ office, IE, Quicken, tax software, etc etc - any windows apps you feel you can't do without. They will run perfectly normally. The exception to this is many games, or the very few other apps that require Direct X. While vmware supports Direct X, it's too slow for gaming. Win4Lin is plenty quick enough for gaming, but has only software-level support for Direct X. The guys at netraverse are pretty sharp though, and hardware Direct X support is in the works. Patience. I should mention that Win4Lin has the best customer support I've ever experienced from any company selling any product. Unlike vmware, Win4Lin will only run Win9x (any version). Support for versions of WinNT is also under heavy development and I hear good progress is being made. It's only a matter of time. This isn't a big deal anyway, since most of the advantages of WinNT over Win9x don't apply under Win4Lin. Journaling file system? Win4Lin loads Win9x on ReiserFS, ext3. Stability? Win98/Win4Lin is rock-solid, unbelievably so. I still run my original Windoze installation, never needed to reinstall Windoze, even to update Mandrake. I've run Win4Lin daily for 3 years, several hours a day, and it has never crashed. Win4Lin makes Win9x act like a real OS. That's because Linux handles the hardware and Win4Lin lets Win "run" virtual hardware - but anyway... True to a point with vmware, but Win4Lin couldn't be much easier, and definitely belongs on any average user's machine who needs it. I hated dual-booting. I ran Linux about a week before I went out and bought Win4Lin. No true. When I switched to Linux, I first tried vmware, and it was a little tough, but not that bad, and I'm sure it's gotten better since the last time I tried. It's been a couple of years. But even 3 years ago, Win4Lin was as easy to install as any Windoze app - click-click easy. Really, I just couldn't believe it! I was EXTREMELY impressed! And there are few things funnier than watching Windoze98 splash screens stupidly extolling it's questionable virtues as it installs on a Linux file system. It does require installation of a Win4Lin-enabled kernel, yes. That's what makes Win4Lin so friggin' fast. But the GUI installer downloads, installs, and adds the Win4Lin kernel to your kernel boot choices automatically. I, at the time a total Linux idiot noob (well, still am), had no problem whatsoever - none - with my 1st installation! Small catch - temporarily, since the 2.6 kernels came out, the kernel has to be installed manually. There's some very simple instructions on the Win4Lin/Netraverse website that anyone can follow. However, the final testing of the GUI auto-installer to restore this capability is nearly done, and click-click easy auto-installs will be back very soon. For anyone interested, there is a Win4Lin-enabled version of the latest security-patched MDK 2.6 kernels (built by Buchan Milne) on the Contrib mirrors now. Win4Lin-enabled versions of the latest MDK 2.4 kernels will be there very soon. You betcha! Win4Lin is amazing (so is vmware in it's own - expensive - way). It even does cool stuff like cut/paste between Windoze apps and Linux apps. It really has to be tried to be appreciated. I've not fooled with Bochs except a 15 minute attempt to install that failed, and I just didn't put more effort into it. I hear that at it's best, it can rival Wine, at least with certain apps. Anyway, that's my $1.00 worth, obviously speaking as a well-satisfied longtime Win4LIn user.

www.gnucash.org doesn't have an rpm for Mandrake 10.0. A rpm for 9x will not work,a nd building GnuCash from source can be pretty tough. you should use the Mandrake rpm, it should be on the discs. The Software Manager just may not know it. What happens if you open a terminal, su to root and type: urpmi -v gnucash That should be all you need to do to install it.

GnuCash is nice, but compiling it can really be a bear. Have you tried just opening a terminal as root and: # urpmi gnucash If so, what happens?

"I use GCombust...and use simulate...that doesn't check then burn??? Odd...Nero's got a simulate too...and that burns after it simulates" I think with GCombust you gotta uncheck the simulate option. I like GCombust though and still find myself using it a lot instead of kb3..

Try: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm Should add enough intelligence to Windoze to read ext2 or ext3. I haven't tried it myself, no need, but I've heard it works nice. But what's up with your burner? I thought about any burner works fine these days.

Importance depends on what the logs say. If it only took a week for them to grow to this size, then like bvc said, something is seriously wrong. My log files are much smaller even after letting them grow for almost 2 1/2 years. Read the logs a little, especiallt at the end of the files. See if they can tell you what's causing these files to grow so fast. If you're stumped, post a small snippet here. The separate partition for /var is a real good idea, and IMHO should be the default for any Linux install.

Have you made sure that you have port 5900 open in your firewall confugration?

Yeah, what I said, I just said it poorly. Should've previewed that post for sure. Anyway, I've never fooled with tunneling a VNC session with SSH 'cause for what I use VNC for it's just not that critical. Let 'em hack into my sessions if they want - nothing worthwhile to steal and it'll bore them silly. VNC works great for remotes to my Win2k workstation from my Linux box at home. I hear another beta of VNC 4x is due out soon, but the 4x beta I've been using for months has been rock-solid. TightVNC adds SSH capability for security. There's another Windows-only version of VNC (can't remeber the name) that adds a built-in FTP client for remote file transfers to give some of the functionality of pcAnywhere or LapLink.

If you used the 3x version of VNC before, try the 4x Beta. It's all-around better, but much faster in particular. I've been using VNC 4x for a long time with great results.

I'm using an Asus A7N8X n-Force2 board with 8.2 - no problem. Had to manually enable DMA of course, but as stable as it gets. My current uptime is 103 days of heavy use, and was something like 87 days before that when I purposely shut it down to rearrange all the friggin' cables connected to this thing. It seems it'll run 'til a power outage gets it. On the other hand, at work I have an A7V8X VIA version of the same board running Win2kPro. That doesn't apply to Linux use, but and it is the best Winshaft machine I've ever had. Almost makes Windows act like a real OS. Both boxes use AMD Barton 2.5 processors, but note that neither of these boards is the "Deluxe" version. Maybe it's just coincidence, but seems all the problems I've heard about with lockups on the Asus n-Force2 boards were Deluxe versions. At any rate, I've used Asus boards almost exclusively for years. I must've put a couple dozen boxes together with Asus boards by now and I know of several still running after years of use. Never had any problems at all. I have had problems with other boards. Chaintech, Abit, maybe a Tyan, I can't remember for sure now. Bottom line is I'd buy either chipset as long as it sits on an Asus motherboard.

I like df -H best...

Well, it's doesn't *specifically* say that Mandrake's kernels will include the Netraverse patches, but it doesn't say no either. Not sure where you got that. The Win4Lin kernels have been available in Cooker for a while. Netraverse uses Mandrake as one of their standard test distros. And there have been hints on the Win4Lin mailing list that the Win4Lin patches were likely to be included the standard Mandrake kernels soon. I *think* this is the announcement that they did indeed get things worked out. Gentoo, Lindows, Xandros and several other distros already include the Win4Lin patches. I doubt Mandrake would want to be left out of that game for long unless doing so violated the GPL. It doesn't. Win4Lin is proprietary, but the kernel patches themselves are GPL'd. Anyway, I thought it was good news...

QUOTE tyme said: "Bastille may be a bit more work than I'm looking for right now, but I will look into it." That would be terrific. This is how to do a minor tweak to install it on 9.2 - maybe this will help simplify things for you: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alex.bache/ma...ake-faq.html#7c Thanks!

Apparently Mandrake will be including Win4Lin patches in the standard Mandrake kernels: http://www.netraverse.com/company/press/ne...a2ae39ae5b2917f Very good news!

Assuming your cable system uses DHCP, and since you mentioned having 2 nics installed...make nic #1 (etho) your connection to the 'Net with DHCP. Just get your 'Net connection working with that 1st. Then make nic #2 (eth1) a static IP (like 192.168.0.1) for your 2nd box. Give the Winshaft box a static IP (like 192.168.0.2) and the correct subnet. You won't use Internet Connection Sharing in Mandrake Control Center - that sets up a DHCP sever on your Linux box for connecting to the 2nd box, which you really don't need in this case. If you can't get it going, post the result of (as root): # ifconfig So we can see what you've done so far. Here's the relevent parts of my ifconfig output, using the same configuration described above: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:05:5D:49:73:2C inet addr:65.30.15.247 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.252.0 UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:20:18:89:18:7C inet addr:192.168.0.1 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 Your Linux box will do the routing and firewalling for your Windex box's tender ass once you get things working and re-enable Firestarter. If enabling Firestarter kills things, of course you'll need to re-configure it, but I don't use Firestarter for firewalling, so I'll leave help with that to someone who does.

Bastille. Still the best tool I've ever seen for setting up networking, firewalling and overall system permissions all in one friggin' Swiss Army Knife of Linux security. Just terrific, nothing else like it. Gone from Mandrake since 8.2. I installed it on 9.2 with a tweak, but I don't have my test box with 10.0 installed anymore, so I can't fool around to see if Bastille works with 10.0 or build a rpm myself. Had to use my spare box for evil Windoze purposes at work before I tried it out on 10.0. Deserves a rpm for sure so more users can take advantage of it.

Funny it couldn't find hdparm...you did try hdparm as root, right? I hate to reboot and haven't in months. No need to reboot to enable DMA. As root just do: # hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda (or whatever drive) That will enable DMA on the fly. Then edit line in /etc/sysconfig/hardisks that sets DMA (must be like this): hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda where '1' is enabled, '0' is disabled (i.e. slow). This ensures DMA is enabled when you do reboot without having to manually enable it again. As for enabling 32-bit support, it may not always be a good idea 'cause it can actually slow a system down slightly. 32-bit is only needed for data transfers across a PCI or VLB bus to an interface card, standard ribbon connections will still be 16 bit. Read the section on the '-c' variable in 'man hdparm' before you do. BTW, you can also set HD standby times manually, or at boot in /etc/sysconfig/hardisks by adding entries like this: # For setting standby time: hdparm -S 242 /dev/hda hdparm -S 241 /dev/hdb hdparm -S 241 /dev/hdd No need to leave all those drives running all the time. 'man hdparm' explains the time settings (the '24*' numbers).

I'm a little confused as to just what you mean, but I've never had, and never heard of, anyone having a problem with using Wine and Win4lin on the same machine. You could try a little Googling and see if anything comes up, just to be sure.

Other people have gotten checkinstall + 10.0 working, so I'm sure a little Google time will find the fix. No biggie. You can do it. As for Gentoo...for grins, a lillte while back I put Gentoo on my test box before wiping it to install 10.0CE. Mostly just wanted to se if I could do it. Had it working fair, some bugs I woulda had to work out had I left it on, but I just wasn't impressed for all the trouble and time. Sorry, Gentoo people. It's obviously good, but...these days I'm actually a little more tempted by Slackware, and I may give it a shot on the next test box before installing 10.0 (10.1?). Likely I'll just stay with Mandrake on the main box. Hard to beat urpmi for easy installs. Lotsa pre-compiled stuff available. Nice community support for Mandrake. The other thing I really like about MDK is that since there are several users on this, each user can login and get anything they want, from XP-style GUIs with KDE to my kinda Slack-style mostly text-apps, CLI and Fluxbox/Ratpoison setup. Of course, that can be done with any distro, but Mandrake makes it very easy to setup that kind of flexibility for very different users.

I don't think anyone has mentioned this method yet, but I just convert mp3 to wave with XMMS using the Disk Writer plugin, it's quick and easy. Then I burn to CD with gcombust, XCDroast or kb3.

Hmmm...that was just a tip I'd seen on alt.os.linux.mandrake that seems to be working for people with 10.0. I hadn't tried checkinstall on my test box with 10.0CE yet before it had to be called into service for other (Windoze) purposes and I haven't cobbled together enough spare parts yet to build another tester for 10.0, so I so I can't troubleshoot it myself right now. My main box still runs Mandrake 8.2 with checkinstall-1.5.1 and /usr/lib/rpm/macro has no such entry. There is no 'man checkinstall', but looking at /usr/share/doc/checkinstall-1.5.1/README (which is really the manual) is no help 'cause - no surprise - %_unpackaged_files_terminate_build 1 is not mentioned. Anyway, bottom line, I'm not sure what the point of the change is, I just know it's worked for some people so I passed it along and thought it might do it for you. Sorry it didn't work. Maybe try reading the manual for your version, it may explain it, or do some Googling I guess.

Andrewski...try this: Go into: /usr/lib/rpm/macros and change BOTH occurences of %_unpackaged_files_terminate_build 1 to: %_unpackaged_files_terminate_build 0 See if that does the trick for checkinstall.

Just curious...do you have sendmail installed also or just qmail?