Crashdamage

Seems the PLF rpms suck. Hey, nobody's perfect... Here's a Usenet post that explains how to get it working right. Thanks to Gonzalo for posting this info! Be aware that I haven't done this myself, but it has been confirmed to work by others: From: Gonzalo <nomail@nomail.com> Subject: Here's how to play DVDs in Mandrake 9.2 Newsgroups: alt.os.linux.mandrake Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 04:00:37 -0400 Message-ID: <1pucnVVnJ86vbg2iXTWJkQ@dsli.com> Dear Mandrakians, After being unable to play DVDs by using the Ogle rpms available through plf, I decided to do a little bit of research. Now I have perfect playback and I thought this info might benefit other folks. To get Ogle to play in Mandrake 9.2,you need to install the the following package from the third CD of the download distribution: XFree86-compat-libs-4.1.0-3mdk.i586.rpm Then, Go to this page: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/redhat.shtm Where you will find a convenient link for the following rpms: libdvdcss-1.2.8-1.fr.i386.rpm libdvdread-0.9.4-fr3.i386.rpm ogle-0.9.1-fr3.i386.rpm ogle_gui-0.9.1-fr2.i386.rpm I used the freshrpms link for each of the above. Make sure you download the actual rpm and not the devel or source package. Install each the usual way, i.e. rpm -ivh "nameofrpm" That's it. Enjoy perfect and beautiful DVD playback in Mandrake 9.2. The plf packages for Ogle are junk. I repeat junk, so don't bother using them.

Also keep in mind that... 1. You don't necessarily have to have a machine dedicated to being only a router or router/server. Your main box can serve as the router along with doing it's other duties, like my home machine does. All you need is the 2nd nic - or 2 or 3 if you have the open slots and want to skip using a hub/switch. 2. Linux allows much more flexibility in setup than some cheapo routers. For example, after running about 3 years without a reboot, the old RedHat6 linux router at my business fried when the CPU fan stopped. I figured, screw it, I'll just get a $50-60 router and get going again the quick 'n easy way. Yeah, right. I took 2 new routers take back 'cause they would not allow me to setup a reasonable level of security and still allow pcAnywhere to work. Bought Model X, no go, but they swore if I went back and got Model Z it would. After a couple of hours talking to their tech support both they and I realized it wasn't gonna happen, the necessary options just weren't there. Screwed around with those most of a day and still no joy. So I gave up and made another Linux router out of an old Pentium 166 + motherboard I had around. Problem solved in less than an hour. Now if I can just find time to set it up as a mail server also...

Upgrade to Win4Lin 5 if you can - it's worth it. Has partial DirectX support (software only) much improved cut/paste between native Linux apps/apps running in Win4Lin, other improvements.

Just install Win4Lin as instructed by Netraverse, using the click-click easy GUI installer. It will download and install a Win4Lin-enabled kernel which is exactly the same as the original Mandrake kernel except for the Win4Lin add-ons. In other words, if it worked before you install Win4Lin, it'll work afterward.

I'm one of those few still using MDK 8x (8.2) and since everything works fine, I've updated all the stuff I use and I don't need the latest KDE or Gnome eye-candy (use Fluxbox) I have no urge to upgrade. I won't 'til the 2.6 kernel is out and nice and stable. Even then, I may keep 8.2 if I can figure out how to install the 2.6 kernel in it. I'm not big on upgrades in general, just when I need to. I've only this year started changing our office workstations from Win98 to Win2000, and we'll run 2000 'til hell freezes over or we can make the change to Linux - whichever comes first. But as far as what Gowator was saying, I've found Mandrake to be MORE trustworthy than any version of Windows for everyday use. I run for weeks at a time without even a reboot and crashes are a distant memory. All the Windoze worm/virus stuff lately has just made me more certain that Linux is a more trustworthy system (and kept me real busy at work). I've moved all my home and business finacial records into Linux, family photo files, mp3s, etc, etc. So my confidence in Linux now is pretty high. That said, I still have a small partition with a basic Win98 install on it as an emergency backup system. But then, I also do on my Win2000Pro machine at work. When it comes to computers, ya gotta have backups for EVERYTHING. The upgrade vs reinstall situation does suck. But it does for Windoze too. I never upgrade Windoze - I always do a fresh install, for pretty much the same kinda reasons people here do with Mandrake. Even so, no doubt Mandrake should work on the whole upgrade thing. At least for minor point upgrades it should work reliably.

Yeah, mine is a Digital Elph, I forgot to mention that. In fact, my S100 was the original Digital Elph. There's been several updates since, but they're all basically the same. The newest ones are like 4 megapixel now. Of all the gadgets I've had, the S100 is one of the best.

I just bought a Asus A7N8X motherboard (not the Deluxe version, Nforce 2-based) and AMD Barton 2500, originally to upgrade my Win2000Pro workstation at work. Plans change sometimes though, and now I'm thinking of using it to upgrade my very trusty but slightly rusty old AMD800/Asus box at home. Yeah, I still use 8.2 and likely will 'til the 2.6 kernel is out. Anyway, after Googling around and searching the MDK compatibility list, etc, etc, I haven't found a definitive answer to whether or not this Asus board will work with 8.2 and the 2.4.18 kernel. I use Win4Lin, and upgrading the kernel to a later version is still possible, but it does complicate things some. I did find some old posts by users who *apparently* were using this combo. Problems seem to be limited to the onboard lan and sound. No problem there, I was gonna diable both in the bios and use my old PCI cards anyway. Has anyone tried this or know anything else about it? It would be really nice if I could just drop it in and go...

Hey, everybody lighten up a little. Mandrake needs to make a buck - so let 'em. Usually free stuff at least requires sending in a coupon or answering a stupid questionare. This should be much less annoying. They say the ads can be removed, they won't be in paid copies, and they're not saying they won't release the downloads 'til after the boxed copies are out - none of that kind of stuff. So they haven't fscked things up bigtime yet. They just want (need) to make a buck so they can continue to offer a kick-ass distro for FREE to everyone, as soon as it's ready. What's so bad about that? Do the ads suck? Hell yes they will. Am I the least bit upset about it? Hell no. Way better than no more Mandrake. Or going back to Winshaft and paying for almost everything...over and over...remember? BUT...if they want to acutally SELL more copies, they really need to get the MandrakeStore straigtened out, work on customer service and support, and squash bugs better before each new release. Then they'd have something that customers would be happy with, tell others about, and sell enough copies that maybe this kinda crap wouldn't be necessary to stay afloat.

Basically, I'll go along with try it and then use what you like. But I'd like to add a little something to this. The 1st distro I tried was Redhat 6.3, and it was ok but just couldn't do everything I needed at the time, too much hardware that wouldn't go. Later, I tried Mandrake 8.0 and that got me pretty close to fully functional, enough to leave it on permanently in a dual-boot. 8.2 was the one that really got things going. It got me out of having to dual boot and was so good I still use it. I've played around a little with other distros in the meantime just to see if something else would be worth a switch, but I'll probably quit wasting time experimenting and stay with Mandrake because Mandrake really is pretty fast, it's stable, has lots of software available - but most of all because Mandrake has urpmi. Not many people using other distros know about Mandrake's urpmi. Even many Mandrake users don't really realize what a terrific tool it is. Everything else can be debated endlessly, but urpmi is the one thing that makes Mandrake the best, at least of all the rpm-based distros. Once you get all your ftp mirrors setup, you can just type: # urpmi -v mutt (or whatever package) and off it goes. Downloads all the necessary packages to satisfy any dependencies (if available on the discs or the mirrors you have setup) and installs everything easy as pie. It's not perfect but it works pretty well. RedHat has nothing like it. # rpm -Uvh <package> is not the same thing. Suse's YAST is ok but can't quite compare. Other than that, all the kernel mods RedHat does kinda drive me nuts...and I just don't see any advantage to other distros worth getting excited about. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

There is now a new README file which should be a little more helpful. And remember, there are config files for both mutt and slrn. Anyone who tries these out, as bvc says, please post your comments or questions here. These setup files were done in a way that should make them mostly self-explanitory and easy for new users get up and running with mutt and/or slrn with quite a few features enabled for a minimum of hassle. I'd like to hear all comments. If you think these config files suck large, ok I'm a big boy, I can take it. If you think they're great, don't tell me just send money! ':D' If anyone who tries these and would like to try writing up something for Tips 'n Tricks, feel free. It would probably be better to have that written from the perspective of a new mutt/slrn user who was trying to do setup for the 1st time. Thanks to bvc and anon for getting this stuff on the server. Hope they'll help someone get going.

"Running the same mc version of yours. MC got a cool interface here, a pretty one, sure you can imagine, working like a charm." Thanks, I like the colors pretty well on dark backgrounds. I should work up another version for light ones. "...using Eterm instead aterm." You really ought to try aterm. Does everything eterm does on far less (as in almost none) system resources. Check it out: http://aterm.sourceforge.net/ "...see how to change (which session of the command line?) the blue color in the left window under directory tree, cause only the invisible files above it get a complete tranparent effect?!? " Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean...do you have some solid blue background area lower left side? If you do have a solid color area, maybe you have a typo in your menu line? If not, opening it in an aterm with the exact string I posted and see what happens. With that menu line, I have 100% transparency except for red error boxes, but that's on purpose.

So you want something small and rugged, eh? Well, I've got a Canon PowerShot S100 I've used for over 3 years and nearly 20,000 (!!!) photos. It's dented, scratched, and most of the markings have worn off. It's been used in 110F heat and -10F cold, but it still works perfectly. You'd probably have the same luck with one of the newer versions since they're almost identical except for the pixel count. The Canon is very small, has a metal case (glad of that) and uses CompactFlash cards. My old S100 is just 2 megapixel, but it really does take nice photos, better than my brother's $550 Olympus or a couple of Kodaks I had. I first realized just how cool it was when right after I got it we went to San Diego, rented bikes and pedaled all over Coronado Island with it stuffed in my pocket out of the way, no hassle to carry along. Very handy little thing. You can even get an underwater case for them. FWIW I'll never buy a camera that uses anything but CF cards. They're plenty small enough for even something like a PowerShot, but far more durable than SmartMedia cards, friggin' MemorySticks, etc. Rugged little pieces of plastic with no exposed contacts, so they're tough enough you can stuff 'em in your pocket, walk on 'em, whatever, then stick 'em in and they'll work. I've used them for probably 40-50,000 photos, poppin' 'em out of the camera into a card reader every day and never had one fail. I still have the 1st 2MB CF card I ever bought. Always as cheap or cheaper than other types of memory, too.

Hey, no problem, just glad to help. Jeez, I've sure gotten plenty of help here, so time to give back a little when I can. BTW, using that setup even the pull-down menus come up transparent - pretty cool...

I use Midnight Commander in transparent mode, but it's a little tricky. First, not all MC rpms are compiled to support transparency, so make sure you use one that does. I use this one: mc-4.6.0-1.i386.rpm Kind of a generic rpm I got someplace. I can't remember for sure now, but probably from here: http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/ Dependencies aren't much of a problem with MC, so that rpm will probably work with almost any rpm-based version of Linux. After you install, do $ man mc and scroll to the "Colors" section, it's towards the end. Do some reading, it will tell you more there than I can here. Since MC is a text app it will run fine without X at all, even in color, but to get transparency you'll need to start MC in a variety of Xterm that supports transparency. I like aterm much better than anything else. MC will need a rather long initiation string that opens a terminal with MC in it with the correct options, sets your colors and the background to default (transparent). I run Fluxbox, so I wrote this line in my Flux menu entry for MC: [exec] (Midnight Commander) {aterm -fg 15 -bg 8 -cr 6 -pr 1 -tr +sb -sh 60 -geometry 120x40-10-25 -e mc -C base_color= normal=lightgray,default:errors=yellow,red:reverse=lightgray,default,red:gauge=b lue:normal=cyan,default:selected=yellow, default:marked=lightgray,default:markselect=white,default:input=lightgray,blue:d normal=lightgray,default:dfocus=yellow,d efault:dhotnormal=white,default:dhotfocus=brightred,default:menu=green,default:m enusel=brightgreen,default:menuhot=cyan, default:menuhotsel=brightcyan,default:helpnormal=lightgray,default:helpitalic=wh ite,default:helplink=green,default:helps link=brightgreen,default:directory=green,default:executable=red,default:link=bri ghtblue,default:stalelink=blue,default:d evice=brown,default:special=magenta,default:core=brightred,default} A little lengthy, like I said. If you don't use Flux, no problem this can still be used from a KDE icon or whatever with some editing of the Flux menu-related stuff. Gives you the idea anyway. These are of course my color choices, so adjust to suit if you use that line. Midnight Commander just rocks. Like emacs, it'll do way more than you'll ever need or have time to learn. All kinds of stuff you might not think it would, from email and usenet (never tried that) to of course, just about any kind of file manipulation you'll ever think of. The manual has all kinds of stuff in there. Very fast and rock-stable. It has never crashed for me, not a burp. Once you get used to it those GUI Windoze-wannabe style file managers are weak. And in a transparent window, it just looks great! Totally freaks Windoze lusers...

Midnight Commander is #1. I ya gotta have a Windoze-style GUI manager, XFE or Endeavour2.

Thanks for suggestions, but... Cannonfodder: Been there, done that, also du, etc. I used df -H to show partition usage in my original post. Couldn't find anything unusual except a full /. LiquidZoo: Nope. Steve Scrimpshire: Haven't done that, but I wanna try and get it back to Level 1 and try some other stuff before I do anything requiring a reboot. Most likely explanation I've found so far is whatever bits are set (or whatever) in the file system that keeps track of usage is set wrong, giving false fill info. It probably happened when fsck had to try and fix a buch of file errors after that fscked up attempt at installing security updates and I just didn't notice the full / 'til Saturday. I had some major file system errors after that friggin' update attempt, and fsck did a lot of repairs. Can't even begin to remember what they were now, I just kept typing "y" when it asked to do something. At the time, I was having a "kernel panic" of my own and in no position to argue with it anyway. I was amazed I got a running system again, though it took some more work to put things back, it didn't just "heal" itself and run normally. Some programs (like Xfree86) had to be reinstalled, etc. Anyway, if that is the problem and fsck can't find and correct the errors again, this time I'm really fscked. Could be worse - I do have full backups of all partitions on the hdd drive, so even worst case I'm not gonna lose anything but a lot of time. Normally, I'd quit screwin' around, reload and be done with it, but I'm not kidding when I say this is no simple installation...it'll take quite a while to re-create. Besides, I'm learning things just by trying to fix it, things that could *really* be handy later. I'll be checking into all these other possibilities further before I try repair with fsck. Just buried with work and don't have much time right now. I want to work on this when I've got a few hours to devote to it so I don't hose a fixable system gettin' in too much of a hurry. I'm a little slow ya know...gotta have thinkin' time...

I've heard about the "invisible" file thing before, where a file manager or even "find" function run in a terminal won't show anything. The box is now not quite crashed, 'cause I can't really do anything on it, but I can still access the shared files from another Linux box. But basically it's down, a very sick puppy. This weekend I'll have more time to fool with it, and before I give up and reinstall I'm gonna try to at least get it back up in Level 1 before I reboot it. I hear that from there sometimes you can get to this stuff and do some good. Basically, I don't think it's any of these things, or a hardware problem. I think it's quit now because the logfiles have used up the last few free bits on /, but I don't think the logs are the cause of the full partition to start with. Before it quit I did quite a bit of fooling around and the partition info is ok, so I didn't lose that, and the HD passed all tests. In fact, everything seemed just peachy except if you looked at the space on /. As far as I can tell my / file system just got trashed somehow. Probably has something to do with some serious file system and Xfree86 problems I had a couple of weeks ago when I tried to install some security updates and it went very wrong. But I'm not certain that was when it barfed, it's just all I can think of, and I just happened to notice it was 100% full Saturday. You can bet your ass I'll investigate all possibilities before a format and reinstall. Probably the only hope of a fix is fsck...but thanks for the suggestions...

I have all the Mutt and slrn config files ready to upload. Let me know what's next. This includes a complete set of config files for both and even a couple of nice extra macros I found for slrn. The color setup files are ready as is for transparency with dark backgrounds as most lettering is light. Setup of aliases is up to the user 'cause I just don't fool with 'em. Instead, I use and recommend abook. There's plenty of comments in the config files to explain things, so most stuff can be figured out by just reading the files and changing any entries as needed for the user's particular preferences and setup. Just edit and copy the files to the proper places (listed at the top of each file) be sure to have sendmail installed and you should have Mutt or slrn pretty well configured and ready to go. If Mutt or slrn won't go starting it from a menu or icon, try starting it from a console and see what error messages you get. Mutt in particular is very good about telling you where problems are. Endless tweaks are possible if you don't like things the way they are. Just don't blame me if some hook or something you want is missing...:-) Here's some links that are handy: Mutt: http://www.ucolick.org/~lharden/learnmutt.html http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/mutt/ http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/mutt/manual.html http://support.ossifrage.net/plaintext/abook.txt SLRN: http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/FIRST_STEPS http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/howtos/slrn.html http://www.geocities.com/tsca.geo/slang/ext_header.txt BTW, if anyone has a clue what I should do about my full / partition problem I'm ready to listen to anything. I posted about it in some detail in hardware. This seems to be a problem that happens now and then that nobody has an answer to.

My / partition has suddenly decided that instead of something like 27% full, it's 100% full. I noticed this after I used DiskDrake to shrink the /mnt/win_data partition to give more to /data2 on the /dev/hdd drive. Believe me, I did absolutely nothing to any of the /dev/hda partitions *especially* / - I'm not nuts...anyway, that was a few days ago, and may not be related - or could and I didn't notice before 'cause everything's running fine. [tim@tim tim]$ df -H Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda5 818MB 776MB 147kB 100% / /dev/hdb1 98GB 21GB 72GB 23% /data1 none 395MB 0 395MB 0% /dev/shm /dev/hda9 10GB 3.1GB 6.5GB 32% /home /dev/hda1 2.0GB 1.1GB 986MB 51% /mnt/win_c /dev/hda7 4.1GB 1.6GB 2.3GB 40% /usr /dev/hda8 2.1GB 488MB 1.4GB 25% /var /dev/sda1 10MB 3.3MB 7.1MB 32% /mnt/sda1 /dev/hdd5 56GB 17GB 35GB 33% /data2 /dev/hdd2 5.0GB 365MB 4.6GB 8% /win_data Right now, everything is working just fine, but this is a real problem, since it means a kernel panic is only a reboot away. This has happened to me twice before, once with ext2 and once using ReiserFS. / is ext3 now. Previously, the only solution I found was reformat and reinstall. There don't seem to be anything like log files that went nuts and grew extremely large, everything seems normal. So this must be a file system error, but would running fsck do any good? Since it's the / partition I can't unmount it to try repair unless I shut down and run fsck from rescue mode, which of course means I'm screwed if fsck (or something else?) can't repair the file system. At least right now I'm still up and running. Any ideas? Google has been little help. I'd like to have a better idea of what I can do before I try anything I'm sorry for later.

Looks like it wants to use sendmail and can't find masqmail. The symlink isn't doing it for you, for whatever reason. In mine, /usr/sbin/sendmail is the executable, there is no /usr/bin/masqmail. Just uninstall masqmail and install sendmail, then I betcha it goes. Never heard of masqmail anyway... It may take 2-3 days for me get to those files. I sprouted another problem. My / partition has suddenly decided it's not 27% but 100% full and I've gotta try to find a fix or reinstall so I can reformat /. Right now a kernel panic is a sure thing if I have to reboot. I may be off-line for a bit. Promise I'll post them pretty soon...sooner if find a fix. Gone to see if I can Google my way outta this...

I'll just post again in this thread when they're ready. Shouldn't be long - I might even get a chance to do it tonight or tomorrow.

Sure, I got no problem with that. They're much improved over what I sent you long ago. Sven puts *lotsa* stuff in his. I've tried to trim them down without cutting useability or flexibility, along with adding a bit of my own stuff and a general cleanup to make everything more readable and clearer. There's still things I left in even though it's commented out, just for examples or explanation. I think I've got them to the point now they should be ok for beginners, both to use everyday and to learn more about Mutt. Anyway, yeah, I could easily work up some "generic" versions (my personal stuff edited) of my Mutt and slrn config files that you could put up. If possible, they should be posted with a little explanation and maybe a few links to more info.

I like clean and simple, so I use a stripped-down Fluxbox. No slit, no dockapps, no idesk icons, etc. Anything I need is in the menu. I tried messing around with the tabs, but nah, I'll pass. I also use Ratpoison occasionally and really, the more I use it the more I like it. Mouseless is better, and rock-solid. But it's hard to resist the quick bug-free operation combined with clean good looks I get with Flux. I have a bunch of nice clean-looking custom themes, but I usually have Xplanet running (bare) for the background. Ok, ok, so I can't resist a touch of eye-candy...it still makes a *very* quick desktop, even on my old Athlon800...

Mutt setup can be a strain on the brain, but it's worth it. If anyone wants some help with Mutt let me know. I've been using it a while now and have the basics fairly well figured out or can tell you where to get help if a question gets beyond me and the manual doesn't do it. The "help" I gave bvc was just sending him some quickly (and badly) hacked copies of Sven Guckes' (cranky Mutt guru) setup files. That was back when I'd just started using Mutt. Since then, I've done a lot of tweaking. I think I have a much more pleasant color setup now, especially for w/transparency, but they're easy to change if you think mine suck. (Sven *really* liked colors - I think he got his color set from a peacock...) The Mutt setup files I'm using now are still based on Sven's original files, but are smaller and simpler. I've cleaned out a lot of stuff, straighted things up for readablilty and added some comments. Still got a couple of minor issues I haven't had time to worry about, but they're regarding my particular preferences. These setup files should be very usable for most people. I'd be glad to send them to anyone wanting to try Mutt. It really is terrific and will break your GUI dependencies. Anyone wanting to try slrn (Mutt's newsreader cousin) can contact me also. Like Mutt, it'll do some cool stuff, like for instance put your uptime in headers to whizzoff Windoze lusers - almost anything is possible with some effort. I've got slrn setup with a transparent color scheme like Mutt, with similar colors for consistency, as I do Midnight Commander.

Motts wrote: "If you are completely STEALTH from the internet then you are not vulnerable at all. Sleep easy man!" Unfortunately, that's not true. The RIAA may not be able to scan your computer *directly*, but since your shared files are out there for the picking, the RIAA easily knows what you're making available same as anyone else. The real problem for them is finding out who you are. That's where the ISP comes in. You may be full stealth, but an IP address for you is still available, broadcast to the world, even if you get a dynamically assigned one. File sharing is impossible without an IP. Now, if you're full stealth then true, the RIAA has no way of scanning your computer for info about who you are, but your ISP knows who they have given an IP address. That's why the court decision forcing ISPs to give that info to the RIAA was so important. It's the only easy way for the RIAA to find you. So stay awake - unless you're very sure your ISP won't give you up.