coverup

I should have mentioned the magazine. the Australian Personal Computer magazine makes a consistent effort advocating Linux. Mandriva has done itself a bad favor as far as I am concerned, and if what dexter11 says is true, it is going to repeat the mistake. Making 'nonfree' stuff available for download is not the same as putting it on a LiveCD. IMHO many people use LiveCDs as tests. If I can't get wireless working from the LiveCD, what are chances that it will work after I download and install the driver? I'd rather go with the distro which proves to work. The irony is that the laptop in question runs quite happily under Mandrake, including wireless. I was looking for an upgrade, and Mandriva scored nil on my list, compared to Ububtu and SuSE.

I was browsing a magazine stand this afternoon, and my eye caught this headline on one of the DVDs: In an hour or so I was booting off the CD, which was burnt from the ISO image included in the DVD. Well, what can I tell that you don't know? I did not even get to see what all the fuss is about .... Mandriva started OK from the second attempt; the first boot was a fiasco because for some reason it did not like the monitor connected to the laptop, and I had to disconnect it. I was presented with I bright and shiny yellow/orange GUI, the mouse was moving OK, but... the system was responding at a speed of one click per second! There was absolutely no way I could check anything, or start an application! I somehow managed to start firefox just to find that it couldn't load the welcome page. One thing really p@#$%d me off. Since ethernet was down (to disconnect the monitor I had to take the laptop off the docking station) I tried to configure the wireless connection. Guess what? I was presented with a popup message saying that I had to sign up for the Mandriva Club in order to be able to download and use the proprietary driver for my Intel Wireless 2100 card. Hold on, but Novel and Ubuntu did not request me to pay for this! I was able to configure and use WiFi off Ubuntu 6.06 and OpenSuse 10.2 Live CDs with no problem. Did they breach their deal with Intel? I doubt. I'd rather think that Mandriva uses this cheap trick to squeeze another few bucks from unsuspecting noobies. OpenSuse 10.2 Live CD was on the same DVD, and I was shocked with how pathetic Mandriva One was compared to OpenSuse. One may or may not like Suse, but from the moment I put the DVD into the tray, everything worked as it should, including Internet, wireless, the external monitor was recognised, and OpenOffice was usable from the very first second. [moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

Waht do you mean saying "won't come back alive"? What happened when you press Ctrl+Alt+F2? This should take you to console 2, you should be able to login from there and cleanly shutdown/restart the system. Also, you should be able to browse and edit config files from the console. Try to disable the screensaver alltogether, by editing the file /home/username/.kde/share/config/kdesktoprc. Nano or pico are the best for this kind of job, but if you are brave enough, you could use vi just as well. Anyway, login to the console, open the file kdesktoprc with the editor of your choice, locate the section [screenSaver], ane disable the screensaver by setting Enabled=false . Save, exit the editor, reboot/restart KDE.

IMHO, .xinitrc is not always a right place to put commands. As the name suggests, this file is for X init stuff - like in the example above. If the commands you want to use are not related to X (e.g., networking, printing, starting/stopping daemons, mounting/remounting of partitions), place them in rc.local

Just a shot.... /usr/lib/gnome-settings-deamon?

I concur with the above. Commands/scripts which you want to run after all init scripts have finished and before X starts must be put in /etc/rc.local which is symlinked to /etc/rc.d/rc.local: $ head /etc/rc.d/rc.local #!/bin/sh # # This script will be executed *after* all the other init scripts. # You can put your own initialization stuff in here if you don't # want to do the full Sys V style init stuff.

Sorry, mate, no hard feelings. I agree, MCC will update whatever bootloader was initially used... I assumed Clitheroe was most likely using lilo for his initial Mandriva install, since lilo used to be the default bootloader for Mandrake/driva. However, I maintain my point that if things can be fixed easy way, that's the way to go. A direct non-GUI solution is often more transparent and educational than resorting to `heavy artillery' like MCC. Afterall, MCC is a tool which you only find on a Mandrake/driva system, and it is only a frontend to a script editor - not always a good one, let's admit. Not much to learn from it IMHO. Happy Australia Day

On the bootloader issue... You need only one of them, lilo or GRUB - whichever you like. Linux is a little trickeir to dualboot then Windows. It's not a big deal but because one may want to share swap, boot directory, home partition, etc., there is a variety of options for dualboot setup. Therefore, one way or another you end up editing bootloader config files by hand. You should always have a LiveCD or a resque disk handy in case you mess up something, and the computer no longer boots - this happened to me a month ago :D Anyway back to the problem... Since you use GRUB and, I presume, can boot both Ubuntu and Mandriva from it, keep it that way :D Only thing you have to do is edit GRUB's menu.lst file. If you can access Ubuntu's boot partition from Mandriva, then you can do it from Mandriva. If you feel unsafe/uncomfortable doing so, boot into Ubuntu and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst from there. Locate the section corresponding to Mandriva and edit the line starting with kernel. You need to add options to this line, as follows kernel blah blah append= <options you want to try> Options to try acpi=on or acpi=off - turns ACPI on|off, Mandriva uses by default acpi=ht, don't know what this option means noapic nolapic - Try one of these options or both. Cutting long story short, one of these options addresses inconsistencies in the power managment as described in Gowator's post. I insist, you have to edit this line by hand, DO NOT USE Mandrake Control Center. If you do, it will replace GRUB with lilo (the default bootloader in Mandriva) in the MBR (Master boot record) from which your PC loads. Since you want to keep GRUB, forget about using MCC for this kind of tasks - unless you want reinstall one or both OSes. With my respect AussieJohn, All is needed is just add a couple of options into one of the lines. One of the convenience of Linux is that all problems can be solved without reinstalling the OS.

emmanuel_uk, I am looking forward to reading about your experience. I'd like to find some sort of idiot's guide to capturing video to DVD. I just want a simple list of actions/options to select to get a DVD. I don't care (at this stage) about wealth of possibilities and options the program/script xyz offers to a power user - I have no intension to become one :D Using Kino, I managed to capture to a dv file, and then was able to convert it into an ogg audio (mp2 or mp3 did not work, dunno why) and mpeg video with no sound. Even though I selected option 8 - DVD, I ended up with a silent mpeg. How do I get a DVD out of this mess?

Happy New Year, John :D I just recently looked into a similar task except for I am using my camcorder as the AV->DV interface between the VCR and the PC. I have recently replaced my Mandriva 2005LE partition with Ubuntu, so my experience is based on Ubuntu 6.06. The version of Kino which comes with Ubuntu 6.06 captures the camcorder DV output pretty well, a lot better than the one I had on the 2005LE PC. You can also do some simple editing and DVD authoring with Kino.

md5sum /dev/cdrom gives me input/uoutput error. I guess the DVD is dead.

I am lost. The caveat specificly instructs that the command $ md5sum /dev/cdrom should not be used :huh: Instead one should use some info about the iso (the length of a particular ISO image). But I did not burn the DVD (I bought it), how do i know the length of the ISO? Now, even if I did know it, where can I find the correct md5 sum to compare with? Sorry if it all sounds like a bunch of nonsense, I just want to get two numbers and compare them in a simplest possible way...

I am trying to install Mandriva Free 2007 from a DVD which came with one of the magazines (Linux Format IIRC). It gives an error during install and aborts, alt+F4 shows some media errors. How can I check whether the DVD is damaged/defective? There is a file called MD5SUM in i586 directory, but it is empty...

Post your question to the Linux-on-Thinkpad mail list http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/.../linux-thinkpad . Just guessing, old Mandrake came with a special kernel module for thinkpads, maybe you need to load this module first?

You need only one of those services. They all work pretty much the same - monitor the CPU load and adjust the CPU frequency accordingly. Try installing one of them using urpmi.

check if services such as spudyn, powernowd or cpufreq are enabled. They are needed for CPU thottling/speedstepping. Otherwise, the CPU runs at the highest frequency and draws power even if the OS does not need it.

I used to buy powerpacks from EverythingLinux.com and Linux Systems Labs. They don't offer Mandriva official products anymore, since they cannot source them in Australia. I suspect this has something to do with the Mandriva business model which looks to me like "buy club membership, or else...".

Make sure speed stepping / frequency throttling modules and daemons such as speedstep-centrino, powernowd, cpufreqd or similoar, are loaded and running. If that's not done, the kernel will run the CPU at full speed all time, even if the CPU is not loaded. This will draw a lot of power, and turn the laptop hot.

It will include a month or two of free support and club membership anyway. It should be enough for you to make up your mind.

Here is a typical example of a half cooked burger Mandriva style - Mandriva Online service which meant to be one of the benefits enjoyed by club members does not work with 2007: http://forum.club.mandriva.com/viewtopic.p...9915052e9af9bab

What does DFP-0 stand for? Is it an nvidia specific option?. I have a laptop with a ATI card and a different resolution LCD monitor connected via DVI port on the port replicator. Tried to get them working simultaneously, but it never worked

I am not trying to be smart but maybe you should take a look at the computer bookshelf in a local bookstore? Most likely, you will find a book which will instruct you on the step by step process. And of course, google is your friend as well.

Don't know about that... I used to buy powerpacks in the past, and they did not include support for either of those you mentioned.

If FREE works for you, why would you need Powerpack? I believe, all free MDV applications shipped with PP are available from rpm repositories and can be added to FREE installation using urpmi. PP includes some nonfree stuff such as commercial drivers patched by Mandriva + short term support + Club membership. I found the last two (especially support) of no use. Hence there is no reason for spending money on the PP.

Try putting a card into the reader and run harddrake or reboot with the card inserted. See if harddrake recognizes the hew file storage device.