Jump to content

coverup

Members
  • Posts

    1277
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by coverup

  1. You can calm down now. Mandriva Spring (aka 2007.1) will have a public non-free repo with drivers and Java and possibly something else. Plus when I tried RC1 KDE live CD and launched rpmdrake for the first time It configured ftp servers almost automatically including non-free. I just had to choose from the servers list.

    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.

  2. I was browsing a magazine stand this afternoon, and my eye caught this headline on one of the DVDs:

    Linux hits back at Vista. Try out Metisse, the new 3D window manager for Linux that competes with Vista's Aero Glass. Included as a LiveCD based on Mandriva One 2007.

     

    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 :lol2: .... 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]

  3. 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.

  4. When placing commands in .xinitrc use an ampersand at the end of each command except the last one to enable the script to coontinue until all commands are completed.

    Example:

    rxvt -geometry 108x44+0+0 &

    exec startkde

    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

  5. Anotehr place: Daemons / services are usually started from /etc/init.d/ via the System V init system. You can define for which run levels this should be done, so level 3 and 5 in your case.

     

    Yet another place: .bash_profile (per user) or /etc/profile (all users) after their logon has been completed.

    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.

  6. Sorry coverup but your post was while I was editing my post. I was not suggesting doing reinstalls. Didn't you notice that most of what I wrote was contained in inverted commas ? It is a quote from an earlier time.

    Your Point about MCC....... is not correct I have used the MCC for 2 1/2 years to select Grub and have never had MCC overide my Grub selection with Lilo.

    With respect, if you have had such trouble then you must have been doing something incorrectly.

     

    Cheers. John

    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 Austflagbunting.jpg

  7. 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.

  8. Software-wise I love kino for the DV files, it will do anything you want....

     

    Another one to consider is avidemux...

    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?

  9. 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.

  10. doesnt the tips here work?

     

    ciao!

    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...

  11. 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...

  12. 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.

  13. Thanks for all the input ............ from what I have been reading I will not join the club, but I might buy the full powerpack at a later stage simply becasue it is supporting the guys that put in tons of hours of work and I will gladly rather pay the $50 for Mandriva than the $200 for Windows XP.

    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.

  14. 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.

  15. A friend of mine has a HP laptop which uses the same card controller (I believe the same controller chip is used for both the cardbus controller and the card reader) and he never managed to make it work (he's using Gentoo). I cannot say for sure though if it can work or not, because I have stopped using any HP/Compaq hardware since ages.

    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.

×
×
  • Create New...