New2MDK

I'd like to thank everyone who helped me get back to the right point. Thank you, New2MDK

As you suggested, I ran XFdrake as root. When the dialog box opened, I could see it had all the correct options selected. However, I went into each to make sure, I even ran a test which was fine. I then booted in using KDE. But when I did a system boot then it brought to a Non GUI Mandrake login, which only let me into root. As I was booting back in, I saw 2 lines which did not appear normally: root filesystem check after boot filesystem check after boot I don't know if that has anything to do with any of this. Thx for you patience, New2MDK

PIII-930Mhz 256RAM NVIDIA Geforce2 (which it detected with a linux driver) TurtleBeach santa cruz I won't re-install yet Thx New2MDK

I was able to enable all services, hower, that did not work. I'm going to do a re-install, and really I only need to save a couple of this (bookmarks in firefox and email messages). Since booting-up failsafe will allow me to get to a command prompt, I am able to get to /home. Am I able to save that particular information, and could you please help me achieve that. The reason being, having used M$ way to long, I have become paranoid with installing over another corrupt install and normally like to do a clean install. Am I able to do the above then a clean install. Thank you again, New2MDK

Thank you for your reply, I am not sure what services I disabled. I have booted into failsafe mode, and actually I was able to get to a command prompt, if thats important? I am also able to boot into WindowMaker and WVMsomething I think, both of which I am to deal with services. Would I be able to enable all serices just until I get a proper boot, or is that not recommended? If I can do that, how would I know which services I could disable? My /home is on a seperate partition from /root. Are you saying even if I would end up reinstalling, hat would be intact? Thank you very much for the help New2MDK

Hi, I finally got everything going with guarddog earlier and after I finished disabling services I wasn't using, I thought. Apparently, I stopped a service that shouldn't of been stopped I'm guessing. Anytime I try to boot, it has trouble starting the ROOT FILESYSTEM it says. Boot continues and takes me to the login screen, I sign in and the KDE GUI starts, but stops at 'intializing services configuration'. At that point I have no choice but to hard boot. Then when I tried again, it said hit Y to rescure root filesystem, which I did. Boot continued and the same thing happened. Then I used the boot disk >hit F1 for more options > rescure> repair /root filesystem and that never resolved anything. Did I screw things up bad? Can I recover without re-installing? And if I have to reinstall, is there a way to keep my bookmarks, docs I haved saved in Mandrake right now? Please help, I'll be a newbie forever if I can't get in to learn MDKlinux Thank you very much New2MDK

Heather, this is some real saddness on my part. I continued disabling serices I don't need, after I wrote you back. Apparently, I stopped an incorrect services, because now I can't get in . During boot it asks me to press Y to check and fix something in root. Then it takes me to the login prompt, and as its booting in, it stops at loading services. Please help :D I didn't even do your last suggestion, because I can't. I had to come back to the miserable side of M$ XP. I await any help, Thank you New2MDK

Sorry for being a complete nuissance, however, is the protocol tab the only thing I need to specify in. what about ZONE internet & local, PROTOCAL local and the ADVANCED tab. Again I apologize for my ignorance. I'm trying to read up on as much as I can so I don't have to rely so much. But then again, thats why they call them newbies Thanks again Gianluca aka.New2MDK

Thanks everyone for helping me understand, and thank you heather for giviing me the pointers. I have it up, just configuring it now. Thank you everyone :D New2MDK

Heather, thank you for the reply and help. I downloaded guarddog through the same like. Then through the link for the RPM repository I did this as root urpmi.addmedia simonzone http://www.simonzone.com/software/mdkrpm/ with hdlist.cz. Then I installed the package using rpmdrake within Mandrake 10.1. I ran guarddog as root and got the following: [root@gian]# guarddog Link points to "/tmp/ksocket-root" QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used Link points to "/tmp/kde-root" QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used kbuildsycoca running... Reusing existing ksycoca Launched ok, pid = 6406 ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe FOLLOWED BY: Guarddog was unable to read the file at /etc/rc.firewall as being a Guarddog firewall. This probably means that this file in not actually a Guarddog firewall. This is not a problem, but please note that if you exit Guarddog via the 'Ok' button this file will be overwritten. If you do not want this to happen, then after closing this message, immediately quit Guarddog using the 'Cancel' button. Also please be aware that the firewall settings shown may not represent the system's current firewalling configuration. (Detailed message "Error reading firewall file. This does not appear to be a Guarddog firewall file."), which came up in a different dialog box. Those messages is what prompted me to ask whether or not I needed to uninstall my default firewall first, which I believe is called "shorewall" I think? Any help you could give will certainly be appreciated. Thank you

After having read the FAQs (securtiy section), I'm still unclear of something. It described guarddog as being more of a newbie firewall who don't understand the configuration of fire walls to well. So for me it sounds like a good thing. However, I'm confused, does it work in conjunction of my default firewall, or does that need to be uninstalled? If so, could you please give me direction on how to do that? Thank you all very much,