ianw1974 Posted October 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 No, wouldn't abandon Mandriva. I just decided to use Gentoo for this machine :P Just one of them, I have at least 4 running Mandriva, so I'm still a devotee :woops: And not only that, I have my own private mirror for main/contrib/updates, so that's at least 10GB sync'd, so not abandoning that!! Well, that's at work, my home connection is slow, so I only mirrrored updates, as I still have systems at home :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 Well this sort of inconsistency is what made me abandon mandriva at least as a primary distro. The same thing in terms of working/not working with any specific hardware seems to have been happening since back in 9.0. It gave me the feeling that everything was 3 steps forwards then 2 back... and though its fun for a while it gets old real fast. Its like your hardware is all working perfectly (indeed I buy all my HW to work with linux) then you get the next version and everything just goes to £$it... the support for a specific device just dissapears... If you watch these forums for any length of time its like 20% of users with a specific chipset are having problems and then when the next release comes out these users are happy and the another 20% have problems with a different chipset that was previously working fine? This is principally why I switched to Debian because although development is a lot slower its progressive. To me its more little step forwards and very few back... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 (edited) Well this sort of inconsistency curiosity here: I have heard this a few times, but more geared at mdv kernel patches. Correct me if I am wrong, a distro is composed of many things: kernel patches, utilities, support type, community, packages etc. were you only speaking of the kernel and driver patches? are you saying in some cases some user would be well advised to try another kernel version / source? (assuming most hardware problems are with open source kernel modules) maybe for this shutdown issue trying a vanilla kernel would have been a solution? Edited October 17, 2006 by emmanuel_uk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoonma Posted October 17, 2006 Report Share Posted October 17, 2006 Can't speak for others, but using Mandrake systems (last as main working OS) since version 8.0. So I've tried it on different types of hardware mixtures, an for me it's getting better most times with very few backsteps. Otherwise I'd have switched over to Ubuntu or Gentoo. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted October 18, 2006 Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Well this sort of inconsistency curiosity here: I have heard this a few times, but more geared at mdv kernel patches. Correct me if I am wrong, a distro is composed of many things: kernel patches, utilities, support type, community, packages etc. were you only speaking of the kernel and driver patches? are you saying in some cases some user would be well advised to try another kernel version / source? (assuming most hardware problems are with open source kernel modules) maybe for this shutdown issue trying a vanilla kernel would have been a solution? Man its a long story......and a combination of a lot of stuff.... Basically I would be using one release... that release would work great on one or more machines but not at all on others. One example was the PCMIA slot on my laptop.... mandriva would lock up every time (presumably a kernel module) then I'd install the new release and 1-2 of the machines would start doing stupid things like not powering down or the NIC not working or .... Like ianw this wasn't changing hardware or even bios... the same hardware and the same bios settings would just not work.... (just look how many people are having problems with X in 2007 right now) Now some of these could be fixed by changing the bios ... perhaps but the question is why? The HW is the same .... its just mandriva have switched over doing something... Bear in mind I started on Mandrake 7 so I had a lot of this... and lots of these issues wrre actually historical bugs that they fixed. Now this is just my perception but it seems like a screwy development model. From my POV I feel it should be once a product is supported and fixed it stays that way.... Sure I don't expect 100% and some products will just time out because they are no longer available to buy or test but Im talking about stuff like major chipsets which are current... The nforce2 chipset was like this... somewhere between 10.0 and 10.1 it stopped working ... it was fixable but the bummer was no NIC therefore no internet access.... I just remembered another, a belkin USB2 card which locked up mandriva in a hard lockup.... Like the PCMCIA on the laptop it worked in Debian from day 1....(not just Debian but Debian based distro's like Xandros, Linspire and Mepis) The weird thing is it worked in one version of mandriva once.... it was the upgrade that killed it and the machine. Most of this stuff is fixable.. and its somewhat fun at some point.... but at the point where I ditched Windows completely it stopped being fun and became critical. I started off just using debian on the laptop and took the USB card out.... and then eventually I just got tired of the "ooh new version of Mandriva, lets see if it works with my HW" experience. If I thought I could have got it working and it would work with the next release as well then that would have been motivation to persist but over time I just got tired of putting mandy on then upgrading and it nor working anymore. What I found with Debian is once it works it more or less keeps working through new releases and the releases are fewer anyway's..I update more on new patches but major versions take years .... Im sure its not the only distro like this, Gentoo seems to be the same and RH excepting 1-2 hickups.... The best way I can describe it is Mandriva seem to be all over the place adding new stuff but at the same time older stuff suddenly stops working whereas some other distro's seem to go in a straighter line albeit more slowly. The consequence is less time spent messing about just getting the fundamentals working .. I guess if all the machines were the same its less hassle its just the bits that stop working seem quasi random .. even over the differences between nforce2 and nforce4 ??? I guess in summary I got to the point where I would have to dedicate a weekend to installing a new version and having it working by monday morning wheras I can install Debian in 12 minutes and be pretty certain its all working at least on a fundamental hardware level..... Sure some stuff does break ... like Xorg in testing when they switched from XFree but this is froma dist-upgrade live, not a reinstall and 90%+ of the SW will work within minutes and most anything doesn't (my recent one was cups) I just switched it to sysV printing until I can be bothered to work it out. These are more minor inconveniences compared to the NIC not working or no access to my data on USB disks etc. I started off just Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted October 18, 2006 Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 interesting just look how many people are having problems with X in 2007 right now I know My laptop video card was not detected properly, but maybe it was due to compiz. I reran drakx11, stopped compiz, it is ok now. On the desktop, well plain radeon 9250, I cannot change the resolution on the fly anymore (using the plain open source driver). Need to restart X. I am not asking for help, I will try to figure. but yes all sort of problems At the same time vast improvement in speed, drakrpm is better. Did not have much time to look deeper In 2007, ACPI support better I can suspend to RAM, but no Fn hotkeys to reboot works (you can only remeve the battery! nobodies fault, just an IBM with a bit broken acpi implementation I believe). ACPI and APM are misterious beasts ;) Ianw1974, sorry I've gone off topic here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 That's OK :P I've got gentoo installed, and it shuts down perfectly fine. It was running 2006.1 but I couldn't get the console fixed, and mc/ncurses/menuconfig were all generating letters instead of lines. I couldn't be bothered trying to figure it out, and I knew it worked with 2005.1 so I've currently got 2005.1 on my system, and updating it to the latest at present anyway. Just means more updates to install and compile, but it's working fine - at least as a console based system just now. I've yet to emerge kde/gnome/xorg, etc, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted October 18, 2006 Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Ianw1974, sorry I've gone off topic here Sorta but I think what I found is stuff like this sometimes isn't worth fixing or messing with... largely because by the time its sorted out its getitng close to time to upgrade? Indeed I seem to remember the same prob and just wait till it starts rebooting and hit the power switch... if it reboots instead of shutting down or if it just sits there hit the power buttom? The logic being you can mess about with the BIOS etc. and then find other distro's have probs (or win if you use it) and then find next upgrade it doesn't work until you put it back the way it was? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2006 Machine is going back on Mandriva 2007 as we speak. Was having too many problems trying to get Gentoo in a state that I liked and was encountering a few problems - of which I could overcome, but I'm inpatient :P I need my software raid1 config, and that causes me some problems with other distros that I want to choose and figure out how to do it. So it's back to good 'ol mandriva on this machine, and see if I can figure out why the damn thing won't shut down. I remember it does after install, so have to see what breaks it. If it breaks this time ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 19, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2006 Well, it's certainly weird. I've reinstalled, done exactly what I normally do in configuring my machine and removing the unnecessary stuff/services/etc, and it's shutting down perfectly fine now. Bizarre. Don't know why it should start working. Although saying that, I did update my BIOS as well, so maybe that did it. Who knows?!? :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 20, 2006 Well, I thought I had solved this for the better, but I haven't. First, I updated the bios, I have a 7VTXE on my gigabyte board, and updated to the latest F9 version. Whilst shutdown worked, sound did not. I had done this before years ago and the same problem occurred under Windows. F8 BIOS is also the same, and F7 is the only one that is up-to-date that the built-in soundcard works with. So, I reverted to F7 BIOS, and then the damn machine won't power off anymore. Pile of crap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoonma Posted October 20, 2006 Report Share Posted October 20, 2006 (edited) First, I updated the bios, I have a 7VTXE on my gigabyte board, and updated to the latest F9 version. Whilst shutdown worked, sound did not. I had done this before years ago and the same problem occurred under Windows. F8 BIOS is also the same, and F7 is the only one that is up-to-date that the built-in soundcard works with. This is interesting. Though nothing is really known about the very reason causing the faulty condition now, your error description would point me to some difficulty/inconsistency or imcompatibilty of components rather deep inside. Seems you have to wait for a working combo with regard to BIOS and/or Kernel (update). BTW, are there any mainboard manufacturers who support Linux (well)? There's another point which comes to my mind: AFIRC there some kernel (compile time?) option, by which you can tell it to disregard/ignore BIOS settings but instead let linux control the hardware all by itself. Perhaps this comes in handy to track down the error - if you're not fed up with it... Cheers, scoonma Edited October 20, 2006 by scoonma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted November 7, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2006 I fixed it, I had to add these parameters to the boot config: acpi=off apm=on apm=power-off and now it shuts down fine. Presuming because it's using apm for stuff now and not acpi. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mandrivauser Posted November 24, 2006 Report Share Posted November 24, 2006 can u tell me how to add those parameters to the boot config? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted November 24, 2006 Report Share Posted November 24, 2006 can u tell me how to add those parameters to the boot config? Assuming you are using grub, it is just a question of editing as root /boot/grub/menu.lst and adding it to the kernel line For a first post this a strange one :) Welcome to the board, am sure this will be echoed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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