My first weekend with Linux

UberBlue · Feb 27, 2005

Mandrake 10 to be specific. My OS experience up to this point has been entirely Windows and I've never used a command line with the exception of ipconfig.

Successes:

1. Managed to install nVidia's unified nForce drivers. Only took me an hour to figure out the syntax for the sh command.

Failures:

1. Ati's unified drivers. OpenGL crawls.

2. ndiswrapper. Damn you Linksys and your non-Linux ways. I eventually gave up on wireless. Yay for the crawlspace to pull wires.

3. Rpmdrake 10.0. After software is installed, where the hell do I find it? I still can't find Wine.

4. How do I log on as Root? It's simple stuff like this I'm having problems with. Obviously su, but how do I log onto a session AS root.

5.I can't access an NTFS partition. I don't care about writing to, only reading. Lots of guides on the net, but I can't figure out how to make them applicable to my situation. I though Mandrake 10 supported ntfs reading nativly.

6. Don't change the home directory to “/”. I wound up reinstalling because KDE really didn't like what I had done, and I had no clue how to fix it.

I blame all of this on being extremely uncomfortable with the command line. I have no idea what I'm doing. Lots of places to find out what a command does, but not the syntax for use; I.E. a dictionary gives you the meaning of a word but not how to group words into properly structured sentences.

I'm not giving up. Any suggestions?

Please Obi-Wan. You're our last hope.

electrorcamd · Feb 27, 2005

What problems were you having with ndiswrapper? I think Mandrake 10 included version 0.4, so if you installed another version, it wouldn't work.
For logging into a session as root, when you do the login type root for the name, and then the password when it asks. It is just like a normal user. Mandrake didn't block it at all for me.
To use Wine, go to a terminal, type

Code:

wine /dir/progname

replacing /dir/progname with the directory for the command and the command name.

I'm not really sure on the rest. Good luck though.

Gnufsh · Feb 28, 2005

As for 4, you shouldn't log as root. Just su if you need to be root. I assume Mandrake doesn't let you log into a graphical session as root, because it is generally thought to be a bad idea.

gigahertz · Feb 28, 2005

for ndiswrapper...

download the windows driver for your card
create a dir so you dont get lost

cd /home/username
mkdir wlan
unzip windriver.exe -d /home/user/wlan
cd /home/user/wlan
ndisrwapper -i filename.inf
modprobe ndiswrapper
echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules-2.6.XXXXXXXXX

iwlist wlan0 scan

if all is good and your card works

then

iwconfig wlan0 essid youressidhere key yourkeyhere

NsOmNiA91130 · Feb 28, 2005

I'd HIGHLY reccomend reading a book on Linux. I'm reading Linux Toys, and it has some cool projects in there, from a simple temperature monitor, to making an entire ISP in your home.

For you, I reccomend Knoppix Hacks, which comes with a Knoppix Live CD, and it's got all sorts of cool crap inside...

Ah...I love reading these books at school...everyone looks at me wierd

Midnight Dream · Feb 28, 2005

Welcome to the wonderful (and sometimes confusing) world of Linux. You are already doing better then the majority of the computer world, by at least attempting it. Mandrake is a good place to start with, though I would of said Fedora Core 3. As for a couple of your issues.

As Gnufsh said, you should NEVER log in a root. ALWAYS use the su command, and do it via a terminal, if you need to do something with root access. Another thing, is are you mounting the NTFS partition? This can be done via the root command, in this way:

Code:

mkdir /mnt/windows
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -r -o umask=0222

What this does, is it makes a folder named windows in the /mnt folder (though you could put it anywhere, I usually will mount mine in my home dir, but its also my MP3 collection). Then, you run the mount command, which mounts the partition. Say that your NTFS is on harddrive 2, partition 3. You would then do a mount /dev/hdb3. Ignore the rest of the details about it right now, if your just trying to get a ntfs mounted. If you want more information, you can just do a 'man mount'

For installed software, if it does not put itself into the application menu (sometimes requires a restart for me, for it to show up), you can usually just type it into the terminal. For wine, as mentioned before, you would just type in wine, and it will give details on the syntax, or a way to find the syntax.

UberBlue · Feb 28, 2005

electrorcamd said:
What problems were you having with ndiswrapper? I think Mandrake 10 included version 0.4, so if you installed another version, it wouldn't work.
For logging into a session as root, when you do the login type root for the name, and then the password when it asks. It is just like a normal user. Mandrake didn't block it at all for me.
To use Wine, go to a terminal, type

Code:

wine /dir/progname

replacing /dir/progname with the directory for the command and the command name.

I'm not really sure on the rest. Good luck though.

Mandrake does include ndiswrapper v0.4, but v 1.0 was recommended for my card. Obviously the earlier version needed to be uninstalled. Here's where my root frustrations come into play. I needed to edit edit /lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/modules.dep to remove a couple of line referencing the old version. I don't know how to edit this file from Konsole, and editing in a text editor wouldn't let me save because I didn't have root. For me a dead end.

But ndiswrapper is moot because I'm hardwired now (this all started as an experiment Saturday morning. I quickly became obsessed Linux).

Midnight Dream said:
Another thing, is are you mounting the NTFS partition? This can be done via the root command, in this way:

Code:

mkdir /mnt/windows mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -r -o umask=0222

What this does, is it makes a folder named windows in the /mnt folder (though you could put it anywhere, I usually will mount mine in my home dir, but its also my MP3 collection). Then, you run the mount command, which mounts the partition. Say that your NTFS is on hard drive 2, partition 3. You would then do a mount /dev/hdb3. Ignore the rest of the details about it right now, if your just trying to get a ntfs mounted. If you want more information, you can just do a 'man mount'

Tried it. Results as follows.

[ben@localhost ben]$ su -
[root@localhost root]# mkdir /mnt/windows {enter}
mkdir: cannot create directory `/mnt/windows': File exists
[root@localhost root]# mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -r -o umask=0222 {enter}
[root@localhost root]#

Still no access.

I plan on a reinstall soon. Maybe then it'll auto do its thingy with ntfs.

One more issue... Does anybody know where install disk 4 is. I've been asked for it several times. Is it something mandrake only bundles with the paid versions?

And thanks for the answers and patients.

Midnight Dream · Feb 28, 2005

Install disk 4? I have 5 with 10.0

UberBlue · Feb 28, 2005

Midnight Dream said:
Install disk 4? I have 5 with 10.0

Sweet honey covered biscuit shaped jesus!

Linuxiso.org only has the first three.

I need to start snooping around.

EDIT: Nevermind. only 1 - 3 are public domain. I don't wanna go there.

MRD · Mar 1, 2005

Did you build ntfs support into your kernel? I had to do so, it was not there by default.

schismspeak · Mar 2, 2005

Hmm, I got 4 disks(maybe five, i'll have to find them and see) when it first came out, got it free with an off the shelf computer mag.(Didn't have dsl at the time to download over 2gigs of software.) So I dunno, maybe I got the version that costs for free. :shrug:

Can't help you with the commands i'm afraid, I dropped linux for now, I do too much gaming to use it on my only pc, but I plan to put it on one when I get another pc someday.

Flamed_Chip · Mar 2, 2005

UberBlue said:
I don't know how to edit this file from Konsole, and editing in a text editor wouldn't let me save because I didn't have root. For me a dead end.

You need to use a command line based text editor such as nano or whatever your editor of choice is. You'd just need to type something like

Code:

nano -w /lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/modules.dep

Hope that helps.

My first weekend with Linux

UberBlue

Completely NUTS

electrorcamd

Member

Gnufsh

Senior Member

gigahertz

Member

NsOmNiA91130

Member

Midnight Dream

OSPF Loving Member

UberBlue

Completely NUTS

Midnight Dream

OSPF Loving Member

UberBlue

Completely NUTS

MRD

Senior Member

schismspeak

Member

Flamed_Chip

Member

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