mixing slink and potato?
Hi, I have a machine running slink, but I need some packages only available on potato. Is it possible to install those packages (preferably with dselect or apt-get) without updating the whole system to potato? As soon as I included the unstable directories in apt, dselect forced me to update the whole thing. Is there a way to prevent that? Stefan.
eth0 not working on remote machine (outch!)
Hello everyone, I'm in deep trouble: Yesterday, I updated my remote server, which is sitting in Belgium (I'm in NJ,USA), using dselect. My box is a P100 running potato. I then rebooted, and nothing came up! This morning I called someone over there, who told me the machine boots, but says eth0 is not working. My friend in Belgium knows almost nothing about Linux, so I can't ask him to fix this, and I can't do anything, since I can't even telnet the thing. So I have several questions: - Is anyone aware of problems with network cards introduced by new updates in potato (I didn't really bother to check while the update was being made, but I think it updated the kernel). And how to fix those... - I figure the only solution (besides taking the plane to Belgium) would be to send a disk to my friend, with a working kernel, and a telnetd, and ask him to boot the floppy, and then try fixing the thing from here. Does anyone know how I can find/make such a floppy? - Any other solutions you can think of? Thanks in advance, Stefan.
Printer Okidata OL400e config?
Hi, I have a Debian (slink) system connected (parallel port) to an Okidata OL400e printer, and of course, I don't have the manuals of the printer. I've been unsuccessful until now to find documentation on how to configure it, and my random trials have failed. Could anyone give me a hint on how to do this, or point me to some ducumentation? Thanks a lot, Stefan.
how to create a dummy /dev/dsp
Hi, I have slink installed on an old Pentium 75 box, WITHOUT a sound card. When I installed the system, it apparently didn't create a /dev/dsp. How do I create one that doesn't do anything? Thanks, Stefan.
What do I do with tarballs?
Hi, dselect is great, but what do I do when there is no deb package for the soft I want? I know of course how to install somethng from a tarball, my question is just: where do I do it? Where do I put the package etc. and make sure I am not messing up dpkg? Are there any conventions for that? Is there any doc that explains that? Thanks a lot, Stefan.
Partitions and install problem
Hi, When I installed hamm some time ago, I had the following problem: apparently, dselect downloads everything before installing. Having only one partition, and not too big (400Mb), at some point, it ran out of space, and I just couldn't do anything anymore. Luckily, I had some free space on the old DOS partition, which I reduced and added a new partition, and I forced dselect to download its stuff on there. It worked! I just decided to re-install a whole new slink from scratch, and since I am doing that, I might as well re-partition the HD. Now, I have about 600Mb total, and I would like to keep it all in one big partition (just because it's kinda more flexible.. I don't know how much space users are gonna need and stuff...), but I'm afraid the same problem might happen. Does anybody know if the new installer is being more clever about this, and if not, what is the right strategy. Am I being crazy or immoral wanting only one partition? most Faqs and docs I read about it say you should always make a few partitions. Is there a tool for unix fs which allows to re-partition without destroying everything (reducing a big one safely)? Thanks a lot, Stefan.
Install - which device drivers?
Hi again, Ok, I'm installing slink right now, and I'm currently in the part where you install device drivers. Now, How do you know which are the ones you need? most of them have only one short line of explaination, (one even just has a '.'), and several seem to do the same thing. Is ther eany place where I can read more about them to help me make those choices? (usually, I just pick random stuff, and it seems to work, but I don't think it's the best method) Thanks a lot, Stefan
Help! I can't even login!
Hi, I have a debian system installed on my box, and it has been working fine for the past 6 months or so. Yesterday, I decided it was time to update my packages, so I ran dselect, it downloaded about 100Mb of stuff, and started installing them. Everything went fine, until it started displaying repeatedly libncurses.so.4: no such file or dir... At that point, the whole system began to behave strangely, so I decided to reboot (bad idea!) Now, the boot stops at some point displaying that same error, and altough it shows the login prompt, it says something like unable to change tty... when I try to login. Any ideas? Stefan
