Cfdisk + win98 + 8.4 GB = DANGER!
Okey...here is what I've learned, the hard way (no guarantees, but I'm quite sure about this now). 1) For large disks, win98 uses LBA mode. That is, the partition *must* be Win95 FAT32 LBA and not Win95 FAT32. (Otherwise, windows writes on your linux partition, which may cause severe file system damage) 2) In case you want to make logical partitions, cfdisk automatically reserves a primary partition for this, which it gives id 5, Dos extended. For large disks, THIS IS WRONG, because the LBA rule is here too: It should be id 0f: Win95 Extended LBA. (Otherwise, windows writes on your linux partition, which may cause severe file system damage) 3) There can be only one primary DOS partition and one extended (primary) DOS partition on one hard disk, or windows goes crazy complaining about corrupt partition table (might have been why win-fdisk integrity-checked my floppy...) I don't know if this is something I should report somewhere, but at least you know about it now. Spread the word. / David
Moving partitions around...
This is how my 20 GB disk looks today: hda1 Linux, /boot 24 hda2 Linux swap 133 hda3 ALinux root 8197 - the 1024 limit is here hda4 PRI DOS FAT32-LBA11217 I would like to have a FAT16 partition too, so I can run DOS 6.0. But I guess DOS 6.0 doesn't like being beyond the 1024th cylinder. I can delete my FAT32 partition temporarily (but I don't want to lose my linux fs), so if I could move the files in hda3 I could make - after two copies - the hd to look like this: hda1 Linux, /boot 24 hda2 Linux swap 133 hda3 FAT16 1000 hda4 ALinux root 8197 hda5 PRI DOS FAT32-LBA10217 I think I could use dd for copying (right?)...but what about hda3 going hda4? Will that cause much trouble? We're talking about the root file system here... Please give me the right command for copying the partition - I don't want to make a beginner's mistake here... Maybe it would be better having it look like this: hda1 Linux, /boot 24 hda2 FAT16 1000 hda3 ALinux root 8197 hda4 Linux swap 133 hda5 PRI DOS FAT32-LBA10217 Then hda3 won't change, but the swap partition will...how do I change what is the swap partition? / David
KDE GNOME (was: Making documentation easier to find)
If you are running KDE, I'm currently using Slink 2.1r4. Is KDE in potato? I don't think I have seen a package with KDE on my two CD's. I saw gnome, with big warning labels saying thinks like !!!WARNING!!! ALPHA software! This is very buggy and horrible and you don't want it. If I've got it right, there are two 'somethings': KDE and GNOME, and they work at the same level. And there are window managers, which work at another level. What are KDE and GNOME, what is the right word? Do you have to have one of them? I have no icons on my desktop, although staroffice told me it was going to install one... What I've heard, KDE is trying to look like windows, and GNOME isn't. Right? I'm a bit confused. All the info needed is already in the dpkg DB, you just have to parse /var/lib/dpkg/info/package.list (via dpkg -L package, maybe) and extract the locations of anything that profiles like a doc file. Figuring out what is a doc file, and what kind it is (Manual, FAQ, ReadMe, Examples, etc.) is the tricky part... When I read some docs in emacs, I find that the headlines are filled with ^ and ~ and perhaps _ among the chars. What reader should I use to read these docs? / David
Making documentation easier to find (was: Re: exim mail routing...)
what i mean, is, the reason newbies don't FIND the documentation is because it is an ORDEAL to do so. apprentice-guru status is required to know to search /usr/doc via zgrep AND /usr/share/doc AND info pages AND man pages AND apropos... You're quite right. Could this be a solution? A new Debian utility called documentationview or something, tree-organized like dselect. The first thing you do is to select a category. And then you get maybe an HOWTO and a FAQ from there, and a list of available programs/packages. If you select a package, available help files from within that package is shown. Manuals, getting started stuff, etc. And maybe links to configuration scripts? If you select one of them, it could start up man, info, less, mozilla/lynx, or whatever is appropriate. I haven't read the .deb specs, since I'm not much more than a newbie yet, but maybe there could be a possibility to include this therein. As I see, there are at least two problems with this: 1) Somebody has to write the program 2) All the debian package maintainers have to use it. One of the things that took the most time until I got my mail working under linux was to find out that my mail program were named exim, mutt and fetchmail. I mean - the mail HOWTO doesn't say anything at all about exim...so how was I supposed to find out? (Maybe there is something like this in debian already. How would I know?) / David
PCI 128...
Okay, so I continue to try to get my PCI128 working. I ran make menuconfig (kernel 2.2.14) and this time, i checked OSS. And then a lot of new options appeared, and I checked my old card (SB16). And after a reboot, cat /dev/sndstat started working and I could send midifiles to my synth using the SB16 midi port. However, cat /dev/sndstat only tells me about my SB16 card and nothing about the PCI 128 (which I - through lspci - found out was a 1370 and not a 1371, which was what I guessed). The PCI 128 seems not to be a part of OSS, but some kernel stuff. But if playmidi uses OSS and my PCI 128 doesn't, how do I use the PCI 128 midi port? Btw playmidi begins by telling my synth to turn itself into GM mode, which it really shouldn't. / David
Program for both win98/dos and Linux
Since I'm going to use both win98 and Linux for a while, it would be nice to have programs working in both OS's, that is, they share the same data, on perhaps a FAT16 partition. I have a program for fidonet - mypoint works under Linux' DOS-emulator. Word 97 and Staroffice/Linux seems to work well, the little I've tested so far. I don't have two mail programs who work well, any ideas? This is what I miss the most right now. The same goes for ICQ, would be nice to have a common database of message history, and maybe IRC. There is no risk of both programs doing things at the same time, as I either boot one OS or the other. / David
Re: PCI 128...
you do not need OSS. Use 1370, only If that goes for midi too, why isn't the midi working? The documentation says (about midi) 'no ioctls supported'. What does that mean? (That alsa is the only option?) / David
Re: Sound problems (PCI128)
Try lspci -v -v. It will tell you, which card you own. Look at the section name with multimedia. bash: lspci: command not found A search for lspci in dselect gave no result either... / David
Clipboard?!
Well, I read somewhere about that there was a clipboard in Linux. And it was supposed to work as this: You mark a text and it will immediately be in the clipboard. Then click the middle button and it is pasted. I have no middle button. So there is some kind of emulation of that in linux, right? I just don't haven't figured how to do it. It doesn't seem to be both at the same time, and not first-one-and-then-the-other either. In XF86Config there is something about this, some timeout value...? Does this clipboard stuff work both in X and tty/console mode? In tty mode, there is no kind of mouse arrow. I'm using debian 2.1r4 slink + kernel 2.2.14. / David
Sound problems (PCI128)
That sound thing in Linux seems to be a real mess... :( I downloaded kernel 2.2.14 to get support for PCI128. I don't know if it is 1370 or 1371, but I took a chance on 1370. Ányway, the wave is working but the midi isn't (I mean the midi port, I have an external synth module). So I wen't to irc.debian.org, and there someone told me to try alsa. However, I took the potato version since I thought that would work better with a 2.2 kernel. That whole stuff turned out to be packages needing other packages, so I thought it was best to stop and deinstall all the alsa stuff again. However. The wave is working. And so is the mixer, but the settings are low every time I boot the computer. According to the sound HOWTO a call to setmixer at boot time would solve the problem, but I have no such file. I have Xmixer, but as far as I know it can't set stuff from the console prompt. (cat /dev/sndstat says Operation not supported by device if that matters.) ...Well, I guess I could just add another question, which is probably simpler to answer. User root has a prompt which could look like Dwc:/usr/share#. But user diwic has only a $ (xterm says bash $), and a path would be very nice to have there too. / David
Mounting ext2 from win98
You mean you can also mount the ext2 filesystem from the Win98 OS? How? I thought this would not be possible? There is a read-only utility I got from a guy at irc.debian.org. So I don't know where on the web it is. The zip file was called fsdext2.zip. / David
