Well, I now have Win4Lin installed... but this was no simple undertaking. I will detail out for you the stumbling blocks I ran into, so that you can be prepared in your attempt. First: Problem with Mandrake 8.0 pre-fab kernel. There wasn't one on the CD. Per a trouble ticket I opened via Netraverse's website, I found that the CD's shipped before the Mandrake 8 kernel was ready. Not to big an issue, I can understand that. Just please don't say it supports Manrake 8.0 on the box when it is something you actually need to download, please. If you are behind a corporate firewall with only http and ftp proxies... Too bad. The customized kernel (and it's bare patch file(s)) are not yet available for download except via the Win4Lin Installer. While I did find the URL they used in the installer, you can't get to it yourself... it's a private account. And yes, the binaries and logs do not detail that account information (which is a GOOD thing, security wise). After bringing the machine home, and placing it on my DSL, the installer was happy to update itself and then download the kernel package and an updated Win4Lin. Cool... but it makes me wonder why I bought it on CD ($10 more) when it re-downloaded it anyway. Ahh well, I digress. Second: Boot loader problems with new kernel I happen to be using Grub, not lilo. I happen to prefer Grub's flexability if my system doesn't boot, that's all. I had rebooted and re-ran the installer like I am supposed to do... But the kernel still wasn't Win4Lin ready. This problem wasn't obvious either. The installer got 50% through copying my Windows 98SE CD, when it would die... telling me I didn't have a valid Dos or something like that. So after poking around a bit, I ran 'winsetup'. I used its menu to try and load the Windows CD image, but it did the same thing... But aha! In the little text window, it gave me the error I needed... I wasn't running with a Win4Lin ready kernel! So I check my /boot area and everything seemed to be there... minus a new initrd image (I need that, Netraverse, btw). So I edited my /boot/grub/menu.lst to add a 'Linux-Win4Lin' entry. I modeled it after what they put in /etc/lilo.conf. So at that point, I wanted to make my new initrd image... That's the third problem. Suffice it to say I did get all this working, but it's time to talk about problem three. Third: 'mkinitrd' couldn't find the reiserfs module. Of course it couldn't. Netraverse had compiled it directly into this new kernel and not as a module. "How odd," I thought, "since it's supposed to be a drop in replacement kernel..." Oh well. There are two solutions for this. 1. You can copy over your previous kernels reiserfs module... (/lib/modules/2.4.3-20mdk/kernel/fs/reiserfs/reiserfs.o.gz). Then do your mkinitrd... Then gunzip your new initrd image, mount it loopback and remove the module and it's reference in the config file (I forget it's name). (This is how I did it) 2. You can try to edit the mkinitrd script so that it doesn't care about the module. I seem to remember with Mandrake 7.2 that I major problem doing this... I think it was because it called something else that was a binary instead of a script... Can't remember. I ran into more configuration stuff of my own because I am using the Windows 2000 bootloader to choose and load a bootsector image file (per the linux+nt Howto's). But that was just having to boot into Win2k to update my Grub bootsector image. I'm thinking many of you will not face that problem since Win2k is, well... Again, I digress. Fourth: NVidia made X drivers die. That's right! I had to kiss my freshly installed NVidia OpenGL drivers good bye. The NVidia kernel module refused to load do to 'bad symbols'. So I tried to recompile it for this new kernel... ahhhh There's a catch! My kernel source isn't patched (not yet, anyway). So the compile fails, too. After some grumbling, I reluctantly revert my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to use the generic 'nv' driver and comment out the 'Load "glx"' line. Okay, so X is up... just no 3D. **sigh** Fifth: Dhcp client config broken. The install went great. Without a hitch, even... But when I finally started Windows... No lan. Don't get me wrong, the drivers were there. They were properly configured for dchp, too. But unlike my daughters PC down the hall... It could not, would not, get an IP. I dinked with it a bit, even disabled the DNS tab of the network setup, but no. I resigned my self to setting it up for a static IP, static route and two DNS entries. Rebooted and hey! It worked! I now have a working Win4Lin 3.0 on my Mandrake 8.0 box. Granted as soon as it could browse the web, I wrote this Installer Review... So I haven't installed software yet. But this is how you get this far! Oh, and one last note... If you are using one of those Promise ATA100 cards... Be sure to add your idex=0xaddr,0xaddr line to your new bootloader entry. I remembered to, but it struck me that many folks might not remember. Enjoy! *Brandon Darbro TheDarb _______________________________________________ Win4Lin-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.netraverse.com/mailman/listinfo/win4lin-users
