fubar-ed my mandrake installation *fixed* Now with more questions!

[screw3d]

I have a feeling that I have chosen a bad refresh range for my monitor and now nothing shows up when KDE loads (D'oh!).

I think (based on my 1-2 days experience) this can be fixed by resetting my XF11config-4 file (or something like that).

How do I fix this? Please tell me step-by-step like I'm 5 years old I don't even know how to stop if from loading KDE so I can fix this!

 

[Jonitus]

1. Do an internet search on a working computer and find the proper specs for your monitor. You may even find the horizontal refresh and vertical refresh ranges in the owner's documentation (supposing you actually keep manuals)

2. When Mandrake boots, I am supposing it defaults to loading KDE automatically? If so, you could hit CTRL-ALT-BKSPACE to kill X and be dumped at a prompt.

3. Do an "su" and become root. Navigate to the directory where your Radeon drivers were installed, and run "fglxconfig", making damn sure to use the proper settings for your monitor this time.

4. After the config is completed and you are back at the prompt, type "exit", thus getting out of root and back to a login prompt.

5. Login as your user. Issue "startx" and wait for KDE to load.

6. Open terminal. Issue "fglrxinfo" and look for a line that reads something to the effect of "ATI Technologies" for your display information. If you get the line, your drivers are installed properly and 3D is working, if not, reinstall drivers per ATI instructions.

7. Supposing drivers are working, smack self repeatedly in head for not doing the needed research on your monitor specs and fubaring your XF86Config-4 file.

 

[screw3d]

Thank you! I'll try that soon. Thank goodness for dual-boot so I still can post this on Win XP

/smack self repeatedly

I haven't told another one of yesterday's story where I fubar-ed my mouse settings and suddenly I have no left-click mapped anywhere, not even on the keypad thing you get from running xf86cfg :Q It took like an hour of frantic navigating on the keyboard to find out how to modify the XF86config-4 file on a spanking new Firefox installation (which incidentally also took the better half of an hour to setup ). I managed to fix it and I feel proud

/smacks self again

Give a noob some credits for refusing to back down!

 

[drag]

That's just what it takes sometimes.

There are couple easy ways to find files. You can try the "locate" command, it uses a database to search thru the file system. The only trouble is that if you make recent changes to the filing system it won't be aware of them until updatedb is run again. (usually run thru a nightly scedualed "cron" job)

locate XF86Config

If that doesn't work then you can use the find command at root, it takes a long time but it'll find anything, even recent changes.

find / 2> /dev/null |grep XF86Config |grep /etc

stuff like that.

There are command line browsers so that you can look up on the internet stuff. Two popular ones are links, and lynx. That way you can google for help even if you don't have a gui.

I beleive that Mandrake has Webmin running by default. Webmin is a web-based configuration tool. You can use that sometimes to configure things.

Little things like that can make a big difference on how easy it is to use Linux, and fix it when things go wrong. Just takes a bit of experiance to get your own little bag of tricks to help yourself out.

I like to recommend going to www.tldp.org and checking out in the guides section, the bash introductionary guide, and Linux system administrators guide. First one will help you deal with the shell and be able to use it more effectively (it's very powerfull, much better then the CLI in Windows), and the Linux administrators guide is a more advanced introduction on how the OS itself works and some tips on doing basic adminstistrative tasks.

 

[screw3d]

Thanks drag.. I just picked up locate and updatedb from somewhere when I failed to find my drivers I'll do the rest as you suggested

I got it running fine again!

The programs that came with the RPM installation on Mandrake's ISOs are a bit behind in version numbers.. I'm wondering if there is a command that will automatically connect to servers and patch my programs? What's the best way to update my programs? I read that I can make my own RPMs from source files.. I have to look into the commands again

 

[drag]

Well that's the thing about depending on closed source drivers. You can check out ATI's site and see if they have updated versions, or not. I don't know. If they provide a source file for installing stuff you can try uninstalling the default versions and compiling and using your own tools made from the latest versions. ATI may have a RPM aviable for mandrake with newer version numbers that you can install, that may help. It's kinda one of those things... At your own risk and stuff like that.

However for updating and patching your system automaticly... Normally you have urpmi for updating files over the internet with Mandrake, but the support for it is lacking and it doesn't turn out that well, at least last time I tried it.

Apt-get, Portage, and Yum are others. There should be limited support for Apt-get somewere for Mandrake, but it probably won't help you much. Fedora supports Yum and Apt-get, with Yum is installed by default. There are lots of nice 3rd party repositories you can use to update your OS against and get lots of nice programs. Debian is the originanator of Apt-get, other versions are hacked to support RPM files, but debian program package files are .debs. Portage is Gentoo's baby, of course. Very advanced, although a pain sometimes.

urmpi.org

here is a link to "easy urpmi" it should help you get going. Nice to see it was last updated 7/27, it was almost dead last time I looked at it. It will probably not help you much with your ATI stuff, but will probably help you keep up to date with latest patches and stuff like that. I didn't have much luck with it last time I tried Mandrake out, but it may go better for you.

 

[screw3d]

I know about urpmi but i was hoping that I'll be able to learn to install it manually too

How can I mount all my ISOs like Daemon Tools in Windows? It's getting annoying to keep swapping discs when installing packages from rpmdrake :frown:

Another question:

After loading up KDE, Konqueror will pop up and attempt to open the dir (/home/myprofile/firefox) which doesn't exist anymore, and it complains "/home/myprofile/firefox" cannot be found.. how do I stop this? This, I have no idea how to google for.

 

[Montano]

fubar

 

[screw3d]

bump and another question

How on earth do I list all the packages I have installed? Rpmdrake only shows what's available, not what's installed. I tried to find it using CLI but can't figure out the commands Google failed me!!

 

[drag]

To mount iso images you use it like a loopback file system.

mount -t iso9660 -o loop cdrom.iso mountpoint/

You can build loopback file systems pretty easily. For instance initrd is a loopback filesystem used to load any modules needed to get the filesystem going.

To make it to mount easily without having to type out all the options and stuff you can add the mount to your /etc/fstab file. That is used by the OS to know were to mount what.

iso9660 is the type of file system (basic data file system for cdroms) and loop is a option that stands for loopback. Read the man files.

man man
to read the man file about man
man fstab
to read about fstab
man mount
to read about mount

To see what rpms you have installed in Fedora you can go:
rpm -qa

Should be the same in Mandrake.

rpm newbie tips

Don't forget google, you can find answers faster that way, and more in depth (and more correct) then what I can do.
edit:

I used the search:
rpm show installed packages

to find that.

 

[screw3d]

Thank you drag

Should be interesting from here!

 

[Flatline]

Also, using the control center, you can enter the remove programs section and it will have all the packages installed listed.