mcnelson Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 I can't resist Linux Format magazine when they covermount Mandrake Distros. I started out with 9.1 about 7 months ago, bought and installed 9.2 in December, and then the other day I stumbled across 10 community... I did an upgrade first, which was probably a bad move, as I had all sorts of problems because of my nvidia drivers, so I couldn't boot into an X session...I reconfigured my XF86Config file to use generic VGA stuff, but it was sooooooooo crappy. Plus some other crap happened.... SO I got bored and uninstalled / did a clean install of 9.2 again. But then I thought " I've gotta figure this out" so I did a clean install of 10. Overall I like it. LinNeighbourhood seems to have been replaced as a default by Smb4K, which I think is a lot easier to use and much prettier. I tried installing the latest nvidia drivers again, installed the kenel source etc - but the nvidia installer crapped out on me, citing a 'kernel header' failure.(??) AND, for some reason, one of my CDRoms and my HD light keep blinking every 3 seconds. If anyone can shed some light on any of the above, please feel free to enlighten me! :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alien_II Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 solution: do clean install 1 thing linux isn't good at is upgading.. it's getting there... -Alien Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnelson Posted May 3, 2004 Author Share Posted May 3, 2004 Current install was a clean install - still got weird blinking lights and no nvidia drivers! Did I read somewhere that the official (paid) release contains Nvidia drivers?? Shame it won't have Gnome 2.6 though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shimon Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 no its the distro not the linux kernel which is good at upgrading Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted May 3, 2004 Veteran Share Posted May 3, 2004 Current install was a clean install - still got weird blinking lights and no nvidia drivers! As for the nVidia, does Mandrake 10 use XFree86 or Xorg? Fedora just switched to Xorg, maybe Mandrake did, too. Also, nVidia modules seem to be a bit broken in 2.6 kernel. I think if you recompile your kernel with one of your options switched (search the forum here for which one), you might get it to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnelson Posted May 3, 2004 Author Share Posted May 3, 2004 ...nvidia I can deal with, as I'll figure it out at some point or just wait for the 'official' version. But as for the drive lights, anyone got any idea what's going on, or what files / configs I should be checking? They blink every 3 seconds! I don't think it's anything to do with HardDrake, everything seems to be configured properly (and there's been no hardware changes between 9.2 and 10). The CD drive doesn't make any noise either - just blink, blink, blink..... :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kemical Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 As for the nVidia, does Mandrake 10 use XFree86 or Xorg? Fedora just switched to Xorg, maybe Mandrake did, too.Also, nVidia modules seem to be a bit broken in 2.6 kernel. I think if you recompile your kernel with one of your options switched (search the forum here for which one), you might get it to work. nvidia should work fine with a vanilla 2.6 kernel, its the patched kernels you need to be wary of Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shimon Posted May 4, 2004 Share Posted May 4, 2004 i read my erealer post i did make sence and i cant edsit for some reson so i'll make sence of it now. Its the distro and not the linux kernel (which is wat linux really is) which not good at upgrading but its getting worse and worse (untill a rewrite of the upgrade coding) (this is more for newbie distros which have a bloated installer) for some distro and better and better for other Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnelson Posted May 4, 2004 Author Share Posted May 4, 2004 OK, Nvidia drivers are now installed: kernel source did not match actual kernel, so there was the problem. We still have blinking lights though. It didn't happen in 9.2, but it does now. Is there any kind of rogue 'mnt' thing going on? It's starting to get annoying.... As always, muchos gracias. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kemical Posted May 5, 2004 Share Posted May 5, 2004 what does top show in the console? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted May 5, 2004 Veteran Share Posted May 5, 2004 And maybe I am off on a tangent here, but can you verify that your master/slave settings are correct for your drives? And also make sure that if you are using a higher-speed ATA (80-wire cable with the normal 40-pin connectors), that your master device is on the end with the slave in-between the master and the Motherboard IDE. I just want to make sure that there isn't a hardware config that should be corrected before we delve too deeply into software... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnelson Posted May 23, 2004 Author Share Posted May 23, 2004 I got bored of 10, then reintsalled 9.2....then I figured it was best to persevere, so reinstalled 10 after boning 9.2 by trying to install gnome 2.6 . I fixed the CDR problem by just disabling it, as I have 2 CDRs in the box. Just waiting to do some more upgrades, as apparently all the mirrors are in some kind of disarray, and I'm experiencing the same problems as many other people regarding updating DRAKCONF, etc. Still want Gnome 2.6 though....looks sweet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chomps Posted May 23, 2004 Share Posted May 23, 2004 When Mandrake Community was released aparently it wasn supposed to be but evryone liked it so much that they started putting the iso s up. They said it wont have support for ATI or NVidia...yeh right. Well I installed it on my system and I have a Radeon 9200 and it worked fine. Certain things didnt work like TV out etc, so I upgraded to the Official version and wala. All ok. I still want to download the Official version but hey, I will get there. having too much fun at the moment. Very cool distro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnelson Posted May 25, 2004 Author Share Posted May 25, 2004 As you can probably tell, I don't get on with Linux too well sometimes...it can be immensely frustrating, and were it not for the help of more knowledgeable people, like the ones in our forums, I would have uninstalled it ages ago. So Yesterday I was given a perfectly legitimate XP Home key. A few months ago I would have been jumping for joy, and I'd have got Linux out of my box double double quick. But I don't want to now... It's ironic that last night I *finally* managed to get Gnome 2.6 installed, via some creative 'update_source' and urpmi work, and this repository: wwwra.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~waschk/ Mandrake/GNOME2.6/SRPMS/ Via the same process I managed to upgrade a load of stuff, and now my box shows 'official' instead of community. It's not perfect, but it's a start I guess. I feel like I can install NVIDIA drivers with my eyes closed now too. Lucky I picked an easy distro eh? I definitely have a 'love-hate' relationship with Linux, I figure I'm just posting on a 'love' day. I'll definitely be sticking with it, expect more posts from me as I try to figure out a lot of what's 'under the hood' and get down and dirty with it. Thanks to everyone that's helped me so far...there's more to come I'm sure! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted May 25, 2004 Veteran Share Posted May 25, 2004 As someone wise pointed out to me once, In Windows, you are a user. In Linux, you learn to become an administrator. I think it was just his way of saying "Welcome to the learning curve"! :laugh: (it was woth the effort, in my opinion) ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts