"Kent West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Brian Coiley wrote: > > >modconf also appears to be broken. When it says "Please select the category > >of modules", there is no list of categories. The only option reads "Exit > >Finished. Return to previous menu." Which takes me right back out to the > >command prompt. There's also an OK button, and a Cancel button, both of > >which also simply quit. And that's it. > > > > >[Discover] said, among other things, "Skipping module sis900. It's > >already loaded." As noted in an earlier post, the problem appears to be > >unrelated to the NIC, and entirely to do with obtaining a DHCP lease. USB > >mouse still doesn't work. > > > > >Unfortunately, unless it gets one hell of a sight easier very fast, > >tomorrow's operating system is going to remain the preserve of a few very > >determined digit heads. I have 20 years' software development experience > >and a degree in mathematics, and if I'm having all this trouble, how the > >hell is the average Windows user supposed to manage? > > > > > > This sounds more and more like the dist-upgrade did not complete > properly. You might want to post the contents of your > "/etc/apt/sources.list" file for us to peruse (although that might be > hard right now without networking, although you could use a USB > Flashdrive, or CD, or floppy, or even an image from your digicam). > > You might want to re-run "apt-get dist-upgrade" and watch for any > errors. Take care of the errors and repeat until you get no more errors. > > > >Kent West wrote: > > > >>Until the viruses hit, > >> > >> > > > >Never had one, just need to be sensible. Good virus checkers are free these > >days. > > > > > > Perhaps I should have said "malware" instead of viruses. > > >>and the license fees, > >> > >> > > > >My lost earning time on this stuff already amounts to more than twice the > >cost of a Windoze licence. > > > > > > > > Until the BSA comes knocking and you realize you've paid for the > license, but didn't adequately track it. Granted, in a single-user > environment, that's probably not a big deal, but with 10,000 machines, > that can get scary. > > >>and the > >>inflexibility, > >> > >> > > > >??????? > > > > > > Like trying to move "Program Files" onto its own read-only partition in > a school lab environment. Or recoding the source to fit your needs > rather than what Microsoft deems as your needs. Or completely > uninstalling Internet Explorer. (Yes, there are work-arounds, but I find > Linux to be much easier to tailor to my way of doing things than is > Windows.) > > I'm not trying to say Debian is a better OS than is Windows, just that > it is for me. > > -- > Kent >
Thank you folks for your continued interest. Here is the current situation: I ran the distribution update again, having taken Maurits' advice to make sure that I first did an apt-get update. It updated over 200 packages! Running it a further time updates nothing, so I assume it is all done now. WHAT IT FIXED: ============= Not a lot really. It still fails to automatically get a DHCP lease. However, the script "dhclient" now works, so I no longer have to find and run one of the kernel-specific underlying dhclient commands. So, by running "dhclient", I can easily get a DHCP lease and hence a network connection, but for some reason it will not do so automatically (something that it did quite happily with Woody). WHAT IT BROKE: ============== Last night, at about 1:00 a.m., I finally got X and Gnome working, except for a minor glitch with keyboard layout (see earlier post). The re-run of the distribution update has now broken it. Issuing "startx" now results in a totally blank screen (I mean COMPLETELY blank, like I turned the monitor off). Ctrl-Alt-bkspace takes me back to the command prompt, where I observe the following error: "client 5 rejected from local host". A trawl of the archives suggests editing the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/xdm-config and changing "DisplayManager*authorize: true" to "false". I tried that, but it made no difference. So, as seems to be entirely typical of this environment, I try to fix one problem, and something else breaks! My sources.list file currently reads: deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ sarge/updates main Yours in total frustration, about to hurl computer through window... Brian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
