Re: Help: Screwed up LILO MBR
Tim Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi everyone, > > sorry if this is a bit of a saga but please bear with me. > > [snip] > > Can anybody suggest a way to get back Win98 on /dev/hda1 and, more to > the point, suggest a way to be able to boot /dev/ha1, /dev/hda5 and > /dev/hda2? Apart from `man lilo` and `zless /usr/share/doc/lilo/Manual.txt.gz` (or similar) you mean ;-)? Boot into debian (I don't know RH, that's why) from a floppy and change /etc/lilo.conf to read along the following lines: boot=/dev/hda delay=20 default=Win98 image=/vmlinuz label=Debian root=/dev/hda2 image=/vmlinuz label=RedHat root=/dev/hda5 other=/dev/hda1 label=Win98 You probably don't want to touch what is already there and replace /vmlinuz with the appropriate value for your RedHat system. If all that's done, run `/sbin/lilo -t` to see if the config file is OK and then `/sbin/lilo -s`. You're done. When rebooting you have 2 seconds (20 deciseconds) at the LILO prompt to hit a shift, ctrl or alt key. Hit the tab key to get a list of options or just enter one of the labels you stuck in /etc/lilo.conf. That should get you booted into what you want, barring major goofs from me. Hope that helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development
Re: unpredictable crashes, lock up, freezes, whatever
Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Yup, following up on my own post! Please bear along with the long quotes. I left them in because I'm now also cross-posting this to debian-laptop. > "Karsten M. Self" writes: > > > on Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 04:51:35PM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen ([EMAIL > > PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > Dear all, > > > > > > I'm running mostly testing with some unstable under linux 2.2.19 (hand > > > rolled, of course) on an IBM ThinkPad i1476 (Type 2611). Since a few > > > weeks, my machine completely locks up at unpredictable moments. The > > > screen is no longer updated, I can't switch to a virtual terminal, > > > even the three finger salute doesn't do a thing. Pinging from another > > > machine results in 100% lost packets but the PCMCIA network card keeps > > > signalling traffic. Just about the only thing that keeps on going is > > > CD audio. > > > > CD audio is not mediated by the OS, [...] > > > > I regularly 'apt-get -t testing upgrade' and the problem hasn't gone > > > away. I've tried other kernels, including the Debian vanilla ones, > > > but to no avail. I've run memtest86 and found errors in one of my > > > DIMMs but the problem remains even after lobotomy. That is, even when > > > I only use the DIMM that is okay (memtest86, 20+ passes, tests 1-7) my > > > machine randomly locks up. > > > > > > I've checked the logs but apart from occasional blocks of nulls just > > > before a lock up, I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. Note, > > > those null blocks only appear before _some_ lock ups, not all. > > > > Look for power-change events under apmd. > > I doubt that has anything to do with it because the machine is on AC > 99% of the time. [Goes checking the logs now ...] No correlation > between power change events and crash times. Okay, so I compiled a kernel without any APM support, installed and tried it. My system froze within half an hour :-( > > > Because I haven't experienced any lock up when using the console, I'm > > > wondering if my graphics card (probed as Neomagic NM2200 according to > > > XFree86 log, NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV according to hardware spec) has > > > gone bad. Are there any tools a la memtest to test my graphics card? > > > > Possible, but the card's pretty well supported in recent XF86 v.3 and > > v.4 drivers. > > > > It's not clear how long you're leaving your system in console mode to > > establish whether or not this is a problem. Might make a practice of > > doing this on long breaks (lunch, overnight), and seeing what the > > results are. > > Sorry, should have mentioned that; somewhere around 5, 6 hours. Have > only done that once though. Could try leaving it in console mode > overnight. Left if sitting at the console and gdm login prompts overnight as well. No crash. Bad news is that as soon as I logged in through gdm, my machine froze. Actually, it locked up three times in ten minutes or so :-( > > > Before you suggest, I have already tried both Gnome (with several > > > window managers) and KDE. It doesn't matter. The machine even locks > > > up when running (x|k)screensaver during lunch :-( > > > > > > If you have other ideas as to what could be the matter, I'm open to > > > suggestions. > > > > I had similar problems associated with apmd and Speedstep (aka > > Geyserville) on my TuxTops Amethyst 20U, exacerbated by a flaky onboard > > power port (it breaks circuit when jiggled, resulting in APM mode > > changes). In system BIOS, I disabled speedstep functionality -- my CPU > > is always running in full-speed mode (600 MHz), resulting in shorter > > battery life, but longer uptime ;-). I've had no problems since > > changing this setting about two months ago. > > I believe I've disabled BIOS power savings settings but will double > check at the next crash, er, reboot. Disabled all power management settings (there's not much to be set with this BIOS) to no avail. > > I'd made a more complete report to debian-laptop, should be in > > archives. > > That box gave you a bit of troubles, eh? My symptoms seem very much > like yours. I'll be going over my kernel APM configuration as well. See above, that wasn't much use. > > You might isolate video card issues by running in console mode, by > > switching to a version 3 XF86 driver, or by switching from an > > accelerated driver to
Re: unpredictable crashes, lock up, freezes, whatever
Heather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Okay, so I compiled a kernel without any APM support, installed > > and tried it. My system froze within half an hour :-( > > You must compile with one of the two flavors of power management, or > else there will be hardware interrupts that *will* happen, that the > kernel will not have any awareness of, and eventually, something bad > will probably happen. Then the kernel configuration should take care of that, not? :-) Anyway, I wouldn't really want to use a kernel without APM enabled. Doubly so on a laptop. > You can try ACPI - [...] Haven't seen that mentioned in the configuration for 2.2 kernels. Is this something from 2.3+? > I believe, but am not sure, that the original "neomagic specific" X > server is still out there, and you could try it. You might have to > raid the complete X setup from an older distro in order to try it if > you want to go that far. Don't think I want to go that far back to the stone ages ;-) > > Left if sitting at the console and gdm login prompts overnight as > > well. No crash. Bad news is that as soon as I logged in through > > gdm, my machine froze. Actually, it locked up three times in ten > > minutes or so :-( > > Interesting, that makes it hard to tell if Gnome, gdm itself, or X > is the problem. I'm pretty sure Gnome is not the problem. Originally, I experienced these lock ups with KDE. Since that included (still does, I think) quite a bit from unstable I switched to Gnome to see if it made a difference. Not! > I know it's weird but you could just run 'X' - which should get you > the server, no window manager, and no clients, and see if it lives. > Even leave it that way a while and see if it eventually barfs out on > you. If you want to test Xserver activity, move the mouse. Something I might want to keep in mind when I get some time to really sort this problem out. > > > > You might isolate video card issues by running in console > > > > mode, by switching to a version 3 XF86 driver, or by switching > > > > from an accelerated driver to SVGA or VGA16. > > > > > > I've been thinking about running X on the frame buffer device > > > myself. > > > > This morning, after three lock ups in ten minutes, I compiled > > frame buffer support in, fiddled my XF86Config-4 to use it and > > I've been up for 5(!) hours. I think I'll lock my session with > > xscreensaver (to guarantee some Xserver activity (eh, at least > > until APM kicks in and blanks the screen)) before I go home and if > > my machine hasn't crashed by tomorrow morning I'm ready to believe > > my problem is fixed. I might even get bold and start using that > > broken DIMM again ;-) APM didn't kick in last night it seems. The screensaver was running happily when I came in this morning. Removed the lock and my session was still very much alive (left stripchart running). As a matter of fact I'm typing this mail from a 21 hour old session. I'd say that even if my problem may not be fixed, I've got myself an acceptable work around. Using the framebuffer is only a bit slower. > > Problem then is where to put the blame: graphics card or X driver? > > I'm using xserver-xfree86 4.0.3-4. > > Try tuning up SVGAlib to see if that also freaks out the system. If > it works at all it will be under "VESA" or "Standard VGA". If it > breaks too then two things remain. Not quite sure whether I get what you're saying, but I'll keep this in mind for when I get oodles of free time (or my boss' blessing :-) to get to the bottom of this. > 1. the modeline. SVGAlib uses XF86 style modelines too. Monitor being >pushed just barely out of spec could be doing something unknown and >invisible. To test that, reduce the freq range for your monitor >values in X's config then try again, so you get new modelines. > > 2. yeah, your card could be bad... > > Good luck > > * Heather Stern * star@ many places... Karsten, Heather, thanks for the feedback. -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development Free Software: `No walls, no windows! No fences, no gates!'
Re: unpredictable crashes, lock up, freezes, whatever
Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Heather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > This morning, after three lock ups in ten minutes, I compiled > > > frame buffer support in, fiddled my XF86Config-4 to use it and > > > I've been up for 5(!) hours. I think I'll lock my session with > > > xscreensaver (to guarantee some Xserver activity (eh, at least > > > until APM kicks in and blanks the screen)) before I go home and if > > > my machine hasn't crashed by tomorrow morning I'm ready to believe > > > my problem is fixed. I might even get bold and start using that > > > broken DIMM again ;-) > > APM didn't kick in last night it seems. The screensaver was running > happily when I came in this morning. Removed the lock and my session > was still very much alive (left stripchart running). As a matter of > fact I'm typing this mail from a 21 hour old session. I'd say that > even if my problem may not be fixed, I've got myself an acceptable > work around. Using the framebuffer is only a bit slower. I had my session going for close to 48 hours (20 hours of XFree86 CPU time) without a hitch until I made the mistake of firing up Konqueror (kdeinit gobbled up all memory ;-). Anyway, I stuck that broken DIMM back in an haven't seen any hiccups yet. > > > Problem then is where to put the blame: graphics card or X driver? > > > I'm using xserver-xfree86 4.0.3-4. > > > > Try tuning up SVGAlib to see if that also freaks out the system. If > > it works at all it will be under "VESA" or "Standard VGA". If it > > breaks too then two things remain. > > Not quite sure whether I get what you're saying, but I'll keep this in > mind for when I get oodles of free time (or my boss' blessing :-) to > get to the bottom of this. > > > 1. the modeline. SVGAlib uses XF86 style modelines too. Monitor being > >pushed just barely out of spec could be doing something unknown and > >invisible. To test that, reduce the freq range for your monitor > >values in X's config then try again, so you get new modelines. > > > > 2. yeah, your card could be bad... I was going to blame it on the graphics card until I had a look at http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/neomagic/. There are some reports that show very similar behaviour as to what I saw but all those folks could still telnet to their machine. Mine didn't even return pings. So, I'm still not sure where to put the blame ;-( At least the frame buffer solutions works and with the extra memory back I hardly notice the performance difference. FWIW, I'll include the frame buffer settings: I compiled the kernel (2.2.19) with CONFIG_FB=y # CONFIG_FB_PM2 is not set # CONFIG_FB_ATY is not set CONFIG_FB_VESA=y CONFIG_FB_VGA16=y # CONFIG_FB_MATROX is not set # CONFIG_FB_ATY128 is not set # CONFIG_FB_VIRTUAL is not set # CONFIG_FBCON_ADVANCED is not set CONFIG_FBCON_CFB8=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB16=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB24=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB32=y CONFIG_FBCON_VGA_PLANES=y # CONFIG_FBCON_FONTWIDTH8_ONLY is not set # CONFIG_FBCON_FONTS is not set To /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 I added Section "Device" Identifier "Linux Frame Buffer" Driver "fbdev" EndSection changed the Device setting in the Screen section to match this and commented the DefaultDepth out. I also added SubSection "Display" Depth 32 Modes "1024x768-76" EndSubSection In /etc/lilo.conf I set vga=ask and whenever I boot I enter 318 (have not bothered hard wiring this yet). I really like the huge console that gives me! -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development Free Software: `No walls, no windows! No fences, no gates!'
Re: Very Selective upgrade
Tom Allison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Can someone give me an example of how I would upgrade a specific > package from 'testing' without affecting any of the apt-get libraries? > If I change the sources.list to include 'testing' then I get all kinds > of files selected for upgrade. I really don't want to move anything > out of 'stable' right now as I've tried repeated upgrades and they all > result in a horrific system failure. > I've got 'stable' installed, but I want to include the 'testing' > version of openSSH... Nothing to do with laptops, but ... You can use sources.list to include testing and invoke apt-get with a '-t stable' option or add the following to /etc/apt/apt.conf APT::Default-Release "testing"; Err, that is in testing you can, don't know 'bout stable. You could always just grab the deb and use `dpkg -i' to install. May need to upgrade a few libraries as well, though, so generally apt-get would be more painless. -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development
Re: Effective Boot Procedure
Sven Niedner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tuesday 04 September 2001 13:33, Schoppitsch Dieter wrote: > > So far I deleted most daemon-boot-scripts from /etc/rc2 and edit > > /etc/inittab to set the runlevel at 2 (no daemons) or > > 3 (with daemons) - than I have to reboot. > > This is already the way to go. > > You can pass the initlevel to the kernel at boot time; I am not shure > how this is done, the only thing I know by heart is that the parameter > single boots into single user mode (and maybe you can "abuse" this for > you minimal configuration -- no daemons, no anything). Use something like the following in your /etc/lilo.conf image=/boot/linux label=daemons read-only append=3 image=/boot/linux-small label=no-daemons read-only append=2 And choose whatever you need when booting. If you want to change run levels without rebooting, become root and `init 2` to switch all your daemons off or `init 3` to switch 'em on. You do *not* have to change /etc/inittab Just for fun, I've installed xdm, gdm (recompiled to work around xdm and kdm conflicts) and kdm and I boot to the console or one of these in a way similar to that described above. In /etc/rc2.d I moved the S99?dm symlinks to K01?dm so that whatever login manager is running gets summarily killed when I `init 2`. In /etc/rc3.d I left S99xdm and moved the other two to K01[gk]dm. The other run levels, 4 and 5, are analogous. Whenever you move symlinks from S to K (or the other way around) just make sure that the numbers add up to 100. Then they will be executed in the correct order. The only possible PITA is that upgrading may stick one of the symlinks you moved/deleted back in. Hope this helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development
Re: Effective Boot Procedure
Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Sven Niedner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On Tuesday 04 September 2001 13:33, Schoppitsch Dieter wrote: > > > So far I deleted most daemon-boot-scripts from /etc/rc2 and edit > > > /etc/inittab to set the runlevel at 2 (no daemons) or > > > 3 (with daemons) - than I have to reboot. > > > > This is already the way to go. > > > > You can pass the initlevel to the kernel at boot time; I am not shure > > how this is done, the only thing I know by heart is that the parameter > > single boots into single user mode (and maybe you can "abuse" this for > > you minimal configuration -- no daemons, no anything). > > Use something like the following in your /etc/lilo.conf > > image=/boot/linux > label=daemons > read-only > append=3 > > image=/boot/linux-small > label=no-daemons > read-only > append=2 BTW, I removed those ugly symlinks in / and use full path names to symlinks in /boot. > And choose whatever you need when booting. If you want to change run > levels without rebooting, become root and `init 2` to switch all your > daemons off or `init 3` to switch 'em on. You do *not* have to change > /etc/inittab Eh, that's assuming both kernels have what it takes to run all them daemons. When booting /boot/linux you should be okay, I guess, but it may not work the other way around. > Just for fun, I've installed xdm, gdm (recompiled to work around xdm > and kdm conflicts) and kdm and I boot to the console or one of these > in a way similar to that described above. In /etc/rc2.d I moved the > S99?dm symlinks to K01?dm so that whatever login manager is running > gets summarily killed when I `init 2`. In /etc/rc3.d I left S99xdm > and moved the other two to K01[gk]dm. The other run levels, 4 and 5, > are analogous. Whenever you move symlinks from S to K (or the other > way around) just make sure that the numbers add up to 100. Then they > will be executed in the correct order. > > The only possible PITA is that upgrading may stick one of the symlinks > you moved/deleted back in. > > Hope this helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development
Re: Help: Screwed up LILO MBR
Tim Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi everyone, > > sorry if this is a bit of a saga but please bear with me. > > [snip] > > Can anybody suggest a way to get back Win98 on /dev/hda1 and, more to > the point, suggest a way to be able to boot /dev/ha1, /dev/hda5 and > /dev/hda2? Apart from `man lilo` and `zless /usr/share/doc/lilo/Manual.txt.gz` (or similar) you mean ;-)? Boot into debian (I don't know RH, that's why) from a floppy and change /etc/lilo.conf to read along the following lines: boot=/dev/hda delay=20 default=Win98 image=/vmlinuz label=Debian root=/dev/hda2 image=/vmlinuz label=RedHat root=/dev/hda5 other=/dev/hda1 label=Win98 You probably don't want to touch what is already there and replace /vmlinuz with the appropriate value for your RedHat system. If all that's done, run `/sbin/lilo -t` to see if the config file is OK and then `/sbin/lilo -s`. You're done. When rebooting you have 2 seconds (20 deciseconds) at the LILO prompt to hit a shift, ctrl or alt key. Hit the tab key to get a list of options or just enter one of the labels you stuck in /etc/lilo.conf. That should get you booted into what you want, barring major goofs from me. Hope that helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: unpredictable crashes, lock up, freezes, whatever
Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Heather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > This morning, after three lock ups in ten minutes, I compiled > > > frame buffer support in, fiddled my XF86Config-4 to use it and > > > I've been up for 5(!) hours. I think I'll lock my session with > > > xscreensaver (to guarantee some Xserver activity (eh, at least > > > until APM kicks in and blanks the screen)) before I go home and if > > > my machine hasn't crashed by tomorrow morning I'm ready to believe > > > my problem is fixed. I might even get bold and start using that > > > broken DIMM again ;-) > > APM didn't kick in last night it seems. The screensaver was running > happily when I came in this morning. Removed the lock and my session > was still very much alive (left stripchart running). As a matter of > fact I'm typing this mail from a 21 hour old session. I'd say that > even if my problem may not be fixed, I've got myself an acceptable > work around. Using the framebuffer is only a bit slower. I had my session going for close to 48 hours (20 hours of XFree86 CPU time) without a hitch until I made the mistake of firing up Konqueror (kdeinit gobbled up all memory ;-). Anyway, I stuck that broken DIMM back in an haven't seen any hiccups yet. > > > Problem then is where to put the blame: graphics card or X driver? > > > I'm using xserver-xfree86 4.0.3-4. > > > > Try tuning up SVGAlib to see if that also freaks out the system. If > > it works at all it will be under "VESA" or "Standard VGA". If it > > breaks too then two things remain. > > Not quite sure whether I get what you're saying, but I'll keep this in > mind for when I get oodles of free time (or my boss' blessing :-) to > get to the bottom of this. > > > 1. the modeline. SVGAlib uses XF86 style modelines too. Monitor being > >pushed just barely out of spec could be doing something unknown and > >invisible. To test that, reduce the freq range for your monitor > >values in X's config then try again, so you get new modelines. > > > > 2. yeah, your card could be bad... I was going to blame it on the graphics card until I had a look at http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/neomagic/. There are some reports that show very similar behaviour as to what I saw but all those folks could still telnet to their machine. Mine didn't even return pings. So, I'm still not sure where to put the blame ;-( At least the frame buffer solutions works and with the extra memory back I hardly notice the performance difference. FWIW, I'll include the frame buffer settings: I compiled the kernel (2.2.19) with CONFIG_FB=y # CONFIG_FB_PM2 is not set # CONFIG_FB_ATY is not set CONFIG_FB_VESA=y CONFIG_FB_VGA16=y # CONFIG_FB_MATROX is not set # CONFIG_FB_ATY128 is not set # CONFIG_FB_VIRTUAL is not set # CONFIG_FBCON_ADVANCED is not set CONFIG_FBCON_CFB8=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB16=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB24=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB32=y CONFIG_FBCON_VGA_PLANES=y # CONFIG_FBCON_FONTWIDTH8_ONLY is not set # CONFIG_FBCON_FONTS is not set To /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 I added Section "Device" Identifier "Linux Frame Buffer" Driver "fbdev" EndSection changed the Device setting in the Screen section to match this and commented the DefaultDepth out. I also added SubSection "Display" Depth 32 Modes "1024x768-76" EndSubSection In /etc/lilo.conf I set vga=ask and whenever I boot I enter 318 (have not bothered hard wiring this yet). I really like the huge console that gives me! -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development Free Software: `No walls, no windows! No fences, no gates!' -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: unpredictable crashes, lock up, freezes, whatever
Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Yup, following up on my own post! Please bear along with the long quotes. I left them in because I'm now also cross-posting this to debian-laptop. > "Karsten M. Self" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > on Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 04:51:35PM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) >wrote: > > > Dear all, > > > > > > I'm running mostly testing with some unstable under linux 2.2.19 (hand > > > rolled, of course) on an IBM ThinkPad i1476 (Type 2611). Since a few > > > weeks, my machine completely locks up at unpredictable moments. The > > > screen is no longer updated, I can't switch to a virtual terminal, > > > even the three finger salute doesn't do a thing. Pinging from another > > > machine results in 100% lost packets but the PCMCIA network card keeps > > > signalling traffic. Just about the only thing that keeps on going is > > > CD audio. > > > > CD audio is not mediated by the OS, [...] > > > > I regularly 'apt-get -t testing upgrade' and the problem hasn't gone > > > away. I've tried other kernels, including the Debian vanilla ones, > > > but to no avail. I've run memtest86 and found errors in one of my > > > DIMMs but the problem remains even after lobotomy. That is, even when > > > I only use the DIMM that is okay (memtest86, 20+ passes, tests 1-7) my > > > machine randomly locks up. > > > > > > I've checked the logs but apart from occasional blocks of nulls just > > > before a lock up, I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. Note, > > > those null blocks only appear before _some_ lock ups, not all. > > > > Look for power-change events under apmd. > > I doubt that has anything to do with it because the machine is on AC > 99% of the time. [Goes checking the logs now ...] No correlation > between power change events and crash times. Okay, so I compiled a kernel without any APM support, installed and tried it. My system froze within half an hour :-( > > > Because I haven't experienced any lock up when using the console, I'm > > > wondering if my graphics card (probed as Neomagic NM2200 according to > > > XFree86 log, NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV according to hardware spec) has > > > gone bad. Are there any tools a la memtest to test my graphics card? > > > > Possible, but the card's pretty well supported in recent XF86 v.3 and > > v.4 drivers. > > > > It's not clear how long you're leaving your system in console mode to > > establish whether or not this is a problem. Might make a practice of > > doing this on long breaks (lunch, overnight), and seeing what the > > results are. > > Sorry, should have mentioned that; somewhere around 5, 6 hours. Have > only done that once though. Could try leaving it in console mode > overnight. Left if sitting at the console and gdm login prompts overnight as well. No crash. Bad news is that as soon as I logged in through gdm, my machine froze. Actually, it locked up three times in ten minutes or so :-( > > > Before you suggest, I have already tried both Gnome (with several > > > window managers) and KDE. It doesn't matter. The machine even locks > > > up when running (x|k)screensaver during lunch :-( > > > > > > If you have other ideas as to what could be the matter, I'm open to > > > suggestions. > > > > I had similar problems associated with apmd and Speedstep (aka > > Geyserville) on my TuxTops Amethyst 20U, exacerbated by a flaky onboard > > power port (it breaks circuit when jiggled, resulting in APM mode > > changes). In system BIOS, I disabled speedstep functionality -- my CPU > > is always running in full-speed mode (600 MHz), resulting in shorter > > battery life, but longer uptime ;-). I've had no problems since > > changing this setting about two months ago. > > I believe I've disabled BIOS power savings settings but will double > check at the next crash, er, reboot. Disabled all power management settings (there's not much to be set with this BIOS) to no avail. > > I'd made a more complete report to debian-laptop, should be in > > archives. > > That box gave you a bit of troubles, eh? My symptoms seem very much > like yours. I'll be going over my kernel APM configuration as well. See above, that wasn't much use. > > You might isolate video card issues by running in console mode, by > > switching to a version 3 XF86 driver, or by switching from an > &g
Re: unpredictable crashes, lock up, freezes, whatever
Heather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Okay, so I compiled a kernel without any APM support, installed > > and tried it. My system froze within half an hour :-( > > You must compile with one of the two flavors of power management, or > else there will be hardware interrupts that *will* happen, that the > kernel will not have any awareness of, and eventually, something bad > will probably happen. Then the kernel configuration should take care of that, not? :-) Anyway, I wouldn't really want to use a kernel without APM enabled. Doubly so on a laptop. > You can try ACPI - [...] Haven't seen that mentioned in the configuration for 2.2 kernels. Is this something from 2.3+? > I believe, but am not sure, that the original "neomagic specific" X > server is still out there, and you could try it. You might have to > raid the complete X setup from an older distro in order to try it if > you want to go that far. Don't think I want to go that far back to the stone ages ;-) > > Left if sitting at the console and gdm login prompts overnight as > > well. No crash. Bad news is that as soon as I logged in through > > gdm, my machine froze. Actually, it locked up three times in ten > > minutes or so :-( > > Interesting, that makes it hard to tell if Gnome, gdm itself, or X > is the problem. I'm pretty sure Gnome is not the problem. Originally, I experienced these lock ups with KDE. Since that included (still does, I think) quite a bit from unstable I switched to Gnome to see if it made a difference. Not! > I know it's weird but you could just run 'X' - which should get you > the server, no window manager, and no clients, and see if it lives. > Even leave it that way a while and see if it eventually barfs out on > you. If you want to test Xserver activity, move the mouse. Something I might want to keep in mind when I get some time to really sort this problem out. > > > > You might isolate video card issues by running in console > > > > mode, by switching to a version 3 XF86 driver, or by switching > > > > from an accelerated driver to SVGA or VGA16. > > > > > > I've been thinking about running X on the frame buffer device > > > myself. > > > > This morning, after three lock ups in ten minutes, I compiled > > frame buffer support in, fiddled my XF86Config-4 to use it and > > I've been up for 5(!) hours. I think I'll lock my session with > > xscreensaver (to guarantee some Xserver activity (eh, at least > > until APM kicks in and blanks the screen)) before I go home and if > > my machine hasn't crashed by tomorrow morning I'm ready to believe > > my problem is fixed. I might even get bold and start using that > > broken DIMM again ;-) APM didn't kick in last night it seems. The screensaver was running happily when I came in this morning. Removed the lock and my session was still very much alive (left stripchart running). As a matter of fact I'm typing this mail from a 21 hour old session. I'd say that even if my problem may not be fixed, I've got myself an acceptable work around. Using the framebuffer is only a bit slower. > > Problem then is where to put the blame: graphics card or X driver? > > I'm using xserver-xfree86 4.0.3-4. > > Try tuning up SVGAlib to see if that also freaks out the system. If > it works at all it will be under "VESA" or "Standard VGA". If it > breaks too then two things remain. Not quite sure whether I get what you're saying, but I'll keep this in mind for when I get oodles of free time (or my boss' blessing :-) to get to the bottom of this. > 1. the modeline. SVGAlib uses XF86 style modelines too. Monitor being >pushed just barely out of spec could be doing something unknown and >invisible. To test that, reduce the freq range for your monitor >values in X's config then try again, so you get new modelines. > > 2. yeah, your card could be bad... > > Good luck > > * Heather Stern * star@ many places... Karsten, Heather, thanks for the feedback. -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development Free Software: `No walls, no windows! No fences, no gates!' -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Very Selective upgrade
Tom Allison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Can someone give me an example of how I would upgrade a specific > package from 'testing' without affecting any of the apt-get libraries? > If I change the sources.list to include 'testing' then I get all kinds > of files selected for upgrade. I really don't want to move anything > out of 'stable' right now as I've tried repeated upgrades and they all > result in a horrific system failure. > I've got 'stable' installed, but I want to include the 'testing' > version of openSSH... Nothing to do with laptops, but ... You can use sources.list to include testing and invoke apt-get with a '-t stable' option or add the following to /etc/apt/apt.conf APT::Default-Release "testing"; Err, that is in testing you can, don't know 'bout stable. You could always just grab the deb and use `dpkg -i' to install. May need to upgrade a few libraries as well, though, so generally apt-get would be more painless. -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Effective Boot Procedure
Sven Niedner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tuesday 04 September 2001 13:33, Schoppitsch Dieter wrote: > > So far I deleted most daemon-boot-scripts from /etc/rc2 and edit > > /etc/inittab to set the runlevel at 2 (no daemons) or > > 3 (with daemons) - than I have to reboot. > > This is already the way to go. > > You can pass the initlevel to the kernel at boot time; I am not shure > how this is done, the only thing I know by heart is that the parameter > single boots into single user mode (and maybe you can "abuse" this for > you minimal configuration -- no daemons, no anything). Use something like the following in your /etc/lilo.conf image=/boot/linux label=daemons read-only append=3 image=/boot/linux-small label=no-daemons read-only append=2 And choose whatever you need when booting. If you want to change run levels without rebooting, become root and `init 2` to switch all your daemons off or `init 3` to switch 'em on. You do *not* have to change /etc/inittab Just for fun, I've installed xdm, gdm (recompiled to work around xdm and kdm conflicts) and kdm and I boot to the console or one of these in a way similar to that described above. In /etc/rc2.d I moved the S99?dm symlinks to K01?dm so that whatever login manager is running gets summarily killed when I `init 2`. In /etc/rc3.d I left S99xdm and moved the other two to K01[gk]dm. The other run levels, 4 and 5, are analogous. Whenever you move symlinks from S to K (or the other way around) just make sure that the numbers add up to 100. Then they will be executed in the correct order. The only possible PITA is that upgrading may stick one of the symlinks you moved/deleted back in. Hope this helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Effective Boot Procedure
Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Sven Niedner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On Tuesday 04 September 2001 13:33, Schoppitsch Dieter wrote: > > > So far I deleted most daemon-boot-scripts from /etc/rc2 and edit > > > /etc/inittab to set the runlevel at 2 (no daemons) or > > > 3 (with daemons) - than I have to reboot. > > > > This is already the way to go. > > > > You can pass the initlevel to the kernel at boot time; I am not shure > > how this is done, the only thing I know by heart is that the parameter > > single boots into single user mode (and maybe you can "abuse" this for > > you minimal configuration -- no daemons, no anything). > > Use something like the following in your /etc/lilo.conf > > image=/boot/linux > label=daemons > read-only > append=3 > > image=/boot/linux-small > label=no-daemons > read-only > append=2 BTW, I removed those ugly symlinks in / and use full path names to symlinks in /boot. > And choose whatever you need when booting. If you want to change run > levels without rebooting, become root and `init 2` to switch all your > daemons off or `init 3` to switch 'em on. You do *not* have to change > /etc/inittab Eh, that's assuming both kernels have what it takes to run all them daemons. When booting /boot/linux you should be okay, I guess, but it may not work the other way around. > Just for fun, I've installed xdm, gdm (recompiled to work around xdm > and kdm conflicts) and kdm and I boot to the console or one of these > in a way similar to that described above. In /etc/rc2.d I moved the > S99?dm symlinks to K01?dm so that whatever login manager is running > gets summarily killed when I `init 2`. In /etc/rc3.d I left S99xdm > and moved the other two to K01[gk]dm. The other run levels, 4 and 5, > are analogous. Whenever you move symlinks from S to K (or the other > way around) just make sure that the numbers add up to 100. Then they > will be executed in the correct order. > > The only possible PITA is that upgrading may stick one of the symlinks > you moved/deleted back in. > > Hope this helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Boot hangs at 'Starting PCMCIA services: modules' on ThinkPad i1476
Hans van den Boogert wrote: (B (B (B>It is probably the PCMCIA start up script (in /etc/init.d). Try to (B>rename it to x-pcmcia. If you can boot then start reading the PCMCIA (B>HOWTO. (B (BThat's easier said than done if you can't get at a shell prompt :-) (BHowever, I've found out that booting with a different version of the (Bkernel skips the pcmcia stuff (because of mismatching versions) and (Bcan start looking for the cause. (B (BPS: I goofed the debian-laptop address on the original message. (BIt only went out to debian-user. Below is the original. (B (B>At 05:24 PM 9/8/99 +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: (B> (B>> Dear friends, I've installed a dual-boot system (hamm/that other OS) (B>> on a brand-new ThinkPad i1476 without any trouble, but the first (B>> boot hangs on Starting PCMCIA services: modules I'm suspecting (B>> that the built-in Lucent Win Modem is wrecking havoc, but don't have (B>> a clue as to how to fix this. I'd appreciate any sug- gestions. (B>> BTW, I'll try with slink tomorrow, but am not very optimistic that (B>> that will solve the problem. Please reply directly as I don't (B>> subscribe just yet, Haven't figured out how to split incoming mail (B>> with Outlook Express ... doubt if I'll ever bother when Debian boots (B>> OK. Thanks in advance, (B-- (BOlaf Meeuwissen
Re: Boot hangs at 'Starting PCMCIA services: modules' on ThinkPad i1476
Earlier I wrote: (B (B>Dear friends, (B> (B>I've installed a dual-boot system (hamm/that other OS) on a brand-new (B>ThinkPad i1476 without any trouble, but the first boot hangs on (B> (B>Starting PCMCIA services: modules (B> (B>I'm suspecting that the built-in Lucent Win Modem is wrecking havoc, (B>but don't have a clue as to how to fix this. I'd appreciate any sug- (B>gestions. (B> (B>BTW, I'll try with slink tomorrow, but am not very optimistic that (B>that will solve the problem. (B> (B>Please reply directly as I don't subscribe just yet, Haven't figured (B>out how to split incoming mail with Outlook Express ... doubt if I'll (B>ever bother when Debian boots OK. (B> (B>Thanks in advance, (B (BI've tried with slink without much success. However, I noticed that (Bbooting slink with the hamm kernel does not try to start PCMCIA, so I (Bcould get at a boot prompt. Moved /etc/init.d/pcmcia to somewhere (Belse and rebooted with the slink kernel. BTW, I'm using loadlin to (Bboot. (B (BSome experimenting showed that the pcmcia script hangs while trying to (Bload the i82365 module. Inserting and removing a PCMCIA card in the (Btop slot causes it to continue. Things seem to work OK, so far. (B (BI have been looking at /var/log/messages to see if I can find out what (Bis causing the hang, but I'm afraid that is a little beyond me. If (Bkind folks in the know would care to help me out, I'd appreciate it. (B-- (BOlaf Meeuwissen (BWhere there's no walls, who needs windows? (BWhere there's no fences, who needs gates?
RE: Boot hangs at 'Starting PCMCIA services: modules' on ThinkPad i1476
Just wanted to let you know that I've found out how to work around (Bthis. (B (BDuring the installation, you need to configure PCMCIA and set an (Boption for the controller. Set it to: (B (Birq_list=3,4,7,11 (B (Band all will be well. (B (BThanks to all who responded. (B-- (BOlaf Meeuwissen
RE: Boot hangs at 'Starting PCMCIA services: modules' on ThinkPad i1476
Hans van den Boogert wrote: >It is probably the PCMCIA start up script (in /etc/init.d). Try to >rename it to x-pcmcia. If you can boot then start reading the PCMCIA >HOWTO. That's easier said than done if you can't get at a shell prompt :-) However, I've found out that booting with a different version of the kernel skips the pcmcia stuff (because of mismatching versions) and can start looking for the cause. PS: I goofed the debian-laptop address on the original message. It only went out to debian-user. Below is the original. >At 05:24 PM 9/8/99 +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > >> Dear friends, I've installed a dual-boot system (hamm/that other OS) >> on a brand-new ThinkPad i1476 without any trouble, but the first >> boot hangs on Starting PCMCIA services: modules I'm suspecting >> that the built-in Lucent Win Modem is wrecking havoc, but don't have >> a clue as to how to fix this. I'd appreciate any sug- gestions. >> BTW, I'll try with slink tomorrow, but am not very optimistic that >> that will solve the problem. Please reply directly as I don't >> subscribe just yet, Haven't figured out how to split incoming mail >> with Outlook Express ... doubt if I'll ever bother when Debian boots >> OK. Thanks in advance, -- Olaf Meeuwissen
Re: Boot hangs at 'Starting PCMCIA services: modules' on ThinkPad i1476
Earlier I wrote: >Dear friends, > >I've installed a dual-boot system (hamm/that other OS) on a brand-new >ThinkPad i1476 without any trouble, but the first boot hangs on > >Starting PCMCIA services: modules > >I'm suspecting that the built-in Lucent Win Modem is wrecking havoc, >but don't have a clue as to how to fix this. I'd appreciate any sug- >gestions. > >BTW, I'll try with slink tomorrow, but am not very optimistic that >that will solve the problem. > >Please reply directly as I don't subscribe just yet, Haven't figured >out how to split incoming mail with Outlook Express ... doubt if I'll >ever bother when Debian boots OK. > >Thanks in advance, I've tried with slink without much success. However, I noticed that booting slink with the hamm kernel does not try to start PCMCIA, so I could get at a boot prompt. Moved /etc/init.d/pcmcia to somewhere else and rebooted with the slink kernel. BTW, I'm using loadlin to boot. Some experimenting showed that the pcmcia script hangs while trying to load the i82365 module. Inserting and removing a PCMCIA card in the top slot causes it to continue. Things seem to work OK, so far. I have been looking at /var/log/messages to see if I can find out what is causing the hang, but I'm afraid that is a little beyond me. If kind folks in the know would care to help me out, I'd appreciate it. -- Olaf Meeuwissen Where there's no walls, who needs windows? Where there's no fences, who needs gates?
RE: Boot hangs at 'Starting PCMCIA services: modules' on ThinkPad i1476
Just wanted to let you know that I've found out how to work around this. During the installation, you need to configure PCMCIA and set an option for the controller. Set it to: irq_list=3,4,7,11 and all will be well. Thanks to all who responded. -- Olaf Meeuwissen
Re: I need help setting up my DVD please.
Jeremy Petzold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I need some help. I have a cd-rw/dvd-rom on my laptop > I downloaded ogle, ogle gui is not working right in sarge so I got rid > of it while I test out the access. > > I have access to the CD-RW functions, so I know my scsi emulation is > working, I made a directory /dev/dvd and ln -sf to /dev/scd0. Not claiming that I know what I speak of but this doesn't sound right. What does $ ls -ld /dev/dvd /dev/scd0 give you? I think /dev/dvd should be a symlink to /dev/scd0 and that should in turn be a proper device node. I don't have a DVD-ROM, but for my CD-ROM it looks like $ ls -ld /dev/cdrom /dev/hdc lrwxrwxrwx1 root root3 Apr 3 2001 /dev/cdrom -> hdc brw-rw1 root cdrom 22, 0 Dec 1 2000 /dev/hdc $ > I edited my fstab to add a dvd entry here is my fstab : > > /# /etc/fstab: static file system information. > # > # >/dev/hda2/ xfsdefaults 0 0 >/dev/hda5none swap sw 0 0 > proc/proc proc defaults 0 0 >/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0 >/dev/scd0/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0 >/dev/hda6/home xfs defaults0 0 >/dev/scd0/dvduser,noauto,ro0 0 Eh, don't you need a file system for the /dvd entry? If things look as I described above you could use /dev/cdrom/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0 /dev/dvd /dvd??? user,noauto,ro 0 0 instead of what you have now if you like. > here is the ogle output: > > > Note[ogle_ctrl]: ogle 0.8.4 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_cli with pid 2239 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_nav with pid 2240 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_vout with pid 2241 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_mpeg_ps with pid 2242 > Debug[ogle_vout]: CLK_TCK: 100 > Debug[ogle_nav]: Opening DVD at "/dev/dvd" > libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.1 for DVD access > libdvdread: Couldn't find device name. If you really made a /dev/dvd directory as you said, I'm not really surprised libdvdread can't find a device name. HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
HD performance question
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dear .debs, I'm a minimalist and rolled my own kernel. It was absolutely bare bones and that had a noticable effect on hard disk performance. So I tinkered around a bit with kernel options and tested performance with hdparm -tT. Now I'd like to know what all those numbers mean and if they are reasonable (for my Dynabook SS S4/275PNHW). I've repeated all tests five times and dropped outliers. With my initial kernel I get ~110 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads ~ 2 MB/sec for buffered disk reads After tinkering I get ~ 55 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads ~ 14 MB/sec for buffered disk reads Question 1: Which of the two is "better" and why? Question 2: Can I do better than this? I still think hard disk performance is a bit slow but that may be just me. PS: I'm no hardware buff (in case you hadn't noticed :-) - -- Olaf Meeuwissen GnuPG key: 91114EAF/C3E1 2D40 C7CC AEB2 FB15 8BDF 60C2 5B3F 9111 4EAF -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE92MDHYMJbP5ERTq8RAr4DAJwNHcnXELDWh1xG/mltKBBXBwmsLACgiD4P jhbC3H9zTJ+qkEuPmIjyDbE= =UYf1 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: HD performance question (3hd raid)
Robert Michel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Monday, 18. November 2002 13:01, Daniel Pittman wrote: > > On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > > Question 2: Can I do better than this? > > > > No. > > > > > I still think hard disk performance is a bit slow but that may be just > > > me. > > > > It is. You have a laptop, which means a 5400RPM drive is *fast*. Don't > > expect desktop performance out of these poor little drives. :) > > Don't beat me for this proposel: > > - Why not putting two edditional hds in one modular bay and run an software >raid with three hds? > > size wouldn't be a problem: > - two hds in two layers would fit > power wouln't be a problem: > - one CD-RW: 1.4A > - one HD:0.5A > master/slave woudn't be a problem > - two HDs should fit inside of the modular bay :-) Lugging it around would be a problem :-) I bought my laptop because it is easy to carry around (A4 size, 19mm thick, 1.4kg *with* the adapter included), not because I'm into weight lifting :-) -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: HD performance question
Daniel Pittman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > I'm a minimalist and rolled my own kernel. It was absolutely bare > > bones and that had a noticable effect on hard disk performance. So I > > tinkered around a bit with kernel options and tested performance with > > hdparm -tT. Now I'd like to know what all those numbers mean and if > > they are reasonable (for my Dynabook SS S4/275PNHW). > > > > I've repeated all tests five times and dropped outliers. With my > > initial kernel I get > > > > ~110 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads > > ~ 2 MB/sec for buffered disk reads > > > > After tinkering I get > > > > ~ 55 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads > > ~ 14 MB/sec for buffered disk reads > > > > Question 1: Which of the two is "better" and why? > > The second, because 2MB/second is PIO, while the second is DMA > transfers. So, buffer-cache reads may be slower... but not using 100% > CPU when you touch the hard disk is worth it. :) > > > Question 2: Can I do better than this? > > No. Because? > > I still think hard disk performance is a bit slow but that may be just > > me. > > It is. You have a laptop, which means a 5400RPM drive is *fast*. Don't > expect desktop performance out of these poor little drives. :) I don't. > One of the best ways to improve laptop performance is more memory > because, always, the hard drive performance is not going to be great. Maxed that one out already. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Debian on a Toshiba SS S4/275PNHW
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi, I've installed Debian on a Toshiba SS S4/275PNHW (a while back already) and finally got around to putting together a diff against boot-floppies that is needed to install. # I got a little "distracted" trying to return the pre-loaded OS and still am :-| (see http://www13.0038.net/~olaf/no-return.en.html for details). This laptop has neither internal CD-ROM, nor internal floppies so some boot-floppies patching was required to get it going. I don't know if this model is available outside Japan. Toshiba recently released two derived models, the S5/280PNKW and S5/280PNLN , that should be installable with my customized boot floppies. # Note, I do not recommend any of these computers. As a matter of fact, I'd recommend you buy *no* Toshiba products at all if you care about your rights as a customer. I've installed on my S4/275PNHW in a variety of ways using these patched boot-floppies and a set of woody pre-release CD-ROMs: bootkernel/drivers base system smart media USB floppy USB CD-ROM USB floppy USB floppy USB CD-ROM smart media USB stick drive USB CD-ROM I haven't tried but am pretty sure you could even install from a single USB stick drive (using the 2.88MB floppy image and a minimal file system containing the kernel, drivers and base system packages in the right places). Anyway, the patch and instructions to build custom boot floppies are available via: http://www13.0038.net/~olaf/floppies.en.html Time permitting, I'll polish up and add my installation/configuration notes. - -- Olaf Meeuwissen GnuPG key: 91114EAF/C3E1 2D40 C7CC AEB2 FB15 8BDF 60C2 5B3F 9111 4EAF -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE92htmYMJbP5ERTq8RAnj5AJ4s0UZZ/IY+9ZNsftUn7eH2ozkNNQCfWFik EHZhhgejMg9F+e/XPUsVt4o= =oMWx -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Debian on a NEC PC98
Dear .debs, I recently "rescued" an old NEC PC-9821Lt2 from the garbage bin and would like to install Debian on it. PC98 machines are mainly used in Japan, hence the cross-post. I have found some info on the Debian-JP site (that I still have to dig into), but am wondering if there are any .debs out there that have experience with this. Any info is welcome (even in Japanese). -- Olaf Meeuwissen
Re: Debian on a NEC PC98
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Masato Taruishi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > At Tue, 12 Feb 2002 20:05:42 +0900, > Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > I recently "rescued" an old NEC PC-9821Lt2 from the garbage bin and > > would like to install Debian on it. PC98 machines are mainly used in > > Japan, hence the cross-post. I have found some info on the Debian-JP > > site (that I still have to dig into), but am wondering if there are > > any .debs out there that have experience with this. Any info is > > welcome (even in Japanese). > > Though I don't use pc9800 now, but created some pc9800 related > packages long time ago. You can find some packages at > > http://people.debian.org/~taru/debian98/debs/ Thanks. I've also done my homework and dug into the info @ Debian-JP. As a result I now have a Debian Installation Manual annotated for PC9800 (in Japanese) and downloaded pc98 boot floppies. I'll try them out during the weekend. http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/3999/debian98/install.ja.html http://ftp.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/potato-jp/main/disks-pc98/ - -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.6 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iD8DBQE8awtIFsfyfWvjfZARAibEAKCxe+y/WMRZRTAetI9r0qc6aDhM0QCdHvYe P8YBGzm+vVPx/Gl140QuxZc= =qQou -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Debian on a NEC PC98
Tomohiro KUBOTA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hello, > > At Tue, 12 Feb 2002 20:05:42 +0900, > Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > I recently "rescued" an old NEC PC-9821Lt2 from the garbage bin and > > would like to install Debian on it. PC98 machines are mainly used in > > Japan, hence the cross-post. I have found some info on the Debian-JP > > site (that I still have to dig into), but am wondering if there are > > any .debs out there that have experience with this. Any info is > > welcome (even in Japanese). > > I forwarded your message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list > and I heard that > http://homepage2.nifty.com/tenboshi/debian_pc98.html > is a good information, though the page is written in Japanese. Looks good, together with the boot floppy images I pulled down today I'll give it a go over the weekend. # Back to work now. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
installation report PC-9821Lt2/3A (was Re: Debian on a NEC PC98)
Okay, I guess I ought to let you all know how my PC98 install went. The machine is a PC-9821Lt2/3A with 35 MB of memory and a 344 MB HD. Not impressive, but hey it works. I got a working set of floppies from http://www.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/stable-jp/main/disks-pc98/curr ent/ There are two flavours, pe and ce, but they only differ as to the kind of network cards they support. As I didn't have a network card (apart from PCMCIA, but see below) either should work. I used the pc9800pe floppies to boot and did not use any boot parameters. Just pressed enter and off I went. Oh, by the way, these boot floppies are completely in Japanese. I partitioned the hard disk to allow for a 35 MB swap partition and use the rest for /. Not much use splitting that further up with that little space. I put the swap partition at the beginning just in case the HD uses ZBR in which case that should give slightly better performance. Oh, by the way again, I did this from within the shell that the installer provides on the second virtual terminal. You can switch with GRPH-f2 (there is no ALT key). Initialized swap and the Linux partition (dropped pre-2.2 support) and mounted it as /. Installed kernel and drivers from floppy. I tried configuration of the PCMCIA card, but that hung badly. Still have to look into it, but it meant installing the base system from floppy, ouch! Oh well, that wasn't the first time. Masochistic, me? Skipped the configuration of device drivers, set a host name and was busy changing floppies for a while to install the base system. Then set the time zone, before I tried to install the boot loader on the HD. Too bad, that's not supported so you'll need to create a boot floppy. Rebooted from that, enabled MD5 and shadow passwords, set a root password, didn't zap PCMCIA, didn't use PPP, left the APT config for what it was (no sources 'cause I'm not connected), trudged through the dselect stuff and was done. Note, after the reboot you'll see a bunch of messages from debconf; it complains about not being able to initialize the slang front-end and falls back on the dialog one. No big deal, just a bit annoying. Booting from floppy is all nice and dandy, but being able to boot without is a lot nicer. Tried lilo first. Cobbled together a config that should work, installed it and reboot. No go, bummer! Oh well, now I have an excuse to get familiar with grub98. Read the docs, gave it a spin and ... no go. It has probloms finding things in the /boot directory. I tried the interactive interface and via tab-completion noticed that it thinks there is an extra character appended to the dir name. Saw the same for some other names. Then I pulled down grub-0.5-pc9800-2002.tar.gz from http://www.kmc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/proj/linux98/arch/i386/boot/grub98/v0.5.h tml (on another machine of course!) copied the stage1 and stage2 boot loaders via floppy to /boot/grub/ on the PC-98, made a simple menu.lst and installed that. For reference, you can copy the bootloaders to floppy with $ dd if=bin/stage1 of=/dev/fd0 $ dd if=bin/stage2 of=/dev/fd0 seek=1 from the top level grub source directory and you can peel them back off again with $ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/boot/grub/stage1 bs=1 count=512 $ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/boot/grub/stage2 bs=1 count=33764 seek=1 Adjust the count to the size of the stage[12] files if necessary. Booting from this floppy I installed grub with my menu.lst on /dev/hda with / on /dev/hda2 by grub> install=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage2 0x8000 p /boot/grub/menu.lst The menu.lst is very simple: timeout = 10 title = Debian GNU/Linux root= (hd0,1) kernel = (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-pc9800pe root=/dev/hda2 Having done that I can now boot directly from the hard disk. Since the lilo and grub98 from the base system are of no use, I purged them. There's a couple of other packages I purged 'cause of the small amount of disk space and plans to upgrade to woody (yes, without a network connection) and I also ripped out non-essential files like message catalogs (a la purge-locale or whatever that package is called). Anyways, further fun experiences will have to wait a little till I get the relevant .debs transferred. Hope this helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen
Re: installation report PC-9821Lt2/3A (was Re: Debian on a NEC PC98)
Werner Heuser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > with permission from Olaf I have put his report into a HTML page at > http://mobilix.org/nec_pc98_laptop.html > I will announce it to Linux-on-Laptops now. > > BTW: Some links from the original posting seem to be broken. I hadn't > time to provide better links yet. Sorry about that. Something gone wrong cutting and pasting, I guess. The correct links are http://plat.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/potato-jp/main/disks-pc98/current/ for the boot floppies and http://www.kmc.gr.jp/proj/linux98/arch/i386/boot/grub98/ for the grub replacement. I used the 2001/11/12 version which is at http://www.kmc.gr.jp/proj/linux98/arch/i386/boot/grub98/grub-0.5-pc9800-2002.tar.gz BTW, I just upgraded the machine to woody over the weekend (great fun without a network connection! :-) and when I have some time will write that up as well. The next step will probably be installing X (that is if disk space permits; maybe I'll just make it ;-). -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: Debian installation problems
"Nick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think the problem lies where I had to choose which components to install. > I tried to install all the Xfree components but still after login I cannot > get XWindows to launch. This is the error I get when I type STARTX. > > X: cannot stat /etc/X11/X (No such file or directory), aborting. > giving up. > xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server > xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error. /etc/X11/X is supposed to be a symlink to your Xserver binary. In my case it points to /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 (running woody). Just create the symlink yourself and give it another shot. BTW, if you have installed one of the potato xserver-* packages, you probably have to link to /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86_* (from memory). HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Woody?
"Nick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Alot of you on this mailing list have told me to stay with Woody rather
> than upgrade to Potato because Woody will eventually be the stable
> version.
> What is the major difference between Woody and Potato, why is Woody
> better than Potato?
>
> I am confused now, I spent a few hours downloading Potato 2.2r5 to
> upgrade Woody 2.2r3 with the view of having the most stable release but
> from what I have been told through this mailing list this is not the
> case so I am now reluctant to install Potato even though on the download
> page it does say it is stable.
There are three branches in the Debian distribution: stable, testing
and unstable. Currently, these canonical names map to the code names
potato, woody and sid. That is, potato is the same as stable as of
writing, woody is the same as testing.
The release number for potato is 2.2r6, as of writing. Every now and
then security and other important fixes are integrated in the stable
release. Whenever this happens the digit after the r is increased.
Until about a week ago potato's release number was 2.2r5.
# Note that all security upgrades are available via
# deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main
The release number for woody will be 3.0. Whenever security and other
important fixes are integrated, it will be 3.0r1, 3.0r2, etc.
While potato is currently the stable release, it has been released
such a long time ago that many consider it almost obsolete. Hence the
advice to stick with woody. Although this is Debian's testing branch,
it is very stable (and rumoured to be releasable around the beginning
of next May, meaning it will become the stable branch). I have been
using it for over a year now without major trouble.
If I were you, I'd stick with woody and forget about potato. Chances
are that your hardware is better supported by woody anyway. Your apt
sources.list (for woody) should look something like:
deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main
# yes that's stable/updates, there are no security updates for
# testing or unstable
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian woody main
# replace with the mirror of your choice
HTH,
--
Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID
GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90
LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian for a train hopper
wandering jason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > thank you everyone for the advice. i'll have to do > more research into the various models mentioned. > sounds like if i'm buying a used system, a thinkpad > may be the way to go. Just some data here but I noticed when shopping around here in the backwaters of Japan that there is hardly a new ThinkPad in sight in most any store. However, when it comes to used machines, they make up 30 to 50% of what's available. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: uninstall Debian
Andrew McMillan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, 2002-04-16 at 08:57, Nick wrote: > > I need to uninstall Debian so I can reinstall from scratch, how can I > > uninstall everything. > > I've _always_ wanted to say to someone to just: > > su > rm -rf / Personally, I prefer one of # shred /dev/hda # you'll wipe Win-DoS too if installed # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda to really scrub the hard disk clean, but they can take quite a bit of time with large disks. They really get rid of your data (especially when using shred, see `man shred`) which is usually a good idea when you plan to junk/sell/give away your machine. If you want to keep Win-DoS, just loop over the /dev/hda* devices that you want to clear and skip the ones you want to keep. > And finally it is halfway reasonable advice! :-) > > Seriously, do an 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' and a 'df' to see what your > partitions are at the moment and where they are mounted. Save that > information. > > Use 'cfdisk /dev/hda' and delete the partitions that have Debian on > them. You can do that during the reinstall. Just switch to the second virtual terminal with ALT+F2 and you have a shell where you can do these basic things directly or go down the installer's menu to (re) partition the hard disk. > Reboot from your Debian installation media (CD, preferably) and you > will be able to do a completely clean install of Debian. > > On the other hand this is kind of a strange request. Very few > situations require a complete reinstall, and you should even be able > to do a reinstall over the top of the existing install, but it could > potentially be messy - the approach above will end up with a > completely clean system, but means losing your data files (under > Debian - your windows ones should be OK). Sometimes it's easier to just reinstall the whole bunch (although you may want to keep /home -> put it on a separate partition to do that!). It's probably also a good idea to backup /etc before going ahead. It may come in handy later when (re)configuring stuff. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: about upgrading the kernal
"Robert Hood, Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi, this list has been really helpful so far. > > just a newbie question: I've read that the short answer to when to > upgrade my kernal is *never* -- but my gateway 2500 needs some usb > support not in the current kernal (2.2). Is there something like > "apt-get" for a new kernal that will hold my hand through the > process? host:~# /usr/bin/apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18 should be a decent starting point. The postinst script does a pretty good job of making sure you will be able to (re)boot with your brand new kernel as the default. Eh, assuming you have not messed with the lilo setup too much. HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: about upgrading the kernal
Shyamal Prasad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > "Olaf" == Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Olaf> "Robert Hood, Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> Hi, this list has been really helpful so far. > >> > >> just a newbie question: I've read that the short answer to when > >> to upgrade my kernal is *never* -- but my gateway 2500 needs > >> some usb support not in the current kernal (2.2). Is there > >> something like "apt-get" for a new kernal that will hold my > >> hand through the process? > > Olaf> host:~# /usr/bin/apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18 > > Olaf> should be a decent starting point. The postinst script does > Olaf> a pretty good job of making sure you will be able to > Olaf> (re)boot with your brand new kernel as the default. Eh, > Olaf> assuming you have not messed with the lilo setup too much. > > This works and is a great suggestion. > > Just FYI, it will give you a warning about initrd during the install > that might scare you, but is self explanatory. Don't worry about it. Sorry, forgot about that! > Go to a different console, load /etc/lilo.conf into an editor, and add > a line like 'initrd=/initrd.img' like the message from the installer > says. Save the file, continue with the installation. As long as you > have the /vmlinux.old image in lilo.conf that was put in by the > original install there is very little chance that you will end up with > a non bootbale system. Just adding the initrd= line to your /etc/lilo.conf ought to be enough indeed. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian testing on Toshiba Satellite 2650DVDX
Andreas Marienborg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I was thinking about writing a page about my experiences, troubles > et al with debian on this particluar toshiba laptop, since I can't > seem to find any info on this one.. I just installed woody on a Toshiba Dynabook SS S4/275PNHW. There is probably some useful info to be gleaned from a Toshiba releated site: http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/index.htm and in Japanese http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/indexj.htm I will write up my experiences as soon as I get my notes straightened out, the kernel configuration trimmed down and some time, but I found these pages pretty useful: http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/memo/memo.htm http://memebeam.org/toys/ToshibaLibretto HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Driver for Intel 10/100 (Toshiba Satellite 1400)
Stephen Gran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > This one time, at band camp, Charles Lewis said: > > Can't find a driver that works for my built in ethernet port. The device id > > is 8086:1059. > > None of the obvious drivers work (eepro100,eexpress,eepro,etc). Any ideas? > > Please CC me, as I am on the road for the next 2 weeks. Thanks. > Try cat /proc/pci - it may give you the vendor ID, and you can go from > there. Looked at their website, but it wasn't very helpful. > linux-laptop didn't have anything either ;-( I don't know where you looked but there is a long list of Toshiba PCs at http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/speclist.php3. It doesn't mention any Satellite 1400, though :-( -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: how to load a module for vfat fs support?
Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >>>>> "Gale" == Gale Stafford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > [...] > > Gale> In /lib/modules/2.4.10/build/vfat I see three files. > > Gale> vfatfs_syms.c > Gale> Makefile > Gale> namei.c > > Those should not be there. You should not have a build directory under > /lib/modules/2.4.10, and /lib/modules should not contain any source > code. How did you build your kernel and modules? I've noticed that kernel-package puts "build" symlink in the debs it makes. This symlink points to the source directory you used to roll your own kernel. If that directory is still there, you'll be seeing the behaviour mentioned. You can get rid of the symlink by lying and making make-kpkg believe you are building an official kernel. The way to do that is create a debian directory (if not already there) and touch a file by the name of "official" in that directory. $ cd $KERNEL_SOURCE_DIR $ test -d debian && mkdir debian $ touch debian/official HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: printing setup
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > take a look at the epkowa website, they provide linux drivers with > graphical interfaces verysimilar to the windoze ones > (http://www.epkowa.co.jp/english/linux_e/pips_e.html) > > some pips packages are also in debian (can't remember whether woody > or sid) Thanks for mentioning our site. The debian packages that are available do not support the Epson Stylus C60. However, grab the RPM and pull it through `alien` and you should be able to install the result. > >Can anyone advise on the best/easiest way to set up a > >printing and printer now? The printing howto, in a > >brief section on Debian, suggests apsfilter and CUPS. > >I just used apsfilterconfig to set up the printer and > >it printed a test page successfully, but I want to > >have a graphical interface such as CUPS provides. I > >installed cups (libcupsys2-dev and libcupsys2) but > >have not been able to find out how to set it up or > >start the configuration. First of all, should I try > >to remove the configuration done with apsfilter - > >does CUPS do that part or would it build on what > >apsfilter has done? > > > >I am running Woody with the 2.4.18 kernel on a Fujitsu Lifebook > >P-2040 using a direct USB connection to the printer. The printer > >is an Epson Stylus color C60. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Strange behaviour
Matthew Guenther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I recently got a new laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200) and have installed testing > on it and set up pretty much everything as I like it. However I've run into > a problem that I haven't seen before which confounds all my attempts to sort > it out. > > Basically, after a few days of uptime, it seems as though some processes > stop working correctly, not starting properly and also refuse to quit > or allow themselves to be killed. Specifically terminal windows (xterm, > rxvt) open, but do not run a shell, and XEmacs also hangs midway through > initialization. There are also numerous qmail-local processes stuck, but > which refuse to be killed. Also, any PCMCIA cards I have in the machine > work until they are ejected, but nothing happens when they are reinserted. > I am still able to log in fine from the console, and the affected processes > do not appear to be zombies, so I am at a loss as to what is going on under > the hood. > > I compiled my own kernel (2.4.18) and tried some new options that I'd not > used before such as devfs, ext3, alsa and hotplug support so I'm wondering > if this could be a kernel problem. Anyone heard of something like this > happening before? Err, you did read Documentation/filesystems/devfs/README, didn't you? If not, recompile your kernel without devfs and I think your problems will disappear. Using devfs takes a bit more than a CONFIG_DEVFS_FS=y in your config. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: Strange behaviour
"Derek Broughton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > From: "Matthew Guenther" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 03:56:38PM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > > > > Err, you did read Documentation/filesystems/devfs/README, didn't you? > > > If not, recompile your kernel without devfs and I think your problems > > > will disappear. > > > > Of course I read the README, I'm not insane! This page: The one that came with kernel-source-2.4.18 right? Most (if not all) of the symptoms you described can be traced to device access ... > > http://www.rm-r.net/~meff/i8200/ > > > > Was my baseline instruction sheet and he described no problems > > with devfs so I figured it was okay. He used 2.4.19 however, so I > > may try upgrading and if the problem persists, turn off devfs. > > ?? His only reference to devfs was "If you use devfs you may need ...". It > doesn't seem likely that he used it at all. I think you're going about this > in the wrong order. Turn off devfs first, get it working, THEN try figuring > out what to do to get devfs. Devfs is no more likely to work with your > configuration on 2.4.19 than on an earlier kernel. The ONLY reference to devfs on that page reads: Note: If you use devfs you may need to make the device: mknod /dev/hdb b 3 64 and it is in regards to getting CDRW/DVD working. This is not nearly enough to get devfs to work. I completely agree with Derek's advice: rip out devfs, see if that fixes things (it likely will if your system hasn't been hosed by reckless devfs use) and only once things are back in order contemplate adding devfs again. Do yourself a favour and read that README, make sure you understand it (not sure I do myself and haven't had the time to test that), do as it tells you to and only then try a devfs enabled kernel. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: Strange behaviour
Matthew Guenther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 08:56:23AM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > > The one that came with kernel-source-2.4.18 right? Most (if not all) > > of the symptoms you described can be traced to device access ... > > The one that came with the kernel source, yes... however it doesn't > refer to the type of difficulties I'm experiencing The difficulties you are experiencing have one thing in common: they all appear at points where stuff in /dev is likely to be accessed ... That should give a hint ;-) > I should have been more specific, the kernel config from the page > has devfs enabled, from that and the lack of mention of any > substantive issues I inferred that it would work fine. Try a boot with "devfs=nomount" to see if that fixes things for you. No need to even recompile your kernel. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: installation screen is bigger than my resolution
João Macaíba <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I'm trying to install debian 3.0 in my toshiba satellite 1805-s204 but I
> can't see all the installation screen, I only see half screen. So I just
> can't access the control buttons ('OK', 'cancel', ...).
>
> The mouse is not recognized at installation time so I only have the
> keyboard. I've tried many things even to scroll down ... I've tried to
> resize the screen resolution, but I haven't find out.
Had something similar on my Dynabook. The bottom 3 or so lines were
not visible. I worked around it by using the framebuffer. Instead of
just hitting enter at the boot prompt, do
linux vga=0x318
for a full-screen, full-colour (1024x768x32) installation. There are
a couple of more values you could use but I don't remember them off
the top of my head. Try `man fbset` or the kernel sources framebuffer
docs.
HTH,
--
Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS
GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90
LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: X windows setup
Designer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hello, > > I installed X during the coarse of the normal Debian installation. > When my 'Prostar' reboots X tries several times to start, then > fails. > > Video ATI Radeon 7500 64Meg of SDram > > I not sure how to 'rerun' the X installation, so I can try a variety > of speeds etc. dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 > Is there a good document I should read that talk all about how to > 'rerun' the installation and how to tweak thing under version 4 of > XFree? The FAQ? /usr/share/doc/xfree86-common/FAQ.gz > This is my first attempt at setting up Version 4, so hopefully there > is a new document, and a better way to figure those -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: kcore eating my disk space
David Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > what is /proc/kcore and why is it eating up my disk space? > i.e. > 262573 -r1 root root 268349440 Oct 16 08:59 kcore > and a couple of minutes later > 0 -r1 root root 320598016 Oct 16 09:03 kcore > ^ ^ > || > and why is it's size 0 blks and also have a size of 320598016 bytes > i'm running with kernel 2.4.17 > > Yeah the obvious answer from it's name is it's a kernel core dump, but > thats just a guess! a real explanation would be good and how do I get > rid of it would be better. The `files' below /proc are not real files. They are a file oriented interface to information that lives in your running kernel. I would think kcore gives (read-only) access to the memory currently used. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Re: kcore eating my disk space
David Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The reason I noticed it was because my used disk space jump up to 100% > and I started looking for what using it. du in the root directory gave > > [snip command output] > > So if I trust du, df and ls in the /proc (which i probably shouldn't) > directory why did it start using the disk? > or show up as using disk space? I'd use `df` to get a handle on what partition is filling up and then `du -s` on that partition to figure out what is hogging it. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
Debian on a NEC PC98
Dear .debs, I recently "rescued" an old NEC PC-9821Lt2 from the garbage bin and would like to install Debian on it. PC98 machines are mainly used in Japan, hence the cross-post. I have found some info on the Debian-JP site (that I still have to dig into), but am wondering if there are any .debs out there that have experience with this. Any info is welcome (even in Japanese). -- Olaf Meeuwissen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian on a NEC PC98
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Masato Taruishi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > At Tue, 12 Feb 2002 20:05:42 +0900, > Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > I recently "rescued" an old NEC PC-9821Lt2 from the garbage bin and > > would like to install Debian on it. PC98 machines are mainly used in > > Japan, hence the cross-post. I have found some info on the Debian-JP > > site (that I still have to dig into), but am wondering if there are > > any .debs out there that have experience with this. Any info is > > welcome (even in Japanese). > > Though I don't use pc9800 now, but created some pc9800 related > packages long time ago. You can find some packages at > > http://people.debian.org/~taru/debian98/debs/ Thanks. I've also done my homework and dug into the info @ Debian-JP. As a result I now have a Debian Installation Manual annotated for PC9800 (in Japanese) and downloaded pc98 boot floppies. I'll try them out during the weekend. http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/3999/debian98/install.ja.html http://ftp.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/potato-jp/main/disks-pc98/ - -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.6 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iD8DBQE8awtIFsfyfWvjfZARAibEAKCxe+y/WMRZRTAetI9r0qc6aDhM0QCdHvYe P8YBGzm+vVPx/Gl140QuxZc= =qQou -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian on a NEC PC98
Tomohiro KUBOTA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hello, > > At Tue, 12 Feb 2002 20:05:42 +0900, > Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > I recently "rescued" an old NEC PC-9821Lt2 from the garbage bin and > > would like to install Debian on it. PC98 machines are mainly used in > > Japan, hence the cross-post. I have found some info on the Debian-JP > > site (that I still have to dig into), but am wondering if there are > > any .debs out there that have experience with this. Any info is > > welcome (even in Japanese). > > I forwarded your message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list > and I heard that > http://homepage2.nifty.com/tenboshi/debian_pc98.html > is a good information, though the page is written in Japanese. Looks good, together with the boot floppy images I pulled down today I'll give it a go over the weekend. # Back to work now. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
installation report PC-9821Lt2/3A (was Re: Debian on a NEC PC98)
Okay, I guess I ought to let you all know how my PC98 install went. The machine is a PC-9821Lt2/3A with 35 MB of memory and a 344 MB HD. Not impressive, but hey it works. I got a working set of floppies from http://www.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/stable-jp/main/disks-pc98/curr ent/ There are two flavours, pe and ce, but they only differ as to the kind of network cards they support. As I didn't have a network card (apart from PCMCIA, but see below) either should work. I used the pc9800pe floppies to boot and did not use any boot parameters. Just pressed enter and off I went. Oh, by the way, these boot floppies are completely in Japanese. I partitioned the hard disk to allow for a 35 MB swap partition and use the rest for /. Not much use splitting that further up with that little space. I put the swap partition at the beginning just in case the HD uses ZBR in which case that should give slightly better performance. Oh, by the way again, I did this from within the shell that the installer provides on the second virtual terminal. You can switch with GRPH-f2 (there is no ALT key). Initialized swap and the Linux partition (dropped pre-2.2 support) and mounted it as /. Installed kernel and drivers from floppy. I tried configuration of the PCMCIA card, but that hung badly. Still have to look into it, but it meant installing the base system from floppy, ouch! Oh well, that wasn't the first time. Masochistic, me? Skipped the configuration of device drivers, set a host name and was busy changing floppies for a while to install the base system. Then set the time zone, before I tried to install the boot loader on the HD. Too bad, that's not supported so you'll need to create a boot floppy. Rebooted from that, enabled MD5 and shadow passwords, set a root password, didn't zap PCMCIA, didn't use PPP, left the APT config for what it was (no sources 'cause I'm not connected), trudged through the dselect stuff and was done. Note, after the reboot you'll see a bunch of messages from debconf; it complains about not being able to initialize the slang front-end and falls back on the dialog one. No big deal, just a bit annoying. Booting from floppy is all nice and dandy, but being able to boot without is a lot nicer. Tried lilo first. Cobbled together a config that should work, installed it and reboot. No go, bummer! Oh well, now I have an excuse to get familiar with grub98. Read the docs, gave it a spin and ... no go. It has probloms finding things in the /boot directory. I tried the interactive interface and via tab-completion noticed that it thinks there is an extra character appended to the dir name. Saw the same for some other names. Then I pulled down grub-0.5-pc9800-2002.tar.gz from http://www.kmc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/proj/linux98/arch/i386/boot/grub98/v0.5.h tml (on another machine of course!) copied the stage1 and stage2 boot loaders via floppy to /boot/grub/ on the PC-98, made a simple menu.lst and installed that. For reference, you can copy the bootloaders to floppy with $ dd if=bin/stage1 of=/dev/fd0 $ dd if=bin/stage2 of=/dev/fd0 seek=1 from the top level grub source directory and you can peel them back off again with $ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/boot/grub/stage1 bs=1 count=512 $ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/boot/grub/stage2 bs=1 count=33764 seek=1 Adjust the count to the size of the stage[12] files if necessary. Booting from this floppy I installed grub with my menu.lst on /dev/hda with / on /dev/hda2 by grub> install=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage2 0x8000 p /boot/grub/menu.lst The menu.lst is very simple: timeout = 10 title = Debian GNU/Linux root= (hd0,1) kernel = (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-pc9800pe root=/dev/hda2 Having done that I can now boot directly from the hard disk. Since the lilo and grub98 from the base system are of no use, I purged them. There's a couple of other packages I purged 'cause of the small amount of disk space and plans to upgrade to woody (yes, without a network connection) and I also ripped out non-essential files like message catalogs (a la purge-locale or whatever that package is called). Anyways, further fun experiences will have to wait a little till I get the relevant .debs transferred. Hope this helps, -- Olaf Meeuwissen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: installation report PC-9821Lt2/3A (was Re: Debian on a NEC PC98)
Werner Heuser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > with permission from Olaf I have put his report into a HTML page at > http://mobilix.org/nec_pc98_laptop.html > I will announce it to Linux-on-Laptops now. > > BTW: Some links from the original posting seem to be broken. I hadn't > time to provide better links yet. Sorry about that. Something gone wrong cutting and pasting, I guess. The correct links are http://plat.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/potato-jp/main/disks-pc98/current/ for the boot floppies and http://www.kmc.gr.jp/proj/linux98/arch/i386/boot/grub98/ for the grub replacement. I used the 2001/11/12 version which is at http://www.kmc.gr.jp/proj/linux98/arch/i386/boot/grub98/grub-0.5-pc9800-2002.tar.gz BTW, I just upgraded the machine to woody over the weekend (great fun without a network connection! :-) and when I have some time will write that up as well. The next step will probably be installing X (that is if disk space permits; maybe I'll just make it ;-). -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian installation problems
"Nick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think the problem lies where I had to choose which components to install. > I tried to install all the Xfree components but still after login I cannot > get XWindows to launch. This is the error I get when I type STARTX. > > X: cannot stat /etc/X11/X (No such file or directory), aborting. > giving up. > xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server > xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error. /etc/X11/X is supposed to be a symlink to your Xserver binary. In my case it points to /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 (running woody). Just create the symlink yourself and give it another shot. BTW, if you have installed one of the potato xserver-* packages, you probably have to link to /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86_* (from memory). HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Woody?
"Nick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Alot of you on this mailing list have told me to stay with Woody rather
> than upgrade to Potato because Woody will eventually be the stable
> version.
> What is the major difference between Woody and Potato, why is Woody
> better than Potato?
>
> I am confused now, I spent a few hours downloading Potato 2.2r5 to
> upgrade Woody 2.2r3 with the view of having the most stable release but
> from what I have been told through this mailing list this is not the
> case so I am now reluctant to install Potato even though on the download
> page it does say it is stable.
There are three branches in the Debian distribution: stable, testing
and unstable. Currently, these canonical names map to the code names
potato, woody and sid. That is, potato is the same as stable as of
writing, woody is the same as testing.
The release number for potato is 2.2r6, as of writing. Every now and
then security and other important fixes are integrated in the stable
release. Whenever this happens the digit after the r is increased.
Until about a week ago potato's release number was 2.2r5.
# Note that all security upgrades are available via
# deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main
The release number for woody will be 3.0. Whenever security and other
important fixes are integrated, it will be 3.0r1, 3.0r2, etc.
While potato is currently the stable release, it has been released
such a long time ago that many consider it almost obsolete. Hence the
advice to stick with woody. Although this is Debian's testing branch,
it is very stable (and rumoured to be releasable around the beginning
of next May, meaning it will become the stable branch). I have been
using it for over a year now without major trouble.
If I were you, I'd stick with woody and forget about potato. Chances
are that your hardware is better supported by woody anyway. Your apt
sources.list (for woody) should look something like:
deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main
# yes that's stable/updates, there are no security updates for
# testing or unstable
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian woody main
# replace with the mirror of your choice
HTH,
--
Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID
GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90
LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian for a train hopper
wandering jason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > thank you everyone for the advice. i'll have to do > more research into the various models mentioned. > sounds like if i'm buying a used system, a thinkpad > may be the way to go. Just some data here but I noticed when shopping around here in the backwaters of Japan that there is hardly a new ThinkPad in sight in most any store. However, when it comes to used machines, they make up 30 to 50% of what's available. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: uninstall Debian
Andrew McMillan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, 2002-04-16 at 08:57, Nick wrote: > > I need to uninstall Debian so I can reinstall from scratch, how can I > > uninstall everything. > > I've _always_ wanted to say to someone to just: > > su > rm -rf / Personally, I prefer one of # shred /dev/hda # you'll wipe Win-DoS too if installed # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda to really scrub the hard disk clean, but they can take quite a bit of time with large disks. They really get rid of your data (especially when using shred, see `man shred`) which is usually a good idea when you plan to junk/sell/give away your machine. If you want to keep Win-DoS, just loop over the /dev/hda* devices that you want to clear and skip the ones you want to keep. > And finally it is halfway reasonable advice! :-) > > Seriously, do an 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' and a 'df' to see what your > partitions are at the moment and where they are mounted. Save that > information. > > Use 'cfdisk /dev/hda' and delete the partitions that have Debian on > them. You can do that during the reinstall. Just switch to the second virtual terminal with ALT+F2 and you have a shell where you can do these basic things directly or go down the installer's menu to (re) partition the hard disk. > Reboot from your Debian installation media (CD, preferably) and you > will be able to do a completely clean install of Debian. > > On the other hand this is kind of a strange request. Very few > situations require a complete reinstall, and you should even be able > to do a reinstall over the top of the existing install, but it could > potentially be messy - the approach above will end up with a > completely clean system, but means losing your data files (under > Debian - your windows ones should be OK). Sometimes it's easier to just reinstall the whole bunch (although you may want to keep /home -> put it on a separate partition to do that!). It's probably also a good idea to backup /etc before going ahead. It may come in handy later when (re)configuring stuff. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: about upgrading the kernal
"Robert Hood, Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi, this list has been really helpful so far. > > just a newbie question: I've read that the short answer to when to > upgrade my kernal is *never* -- but my gateway 2500 needs some usb > support not in the current kernal (2.2). Is there something like > "apt-get" for a new kernal that will hold my hand through the > process? host:~# /usr/bin/apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18 should be a decent starting point. The postinst script does a pretty good job of making sure you will be able to (re)boot with your brand new kernel as the default. Eh, assuming you have not messed with the lilo setup too much. HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: about upgrading the kernal
Shyamal Prasad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > "Olaf" == Olaf Meeuwissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Olaf> "Robert Hood, Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> Hi, this list has been really helpful so far. > >> > >> just a newbie question: I've read that the short answer to when > >> to upgrade my kernal is *never* -- but my gateway 2500 needs > >> some usb support not in the current kernal (2.2). Is there > >> something like "apt-get" for a new kernal that will hold my > >> hand through the process? > > Olaf> host:~# /usr/bin/apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18 > > Olaf> should be a decent starting point. The postinst script does > Olaf> a pretty good job of making sure you will be able to > Olaf> (re)boot with your brand new kernel as the default. Eh, > Olaf> assuming you have not messed with the lilo setup too much. > > This works and is a great suggestion. > > Just FYI, it will give you a warning about initrd during the install > that might scare you, but is self explanatory. Don't worry about it. Sorry, forgot about that! > Go to a different console, load /etc/lilo.conf into an editor, and add > a line like 'initrd=/initrd.img' like the message from the installer > says. Save the file, continue with the installation. As long as you > have the /vmlinux.old image in lilo.conf that was put in by the > original install there is very little chance that you will end up with > a non bootbale system. Just adding the initrd= line to your /etc/lilo.conf ought to be enough indeed. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian testing on Toshiba Satellite 2650DVDX
Andreas Marienborg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I was thinking about writing a page about my experiences, troubles > et al with debian on this particluar toshiba laptop, since I can't > seem to find any info on this one.. I just installed woody on a Toshiba Dynabook SS S4/275PNHW. There is probably some useful info to be gleaned from a Toshiba releated site: http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/index.htm and in Japanese http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/indexj.htm I will write up my experiences as soon as I get my notes straightened out, the kernel configuration trimmed down and some time, but I found these pages pretty useful: http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/memo/memo.htm http://memebeam.org/toys/ToshibaLibretto HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEpson Kowa Corporation, CID GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: kcore eating my disk space
David Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > what is /proc/kcore and why is it eating up my disk space? > i.e. > 262573 -r1 root root 268349440 Oct 16 08:59 kcore > and a couple of minutes later > 0 -r1 root root 320598016 Oct 16 09:03 kcore > ^ ^ > || > and why is it's size 0 blks and also have a size of 320598016 bytes > i'm running with kernel 2.4.17 > > Yeah the obvious answer from it's name is it's a kernel core dump, but > thats just a guess! a real explanation would be good and how do I get > rid of it would be better. The `files' below /proc are not real files. They are a file oriented interface to information that lives in your running kernel. I would think kcore gives (read-only) access to the memory currently used. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: kcore eating my disk space
David Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The reason I noticed it was because my used disk space jump up to 100% > and I started looking for what using it. du in the root directory gave > > [snip command output] > > So if I trust du, df and ls in the /proc (which i probably shouldn't) > directory why did it start using the disk? > or show up as using disk space? I'd use `df` to get a handle on what partition is filling up and then `du -s` on that partition to figure out what is hogging it. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: I need help setting up my DVD please.
Jeremy Petzold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I need some help. I have a cd-rw/dvd-rom on my laptop > I downloaded ogle, ogle gui is not working right in sarge so I got rid > of it while I test out the access. > > I have access to the CD-RW functions, so I know my scsi emulation is > working, I made a directory /dev/dvd and ln -sf to /dev/scd0. Not claiming that I know what I speak of but this doesn't sound right. What does $ ls -ld /dev/dvd /dev/scd0 give you? I think /dev/dvd should be a symlink to /dev/scd0 and that should in turn be a proper device node. I don't have a DVD-ROM, but for my CD-ROM it looks like $ ls -ld /dev/cdrom /dev/hdc lrwxrwxrwx1 root root3 Apr 3 2001 /dev/cdrom -> hdc brw-rw1 root cdrom 22, 0 Dec 1 2000 /dev/hdc $ > I edited my fstab to add a dvd entry here is my fstab : > > /# /etc/fstab: static file system information. > # > # >/dev/hda2/ xfsdefaults 0 0 >/dev/hda5none swap sw 0 0 > proc/proc proc defaults 0 0 >/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0 >/dev/scd0/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0 >/dev/hda6/home xfs defaults0 0 >/dev/scd0/dvduser,noauto,ro0 0 Eh, don't you need a file system for the /dvd entry? If things look as I described above you could use /dev/cdrom/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0 /dev/dvd /dvd??? user,noauto,ro 0 0 instead of what you have now if you like. > here is the ogle output: > > > Note[ogle_ctrl]: ogle 0.8.4 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_cli with pid 2239 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_nav with pid 2240 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_vout with pid 2241 > Debug[ogle_ctrl]: Started /usr/lib/ogle/ogle_mpeg_ps with pid 2242 > Debug[ogle_vout]: CLK_TCK: 100 > Debug[ogle_nav]: Opening DVD at "/dev/dvd" > libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.1 for DVD access > libdvdread: Couldn't find device name. If you really made a /dev/dvd directory as you said, I'm not really surprised libdvdread can't find a device name. HTH, -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HD performance question
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dear .debs, I'm a minimalist and rolled my own kernel. It was absolutely bare bones and that had a noticable effect on hard disk performance. So I tinkered around a bit with kernel options and tested performance with hdparm -tT. Now I'd like to know what all those numbers mean and if they are reasonable (for my Dynabook SS S4/275PNHW). I've repeated all tests five times and dropped outliers. With my initial kernel I get ~110 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads ~ 2 MB/sec for buffered disk reads After tinkering I get ~ 55 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads ~ 14 MB/sec for buffered disk reads Question 1: Which of the two is "better" and why? Question 2: Can I do better than this? I still think hard disk performance is a bit slow but that may be just me. PS: I'm no hardware buff (in case you hadn't noticed :-) - -- Olaf Meeuwissen GnuPG key: 91114EAF/C3E1 2D40 C7CC AEB2 FB15 8BDF 60C2 5B3F 9111 4EAF -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE92MDHYMJbP5ERTq8RAr4DAJwNHcnXELDWh1xG/mltKBBXBwmsLACgiD4P jhbC3H9zTJ+qkEuPmIjyDbE= =UYf1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: HD performance question (3hd raid)
Robert Michel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Monday, 18. November 2002 13:01, Daniel Pittman wrote: > > On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > > > Question 2: Can I do better than this? > > > > No. > > > > > I still think hard disk performance is a bit slow but that may be just > > > me. > > > > It is. You have a laptop, which means a 5400RPM drive is *fast*. Don't > > expect desktop performance out of these poor little drives. :) > > Don't beat me for this proposel: > > - Why not putting two edditional hds in one modular bay and run an software >raid with three hds? > > size wouldn't be a problem: > - two hds in two layers would fit > power wouln't be a problem: > - one CD-RW: 1.4A > - one HD:0.5A > master/slave woudn't be a problem > - two HDs should fit inside of the modular bay :-) Lugging it around would be a problem :-) I bought my laptop because it is easy to carry around (A4 size, 19mm thick, 1.4kg *with* the adapter included), not because I'm into weight lifting :-) -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: HD performance question
Daniel Pittman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote: > > I'm a minimalist and rolled my own kernel. It was absolutely bare > > bones and that had a noticable effect on hard disk performance. So I > > tinkered around a bit with kernel options and tested performance with > > hdparm -tT. Now I'd like to know what all those numbers mean and if > > they are reasonable (for my Dynabook SS S4/275PNHW). > > > > I've repeated all tests five times and dropped outliers. With my > > initial kernel I get > > > > ~110 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads > > ~ 2 MB/sec for buffered disk reads > > > > After tinkering I get > > > > ~ 55 MB/sec for buffer-cache reads > > ~ 14 MB/sec for buffered disk reads > > > > Question 1: Which of the two is "better" and why? > > The second, because 2MB/second is PIO, while the second is DMA > transfers. So, buffer-cache reads may be slower... but not using 100% > CPU when you touch the hard disk is worth it. :) > > > Question 2: Can I do better than this? > > No. Because? > > I still think hard disk performance is a bit slow but that may be just > > me. > > It is. You have a laptop, which means a 5400RPM drive is *fast*. Don't > expect desktop performance out of these poor little drives. :) I don't. > One of the best ways to improve laptop performance is more memory > because, always, the hard drive performance is not going to be great. Maxed that one out already. -- Olaf MeeuwissenEPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97 976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90 LPIC-2 -- I hack, therefore I am -- BOFH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian on a Toshiba SS S4/275PNHW
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi, I've installed Debian on a Toshiba SS S4/275PNHW (a while back already) and finally got around to putting together a diff against boot-floppies that is needed to install. # I got a little "distracted" trying to return the pre-loaded OS and still am :-| (see http://www13.0038.net/~olaf/no-return.en.html for details). This laptop has neither internal CD-ROM, nor internal floppies so some boot-floppies patching was required to get it going. I don't know if this model is available outside Japan. Toshiba recently released two derived models, the S5/280PNKW and S5/280PNLN , that should be installable with my customized boot floppies. # Note, I do not recommend any of these computers. As a matter of fact, I'd recommend you buy *no* Toshiba products at all if you care about your rights as a customer. I've installed on my S4/275PNHW in a variety of ways using these patched boot-floppies and a set of woody pre-release CD-ROMs: bootkernel/drivers base system smart media USB floppy USB CD-ROM USB floppy USB floppy USB CD-ROM smart media USB stick drive USB CD-ROM I haven't tried but am pretty sure you could even install from a single USB stick drive (using the 2.88MB floppy image and a minimal file system containing the kernel, drivers and base system packages in the right places). Anyway, the patch and instructions to build custom boot floppies are available via: http://www13.0038.net/~olaf/floppies.en.html Time permitting, I'll polish up and add my installation/configuration notes. - -- Olaf Meeuwissen GnuPG key: 91114EAF/C3E1 2D40 C7CC AEB2 FB15 8BDF 60C2 5B3F 9111 4EAF -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE92htmYMJbP5ERTq8RAnj5AJ4s0UZZ/IY+9ZNsftUn7eH2ozkNNQCfWFik EHZhhgejMg9F+e/XPUsVt4o= =oMWx -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
