Question 1. Recently I installed Red Hat 7.2 on my Compaq laptop. But I went back to XP because my modem wasnt working. I later found out that other people have had the same experiences os I think I can fix it now. N-E-wayz, everytime that I booted up, it always took a long time to get past the Eth0 test. Where it tests everything to see if they are ok. Well it always takes forever for it to display FAILED. Why does it do that. I'm not connected to a network but shouldnt it still pass. In XP it notices when there is a connection so it should be working properly.

Question 2. I have XP on right now, I'm hoping to try out Mandrake. If I install Mandrake and install GRUB in the MBR, which OS will be the default? And how would I be able to change it if I dont like the settings of a default? Remember, I'm a complete newbiw so explain it to ma as if I were a 1st grader.

Question 3. Which one would be better? LILO or GRUB?

Sorry for all the questions.

And why is it that when I would HALT the system, it would kill everything but it wouldnt turn the computer off? Doesnt HALT basically mean the same thing as ShutDown? Is that just the way that Linux is (Red Hat 7.2)? Or is there some settings that I can change so that it turns the computer completely off? If I have to do something with the kernel then try to be very detailed cause I have no idea what the whole kernel deal is about.

Another question (sorry)
Can someone please tell me about the BASH SHELL and the Linux Kernel. I know what the kernel is but how do you reconfigure it? or something like that. But as for the BASH SHELL, I have no idea what it is, what it's for, basically nothing. Please help. I really want to know all this shit.

hi,

what u do is..go to (if u have KDE) system..network configuration and edit the etho configration. u have to option of diabling the nic card at boot up so that it will not take long time while booting..

hope that works...uncheck the box..

But what happens to my modem? Doesn't get disabed also? Does anybody know why the modem fails?

Answer 1:
You're using DHCP to obtain your IP information. One of the things that's happening at the "Bringing up Interface eth0" point in the boot process is that the DHCP client daemon is trying to contact the DHCP server, which will assign your computer a valid IP address for the card (among other things). The daemon will query the network for a specified amount of time before it gives up and returns the "Failed" error. When you're not connected to a network, the daemon is obviously not going to find the server, but it will still keep trying until it reaches the timeout period, hence the hang.
You can take jdevanand's advice about disabling the "on boot" option for your NIC (eth0); it won't affect your modem.

If your modem is a Winmodem (also called software modem, HCF, HSF, or controllerless modem), you're going to have problems. Those modems are designed such that they need to pass off a large part of their processing load to the operating system and CPU. This makes them cheaper to manufacture, but unfortunately, they were designed to work specifically with Windows. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to get a Winmodem to work under Linux, but it's usually a painful proposition. You can go to linmodems.prg for more details, compatibility info, resurce links, etc.

Answer 2: The Mandrake installer should detect your existing Win partition and automagically put an entry for it in the grub (or lilo) config. file. The install might let you choose the default OS; if not, the default will be Mandy. As for actually changing the default OS, it's easy enough to find the (simple) instructions on how to do it, so I won't rehash them here.

Answer 3: I'm not even going to touch that one. Let's just say that people have, um, diferring opinions on the subject.


Answer 4: Power management (ACPI/APM) needs to be enabled in both your BIOS and your kernel. You also need to enable the APM daemon (apmd). Your kernel probably has power management support enabled, but if not I'm pretty sure the only option is to recompile the kernel. Assuming the BIOS and kernel do have support enabled, have a look at these instructions for controlling services in Rh 7.2 to enable apmd.

Answer 5: These are a few ways you can "configure" the kernel:
- pass parameters/options to it at boot time to force certain settings
- install loadable (external) modules to extend it's funtionality.
- recompile it to build in new features and functions.

As for bash, what it is, and what it does, the Bash Reference Manual sums it up better than I can.

*The best (and fastest) tool for finding Linux resources, answers to questions, etc. is the Google search engine. Learn how to concisely craft your search keywords and you'll be able get all of the info you need in a very short time.*

I altered the /sbin/ifup file to allow you to add DHCP_CLIENT_TIMEOUT to any ifcfg-eth* file (such as /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0



if [ -n "${DYNCONFIG}" ]; then
PUMPARGS=$PUMPARGS
#--------------------------------------
# Brian Bober
# Hacked to add ability for DHCP_CLIENT_TIMEOUT (in seconds)
# variable to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* scripts
#--------------------------------------
if [ -n "${DHCP_CLIENT_TIMEOUT}" ]; then
DHCPCDARGS="${DHCPCDARGS} -t ${DHCP_CLIENT_TIMEOUT}"
fi
#--------------------------------------
# End Hack
#--------------------------------------
DHCPCDARGS="$DHCPCDARGS -n"
if [ -n "${DHCP_HOSTNAME}" ]; then
PUMPARGS="${PUMPARGS} -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME}"
DHCPCDARGS="${DHCPCDARGS} -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME}"
fi
if [ -n "${NEEDHOSTNAME}" ]; then
PUMPARGS="${PUMPARGS} --lookup-hostname"