a few questions
 

hey everyone i was wondering if someone could help me with a few problems im having:

1. how do u see which rpm's u currently have installed?

2. i tried changing my resolution through the display applet, but it never goes above 640X480 even after i restart X or restart the computer. is there anyway to change my resolution (9800 Pro)

3. whenever i try installing the ati drivers, i restart, X starts, but then i can't get to the gui. a screen opens with a yes or no and no text. if i select no, it goes staright to cli. if i pick yes, it loads the vesa driver, then i can load the gui. can the ati drivers be installed?

4. whenever the system boots and X starts up, the screen as all distorted. but then it's ok. is
there anyway to fix this prob? (i think its a driver prob, but not really sure.)

5. when im logged in (not as root) i cant access files i created as root, which is good. but when i type su, and type in the root password, i still cant access the folder (i get permission denied error.). i can view the folders from the terminal tho, but if i try to execute the file i get a permission denied error again. basically i wanna know whats the easily way to login as root, but not have to logout, enter the username and pw, then log back in as a regular user?

6. when im installing rpm's i always have dependency issues. i know the debian package manager has the apt-get command to help with this, but is there something similar in redhat 9 to make installing software less tedious?

7. I bookmarked www.rpmfind.net and www.rpm.pbone.net, but would like to know if theres any other rpm search engines i should be aware of?

Thanks for any help!

also id like some good links to sites about networking windows and linux

Here are some answers :) :

(1) rpm -qa

(2) Not sure -- do you have proper drivers for your video card installed? From question 3, doesn't sounds like it.

(3) Pass.

(4) It's normal (at least for me) for the screen to look a little weird (pieces of old screens, etc.) right when X starts up. It doesn't last more than a couple seconds. I'm not sure why it happens (maybe video memory not being cleared).

(5) Not sure exactly what your asking -- root can su to any other user on the system, so if you're root and want to become bob quickly, just do "su bob" or "su - bob" to get bob's environment. Re the permissions denied issuess - did you have executable permission turned on on the file? You should do chmod +x <filename> to turn on execute on a file. Obviously, this does nothing unless the file is actually something that an be executed (e.g. a program or shell script -- note also that execute permission on a directory allows one to cd into it). Read a tutorial on Unix permissions for more details.

(6) There's apt4rpm which allows you to use apt-get with RPMs. You should find an RPM for it and install (try rpmfinder.net). There's also yum, but I've never used it.

(7) freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net generally have lots of goodies, many of which are distributed in RPM format.

thanks for the reply.

1. rpm -qa doesnt work, here's the output:

[root@silvera-hroom apt4rpm]# rpm -qa
rpm: one type of query/verify may be performed at a time
[root@silvera-hroom apt4rpm]#

5. what i mean is that, even after i su to root, i still cant access the files. the file in question is an mp3 i was trying to play from a ntfs partition that i had mounted. i can listed to the songs when i login under the root name, but if i try to su into it, it doesnt work.

6. i tried installing apt4rpm and im running into some problems, LOTS of dependency issues, and i got this error after a while:

[root@silvera-hroom apt4rpm]# rpm apt4rpm-0.65.3-0.noarch.rpm
dbiTagsInit: unrecognized tag name: "Sha1header" ignored
dbiTagsInit: unrecognized tag name: "Pubkeys" ignored
error: unrecognized db option: "tmpdir" ignored
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Invalid argument (22)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
[root@silvera-hroom apt4rpm]#

i guess ill try yum out, hopefully itll be easier.

7. thanks for the links