WTF! That's waaaayyy too much for those. Whoa, just took a peak at a conversion, that's alot of money for that type of part. I really hope that fixes the problem for ya!

How's the modem/router coming along? They are great aren't they?

As for the audio/cd/soundcard thing going on (John, give grip a run).... I think it's one of those infrequent times that you may want to try other hardware. If you have friends with cdrom's and soundcards, you might consider asking them to borrow them just to test em out. If it ends up working, then you know it's a hardware problem (which is one of the hardest problems to diagnose sometimes since you've got so many parts pulling to do something).



Cool

Chad, if you recall,

last time I was struggling to get the AC97 onboard device sorted, I seem to remember having the facility up and running after I put the soundblaster 5.1 digital card in.

But since then I have had the /usr/share/speedtouch/speedtouch.sh line 150 command ?RETURNED =0 command command not found. problem, hence the purchase of the modem/router. And even though you pointed me towards that post from the "mandrake cooker" crowd, even that didn't help. It seemed the snag was caused everytime I tried to sort out a firewall. I think that I might have got guarddog working, but I'm more concerned with sorting out the modem/router as that's probably going to be easiest.

One of the reasons for the diaphragm's being so pricey is that it isn't just the "rubber bit". They come complete with the needle assembly slider permanently fixed/bonded to the rubber. I just had to install the needle valves and reassemble. But at the moment, it is looking favourable. I will take it out tomorrow or thursday - depends - I've been off work with a stinking cold and the weather is looking a bit crappy - HA, while I remember, if you think the diaphragm's where expensive, some shit stole the right hand "air scoop" off the fairing when the bike was on the driveway outside the house. When I asked for a price, it also had to come from Yamaha as an original part, and the outside part was 90 pounds + 17.5% vat and the pipe that directs the air onto the top of the engine was a further 10 pounds + the vat. That's like 117.50 inclusive for 2 pieces of plastic. Luckily, there is a scrap dealer about 20 miles up the road, he had one, though I havent paid him for it yet.

Right, to get back on subject, I will try the various ideas posted earlier and report back.

regards

John

Looks like a lot of activity while I have been gone and it also looks like I'm not the only one having trouble. Most of the commands that have been suggested either come up a file already exists or permission denied. I'm less than a month into this Linux experiment and all I get is aggravation; surely it is not that way for everyone. Oh I have gotten some things to work like internet and connection sharing ( cable) with my other computer. It is sorta functional...kind of like driving a car with automatic, a car with stick shift ,or riding a bicycle. I am up to some tinkering but most of the time I feel like i am pushing the bicycle! both printers work but I have less features to choose from (no 'draft' mode). Of course the win modem isn't working yet if ever and the scanner is dead. All of the problems are probably due to incompatible components inside and outside the computer. Probably why I get constant freezes and lockups especially if I try to open or manipulate a sound device...xmms, kscd, grip.
I still don't understand what the root password is for since I get a permission denied message whether I use it or not
.



[QUOTE]

What does ls -l /etc/lilo.conf give you? How do you boot up?

[QUOTE]

Well I get nothing since i use a boot disc (grub) to boot up. I had it all working as a multiboot with grub, but decided to try lilo on one of the reinstalls and probably because I had my head up and jammed it put the boot loader on the wrong hardrive rendering it inoperable and on top of that lilo did not work (something about higher cylinder numbers).
I thought I was understanding some of this until masterC and texicle started talking greek....er geek...
I do appreciate everyone's time and effort but I am convinced that it can't be fixed. I have /dev'ed mounted, emulated and ejaculated until i am blue!
Right now Mandrake is not in my way on a 80g hd so I will leave it and maybe a fix will become available. Right now it is a just a barely useful novelty

Well 322bnh,

the giving up approach would be just what micr0$0ft want!

Seriously, If you have the partitions sorted, then try a re-install but when the "select packages" screen comes up, pick all the stuff down the left and ignore the server and whatever stuff on the right.

Also, if you make it a full install and not upgrade or repair, let mandrake decide where to put the boot loader etc - I have only tried grub the once, and have come to prefer the gui interface of lilo - it's easy to configure in the mandrake control centre - and for my money, more straight forward.

As far as sound is concerned, I have come to the conclusion that it's a "linking" problem, because I can get everything to work under wind0w$, and my mandrake install will do the various system sounds. The fact that I can still get the my cdrw to play a disc with the front panel buttons means that the connection is correct and working between the device and the soundcard - I have got the onboard device disabled in the bios, so the software (either flavour) has to use the soundcard (soundblaster live! 5.1 digital).

When I try running "grip", the track listing appears, and it seems to be playing, but I am still not getting any sound. Hence it is probably a linking problem as previously mentioned. And I will have to go though this entire thread and the one that I posted to with MasterC (linked in one of his posts) to put in all the symlinks etc.

I still don't know how I got it sorted last time, it just seemed to start i.e. kscd started working, I don't think that I ever tried xmms for playing audio cd's.

You could also try looking at the mandrake users forum as I have also had some good advice from them as well.

Whatever you do, don't work too hard cos it's bad for your health, and don't forget, if youre dual booting, you can always kick it back into wind0w$, and resume the "linux learning curve" at your leisure.

regards

John

Good suggestions John

In grip under the config tab/CD you can choose the device for it to look for. However, I must admit, it doesn't appear to be a symlink problem for you right now John. If you are getting the tracks to appear, then it's looking at the correct device. However, it could be just a simple mixer problem. Check to ensure the mixer controls (kmix to launch your mixer) are not muted and the volume is up. If you are using the digital out, make sure you are able to control the volume on that as well.

And I totally agree with the don't work too hard on it. Just relax, after all you've got a (semi) working OS for now until you get your better one up

Cool

Just for info Chad,

I now can't get grip to start. I select it, and it does the "hour glass" bit and them just doesn't open.

So that's got me stumped as well.

regards

John

Try launching it from a terminal. grip

That's the command. Post up any errors it gives you. It might be you need to check the box to "restore" your desktop after next boot while nothing is opened (and you've killed a process if needed).

Cool

Ok Chad,

I can now open grip from kde - but that's only because I have had to do/am in the middle of a re-install.

While I was meddling last night, I read somewhere that the newer mandrake version of the kernel sorted out some problems - some with supermount and some with sound.

So I d/l'd it, and while I was trying to install/upgrade etc it decided to install itself on the boot loader.

I tried to "fire it up", it booted into a terminal type interface and I thought "that's no good" and when I tried to get back into a normal gui, it just got as far as "starting xinetd" in the boot dialogue, the screen would flicker two or three times and then go straight into the terminal type interface.

If nothing else, I could log in and halt. It just means that at the moment I'm sorting out my preferences.

Though while I was watching the install dialogue, it occured to me, when I open grip, I can only get the track listing and the indication that the disc is playing, in "CDROM" i.e. the dvd drive, But, I can only actually hear anything, if I put a disc into "CDROM2" i.e. the cdrw. That means that it's the cdrw aka CDROM2 that is plugged to the mainboard.

There is also the soundcard which is a creative soundblaster 5.1 digital, though mandrake only see's it as a SB Live!

So, eventhough mandrake only see's it as a SB Live! should I be telling it to be running digital output, or analogue - don't forget I've only got a piddling little set of desktop speakers of the "bundled/packaged" type.

Also, since I have reinstalled, and just checked the sound card info, I notice that the DVD aka CDROM is also called /dev/hdb and the burner aka CDROM2 is also called /dev/scd0. I don't recall, but does that have some relevance (bells ringing in my head for some reason.

What next matey

regards

John

How can I get absolute root permission? Part of my trouble in changing/fixing and trouble shooting an application is I keep getting 'permission denied'. People who try to help ask me to post various parameters and I cannot because 'permission is denied'

I seem to recall getting the permission denied line fed to me on occassion.

Though I can't remember if that is when I'm in a user shell and have su'd into root, or when I log into root and do everything there and then su into my user name to anything else!

Though as a wind0w$ drone, I try to do as much using a gui as I can (lack of knowledge for shell stuff is because I am a "chiild of wind0w$ 95" - promoted to XP now).

Might try a bit more shell stuff when I can get my hands on a copy of O'reilly's Running Linux


What else have you tried 322bnh?

regards

John

HEY 322bnh,
Just one question, what's the Company and model name of ur CD drive ?
I used to have the same problem with my LG CRD-8400C Drive , could only watch vcd's and nothing much other than that, couldn't read a single byte of data, if i tried it my box would hang,
so i switched on to redhat and guess what everything works fine,
Just a suggestion !!

332bnh,

I have just got my KSCD playing an audio cd.

The answer was in front of me and I couldn't see it.

I have a cdrw and a DVD drive in my machine, of course, under wind0w$ they are called cdrw/DVD.

For some reason, my mandrake install has called the DVD drive "CDROM" and the cdrw "CDROM2".

What I didn't know, is that the mandrake install also see's the DVD player as "hdb" as well as CDROM and the cdrw as "scd0" as well as CDROM2.

In my "box" I know that the cdrw/CDROM2/scd0 is the drive that has the connecting wires to the soundcard (I think, though I could be thinking of the mainboard - but I am not refering to the IDE cable).

So all I have done is to open KSCD, clicked on the button that has the screwdriver/hammer image on it, when the kscd configuration window comes up, toward the bottom of the window is a box with CDROM device above it. By default, it said CDROM in it. I have changed it to read /dev/scd0 then clicked on the apply button, closed the configuration box, put a disc in the cdrw/CDROM2/scd0 drive and clicked play.

Maybe you could try this or something similar. I did try the above using hdb in the device box, but still got no sound.

I can only conclude that it's to do with linux not picking up the sound output from the IDE cable/channel.

I am going to try all this with XMMS and grip after lunch

regards

John

Congrats bigjohn! And you did all from the desktop with out pounding out a lot of code! I tried all that and it still no worky. My problem is I cannot get the audio tracks to be displayed on any of the applications except grip with my scd0 drive; the other cd drive will only play if I operate the buttons on the front. I seems from your previous post you were getting tracks displayed but no sound....give me a track list and i'll make it work using your method.
Out of curiosity what do you get if you type in a terminal: cdplay. I get a repeating I/O error message.
I tried Mandrake because I was getting constant lockups and spontaneous shutdowns with win xp and I get the same lockups with Mandrake especially while trouble shooting some of these unresponsive sound applications ( the reset button is getting a lot of excercise ). There is probably something basically wrong with my machine and/or hardware. I'm about ready to order one of those $300 computers from Wal-Mart and see if it works any better.

Sweet! The reason you cannot use hdb is because in linux cd recorders use scsi emulation to burn CD's. So, once the scsi emulation is applied (it's in your bootloader usually) your normal hdX's go away, and now it's known as /dev/scd0 or /dev/scd1 and so on.



Cool

So you did get audio tracks to be displayed on grip? Look at your device that you have listed there. Setup your other apps (xmms, kscd, whatever) to use that device. Now, make sure your volumes are unmuted, and make sure you have the audio cable running from the back of the drive to the soundcard.

Cool