Help total newbi installing new kernel!
 

Dammit ! friggin web form won't allow me to paste text. Got to write this whole damn message again... Second time... Rebooted when my modem hung...

Ok never mind.

Well anyway thanks for the last piece of advice, that seemed to go great. However not unexpectedly I ran into a couple of glitches. I ran the setup for the Xfree86 modules in terminal mode (no X as suggested). All appeard to go smoothly, except I had no idea how to get back out of terminal mode and restart my login screen with the selection of GUis. How do I do this? What is the command to restart the GUIs? I tried rebooting, but Mandrake seemed to just remember my previous settings and only started up in console mode.

Also during the install a couple of things happend. Nothing major I think though.

Firstly I got a warning which read as follows:

You appear to have a termcap file /usr/share/doc/vim-common-6.0/termcap

This should be edited manually to replace the Xterm entries with those in /usr/xllR6/lib/X11/etc.termcap

Note the new entries are required to take full advantage of new features, but they may cause problems when using older versions of Xterm.
A trminal type 'xterm-r6' is included for compatability with the standard X11R6 version of Xterm

What does this mean and how do I edit these entries?

Also when I couldn't figure out how to start the GUis again (KDE) I tried rebooting in safe mode to see if this would let me start up next time with a GUI. It didn't, but it did give me another warning. It read as follows:

Warning: it looks like there are some old *.so modules in usr/x11R6/lib/modules/codeconv.

The state of the system is not in sync with the current/updated configurations. You are allowed to make it current, or continue with the current configurations.

Here are the commands to execute:

Changing permisions of file /usr/sbin/ppd from 105755 to 104755

Changing owner of file /var/ftp to root.root

Changing owner of file/var/ftp/pub to root.ftp

Again what do I write and where do I change these entries?

(The* in *.so did'nt seem to be in upper case)

Lastly, I noticed in terminal mode that only one of my processors is listed. I noticed this in Harddrake too. I saw somewhere something about addiing a module in Mandrake to enable SMP support, I didn't pay much attention. It was just a file that was available for download and I'm not at all sure what it was, I was too busy looking for other things. What is the deal here? I can't remember where I saw that file, or even what it really was. (I must have been on about 3000 web pages in the last week). Is there a way to fix this and where can I get the module/s and/or files I need to do this?

So far you guys have been great. If I can get these things done I can get on with my life again and begin to enjoy learning about Linux. I do hope I don't seem like too much of a pain, but I am picking things up slowly.
I can almost see the attraction of this command line stuff, as when you do something that works, it is a little bit of a buzz. However I am still struggling with the basics, and therefore any help you can offer is greatly appreciated.

Yours trully,

Q

PS

BTW do you guys have a live chat channel, like on IRC or something? That would be neat!

PPs

Sorry about posting a new thread, I hit the wrong button and going back and submitting this post in the original thread woyuld mean writing all this again. And as this would be the third time I would have to do this, there is no way I am going to do all this again. :D Sorry!!!

It may help if your posts weren't so detailed (a possible contradiction! Often we ask for more info), or at least set it out so the text isn't so hard to read.

Anyways, I have skimmed the other thread (the forum does allow for text pasting - which browser were you using?), but haven't digested it.

To start up X from the command terminal, simply type:
startx
or if you switch to runlevel 5 (I think) by typing:
init 5

If X doesn't start you can go back to your terminal screen (At any time) by pressing these keys in combo:
ctrl-alt-F1

X defaults to screen ctrl-alt-F7.

Its just like pressing ctrl-alt-delete (although not the same effect).

I don't know what the errors are likely to do, I don't think they will affect much (you will know if you can boot X or not as Xterm is the terminal for X).

To use the SMP (Symmetric Multi Processor - something like that) support will will probably have to recompile your kernel, which I would leave for a while although it wont do any harm to try to recompile, it may take a while to understand. Have you been pointed to www.linuxdocs.org ??

Hope this helps.

I'm sorry my posts contained so much info, I just wanted to deal with as much of these issues in one go as possible and then move on. I wouldn't really know how to abrieviate errror messages, other than write them as they appear. I would like to get my head round what I must do to correct these entries to avaoid possible conflicts. I laid the exact messages out explicitly hoping that someone could visualise what i saw at various points during the install and when I saw them. (And perhaps offer the appropriate assistance). I have a gut instinct that ignoring warnings like these may not be a healthly long term policy, therefore if anyone can help me correct these entries I would be eternally grateful.
As for browsers, I tried netscape, Gozzila, and Konqueror (the last of which was particularly useless) and none of them allowed text pasting. Indeed the clip board in KDE is not very reliable initself, which makes moving large bodies of text between one application and another a fairly haphazzard affair. Oh well just a minor niggle I suppose. Maybe the new version is a bit more useable. Anyway thanks for your help. I won't install Xfree again until I know what and how to edit these entries. At least from then on I will have a base system I can go on and update.

Regards,

Q
.

Definately errors in the longfrun are a bad thing, especially if you get them straight after an installation.

Do you have a middle button on your mouse? Even a scroll button, cus what you can do is highlight the text you want to copy, then press the middle button to where ever you want the text to go.