Brand new at it. Been running MS-stuff since Windows was nothing more than a hole knocked through a wall. Got a whole WORLD of bad reflexes built up over them years and am having a devil of a time unlearning them. I'm quite good with the innards of the computer, so anything that involves me swapping cards, drives, whathaveyou, configuring jumpers, or any of that kind of happy crap, I can handle with ease, although I'm much more comfortable with IDE than SCSI. That by way of indicating that I'm not inclined to use the cd player as a coffee cup holder, ask where the "any" key is, or any such similar.

Have managed to Get Red Hat 8.0 up and running on a spare box (at least I THINK it's 8.0, 'cause I can't even find where to get it to tell me a version number) and it seems happy enough.

Have one of those internal Motorola SM56 chip modems and the OS is sorta figuring out that there's some sort of Motorola modem in there somewhere, but it's not able to do much of anything with it.

I'd like to learn Linux USING Linux, but until I get that modem operational, it's no dice.

So I go looking for drivers and find them nice and easy. But when I load them on an XP formatted floppy, RH fails to find anything on said floppy.

Either that, or I'm missing something fundamental and am too stupid to know exactly what it is.

If we can get me to see what's on the floppy using the RH box, then maybe I can start asking howinhell you go about telling the machine to invoke it.

Many thanks in advance.

u can get the drivers here - http://e-www.motorola.com/collateral/SM56_5.1_I386.rpm
did u try and mounting the floppy drive? ie mount /mnt/floppy? if your windows partitions are in FAT, u can directly access the file by mounting the windows partitions within your RH system so you can just copy the driver directly.

I'm so new at Linux that I have no idea how to "mount /mnt/floppy." I downloaded the drivers from Motorola's site so it looks like I'm ready to go on that front. I'll go and format a floppy FAT32 instead of NTFS and copy the file again while this goes up the wire and down back (I hope).

Many thanks.

Disks are storage media. In a storage media, the information is stored in a 'file system'. FAT32, NTFS, EXT3, are filesystems. When you insert any kind of new media in the system, you need to tell Linux that there's a new media and you want it to read the filesystem. So, you need to 'mount' it. First, you'll need to know where it will be mounted. Go to a console (press Control+Alt+F1), do a login and type: less /etc/fstab

You should find a line with "floppy" on it, and other options. You will probably find /mnt/floppy or /floppy and /dev/floppy or /dev/fd0 on it. Disk media and other devices information are saved in /dev, and mount points (where Linux puts the filesystem) are usually under /mnt.

When you know where is Linux mounting the floppy (/mnt/floppy, /floppy or anything) you can type:

mount (the directory where floppy should be mounted)

With the disk in. Disk unit light should flash for a second. Now, browse to it:

cd (the directory where floppy should be mounted)

And read what is in it:

ls

You should read what is on it. Now, go back to your GUI (Control+Alt+F7 or may be F5 or so on) and open Konqueror or other filemanager. You can now access and do any kind of thing in the directory where the floppy is mounted. If you are using a RPM, you just need to double click it, press Install and type in your root password.

When you are ready, you'll need to unmount your media (if you forget to do it in a floppy it's unharmful, but Linux won't let you get a CD out of the tray if you don't unmount it first). Go to the console, exit the directory where the floppy is mounted:

cd / (this takes you to the root directory)

and then:

umount (the directory where floppy should be mounted)

Disk should flash and all is ready.

Greetings,

Thank you bureado, your information was spot on.

EXACTLY the sort of thing I need to properly grok Linux.

You have unraveled my private mystery of "what the hell is this MOUNT crap?"

Once I got to the floppy, the contents showed up just as pretty as you please. With the Magic Command of ctrl-alt-F7 taking me back to the desktop, I discovered that RH had conveniently placed an icon for the floppy there, that wasn't there before. I clicked on it and it came right up with the file. Which I double clicked and it started to sing and dance and install the rpm.

Unfortunately, after doodling around for a while, it then presented me with "Psyche 8.0 disk 1 needed to install packages" and I've got no idea whathehell that might mean.

But at least I've figured out how to get the rig to find the floppy, and for someone in my present state of ignorance, that's no small achievement.

Thank you kindly, for your help.

Probably you don't have some dependencies installed. Installation of programs in Linux was made thru the compiling of source code which was freely available on the Internet. Since Linux has become into a user-side operating system, programmers started making 'packages' where they include the compiled stuff.

Now, people has no need to do the 'make' and 'make install' stuff that you'll hear from now on, for most of the programs. Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake and others are working with the RPM (Redhat Package Manager) system, while Debian is working with the APT (Advanced Package ??) system which, from my point of view, is better.

When you install a program, it might need some components. In the package language this is called 'dependencies'. Dependencies must be satisfied so the program will run properly. In Debian, apt gets rid of the dependency problem auto downloading the packages that are needed.

You are trying to install an RPM. However, Red Hat warns you that it will not be installed because you need "Psyche 8.0 disk 1". Do you have the Red Hat disk 1? If so, you might need to insert it and Red Hat will (probably, I don't know Red Hat) automount it and fetch what it needs, install it and install the RPM you were originally trying to install.

If this doesn't work, take the filename and find it on the internet. You'll probably find some webpages (which are called RPM Finders or Repositories), where you can find all the information about that package you are trying to install. Between that information, they're the dependencies. You might need to download them if they're small enough to fit in a floppy disk or install them from the Red Hat CD's, thru and application which maybe called Red Hat Package Manager or Install Software Manager, or etc.

If all of this doesn't work, I quit (in this topic only, of course). I never had used Red Hat, and I'm only basing this on my Mandrake experience (1-2 months). If someone here is handy in the package stuff, he/she will help you more than I could do.

A last lesson about mounting: floppies are mounted so easy because their filesystem is FAT. Also, CD's are formatted in the ISO9660 filesystem, which is also autodetected by the 'mount' program. However, hard disks or other stuff might be formatted in other filesystems, like NTFS, ext2, ext3, xfs, and so on (Linux actually supports more than 30 filesystems).

Lots of options can be passed to the mount command, like an specific mount point, or the type of the filesystem and much more. You can learn more about this typing:

man mount

In the console. Man 'command' will also help you learning more about any command (try it!) and

man fstab

Might also help you.

Finally, sorry for my bad english. Greetings,

As for the Motorola SM56 Modem, it's a WinModem, which means it needs software to run. I had one of those and it kept disonnecting even in Windows. If you want a good PCI internal modem that runs in Linux, try the US Robotics/3Comm model 5610B - USR has a linux rpm that works in most rpm-based distros (like your RH8) and it will set the modem up without problems. The Motorola SM56 modem, even with drivers, could never work in linux for me.

The USR 5610B is a controller-based modem, not a winmodem, and needs no special software/drivers. Just the rpm from the USR site (and be sure to reboot after installing).

The WinModems either never work in linux, are too hard to set up, or if they do get online, they don't work that well (even in Windows), I've found. Controller-based modems will almost always work in linux.

>You are trying to install an RPM. However, Red Hat warns you that it will not be installed because you need "Psyche 8.0 disk 1". Do you have the Red Hat disk 1? If so, you might need to insert it and Red Hat will (probably, I don't know Red Hat) automount it and fetch what it needs, install it and install the RPM you were originally trying to install.

A quick googling reveals it to be the RH disk 1. Unfortunately, putting it in the cd drive doesn't help. I then get an endless loop asking me if I want to invoke autoload and then asking me to insert the disk. Something still not right somewhere. Learning how to install rpms will do me good, so I'm almost happy to have hit this little snag. At least now, I've got a focused objective, which is something I didn't have just a little while ago.

>If all of this doesn't work, I quit

Fair and reasonable, it's getting late and you've already done a world of good, just getting me jumpstarted. Muchas Gracias.

>Finally, sorry for my bad english.

Phoo. Your english is so much better than my espanol, that it's silly to even compare such things. You have been kind, sir. I thank you.

*****

>The WinModems either never work in linux, are too hard to set up, or if they do get online, they don't work that well

I'm getting that impression myself. Although the Psyche 8.0 disk 1 weirdness with merely ATTEMPTING to load the drivers and having no success is more than just a little unsettling. I've been lurking around Linux for quite a while now, and am more than just a little worried about the plethora of distros and their individual peculiarities. Nonetheless, I am at least MOVING now, and that's a whole lot better than just an hour ago.

I've got a big pickle jar full of old modems (I do computer repair and have accumulated a vast stock of spare parts, some of which even work!), and I suppose I can just drop all of the damned things into the slot one after the other, load the drivers, and see what happens. Of course, first I've gotta figure out how to get past the present little snag of loading the drivers. Onward and upward. Kindest thanks for the help.

Finally, probably a plain PCI modem (not Winmodem) might be easily recognized by the kernel and all might be done without any effort. I own a Motorola SM56 Modem and I'm unable to make it work. Even in Win XP, it was a hard work to find the drivers, since Motorola stopped both making and supporting their modems.

Greetings,

Hey now that you understand mount always remember to UNMOUNT the removable media before actually removing it, lol trust me on this I learned the hard way when I was trying to move some files from home to my shop and lo and behold the usb pen drive was empty....oops

Greg

U can get the driver here

just follow the pdf instructions to install it

http://www.motorola.com/softmodem/sm56_download.htm