Several problems... mostly noobish
 

gretz

after hours of searching on the mailing list for someone
on my situation i found this site and decided to join this comunity for good as i realize its a pretty
nice one, so hope i can get and give help.

but onto the deal, (kind long story pls read)

System

AMD Athlon xp 2800+
MSI K7N2V (nforce2 chipset)
MSI Gforce4 MX 440 64Mb GPU
KINGSTONE 256 x2 DDR 400 pc 3200
WD 80GB 7200rpm
10 gb win2k (dev/hda1)
15 gb debian (dev/hda3)
40 gb logical (dev/hda5)
800 Mb swap (dev/hda6)

had dual boot of win2k and debian woody_r1
even got the nforce nvidia drivers working there fine
gforce 4 working too with the Xfree version that comes with woody

situation 1

but here comes the thing. i was to install firefox 0.9 but it asked me for
gtk 2.4 and of course gtk asked me for serveral other packages
these gave me a heck of a problem..

glib-2.4.3.tar.gz
pango-1.4.0.tar.gz
jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz

as they configured and installed without a problem
but wen i launched ./configure for gkt first it dropped me an
error saying glib =>2.4 wasnt found, so i specified the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH var to /usr/local/lib
dont ask me why.. but i worked. (also pango asked me for it too and i passed exactly the same var to ./configure)
then gtk promted another error saying there wasnt any jpegsrc. package found, so i did --without-jpeg---something
(cant remember but ./configure suggested me to do it)
i launch ./configure for gtk again and then asks me for pango.1.4.0
"wtf??? didnt i just installed that to?"

just for u to know i installed all of those packages from
/root/GTK/packagename.x.x.x exept for one that asked me for a specific
directory structure.

so i dont know if that was correct.. if it wasnt give me some guidelines on
where should i compile from.

i dropped that gtk & firefox issue to another time or till i find the answer on the mailing list archives.

situation 2

so i moved on on to my tuning
i realized my kernel didnt have USB support (didnt even have input core)
and that it was configurated (being the woody prebuild kernel) to the i386
architecture. so i decided to recompile the kernel or reconfigure it to add those and ntfs read-only filesystem support. so i grabbed the kernel-2.4.18-sources.tar.bz
and unzipped it to /usr/src/kernel-2.4.18-source
and made a symlink called linux on /usr/src to point the source folder
now i went like this after the make menuconfig was finished:

make dep && make bzlilo && make modules && make modules_install && init 6

after the whole process ended without problems the system reboots and
theres something wrong from the begining.

all the modules for nforce chipset arent there
X-server wont run

and when i try to insmod o modprobe the nforce modules
nvnet, nvaudio and so on i get this list of files
saying a lot of stuff on nvnet.o has "unresolved symbols"
and this.

Hint: you are trying to load a module without a GPL compatible license and
it has unresolved symbols. contact the module suplier for assistance. only they can help you.

i went to a research and found that one of the causes for that its a mismatch
between my kernel sources and the running kernel. i got petrified as i used
apt-get to get the sources on the very same debian cd!!
well i dont know if this is my case but im stuck in here...

ill follow up every single guideline i get from here
nedessly to say im kinda noob about this whole debian thing
as i have little understanding of the whole thing. but its best to start
from scratch...

also id apreciate any suggestions about directories from where should i compile install etc etc.

thanks in advance for any help.
i really apreciate it.

I don't want to upset any debian people here :-) Sorry guys, I like Deb :-)

But maybe not the best newbie distro.

ie firefox installation and usb support were problem free on my new mdk10 distro... Mandrake is just a bit easier generall IMO for many new users.

Tho I did have ethernet troubles with mdk9.2 on the nforce2 chipset :-) I haven't tried 10 yet on that box...

Also... are you trying the binary firefox 0.9? That's the one you want.

i know debian hits a little hard on the newbies life, specially when using woody
and installing new software from source as you always have to update a lot of packages...
but is the best distro to really learn from, installing Mandrake 10 or something has turned out
to be very GUI and Windows like ( of course we all like that) but i really want to understand
whats going on backstages. i tryed slackware at first and then Mandrake 9.2(iguess) and
went back to debian to find out it was somehow similar to slack as for the dificulties that
setting them up properly represents for newbies.

anyway ill keep searching for the solution to my problem even though im gonna try a diferent
aproach: apt-pinning to sid.

i know this has a lot of disadvantages and that it creates an very unstable system
but me being kinda newb means i dont need hardcore security nor stability, and that
i can do a fresh install as many times as i need to learn something.

of course i know thats a wrong aproach to solve the problems cuz in a future
fresh install wont be an option so ill wait and check on this thread hoping
someone would aid me on this subject.

btw im not using the Binaries for Firefox .9

im also doing the apt-pinning to test out the nvdrivers and the whole install process
cuz i had an issue with the headers on woody



:scratch:

to moderators
 

:scratch:

i dont wanna copy / paste this thread
but i think im on the wrong forum, well its
not that im not a newbie (cuz i am)
but i think someone on the
General Linux Forum might help me out

so i ask to the moderators to pls move this thread to that forum
then i wont have to copy/paste there.


thankz in advance.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...l#s-install-os
See "7.6 Configure Device Driver Modules" and modconf.
There was no need to recompile for USB support.