XFree question
 

How will I know if I have XFree86 installed and working. Does it switch to a GUI right away or do I have to install Gnome, kde, etc to find out IF I have a GUI?

Another dumb question:

When I mount a cdrom, I can 'cd /cdrom' and see the files on it. If I mount fd0, how come I can't do the same with it. I get "fd0 is not a directory"

I have no printer on my linux box and wish to print out a document. I would like to copy this document to a MS-DOS file system floppy and take the floppy to my Windows system and print out the document. Any information on how to do this would be appreciated (especially - how to make a MS-DOS fs floppy)

Re: XFree question
 

No, it won't switch on a GUI right away ... I'd suggest that
you try to run startx and see what happens.


Maybe it's called /floppy or /mnt/floppy, or /mnt/fd0 ...
Have a look in your /etc/fstab to learn more about
your system ;)


Once you find your floppy's mount-point you
can mount it and then copy your files onto it.

If the /etc/fstab says auto for the fd's file-system
all you need to do is put in a DOS formatted
floppy ... if you don't have one read "man mkdosfs"


Cheers,
Tink

try rebooting the machine first ;)

seriously, try running 'startx', 'gdm' or 'xdm'. If none are present, you don't have a gui. If they give you error messages, those should give you a hint; otherwise, post them here.

Jonas

personal POV: use debian/testing instead of /stable. It doesn't come collapsing down on you, so don't worry ;)

Interesting!

I ran "startx" and it came up with a hash-like screen with three(3) separate windows on it - two labeled 'x-term' and one labeled 'login' ..... now what? It looks like my monitor is going flat out in a 1280x1024 mode - how can I change this? There doesn't appear to be any color - just various gray-scales.

Thanks so far :p :p

try typing 'apt-get install synaptic' in the xterm as root. iirc, synaptic (which is a gui frontend to apt) requires gnome, so apt-get should automatically download it too (after asking you). Also, try 'apt-get install gnome-desktop-environment'

Wonderful!

It is called "floppy" - and I was able to mount and look at the files on it :newbie: Thanks.

Incidently, what I did was to "gunzip -c README.gz>/dev/fd0".
This caused some floppy activity but when I tried to read the floppy on my windows box, it (windows) balked. Should I have included the file-name 'README.gz' after the re-direct? :confused:

/dev/fd0 isn't just like a folder, it represents the entire floppy, including file system information. It's very likely that you overwrote some part of that, thus rendering the data useless (unless you got a raw data extractor for windows).

The 'real way' to do what you want is like this:
$ su
(do your thing)
$ mkdir /floppy
$ mount /dev/fd0 /floppy
$ cp some.tar.gz /floppy
$ umount /floppy
(now you can remove the disk, and it should all work just fine :)

Thanks all for the inputs:)

I was able to read my floppy file in Windows and I now have xwindows to some degree. I would like to know how to re-configure xwindows. All that happens when I "XFree86 -configure" is it does a bunch of something, reports back that I have no mouse and says I should edit a file - doesn't say what file - then dumps me back at the command line.

Running "startx" puts me in xwindows WITH a mouse but in gray-scale and 1280 x 1024 mode. I would like color and a different resolution.........:confused:

dpkg-reconfigure x-server-xfree86

sorry, it's 'xserver-xfree86'

One last point you probably know already. Before ejecting the floppy, you need to unmount it so that everything is written from the cache.

Thx Jonas

I did a "dpkg -reconfigure xserver-xfree86" ....and got a :scratch:

So I checked dpkg's commands - nothing about 'reconfigure'

Subsequently, I did a "dpkg -iEG xserver-xfree86" .....and got "No such file or directory"

Did a search for "xserver" & found two(2)ea. 'xserver' directories - neither had a file by the name of "xfree86"

Did a search for "xfree86" ..... again, no such file or directory.

Visited "www.Xfree.org" but could find no package (or file) by the name of "xfree86" :confused:

Originally, when I downloaded the file from "www.XFree.org" it never mentioned anything about downloading companion files.:Pengy:

Any suggestions?

my bad, I did as misspelling. it's:

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86