Good afternoon everyone. I'm a new Linux user who has several concerns before pulling the plug on my XP OS. Here's where I am:
1. Installed Fedora Core 3 after installing both Mandrake 10.1 Official and Novell Desktop 9
2. After installing Fedora 3 I downloaded the updates using the automatic download function. That wasn't painful at all!
3. When rebooting into XP this prompt appears: Starting Compaq System Recovery. Of course I don't want that so I just opt for the restore from previous restore point. That is opted out of and XP plays as before – everything works just fine.
4. perfect_circle helped me load back into Fedora by using the rescue disk and typing chroot /mnt/sysimage and at the prompt type “grub-install /dev/hda”. No problems, but when rebooting and choosing “Other” to get back into XP the same as point 3. It seems like M$ doesn't want to play with Linux and keeps overwriting my boot loader.
5. When finally booting into Fedora 3 I get this message “Could not look internet address for dhcppc(). This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding dhcppc() to the file /etc/hosts.” What does that mean, and how do I correct it? I just select “Log In Anyway.”
6. My cd player isn't recognized even though if there's an audio cd in the drive it shows on the desktop as an audio cd. When I try to play it – cd error.
7. I can't get Mozilla Thunderbird set as default. It won't play an attachment (midi file).
8. Is there a way to change to GNOME instead of KDE?

There's more, but I don't want to wear out my welcome. I'd really like to convert to Linux, but right now the ride is sort of bumpy. Thanks for any help you can render.

Pastor Ron

i use lilo and slackware, so i can't give you specific advice, but i can tell you that it IS possible to get linux and XP to play nice. in my experience it has always worked well having lilo installed on the mbr, and letting it handle booting windows as well as linux.

have you tried mounting a data cd? have you tried playing an audio cd as root? often the problem is that /dev/cdrom or another file is owned by root, and normal users don't have permission to access it. if you post your /etc/fstab contents we can take a look at that and maybe narrow this problem down.

i don't understand what you mean. thunderbird is an email app...are you talking about getting it to automatically launch a different app to play midi files linked to in an email? please be more specific.

yup. assuming that you installed them both, you can easily change between them. i'm not familiar with fedora, so you might want to search that forum for this topic. in slackware, as root i can type telinit 4 in a terminal to be taken to the graphical login screen where i am offered a choice of window managers. you can automatically boot to runlevel 4 by editing your innitab file (i believe it's /etc/innitab - look for the line like id:5:initdefault: and change the 5 to a 4). if you want to always start gnome, then edit .xinitrc in your home directory, the last line should say something like exec kde, which you would change to exec gnome.

Hello. I finally booted back into Fedora 3 as root and, at first, my audio cd LOOKED as if would play, but no volume even after opening up volume control and turning the cd volume up. No sound at all. After stopping the cd and replacing it in the cd tray, I received a data error.

Here's the contents of the /etc/fstab file:
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

What I mean by Thunderbird not acting as my default e-mail client is this: when using Firefox, there is an icon for both reading mail and creating a new message. When I click on that, I don't want the e-mail clients supplied with Fedora 3 to open, I want Thunderbird to open. Another example: while browsing I might be asked to send an e-mail. Again, I want Thunderbird to open, not the program that came with Fedora.

Now, about the midi file. Someone sent me an e-mail and a sound file was included with it, a midi file. When clicking on the attachment, Thunderbird ask what it should do with it. I can open it or save it to disc. I just want to play the file. I saved the file to disk, double-clicked it but was told Kmid couldn't open the device because it was probably in use by another program. What program?

Now, what's a terminal, and how do I get to it? I really sound uneducated, it's so easy in XP, but I'm here to learn. Sorry for the newbie ignorance.

I will try editing the /etc/innitab file to start up GNOME instead of KDE. Thanks so far. Will this get clearer?

Pastor Ron

sorry, your fstab doesn't look much like i'm used to, so i can't help you much. it looks like an automount system, so i don't think permissions would be a likely problem. unfortunately i don't know fedora core well enough to diagnose it. for your sound all my suggestions are things to try on the command line, so you need to look through your menu for a terminal of some kind, xterm, rxvt, gnome-terminal, aterm, or something. sometimes there is a button that lets you run commands, like the run box in windows. if you can find a terminal (or start one by typing xterm into the run box and pressing enter), try these commands and post any results you get here.


lsmod

alsamixer
- M turns mute on/off, and ESC exits
- if it works, next type: alsactl store



as for firefox and thunderbird, i'm not sure.

the clarity is proportional to the amount of work you put into finding your answers, imo. sorry i can't be of more help.

EDIT: also, www.google.com/linux and the search feature on these forums can solve almost any problem.

I have heard that
Starting Compaq System Recovery
is the source of a number of issues.

I recall a similar post.......I was stunned to find out that the computer had a backup of its bios to hard drive,
stunned because if you hard drive or mbr fails not sure how you rescue.......

you may need to read your manufacturer for how that system works and I think it explains why you do something and it is overwritten when you try restore.........I am guessing it has an image of your mbr and as it did NOT have a linux bootloader at manufacturer stage......you get a windows bootloader

2 questions:

1. Are you using ntfs for your XP os?
NOTE: By default FC3 can not read an NTFS filesystem so it might not be able to boot your OS if grub or lilo are written to the mbr. Windows might be unhappy about being taken out of the MBR as well, you will have to ask around about this.
2. When you installed FC3 did you tell it to write grub/lilo to the MBR or to the first sector of your boot partition? Here is a page that might help with your dual boot system Windows 2k linux dual boot .

Good luck,
Barry

Fc3 can boot xp. Just because it can not read ntfs does not mean it cant boot it. Grub just hands off to xp bootloader. As to your fstab file, red hat goes about them wierd, everything looks okay.Sound is a different story, you probably do not have an analog cable from the card to the cd player. Open xmms right click on it, under cd options it says digital playback, check that option, and try playing the cd from xmms. does it work? To be able to read the cd drive as a regular user change your fstab cdrom entry to: /dev/hdd /media/cdrom iso9660 noauto,users,ro 0 0
As for the thunderbird problem all that is controlled in the control center in the KDE menu. Look around you should find it. To switch to gnome if you installed the full install, under preferences in the menu it says switchdesktop,thats it. If not a full install in a terminal type: switchdesk gnome
OR
(still in a terminal) edit the line in the ~/.xinitrc from startkde to gnome-session
OR as root edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop file.