Hi Linuxcool how do I get into my XF86config file to edit it. I'm not sure how to do that. I don't think I have a text editor. We just learned a little bit about them in class but their machines didn't have them installed either. No pico,ed,edit or joe. Is there another way to edit the XF86config file? Thanks

There should be a text editor installed. It will probably be vi. But first check to see if pico is there. Run pico and see if it shows up. pico would be a lot easier to use then vi. I used to use pico until I installed Caldera. It doesn't come installed. You would have to read up to use vi. To load the file into a text editor you would run either vi /etc/X11/XF86config or pico /etc/X11/XF86config. I now use either Kedit or mc ( midnight commander ). You could try running mc and see if midnight commander shows up. It's a file manager and you can edit files.

Thanks Linuxcool. I know I don't have pico so maybe I'll try VI. I read a little bit about it a long time ago so I'll have to dig through my books to see what I can do. We just went over midnight commander in class a little but I don't have that installed either. I need to learn how to install packages obviously. I know you use the rpm command but I can't figure out how to get to the program on the cd's to install it. It's not like windows where you locate a setup file. I assume I browse the cd, there are 3, and find which one contains pico and then try the rpm command. My problem is accessing the cd rom. When I log on and want to use the cd rom I do the following: mount /mnt/cdrom. Then I try to access what's in the directory and it gets a little fuzzy for me. On top of that I can't get out of the cd rom. I do unmount /mnt/cdrom but sometimes I get a "busy" error or nothing. Either way I can't get the cd rom out of the machine. I have to reboot to eject the cd. Any suggestions? Thanks for helping. It's been a good learning experience.

Pico is in the pine rpm. I know because I just found it and installed it in Caldera. So, now I have pico to play with. Check your cdrom disk for the pine rpm. It might look something like mine ( pine-4.10-1.i386.rpm ). Once you find it on your disk, run the command rpm -ivh /<path_to_rpm>/<rpm_name>. Midnight Commander is a very nice piece of software.

About the problem of getting the " busy " error. If you use the ' cd ' command to move onto the cdrom disk and then try to unmount, you will get the " busy " error. You must move off of the disk before unmounting. Like this cd / and then run umount /mnt/cdrom. Note that it's umount not unmount. Everybody makes that mistake at least once.

Hi Linuxcool, I did run vi /etc/X11/XF86Config to view my XF86Config file. That's the good news. The bad news is line 48 says exactly what yours says:
Subsection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga"
EndSubsection

I'll try to run pico just for the heck of it. I need to learn how to install rpm packages. I guess I just have to check all the packages on all my cd's till I find something that looks like pine-4.10-1.i386.rpm. Thanks for the heads up on the busy erro with the cdrom. I wondered if I had to cd off the cdrom directory before unmounting it. Glad you told me it's umount not unmount! I assume I have to run the mount /mnt/cdrom every time to use the cdrom. Once I've mounted it can I move off it , ie. cd /, and then back on it without mounting it again. I assume I only have to run the umount command when I want to eject the cd. Oh one more thing do you know the package name for midnight commander and how does one find out the names for all these different packages so you know what to look for on the cd to install.

Try renaming the XF86Config file to XF86Config.old like this
mv /etc/X11/XF86Config /etc/X11/XF86Config.old
and run the X window configuration program. It should generate a new XF86Config file and maybe it won't have any errors.

The pine rpm name might be more like this pine-4.10-1mdk.i586.rpm. The rpm name for midnight commander might be like this mc-4.5.55-7mdk.i586.rpm.

About the cdrom, everytime you want to use it you have to mount it. Once it's mounted, you can cd on and off the cdrom all you like. When you're done, just remember to cd off of it and to make sure no other programs are accessing the cdrom drive. If other programs are using the cdrom, you'll have to wait until they are done before unmounting.

Hi Linuxcool just for the heck of it I started from scratch and reloaded Mandrake 8.1. Got the same error at the beginning that I did before and had to go to F1 to do a text install. Basically the errors I got were:

"can't load /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1.i386_linux/auto/gtk/gtk.so for module gtk:

/usr/lib/perl5site_perl/5.6.1/i386-linux/auto/gtk/gtk.so:
unexpected

I received these errors several times with different line numbers. Then when I was part way through the text install got more of the same type errors and at the end when you configure your Xserver I couldn't get it to work so I'm basicallly back to where I started. What do those errors mean and do they have anything to do with my Xserver problems? By the way thanks for the hints on the cdrom. Got it working. I'm going to try installing midnight commander just to see if I can do it. I'm learning quite a lot even though we are not quite accomplishing our goal of a gui interface. Thanks for the help and what do you think of maybe I have a bad cd?

It looks like it is looking for the gtk.so file, but can't find it.

You could be right about there being something wrong with the cdrom disk. Where did you get it? Is it from a retail package or did you d/l it and burn it or did it come from some book? It's also possible that your cdrom drive could be the problem. Sometimes the cdrom disks don't with all the cdrom drives. How do you have your hard drive and cdrom drive hooked up? Are they on the same ide channel? Having them on different channels may work better.

Good luck getting midnight commander installed. It's a good piece of software for the virtual console screen. I don't have it installed in Caldera, but I do in ZipSlack.

Hi Linuxcool, I tried installing the text editor Joe with the format;
rpm -Uvh joe.2.9.7-0.2mdk.i586.rpm
As usual nothing is that simple. Here are the errors I got:
error: cannot open packages index using db3-operation not permitted
error:cannot open packages database in /var/lib/rpm

Next I tried installing emacs-el-20.7-17mdk.i586.rpm thinking this was the emacs editor. The error I got was I need to install emacs before I can install the above program. 2 things. Can you tell me what went wrong with installing joe and next can you tell me how to identify what all the packages are when you're browsing the list on the cd. I mean now how do I find out what package is the real emacs that I need to install first. Still haven't got the gui working but am taking a breather from that and playing around with other stuff. I really know how to download packages and the next big hurdle is on to get the modem configured and on the internet. Can that be done all through the text mode? As usual many thanks for the help. I'm inching along.

I did a search on Google for that error you got trying to install joe and I only got one hit. It talked about a problem about different rpm versions. Also, it mentioned installing the rpm as root and not as user. That's all I could find.

As for identifying what the installed rpm packages are, try running this command: rpm -qi <name_of_rpm>. The ' q ' is for query and the ' i ' is for information. To find out what files it installs and where run: rpm -ql <name_of_rpm>. You can combine them together: rpm -qil <name_of_rpm>. If the rpm is not installed, just add a ' p '. Like this: rpm -qip <name_of_rpm>.

I don't know if mandrake has text install programs for setting up the modem and internet connection. I've never set my modem up because my isp requires me to run special software to connect that only runs under windows.

You mentioned before that you got errors when you reinstalled. You need to have an install that is free of errors. If the install is not loading all the necessary files, that could cause problems with trying to configure things.

Have you tried installing mandrake on a different computer to see if the disks are OK?

Hi Linuxcool you're right about being in root to install the package. It dawned on me that might be the problem and I switched to root and installed the package. Now if I only know how to edit while in "joe". I did try loading this version of Mandrake on another machine and it seemed to start fine. I didn't let the process go on because I didn't want Linux on that machine. It's hard to say if the installation would have continued error free till the end. Earlier I was able to install Red Hat on the machine I am trying to install Mandrake on so I don't know what the problem is. Just one quick question about installing packages. I think I mentioned I was trying to load what I thought was emacs and when I did the error I got was I needed to have emacs loaded first. My question is when you are browsing the cd and looking for emacs there are a bunch of programs that start with emacs. How do I know which one is the real program? Is there someplace I can go to find this out. On that note I'll let you go and thanks again for the help.

That's great that you got joe installed. I wasn't certain that it would work, because the person had already tried it and it didn't work. Try running man joe and see if a man page was installed with instructions on how to use joe.

As for finding out what certain rpm packages do, you can do what I said in my previous post. Using the command rpm -qi <rpm_name> will give information about what an installed rpm package is. rpm -qip <rpm_name> is to be used for rpm packages that haven't been installed. You could go to here and search for the rpm and see what information they have about it. At the top of the page, click on Go directly to the RPM database. This page will give you more ways to find what you're looking for.

Hi Linuxcool, I understand about the rpm -qi command that lets you know about an installed package. However lets say I do rpm -qip pico. The response I get is error can't open no such directory. What I'm really trying to figure out is now I have to go to my installation cd's and see if pico is there so I can install it. Suppose there are several choices with the word pico in it. How do I know which is the real pico? I went to the web site you sent me and did a search for pico and up came some names so I guess I could use those names and see if they are on my installation cd. Is that the best way? Thanks for the heads up on the web site. Right now I can't download because I don't know how in the text mode or even if my modem is set up correct. I'll let you know how it works out.

pico is provided by the pine package. install that rpm.

the -qip options will give info on an actual rpm file, not the package that it represents, so you'd pass it a rpm file to extract the info from.

The problem with locating some programs is that some of them are contained in other rpms. In this case, pico is in the pine rpm. That's the rpm I installed to get pico on my system. The -qip is to be used for rpms that are not installed. Take and mount your cdrom disk and then cd into the directory that contains the rpms and then look for the rpm you're interested in and run rpm -qip <rpm_name> to get info about it. To find out what files and programs it will install use rpm -qlp <rpm_name>. If you do that to the pine rpm, you'll see pico listed. So, look for the pine rpm if you want to install pico.

When you went to rpmfind.net and entered in pico, you probably got only 2 hits named ' pico '. If you went to page I told you would give you more ways to find things and entered in ' pico ' and in the ' System ' box entered ' mandrake ', you would have gotten a list of rpms for mandrake that would have been named ' pine '. Give it a try. Then click on one of the entries on the left side and it will give you info about the package. Try clicking on ' pine-4.44-2mdk.i586.html '. I hope this helps.