Fedora Core 2 Help Needed

Ok I' just about to put FC2 back on my machine. I had it on for about an hour when it 1st came out so I got some things working, other things I did not...

Nvidia drivers.. Any news there? Last time I checked they didn't work and the only way you could get round it was to mess about with your kernel which I'm not comfortable with..

DVD Support.. How exactly do I play DVDs in FC2 and using what software?

NTFS.. Don't have a clue about this and I couldn't find any help articles last time I checked?

Java.. Don't have a clue about installing that either..

Flash.. Last time used the flash installer but flash was very slow anyone know why?

My USB Memory Stick.. How do I get that working? Do I have to modify fstab and that's it? Although I wouldn't know what to put in there..



Thanks for any help anyone can offer..

I'm with you, I can't get nvidia and Xorg to cooperate. When I go to startx, it just hangs and nothing can be done except for a cold boot... I've done everything I was supposed to do.. or at least I though... ANY ADVICE????

For the nVidia drivers. You need to recompile the kernel. Get a no Distro specific Kernel from www.kernel.org. I used the 2.6.6 kernel, I believe there is 2.6.6-1 (not sure tho).

1. Extract your 2.6.6 to /usr/src

2. Use the config file from /usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358/configs copy the your old config file from /usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358/configs/kernal-2.5.3-1.358.config to /usr/src/.config

3. then change dir to /usr/src/linux.2.6.6

4. run make old config

5. It will run through your old config It asked me 2 questions Say NO to both. The one in particular to make sure you say no to is #4KSTACKS.

6. make && make modules_install && make install

6a. You only need to be in root to compile the kernel. The rest you can do as a normal user.
6b. you may need to to create a folder for the modules. /usr/lib/modules/2.6.6 To onstall the modules

7. While its compileing (It can take awhile on a 1.3 Duron with 512 RAM it took me close to 2 hours while just chatting). Get the NVidia dRivers if you don't have them and remember where they are.

7. Reboot at grub splash screen hit 'e' on your keyboard while highlighting Linux 2.6.6 Then high light the kernel line and press 'e' again, enter 3 after quiet. It should look like:
kernel ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet 3 This will boot you to CLI. Xserver can't be running for th driver install.

8. Log in as root install the drivers as normal and with your favorite editor edit the xorg.conf file accordingly. Comment our Load "DRI" and change 'nv' to 'nvidia'

9. Restart you should see the nvidia splash screen twice once when it goes into Interactive Startup and when it Leaves interactive start up.

Thats what I did.

DVD - use xine

NTFS- You will need to recompile the support into the kernel, How not sure never did it (not yet).

JAVA, Download the JRE2 from SUN. Its extracted to /usr/java/ there is a rpm you can install also.

Flash - Can't tell you maybe beccause Flash isn't native linux. I really don't know.

USB mem reader - Same with that.

I hope I have heled wher I could.

Note: I wrote those instructions from meomory but I found them on another forum.

nice howto gufymike!

ok about the kernel compilation, for the drivers to work,
4Kstacks must be disabled (as mike said).
and REGPARM should be disabled.

Personally, I've never run make old config. so if this works for you thats great. Before you compile the kernel though, try running
make xconfig

this loads this graphical view of all the settings of your kernel.
The settings are all categerised into major headings which can be found on your left and the settings that fall under them will be on your right.

Under the General Setup option, scroll right down and you should see an entry with the word register in there somewhere. click on it and its description will tell you 'that it may break binary modules''. make sure thats disabled.

now for the 4k stacks. on the tree list to your right, scroll right down till u find the 'kernel hacking section'
u should find the 4k stacks option there and make sure thats disabled too. Save the configuration, exit and then continue with mikes instructions on howto compile the kernel.

about your other problems, check out this page: http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc2-tips.php

you can also go throug this page although its pretty similar to the link above: http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc2.shtml

your USB stick shouldn't be a problem at all. As you know linux assigns an id of somesort to all your devices. so your hard disk partition points to something like /dev/hdx. My USB flash points to /dev/sda1 which should work for you since i also use FC2.
heres what u do.
su
cd /mnt
mkdir flash (creates the mountpoint, you can use another name instead of flash if you like)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash (please make sure your flash disk is inserted into the usb port and the necessary lights are on)

if mount reports an error like '/dev/sda1' not found or something. replace 1 with someother numbers like 0, 2,3,4 or something.

for NTFS: just goto http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora2.html, and download the necessary rpm and install!

to install the rpm, remember where u stored it, login as root
goto the command line and cd into the directory the rpm was downloaded to

then type this
rpm -ivh kernel-ntfs-2.6.5-1.358.i686.rpm

ok thats it. good luck

Thanks Da_Necromancer , Great follow up.

I have been looking for the exact instructions that GufyMike and Da_Necromancer and just posted! ..

DANG! I wish it would have come a few hours earlier! .. but ok that works .. I have them printed and when I get ready to install FC2 again .. I will have them! ..

Thanks guys! .. Good work!

I dont have that directory, /usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358/configs....what am I doing wrong?

From fedoranews.org

Getting the binary NVIDIA drivers working

Complaints have been that there are no binary drivers for NVIDIA cards for FC2. NVIDIA's site claims 2.6 kernel support. The default stack size in the FC2 kernels is only 4K, while the NVIDIA drivers require at least 8K of stack to work properly. Linuxant has recompiled the fedora kernels with 8k stacks. You can download them here


http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader...ernel-i686.php


I installed this kernel and got nvidia drivers working with no probs!

hello,

i have installed a 2.6.6 kernel from kernel.org and got my nvidia driver installed without any problem.

but today i upgraded with the fedora update center to 2.6.6-1.427 kernel and so x doesn't run, i rebooted under 2.6.6 and it's ok

i wanted to recompile the kernel like i did with the 2.6.6 but in /usr/src/ i just have the 2.6.5-xxx and 2.6.6 , no the 2.6.6-1.427

do you know please how to do ?

cheers

You can "yum install kernel-source" for the 2.6.6-1 source.

Have Fun

Originally posted by 74039186 Ok I' just about to put FC2 back on my machine. I had it on for about an hour when it 1st came out so I got some things working, other things I did not... Nvidia drivers.. Any news there? Last time I checked they didn't work and the only way you could get round it was to mess about with your kernel which I'm not comfortable with.. DVD Support.. How exactly do I play DVDs in FC2 and using what software? NTFS.. Don't have a clue about this and I couldn't find any help articles last time I checked? Java.. Don't have a clue about installing that either.. Flash.. Last time used the flash installer but flash was very slow anyone know why? My USB Memory Stick.. How do I get that working? Do I have to modify fstab and that's it? Although I wouldn't know what to put in there.. Thanks for any help anyone can offer..

Check out apt/synaptic and dag weirs rpm repo for all browser plugins (Java, Flash, etc.), libdvdcss for dvd playback...

Hi all,

I have fedora core 2 x86_64. Can i use the rpms for the ntfs support from that link? I don't think they have a 64 bit build yet and I am guessing you can't mix and match with 32 bit?

Thanks!

Hi, I'm new here so I hope this is welcome. I wrote a howto on my site for Flash (as well as Java). Hope it helps. And thanks for the USB Flash card stuff.

mounting a usb stick drive is easy and painfree
here's how to mount a usbstick w/o being root, and w/o opening a terminal.

First, make a mount point for it

mkdir /mnt/usbstick

Next, edit you fstab file
Make sure you are root

nano /etc/fstab

If you don't have nano installed, use something else like vi

Add the following line to you /etc/fstab file

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick vfat  noauto,user,umask=0 0 0

Now you done. Mount it by doing one of several things:
open a terminal and type

mount /mnt/usbstick

If using GNOME in Fedora Core 1, right click on the desktop click disks and select usbstick
If using GNOME in Fedora Core 2, open the 'Computer' icon on the desktop and click usbstick
If using KDE, create a device icon.
etc, etc.
If this doesnt work for u, consult your distro's documentation

74039186,


Most the information you are seeking can be found here:

http://fedoranews.org/contributors/s...nley/fc2_note/

However, for NVIDIA and NTFS support you may want to compile your own kernel.

I got the NVIDIA drivers to install and enabled NTFS support in kernel 2.6.7 using the following instructions for enabling NTFS:

http://fedoranews.org/contributors/vitor_domingos/ntfs/

and the following for NVIDIA:

download the latest driver from www.nvidia.com
the new driver, so I hear, take care of the 4k stack issue.