Recent Slack Convert
 

Must learn Slackware:

I like Slack, but since I now need to know how to manually do things Mandrake did for me, I have a few questions.

1. Do I need to recompile my kernel if it doesn't automatically detect my SCSI burner?
A. If so, how do I find the right kernel patch?

2. Right now I boot kdm from console by "init 4". Is this the most efficient way to do this if I don't want an automatic boot into a display manager?

3. Once I'm in X, how to I exit it to console instead of to display manager? Is it just a matter of "init 3" from a terminal?

4. How do I get the far right keypad activated? For X, I assume this is done through "xf86config", but it's not been intuitive so far, and it doesn't solve the same problem when I'm not in X.

5. What, if any, is the difference between a module and a driver.

6. When booting X using startx, exiting X causes a total freeze requiring a hard reboot.

7. I have a billion questions so I'll leave it at that.

Thanks alot!

P.S. It's really hard to resist posting a million questions. :)

1. Maybe, but I didn't when mine wasn't found. I did have to manually edit lilo.conf and my fstab entries though. Much simplier and quicker than a kernel recompile.

6. That's not right. ;-) What wm are you using, and in what manner are you exiting from X?

Sorry I haven't messed around with X enough to answer the other questions.

Thanks for the reply!

1a. So, I would locate the correct driver for my drive(more than one correct?), and edit the fstab and lilo.conf for...scsi emulation? Would enabling emulation possibly eliminate the need to find a driver?

6. I'm using blackbox primarily and exiting by selecting 'exit' from the menu, but it does the same thing for kde, gnome and fvwm2.

Thanks

3. Do you mean logout?? just right click on desktop and select logout............If you want to change window managers, from command line type--xwmconfig
this will bring up a menu so you can select ....KDE, Gnome, FVWM, etc......



4. open up the kde control center, select peripherals>keyboard.
there will be 3 radial buttons, titled Numlock on keyboard. select what you want and click apply.

2. Right now I boot kdm from console by "init 4". Is this the most efficient way to do this if I don't want an automatic boot into a display manager?

Just edit your /etc/inittab file so that the default is 4 and not 3. :)

3. Once I'm in X, how to I exit it to console instead of to display manager? Is it just a matter of "init 3" from a terminal?

If you want to get totally out of X yes. If you just want another terminal you can use ALT+F6 as it's always running in Slackware :) (you can use other F -keys too ).

5. What, if any, is the difference between a module and a driver.

Well a driver in Linux is any piece of code that lets the kernel
talk to a specific piece of hardware. A module is any piece of kernel
code which is loaded in after the kernel has already been compiled (it's
not built into the kernel). Often times modules are used for hardware drivers of various sorts. There are however kernel modules that provide support for
different network protocols and/or for different filesystems.
--- :D Hope this is good enough :D ---

7. I have a billion questions so I'll leave it at that.

Bring 'em on :)

Peace,
Whitehat

Fantastic! Thanks for the answers!

3. I would prefer to boot into a regular console and startx from there, but be able to exit my wm back to console at will. So, as I understand it, I can open a virtual terminal and 'init 3' to exit completely, or Alt F6 to a new terminal and Alt F1? back to my wm? That would be really cool.

1. So I don't want runlevel 4 as my default, but would like to know if there's any other options for running a display manager from terminal. No big deal, just curious.

5. Good to know the difference between modules and drivers. I'll put some more reading into figuring out how to install my driver. Any rules of thumb on when to recompile and when to just add a module?

4. I could use the KDE control center, but that's all I did in Mandrake and it's the reason I switched to Slack! :) How would I do the same thing command-line? Thanks though!

7. Seriously; I will start tons of threads if no one stops me. :study:


Thanks again

I boot into console mode and to start X, I use the startx command (go figure). When I'm in X, I can hit ctrl+alt+F1 (thru F6) to change to a virtual terminal (and F1 is showing whatever warnings, errors, etc are being sent to /var/log/XFree86.0.log), then I can switch between them with just alt+F[1-6]. Then to switch back to X, hit alt+F7.

But something is seriously wrong if you can't exit your windowmanager without locking up your system. Post your .xinitrc file so maybe we can work it out.

What kind of burner do you have? Your first post said SCSI, but then you mentioned scsi-emulation which is for IDE devices. If it's SCSI, then you will need a kernel that supports SCSI, whether you use one that is pre-compiled or compile it yourself. If it's IDE, then try running the following command:

cdrecord dev=ATAPI -scanbus

If your burner shows up then you can burn without using scsi-emulation.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

Very helpful,

I assumed my burner was SCSI, turns out I shouldn't assume things like that! Problem solved, although there was a warning when I ran cdrecord -scanbus saying ATA packet interface libscg code was pre alpha and there might be fatal errors. This looks like a stock warning, to be noted, but not related specifically to me, yes?

My /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc(I haven't set up a .xinitrc yet):

#!/bin/sh
# $XConsortium: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.4 91/08/22 11:41:34 rws Exp $

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

# Start the window manager:
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/blackbox


: The freeze happens with no error messages preceding it, every time I exit X, whether by "init 3" when I have kdm running, or a menu logout when using startx. There are no error messages when I Ctrl+Alt+F1` either(Thanks for the tip!)
: Another problem I had that now I think might be related is that I(perhaps unwisely) left the console screen up all night instead of shutting down or something, and this morning I had nothing on the screen at all and had to hard reboot that too! I'm thinking I have some problems. Which is ok, because I have less problems than I did before!

I checked my dmesg, too, but didn't see anything obviously wrong, but...

Thanks all!

P.S. Now I think the freeze might not be a total freeze, because if I Ctrl+Alt+F2, during an X session, for example, I have the same problem, which is that I have a login prompt, but typing does nothing. In this case, if I Ctrl+Alt+F7 back to X, everything is normal there. What gives?

Check /var/log/XFree86.[number].log for the errors it gave, if any. I have the same problem right now because when I compiled my kernel I messed up the framebuffer settings, so that could be your problem too... dunno.

there is a utility "xf86config" that you can use to configure the keyboard from the command prompt. Or you can edit the file /etc/X11/XF86Config manually. It is pretty well commented. You can also browse the X11 website.

As for booting without anything on your screen, maybe some of the power saving features turned on (like turning off the hard disks)... I've never had that happen, so I can't help you there really.

Ok, that's interesting...
I checked my XFree86.0.log and everything seemed normal (i.e. the markers were all "information," "default" or "from /etc/X11/XF86Config" except...

(WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such device)

:which I take to mean XFree86 tried to use a power management feature I don't have in my BIOS.

-and, since you mentioned framebuffer...

(**) NV(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32

:which I believe to be the correct setting for my monitor, but am not sure.


Questions, then...

8. How do I stop XFree86 from using power management?

9. Do I need a framebuffer? Is the penguin logo the main feature at this point? And if I don't need it, can I get rid of it without recompiling the kernel? I might be recompliling at this point anyway since I realized I don't need SCSI support(brilliant!).

Thanks

In lilo you can choose your vga setting. I believe vga = normal is the one that doesn't use the framebuffer - it runs at a much lower res, but works. I think the only advantages are higher res and a penguin logo (i hear you can change that, too).

I know that in the 2.6 kernels, power management is an optional install. No clue where to set that, though KDE has a few things of its own about power management in the control center. The thing is, if you just disable power saving features in the kernel without changing your software configs, you could get some errors when it tries to run them. All guessing on my part.