a few newby questions
 

I recently installed fedora core 2 on my computer.. I am a complete newby to linux so i have a few questions i'm hoping have somewhat siimple answers.

First off my sound didnt work so i found some elsa driver that i believe was supposed to work with my soundcard (soundmax). However after downloading it i had no idea how to install the driver. I extracted the files into a folder on my desktop.. The next time i started up my computer my sound worked..i'm pretty sure it was just coincidence since i didnt do anything with the files.. Well now my sound isnt working again since like the last 5 startups.

I also noticed that it seems i cant install programs, i downloaded mozzillas firefox and when i run the install it goes through all the pre-setup stuff and then when it starts to install it instantly closes ( i know there is no way it in stalls that fast and i cant find any new applications in my computer). I figured this had something to do with my user settings so i tried adding my username several groups such as adm, bin, root and about 2 others (i thought this would give me extra priviledges or soemthing). Now when i start up i get an icon over the computer icon which denotes no write access, and it also is over the trash and my home folder.


Also, i am wondering how i can access my other hard disk drive that windows uses. It does not come up in my filesystem

Lastly, one time i shut down i clicked the icon to save my settings.. After that i get an extra option in my boot loader to boot the older core which was updated on that session.. I really dont care to have that older version available, is there a way to get rid of it?

If anyone can help me out with all or even a few of these questions i would appreciate it since i havent been able to find very much info on my own about these things and fedora didnt come with very comprehensive help documents

I can't really help you with the sound issue but if you desire further assistance you will probably want to post the results of the command "lspci" so people can see exactly which sound card you are running.

For installing firefox, I've had some odd issues with this program as well, but after several attempts it did install. I don't believe you need root access to install it. But if you want your regular user to have root access I highly recommend looking into the sudo program (should already be installed). Add your normal user to the wheel group and edit sudoers (via the visudo command) by simply uncommenting the appropriate line (you will know it when you see it).

If you want to access an NTFS drive you will have to jump through some hoops, I don't do it but I'm sure you can find something on google with NTFS + Linux.

Don't know about the boot thing, never had that happen.

Re: a few newby questions
 

Hi wolfey,
you have quite a few questions.
Let's hope I can help you with any.

Yes, that was coincidence. Anyway, the sound doesnt start / seize working just like that. Do you remember what you did before either change occured? What is the chip your soundcard uses (if you dont know, just give me the complete name)?
Also, could you run the following command and post the output:
cat /proc/pci - This command lists all devices known to the kernel. Your sound card should be in there. I dont need to see all of the output, only if it is there.


Speak after me: Never, never, never add a normal user to the root or admin groups!!!
Now about the installation problem: The firefox installer failing has nothing to do with your permissions. You can try to run the installer from the command line to see additional output (open a terminal, cd to the directory you extracted the files to, run ./firefox-installer). Be aware that the firefox installer is just a normal program, which can fail as any other. It's not a general way of installing programs, it's even a very rare one. If it fails try installing it by hand (download the tar-ball, extract it and move it to a directory you want it to be in (for example ~/.firefox)). Then you can link to the firefox file in this directory.
If you want me to explain how installing applications in linux normally works, please ask.
Here's what I would do to try and get you a normal account back. Remove yourself from the groups you added yourself to. Then make sure you are still a member of the users group. Also, check the permissions of your home directory (ls -l ~; the output should contain smth like this: drwxr-xr-x 50 yourname users 2544 Sep 14 11:50 yourname; if it doesnt, see to it :)).

please post the content of your /etc/fstab file. Also, please show me the output of fdisk -l. You can try making sense of the contents of the fstab file and add a line that represents your windows partition. If that seems to hard, I will try to give you detailed instructions in my next reply (when I have more information).
Also, if you have Windows XP, you are out of luck. Red Hat (i.e. Fedora) have decided to not include NTFS (the windows file system for NT based operating systems) read support. You can add this capability, but that's somewhat complicated (except if you are lucky, which you might be, if you run a major release).

The shutdown dialog seems to present you with an option to boot up a different operating system. What you need to do to get rid of it (once you are sure the new system works) is modify the boot loader configuration file /etc/grub.conf (if I remember correctly, I am not sure about fedora).
The file mainly consists of multiple section which look similar to this:
You need to find the section whose title is the one you dont want to see anymore. Then comment (i.e.: Place # in front of every line) the whole section (including the title up to (but excluding) the next title line). (sidenote: you dont need the kernel and initrd files of that old system anymore. You can delete them. dont, if you dont know exactly what you are doing).

I am glad to help.
Let me share some advice though:
- Try to limit your questions to one (or a few) at a time, many members of linuxquestions seem to hesitate answering such large threads. Rather file more than one thread and ask questions when they come up.
- Try to ask specific questions, if you know what to ask.
- Ask! I mean it! :) Thats the only way you can learn. If for example anything was unclear in my post, dont hesitate to ask more questions.

Good luck,
- drowstar

Thank you very much for the info drowstar, sorry i asked so many questions in one subject, i just hoped maybe i'd get at least one or two of them figured out.. I am really anxious to learn how to use a linux based system. here is the information i got from cat /proc/pci command (i'm not even sure which one is the soundcard? i suppose i could check in windows which address it is but here it is if it helps
PCI devices found:
Bus 0, device 0, function 0:
Class 0600: PCI device 10de:01a4 (rev 178).
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xec000000 [0xefffffff].
Bus 0, device 0, function 1:
Class 0500: PCI device 10de:01ac (rev 178).
Bus 0, device 0, function 2:
Class 0500: PCI device 10de:01ad (rev 178).
Bus 0, device 0, function 3:
Class 0500: PCI device 10de:01aa (rev 178).
Bus 0, device 1, function 0:
Class 0601: PCI device 10de:01b2 (rev 195).
Bus 0, device 1, function 1:
Class 0c05: PCI device 10de:01b4 (rev 193).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=3.Max Lat=1.
I/O at 0x24a0 [0x24af].
I/O at 0x24b0 [0x24bf].
I/O at 0x2480 [0x249f].
Bus 0, device 2, function 0:
Class 0c03: PCI device 10de:01c2 (rev 195).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=3.Max Lat=1.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf8500000 [0xf8500fff].
Bus 0, device 3, function 0:
Class 0c03: PCI device 10de:01c2 (rev 195).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=3.Max Lat=1.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf8501000 [0xf8501fff].
Bus 0, device 4, function 0:
Class 0200: PCI device 10de:01c3 (rev 194).
IRQ 5.
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=1.Max Lat=20.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf8503000 [0xf85033ff].
I/O at 0x24d0 [0x24d7].
Bus 0, device 6, function 0:
Class 0401: PCI device 10de:01b1 (rev 194).
IRQ 10.
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=5.
I/O at 0x2000 [0x20ff].
I/O at 0x2400 [0x247f].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf8502000 [0xf8502fff].
Bus 0, device 8, function 0:
Class 0604: PCI device 10de:01b8 (rev 194).
Bus 0, device 9, function 0:
Class 0101: PCI device 10de:01bc (rev 195).
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=3.Max Lat=1.
I/O at 0x24c0 [0x24cf].
Bus 0, device 30, function 0:
Class 0604: PCI device 10de:01b7 (rev 178).
Master Capable. Latency=66. Min Gnt=12.
Bus 2, device 7, function 0:
Class 0780: PCI device 14f1:2f00 (rev 1).
IRQ 3.
Master Capable. Latency=64.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf8400000 [0xf840ffff].
I/O at 0x1000 [0x1007].
Bus 1, device 0, function 0:
Class 0300: PCI device 10de:01a0 (rev 177).
IRQ 5.
Master Capable. Latency=64. Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf9000000 [0xf9ffffff].
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf0000000 [0xf7ffffff].
still working on the other stuff, i'll get back to you with what i figure out, thanks again

Oddly, after changing back some of my user settings and restarting my soundcard is working again. I kinda think it might be a coincidence also though since i had them the same way before while it wasnt working. Seems to work pretty randomly, yet i never had problem with it in windows. However my home, computer, and trash folders still show no write access icons on them.

Anyways Here is my fstab file info.
i know the label on the hard drive unseen is hda
LABEL=/ / 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/hdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/camera auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0


the fdisk -l command didnt work, it seems fdisk isnt on my system... (i suppose you wanted me to do that from a windows shell though?) maybe i'll try that later

here is what i got from the ls -l command, looks like root has taken over
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 15 19:03 bin
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Sep 14 23:58 boot
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 155648 Sep 17 23:44 dev
drwxr-xr-x 68 root root 4096 Sep 17 23:44 etc
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 14 22:45 home
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 1024 Sep 14 23:58 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Sep 16 21:40 lib
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Sep 14 15:26 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 14 10:39 misc
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Sep 14 22:43 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 11 2004 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 108 root root 0 Sep 17 16:43 proc
drwxr-x--- 9 root root 4096 Sep 17 23:49 root
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Sep 16 22:01 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 11 2004 selinux
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 0 Sep 17 16:43 sys
drwxrwxrwt 18 root root 4096 Sep 17 23:55 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Sep 14 22:29 usr
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4096 Sep 14 22:36 var

oh well maybe i'll figure out more later, any more suggenstions would be great

oops.. sorry i somehow missed unchecking the root button.. fixed
ls -l
total 3600
-rw-rw-r-- 1 wolfey wolfey 12631 Sep 15 00:35 check.sh
drwxr-xr-x 4 wolfey wolfey 4096 Sep 18 00:21 Desktop
drwx------ 8 wolfey wolfey 4096 Sep 17 23:42 evolution
drwxr-xr-x 2 wolfey wolfey 4096 Sep 16 21:17 firefox
-rw------- 1 wolfey wolfey 3644241 Sep 14 23:35 Linux.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 wolfey wolfey 5868 Sep 15 19:14 Resume.sxw

by the way what exactly is ls -l doing? i mean it looks to be giving me the user group in charge of several files/folders and the "-rw-rw etc etc" stuff is the privileges? but i'm not really sure how that works since before root showed a lot more files and folders.

The boot options in grub i figured out are two files in the /boot folder which are config-2.6.5.1.358 which is the original one and 2.6.8-1.521 which is the newest one.. those are the same names that grub shows to start up. i figure if i could just delete the older one that would take out that line in grub but it wont let me delete it.. (i dont have that kind of permissions). Its just a minor annoyance, mostly because its set on the older version by default

Hi wolfey,
I dont have much time now, but I will try answering a few questions and get back to you on the rest later.

ls lists (thus the name) the contents of directories. I accepts a directory as a parameter, if you dont specify one, it assumes you want the content of your working directory (the one you are in, so to speak). The -l flag requests more detailed output.
Have a look at the man page of ls (man ls):
NAME
ls, dir, vdir - list directory contents
(...)
-l Write (in single-column format) the file mode, the number of
links to the file, the owner name, the group name, the size of
the file (in bytes), the timestamp, and the filename.

The file types are as follows: - for an ordinary file, d for a
directory, b for a block special device, c for a character spe-
cial device, l for a symbolic link, p for a fifo, s for a
socket.

The reason the output was a lot more when you had root privileges had nothing to do with you having named privileges. When you "were root" you also were working in the root directory ("/"), so ls listed the contents of that. When you did the same as normal user you were in your home directory ("/home/wolfey"), so ls showed you what was in there.

The file mode is another thing:
Take a look at this line (your Desktop):
drwxr-xr-x 4 wolfey wolfey 4096 Sep 18 00:21 Desktop
the first letter (d) describes what kind of file this is. d is directory, l is link and more of those
the rest are groups of three: rwx, r-x and r-x
The first group is the permissions of the owner of the file, the second the group and the last of others. The permissions are displayed using letters:
r is read, w is write and x is execute.

Alright, gotta go, I get back to you,
- drowstar

Hi wolfey,
alright, this thread is somewhat disorganized. :) I hope, I dont miss anything.
Remember, when I told you that you could delete the kernel and initrd files? Well, the files you found are also part of those obsolete system files. Well, bad news: Deleting them will not fix your situation. You need to find the grub.conf file and delete the sections I mentioned before. Try "find / -name 'grub.conf'". This should give you exactly one match. That's the file you want to edit.

Missing write access on your own desktop:
Do you in fact not have write access? (Try putting a file in the trash.) It might be a desktop environment problem.
Also, check the permissions of those directories ("ls -l /home/wolfey/Desktop/"). The command you want for changing permissions is "chmod", see the man page for more information (or ask).

Reading Windows partitions:
Did you run the fdisk command as root? (You need to do so, because it is /sbin/fdisk, which only root is allowed to execute. "fdisk -l" lists the filesystems on your hard drives, ie does not change anything.) Also, do you have windows XP? Because, as I mentioned earlier, the NTFS is a bit tricky to deal with, so drivers are not perfect yet and Red Hat excludes them completely. You can get drivers here. Make sure you get the file that corresponds to your kernel version, which you can figure out by running "uname -r".

Alright, am I still missing something? I hope I dont. Please ask more questions,
- drowstar

Thank you drowstar. I was actually able to figure out both how to get linux to see my windows drive using the drivers from that site, and i found the grub.conf file i needed to edit. It is in the /boot folder. I deleted those other files anyways since they were no longer needed. I had everything working just fine last night... The reason why i couldnt get anything acomplished before was because i needed to login as root (duh, sorry). However, today i went and booted up and there is nothing in my windows folder where my other drive was mounted.. Do i need to install that driver everytime i want to access that drive, or is there some configuration file i need to have that file load from? also my sound isnt working again.. i'm not sure what the deal is, could there be an irq conflict or something causing it to work randomly? since last startup the only thing i did was install the ntfs driver, which seemed to work perfectly as i was able to access my other hard drive. fdisk -l shows my ntfs drive but its not mounted it seems?
Disk /dev/hda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 5851 46992928+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 5851 19930 113090040 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 5851 19930 113090008+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 116301 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 203 102280+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 204 114351 57530592 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 114352 116301 982800 82 Linux swap

OK i figured out how to mount the drives automatically during startup, i just needed to read the faq first..

Still having problems with soundcard working randomly though..

Hi wolfey,
I am glad most things work for you now.

Is the sound the only remaining problem?
I can't really think of a reason, why it only sometimes works. Maybe there is something wrong with an init script? Maybe the driver just smells (I dont think that's the reason though)? I really cant tell.

How about this: I'll try to get you on AIM some time and we can try to work it out? Let me know in this thread if there is a problem with this.

Talk to you soon,
- drowstar