Well I've got a few more problems I'm hoping someone here can fix on my system. Where to begin..oh yes...

1st... When running gnome the taskbar? (windows user here..don't know what else to call it) wont show open windows. So if I minimize a program that is running I have no where to go back to view it again. example is if I'm viewing a webpage in netscape, and I minimize it, I now have to kill the process (to stop my CPU from eventually overloading w/ 20+ open browswers), and reopen the browswer. How can I get my running tasks to appear on this taskbar/panel?

2nd...I'm still having the X server problem. When X server starts and the login screen appears I attempt to login and X server just restarts and goes back to the login screen. This goes on forever until I finally get out to a console and startx manually using the following command "startx -- :1"
For those that remember me from before I upgraded to X 4.2.0 and everything went to hell.

3rd....is there some sort of consortium of linux console commands and reference material for newbies like me? I was a Dos junkie back in the day so I'm no stranger to consoles or running programs from a command and I do have excessive experience w/ win2k networking, server administration etc etc. Yet I am unable to find an easy to use/find network setup tool in linux. If I want to share a file from this computer to one of my w2k computers how do I do that? I understand the chmod command but that seems to only apply to local user and user groups not to mention the other workstation would not be logging in as at a linux console anyway it would be under w2k. Anyone know anything about networking 2kpro and linux? I have mandrake 8.1 for future reference and thanks for the help in advance

1: The gnome panel as it's called can be customized by left clicking on an open spot on it. Then you select "Add to panel" > "Utility" > "Window List"... and your problem should be solved.

2: no idea

3: Yes, the Linux Documentation Project http://www.tldp.org/ I suggest you have a good lookaround there, there's lots of howtos, guides and so on.

2. Sounds like a GDM Conf issue. Maybe it didnt set your rights to the X server already running at display :0. edit /etc/inittab, find the the line with initdefault and change the 5 to 3.
After you're done it should look like..
id:3:initdefault:
You can either reboot or run /sbin/init 3 as root.
Now you will get a text mode login prompt. Use Startx to get to X. If you want to go back to the graphical login, you should go thru your sysinit scripts and find what's wrong with your GDM ( Gnome display Manager ) configurarion. and change the initdefault runlevel to 5.

Using "startx -- :1" I was able to get back into X and use the mandrake control center to login at a console rather than in X (basically doing automatically exactly what you gave me the manual instructions to do). I appreciate your answer. What is a sisinit script? Where do I find them and how will I know if something is wrong with one of them? Sorry for being such a newb but we all had to start somewhere. I just wish I had learned a bit more before I decided to try and upgrade X to 4.2.0. Thanks for the reply though

I'll address 3:

Indeed. Visit O'reilly. Buy the book - it has a pretty horse on the front

http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/

I'm not entirely sure on the state of the latest Gnome Networking tools (I'm a command line junkie myself). But last time I looked the Network configuration tool already did way more than I needed.

However, it won't do :

Because that's a samba thing. Samba is your 'windows networking for Linux'. It's rather harder to set up than 'right-click, share...' and I'm not entirely sure it'll do just one file - One directory, yes.. but I don't think it works on a file basis.

Be warned. Setting up Samba isn't trivial. But you're good with networky stuff so I'm sure you'll be fine with determining wether your Linux machine needs to be a master browser, and wether to syncronize with a PDC and what have you..

Essentially though you'll need to install samba, configure it to share a directory specified by you with rights to your NT login name (using smbpasswd) and then log into it from your Win2k machine, just the same as if it were a windows share.

http://www.samba.org

Yes... far more than I wish I needed to

Slick.

[QUOTE]

When you do a startx -- :1, you're starting a new X server at virtual graphical console with index 1 ( as indexes start from 0, we're talking second in number) accesible by the key combo Ctrl + Alt + F8. Whereas I think what you should rather be doing is try to create a session with the X server running at :0 accessible via Ctrl + Alt + F7. Running a second Xserver because you cant use the first one is not what I would call 'the best utilization of resources'.

Your sysinit scripts will be under /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit or something of the sort. It varies from distribution to distribution.