a couple of questions
 

Well, I have always come across solutions to my problems or questions about linux, but sometimes even using the search function can let you down.

1. Im running mandrake 9.1 (9.2) with XFCE 4.0.3 and Im trying to figure out what the command line is to look at your disk space? You know total and remaining.

2. There are times when I log to root and back to my account that the screen resolution changes to 640x480 and no matter what I do it stays lthe same. Why does this happen ? how can this be resolved?


3. I was using the commandline drakconf...to access mandrake control center. For some reason that command doesnt exist anymore. What just happend?

and finally urpmi?

I've been told that I can upgrade most of my software and drivers through it . I know Urpmi is rpmdrake. But instead of typing urpmi (filename)

is there a good url that can use to get those good updates? I tried easy urpmi where you specify what distro you are using and version...and it gives you a few urls to put in. But im asking if anyone found a good update link ..since iits showing thay I have got everything up to date...(which isnt true).


I hope u have time to answer these questions.

from what I've seen its a hell of a community and im glad I became part of it.

P.S, I have an 120gb HD it has XP on it only ....im wanting to use more HD space for linux...how much is enough if I want to compile ...etc. I have a feeling my 12gb HD isnt enough. All these source files I have...etc.

thanks again

BTW,

p3 744 mhz
ati radeon 8500 (64mb)
384mb ram
120gb (windows XP)
12gb( mandrake 9.1 (9.2)

The command on any linux distro is 'df'. You can do 'df -h' (or maybe it's 'df --human') to see it in "human-readable form".

I'm not sure about #2, but I'd imagine it's an XF86Config problem.

I don't know about #3 either, but root and users have different paths. For instance, /sbin and /usr/sbin are only in root's path. drakconf might be in the sbin directory.

The rest of the stuff I'm not sure about. I'm not familiar at all with mandrake or rpm.

the only answer i know is to #1. the command is df, and you can list output as GB as opposed to bytes with df -h (for human :D) man df or df --help lists more options.

welcome to LQ!

12GB should be plenty. I have linux running on an 8GB drive and I still have lots of room. If you start to run out you can always move non-essential files to your WinXP partition (as long as it's FAT32 and not NTFS).

Actually Im using reiserFS for mandrake and NTFS for XP...allthough I can't see linux on my xp partition, I can see windows on my mandrake partition....which is under /mnt.

Kinda weird ...I thought u needed linux to run under the same filesystem in order to read/write them

no, that's normal. :) it seems that linux can read just about anything.

Windows is unable to write to any linux file systems, but linux can write to FAT32 (it can only read NTFS; not write).

#1 has been answered

#2: mandrake is trying to discourage you from loggin in as root with gui (figuring you logged in as root with gui of course...); this is mandrake's way of saying StOp!! and i'm being serious

#3: like stated before, drakconf will probably work when logged in as root; but do which drakconf in a terminal to see if it exists

urpmi: never used this tool, but i downloaded everything from mandrake's website mirrors; just go to www.mandrakelinux.com and find the link for ftp mirrors; those may actually work for urpmi anyway

hdd space: depends if you want to keep all your sources WiTh all the compiled things inside it; if you want to keep your sources, either keep them tarred or do make mrproper in the sources to delete the compiled programs within the source dir
those compiled things take up a lot of space; take wine for example; untarred it is about 15 megs; compiled it is over 400 megs!!! plus make install copies that 400 megs into the harddrive again
i keep a lot of my sources (and play lots of games in wine) and i'm using a 25 gig root partition and have only used about 9 gigs of it so 12 gigs should be plenty

like suggested, clean up your /home/user directories and perhaps your /tmp dir to make sure diskspace is kept under control; fortunately linux only uses as much space as required and doesn't do extra things to take up or clean up space (like in Windows, where one day i will have 9 gigs free and then have 100 megs randomly disappear by the next day without going online or modifying or creating any files) but linux does take up space faster than many think

#1, to see file sizes in directory, i believe the command is du
for practical purposes, du -m would be good (-m = space in megabytes, not bytes :D)

but even better would be du -g

:P

thanks alot guys...sorry i didnt answer alot earlier but I didn't expect such feedback so soon.


Although If the whole mandrake doesn't like me using root...then I see no other way. Since Im using XFCE 4.0.3 and no other window manager installed there's only one terminal and that wont even let me choose to have access to root without logging to root.


Thanks again

Start X and start up a terminal. To log in as root in command line, type "su" (no quotes of course) in terminal
su stands for switch users. Now when you do anything in terminal, it will have you doing things as root. Thats an easy way to go around and do something in root.