Hello Everyone,

It's decided - I'll give Linux a go. Now, I've been looking for a week and it seemed that folk, here and elsewhere, think that Mandrake is a good transition for Windows Users so that's what I've downloaded. (I read that Mandrake need financial support [which seems reasonable] and if I decide to keep Mandrake I'll either purchase some disks or just join the Mandrake Club place thingey [which I hope also seems reasonable]).

Anyway I'll start out by listing my hardware and then ask a few questions if that's okay...

Abit KR7A-R mobo
AthlonXp 2000+ cpu
2x Maxtor 20gig ATA133 drives (WinXP Pro, dynamic disks, these 2 are set up as Raid0 and use the Highpoint 372 drivers)
1x Seagate 12gig ATA100 (No-os, Ntfs, dynamic, S-Stuff)
Asus GeF3 Ti200
2x 256 Corsair XMS DDR333 sticks
Alacatel ADSL SpeedTouch PCI internal modem (hmmm)
Yamaha CDRW
No name DVD Rom
Logitech c-l opt. KB+Mouse

I built this machine about 2 years ago and it's behaved pretty well (hardware wise). Anyway...

1. I'll leave XP on the raid setup until I decide to keep Linux. Mandrake will go on the Seagate drive. Q: Is the choice of dynamic disks for XP going to be a problem at boot time? If so is entering the bios to select first boot device HD0 (Linux) or ATA133 (XP) an option or worse unplug the one I don't want before booting?

2. If I want Mandrake (on the Seagate drive) to see XP (on the raid array) will I need to load the HPT372 Linux drivers from the HighPoint site during setup? Is that how it works? If I were to setup XP on the small single drive it wouldn't see the 'other XP' unless I loaded the raid drivers during setup. The Highpoint site lists linux drivers for the following: Caldera, SuSE, Red Hat, Turbo, Free BSD and something called "Linux open source release for HPT372". All of which confuses me. Which if any are the right ones?

3. The ISOs I d/l'ed need to be burnt to CDs. I gather I don't create ISO images but 'burn to disc', yes? I'll use burnatonce, do I not tick "Image File"? And, ISO settings for Data CD Mastering in burnatonce have an option, "Bootable Image" Do I use this or is the CD I burn from the first ISO bootable anyway?

4. Is it possible to leave the ISOs on a hard drive and point to them during setup by making a floppy for this? I think I read that's possible but is it possible in my situation? Is there any point?

5. How best to setup partitions? I think there's an auto option for this step. Will it create or allow for a swap file on it's own partition?

6. I think my modem is going to be a problem but I found this: [ treshna.com/~chefu/itexdsl-pppoa-2.4.19 ] (sorry. only my 2nd post - can't use hyperlink.) Is it suggesting there might be a way? Actually even if it is I don't think I have the foggiest idea what it's saying.

7. The vid card is a V8200 and the Mandrake hardware list only went up to V7700. Is this a problem? I would have thought the card quite dated by now.

8. And last, if all goes well and I keep Linux can I use my raid array for it?

Sorry this was so long but I'm no expert and its tricky trying to work out what to ask ahead of time. Any help much appreciated. Now I just have to sit still long enough to get the low-down from the experts and not go tinkering. Oops, 1 more, KDE or Gnome? I read I chose 1 but a few sites I found with a "KDE vs Gnome" search folk fought like cats and dogs and I still dunno which to chose. Maybe I should try both. Forget it, I'll toss a coin.

I can't answer many of your questions as I have never got my hands on a RAID Array, but I can tell you to go ahead and burn the CD. It's ready like the ISO comes. You shouldn't have to select anything. Just load the ISO and burn.

As far as leaving the ISO's on the hard disk, I think you can, though you'll need to boot from a floppy. I think the hd.img is for that.

...as far as the drivers go, X does a fairly good job at picking the best driver out (and it will often be selected for you). If not, you can probably go on and find the proper driver for your hardware (that like you say may be a little old by now). Instead of reinstalling each time, I think you can go to a konsole (Ctrl-Alt-F1 thru F6) and then try to execute xFDrake after you log in.

I can answer some of your questions but not all:

"if all goes well and I keep Linux can I use my raid array for it?"
Yes. HighPoint RAID works on Linux. I use HighPoint HPT370A without RAID. In the process of setting up my HPT370A I learned from finigan that HighPoint RAID also works.

"KDE or Gnome? "
Install both. I have both installed and over time I have gravitated to mostly using KDE.

"The Highpoint site lists linux drivers for the following: Caldera, SuSE, Red Hat, Turbo, Free BSD and something called "Linux open source release for HPT372". All of which confuses me. Which if any are the right ones?"

If you are using HighPoint controllers without RAID then you do not need any of these drivers. The support for HighPoint is built into all of the current kernels. If you had an old kernel then you might need to add HighPoint support.

If you using HighPoint controllers with RAID then you will need to add a HighPoint RAID driver to your system. "Linux open source release for HPT372" is the source code for the driver. You can compile it on your Linux system and it will be compatible. "Caldera, SuSE, Red Hat, Turbo, Free BSD" are executable drivers that have been pre compiled by HighPoint to work on the respective distributions. Downloading one of them would save you having to compile it before you install it.

"2. If I want Mandrake (on the Seagate drive) to see XP (on the raid array) will I need to load the HPT372 Linux drivers from the HighPoint site during setup? Is that how it works?"

For Mandrake you will have to compile the HighPoint RAID driver. Therefore you have to install Mandrake first, then compile and install the driver.

"Q: Is the choice of dynamic disks for XP going to be a problem at boot time?"

No, probably not for your installed Linux system because Linux will not know they exist at first. It could be a problem when you boot the Mandrake install CD. Mandrake will query all of your hardware to find out what you have installed. Mandrake could concievably hang while querying the RAID array. If so then disconnect RAID either physically or in the BIOS and continue installing. Plug it back in when the install is over.


"How best to setup partitions?"
As I understand it you want to use the entire Seagate drive for Mandrake. I recommend:
primary partition 1 - 512M - /boot
primary partition 2 - 512M - swap
primary partition 3 - 11G - /

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Many thanks lectraplayer & jailbait...

Well I don't have to toss a coin to decide KDE/GNOME, that's cool. And sounds like HPT no problem too (save having to compile myself - no idea what that entails as of yet). Burnatonce was just what the doctor ordered, I over complicated things and tried to use data cd mastering when all that was needed was: file, load new image lol. (Got a bit of a surprise when I slipped the first disk back in to see if it had anything on it and the Mandrake setup screen popped up in the middle of my desktop, wasn't expecting it I spose).

Yes some of this hardware is a tad dated and the lads won't let me anywhere near their machine (though frankly I think it's they who would benefit more from Linux but they're not about to give up their games). Well I think I'll go ahead and see how we go, I suspect I'll have teething problems but that's half the fun!

"Well I think I'll go ahead and see how we go, "

When you install Mandrake be sure to include all of the development packages. You will need them to compile the RAID driver and probably other software packages in the future.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

As someone who knows pretty much "Squat" about IT and linux, the modem should work OK, all you should have to do is get the microcode and copy it to /usr/share/speedtouch (presuming that the pci version works the same as the usb version), though in truth you've already got it if you have the windows driver installed - It's called alc.sys/alu.sys or something like that, on one occassion I just copied it to a floppy, changed the name to mgmt.o (that's the name of the microcode, if you have to get the whole driver from alcatel/thomson's site, and after unpacking it, you just copy the mgmt.o file to the speedtouch directory).

Maybe this helps a little???

regards

John

Hiyas, thanks again

Mandrake saw the raid array right from the get go and without my doing anything and referred to it as untidy or messy or something lol. I setup ok on the 12gb disk. (I immediaetly wanted to move to the raid array lol. But, I'm going to give myself the liberty of doing nothing especially important with Mandrake at the moment except wander about in it. I really liked what I saw and I won't worry too much about preserving anything right now because I'll fresh install on the 133 drives when I've made up my mind to keep it. For the moment I'll just give it a hard time and probably break bits .

Problems I did have were all hardware based. My logitech keyboard works but has lost some of its functionality. I just found this: http://ozzzy.dyndns.org/mandrake/itouch.html

My mouse was a real bugger for a while. I lied and said it was some other mouse to get it to sit still and leave off the top right corner. Also it wouldn't work as a USB mouse but I had a USB ps/2 adapter and then it was detected but no thumb button available.

32bit colour depth has taken a holiday and I'm running 24bit at the moment. Near the end of setup the 'hardware screen only showed my card as GeForce3 generic and the highest colour depth on the drop down was 24.

What I'm going to try fixing first is the modem so I can leave off XP and stay in Mandrake to post here and go looking for solutions on the net. I'll go get the driver from thomson's and try the mgmt.o file first bigjohn, cheers.

BUT! I do have a Mandrake machine (albeit a bit wonky at the moment) and I'll keep plugging away.

I suggest you use KDE. I am using Gnome right now, and after using KDE, I don't like Gnome as much, though it's better than I thought it was. I have yet to pull off a 32-bit color depth on any platform. I usually run 16-bit since I really can't tell the diference between it and 24-bit. That also frees up processor and RAM for other things, and since I'm used to older hardware, I just do it out of habit on my big-banger P4.

No problem, just use the seagate drive to boot either OS. Windows will not recognize the Linux partitions because it doesn't support them.

Its already been told in this thread though they didn't explain it perfectly. The Highpoint support in the kernel is universal version that should work with many Highpoint controllers.

An ISO file is a snap shot of the CD. Everything that was written to the CD like booting and all the files are contain in this file. In CD recording software select image file and burn.

Unless you don't have a CD-ROM drive or you have a double speed CD-ROM drive.

primary partition 1 - 512M - /boot <--- Too much. Anything more than 32 megabytes is too much.
primary partition 2 - 512M - swap <-- Seems reasonable
primary partition 3 - 11G - / <-- Seems reasonable.

With my setup. I have:
/boot 16MB
swap 256MB
swap 256MB
swap 256MB
swap 256MB
/ 8GB
/home 11GB

I don't have anything to say. I'll come back to summarize it.

LInux will see it as Geforce3.

Putting LINUX on an RAID 0 array won't help a bit. RAID 0 and RAID 5 works better if they are one huge partiton. Also RAID works best if you need bandwidth for certain applicatons such as Video, sound, graphics, huge databases, and web sites. Its best to keep linux on a single hard drive or use RAID 1. Highpoint and Promise are software controllers, so you wont get much improvement.

Whoa, cheers Electro. I've just got in so I'll be switching back to Man9.2 for an hour and see what I can do with this modem before hitting the sack. Just wanted to pop back and say thnx for the effort.

Glad to know we're getting somewhere. As far as the modem, go to www.linmodems.com and downloading their ModemID utility. It should unlock many doors (or at least give you some resembelence of a map!). ...or at least that's where it used to be. I'm having a hard time finding it now though.

Never mind, it's an org. www.linmodems.org --right there.

I'm about to feed the modem (imposter) to the dog. I've decided on a new ADSL external.

Everything else is working fine (including the printer which wasn't working a week ago under XP !?

I'd like to install the nvidia drivers now. I tried and it stopped me short and said get binutils, did that, stopped me again and said get kernel-source, did that but there seem to be a few versions around, does it matter which I choose? I've seen 1MDK, 10MDK, 25MDK and others. I tried with 1MDK but it said that was a no go. The ISOs I have do not include the kernel-source on any of the disks. Specifically the error says:

ERROR: Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.o'. This is most likely
because the kernel module was built using the wrong kernel header files.
Please make sure you have installed the kernel header files for your
kernel; on Red Hat Linux systems, for example, be sure you have the
'kernel-source' rpm installed. If you know the correct kernel header
files are installed, you may specify the kernel include path with the
'--kernel-include-path' commandline option.

And then of course I was stuck on the outside without a GUI anywhere in sight. (<----terrified Windows user)

Is this telling me that I have the wrong kernel-source please? If so, how do I work out which to use? Btw, I did make the changes necessary in inittab and XF86Config-4. If there's an error and I need to return to the GUI I gather I undo the changes I made to inittab and x11 but with text, eek!

Hmmm I read the manual for vi. I think I'll be ok if i walk slowly and don't look down...

"there seem to be a few versions around, does it matter which I choose?"

Yes. The kernel source version must be the same one that Mandrake compiled into your kernel. Mandrake will have a kernel source rpm that corresponds to your kernel binary rpm. I don't know enough about Mandrake to tell you the exact name of either rpm. Try the Mandrake support site.

"Hmmm I read the manual for vi. I think I'll be ok if i walk slowly and don't look down..."

I had a stronger adverse reaction when I first looked at vi. I searched through all of the available command line editors and chose mp.

http://www.triptico.com/software/mp.html

Choosing mp over vi is a minor matter and mostly a matter of taste. If vi annoys you enough I suggest that you take a look at mp.


___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

An external modem is by far the best. Thos internal modem rely on drivers [software] which can be wonky occasionally.

Did you get the latest nVidia drivers from their site? If not then you should. Also make sure you save any instructions and follow them carefully.

You can use the text based browser lynx to download the drivers if necessary.

lynx www.nvidia.com

will automatically open it and bring you to the site...look up all the man pages and help sectiopn for commands to become familiar with lynx. It can be really really handy - escpeically when remote administering thru ssh.

Hey team, cheers...

In /usr/share/doc I found kernel-2.4.22.10mdk-1. Is this the kernel-source I should go looking for? Also, when I find and download it should I use the install software function or do I just double click on it?

Hmm it's hard to find...