I don't understand this at all. I'm really thinking of buying XP instead. I've tried installing Mandrake Linux atleast 4 times. Everytime I do I have to type in linux mem=128M (even though I have 512) otherwise it won't install and gives me a kernel panic. When I do install it I get lots of crashes when I try to do things in KDE. I tried doing linux mediacheck but it didn't even bring up a box about if I wanted to test it or not, it just tried installing itself and gave me a kernel panic. I've also tried installing Red Hat 9 but I can't. I have to type in Linux mem=128 M as well and then it probes the hardware and then the screen goes blank. (Keep in mind that I bought Red Hat 9 & burnt my own copies of Mandrake)What is going on here? Should I just give up and buy XP??

Hello,

It's a bit difficult to help with so little info See if there is anything useful in your logs. dmesg will give you a whole lot of info. Also look in /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and maybe /var/log/XFree86-something. Post the errors here, and give some info on your system - then I'm sure you'll get a lot of help (although probably not from me )

Cheers!

Stefan

Hey dizzy -

I have 9.1 up and running on an nforce1 board - probably one of the hardest to get it up and running on (I am a newbie too). It takes my 512 ok. You might inspect what type of hardware you have and look into the hardware support pages on mandrakes site.

Also search the boards for similar problems, ie "mem=512", "mem=128" and you'll probably find fixes. I would say if you not into understanding, but into paying, XP might be the better way to go.

Course if you want you could invest the price of XP into support for mandrake - What would that amount to? a year and a half maybe? I'm sure they can get it up and running for you.

Good luck.

How do I open up /var/log/messages? I went to my home directory and typed that in but then it asks me which program I want to open it in. Any suggestions? Also, is there a way I can configure my cd-roms to automatically install/play when I put in a cd?

To read the logs, such as /var/log/messages, you have to be root. Use command su in a terminal and then give your root password. Then you can just cat, more or less the log. Maybe also head and tail are useful. Read the man pages.

The cd question... Mandrake uses supermount to mount the cdrom automatically, provided of course that you have Mandrake running on your machine. If you mean that you want to boot from the installation cd, I can't help you - I have always had to boot from floppy when installing, through 3 versions of MDK.

To let a program automatically start playing an audio cd, I haven't tried. Shouldn't be too difficult - I hope

Hmmm I logged in and typed in /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog and I get an message saying permission denied. Any other suggestions? Also, how do I go about installing programs on CD's? I tried clicking the cd-rom icon but then I just get a list of files on the CD. I tried double clicking on things like setup.exe but no such luck. What should I do?

What are you trying to install? You can't just run windows programs by clicking on them.

It's extremely simple to install programs in MDK. Find the Mandrake Control Center in a some menu, log in as root in the window that pops up and click on Software Management. There you can install or remove any program on the MDK cd's or from any ftp server you define. Mandrake is very inclined to use rpm-packages and have a program (urpmi) that takes care of all dependencies between the packages. It's great!

And the logs... The logs are pure text files that you have to use a program to print out on your terminal. It is these programs that I mentioned before - cat, more, less, head, tail. If you say "cat /var/log/messages", then the whole file will be dumped on your terminal. Maybe not very useful if the log is long - which is usually is. Then you can use less or more instead. Both of these stops the output after the screen is full and to continue you can use space and, in the case of less, also the arrow keys and page up and page down. head and tail print the top and the bottom of the text file. As I said, read the man pages: "man <command>" at the prompt.