First pclinuxos 2007 crapped out on me, then Mandriva stopped being bootable (it booted up to the login, and when I tried to login, it became a black screen and the little busy blue circling thing went on forever and nothing ever happened). Now I installed Fedora and it's back to square one and I'm having to solve all kinds of basic problems. Should I go back to Mandriva and try again? Should I restart with Fedora?

Here are my problems:

(1) How do I get Fedora to let me resize my desktop to something higher than 600 x 800?

(2) How do I get access to my Windows partitions with my music files on them, to transfer into Fedora?

(3) How do I find what my partitions in Linux look like in Fedora? I'm worried it did what the last two installations did-- tried to squeeze my home folder into a 23 GB partition which is way too small, but I can't even tell.

(4) How do I set something up so that I can recover all my hard work the next time this stupid thing decides to stop booting? I purchased a 320 GB Seagate USB external hard drive but have yet to get far enough in any of these distros to be able to use it at all.

Following is the original rant/background of this post:

People go on and on about the stability of Linux over Windows, but I've had 3 installations (pclinuxos 2007, mandriva 2008 (twice)) become inoperable on me for no apparent reason. What could be causing this and how do I get it to stop? I'm tired of reinstalling bookmarks, customizing the desktop and learning in each new distro how to gain access to my windows partition and import my music files only to see my home directory become full and be unable to add all of my music to it. What is going wrong? Where is the linux everyone fawns over and why can't I experience it? I'm frustrated as hell and sick of starting over again and again-- 2 steps forward, 5 steps back. I don't want to go back to windows but linux has been an overwhelming disappointment thus far. What is going wrong here???

Nice rant

Now calm down. Perhaps lay off the caffeine and think about what you have written:
You search http://google.com/linux/, or even this site (there's a [Search] Button up at the top. See it? USE it.) So you can learn how to edit your xorg.conf file
Fedora (not a distro I know, or use) has probably already mounted your windows partition(s). Look in /mnt or /media, otherwise post the output of mount and fdisk -l (you may need to be root for these commands to work, I am not familiar with fedora.)
With the same command: fdisk -l (that's an "Ell" not a "one", and you probably need to be root)

fdisk -l will tell you your partition layout.
It didn't "squeeze my home folder into a 23 GB partition which is way too small" - you told it to do that, or did you not give it any other option. If 23 GB is insufficient, then give your home directory a bigger partition, or maybe buy another disk. They are cheap now

Not all distros will install to an external hdd, it rather depends on your distro, and BIOS settings. Have you tried installing win XP/Vista on your external HDD. Did it work?
Well the "No apparent reason" has been explained to you by linux, and outlined in your post: Your home directory is full. You are trying to import "all your music files", but there is no room. Either buy another (bigger) disk, or just link (Search: linux link or man ln) to the files on your windows partition. There's no reason to "import" them at all really. They are already on your disk, in a windows partition, that linux can see perfectly well (must be the case as you have tried to import them, but your home is full), so just use them: Click them, they'll play. Tell amarok or whatever your player is where they are and it'll be happy

You are going wrong. You haven't given linux enough disk space for all the "music" you are trying to import to your linux filesystem. So it says "full", or the equivalent.
I prefer linux's way of managing problems. Windows just used to blue-screen with Error 0ffeg39Cxkkos [Reboot] and [Loose your files]

Linux has told you quite clearly that you do not have enough space in /home to fit all you require. So make /home bigger. Or learn to use links - (Check the [Search] button). Linux is damn clever with these things if, and only if, you can be bothered to learn what it is capable of.

Linux is here, on your computer, but you haven't given yourself enough room for "all your music files".

Grrrrr.
It's time for you to get busy, do some self-learning, use searches, and come back with specific questions.

Good luck

[QUOTE=tredegar;2972727]Nice rant


I tried your suggestion of a linux google page (http://www.google.com/linux/)and it didn't work:

Google
Error


Not Found
The requested URL /linux/ was not found on this server.

Yes, grrr is right, pal. There's more.


My Windows partitions are not in /mnt or /media folders. Here is the output of mount:

/dev/mapper/VolGroup01-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
/dev/sde1 on /media/FreeAgent D type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uhelper=hal,flush,uid=500,utf8,shortname=lower)
/dev/sde2 on /media/-boot type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,data=ordered)

Trying to use "fdisk -l" reiterates the point I was making in listing all the problems Linux has in running on this computer-- here is what happens when I try to use "fdisk -l" as root:

bash: fdisk: command not found

But none of this matters to me nearly as much as answering the most important question I asked in my first post, which I'll again put in bold:

How do I back up my progress in solving all of these distro problems so that if it fails to boot, as happened before, this time I will simply have to restore what I've saved and continue where I left off?

This is why I bought the external hard drive. I don't intend to boot from it, simply to have a backup on it to restore to my internal drives in case (when?) linux becomes unbootable. Someone at Best Buy mentioned backula, but that was before Mandriva tanked on me (and anyway, it wouldn't let me write anything to the external drive for "permissions" reasons, which it wouldn't let me change, even as root.)

Should I go back to Mandriva and try again since I started solving some of the problems and would probably be able to track down those solutions more quickly than battling a whole new can of worms with Fedora? What do you think makes the most sense?

I don't do caffiene.

No one ever said Linux was a cake walk.

It's google.com/linux Go ahead, I'll wait a second. Try again.

Not sure why you have a logical volume group setup. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of experience with this. So, I'm not equipped to help you with that. However, Fedora 8 automatically recognized and mounted my Windows partition. No action was required on my part. This was far different from when I started out with Fedora Core 6. It was hell for me trying to get NTFS read/write capabilities. Like I said, no one ever said Linux was a cake walk. You might have to do the leg work yourself, you'll need the NTFS-3g driver. Look it up, you'll find PLENTY of how-to's on it

When trying to execute commands, some are easier than others depending on the distro. When trying to run fdisk, as root or sudo, try /sbin/fdisk -l

Try not to get frustrated. That's the worst thing that can happen. You'll piss us off and we won't want to help you. Then you'll be f*cked.

Regards,

Brandon

If you're brave enough to post again, tell us what video card you're using so we can direct to where to download the drivers.

Regards,

Brandon

Also... I may be reading this incorrectly... but it doesn't look like you have a NTFS/FAT32 for Windows on your hard drive. How are you getting on the internet? Through Windows or Linux? You may completely erased everything on your drive and just put Linux on it. Then again, I'm just another fool living in the world today. So I could be wrong.

Regards,

Brandon

You'll have to install to a point where you have a fully-functioning system first. For example things like fdisk should be working.
[That yours isn't even as root, is odd, what does locate fdisk report?]
Make sure you are allocating yourself sufficient disk space ( / needs about 8GB if you want to be comfortable) /home needs to be bigger than all the files you want to keep there. The sky's the limit here.

System backups are best done when the system disk is not being used. So you can boot from a Live CD. Mount your linux partitions (Very simple if you boot from a knoppix cd, just R-click them on the desktop and choose "Mount" IIRC), and then use rsync cp or tar or whatever you like to copy your partitions to the external disk.

To restore, boot from the live CD, plug in your external hdd, mount your linux partitions and restore them.

Hope this helps.
PS I found kubuntu 6.06.1 to be really easy to install and use. The first time, I just accepted the defaults it offered. Then I was up and running.

@MHPF thanks for correcting my link: It didn't like the trailing slash.

Thanks for your help, guys. I found out fedora did in fact wipe out my Windows partitions. Now I'm back to Mandriva, where I was when I posted this initially.

My display works fine now and I have about 70 GB of space for my home folder as well as about 25 GB for / (boot?), 4 GB for swap and also 15 GB for /usr.

Is it worth it for a beginner like me to purchase the Mandriva Power Pack?

I can't get my printer to work and that problem is posted in a separate thread.

What else should I be checking, besides bash command functionality to be sure that Mandriva is fully set up and fully functional?

Linux has crashed on me twice more since my last post. That makes a total of 6 crashes between 3 versions of linux in the last 30 days.

A lot of people claim that linux is more stable than windows but in 10 years windows has crashed only 4 times on me.

What can be causing this severe instability in linux?

I tried using backups to restore when it crashes, and once restored, it crashed again much more quickly than it took for the first crash to surface.

What could be the cause of this if it isn't linux? Can a person without the money to replace expensive hardware find a way to make linux run in a stable manner?

Ok, I narrowly escaped another data-mucking crash by trying to creatively unfreeze my computer. Everything froze completely when I moved the mouse to get rid of the screen-saver and clicked on a bittorrent window which was not doing anything, simply sitting open. The only other thing I had open was KAudioCreator and a CD had been inserted. Everything froze, not even the mouse pointer would move. <ctrl> <alt> <backspace> didn't do anything. I decided on a whim to press the eject button on the cd-rom drive and when it opened, everything became unfrozen.

I can't say for sure that this could not have caused other freezes, but it seems unlikely that it caused all of them, especially considering that I had all my music on my hard drive already when I first switched to Linux (before Fedora erased my Windows partitions without my permission.)

I'm wondering if this could be a bug in KAudioCreator, how I might find out for sure, and if my installation will survive a software update. After all, the last time Mandriva crashed and became unbootable, it was just after downloading and installing updates and restarting the computer.

One more thing-- I did avert another inoperable crash by using some commands from "Running Linux" 5th edition. I wrote it all down, so if anyone's interested here's what happened and what I did to fix it:

I downloaded and installed updates through "Configure Your Computer" and restarted the computer with the intent of saving all the configuration changes and making sure it would start up again ok. It didn't. Upon reboot, it said:

"Checking file systems
/dev/hdb1: The file system size (according to the superblock) is 10275567 blocks
The physical size of the device is 7950159 blocks
Either the superblock or the partition table is likely to be corrupt!"

/dev/hdb1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY, RUN Fsck manually (i.e., without -a or -p options)
/dev/hda6: clean, 1020/9224192 files, 617662/18434579 blocks [FAILED]

***An error occured during file system check Dropping you to a shell: the system will reboot
give root password for maintenance (or type Control-D to continue)
Warning: # of cylinders63096 larger than 10234

I then ran "fdisk /dev/hdb1" (later, I ran "fdisk /dev/hdb" w/out the 1)


Invalid flag 0x0000 of partition tab le 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
command:

I then entered "v"

63601271

then "p"

Disk /dev/hdb1: 32.5 GB 32563851264 bytes 16 heads...

"w"
I then rebooted with the following error (wouldn't go into Linux):
table failed w/error 22: Invalid argument. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table used at next boot. syncing disks.

"reboot"

sda (a completely different drive) read failed after...(went off screen)

same inconsistency error

"dumpe2fs /dev/hdb1"
filesystem state: clean with errors

error reading bitmaps: can't read an block bitmap (<-- said it just like that, improper grammar and all)

"mount /dev/hdb1" hdb1 mounted ok manually

"e3fsck -f -b 32769 /dev/hdb1"
command not found

I then erased the partition for hdb, which didn't help, and finally
"vim fstab" and I commented out the line for hdb. This let me get back into a normal boot without errors.

Have I created a temporary solution here? Or is this fine to leave things this way?

How can I make my installation more stable and less prone to mysterious freezes?

If I do have to hit the power, is there a way to restore the system without having to reinstall everything from a liveCD and restore the backup on my external drive?

How are those for "real" questions?

Thanks in advance.

linux is only the kernel so the kernel might not be crashing, just the display might be locked up. I would go through one by one and see which program is causing it to crash, try launching each of your favorite programs by itself and see if it crashes, if it doesn't crash by doing that, try launching them together and see which combinations will crash it

You have a hardware problem. That is why you are having freezes/corrupted partitions/crashes.

What is your problem? I don't know; your diagnostics to this point have focused strictly on software issues.

Take a look at your logs (specifically /var/log/messages or the Fedora equivalent...whichever distro you are running now) looking for I/O errors associated with your hard drive. You may or may not find any. If you do find any, proceed through the first, second, and last steps of the diagnostic procedure I provide here.

I suggest you do the following (in this order):

1. Run full diagnostics on the HD. Best choice would be to use Spinrite if you have access to a copy, but it is an expensive tool if you have to purchase it. In any case, obtain a copy of the smartctl command, learn to use it, and see what the SMART messages on your HD have to say. Visit smartmontools.sourceforge.net for more info. If a SMART failure is indicated, post the entire contents of the output of the command "smartctl -a /dev/hdb" here so I can read it. You also should have an hda; run smartctl on that also.

2. If there are I/O errors, replace the hard drive cable, and make sure all drive jumpers are set correctly.

3. If you are still having trouble, replace the hard drive.

4. Remove all cards from the computer (except the motherboard) and disconnect all cables. Clean the whole thing out, getting rid of all dust bunnies. Reinstall all cards, reconnect all cables.

5. Do a power budget on your system to establish that your power supply is big enough. If it nominally is, and if you have an oscilloscope, measure the outputs of the power supply. If they are rippling more than plus or minus about 10 millivolts, or varying more than about 3%, replace the power supply. If the voltages are out of spec by more than 10%, replace the power supply. If you can't perform these tests, replace the power supply.

6. If you still have problems, replace the motherboard.

I agree with jiml8, you probably have a (maybe intermittently, broken) hardware problem. These things happen.

I have various (mostly kubuntu) distros running on 8 completely different PC's, only 3 of which are in my house, I just maintain the others. They never crash. Once they are running, then that's it Happy (non-geeky) users. Happy me as I do not have to deal with complaints

The only thing I would add to jiml8's post is for you to run memtest86 (probably overnight, it is very thorough). It'll pick up any memory problems.

Otherwise removing the dust-bunnies and reseating everything is very good advice that you should follow.

Then reinstall from scratch.

Linux isn't "flakey" - it either works, or it doesn't. If it is working, it will continue to work, unless of course you want to start messing with vital things for the fun of it...

Persevere, it's worth it.

Here's what I found of note in my logs (there will be two sections-- one for what I found after reading your response and the second what I found appended to the log after experiencing another freeze and rebooting, albeit this time being able to still boot up into Linux properly):





(1)


Buffer I/O error dev sda device not ready lost page write due to I/O error on sda1

sense key: not ready
Ext3fs error (device sda1): ext3_find_entry:reading directory #2 offset 0
end_request: I/O error

ERROR:will_tell_kernel bad device (28 GB) < <--- sda is NOT 28 GB, I believe hdb1, before it was erased, was 28 GB, but it no longer exists ---> >

guess_geometry_from_parttition_rable sda: 38913/255/63

Add. sense: Logical Unit not ready, initializing command required

end request: I/O error, dev sda

Ext3ft error (device sda1)
ext3_find_entry: reading directory #2 offset 0




[at this point I tried <ctrl> <alt> <backspace>, which did nothing and then I tried <ctrl> <alt> <F1>, nothing, followed by <alt><sysrq><r>, waiting a few seconds, then each of the following, waiting a few seconds between while seeing no change, not even the hard drive light: <alt><sysrq><s><alt><sysrq><e><alt><sysrq><i><alt><sysrq><u><alt><sysrq><b> but this did nothing either.


< <--- I then held the power button in until the computer did a hard reset. ---> >





(2)


mount [failed] sdb does not exist < <--- I only have one external hard drive, although at one point I had a cruzer micro 2 GB pendrive plugged in, but that was several installations ago ---> >




< <--- more log entries: ---> >


hdd: DMA timeout retry timeout waiting for DMA status timeout: status=0xd0 failed opcode:unknown drive not ready for command
-------------[cut here]---------------
Kernel BUG at c01a4c07 [verbose debug info unavailable]
invalid opcode: 0000 [#1]
SMP
Modules linked in: dm_zero lp parpart_pc ppdev parport < <---- long list here that I didn't copy ----> > amd 74xx ide_core

CPU: 0

Process kio_audiocd (pid:...)
Stack: ...

Call Trace:

Bad page state in process 'klogd' Trying to fix it up but a reboot is needed

hdd: status timeout: status= 0dx0 {Busy}
.
.
.

cpufreqetected nForce2 chipset revision c1
cpufreq: FSB changing is mabe unstable adn can lead to crashes and data loss FSB currently at 132 MHz < <--- it's supposed to be 133 MHz, right? nFroce2-- is that a north/southbridge bus, the onboard audio processor bus or the bus of the cpu? dunno, but there have been strange audio anomalies and this last freeze started by music playing half a second every 3 or 4 seconds, cutting in and out---> > FID 13.0 Marking TSC unstable due to: cpufreq changes

Unknown symbol vbox_cnuc_open

hdd: command error {DriveReady SeekComplete Error}
Illegal request
Illegal mode for this track or incompatible medium failed "Read 10" packet command was: "28 00 00 . . . I/O erro


< <--- end log notes ---> >



Here is a little info on my hardware based on rather rudimentary notions I've gotten from the above:

I built the computer myself in 2000 but got a newer motherboard and hard drive, cd-rw in 2003 or 2004. I bought a 300 GB Seagate external USB hard drive just a week or so ago.

motherboard (and audio): ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe w/onboard MCP-T southbridge integrated Audio Processor Unit (APU) + Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio CODEC; the northbridge is NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 and the southbridge is NVIDIA nForce2 MCP-T; the video card is NVIDIA Geforce FX 5200, so it's always confusing when NVIDIA is mentioned anywhere in logs; also, under hardware it lists this video card as having a PCI bus, when it really has an AGP bus

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73 GHz)

RAM: bank 1 is empty, bank 2 has 256 MB single-bank connection, bank 3 has 256 MB double-bank connection--- I was wondering if the memory could be causing problems

So was I.
Did you miss my post, #13, above?
You list kubuntu as one of your distros. If you have the regular "live CD / install" disk, then the option to run memtest86 is on that disk's boot menu (below "Run or install Kubuntu"). Arrow down to it select it, press return, and let it run for a long time - overnight.
That might, at least, eliminate bad memory.

Parts of your PC (The PSU? Cables ... ) are now 7 years old.
Have you followed jiml8's other advice?