before the problems, i have a brand new syntax laptop and installed slack 9.1

first of all, is it possible to pipe all the startup msgs to a file that i can review later

second, i dont know how to use the dvdrw on my laptop. it is also my cdrom, but i dont know how to access it. i thought i could just go to mnt/cdrom and view the contents but i cant. am i just being really dumb?

also, i think i got the ac97 (EDIT - i used the modprobe the i found in another thread) up and running. i can here very faint music from the headphones slot. is there a way to turn up the system volume? also, it wont play out of the onboard speakers (or the mixer setting is too low) im using kde, and it wont let me use the aRts. i get a cpu overload, which i dont see as being possible

also, i cant install mandrake. i start it from a install cd (disk 1) but it says hda interrupt stop and then goes haywire, any info on that?

i know this is quite a bit of junk here, but any info is appreciated

logs are saved in /var/log

Sartup messages are saved in dmesg and boot.log

Filesystems need to be mounted before you can access its contents.

mount /mnt/cdrom

ok, got the mount. thanx. new problem, i was using kde, now when i run startx, it runs gnome. the man for startx said to look for xinitrc, buut i cant find it...

quick question, can i install mandrake without a floppy drive?

Yes, the simplest method is to download the ISO's and boot from CD.

xinitrc could be a hidden file in your home directory. A hidden file is procedded by a . i.e. .xinitrc

Lacking one in your home directory then look in /etc/X11/xinit

See man pages startx for additional info.

Did you mean that you want to use kde instead of gnome? Just 'switchdesk kde' and 'startx'.