Hi friends,

The first time I laid my eyes on Mepis (Mepis 3.4.3 to be exact), I can say I have fallen. I have all the things that I need to survive. From office applications, desktop publishing, firewall c/o Guarddog, synaptic, wifi support, cd burning software and more. I've been using Linux for almost a year now and I can say that the migration is really not that easy. On my first distro, I've used RH9 then fedora core 1. And the latest one is Ubuntu. The Ubuntu eases my work because it is almost similar to Windows GUI. With the set of applications installed, I was able to enjoy Linux.

Now here's the hard part, all the convenience that I've experienced from Ubuntu became a pain for me in Mepis. Here's the list of issues I encountered in Mepis that I'm not yet able to solve:

1.) My ethernet connection won't start at bootup. After I log-in, I can't ping anyone within my network. I've browsed some forums to find the answers and all I got are set of commands to activate my connection:

#ifdown eth0
#rmmod dmfe
#rmmod tulip
#modprobe dmfe
#ifup eth0

But when I wrote the following in /etc/init.d, it still can't activate the connection

2.) I've tried to install VMWare Server Beta which I downloaded from the VMWare website. I can successfuly install VMWare in Ubuntu but it runs too slow. It takes up most of my memory even if I'm not using it. I wasn't able to resolve this issue and tried to install it in Mepis 3.4.3 and hoping that the result will be different. Unfortunately, I cannot even install it. Everytime I type in vmware-config.pl, I get the following errors:

Building the vmmon module.

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.15-1-586tsc/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.15-1-586tsc'
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/linux/hostif.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/common/hash.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/common/memtrack.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/common/phystrack.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/common/task.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/common/vmx86.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/vmcore/moduleloop.o
LD [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/vmmon.o
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST
CC /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/vmmon.mod.o
LD [M] /tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only/vmmon.ko
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.15-1-586tsc'
cp -f vmmon.ko ./../vmmon.o
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon-only'
Unable to make a vmmon module that can be loaded in the running kernel:
insmod: error inserting '/tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon.o': -1 Unknown symbol in module
There is probably a slight difference in the kernel configuration between the
set of C header files you specified and your running kernel. You may want to
rebuild a kernel based on that directory, or specify another directory.

For more information on how to troubleshoot module-related problems, please
visit our Web site at "http://www.vmware.com/download/modules/modules.html" and
"http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/linux/prebuilt_modules_linux.html".

Execution aborted.

3.) As an alternative to VMWare, I tried to install qemu and kqemu since everyone in the forum told me that its easier to install than VMWare. Again, I have successfully installed qemu and kqemu in Ubuntu but not on Mepis 3.4.3. I got :

FATAL: Error inserting kqemu (/lib/modules/2.6.15-1-586tsc/misc/kqemu.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

everytime I type in modprobe kqemu. When I typed in dmesg, here's what I got:

When I typed dmesg | tail -5, i get:

kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address
kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address
kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address
kqemu: Unknown symbol page_address

Honestly, I still love Mepis but I think Mepis hates me. I am thinking on going back to Ubuntu but sometimes I think it's not a good attitude to turn away from these problems because sooner or later I might experience the same in Ubuntu (another program perhaps). I just need to understand why these things are happening so I can resolve it. I've also read in some of the forums that its difficult to configure wireless devices in Ubuntu and Mepis supports more hardware than Ubuntu.

1)

your script in /etc/init.d wont work unless you link it the appropriate run level.... e.g /etc/rc3.d/

however, it's better to load the modules u want and blacklist the ones you dont.

have a look at this post. it's for Ubuntu, but they are both Debian underneath:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/.../t-154172.html

you need to add this line to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

blacklist tulip


then reboot and you should be fine.


2) Vmware takes a lot of RAM. unless you have over 1gig i would not expect to get very good results with it....

have you got the kernel headers??

try this:

apt-get install kernel-headers-`uname -r`

This will get them for your kerel. You can use Synaptic too. Looks like you could have it already...... it certainly seems like a problem with your headers.....

3)don't know sorry!

Thanks for your reply satinet. I've followed everything written in

http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/n...=14525&forum=9

I am using Mepis 3.4.3 and downloaded the necessary kernel-headers, in my case its linux-headers-2.6.15-1-586tsc. I've also downloaded the linux source (linux-source-2.6.15). But after trying the steps above, I still can't install VMWare. Thanks for the answer to the inquiry 1.

so did you solve problem 1? using blacklists?

you could download the latest kernel from kernel.org.

then copy the .config file from your current kernel sources and simply do

make
make modules
make modules_install


this should get you a new kernel with the same options......

Thanks Satinet...I was able to resolve problem 1. The blacklist is on my /etc/modprobe.d. Now the connection is activated every time I boot up. I have downloaded the linux-source-2.6.16-11 and the linux-kernel. I tried
make,make modules and make modules_install. Now here's my question, do I have to copy the bzImage on the bootloader? Or the kernel will be replaced by the compiled one?

yes, you need to copy bzimage to /boot and link to it in your grub config file: /boot/grub/menu.lst

Ok thanks but I still can't install kqemu module. I've installed VMware though.