I've finally gotten Mandrake 9.1 Traditional Chinese to install. The OS and the GUI's (Gnome and KDE) are in place, but Mandrake isn't recognizing the packages I've installed. The "Start" menu displays only the in-built apps (quick browser, open new file, log out, mini-apps like World Clock, etc.), but none of the other packages (Office, Amusement, etc.).

Also, the desktop isn't showing the hard disk, just the CD-ROM's, the floppy, Home and the Welcome menu. This is true under both Gnome and KDE.

Also also, when I try to run the Mandrake configuration app from the Welcome screen, it tells me it can't find the app.

I had this problem on a previous install, so I tried various different things and somehow solved it, but I don't know how. I tried logging in as root and I think this caused it to somehow start reading the / partition correctly, but this install, I haven't figured out how to log in as anything except the account I set up.

Perhaps I partitioned my drive incorrectly -- one big / (6 GB) and a 700 MB swap? Or perhaps the language modules, but I had this problem with English too. Or perhaps where it's booting from (MBR, in this case)? But I tried having it boot from / and it refused to boot at all. I don't really know enough to know what else it could be.

Thanks in advance for any help...

this is normal. It only shows unmounted harddisk partitions (if at all). The mounted ones are just directories in your directory tree. It's not like windows/dos where all the harddrives are on top of the hierachy as C: D:, etc. with subdirectories.

Your partitioning is fine (though a separate /home partition is always useful) and the booting is not the problem either. Did you check the md5sum of the isos before burning them? There might be a problem with the cds.

You don't have to login as root. What you do is use a command to become root inside a session of a normal user. The command is su. You use it in a terminal window. Also, configuration tools that need root privileges will ask you for the root password.

Open a terminal, become root with
su
then type mcc
and press enter. This should start the mandrake control center. Does it work? If not, what kind of error messages do you get?

Thanks for the advice, quatsch!

Okay, it's good to know my partitioning is normal. If that's not what's causing the problem, though, I don't know what is.

I can't open a terminal, because the terminals aren't in the start menu. Well, maybe I could, if I knew where they were located on my hard drive... I tried looking through some of my files and found the FreeCiv client. When I double-clicked it, it opened pretty normally. So I'm pretty sure all the packages I installed are actually there, but the start menu just isnt registering/showing them for some reason.

I was able to add a "Run program" mini-app to the taskbar. Maybe I could start up a terminal from here? What would be a command to do so?

Maybe more importantly, though, is: will I be able to get the start menu to recognize the apps I've installed once I log on as root? Is there any other way to get Mandrake to recognize the apps?

By the way, sorry I'm using all these Windows-based terminology -- I'm using Mandrake in Chinese, so I don't know (or remember) how the terms translate into English.

And again, thanks in advance for any help.

you should be able to start a terminal with the command
konsole

you should also be able to start the menu editor with the command
menudrake

I hope this helps. It might be that the menus are not available in Chinese yet and the installer decided to not have any entries instead of the english ones. In menudrake, you should be choose something like default mandrake menu.

Thanks for the speedy reply!

I tried menudrake and it worked like a charm. I was able to add all my apps with no problem. They all show up in the main menu be-oo-ti-fully.

Now, Mozilla won't open, though. I'm using Konqueror, but I'd rather be using Mozilla. Actually, I'm going to try installing Thunderbird in a second here. But is there a known bug with Mozilla starting?

mozilla should open fine. Have you tried starting it from a terminal? The command is
mozilla
if you get error messages, it might help figure out what's wrong.

I ended up downloading Firebird and Thunderbird instead. They're both working quite well. There is a problem, but I'm going to post it elsewhere, because I don't think it's a problem specific to Mandrake.

Thanks again for all the help, quatsch. If you're ever in Taibei, I'll buy you a coffee.