A networking problem...

I just installed my 9th distro - the 2.6.26-desktop-2mnb (2009) version of Mandriva. Having tried and failed to get Mandrake to work many years ago, this install was the easiest and most logical I can remember for any distro for many years. It all went extremely smoothly with no hassle.

Until I got to the KDE 4.1 login screen. That has to be the slowest and most awkward version of KDE I've ever used. It wouldn't let me set up the Samba network, and it wouldn't let me add a network printer. I can start the printer-add process as "Keithj", and all is well until the end, when it says only root can add printers. OK, so I do the job as root (ie tick the Admin box and give that familiar password) - whereupon it can't find any printer drivers. Both ways,it bombs out without a printer.

Gnome let me add the two printers with no fuss at all, so that's done.
I think I'm going to be deserting KDE for Gnome.

But ... I CANNOT get the machine to allow incoming connections. It won't even respond to pings from other machines on the network. They can see it, but can't connect to it. It can connect to all the other machines. I've tried all the permutations on smb.conf, even copying the smb.conf from other distros, to no avail.

It's as if there were a firewall there, set to "no entry".

I had a hassle a couple of months ago with SELinux on a Debian machine - I fixed that by disabling SELinux. I can't see any sign of anything similar in Mandriva, but is it hidden somewhere? What am I missing?

Unless you disabled it during installation, then the firewall is active on a default Mandriva install, and the default config allows no incoming connections.

I assume that you know that mdv 2009.0 is still at beta stage. Final release is not due until October.

Jim

Indeed. I turned it off when I installed Mandriva. The Linux machine sits behind my router and its firewall, and doubles as a fileserver for the main desktop and for my laptop.
Yes - thanks, Jim. I'm having a dabble with Mandriva, and reckoned on the "bleeding edge" version as the most interesting.

The "working distro" is Fedora 8, which is rock solid, stable, and runs most of the time.

I gave up on this problem and a few others, and wiped and reinstalled Mandriva. The networking into the Linux machine worked first time I tried with the new installation, so it was clearly something adrift in the first one.

This time, Samba can't see anything on the other machines - it gets as far as displaying the drives list on each PC, but when I try to open them it creates a mount point for them in the Samba directory instead of opening them. That mount point, of course, won't open.

The "Add Printer" wizard does the searching for me - but doesn't find the two "real" printers, only a couple of links on another machine on the network. Fascinating - it worked perfectly the previous time, with what I thought were the same install parameters.

Must be something to do with the sequence of adding software.

Case closed on this one. Off to tinker some more.

mdv 2009.0 Beta 2 was released today. You may want to try that.

Jim

I might wait a couple of weeks now! I sorted the "Windows can't see Mandriva" issue by reinstalling, which fixed it and gave me a new one - "Mandriva can't see Windows!" I solved that by careful tweaking of smb.conf.

Now, this evening, Gnome Commander reports "gksu or kdesu is not found" when I click on "File - Start Gnome Commander as root". That's a pain! It worked fine earlier today - I can't fathom where gksu has gone. Reinstalling gksu didn't fix it. I'm back to "sudo whatever --display=0:0" to run rooty stuff.

It looks like nobody can help me with getting the Mandriva installation to "see" folders on the other machines on the network?

I can see each Windows drive, but not what's in them.

If I click on them, it tries to "Open" them, by creating an icon for them on the desktop. This very slow process can apparently be stopped by clicking cancel - but it never gets as far as showing folder contents.

If I ask it to browse them, I get a message that "Unable to mount location. DBus error. org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Mountpoint Already registered."

A bug in Mandriva 2009, I suppose.

Other machines on the network can access Mandrive, and save items into its directories with no problems.

After considerable "experimentation", I got Mandriva 2009.0 to do most things. The KDE4.1 desktop crashes with a "White Screen of Death" within a few minutes of starting, but Gnome is stable.

2009 will NOT browse my Windows shared folders, and some of the peripherals don't work - but I'm minded to persevere.

There's a new version of 2009 out. I really don't want to wipe the installation I have, and start again with all the "fixes". Can I install the new one over the top of the old one? How do I do that?

If it all goes wrong, I can still wipe and install from scratch.

If you installed a beta release (in effect a snapshot of the development release, cooker) then your system will not be up to date. There are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of package updates every day. It's unlikely that any serious cooker user will have a static system. The bugs you see may well already be fixed. For example, KDE4.1 is stable on my system. I don't use Gnome or samba.

Installing the next version (RC1) should be as simple as selecting upgrade when the installer asks if you want to install or upgrade. Keep in mind that this is "testing" and so almost anything could happen.

Jim

Wireless Networking and normal Ethernet Network cabling was flawless in Beta2 and now RC1.

So far I have tested it on 3 different Laptops and one home build PC.
No issues in Hardware detection and clean boot into the KDE4.1 desktop.
So far just one older Laptop was unable to run the 3D effects, which are now integrated into KDE4.1
KDE4.1 takes some getting used to, but I have been slowly warming up to it.
All tests were done with the Mandriva One (live) CD.

Even at RC1 level, I am giving it 8 out of 10.