Fred K Ollinger on Sun, 28 Apr 2002 23:47:07 -0400


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

[PLUG] Re: Newbie's first question[s]


> All attempts to contact a named server have failed.  I'll try this
> suggestion during my first session in the AM.  Gotta start doing
> useful work; four full days invested in this startup ...

This explains why browser doesn't work.

> > Do a 'route' and post that as well.
>
> Whazzat ?

Type route on command line and paste results into email. This can help a
lot.

> in Netscape; or the like (fictitious IP address here).  Actually,
> this seems to be a major breakthrough, akin to the first time I
> got slapped after all the others simply ignored me.
>
> > Here's google's: 216.239.51.101
>
> Hmmm.  I got 216.239.32.10 with NSLookup.  This result indicates
> that I cannot expect to surf the Net with IP addresses; they change
> dynamically.

LOL. I'm just testing things to localize your troubles. I'm not suggesting
that you memorize all ips. :)

> Nope; no luck.
>
> > if this doesn't work then try:
>
> > 199.232.41.9 [which is the ip address]
>
> Memory says that this worked OK.

Where is ftp server you contacted?

I find it tough to believe you can contact a remote ftp site, but you
can't contact your nearest nameserver.

I think that you have no internet and you need to work on that. Until you
can ping ip addresses, we can forget about nameserver and browsers.

How do you connect to internet? I don't think you are getting on to
internet at all, at this point.

If you tell us how you got onto internet w/ linux, I could help more.

> > Did you reboot the machine overnight?
>
> Several times; got into that habit from running W95 and
> W98 day after day.  Few problems take less than 25 reboots
> before going away.

It's ok, I'm just trying to figure out who is dropping the ball.

> > Not being wise here, but many of us leave our machines on all
> > the time.
>
> I'm tempted; but when it's froze, what's a fella to do ?

I didn't want you to think I was insulting which is why I said that.

> Forget about the Book PC's CD; the system came with two Linux

OK.

> distribution disks (CD's) that the machine will boot from; but
> then it's into the Linux Installation menu, and so I got out
> of there in a hurry.  And it will still boot from them.

I see. So you are saying it will boot install cds. So bios is not broken.
I got it now.

> > Is linux coming from cd or hd?
>
> >From the hard drive; 40GB worth ...
>
> > open my own burner's CD-R disk, but the mount command fails
> > and I cannot keep that icon on the bottom toolbar to work; it
>
> > What desktop (just curious).
>
> I'm so confused right now I don't know.  There's one group of
> programs labeled KDE; and another, just Programs.  Some of

What is on the lower left hand corner where the 'start' menu is in win?

Trying to isolate whether it's a hw or gui problem.

> each seem useful, but not [yet] all of one or the other.  There's
> programs scattered all over the place like a weekend handyman's
> tools after a flood.  As if Windows were any better.

There are cleaner desktops. I use icewm. It has no icons at all, and the
menu says 'start'. I renamed all the linux equivs the same as they are in
windows so my friends can use my box better.

Some people thought I was running windows at work. A weird windows w/
multi-desktops. :)

> Yup.  Both the hard drive and the CDWriter.  No SCSI anywhere.
>
> >> (which seems to work OK, except that the file manager no longer
> >> detects a file which I saved onto that floppy earlier today and
> >> which I could read with a W98 PC) or when I invoke Hardware
>
> > Did you try:
>
> > mount /mnt/floppy
> > ls /mnt/floppy
>
> This works; and I can see the contents of the floppy from the
> Shell screen.  But not from Nautilus's Tree screen.

OK, your hw works. This is as far as I go. I don't use Nautilus, but
others on the list do so they can help.

Basically the hard part is over for this case.

> > from cli? I'm starting to suspect a faulty gui.
>
> What's cli ?

cli == command line interface
gui == graphical user interface

> same (nero) S/W. No more; both installations of nero failed and
> nero doesn't answer my E-mails.  So now it's on to Linux.

I've had great luck in getting cd-rws buring from cli in linux. I don't
use anything else. I have a script which backs up my /home, /etc, and a
few others. I run this daily.

One could do the same in win, though, w/ vb.

> > You can snoop in /proc to see what linux really thinks of all
> > this.  For ide, so:
> > 	cd /proc/ide/
> > and look around. In the hdx dirs, you can find a wealth of data.
> > Esp interesting is the /proc/ide/hdc/drivers, yours may be
> > different.
>
> All's I found were: hda, ide0, and sis

OK, so this is only your hard drive. Both hda and ide0 are hd.
This is bad. This means that when booting linux failed to find your cd-rw.
You need to reboot, still I don't know why the failure.

This smells like hardware failure. Even if you had no support for cd-rw,
you would still have a working cdrom drive when you boot if linux saw the
drive at all. It didn't which is bad.

> > This will tell you if linux ever saw that recalcitrant
> > cdrom drive.
>
> At one point it did - and I could look at a CD-R disk that
> I burned with JPG's and HTML files; worked fine.

Sounds like you rebooted after this. This is flaky behavior.

> > Also, you can do the good old:
> > 	dmesg
> > and grep for cd and other things.
>
> Not much came of my feeble attempts to poke around with these.

Which means that linux didn't find it.

Here's mine:

root@underwood:~# dmesg | grep -i cd
hdc: 20X10, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
  Vendor: ATAPI     Model: CD-R/RW 20X10     Rev: H.KF
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 02

> You're welcome !  This is very educational.
>
> When I try the command:
>
> 	mount /mnt/cdrom
>
> In Shell, it comes back with:
>
> 	mount: can't find /mnt/cdrom in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
>
> Not a good sign ?  Yet, at one stage, it did successfully mount
> several CD's, one at a time of course.

This is an fstab problem.

Your drive is not in /etc/fstab. We can add this later.

> Automount has never worked.  Although if I right-click in the

I don't automount b/c I like to put cd in and not mount it sometimes,
maybe use it later. I hate it when things start running and popping up on
my screen b/c it doesn't make me feel like I'm in control, but we can help
you get automount working once we get linux to see cd-rw.

> A DOS installation disk for the CDWriter came with the system.
> Is there anything useful I can do with that ?  The installation
> instructions for the CDWriter that came with the system just
> say that Windows will Autodetect it.  No help there; no data.

Well, if you can boot dos and run the diagnostics, I'm sure it will
confirm my idea. It will not detect your cd-rw drive b/c there is
something faulty about the connection, the drive, or the bios. This is
really bad.

I suggest that you demand a refund or at least a replacement.

Fred


______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug