Fedora Core 2

[Void Main]

Here's an EXCELLENT list of mirrors where I found several very fast servers:

http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/20 ... 1726NWRHSW

[Griffin518]

The only thing I'd really like to see in Fedora is automounting of any and all additional hard disk partitions. I've been using Mepis and Knoppix, both Live CDs boot up with icons on the desktop for mounting all the hard disk partitions that are availabe on your system, very convenient.
What would it take to create a mount partitions icon on the Fedora desktop?

M$ giving the linux community free reign to bundle the NTFS fileset? They don't include it now for legal reasons... being sued is never fun.

[Griffin518]

Here's an EXCELLENT list of mirrors where I found several very fast servers:

http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/20 ... 1726NWRHSW

The dvd transfer finished this morning... man it was great to not have to switch disks.

[chartoo]

They don't include it now for legal reasons... being sued is never fun.

Knoppix and Mepis have icons that represent mountable partitions on the system hard disk drives.
Why would it be illegal to mount my Windoze files while using Fedora?
They are my files on my computer that I wish to access from Linux. I didn't mean a Windoze icon, just a hard disk partition icon like you see on the Knoppix, DyneBolic or Mepis desktops .
Assuming what you are saying is true, why isn't Knoppix or Mepis being sued by Redmond for allowing access to NTFS partitions in their Live distros ?

;-)

[Void Main]

Ok, I got my nVidia drivers working and my old VMware v3.2 working on FC2. The only thing I know about that doesn't work now is firewire, but that's a problem with the 2.6.x kernel. Hopefully they get that fixed soon as I would like to start capturing more video from my digital camera since I got the big hard drive.

To get the nVidia drivers working I downloaded the stock 2.6.6 kernel, copied over my /boot/config* to .config in the kernel root and did a "make oldconfig" and answered no to the few questions (the default) most notably saying "no" to the 4K stack size (needs to be 8K). Then just did a "make rpm" and installed the new RPM. I made the mistake of turning on the 1394 firewire support as modules and sure enough the system locked up on boot when it tried to load the modules (I read that it would, just wanted to try it anyway).

Regarding NTFS you can just install the NTFS kernel modules via RPM. They are now available for FC2 here:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora2.html

I don't really know why they don't compile NTFS as a module by default. I do understand why they don't include MP3 and other questionable patented pieces. Most of it is available via 3rd party apt repositories so it's not that big of a deal (this may go away with the new EU patent laws). Anytime I find an NTFS partition I reformat it as ext3 so I don't mind that they don't include the NTFS module. :)

[Kaelan]

I just did an upgrade from FC1 to FC2... I will have to say it was completly painless (other than the pain in my back from swapping cd's ) on the first boot after teh upgrade I was presented with a login for the 2.6.x kernel... everything that worked before works now... no fancy video card... no fancy audio.. this is an old PII 400 HP vectra.. ALSA didn't work before, still doesn't, but that's due to the onboard audio being crap that a prob with FC2.

[lovswr]

I just did an upgrade from FC1 to FC2... I will have to say it was completly painless (other than the pain in my back from swapping cd's ) on the first boot after teh upgrade I was presented with a login for the 2.6.x kernel... everything that worked before works now... no fancy video card... no fancy audio.. this is an old PII 400 HP vectra.. ALSA didn't work before, still doesn't, but that's due to the onboard audio being crap that a prob with FC2.

Yea I did the same thing as you. I was, indeed, pleasantly surprised. As I remember it, going from RH9 to FC1 ended up being a complete hard drive wipe.

I do have two problems. My soundblaster (whiched worked under FC1)..puts out so much noise & hiss that I can barely hear the audio in the background. The second & much more pressing problem (to me) is that I can not find how to change my mouse (currently set at generic 2 button) to a differnt type. My Belkin KVM causes problems so I have to set it to something else. Anybody have any ideas?

[Void Main]

system-config-mouse?

[lovswr]

system-config-mouse?

Void, as usual, you are da' main man. Unfortunately, I could not remember what I should change it to. Fortunately, I just plugged in the USB mouse, (that was practically biting me) & now I even get the scroll wheel back.

[chartoo]

I get this message as the desktop comes up

Error activating XKB configuration.
Probably internal X server problem.

X server version data:
The X.Org Foundation
60700000

If you report this situation as a bug, please include:
- The result of xprop -root | grep XKB
- The result of gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/xkb

Everything seems to be working okay.

;-)

[Void Main]

Try renaming your /etc/X11/XF86Config to something else and let xorg start up with it's defaults. I had a problem after updating this laptop where I couldn't even start X and couldn't run the system-config-display. I renamed the "XF86Config" and the system-config-display still didn't work but I though what the heck and typed "startx". To my surprise X came up and in the best looking resolution I have ever seen (1600x1200). To top it off, I pressed CTL+ALT+KPPLUS to see what other modes it new about and I had to have cycled through at least 25 different resolutions before getting back to the original.

I also got the same error you got when I did get it to start X with the LCD only. Ditching the XF86Config seems to have fixed that one as well. The new config file if you want to create one should be called /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

[chartoo]

Try renaming your /etc/X11/XF86Config to something else

Thanks, I'll try later tonight when I get home.

[Griffin518]

They don't include it now for legal reasons... being sued is never fun.

Knoppix and Mepis have icons that represent mountable partitions on the system hard disk drives.
Why would it be illegal to mount my Windoze files while using Fedora?
They are my files on my computer that I wish to access from Linux. I didn't mean a Windoze icon, just a hard disk partition icon like you see on the Knoppix, DyneBolic or Mepis desktops .
Assuming what you are saying is true, why isn't Knoppix or Mepis being sued by Redmond for allowing access to NTFS partitions in their Live distros ?

It's not illegal... but MS is positioning themselves to require licensing from all devices that access their proprietary filesystem types... this put quite a scare into the embedded device (like MP# players) market, since they all use fat32. I wish I could find the article, but I'm afraid it's long gone... it was also seen as a way for redmond to possibly deny licenses to linux distros, so that we couldn't mount ntfs or fat partitions.

[Void Main]

Yeah, I saw those articles a couple of months back as well. M$ was/is trying to pull royalties from device manufacturers that use the FAT file system (flash cards in Cameras, etc). I also saw another article about someone taking them to court over it saying the patent is invalid because of prior art. I haven't heard any more on it since then. I'm also not quite sure where NTFS falls into the mix as far as being patented. I'm not sure if it had it's roots in HPFS or if M$ came up with it all on their own (highly unlikely).

It seems odd to me that RH would include vfat support and not ntfs because for fear of royalties. To me it is much more likely that they haven't included it because they weren't too sure about it's reliability. I have never heard of anyone having problems with it in read-only mode so that's also unlikely. If it was for patent reasons you think they would have disabled vfat in the latest FC2 release since M$ actually *has* tried to grab royalties from it.

Now, one thing that I believe shoot's the royalty theory down is that RH doesn't actually distribute anything formated with vfat or ntfs, they only would be distributing a module capable of reading a vfat/ntfs file system. I believe M$ was suing the memory stick device manufacturures because they were actually distributing the fat formated file systems. If that is true and you have already paid the royalty on your fat/ntfs file system that Windows resides on when you paid for Windows. You are just using a driver to access that file system. I don't know, just my 2 cents. That still leaves a question in my mind as to the actual reasons NTFS is left out.

On a side note, I recompiled my kernel with NTFS support *and* with write enabled (which is supposed to be reliable in 2.6.x) and I still can't write to my NTFS partition on my laptop (work machine). Not sure what the problem is as I mount it with "rw" option and it shows that it is mounted rw. Files/Dirs show up as being owned and writable by root but when I try and create a file as root it gives me an error and doesn't write the file. I did not compile in NTFS debug support though.

[Void Main]

For those people who said they were having sound problems I am curious if it's a permissions issue that I just happen to run across. If you can't run the "gnome-alsamixer" as a normal user and see the slider buttons but can run it as root and have the ability to adjust the volumes then your /dev/snd/* files are probably not being changed to be owned by you when you log in. If this is your problem then edit the /etc/security/console.perms file and add /dev/snd/* to the <sound> section.

e.g.

Code: Select all

<sound>=/dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/midi* \
        /dev/mixer* /dev/sequencer \
        /dev/sound/* /dev/beep /dev/snd/*


Also, the one thing that is often overlooked is unmuting the PCM volume in the gnome-alsamixer and raising both the PCM and the MASTER volume. Enjoy.