Re: Questions about Debian 2.0
On: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 12:21:55 +0200 Remo Badii writes:
>
> Dear Debian users/developers,
> I have a few questions which arised during my (successful) installation of
> Debian 2.0 on a Thinkpad 760 CD. Please consider that this is my first Linux
> installation at all and have mercy.
>
> 1) When trying mtools from my personal account, I get the error message
> "cannot open /dev/fd0
> permission denied
> cannot initialize A:"
> Adding /dev/fd0 in /etc/fstab with user,noauto does not help
> (and it should not). I have the system-made /etc/mtools.conf in
> which I just commented out the line with the SCSI disk and
> uncommented the one with the IDE disk (c: /dev/hda1 , where dos
> resides). None of this changes the situation. Do I have to
> change privileges somewhere?
Add your user to the group floppy. adduser <your login> floppy should
do it.
> 2) When pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL (programmed to halt the system in
> inittab), the machine halts but is not powered off. Is this
> because I have not chosen the APM package during installation
> (overlooked it, probably)? Do I solve the problem by going into
> dselect and installing that package?
You need to add apm-bios support to your kernel. cd to
/usr/src/linux, start make menuconfig (or whatever you prefer) and
look into Character Devices section if there is the item Advanced
Power Management BIOS support enabled. Enable power off on shutdown
too.
> 3) Just after running XF86Setup, I noticed a file /use/X11R6/bin/X:
> is that a copy of XF86_VGA16? Later, I renamed it to Xold
> (probably I could have deleted it), created a file X and linked
> it to /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA. As a matter of fact, X works. Is
> the above correct?
IIRC, /usr/X11R6/bin/X is a setuid wrapper around X11 to fix some
problems of X11 when dealing with some arguments and environment
variables (e.g., DISPLAY). It is supposed to start the server in the
file named in the file /etc/X11/Xserver.
> 4) In XF86Setup, I chose a mouse sample rate of 0 (since I did not see
> any effect in changing it): what is this rate?
It is important for some older serial logitech mice (as the comment in
the file says). I assume it is the number of samples taken per
seconds, a value of 150 means that 150 time per seconds the mice is
polled. Today the mice uses interrupts to signal a button press and a
position change.
> 5) Is there no dos2unix in the distribution?
Install the recode package and define a shell script with the
following contents:
recode ibmpc:latin1 "$@"
> 8) tgif and pgplot (both non-free, graphics and libraries, respectively)
> where not on my CDs (official 2-CD set from Christian Schwarz). Is
> this usual? Should I load them via FTP using dselect?
The official CD set do not include the non-free section.
> 9) Seyon suggests kermit, which is not in the distribution (orphaned
> package ckermit). What can be done?
I found ckermit in unstable (slink) non-free.
Torsten
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