on Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 11:02:32AM +0200, Ian Balchin (fables@imaginet.co.za) wrote:
> Hi,all,
>
>
> I have just joined the list. I haven't been lurking here so hope
> that I am not offending you guys with my surely simple questions.
Only if you promise not to be offended by convoluted answers.
> I have just installed potato as a dual boot m/c (with dos) on a
What's "m/c"?
> new (for me) Cyrix120 PC. I did several installs to get the hang of
> it and recover from errors made.
Good standard practice. I ususally end up with three installs: a
trial, a "get it right", and a "OK, let's not do *that* again".
> I have it installed with no packages selected from tasksel (except the
> final tasksel -s), just the plainest setup possible (Disks as Violet
> 2.2 from Obsidian systems here).
Good. You'll have pretty good idea of what you've got on the system
when you're done with this, as well as the packaging system.
What's your network connection? Dialup? Dedicated phone? DSL? Cable?
> I am not that experienced with unix,
Get some books:
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/linux-books.html
The HOWTO's, man pages, Debian website (http://www.debian.org/), and
system docs under /usr/share/doc/ are all highly recommended as well.
> am just doing this as a learning experience. Eventually I want to use
> the machine for dial up and desktop applications as an alternative to
> Windows, but have not yet installed Xwindows, gnome, or dialup
> packages, so am only playing at the prompt at this stage.
Dig. You should be able to get most of this set up pretty easily.
> Is there a FAQ to this list or can i ask away?
See above for general docs. Someone will usually tell you where to go
if it's a covered issue.
> I have scoured the online documentation given with the install process
> for an easy answer to my problems with no luck, so here goes.
>
> 1. The old machine had a sound card after all. How can I
> configure that without another reinstall?
Depends on the soundcard. Read the relevant HOWTOs. You may be able to
load a precompiled module, you may need to compile your own kernel.
This isn't too hard, but takes a bit of getting used to.
> 2. I have read some of the HOWTO files particularly the one on
> printing. This is a file ending in .gz and I cannot get it to print
> out. Do I have to extract that particular file out of the eng.txt
> first ? If so, how?
There's more than one way to do it. Indented text with a '$' before it
means "run this command":
$ zcat file | less
$ zless file
You can also add the following to your ~/.bashrc (you'll need to know an
editor, I strongly advise either vim or emacs):
# let less handle zipped files, etc.
eval $( lesspipe )
...in which case you can do:
$ less file
> 3. I note that my selections for lp (port 0x378 & irq7) during
> initial install resulted in a failure; even with no entry on the
> line it was also a failure. Why would that be?
What specific error message?
> 5. I see that my SiS6215 video card is listed on the Xfree86 site
> as a supported card, but it was not detected in the initial
> install. xviddetect does not now detect it properly, listing it as
> maybe a SiS 82C204 along with other possibilities. I declined to
> write the xwin (?) config file on the last install as it would not
> detect the video card and came up with error 111 when i tried to
> write it previously. What do I do now? It detects a borrowed
> Trident TGUI9440 OK but maybe I can't keep that.
Do:
$ cat /proc/pci
...and look for something matching your card (this is a virtual file
that lists devices on the system's PCI bus).
You should be able to configure XFree86v4 with xf86cfg.
> 6. My PS2 mouse does not work on this machine (not in dos either, so
> maybe the port is broken) so how do I change this to a plain serial
> mouse? In XF86Setup I cannot get the serial mouse to go with _any_
> settings either.
It's a ps2 mouse, on psaux. If nothing else:
$ cat /dev/psaux
# wiggle the mouse
...you should see stuff on screen. If not, you may have other problems.
You can get a ps2(m)-serial(f) converter, though they're damned hard to
find (more often it's serial(m)-ps2(f). Other option is to buy a serial
mouse.
> I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right
> direction here. (I am now sort-of vi competent so can edit files
> OK).
Schwing. vim rocks ;-)
Peace.
--
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