Re: Newbie comments & queries
[ quoted text rearranged a little ]
On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 11:02:32AM +0200, Ian Balchin wrote:
| I have just installed potato as a dual boot m/c (with dos) on a
| new (for me) Cyrix120 PC. I did several installs to get the hang
| of it and recover from errors made. 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). I am not that experienced with unix, 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
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| 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.
If you don't have X installed/running yet then adjusting X's mouse
config won't help.
To get mouse support at the console, install gpm. Then edit
/etc/gpm.conf to have the proper protocol and device for your mouse.
For example, I have :
-------
device=/dev/psaux
type=imps2
repeat_type=raw
-------
In X, choose "/dev/gpmdata" as the device, and whatever you picked for
gpm's "type" as the protocol. I have "IMPS/2".
| Is there a FAQ to this list or can i ask away? I have scoured the
| online documentation given with the install process for an easy
| answer to my problems with no luck, so here goes.
Ask, and you'll get pointed to the FAQ if it exists :-).
| 1. The old machine had a sound card after all. How can I
| configure that without another reinstall?
First find out what the card is, then use 'modconf' to configure the
module for it.
| 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?
You need to have the 'parport', 'parportpc' and 'lp' modules loaded.
Run "lsmod" (as root, or with full path /sbin/lsmod) to see what
modules are currently loaded. You can list any modules you want to be
loaded automatically at boot up in /etc/modules.
| 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.
I have an SiS6326 that works fine. There are basically 2 ways to get
it to work.
(a) figure out the X settings
(b) rebuild your kernel with framebuffer support
I think that (b) is easier, but building a kernel may not be easy for
a newbie.
For (a) :
Probably use the SVGA driver, then determine the various modelines
and stuff until it works decently. This is a PITA if the tools
(such as xf86config and XF86Setup) don't get it just right. With
this, though, you get any hardware acceleration available with
your card.
For (b) :
Install the kernel source (kernel-source-<version>) and
'kernel-package' and 'fakeroot'. Make /usr/src writable by the
grup "src" and add your login to that group. In /usr/src you will
have a bzipped tarball. Unpack it with
$ cd /usr/src
$ tar -jxvf kernel-source-<version>.tar.bz2
$ cd kernel-source-<version>
$ fakeroot make-kpkg --config=menuconfig
--append-to-version=-custom.1 --revision=custom.1
kernel_image kernel_doc kernel_headers
( the '#' means to do as root )
# dpkg -i kernel_image_<version>-custom.1_custom.1_i386.deb
Then update your boot loader's config and reboot. Add "vga=0x314"
to the kernel's command line (see your bootloader's docs for how
to do this). That will give you 800x600x16.
When you are in the 'menuconfig' step, first load the
configuration from the standard kernel (/boot/config-<version>).
Then enable the VESA framebuffer (I don't remember which section
it is in).
I'm not sure if the framebuffer is in the 2.2.x kernels or not.
I'm running 2.4.10 on one machine and 2.4.8 on the other.
When you go to configure X, simply tell it to use the 'fb' driver
and you're all set.
| 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).
Install 'vim-gtk' and 'vim-rt'. vim is a vi clone that is much better
(IMO) than the default vi clone, nvi.
HTH,
-D
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