As if I didn't have enough to do. Xandros and ProMEPIS.

Post #185,006 by Another Scott 11/25/04 12:24:34 AM Reply	As if I didn't have enough to do. Xandros and ProMEPIS. Hi, I bought a 6 month subscription to MEPIS and downloaded the ProMEPIS beta. It looks interesting - it's a little more up-to-date than SimplyMEPIS and includes Gnome and some other stuff that isn't on the former. (I'm hoping that since it comes with Apache and MySQL that it will be a good test bed for seeing whether putting some of my work data onto a database would be worth the effort. Having the LAMP stuff already configured would be a time saver.) I installed it to the hard drive on my T41 laptop that already has Win2K+SP4 and Xandros 2 Deluxe. The T41 had a 45+ GB NTFS partition (Win2K), a ~9 GB ReiserFS Xandros parition and a 1 GB Linux swap. I used MEPIS's QTPartd to shrink the NTFS partition (hda1), slide down the Xandros partition (hda2), then make a ~ 18 GB partition for ProMEPIS(hda4, ext3). It seemed to go fine. (hda3 is the Linux Swap partition.) I initially installed GRUB in the ProMEPIS root partition as I wasn't sure what to do about LILO (which is used by Xandros to boot Win2K and Xandros). But got the LI_ prompt on the next bootup, so I installed GRUB in the MBR and it worked fine to boot ProMEPIS and Win2k. With some googling, I eventually figured out how to modify the GRUB configuration file to also be able to boot Xandros (barebones without any fancy bitmaps during the boot process). On starting Win2K it went through a CHKDSK process, but came up fine. Subsequent boots of Win2K have been clean. ProMEPIS boots fine from the hard drive. But Xandros now gets partway through the boot process and halts with no error. INIT: Entering runlevel: 2 is the last line that appears on the screen. :-( On trying to find out what is wrong, I've used ProMEPIS (from the HD and the CD with the same results) to check the Xandros partition (no Bad Blocks found) and the File System Repair. The ProMEPIS tool says that the ReiserFS partition isn't clean and doesn't do anything else: Checking/repairing filesystem (fsck) on /dev/hda2. fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004) [/sbin/fsck.reiserfs(1)--/mnt/hda2]fsck.resiserfs -a /dev/hda2 Replaying journal.. Reiserfs journal '/dev/hda2' in blocks [18..8211]:0 transactions replayed Checking internal tree.. finished Reiserfs superblock in block 16 on 0x302 of format 3.6 with standard journal Blocks(total/free): 2303319/1992689 by 4096 bytes Filesystem is NOT clean I'd rather not go through installing Xandros again (it's been updated and I don't want to have to go through that again). But I'd like to keep it around to compare with ProMEPIS in terms of things like Win32 application support (Crossover versus WINE) and SMB networking and the like. Is there a simple way to fix this Xandros problem? Where should I look to find out what is wrong with the Xandros bootup? What tools would I use from ProMEPIS to fix the Xandros? (I also still haven't figured out how to get the wireless networking, or sound, working, but that's less important now.) Thanks a bunch. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #185,053 by folkert 11/25/04 11:32:43 AM Reply	Use the manpage Luke! `reiserfsck [ -afprVy ] [ --rebuild-sb \| --check \| --fix-fixable \| --rebuild-tree \| --clean-attributes ] [ -j \| --journal device ] [ -z \| --adjust-size ] [ -n \| --nolog ] [ -B \| --badblocks file ] [ -l \| --logfile file ] [ -q \| --quiet ] [ -y \| --yes ] [ -S \| --scan-whole-partition ] [ --no-journal-available ] device` What does that tell you? reisersfsck doesn't really do anything unless you tell it to. It only CHECKS by default. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link\|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp\|source] Here is an example: [link\|http://www.greymagic.com/security/advisories/gm001-ie/\|Executing arbitrary commands without Active Scripting or ActiveX when using Windows]
Post #185,055 by Another Scott 11/25/04 11:43:32 AM Reply	Thanks. The trouble with man pages is... you have to know the name of the command that you want to run. :-( I'll give it a shot and see what happens. Thanks a bunch! Cheers, Scott.
Post #185,056 by Another Scott 11/25/04 12:00:42 PM Reply	Result. reiserfsck --check /dev/hda2 from ProMEPIS said repairs could only be made using the --rebuild-tree option. reiserfsck --rebuild-tree /dev/hda2 put 121 objects in /lost+found and deleted 4 unreachable items. :-( Booting Xandros now gives lots of "file not found" errors, and I eventually get a blank screen. Perhaps I could recover by moving things out of /lost+found, but that would be very time consuming for me. And figuring out what was deleted would be a challenge. A reinstall of Xandros seems to be in order. Moral: Don't blindly use QTParted from ProMEPIS on a ReiserFS partition. :-( Thanks Greg. I appreciate the pointer. Cheers, Scott.
Post #185,058 by folkert 11/25/04 12:27:18 PM Reply	What you should have done... You should have used resize_reiserfs to reduced the amount of space the actual filesystem used remove X amount of space. Then you could have reduced the partition size. Lesson learned for next time. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link\|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp\|source] Here is an example: [link\|http://www.greymagic.com/security/advisories/gm001-ie/\|Executing arbitrary commands without Active Scripting or ActiveX when using Windows]
Post #185,089 by Another Scott 11/25/04 8:21:47 PM Reply	Posting from Xandros. On booting the Xandros Setup CD I tried to Repair the existing Xandros installation. It claimed to fix things, but all it seemed to do was reset LILO. It still booted to a black screen (though did give a graphics mode shutdown message when I pressed CAD). I booted the Xandros Setup CD and then reinstalled Xandros. It was uneventful and kept my previous settings for many things. But since I didn't install LILO in the MBR, on booting Xandros after the install LILO wasn't happy: LI 01 01 01 01 ... I booted the ProMEPIS CD and reinstalled Grub in the MBR and then copied my modified menu.lst to allow booting of Xandros again. No problems. On doing the update from Xandros's site, it claimed it needed 120+ MB of stuff, but I don't know how much was actually installed. (It said the updates would take 5+ MB of space.) I think the download was better than 200 kB/s over my 802.11b/cable connection, so it was reasonably quick. So, I'm up and running with Xandros and ProMEPIS. I don't think I'll update Mozilla from 1.4 on Xandros as I don't want a repeat of [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=177480\|this] problem. Cheers, Scott.
Post #185,075 by tjsinclair 11/25/04 2:05:38 PM Reply	apropos is good for that If you don't know the name, but have a vague idea of what it does. \ntsinclai@pdog:~$ apropos reiser\ndebugreiserfs (8) - The debugging tool for the ReiserFS filesystem.\nfsck.reiserfs (8) - The checking tool for the ReiserFS filesystem.\nmkfs.reiserfs (8) - The create tool for the Linux ReiserFS filesystem.\nmkreiserfs (8) - The create tool for the Linux ReiserFS filesystem.\nreiserfsck (8) - The checking tool for the ReiserFS filesystem.\nreiserfstune (8) - The tunning tool for the ReiserFS filesystem.\nresize_reiserfs (8) - resizer tool for the ReiserFS filesystem\n Tom Sinclair "This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here." -- The Bursar is a man under a lot of stress (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
Post #185,076 by Another Scott 11/25/04 2:16:00 PM Reply	Thanks! I'll have to remember that. :-)
Post #185,514 by Another Scott 11/29/04 11:13:24 PM Reply	Sound working now. I turned on everything in the KMixer application (making all the lights light-green, moving up all the sliders) but still didn't have any sound. On playing with the dedicated volume up and down buttons (above the keyboard on this T41) I finally heard some noise! Apparently all of the settings with the sound driver were fine, it was just a matter of me turning up the mixer and using the keyboard buttons. The learning curve is more gradual (i.e. taking much longer) than I had hoped. I'll have to spend more time with this over the holidays. Drew - did you get your sound problems resolved? Cheers, Scott.
Post #185,518 by folkert 11/29/04 11:28:03 PM Reply	Yeah, I turned him onto the fix. >:-D -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link\|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp\|source] Here is an example: [link\|http://www.greymagic.com/security/advisories/gm001-ie/\|Executing arbitrary commands without Active Scripting or ActiveX when using Windows]
Post #185,524 by drewk 11/30/04 12:55:44 AM Reply	Posted elsewhere, but ... My speakers accept both amplified and line-level signal. I was giving it line-in but hadn't turned on the aplifier in the speakers. IOW I'm a dumbass. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]

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