A couple of quick Redhat questions.

Fenster

I'm using Fedora 2, 2.6 kernel, if I have my nomenclature right.

I gave up on Suse 9.1 in the end. It was pretty, user-friendly, and a pain in the arse if I actually wanted to do anything with it. It wouldn't install anything correctly, modules that came with it wouldn't work and the trouble it gave me over my optical drives drove me to dig up up my Redhat disc.

Anyways, questions...

1. X and desktops in general. How can I exit/boot without X without brute forcing it (ctrl+alt+backspace)? I want to install nvidia drivers and I managed to do it before I updated my kernel, but its seemingly been rolled back.

Also, how can I change my default desktop from commandline? The switchdesk gui is apparently missing and I want to switch my default over to KDE from Gnome (to save me the niggle of having to select it each time I log on).

2. Grub...how can I access this from within Redhat (the feature was there in Suse), or otherwise change its settings during boot...I've no idea of what commands are used. I want to rename my windows installation something more informative than "Other" and set it as default besides.

EDIT: nm on the booting without X question...it was a simple case of RTFM and just changing to runlevel 3.

bminish

Nvidia Drivers are compiled as part of the install for your kernel so if you change the kernel you will have to reinstall them. There were issues with these drivers and 2.6 redhat kernels but perhaps those problems are now sorted?

getting out of x

Ctrl alt backspace is fine but you could always try logging out,


editing grub

use your favorite text editor to edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf

Me, I use VI so I open a terminal and type

vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

but vi isn't for everyone, you could try pico or kedit instead of vi

Fenster

The drivers are an issue, yes. I booted to a commandline and installed them, but its being...surly...about letting me enable 3-d acceleration.

bminish

Fenster wrote:

The drivers are an issue, yes. I booted to a commandline and installed them, but its being...surly...about letting me enable 3-d acceleration.

Having just had another go at the nvida drivers on my fc2 kernel 2.6... machine it seems to work ok ( it didn't a couple of months ago)

you did edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf

to have the driver from nv to nvidia

remove lines (under modules)
load glcore
and
load dri

if present
add (under modules)
load glx

if it's not there (it probably is though)


for the desktops you could try (in a terminal window )
switchdesk-helper kde (or gnome)

Fenster

Aye, I did all that. I figured out why it wasn't working though.

I ran the auto-updater after I finisihed my initial setup, but it apparently installed the new kernel seperately, instead of updating the old one-at least that's what Grub shows me. It seems to have been booting to the older one by default, while I installed the drivers on the newer one. Now I don't know how much sense that makes to anyone who knows their way around Linux, but that's what happened near as I can tell. I'm going to take the easy way out and just reformat and reinstall as soon as I get a chance. Won't take more than an hour to set up again.

bminish

Fenster wrote:

Aye, I did all that. I figured out why it wasn't working though.

I ran the auto-updater after I finisihed my initial setup, but it apparently installed the new kernel seperately,

All sounds perfectly normal to me, absolutley no need to format and reinstall, Format and reinstall is something that can mostly be avoided in linux !

When you update everything and get a new kernel, it is installed but not set by default to be the boot preference (so as not to break anything, if for exampe you were using a custom kernel or modules (( such as NVIDIA drivers!)) )
when you are happy with the new kernel (as in having tested it!) you change your grub config so as to load it by default if that is what you want.

When you are really happy (& know your way around a bit better) you can go into the boot dir and remove old kernels that you no longer boot with, then update your grub file accordingly. At that time you may want to experemnt with compiling your own kernel specific to your hardware.


The nvida drivers are kernel specific which means that you will have to run the installer once for each kernel version you wish to use them with, it's not such a big deal since one does not generally change kernels every day. It's the price we have to pay for nvidia dirvers not being open source

Fenster

Ahh, I see, thank you.

Fenster

Ehh, I've a wee, small problem. I accidently removed windows from my taskbar. How would I go about getting them back?

bminish

Fenster wrote:

Ehh, I've a wee, small problem. I accidently removed windows from my taskbar. How would I go about getting them back?

Do you mean that you have removed the windows boot option form the grub startup menu?

if so
fix it like this

boot into linux
open a terminal window ( use su root if yu are not already root)

type sfdisk -lq /dev/hda (assuming your boot drive is the first IDE drive)

look at the output (here is mine )

sfdisk -lq /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 20023 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 2549 2550- 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2550 20022 17473 140351872+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda5 2550+ 2562 13- 104359+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 2563+ 3912 1350- 10843843+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda7 3913+ 20022 16110- 129403543+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

this tells me that the first partition is the windows boot one

now edit /boot/grub/grub.conf with the editor of your choice (I like vi but you may be better off with kedit)

Mine is below

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda6
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=4
timeout=90
splashimage=(hd0,5)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.7-1.494.2.2custom)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2custom ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2custom.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.7-1.494.2.2smp)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2smp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2smp.img
title Fedora Core-up (2.6.5-1.358)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title Win2k
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1



the last entry under title win2k
tells grub to laod windows from the first partition, the second would be hd0,1 third hd0,2 etc)

have a look to see if there is an old grub.conf file saved in /boot/grub/ might show you how it used to look..

Fenster

Nah, once again I apologise for not being clearer. The bar at the bottom of the desktop. I somehow removed the tabs for different windows from it while clicking randomly. Basically any windows I have open don't show up on the bar. I have to alt+tab to go through them.

I don't know if that helps any more.

Fenster

Meh, it was just me being stupid. I didn't realise you could remove/add it though the right-click menu

Fenster

Next up, everyone's favourite newbie question...compiling those source code thingymajigs! The program in question is Kopete. I untar the folder, fire up a terminal, su root and cd to the folder. There I ./configure easily, but when I go to make, I get hit in the face by "insufficient arguments." Now, my question is simply this: What the hell arguments do I use? Every site, every poster I've encountered so far seems to assume I'd know this already. I don't.

bminish

Fenster wrote:

Next up, everyone's favourite newbie question...compiling those source code thingymajigs! The program in question is Kopete. I untar the folder, fire up a terminal, su root and cd to the folder. There I ./configure easily, but when I go to make, I get hit in the face by "insufficient arguments." Now, my question is simply this: What the hell arguments do I use? Every site, every poster I've encountered so far seems to assume I'd know this already. I don't.

mostly there is a readme or README file with the source so start with that.

but if there isn't try the following sequence which may work (& I am no expert at this)

make clean (clears up bits left over from previous compiles )
make configure (configures things for the next bit)
make all (compiles )
make install (installs )

dubhthach

Fenster wrote:

Next up, everyone's favourite newbie question...compiling those source code thingymajigs! The program in question is Kopete. I untar the folder, fire up a terminal, su root and cd to the folder. There I ./configure easily, but when I go to make, I get hit in the face by "insufficient arguments." Now, my question is simply this: What the hell arguments do I use? Every site, every poster I've encountered so far seems to assume I'd know this already. I don't.

When your using ./configure use the --help flag (./configure --help) this will give you all the arguments that you can use for Kopete, as bminish said always read the attached README or Install txt files.

The following page might be a help, after all google is your friend

http://kopete.kde.org/index.php?page=buildtips

Fenster

Yus, but Linux help pages such as that one generally aren't. ;p

Anyhow, time to get re-installing KDE

Fenster

I installed KDE when I crawled out of bed this morning, and Kopete installed fine after that.

This though is the message I get when I try "make" or "make install"

make: *** No rule to make target `install'. Stop.