Linux QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

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This Linux Questions & Answers page
(from Linux Format magazines, circa 2005-2009)

< Skip to Table of Contents, below. >
(i.e. Skip the Introduction)

INTRODUCTION :

Answers to more than 700 Linux questions are below --- arranged into about 40 categories such as 3D , AUDIO , ... , BACKUPS , ... , monitor-DISPLAY , ... , INSTALLS (of Linux) , ... , LAN , ... , OFFICE apps , ... , PRINT/SCAN , ... , VIDEO , ... , WEB-SERVERS , ... , WIRED/WAN , ... , WIRELESS.

This page includes a TABLE OF CATEGORIES --- followed by hundreds of links to questions-and-their-answers, grouped in the categories.

Each link includes the starting lines of the the user question, with the link to a separate web page that contains the complete question and an answer.

Most of these questions and answers come from Linux Format magazine (Wikipedia link) --- from DVD's that came with issues of the magazine. I spent hundreds of dollars on those magazines. This page is something to show for that expenditure.

The DVD's contain the web pages of answers, but the Linux Format index page that contains links to the answers does not have the questions organized into categories. The questions seem to be placed quite randomly down the web page.

The intent of this page is to provide an index page that is much more to my liking. (This page is essentially a re-organization of the index page provided by Linux Format magazine.)

How to use this page :

You can use the Table of Contents below to go to categories of question-answers.

Alternatively, you can use a find-text search-option of your web browser to look for keywords (on this web page) related to your problem. Example keywords: Gnome, print, wireless. Then click the nearby link for the full question and answer.

Furthermore, you can simply scroll down this page to spot topics of interest.

Some of the answers may not address all aspects of the question. You may have to do further research to get a complete answer.

A way of using the groups of Q-and-A's :

Admittedly, if you have a specific Linux issue, you are probably more likely to get an appropriate (and perhaps more comprehensive) answer by doing a web-search on the world-wide web --- rather than using this page.

I forsee using this page as a way of getting an introduction to some of the issues that may arise with respect to a Linux topic.

For example, if I were planning on setting up a printer (or printers) for a Linux machine (or a Linux network), I could go to the PRINTER/SCANNER category and browse through the questions and answers in that category.

Each category is like a magazine article on that topic. Reading the Q-and-A's for that topic is like reading a magazine article on that topic --- a magazine article that addresses very specific issues and is quite down-to-earth and practical, rather than nebulous and not very useful.

The order of the Q-and-A's within each category :

The Q-and-A's within each category are generally ordered with the most recently asked questions at the top. Thus the oldest questions (and often the most out-of-date) are at the bottom of each category list of links.

Unfortunately, the LinuxFormat magazine Q-and-A pages do not include a date indicating which issue they came from. However the pages are given numbers as names --- numbers from 1 to over 700. Specifically, the page names are 1.html, 2.html, ..., 700.html, ...

It appears that the lower numbers are the oldest Q-and-A's, probably coming from early issues around 2005 or before. Judging from the distro versions mentioned in some of the Q-and-A's, it looks like the pages in the 600's are from around 2009 --- the pages in the 500's are from around 2007 --- the pages in the 400's and below are from around 2005.

There were so many pages in the INSTALLS-of-Linux category that I have put the 1 to 399 pages, in that category, on a separate web page. Since most of those Q-and-A's were from before 2006, and most of the issues with those older distros are (hopefully) now resolved, it is appropriate to remove them from this page --- keeping the more up-to-date information on this page --- and available to Find-Text searches with your web browser.

After viewing a Q-and-A page, click on the Back button of your browser to return to this page.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
(sections below on this page)

< Go to Top of Page, above. >

Notes on these categories:

Some of these categories may overlap --- for example, some Linux-install issues may involve hard-Disk (partitioning) issues. In spite of this, almost without exception, each Q-and-A is placed in only one category.

Typically, the Q-and-A is put in the category which is an essential aspect of the issue. For example, if a disk-partitioning question arose as part of a Linux-install (and probably would not have arisen otherwise) the Q-and-A is put in the 'INSTALL-of-Linux' category, rather than the 'hard-DISK' category.

I may put some Q-and-A's into a new category. For example, LVM questions may be extracted from the 'hard-DISK' category and put in their own category --- similar to the way RAID questions were put in their own category.

There also seem to be a lot of VNC (remote desktop access) questions. They may be put in their own category instead of in the MICROSOFT or WIRED/WAN categories.

The WIRED/WAN category includes many questions on routers and modems. Those questions may deserve their own category --- or categories.

End of Table of Contents.
Start of questions-and-answers.

3D issues :
(Compiz, 3D acceleration, etc.)

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  • Mandriva: no 3D effects with Nvidia GeForce 6800GT card I have successfully installed Mandriva Linux 2007 and am trying to enable 3D desktop effects. When I click on the 3D icon under Configure Your Computer/Hardware, everything is greyed out, with a message at the top saying 'Your System does not support...
  • 3D acceleration not working in SimplyMepis I am using SimplyMepis 6.0. I have sound and internet, am pleased with apt-get, Beagle and SuperKaramba are working well ... the only thing missing is 3D acceleration. I installed the ATI drivers and activated them in the Mepis control centre. I also...

AUDIO issues :
(no audio, audio file conversion, audio CD's, etc.)

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  • Skype sound loss I like to use Skype to talk while playing online games. I've just switched over to Ubuntu 8.10 from Windows, but I've found I'm unable to use sound in more than one application at once. Furthermore, after one Skype call ends, I need to play a random ...
  • Use an iPod with Linux I've just bought an iPod nano and seem to be having some problems with it using Linux. Every time I try to put music on it, it goes wrong. Banshee and Gtkpod fill all the space up on my iPod without putting anything on it and it doesn't mount in Amar...
  • Use Sony Walkman NW-E507 in Linux I have a Sony NW-E507 Walkman and I use Ubuntu 7.04. This Walkman uses Sonic Stage for installing and removing music files and podcasts, which is what I mostly use it for. I have tried Mbnet without success. Is there anyway to use this Walkman with m...
  • Audio CD playing silent in Linux I can't play audio CDs in either my user account or my partner's. My audio is working - I'm having no problems with digital tracks ripped onto my system. KsCD shows that an audio CD seems to be playing but there's no audio output. The CD is turned up...
  • Shrink Ogg files Is it possible to reduce the bit rate of OGG files? I encoded at 458kbps, and they are taking up too much disk space. ...
  • Rip audio CDs and batch convert in Linux Can you recommend a format to rip audio CDs to so that they'll play out of the box on patent-free distros? Can you then tell me how to batch convert the 30 or so albums I ripped to MP3 a few years back when I was a Microsoft user? ...
  • Run audio encoding tasks in serial or in parallel on AMD64? I'm running Ubuntu 6.10 64-bit on AMD64 and I do a ton of audio encoding. I set up a small test to see what was more effective: encoding four directories worth of FLAC files (four files to each directory, all the same size) to OGG in serial or in par...
  • Best laid plans... Having bought my wife an MP3 player for her birthday, I'd hoped to be able to rip all the stuff under Linux so she could pick and choose what she wants to upload. Unfortunately, it would appear that my setup seems to have decided that the partition t...
  • SoundBlaster Live not working in SUSE Linux I have a Dell 8300 with a Pentium 4, 1GB of RAM and a 120GB disk running XP Home and two logical partitions running Swap and SUSE 9.2, upgraded from 9.1 Pro, which I bought previously. I had no sound on any SUSE applications and, finding a lack of a ...
  • Sound problems with VIA chipsets I'm a newbie with regards to Linux, but with the offer on your cover of SUSE 9.2 I thought I'd give it a try, and set my machine up to dual-boot both Windows 98 SE and SUSE 9.2. I must say I'm very impressed. The install was a lot easier than Windows...

BACKUPS issues :
(remote backups, rsync, scripts, crontab automation, etc.)

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  • Mounting Mac HFS disks I'm running Mac OS X (10.4 and 10.5) and Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora) systems at my house and I have external hard drives. My problems arise when backing up a system or files; there is plenty of information on Windows/Linux or Windows/Mac filesystem com...
  • Looking for a remote backup server I am looking at setting up a remote backup server to back up various Windows desktops and servers. I am looking for a backup package for the Linux Server as well as the client software to manage the backup from the client PCs. ...
  • Imaging backup solution I have been looking to set up a backup solution for some time now and have decided that I would get a external hard disk enclosure and new hard disk. I need an incremental backup tool like TimeVault or rsync, but I would like it to be imaging so that...
  • .dmrc and .ICEauthority permissions problems I need to implement a BACKUP solution and have installed TimeVault. I also implemented Thunderbird as my email program. All seemed OK yesterday, but on startup this morning I got error messages: "User's $Home/.dmrc file is being ignored. This preven...
  • That rsyncing feeling I'm highly interested in running backups - ideally decentralised - regularly. To do that, I've found the nice utility called rsync. Here's the command I run to get a local copy of my whole home directory in another folder:
    rsync -avz --delete-after ...
  • Write backup script that only selects one file I use Simple Linux Backup, which produces daily backups in the following form: Backup.Mon.tar.gz Backup.Tue.tar.gz Backup.Wed.tar.gz ... Of these, the Monday backup is the full one, the others are incremental. I run two versions of Simple Linux Backu...
  • Recover file backup operations after network disconnection I use IBackup, because I can have backups from my own PC (Ubuntu) and from my wife's Windows PC. She can manage her backups without any intervention from me. The problem is, that often during the backup on my PC, which is performed by cron, the conne...
  • Rsync backups: excluding directories I've been trying to set up an rsync script to back up the important contents of my home directory to a USB drive, and I'm having great difficulty whipping it into shape. Particularly confusing is how to use --exclude-from and (even more confusing) --...
  • Linux solution to automatically back up and restore hard drives A friend of mine has a small law firm (six users using Windows XP Pro, one Linux proxy/mail server). They often do 'bad things' to their machines, and he calls me to fix them. Usually this means a Windows re-installation after backing up every docume...
  • Share with a Windows machine using Samba and CIFS I have a Linux machine at 192.168.1.1 connected to my wireless router, which contains a backup of my Windows laptop that I FTP up every now and then. Is there a better way to do this and perhaps store all my documents on my Linux machine and connect ...
  • Back up profile information in Firefox and Thunderbird I'd like to back up my bookmarks, account settings and address book from Firefox and Thunderbird. I used them for a while in Windows, where I had a dedicated backup program - very useful when Windows threw a wobbly. But in Fedora I can't find either ...
  • Backup script not working in cron I have been writing a small script that makes a backup of some files from one server to another over FTP. The script works fine when executed at the command line over SSH. However, when scheduled to run every two hours something is not working and th...
  • Automate backups in crontab Back up, back up, back up is the first rule of the trade. Besides my business, I run a small home web server and tend to back up my files on it as often as possible. I use rsync on my backup machine:

      rsync   -avz   myserver:var/www   /backup

    What I would...

  • Fix slow backups with Unison I'm trying to set up Unison so that it will synchronise backups on a small LAN. It all works fine, except that the transfer rate is very slow compared with the LAN's normal speed. The PCs are both using Unison on SUSE 9.2, connected by SSH. I'm getti...
  • Choosing backup software I'm responsible for a Linux server and 30 workstations, running Windows 2000 and numerous software packages. I need a backup system that can handle the Linux filesystem and, where appropriate, be able to back up a Windows 2000 client. I was advised t...

BIOS-BOOTUP issues :
(BIOS updates, BIOS passwords, USB-drive bootup,
DVD bootup, dual boots, Grub config, etc.)

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  • Booting USB hard drives I have been reading about creating a USB bootable hard disk, and I was wondering if I can just do the same with an external hard drive? Also I understand that you can test ISO images using VirtualBox, but how do I convert an ISO image to VDI? ...
  • Remote DVD booting I have a Pentium 3 laptop with not much RAM, but it does have a DVD drive. I have a Pentium 4 PC with 1 GB RAM, no DVD drive and VirtualBox installed. Both laptop and PC are networked and I normally access the PC from the laptop via SSH. I want to ru...
  • Ubuntu settings disappearing after every reboot I have installed Ubuntu and find the setup very impressive. However, when I start the PC from scratch - having shut down completely - all my settings in Ubuntu have disappeared and I have to re install and reset everything. I lose Thunderbird account...
  • Ubuntu boot error: unable to access tty When I try to run or install Ubuntu, I get the following message after the splash screen comes up: 'unable to access tty, job control turned off' and am returned to a terminal prompt. Ubuntu apparently is trying to access my floppy drive for some rea...
  • Booting problem: MP-BIOS bug 8254 error message I bought what I thought was the greatest money-for-value-wise PC, and I still think it is; one thing bothers me though. When I start up the PC and select Ubuntu from Grub, a message is printed telling me that there is MP-BIOS bug 8254 and some timer ...
  • Reset BIOS/CMOS password I have four totally different computers. Six months ago I entered the same password on each of them to protect the CMOS. The password has six letters and a * and an &. Now that I need to install and change some hardware I'm finding out that none ...
  • Windows overwriting Linux bootloader When I installed SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop [SLED] 10, I made these partitions on my 28GB hard drive:

      FAT32, 10GB, /windows/C.
      Linux, 10GB, /.
      FAT32, 7GB, /windows/E.
      swap, 9GB, swap.

    Then I installed Windows on C:. But now I have a problem: Lin...

  • XOSL problem: installing Damn Small Linux I have a PC box with multiple partitions and a few Linux distros installed to have a play with before I settle down to make one of them my favourite. I'm using XOSL as boot manager, and it works happily with a number of distros - and even things from...
  • Updating the BIOS on a HP OmniBook laptop via Linux I have an HP OmniBook 6000 on which I run Mandrake 10.0. When rebooting, the machine freezes. I searched the web and found out there is a fix for the problem: I have to update the BIOS with a certain file from an HP customer care web page. My first p...
  • Running two distros at the same time I would like to find a way to use two distros at the same time without rebooting. Is there a program that allows a user to boot up another distro when already in another? For example, if I had a dual boot PC running distro A with distro B installed o...
  • Two Linuxes fighting to boot I got a new computer with a 40GB hard drive, so I decided to take 13GB and put Linux into it. I did all the partitioning and I installed Linux in three different partitions, as follows: /dev/hda6 /boot 102 MB, /dev/had7 swap 1977 MB (twice the RAM si...
  • Triple-booting Grub configuration I love VMware but I don't have enough CPU and memory on my laptop. What I want to do is have three distros on one hard disk and I'm guessing Grub will be my best option. I have an 80GB hard drive on my laptop. Since I have to use Windows 2000 for wor...

CD-DVD issues :
(writing, reading, batch duplicating, batch ripping, etc.)

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  • Automatically rip DVDs in Linux I'm currently using DVD::Rip to back up a load of DVDs on to my server at home. This takes about 2 hours 20 minutes for each DVD, but it's the setup that I find annoying. Is there a way to run a script to do it automatically? ...
  • Creating a CD duplicator I'm trying to build a CD duplicator from an old Sempron-based machine with four IDE CD-RW drives and a SATA hard disk. I've installed Ubuntu 9.04 and tried GnomeBaker and K3b but they don't seem to support multiple CD burning. We need to produce abou...
  • Convert Kaffeine saved files to DVD I record TV programmes using Kaffeine. It saves them in files with a file type of M2T. I want to convert them to a format that I can burn to DVD using K3b so that I can play them back on my DVD player to my TV. Can you recommend any combination of ro...
  • Install Xubuntu alternative from CD I need to install Xubuntu on to a computer with no DVD drive. I have copied the file xubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso to my home directory then burned it to a CD using Xfburn. The CD however will not boot on either of my older computers. They do boot ...
  • Fedora only able to play non-encrypted DVDs My work takes me to many locations worldwide and when I have some free time, like many other people, I enjoy watching DVD movies. I am running Fedora 7 on my T60 Thinkpad and installed VLC and all other plugins from the Livn repository but I am only...
  • Booting a DVD in Linux I want to install Linux an older PC, dual booting with Windows 98SE. This computer is a seven-year-old Athlon 600 in an MSI motherboard with 128MB RAM, two hard drives, one DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive. The BIOS of this older PC hasn't an option t...
  • Convert DVB to DVD I've got my DVB-T stick working but my wife still won't look at a computer screen; is there some way I can convert files saved from the stream into something that can be played on our DVD player through the television? ...
  • K3b: burn a disc but retain original timestamps I use the K3b burning software to burn data discs for my job. When you burn a data disc in K3b the time stamps on all the files are made the same. I need to keep the original time stamp of the files I burn but can't find any way to do that. I was won...
  • Add copy protection to CDs in Linux With Windows, there are commands in Nero and other software that enable you to put copy protection on to the CD-ROMs that you make. Is there such a command with Linux? ...
  • Burning an ISO in Linux with K3b I have tried all I can to get a Debian and Fedora dual-booting DVD working. But all my efforts proved abortive. The Smart Manager Bootloader could boot any other CD but not my ISO CD. Could you tell me anything else I can do to boot the CD? There is ...
  • Running Java programs on SUSE Linux I'm trying to install DVDRipper for perfectly legal reasons and it's driving me nuts! I'm using SUSE 9.2 and KDE. Here's what I've done, several times:
    1. Copy the folder from the disc to my home directory. 2. Open Konsole. 3. cd to my home directory...
  • Permission denied reading CDs I want to give myself, as user, permission to use my CD-ROM, CD writer, floppy and so on, and avoid the 'Permission Denied' error message when using programs such as CD Player. If I go into a terminal as su - or log in as root - and type chmod 666 /d...
  • Linux error messages with DVD writers I have recently obtained a new DVD-writer. I don't have the box or anything, as I got it from a friend who upgraded to dual-layer. I didn't think I'd have too much trouble using it with K3b, dvdtools and so on but there seems to be something wrong. I...
  • Getting an external CDR to work I have started to migrate from Win2K to SUSE Linux 9.0, but can't start to install personal data in my partition until I'm able to back it up. Though I have tried to test the CD software K3B, I have an external HP 8200 series (8220e/8230e) USB CD wri...

DATABASE issues :
(MySQL, FoxPro, Oracle, etc.)

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  • MySQL Administrator crashes with undefined symbol error I've never been able to get MySQL Administrator to work on a Linux workstation. I've tried different workstations connecting to different servers - I enter server, username and password, click Connect and the window disappears. It's not the server, b...
  • Access FoxPro .dbs Xbase databases under Linux I am a recent convert to Linux and have managed to find alternatives to most of my Microsoft programs. One thing I still haven't managed to do is read or update FoxPro .dbf files. I have a legacy database system that uses them and in Windows I would ...
  • Cron jobs to back up servers As part of my day-to-day work, I need to back up MySQL databases from various servers (both local to the office and external). I have created cron jobs for each server to be backed up at night - some servers have only one or two databases, but others...
  • How to reset MySQL password I have a Mandrake system, which I set up with security at the top of my priority list. I chose good strong passwords, disabled a load of services that weren't required, do regular updates and even got an excellent iptables setup off Google to use as ...
  • Oracle install problems I recently installed Oracle on my fresh Linux OS. The database was successful, although there were problems with my DBCA. In the process of fixing the above problem, someone suggested that I put this line at the top of my .java_wrapper in the jre dir...
  • Recording voicemails in a database Hi, I have an application running on a Microsoft-based system that allows me to record telephone voicemails directly into an SQL database. People can send messages to friends, who can either phone in to pick them up or receive them from our website (...

DESKTOP (config) issues :
(Gnome, KDE, appearance, display managers, etc.)

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  • Launching the Dolphin file manager I've noticed what appears to be a glaring omission in your tutorials: graphical file management. In Fedora/Gnome, there is a computer icon on my desktop from which I can open windows, create folders, move files around and so on, similar to older vers...
  • Panels and taskbars missing in Xubuntu (Xfce) I am new to Linux having loaded Xubuntu. Since loading this has been upgraded by the inbuilt facility and the Grub screen now tells me that I am loading 'ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic'. My problem is that I have lost the panels, or taskbars, ...
  • Run Sherman's Aquarium as a screensaver in Linux Mint I am running Gnome on Mint 4.0, which is based on Ubuntu 7.10. Is it possible to use Sherman's Aquarium as a screensaver? I've installed it and it runs as an applet on the Gnome panel and I can manually start a larger version from the command line, b...
  • How to switch from Gnome to KDE in Ubuntu I am a first-time Linux user, having used MacOS and Windows for some time. I have replaced Windows XP with a special version of Ubuntu that includes both Gnome and KDE, but I don't know how to change from Gnome to KDE. How do I do this? ...
  • Make font sizes bigger in Fedora 6 I've just installed Fedora. How do I make the font size larger on the desktop/system. ...
  • Remove menu clutter after installing multiple distros After installing various distros I have a cluttered /home/username folder and a menu full of unusable program entries. How can I delete these dead entries and sort the files into folders by extension, for example putting all GIF, PNG and JPEG files i...
  • How to Enlarge GTK fonts I am looking for information on how to enlarge the fonts in Xara Xtreme, Gimp and similar programs that do not change when System Config > Appearance and Themes > Fonts are manipulated. I am using SimplyMepis - and like it! ...
  • Install Gnome and KDE on the same distro I have installed Fedora, but now I'm in a quandry. I don't know which is better: Gnome or KDE. Can I have them both installed on the same computer? Also, I tried to download K3b but I could not install it. Do you know why? ...
  • Setting up a trash can on the Linux desktop I have two questions, both concerning forgotten program names. The first follows on from a major deleting 'oops!' I had recently. (Computers don't do what you want them to do, they do what you tell them to do, and I really need better protection from...
  • Settings up Pipemanic program launcher in KDE I have installed the Pipepanic game into my home directory and can run it by typing ./pipepanic in a console with

      cd pipepanic-0.1.3-source
      ./pipepanic

    However, I can't work out how to add this as an item to the K menu using the Edit K Menu section...

  • Getting a graphical desktop on Debian I have this day installed Debian 3.1. After some mucking about I finally got the first disc installed, and all I would like now is to be able to open the system up so that I can continue. At logon I put in my username, press Enter, then password, Ent...
  • Xfishtank not appearing in KDE I know it's rather sad but I should like to be able to set up Xfishtank to act as a background. I use Free Mandriva 2006 with KDE and have installed the Xfishtank software from an RPM. However, the best I have achieved is a fleeting glimpse of the fi...
  • Mapping IntelliMouse buttons in xorg.conf I have an IntelliMouse, with seven buttons: 1 = left, 2 = middle, 3 = right, 4 and 5 = wheel, then 6 and 7 as extra buttons by my thumb. I want to use those last two buttons for something like volume control or maybe track-skipping in Amarok. As far ...
  • Installing a Gnome Live CD to the hard drive I have an old laptop, previously loaded with Windows 98. I have used the Gnome 2.12 Live distro. This has proved ideal and it works very well, except that starting it each time is a slow process. Is there any way this distro can be loaded to the hard...
  • Apply GTK themes to KDE apps I've been using Linux for a while, but there's something I've been puzzling over that I've never worked out. I use KDE for my desktop, but I still use some GTK apps such as Gimp. Is it possible to apply GTK themes to GTK apps running under KDE? If so...
  • Configuring a display manager I'm a command line junkie and I'm yet to decide which GUI I dislike least! What I'd really like to do is set up a system where I can log in as either CLI, KDE or Gnome and automatically get the relevant user interface. Incidentally, that doesn't mean...

DEVICES (general) issues :
(device managers, etc.)

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  • Looking for a Linux equivalent of the Windows Device Manager I work in a mostly Windows environment but am constantly striving to move to Linux; one thing I find quite frustrating is good visibility of what devices I have running and their status with regards to device drivers. I hesitate to say but Microsoft ...
  • Report the used RAM slots in a Linux machine Is there a program that could report the used RAM slots in a machine? What's in them from the point of view of RAM per chip, bus speed, and so on? Crucial has an ActiveX utility for IE that does the job, but I'm not running Windows, and I don't want ...

DISABILITIES issues :
(screen readers, magnifiers, etc.)

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  • Blind Linux installation - Orca screen reader I am considering moving to Linux from Windows, but I must have a screen reader because I have recently lost my sight. I have listened to a podcast by a blind user installing Ubuntu 8.04 using the Orca screen reader, which sounded pretty cool. Will Or...

hard-DISK issues :
(adding a disk, partitions, Solid State Disk, LVM, etc.)

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  • SSD lifespan on Eee PC I own an Eee PC 900 on which I have recently installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. Besides now having Ubuntu's flexibility and updates at my fingertips, I am also in love with the NBR interface, which works surprisingly well after some minor tweaks (i...
  • Rearranging LVM I run Fedora 9 on my PC, which has two 80GB hard drives configured with LVM [logical volume management]. I would like to create a home partition on one of them, but can't figure out how to do it. GParted doesn't work with logical volumes, so I'm a bi...
  • LVM migration I want to setup an LVM on a server that contains two USB disks. This LVM will contain 1.5TB across the two disks and once the LVM is full, I want to migrate the disks to a different server and retrieve their content. How complex is this? ...
  • Disk diagnostics Lately Seti@home is giving a signal 11 error while it does its number crunching. This error has been related to problems with hard disks. The problem is that I don't know what the best way to check my hard disk is. I use Kubuntu 8.04, and have four p...
  • Sharing data I was running Linux Mint on an old laptop for about six months when I had to replace the hard drive. (Luckily, I was able to recover the partitions with Clonezilla.) I've been thinking about using all the extra space on my new hard drive by dual boot...
  • What is the best filesystem? I would like to get rid of Windows, completely! But it seems that, as far as filesystems are concerned, we are always obliged to pass through either FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. What should we use for USB keys? They are always FAT formatted. I've tried to for...
  • How to format a Maxtor SATA hard drive in Linux I am presently building my own computer and have installed Debian. Whatever I have now done, I can no longer log in. Could you please tell me how to format the Maxtor SATA hard drive? I wish to start again and install two partitions - one for Vista a...
  • Nautilus can't access new partition My mum has just got a new digital camera and I have made a partition on /dev/hda2 for all the photos from it. I made it using GParted and everything worked, but when I tried to open the partition, I received an error from Nautilus:

      libhal-storage.c ...

  • Sharing partitions between different flavours of Ubuntu I finally built up a computer and installed Ubuntu. I divided my 750GB SATA drive into several partitions: /boot, swap, /, /usr, /local, /var, /home as per the recommendations in Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux. I'm interested in installing an additi...
  • Using SD cards on a netbook as a memory expansion I am quite keen to buy a laptop like the Asus Eee PC, but I wonder about the use of SD cards for memory expansion. On the Panasonic home page there is a formatting tool available for SD cards. Apparently Windows does not do it properly. Is that an is...
  • How to hot-swap SATA drives in Linux I have several 500GB SATA hard drives with all my movies on them. Instead of putting them on a server and running them across the wire, I have chosen to have a removable tray in my media computer. The only problem is that I must shut down the compute...
  • Repartition drive, keeping /home on a new, separate partition I run Ubuntu 7.10 and thought I would repartition my hard disk, and keep /home on a new separate partition, but without the encryption. However a number of issues arose and before I do the deed I would appreciate some advice if possible. It is not cl...
  • Shrinking primary partitions to make room for logical partitions I have a HP 6710 laptop that already has three primary partitions on it: Vista, HP recovery and another 2GB partition. Am I right in thinking that I can shrink the Vista partition, fill the space with an extended partition, then put three logical par...
  • Connect an extra SATA hard drive in Debian I have a Debian GNU/Linux rig on a Celeron based system. I would like to connect an extra SATA hard disk as an upgrade and need a Linux compatible SATA adaptor in PCI form factor, before I break the bank for a new system mainboard. Can you give me gu...
  • Reformat JBOD drive from FAT32 to ext3 I recently purchased a 1TB USB desktop hard drive from Iomega, which consists of two 500GB drives strung together using JBOD so that it appears as a single 1TB volume. Naturally it came pre-formatted with a single FAT32 filesystem, which is fine exce...
  • Stop fsck running every 27 boots on Ubuntu I tried to boot into my Ubuntu Gutsy and it wouldn't go. I got Grub just fine, selected the OS, and it went to the boot splash screen and the loading bar. It got only a short way up this bar before the screen went black with a cursor in the top-left ... /li>
  • Hard drive not being recognised by Mepis and PCLinuxOS I have just bought a Compaq Desktop SR5280CF and tried to use a Live CD. I tried Mepis, PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE; all three are able to boot in the computer, but the hard disk is not detected. Neither Konqueror nor KDiskFree show hda1 or sda1. This com...
  • USB hard drive being given different device names every boot I have a Seagate 250GB USB hard drive attached to my Dell Inspiron laptop running Ubuntu 7.04. There is no problem with the drive being recognised, but every time I boot up, it appears at a different place in dev - anything from /dev/sdb to /dev/sdh ...
  • Read SMART signals from hard drives in Linux Would you be able to suggest a couple of programs that read the S.M.A.R.T. signals from hard drives? Keeping an eye on hard drive health is a good thing. I run FreeBSD, so the ability to run natively would be nice, but as you know FreeBSD is able to ...
  • LILO boot problems after moving Linux installation to larger hard drive I found that I needed a bigger hard disk, so I plugged one in as hdb, partitioned it as I wanted, copied file systems from the old drive (hda), and tried to boot from the new one. Unfortunately, this operation turned out to be unsuccessful. I made an...
  • External USB hard drive always mounting as root? I have set up a small server running Debian Etch, mainly to use as a fileserver but also eventually for some web-based stuff. I have a USB hard drive that I want to use as shared storage via Samba. My problem is that no matter what I do the drive is ...
  • Sync Linux laptop with Buffalo LS-250 LinkStation I have just installed a Buffalo LS-250 LinkStation [a networked storage device] on my home network (me running Kubuntu Dapper and three Windows XP machines). I have no problems at all copying files to and from my Dapper laptop and it was very easy to...
  • Mount a SATA disk in OpenSUSE 10.2 Please help me! I have a problem. My motherboard is an ASUS P4S800D with an SIS655FX chipset. I have two hard disks: the first, an IDE disk, with OpenSUSE 10.2, the second, a SATA disk with Windows. The installer of SUSE 10.2 detects only the IDE dis...
  • Transfer Mepis from secondary drive onto primary drive I have a two-disk box with the hda holding Windows 98 SE, and SUSE 10.1 and Mepis 6.0 on hdb. I have decided to switch my main distro to Mepis. Everything is now installed on it and I want to ditch SUSE. However, I would really like to transfer Mepis...
  • Restore partition table in Linux after formatting drive In my frustration at trying to get a new SATA drive to format, I accidentally formatted the wrong drive, which had three partitions (/, /home and swap). I must admit I was using the Windows XP install disk (last resort, honest!). I managed to press t...
  • Ubuntu won't write to SD cards My Evesham Voyager (running XP Pro and Ubuntu 64) will read but not write SD cards whether the slider is locked or unlocked. The card works fine in my brother's Toshiba. I have contacted Evesham and reloaded USB drivers but to no avail. I thought it ...
  • Adding new space to the / (root) partition via another partition My / partition is nearly full. I need more space, and have a free partition where I could put, for example, /usr/lib. But how is that done? ...
  • Mount failing: bad superblock error message I tried to mount one of my extra disks the other day and got the following error message:

      mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
      or too many mounted file systems

    When I tried to scan the disk with fsck I got this message:

      f...

  • External hard drive light constantly flashing in Mandriva I have Mandriva 2006 on a box with two hard drives. The second is a backup partition. After loading the KDE desktop all appears OK; however, the indicator LED for the hard drive keeps flashing on and off faster than I can count (several times a secon...
  • Mount LVM partitions from an external hard drive Is it possible, and if so how, to mount LVM partitions from an external hard drive? I'm thinking of my old Fedora system drive from which I would like to retrieve a single file without having to boot from it. ...
  • Making new hard drive bootable in GRUB I've been trying to duplicate a Linux system drive - it's a SCSI drive, if that makes any difference. I have a new drive, which I've partitioned in broadly the same way with swap and root partitions; the root is ext3. Another drive, which I'm not con...
  • Promise SATA card not working in RHEL I'm using CentOS (based on RHEL), and I cannot get my Promise SATA card (with attached 500GB disk) to work properly. The latest driver on Promise's website is for an older kernel and doesn't work. I have emailed Promise 20-30 times and I always get ...
  • Get a Zip Plus drive working in Linux I have recently tried many flavours of Mandrake and others (plus many Live distros) and not one of them will detect my faithful old Zip Plus drive, for which I have an archive of 42 100MB disks. In desperation I decided to install it manually, and lo...
  • How to mount LVM partitions I'm working on upgrading our school computers to Fedora. Up until now we were on Fedora, which seems to use ext3. Basically, I set up one computer on FC4 and do all the upgrades. Then I do a minimal install on the other drives (to correctly partition...
  • fsck command asking to repair manually I wonder if you can help. I am running Ubuntu and during boot it says the following:

      'fsck failed. Please repair manually.
      * CONTROL-D will exit from this shell and continue system startup.
      root@(none)::~#'.

    Ctrl+D does indeed continue the boot pro...

  • Set up a gateway with NAT I have been trying to help a friend set up a very basic gateway - I just need to NAT everything for him, but I've had no luck so far. I realise a complete script might be a lot to fit in, but could you get me started? ...
  • Can't use PATA and SATA drives at the same time I tried installing Fedora on my Athlon 64 box last night. The problem is this: I have two PATA drives and four SATA drives, and if I try to use both types I get a lot of garbage during boot and a lock up. The info is excessive and contains a lot of '...
  • SUSE cannot see other distro files I have a hard drive (hda) with Windows 98 and SUSE 9.2 installed on it. I also have another hard drive (hdb) on to which I installed MEPIS PRO. The problem is that when I boot into SUSE, although it sees my Windows files, it cannot see the other MEPI...
  • Graphical X Window System applications failing after disk upgrade I recently moved my system from an old 120GB disk to a new 200GB disk. To do this, I booted from a Live CD, mounted both disks and used cpio to copy all the files across.

      cd /mnt/old_disk
      find . -print | /mnt/old_disk/bin/cpio -
      pamd /mnt/new_disk

    ...

  • Cannot write to USB Lacie hard drive in Linux I am using a USB2 160GB Lacie external hard drive, formatted as a primary FAT32 partition. Whenever the disk is connected, an unmounted icon is placed on the desktop, which mounts just fine when I click on it. Unfortunately, I cannot write to it. I c...
  • Mount partitions as read-write in Knoppix I have discovered the wonders of Knoppix while waiting for my new PC to arrive. The HD from my Linux PC is on /dev/hdb and all my data is there. I wanted to copy a few files from /mnt/hdb7 to /mnt/hda5 but I get a read only message. I have done su an...
  • Safely transfer data between partitions I recently installed Fedora on to my Dell 510M laptop, in a dual-boot setup with Windows XP, and it's giving me a problem. One of the Linux partitions (/) is nearly full, while the other one (/home1) is almost empty. I used Partition Magic 8.0 on the...
  • Merge two hard drives into a single third drive I have a Linux box running SUSE 9.3 Pro. It was installed with three hard disks in the following configuration, which was taken from fstab: 


/dev/hda3   /      reiserfs   acl,user_xattr   11
/dev/hda1   /boot  ext2       acl,user_xat...

  • How to make Iomega zip disks work I've installed SUSE 9.2. However, I've had to revert to 9.1 as I couldn't get my Zip drive to run on 9.2 - the Iomega Zip drive wasn't even identified. I give below the entries I made in /etc/fstab:

      /dev/hdb
      hdb4 /media/zip subfs auto auto noauto,fs...

  • Using fdisk to verify a partition Last night I installed Mandrake on my daughter's PC to run an MP3 player not supported by Win98. Initially I tried Partition Magic to create the partition on the C drive. Needless to say it crashed, as did Windows, and a reset was needed, so I used t...
  • Using fdisk to repartition a drive I have an 80GB hard drive, which is configured as follows:

      hda1 12.9GB Vfat (Win98 SE) 0-27045
      hda2 776MB Linux Swap 53789-55366
      hda3 16.7GB Linux 55367-90269
      hda4 32.9GB Linux 90270-158800

    Using YaST I managed to reduce the size of hda1, thus leav...

  • Best Linux distro for a Seagate hard drive? I recently bought an Intel 865 desktop board. I have a Seagate 120GB SATA hard drive. I tried installing Red Hat on it, but with no success. Can you tell me which Linux flavour I should use? Will Mandrake 10.1 detect my Seagate SATA hard disk? ...
  • Adding an extra disk to Linux I have a Linux PC, running Red Hat 9.2. I want to add an additional disk drive. I know this sounds like the most basic of tasks, but having only done this with Windows, I don't really know what to expect. After I've added the hardware and rebooted, w...
  • Updating an old hard drive with a new OS I've put a hard disk in my old computer. It did have a damaged hard disk but now I've reformatted it and partitioned it to a primary DOS partition. However, Windows 95 is old and I can't do anything with it because it's a new computer. How would it b...

monitor-DISPLAY issues :
(screen resolution, video cards, etc. - also terminal windows)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • X Window System not working in Fedora 10 Whatever happened to the concept of portability in the Linux community? I know that different distributions will work on a variety of unique machines. Well, shouldn't the same concept be applied to the distribution itself when considering upgrades? I...
  • Samsung monitor blank screen I have a Samsung 2343BWX monitor that won't work with Ubuntu 8.10. When I boot up with the live CD, the process stops, I get a blank screen and two of the three lights on the top of the keyboard blink on and off. Nothing further happens. The lights t...
  • Monitor signal out of range A few years ago, I was able to install Ubuntu Edgy Eft on my HP Pavilion. The installation went without a hitch; even the X Window System worked well. I have since upgraded to Hardy. However, around the time Hardy was released, live CDs stopped worki...
  • Fixing ATI video driver problems My PC is running Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10 in dual-boot mode, with each OS on its own hard drive. Everything was running fine until I disabled the proprietary driver for my graphics card to try the Linux driver. The problem now is that when I get to...
  • Nvidia 8800 drivers In December 2007 I built a new PC, the best machine I could afford. My thinking was that it would fly with Linux with 2GB of RAM at 1066, 3.4GHz dual core, 4TB of storage and a BFG Nvidia 8800GT graphics card. I then tried Ubuntu, Mandriva and SUSE. ...
  • Mandriva Nvidia driver installation I am having difficulties installing the latest Nvidia driver for Mandriva One. I have installed it on my main system, multi-booting with two XP Pro installations on a spare partition. My difficulty is in installing Nvidia-Linux-x86-177.80.pkg1.run. I...
  • Video for Androids I have recently treated myself to a G1 phone running Google's Android operating system. I really like it but am faced with constant battles with my iPhone-owning friends "can it do this" or "why can't it do that?". So far it has only failed to acquit...
  • Disappearing display in OpenSUSE First off, I've only been a Linux user for approximately two years, but I've been very impressed with the various distros available based on the users' needs. I've successfully installed Mandriva One 2008, PCLinuxOS 2007 and Ubuntu 7.10 on a Dell des...
  • Video mode recovery I installed/upgraded from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 and made a mistake with my screen display. It's now widescreen and is unreadable. I can go to recovery mode but that doesn't help, so I need a line in the root window to restore to, say, VESA 800x600 mode...
  • Ubuntu locking up running games I have Feisty Fawn up and running reasonably well on an old PC. I had no problem going through most of the programs except when I tried the games. The only one that gave me grief was a card game that I play a lot on my XP that uses two banks of four ...
  • Choose the right graphics card and CPU for Linux Finally, after years of saving, I'm going to get a new desktop or laptop computer. The only problem is that I want it to be able to run Linux so I have to get a lot of facts right before taking the jump. Using an old desktop with Debian for the past ...
  • Change colour of text and background on the Linux console How can I change the colour of the text and background on the Linux console in run level 3? I would like to change the colour to black text on a white background. If possible, I would like this change to be evident as soon as the kernel begins to loa...
  • Set up Linux Nvidia driver for multiple monitors I'm attempting to set the propriety Nvidia driver up for single, dual and twin view, and after much searching, I've finally managed by creating the xorg.conf files directly (as the Nvidia GUI keeps complaining about overlapping meta modes and reporti...
  • Force X.org to use a higher resolution I want to access a computer, running without a monitor, via remote desktop connection (krdc). Because the remote machine boots without a monitor, X.org drops back to VGA (640x480). Is there any way I can force X.org to use a higher resolution? I do n...
  • SUSE LCD monitor problem: 'not supported' I hope there is a simple answer to this simple hardware-related question. Every time that I try to load SUSE 10.2 with my new 19-inch flat-screen monitor, I get the message 'not supported' How do I get over this? The computer works fine with an old 1...
  • Connect two monitors to Nvidia FX5200 video card I've just bought a new LCD monitor as a replacement for my old CRT. My Nvidia video card has two outputs - so is it possible to connect both monitors to the card and expand my KDE desktop to fill both of them? I'm using Gentoo 2006.1 with an Nvidia F...
  • OpenGL not working on Sony VAIO laptop I have Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installed on a Sony VAIO VGN-FJ250P laptop. I'm satisfied with almost all aspects of this distro, with just one or two niggling problems. The one I've been putting the most effort into recently regards OpenGL. It seems ...
  • Installation problems with Ubuntu and OpenSUSE - video modes and Wine I decided to have another go with Linux and see if I can fiddle with Wine to get my finite element engineering packages to run. I tried installing Ubuntu 6.10 but the display flickered during boot-up even though I used Start With Low Resolution suppo...
  • Screen goes black with Fedora and Nvidia GeForce graphics card I have an AMD64 3000+ CPU, with 1GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce PCI-express graphics card and a 320GB SATA HDD. When I install Fedora, everything seems to go well until it gets to 'starting udev [OK]', then the screen goes black. After that, the hard d...
  • Ubuntu screen resolution not correct - can't see buttons I am using Ubuntu 6.06 on a Compaq Presario SR1720NX and am very new to this. When I try to add an Epson Stylus CX4800 printer using Gnome CUPS, the bottom of the screen, which should show Cancel, Back and Forward or Apply buttons, is missing. I can ...
  • Installing drivers for two separate video cards I use a dual-boot XP and Ubuntu machine at work, which has two monitors. I have two monitors at home and have set up a replica of my workstation. Everything works wonderfully, mostly thanks to the great article you guys did about dual head some month...
  • Using serial terminals in Linux I maintain some ancient industrial hardware, and have some simple test software I wrote many years ago in Quick Basic and monitor the test results using HyperTerminal, set up to emulate a DEC VT100 using COM1 (9K6Baud). I also use a Thurlby LA160 log...
  • SUSE screen resolution problems with Belkin KVM switch I have two computers with a Belkin KVM switch connecting them to a KDS Visual Sensation 190 monitor. Both machines are running SUSE 9.3 with no problems whatsoever. However, I have tried to install SUSE 10.0, and I keep running into the same problem....
  • Cannot connect Dell Precision M60 to external monitor I have a Dell Precision M60 running SUSE 10.0. Unfortunately, I (and apparently everyone else posting to Google-able sites) cannot connect to an external monitor. I have tried an older Dell analogue tube monitor, as well as a brand-new Sony KLV-S23A1...
  • Install Nvidia drivers in SUSE via the command line I've just upgraded my graphics card to an Nvidia MX440 (128MB). It works great in Windows after I installed the Nvidia drivers, but now I need to install the Linux drivers for SUSE 9.3, which I downloaded into my home partition. The problem is that I...
  • Splitting the display in screen Every time I try to split the display in screen, it just freezes the session and the only way I have found to get around this problem is to shut the session down, which means I am unable to re-connect to the session. I am current running Fedora with ...
  • Virtual terminals disappeared from Fedora I have just installed Fedora and have one quick question - where have all of the virtual terminals gone in this release? Pressing Ctr +Alt+F1 to F6 just gives blank screens. ...
  • HyperTerminal-like program for Linux Please can you tell me if there is a program such as HyperTerminal available for Linux? ...
  • Updating Nvidia kernel modules I work for a web design company specialising in websites for graphic design companies. We have programs that manipulate large multimedia files, and use the graphics processor unit functions on an NVIDIA card, but find ourselves the graphics card. We ...
  • AL511 monitor not supported in Linux I'm setting up a computer for a complete newbie and couriering it to them across the country. The box has an NVIDIA Pro card and their screen will be an Acer AL511 flat screen. If I set the monitor up to suit my hardware, a 'detected hardware' change...
  • ATI video card problems with SUSE I have an ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro AGP video card. I need help getting the video card installed and working with SUSE 9.2 Pro. I used an old 16MB video card to boot the system in order to flash upgrade the BIOS, as the onboard video wasn't working....
  • Linspire not recognising video card I'm having a problem with the Linspire 5.0 Live distro. I can run it as a Live CD with no problem, but when I try to install it by typing startx at the prompt the cursor appears and the screen turns grey - then it just stops. I'm not sure what to do ...
  • X.org configuration is wrong - virtual screen size problems I am having a very hard time with the new X.org, where I previously did not. I have installed Slackware 10 and BSD 5.3 with an NVIDIA card on the same machine and am having the same problems with both. One of these problems is with xvidtune. I starte...
  • Video mode problem: blank screen and mouse cursor I wonder if you could point me in the right direction to seek appropriate support? I've just bought a new Evesham PC, and wanted to explore whether I could move away from Windows so I ran SUSE 9.2 from your DVD (having initially partitioned my HD and...
  • Forcing 80 columns in text mode The text mode of Knoppix sets the display to 132 columns, but I prefer the standard 80x25 layout, which suits a smaller monitor. Is this controlled by the kernel or by a program; and how do I change it, please? ...
  • Via graphics drivers Is there a Linux driver for the built-in graphics in the KM400/A? ...

FILE-MANAGEMENT issues :
(permissions, ownership, compression, syncing, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Advanced file permissions I would like to share files in a particular directory between certain (local) users. Those users should have read/write access to these files. I would like to leave the umask set at 022 for default permissions on all other files. I can create a group...
  • ODF oops I have a huge number of OOo files with meaningless filenames. I need to sort out those that have been created or modified in the last month, but all the files have the same timestamps. I hoped that Konqueror's Info List View would help, as it does fo...
  • Automated file copying I want to have a folder in my home directory that automatically updates that folder from the same folder on my USB stick when I insert it. If the above description is poor then all I can compare it to is having a Microsoft Windows briefcase. I'm usin...
  • Transfer home directory to another machine with settings intact I've installed Mandriva 2008 on my new machine and the network is working so I can see the Home directory on the old machine. I now want to transfer everything to the new machine, including hidden files and config files. I'm wondering about the best ...
  • Current Account folder disappearing in GnuCash I have used various versions of GnuCash for years with no problem. However, using 2.0.2 on either the latest versions of Ubuntu or SUSE, on two occasions the Current Account folder has disappeared between saving the account and restarting it. On the ...
  • Create symbolic link (symlink) to fix OpenOffice.org installation I need to link one directory to another so that if a program asks for directory x, it is shown directory y instead. I've tried ln with various options, but it just keeps creating the link inside the target directory. The reason for doing this is that...
  • Make KFind skip directories and mount points I am using Kubuntu 6.06 with the Ichthux packages but my question is common to any distribution using KDE. The 'Find Files' utility searches every directory on the root (/), including the directories in the /mnt directory. This means KFind is searchi...
  • How do permission bits work with chmod? I'm new to Linux and have been a bit confused as to how the permission 'bits' work with chmod. Can you help? ...
  • What does the /proc directory do? When I issue a mount command, I see a filesystem called /proc that is not on my hard drive. Can you tell me what is it, and why is it there? ...
  • What exactly is the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard)? I've heard the term FHS banded about. What exactly is it and what is it for? ...
  • File permissions changed to root after distro switch I recently switched distros from Xandros to Fedora. I transferred 3GB of data only to find that all the files in my home directory have root as both file owner and file group. Is there a script I can use to change all the permissions to my user name?...
  • Restoring /bin/bash after deletion While experimenting with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 installation and trying to break and fix things, I unintentionally deleted /bin/bash. The operating system obviously crashed but I found mysel at odds with what to do next. I was unable to boot th...
  • Connecting Palm Pilots with KPilot I am having a couple of problems with ports. First, as root my Pilot is available on ttyS0 in KPilot, but when I'm logged in as myself KPilot tells me that it is not read/writeable and automatic detection will not find it. It seems that I cannot acce...
  • File uploads not matching their MD5 checksums We are getting very strange corruptions whenever we download files bigger than 100MB on to a new server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 3. The files download to the server without reporting any errors, but the MD5 checksum of the downloaded file ...
  • Locked out of /home directory I'm having a problem accessing my /home/stuart directory under Red Hat 8.0 and Debian Sarge, and was hoping you could help. I'm using three hard disk drives. Two hard disks (40GB and 20GB respectively) have been fitted into a removable caddy and take...
  • How to encrypt a Linux filesystem I am keen to test Linux and eventually would like to migrate to it from Windows XP. Before I do that though, I really need to know if Linux has the following security features, which the Windows XP program DriveCrypt has. I am currently able to encry...
  • Can't get bzip2 to work I'm having problems trying to copy the Gambas application from a magazine CD. Using find /mnt/cdrom2 gambas-1.0.1.tar.bz2 -print results in mnt/cdrom2/Magazine/Gambas/gambas-1.0.1.tar.bz2; but adding this pathname to the command tar xvf --bzip2 gener...
  • Solving file permissions problems with Gallery Before we begin let me tell you I'm not some super computer-user and all I know about Linux is that my website runs on it. I have Gallery installed on my website so that my family and friends can check out my holiday photos. I run the site on web spa...
  • Rar files on Linux I've installed and set up BitTorrent on my Linux box as I just got my broadband connection set up. I downloaded software from a torrent site. One problem: it's a rar file, or rather a directory of rar files. I appear to have a lot of 'parts'- how the...
  • File ownership with chmod and chown I'm having a problem with chmod in two areas. I generally use WS_FTP PRO to upload files, and sometimes have to change the mode after uploading. The first problem I'm running into (and this has never happened before, with 35 sites running), is that a...

FTP issues :
(truncated files, FTP vs. SSH, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Truncated files on Red Hat server after FTP uploads I am having some trouble with an updated Red Hat server at work. We have an applet that makes an FTP connection to the server, and users can upload files. This all works fine. The problem lies with a script that runs on the server to look for changes...
  • Vsftp: connections from behind a firewall hang I have Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 4 running on my server. It uses Vsftp as an FTP service. FTP seems to work OK, but I have increasingly noticed that when I attempt to make a connection from a remote location that uses ADSL or I am behind a firewall...
  • Access multiple home directories with a single FTP account I've set up a number of FTP accounts restricted to their respective directories. On our dedicated server running RHEL I managed to do this by setting the users to chroot(). These accounts are used by our clients, who upload spreadsheets and other dat...
  • Upload files with FTP or SSH? I have a networked web server set up with Apache, which I a going to use for testing websites. I can access the web pages via port 80 over the network, but at the moment only the default index.html file is available in /var/www/html. What is the bes...
  • ProFTPD sending email error messages My Linux server is running ProFTPD, and every day I get these error messages in my mail:

      'fred.co.uk - notice: 'Freds FTP Server' (x.x.x.x:21) already bound to 'ProFTPD'
      fred.co.uk - bindings.c:774: notice: unable to create ipbind 'x.x.x.x': Address...

IMAGE PROCESSING (and camera) issues :
(format conversion, camera transfer, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Recovering lost photos I think my camera might have crashed and rebooted when I was trying to delete a photo. I can view the photos on the screen on the camera, but when I try to download I get I/O errors for some of them. I can copy an image off the card using:

      dd if=/de...

  • Find a card reader compatible with Linux I am thinking of buying a Canon S5IS camera that uses SD memory cards. However I am told that I need a "card reader" My computer has lots of free 2.0 USB slots, but I don't know what reader is compatible with Linux. (I'm running OpenSUSE 10.3.) ...
  • Convert RAW images into TIFF with a script I'd like to have a simple command to convert all the RAW images in a folder, let's say /home/andy/photographs/new, into TIFF with LZW compression. I don't know if it's relevant, but the extension for the RAW files is .PEF - (the Pentax RAW format). ...
  • Rename files and change timestamps according to EXIF data I have a photo collection that has got out of hand - several gigabytes worth. I need to organise them so I can get a good backup. Do you know of a program that will rename a file based on the EXIF date of the image and change the Modified Date of th...
  • Make DVDs or video CDs from slideshows of photos I would like to make video CDs of some of my photos. At the moment I just want to get the photos on to video CD so that they can be played on a simple DVD player and TV. Later, I will want to add a soundtrack. It appears that there are various tools ...
  • Copyright of images from the internet If I was to use images from the net in a slide show, what would the rules concering these be? I can't find any associated copyrights to the images I want to use and nothing is marked down, but I was wondering what the rules are govering the use of im...
  • DigiKam won't recognise Trust digital camera I have just been given a new digital camera (manufactured by Trust), and I have been unable to get DigiKam to recognise it. However, /var/log/messages seems to detect that a device has been added to the USB port, and the camera is powered up. I don't...
  • Using convert instead of mogrify to resize images When using mogrify to resize and change the format of a collection of images, how do I set a target directory for the output, and also make the name of the file contain a numeric string as a timestamp? I work with groups of young kids and things can ...
  • Linux viewer for .ecw survey map files? I have been supplied with some *.ecw files containing detailed survey maps. They came with a viewer called ER Viewer 2, which allows zooming and traversing of the maps. It is very basic, but it only works on Windows. Is there an alternative 'viewer' ...
  • Connecting a digital camera to Linux I've bought a new digital camera, a Pentax Optio 430 RS. My reasoning was that the old (about five years) Pentax digital of my brother's had connected to my first Linux box (an old P1 233 running RH 7.1) perfectly - all I had to do was something like...

INPUT DEVICES issues :
(input tablets, mice, touchpads, keyboards, game controllers, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >

INSTALL-of-Linux issues :
(install issues of various distros, finishing touches, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • How do I install and use Wine? I'm a radio ham and use several programs that only work in Windows. However, I wish to use these programs in Linux, Ubuntu being my preferred OS. I'm aware of the Wine program, but I can't seem to obtain it. My request is simple. Where can I download...
  • Custom Ubuntu install images with SquashFS I'm creating my own distribution based on Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10) and am getting along nicely except for one little problem. I've removed Evolution using apt-get, but there is still a launcher for it in the top panel. That launcher doesn't do anything...
  • Acer Aspire One - programs too big for the screen I'm just starting to use an Aspire One with Ubuntu 8.10. However, I'm having a few problems with the screen shape. I was completely unable to configure Evolution mail because the second page's Continue button was off the bottom of the screen. After t...
  • Acer Aspire One WiFi with Ubuntu Netbook Remix As a newbie to Linux, I've been reading your series on the Aspire One with great interest. I now want to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), but I'm nervous that I won't be able to persuade the distro to find the Aspire One's built-in Wi-Fi card, whi...
  • Upgrading Ubuntu I have Ubuntu 7.04 installed in my laptop, and I would like to upgrade it to Ubuntu 8.10 that I have on a DVD. Is that possible? If yes, how can I proceed? ...
  • Desktop distros vs server distros Could you explain the main differences between a desktop and a server distro? Also, I know you wouldn't do it on a production server, but how would you go about installing a basic GUI on Ubuntu 8.10, as my command line knowledge isn't up to exploring...
  • Deleting a whole distro I'm seriously thinking about trying Ubuntu as a dual boot with XP. Is there a way to erase every part of Linux, including undoing partitio changes, if I decide that I want to go back to Windows? ...
  • Switching distros I am running Ubuntu 8.10 and Windows XP on a single 80GB hard disk (50GB for Linux, the rest for Windows). I want to remove Ubuntu and install another distro (I've not decided which yet). The problem is that if I use Windows Hardware Management to wi...
  • Failsafe booting Most distros use Grub nowadays and I can see how it is easier to use than Lilo. But there appears to be one very important feature missing: Lilo can use the -R option to boot a kernel once only, so the next time it goes back to the old default, which...
  • USB boot alternatives I have tried to install Ubuntu on my old HP Pavilion Notebook. Since I was short of disk space (and still need Windows) I installed it on a USB disk drive. The install went well, but rebooting produced a Grub error. I now understand from reading arou...
  • DVD into CD won't go I have an obsolete PC with a Pentium 2 running at 400MHz and 128MB of RAM. It has a floppy drive, a CD-ROM drive and a hard disk with only 4GB of storage space. There's Antix, which seems to be a perfect fit to give me a starting place for learning L...
  • Old distro, old problem I have a PC that I've put together using bits and pieces of old machines that I've scrounged from friends and relatives. It has a 13.5GB hard drive, Pentium III 600 processor and 384MB RAM. I'm trying to run Ubuntu 7.04 and having managed to make the...
  • Aspiring Linux user I've just got a Acer One. Should it have any security on it, such as AVG? Comet, where I bought it, said I have to have McAfee or one of the others. I do hope you can help me. ...
  • What to look for in a Linux distribution Alright, so I can make Gnome or KDE basically look like whatever I want it to, and I have hardware that's supported in every distro I've looked at. Aside from the package manager, what should I really be looking for in a distribution? From my standpo...
  • Run 32-bit and 64-bit distros from the same drive My main reason for moving to Linux is to port some software developed on other platforms (beginning with W and with M) and written in Lisp. There are 32-bit and 64-bit implementations of the language available, which has me curious about ways to run ...
  • Partition planning I am a beginner with Linux. I've divided the hard drive on my notebook into five partitions: two 50GB ext3 partitions (for / and /home), two NTFS partitions of 50GB and 30GB each and 1GB for /boot. I want to know how I can reconfigure my distro (I'm ...
  • Separate OS, separate drive I would like to install Ubuntu on a separate SATA drive from the current SATA drive that has Windows XP. After doing some research on this, the installation process seems fairly straight forward. My one big question has been with the installation of ...
  • Retrieving Grub At present I dual boot between XP Pro on drive C and PCLinuxOS on drive D. It's time for a reinstall of XP, but I have PCLinuxOS set up pretty well the way I want it and don't want to start all over again with it. I also don't want to lose the dual b...
  • Best Linux distro support for Asus P5KPL motherboard I am running OpenSUSE 10.2, but the OS doesn't go too well with the Asus P5KPL motherboard of my new machine. Which Linux distros get on best with it and will in be able to use Planner on it, too? ...
  • Linux freezes on Sony Vaio VGN-N385N laptop I have a Sony Vaio VGN-N385N laptop and can run any KDE distro up to 3.5.8 or any Gnome distro with no problems at all. The problem is that any KDE 3.5.9/4.03 or any new Gnome distro just won't run. I install them on my hard drive with no problems bu...
  • LILO printing number nine (9) all over the screen I'm sure you remember one of the usual bugs in the boot stage that fails to load the kernel, this happening usually when upgrading kernels but neglect to call Lilo. Grub is another story of course. Well, when the kernel is not found, we see 9s all ov...
  • Foresight Linux: 'Bad IPL' error message I have a cheapo Time AMD 64 laptop with Windows XP and usually Mandriva dual-booted. I occasionally try other distros on it, sometimes alongside with Mandriva and sometimes replacing it for a while. This week I tried to load Foresight Linux, using th...
  • External drive booting I am new to Linux and am exploring all the distros. I have XP dual booted with Ubuntu and I then added a second drive installing SUSE 10.3 on to that. The Ubuntu install created a boot menu including Windows, and when I installed SUSE it installed it...
  • Add an entry for Fedora 8 to Grub Under my vanilla Fedora Core 5 installation, the new Fedora 8 installation shows up as two partitions: /dev/hda7 and 8 under both fdisk and /dev, with none of the /dev/VolumeXX/GroupXX stuff I've been finding described on the net. I'd like to add an ...
  • Linux Mint installation: part of hard drive inaccessible I installed Linux Mint and, being new to Linux, followed the instructions about partitioning. However I was installing on a laptop with Windows already taking up two partitions therefore when I partitioned I found that (only being allowed four partit...
  • Looking for distro that runs on Apple Mac G4 As someone who dislikes bloatware, eye-candy, and other such stuff that clogs and hogs a computer's hardware, I have been considering refurbishing an old computer to run Linux with a lightweight WM. The trouble is, the computer I hope to use (an old ...
  • How to install GRUB on a USB stick I have a laptop with the default OS installed on hda1. I installed Debian on hda2 but installed Grub on hda2 instead of the MBR. I wanted to take this opportunity to learn how to install Grub on to a USB stick instead of just re-installing Linux, but...
  • Live CD changing login prompt in Linux I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 with PCLinuxOS 2007 installed, and booted a DVD with various Live distros. Afterwards I removed the disk and re-booted. Opening a terminal I expected the usual

      peter@Laxey $

    prompt. I was rather shocked to see a new prom...

  • Mandriva booting into text mode after installation I have just installed Mandriva 2008 'Free' on to my Asus PRO31F Series laptop. It runs Windows Vista Home Premium on 1GB RAM and 100GB of hard drive space. The installer successfully partitioned my hard drive and installed Mandriva. I do not appear t...
  • How to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows Vista I have Vista Home Ultimate installed and would like to dual boot with Ubuntu 7.10. An article on apcmag.com makes it appear straightforward, and up to the point of shrinking the Vista partition this is the case. I now have 62.76MB unallocated space. ...
  • Distro upgrade recommendations It's that time of the year again when new versions hit the download mirrors. This is all well and good but can the yearly upgrade be avoided? Each year do I have to spend a day downloading and installing a new version of my distro? Are there not dist...
  • Recreate Ubuntu partitions after installing Gentoo I have a system with Ubuntu on a 500GB hard disk (dev/sda). I had been using Gentoo, which I like better, so I created a new partition and installed Gentoo. I used the original boot and swap partitions. Now running Gparted, I seem to have three parti...
  • Computer crashing at random points during Linux installation I have a Compaq Deskpro 650MHz with 128MB RAM and a 10GB hard disk. I am running Mandrake 10.0 on it, which is quite out of date, so I have been trying to upgrade to - or install from scratch - Mandriva 2007. The computer seems to crash every time mo...
  • Set custom boot options when remastering ISO I've tried building my own distro. I tried it in my HP DV9308nr laptop, added the BCM43xx firmware to the ISO image I was creating, burned it, booted from it, and everything worked as expected. How do I edit the menu.lst file under /boot/grub/ in the...
  • Create a separate home partition after installing Linux I've read several times about the benefits, but I didn't initially set up my hard disk like that. Is there a way to create a new home partition after the fact or do I need to wipe out everything, reinstall, and restore my home directory to the re-par...
  • Hostname disappeared after upgrade to Fedora 7 I have a Linux box which I use as a server for testing web development projects (it's in my DMZ, so I use a dedicated machine rather than my main machine). When it was running an older Fedora, Windows machines were able to access the machine by its h...
  • Gentoo Live CD renaming PC (login prompt) I am using Fedora; after trying out a Live CD of Gentoo, I notice that when in a terminal the name is now root@livecd. How can I change this back to my original name? Why did it happen? ...
  • Lightweight distro needed I am looking for an OS suitable for an AMD K-6/200. I thought NetBSD might be a good choice, but it turns out the basic install results in an OS that is command line only. Xfree86 (not Xorg) needs to be set up separately. I'm disabled and the extra e...
  • PNG to GIF URL rewriting in Apache I am writing a website that uses .png images throughout - most of these images use transparency. It works great on all the latest browsers but (as expected) not IE6. To compensate for this I've created .gif versions of each of the graphics (as well a...
  • Expand Linux partitions to overwrite old Windows partitions I'm new to Linux, and I have decided to completely wipe Windows XP from my laptop and just have Linux. I am dual-booting XP and Ubuntu; could you please tell me how to remove Windows and just have Ubuntu? How would I expand the Linux partitions to ta...
  • How much RAM do I need in Linux? I'm very aware that the amount of memory on my server could be a bottleneck. For a start, the server seems to be using swap space all the time. But I find it hard to work out just how much memory I actually need on the system to make it run efficient...
  • Making a multi-boot DVD How do you make a DVD boot multiple distros? I want to make something similar for relatives and friends on dial-up to experience the Linux difference. I've got a DVD burner and media, so I think that should take care of hardware. I just need to know ...
  • Fedora installer video problems on Dell Latitude Last week, I purchased a Dell Latitude (Pentium III) laptop that came from a local university surplus outlet. It formerly had Windows on it, but was sold without any software so we thought, let's try Linux! But it freezes up. ...
  • Mepis root directory not being mounted read-only Having successfully converted my computer from running from an old Mandrake Linux system to the SimplyMepis 3.4 distribution, I found that all ran so smoothly that I soon gave up using F2 during the boot process, as there never seemed to be any warni...
  • DeLi Linux installer saying 'failed to mount the source device' It was good to see DeLi Linux, as I have a 486 PC that I thought would be good to learn on. Burning the CD and the boot floppy went well, as did the install until a pane appeared asking 'Where is delibase.tgz?' Part of the pane states 'I can scan for...
  • OLDER Q-and-A's on INSTALLS-of-Linux (mostly pre-2007)

KERNEL (and Linux config) info :
(lsmod etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Does lsmod list modules built into the kernel? When I'm compiling my own kernel I can build modules into the kernel or compile them separately to load when required. If I run lsmod in a terminal, will it list the modules that are built into the kernel, or it will show just the modules that have b...

LAN (server) issues :
(LOCAL AREA NETWORK issues : mail and file server issues, NFS, NTP, remote desktop access, etc.)

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  • Local network resolution I have a desktop running Fedora 9 and a laptop running Ubuntu 8.04, as well as my son's and wife's machines running XP. These are all connected via a D-Link router. I connect my desktop and laptop via SSH but use the local IP number to do this. The i...
  • Basic Linux file server with web accessibility I am new to Linux. I want to install a file server in the office with web accessibility so we can all call code off the server. We also want to access emails (currently emails are picked up on one machine using Outlook, with no web access). Can you r...
  • When NFS server is rebooted, clients need to be rebooted too I have a remote drive (rw) on a server connected by NFS which the client computer mounts at boot time using fstab. If the server computer is rebooted this seems to require any clients to be rebooted and the server disk remounted. On my Amiga I can do...
  • Control a remote machine I have a PC in my father's home that I do not want to leave on 24 hours a day. So I would like to be able to turn it on and shut it down from my house. That computer is running Windows XP, while I am using Slackware 12.0 here. Is this possible? ...
  • ntpdate problem: no servers suitable for synchronisation I have a small, self-contained network for testing VoIP, and every machine has a static IP in the range 192.168.254.x. I've assigned the machine with address 192.168.254.200 to be the NTP server. NTPD is installed and starts fine, but if I ask anothe...
  • Faster network sharing than NFS I've been using NFS between two boxes but have noticed that it's not the fastest transport in the world. Is there anything else you can recommend? ...
  • NFS export keeps hanging without log messages I'm trying to mount an NFS export from my server to my workstation, and it keeps hanging. There is nothing in any logs to indicate what's going wrong - are there any common causes? ...
  • Mepis not recognising NFS network I'm enjoying Mepis, especially as it is the first Linux version I've tried in which Skype works well. However, I was disappointed that there was no sign of NFS, meaning I could not use my Linux network. The Mepis website was no help as others have th...
  • Sync NTP server at specific times I have an old box running Mandrake 8.2 as a home server for about six other PCs in the house. We are still on ISDN dial-up as there is no pressing need to upgrade to broadband. I have been using NTP fine for the past few months to update the server's...
  • Configuring Linux as a domain controller and groupware server I have a client who needs me to get him a collaborative mail server such as Microsoft Exchange. I can easily do the project 100% in Windows (ie Windows 200x and Exchange 200x). However, I know that I can configure Linux as a domain controller. I am s...
  • Find network hosts that are using up all the bandwidth I work in the IT department of a small hospital. More and more, we have PCs going out into our wards and doctors' areas - all of which have internet access. Some time ago, I installed Squid and DansGuardian and they're working really well. The thing ...
  • Unicode character problems on Linux server accessed via Putty Whenever I connect to my Linux server (Fedora) over Putty I get funny French-looking characters replacing some punctuation characters when viewing man pages. This does not happen when I log in at the console. ...
  • Which CMS should I use? I work for a company with about 75 people in different departments, some of them technical, some of them not. I would like to have a content management system to hold all the data that could be shared within the organisation, ideally with the minimum...
  • Share folders with NFS in Fedora I just installed Fedora on a used PC. Since I already had Linux installed on another system, I planned on mounting the /var/spool/up2date folder from the first one on the second so I won't have to download update files twice But after looking at the ...

LOG FILES issues :
(too big, rotation, viewing, etc.)

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  • Fixing logrotate problems I use ClamAV for scanning all email. To make this more efficient, I use the daemon service clamd. Recently I noticed that the clamd log file was getting quite large (I know that there is an option in the config settings to limit the log size in kB or...
  • Display serial terminal logs from printer We have a small 5ESS switch which sends log files to a ROP (read-only printer) at 1200-O-7-1. The cable is the normal three-wire Unix serial cable. I have connected a PC to this using a Black Box bridge. The PC is running Windows 2000 with Procomm [a...
  • Reduce the number of identical log messages Can you help me reduce the number of identical log messages? When I first started using Linux there were lines of 'message repeated x times', but these have become rare. The problem is not really the size of the files but the difficulty of finding im...
  • How to manage logs I have a few scripts that I run, and I want to generate debug logs that I can occasionally turn on and off. Do you have any suggestions for me? ...
  • Xampp log files growing too big I'm running a box with SUSE 8.2 (yes, I know - it's very old) and Xampp [the Apache distro]. How I can get Xampp's log files into the log rotation possibilities of SUSE? They are growing and growing. ...
  • /var/log/messages contains no data I tried to review /var/log/messages and found the file to be empty. Listing the contents of /var/log I found /var/log/messages to be dated two days ago while /var/log/messages. 1 was dated today. I created a few entries using logger and saw that my me...
  • View log files in Webmin We had a Fedora-based solution set up as an email, DNS and firewall server for an office of eight people. We manage the server mostly through Webmin, and we have our phone system wired to the server's serial port where call activity gets written to t...

MAIL issues :
(Sendmail, Procmail, Exim, MTA, Qmail, Postfix, clients like Thunderbird and Evolution, etc.)

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  • Setting up a minimal mail server with Exim 4 I'm trying to set up a remote host so that I can send logs via Mail, Mailx or Mutt using Cron jobs on, say, a weekly or monthly basis. Setting up the Cron jobs isn't an issue, it's the mail setup that I need help with. Currently, I have installed Exi...
  • Unable to empty waste basket in Evolution I am running SUSE 11.1, for the last three days I have been unable to clear my waste basket on Evolution and it is slowly expanding. I have tried to delete and re-install the application but this doesn't solve the problem. My other problem is that si...
  • Email authentication I am trying to use email with Ubuntu 8.04 without success. My service provider is tiscali.co.uk and I have no problem using Outlook Express with Windows XP. I've tried using Evolution, Thunderbird and Opera email without success. I see an error messa...
  • The relationship between the MTA, Sendmail, Procmail etc. I am just trying to work out the whole Linux mail server scenario. I understand that the mail transfer agent (MTA) is a program such as Sendmail or Postfix that actually does the SMTP sending, receiving and so on. I also understand the obvious mail u...
  • Configure mobile email on the Eee netbook I have an Eee PC 901 Linux version on order and I'm hoping that a mobile broadband account will soon enable me to enjoy a much more comfortable mobile email experience. But how will I configure mobile email on my Eee? I have my bob@bob.net email addr...
  • Command line mail In a recent issue there was a mention of a program that could use my ISP's SMTP server to send emails from the CLI. Can you remind me what its name was? ...
  • Keep email folders intact when changing distros We are a multiple PC, dual-boot family, and I would like to get rid of Windows, but I have a problem for which I have not yet found an answer. I must keep my email folders intact, and I sometimes change Linux distros. This ties me to Windows/Mozilla....
  • Transferring Thunderbird's Junk Filter settings (training.dat) If I buy a new computer, is there a way I can transfer Thunderbird's Junk Filter 'intelligence' by copying some files, rather than it having to re-learn from scratch? ...
  • Use Linux as mail proxy I want to download my emails from my ISP account automatically and use my Windows laptop to retrieve them from the Linux box, thus not having to download them on one machine and then also the next and also leave them on my host's server. I would just...
  • Fedora only delivering local mail I'm using a Fedora system and thought of upgrading to the latest version. Before doing this I loaded it onto a separate machine to see how it was configured off the disk. I found that sendmail was set up to deliver mail but I couldn't deliver mail to...
  • Limit email relaying to one user We currently have an email server running Postfix, and users either use Outlook Express or the web-based SquirrelMail (running on the server). This works fine at the moment, and only clients on the internal network can relay email to the outside worl...
  • Using command line mail in Ubuntu I'd like to use the shell for my email. Can you tell me how this can be set up? I currently use Ubuntu 6.10. ...
  • Change 'from' address in Linux mail command How do I change the 'from' address when using the Linux mail command? It insists on marking mail as from user@user-laptop (user-laptop is my hostname). ...
  • Share and sync mailbox with Thunderbird I've been using Thunderbird as a mail client and am very happy with it. I've now acquired two laptops and would like to be able to access my mailbox from all three machines - ie for them all to share the same contents. My requirements in a nutshell: ...
  • How to configure Evolution on Ubuntu I need help with post-installation configuration of Evolution mail on my Ubuntu system. My home computer runs a dual-boot system with Windows XP on one partition and Ubuntu Linux on the other. I have an Ethernet connection to a broadband hub. Mozilla...
  • Monitor mailboxes for corruption I run a mail server. Can you tell me how I can monitor mailboxes for corruption? ...
  • How to clear the Qmail queue My server is running Qmail and I have a lot of failure notice emails in the mail queue. How do I clear the mail queue on my mail server? ...
  • Check email anywhere from SquirrelMail server I have a Linux mail server (SquirrelMail). How can I check my mail from any Windows workstation without installing any extra software? ...
  • WebDAV Hotmail access - moving mails to POP3 server I've got WebDAV access to my Hotmail account. Is there anyway I can get it into my POP3 server? ...
  • Fix authentication issue on mail server with Telnet I am trying to fix an authentication issue with my mail server, and the only way I have been to test it is by setting it up in Evolution. Is there any way that I could try without having to set an account in Evolution? ...
  • Sendmail: nothing gets sent to the outside world I am in the process of setting up a server to host our laboratory management software. I've gone for a Kubuntu server install with Sendmail - this is where the problem starts. I've run through the basic Sendmail configuration, leaving things alone as...
  • Make KDEinit look in the right place for Thunderbird If I click on an email address in KDE, I get this error: 'KDEinit can not start /usr/share/application/thunderbird/thunderbird'. Thunderbird is installed at /opt/thunderbird. I used to run SUSE, but now I run Gentoo, and when I transferred the /home ...
  • Qmail delays in sending mail I have been experiencing delays in sending mail through my Qmail-enabled mail server. I have tried to make things go faster, but to no avail. Could you give me a list of things to check that might be causing the delays? ...
  • Relay mail with cron jobs and Sendmail I'm currently running Fedora on my desktop and was wondering if it's possible to relay mail sent via Cron jobs etc. through my mail server running Sendmail. It would save me having to run another instance of Sendmail on my desktop. ...
  • Connect securely with encrypted access to Dovecot email server In our office we have an internal Dovecot-based email server. We would like to offer our employees encrypted access to it, as some of them want to connect from home, but we are worried about the security implications of allowing this. Please could yo...
  • Back up Cyrus IMAP email and configuration I am running a mail server at home (SUSE 9.3) with Cyrus as an IMAP server. It's the best thing there is. It fetches my emails, runs them through two virus scanners and sends them to my Cyrus server. I can read my mails on my desktop and my notebook,...
  • Creating a backup email server on RHEL 4 I've got a dedicated server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, which is used to host my company's website and email. When I first got the server I decided to use Sendmail as I only host a single domain, and the Sendmail configuration worked straight...
  • Set up Postfix to allow relaying I run a local mail server that acts as my mail gateway and storage. This works well when connected to my LAN, but when I connect from elsewhere (I have a static IP address), I can receive mail but not send it. I am using Postfix and Dovecot on Gentoo...
  • Replacing Sendmail with Postfix I am running Sendmail with SendmailAnalyzer and a custom web interface, and I would like to replace the whole lot with Postfix and add ons. Can you provide me with at least a direction to follow? ...
  • Stop Postfix from adding new system users for each email address I want to set up Postfix so that it won't add new system users for each email address I want to add. I usually learn quite well by example but the tutorials I have found on this are very confusing. Can you suggest an easy tutorial or HOWTO? ...
  • Setting up a mail server with Courier, Sendmail/Postfix and Fetchmail I want to set up an IMAP mail server so that the wife, children and me can log on to any of our three PCs and have the same email format, whether it be Linux or Windows. I have a SUSE Server set up for File > Printing that the three PCs connect to... /li>
  • Accepting domain literals on a mail server I have a Red Hat 8.0 server with one primary domain. A friend of mine recommended I check out www.DNSreport.com, which performs a variety of useful tests on the DNS records as well as the server itself. Everything went through fairly well but my doma...
  • Hiding SMTP error messages I've recently been finding a lot of messages like the following in /var/log/maillog:NOQUEUE: server.domain.com [192.168.1.39] (may be forged) did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA. Can you tell me if this message is something mea...
  • Sendmail server load spikes I seem to be having some serious problems with Sendmail. Earlier this evening Sendmail seemed to be causing my server load to spike up in the 4.0 or greater area. When I ran the top command there were several instances of Sendmail going and they were...
  • Building a simple mail server I'm a member of a small church that has six computers networked in a peer-to-peer configuration, running Windows XP and 2000. The Internet connection to the local ISP is broadband (384K) We don't have a registered domain name, although we have five P...
  • Managing email user accounts Do you know of a decent user email account manager to allow someone of less technical knowledge to administer email accounts via a web-based control panel? We've set up sendmail on our server and can happily add accounts ourselves, but they want cont...

MEMORY issues :
(testing, swap size, tracking over time, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Memory testing Some distros, when they boot up, have a menu list with install options that sometimes include a hardware check utility like the Memtest app. Is it possible to have that code and the program boot from a hard disk partition, and how would one go about ...
  • What is the best size for the swap partition? First I would like to say that I'm new to the Linux world. I've read that the swap file should be twice the size of the machine's RAM but no more than 512MB. But in another guide I've seen "... a 2GB partition hda2 for the swap partition". I'm confus...
  • Track memory usage over time I have recently rented an entry-level Linux server with a single SCSI disk and 1GB of RAM to host one of my websites. The server has crashed twice over the past two weeks and the hosting provider let me know that the server had to be rebooted because...

MICROSOFT issues :
(Windows partitions ; Microsoft file systems - NTFS, FAT ; Samba ; etc.)

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  • Removing Windows completely I have inherited an old Gateway Solo laptop, model 2550, running Windows 2000 Professional - it has a CD and floppy drive. From what I've been reading, this is an opportunity to try Linux. I'm too old to be a geek and would like some pointers as to w...
  • Best way to share files - Samba or SSH? I am running Samba on my Linux desktop so that my Windows laptop can access files in the desktop. If I need to access the files on my Linux desktop from another Linux laptop, do I need to run Samba? I tried TightVNC the other day and was able to see ...
  • Switch back to Windows after installing Ubuntu How do I return to Windows XP after installing Ubuntu on my laptop? ...
  • Writing to NTFS I administrate a PC that dual boots Vista and Slackware. It has a shared partition, formatted NTFS. I can get read-only access under Linux, but I cannot create files. I don't need fancy permissions on the shared partition, as it will hold only one us...
  • Long filenames truncated when mounting USB stick in Linux I use a USB stick in a Windows computer and I download files on the stick from the Internet. Then I plug this USB stick in a Linux computer at home and I find that all the files with long names have been renamed using "~" For example, mylongfile3.mp3...
  • Can NTFS partitions be defragmented on Linux? I have a external hard-drive, NTFS-formatted. I need to defragment it but I don't want to lose the data on it. Can you defragment NTFS on Linux? I run Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on an old PC2800 computer. ...
  • Sync a Windows CE PDA with Linux I would like to switch to Linux, but I fear that syncing with my PDA with Microsoft Outlook may not work. Also I have Money for PPC on my PDA and that is important to me so does GnuCash provide a similar feature? ...
  • Accidentally made a Vista partition into a swap partition I was messing about with trying to create a swap partition on an old flash mp3 player, and I accidentally made a swap file on my Vista partition. I have not switched the swap file on, and used the mkswap command to make the swap file. My Vista still ...
  • Reorganising hard drive letters in Windows after installing Linux A few months ago, having installed Mandriva on my system, I replaced it with SUSE 10.2. I have two internal hard disks both split into two partitions. Windows 2000 shows them as C and D on the 0 disk and F and G on the 1 disk. SUSE is installed on dr...
  • Linux can't read files on Vista partition After problems with Vista, a friend has asked me to put Linux on their PC. My PC is running Fedora, and I've set up a shared drive in Vista so I can pull off the files that my friend needs saved. But I need help getting the files off. I can access th...
  • Can't access Windows hard drives in Mandriva I have just installed Mandriva 2005. This is the second time I've done this. The first time I could read my Windows hard drives but this time I can't. I appear to be locked out. How can I get access to these disks as I did last time? The previous ins...
  • Removing Linux and restoring Windows partitions I purchased Fedora on DVD from a publication and installed it on my Acer notebook, thinking I would always have access to my programs already installed on my Windows desktop. That was a wrong assumption on my part. As you can tell I'm new to this Lin...
  • Cannot import Microsoft Money files into KMyMoney I have been using Linux for about three years; two years running Mandrake and one running Ubuntu. I am trying to convert my other half to use it as well - she already uses OpenOffice.org on her XP machine. I have loaded a disc for her with Ubuntu Dap...
  • Audit directory permission changes in Red Hat Enterprise Linux I am a Windows sysadmin at a marketing company. The company employs a number of developers who work on in-house marketing campaign software that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The other Windows administrator with Linux experience who used to manag...
  • Convert Microsoft Word documents with Antiword and Bash scripts I have a bunch of directories with some Microsoft Office Word files on a Gentoo system, and I need to use Antiword to change them to text files. I have written a script that does it for a given directory:

      for i in 'ls *.doc' ; do antiword $i >${i...

  • Access Windows FAT filesystems in SUSE and Fedora I have an old but dependable Compaq Deskpro EN (733MHz, 488MB of RAM) which I've set up with a 10GB hard drive with Windows XP. I also have the My Documents directory including all my music files, and my SUSE Linux 9.2 installation, on a 40GB hard dr...
  • Map Windows Storage Server on Linux I am running Red Hat Linux 9, and using the following command to map Windows Storage Server 2003.

      mount -t smbfs -o username=<username> ,password=<passwd> //<ipaddress>/share /mntpoint

    On the Windows side, I just make the share fo...

  • Automatically set up internet sharing I have a two computer network at home, one running Windows XP and the other Mandrake 10.1. The Mandrake box acts as the server for the windows machine and shares the internet connection. My trouble is that every time the internet is restarted I have ...
  • Cannot browse Debian Samba share I've got a Samba web server on Fedora, which is fine for browsing and generally works OK, so I decided to try a Debian server as well. I set up a very simple Debian Stable system and Samba, and the storage share is working fine, but I can't browse to...
  • Cannot boot into Windows XP after installing Linux Before I start, my system specs are: a Shuttle XPC, Athlon 2400XP, 1024MB of RAM, DVD/CD-RW, a 120GB hard drive and a Leadtek 6600GT graphics card with a 19-inch Sony monitor. Oh, and a BT Voyager 105 USB ADSL modem. I recently ran Simply MEPIS Live ...
  • Samba on SUSE I'm having trouble getting Samba to work on my SUSE 9.2 box. I use a Belkin 10/100 Ethernet card on my Linux box; a Via Rinefire onboard 10/100 Ethernet card on my Windows box; and a five-port Belkin Ethernet switch. The Belkin NIC is detected and co...
  • Managing domain trust between Windows and Linux At our company we are trying to migrate our intranet from a Windows/IIS solution to Apache 2 on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. The main problem is integration with the rest of our network, which runs Windows (Win2K on the servers and WinXP Pro on th...
  • Samba drive mapping I can copy a file from a Linux machine running Mandrake 10.0 to a Windows directory in a partition on the same machine, ie:

      cp   samba_issue.txt   /mnt/windows/

    This works OK. I can read from, but cannot copy any files to, a Windows directory on anothe...

  • Permission denied with Samba file shares My problem is with mounting a network share from a Windows file server that I connect to from my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 system. I mount the share as root.

      [root@office root]# mount -t smbfs -o username=user,password=password
      \\\\fileserver.domai...

  • Partitioning: FAT vs FAT32 People often recommend FAT partitions, which I think can be up to 4GB, for easy read/write access from both Windows and Linux. This would be of great use to me, but I haven't been able to set this up. I run an Evesham (May 2003) with Windows XP Pro a...
  • Putting Windows at the top of the list with Lilo Firstly, a big thank you and apology to all who helped me out with my scanner woes some time back. Sorry for not replying; I took some time out to start a family. Family fine, scanner still only works if I boot into Windows first. Anyhow, I need a ha...

OFFICE app issues :
(word processing, spreadsheet, etc. issues)

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  • Generate OpenOffice.org quick help guides I suffer from short term memory loss and would like to be able to print out some OpenOffice.org instructions, such as how to replace row and column headings with labels. Is there an easy way to do this and make pages from just the information I need?...
  • Expanding the spellchecking lists used by Ispell or Aspell I wish to expand the spellchecking lists used by Ispell or Aspell into a plain list of words in alphabetical order. I want to know how the compression algorithms work, but I can't seem to find any information explaining this. If I knew this I could w...
  • Find out which fonts OpenOffice.org is using I often work on documents and spreadsheets from work that use the Microsoft fonts, Times and Arial, which I do not have. I have downloaded the Liberation fonts from Red Hat to use as replacements. After I installed them in my /usr/share/fonts/truetyp...
  • OpenOffice.org desktop-integration package installation problem Regarding OpenOffice.org 2.1 installation: I am very new to Linux so I've no idea how obvious the answer to my problem is, and any answer probably needs spelling out to me. Following the instructions I tried to install it into OpenSUSE 10.2. Everythi...
  • Install win32codecs on SUSE When I try to install w32codec on SUSE 10.1, I get messages like

      'Transaction failed: Package transaction failed:
      Can not find resolvable w32codec-all 20060611-0.pm.0'

    or

      '2006-06-03 08:55:00 w32codec-all-
      20060501-0.pm.0.i586.rpm install failed
      ...

  • OpenOffice.org won't recognise Canon MP 760 printer I am using SUSE 10.0, which incorporates OpenOffice.org 2.0 build 1.9.125.1.2. I cannot get it to recognise my Canon MP 760 printer as the default printer no matter how I try. If I set it up and test print, it is then recognised in OpenOffice.org. Ho...
  • AbiWord plugin for Psion Word files I still use my old Psion MX5 as my PDA because nothing else I've seen comes close. My current distro is Fedora, which I am very happy with - except for the fact that it doesn't have the Psion Word plugin. Do you know where I can find an AbiWord build...
  • File compatibility across distros If you have a document in, say, AbiWord, or another program, can it simply be read by someone who has another distribution of Linux? In other words, if soul A writes something in AbiWord on their Debian machine, and sends it to soul B, who has SUSE, ...

PACKAGE-MANAGER (software install) issues :
(repository issues, software installs, etc.)

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  • Ubuntu 8.04 upgrade problems - Gnome and Audacity After upgrading Ubuntu to 8.04 with kernel linux-2.6.24-23-generic and Gnome 2.22.3, I have experienced a few small problems on my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop. The Gnome file browser gets stuck when I try to display my home directory. It works fine on ...
  • Get software from DVDs with APTonCD In Ubuntu, under Administration > Software Sources > Third-Party Software, it's possible to add packages stored on a CD-ROM - very useful as I can only connect my laptop to the internet occasionally, thus not install packages direct, but I can ...
  • Ubuntu APT package caching with a proxy server We've been using Ubuntu 8.04 for computer learning in the community. I want to set up an Ubuntu update server that will be used by 30 client machines. This server updates the packages, and these packages should be available for all the Ubuntu clients...
  • Software installation I'm a recent convert to Linux and I can't see how to install new software. When I read about software installation, I keep seeing instructions on compiling from source. Why can't it be as easy as installing in Windows? ...
  • Reeepositories I have recently bought an EEE PC 901 and tried to add programs as per a tutorial I read on the internet. All I got was a load of error messages. I assume that the line

      deb http://xn4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free

    is on a si...

  • Add repositories to Eee PCs: 'couldn't stat source package list' I have only been using Linux for a week or two but need to tweak a number of Eee PCs. I followed a tutorial to add a repository but it didn't seem to work. Did I do something wrong? If I browse to the websites the directory structure does not seem to...
  • Install programs not in Mandriva repositories I finally took the plunge and installed Mandriva 2008 Powerpack on my Toshiba Laptop (Satellite M50 PSM53A). Everything works great that I have noticed so far, except that I think I may have a software modem, I'll have to work around this, I guess. I...
  • Install Fedora software from a DVD After installing Fedora I tried to install some additional software in RPM format from the same disk. I received the following error message: "Unable to retrieve software info - this could be caused by not having a network connection." That is correc...
  • Installing a program - missing Perl module I have tried to install Evince. After copying the application and compiling and installing the XML2 library I tried to configure Evince and got the following error message.

      Checking for intltool >=
      0.35.0....0.35.5 found
      checking for perl ..../us
      ...

  • Uninstall programs compiled from source code I usually uninstall apps by using apt-get remove in Ubuntu. Recently, I have started compiling programs from source, but then have problems uninstalling them. I tried to use make uninstall, but to do this you always need the Makefile present. So do I...
  • Installed programs in Ubuntu - not in the menus I've installed Kmoon and KWeather in both Dapper Drake and now in Gutsy, but neither runs. They don't show up in the menus, and when I try to start from Konsole, I get "command not found" I used to love both these applets. Locate finds the files; but...
  • Get packages and dependencies for installing offline I don't currently have a net connection to my Ubuntu box, but I do have access to a fast connection at college. Is there a tool I can use on the box that's connected to the net (a Windows PC) to grab dependencies? What I'm looking for is a way to ent...
  • Installing OpenOffice.org: Java runtime disappeared I have installed OpenOffice.org 2.3. While most parts seem to run without any issues, when I try to open my Base files they demand an updated Java runtime which seems to have disappeared. I have tried downloading and reinstalling Java from Sun but I ...
  • Is there a game of Bridge for Linux? Do you know if there is a game of Bridge for Linux? All I can find is versions of Bridge to play over the Internet with other players. ...
  • Install software outside of distro package manager My laptop to dual-boots to PCLinuxOS. One thing that trips me up every time I try to install apps from an source code, there is no hyphen shown in the command to decompress the tar. The help shows tar xzvf /mnt, but one must actually type in tar - xz...
  • Updating Debian offline We have a number of computers running Debian that do not have full internet access. Some are not networked at all. What is the best way to keep these up to date? Currently we copy updated Deb files to a CD and install them manually on each computer, ...
  • Can you use CentOS repositories with RHEL? According to the CentOS website at www.centos.org, CentOS "aims to be 100% binary-compatible" with "a prominent North American enterprise Linux vendor." That got me thinking. Can you point Yum on an honest-to-goodness install of Red Hat to the CentOS...
  • Installing Qemu with GCC 3 The Qemu emulator looks interesting, but it is impossible to get working. It says it needs GCC 3 to compile, and OpenSUSE 10.2 has only GCC 4. Is there any way round this? ...
  • Installing software from magazine DVD I am brand new to Linux, and have successfully installed the OpenSUSE. Awesome! So far I am very impressed by what little I've seen in the Linux program. My question, however, will reveal my ignorance: how do I get the other programs on a magazine DV...
  • Installing TightVNC: ./configure command not working I have my usual problem in trying to install a VNC program to my laptop running Xubuntu. I downloaded all the VNC programs on to a recent disc and copied them to my laptop. I then used the correct tar instruction to unpack the archive both of TightVN...
  • Installing Epiphany in Debian I am attempting to update the Epiphany browser in Debian 3.1 Sarge, using su && apt-get install epiphany-browser The following is what I get:

      Reading Package Lists... Done
      Building Dependency Tree... Done
      epiphany-browser is already the newe...

  • Updating RPMs on SUSE from DVDs I am quite a new user of Linux and have just installed SUSE 10.1. When I tried to use Amarok on this installation I got no sound, even though the soundcard appeared to be working (it sounds at startup, for instance). I noticed a new version on a newe...
  • Fedora software installation problem: 'unable to retrieve software information' I have installed Fedora, and all seems fine - with one exception. When I try to run Add/Remove Programs or Packager Updater, I am prompted for the root password. Then I get the error messages: 'Unable to retrieve software information' or 'Unable to r...
  • How to install software from tarballs I installed SUSE 10.0 three weeks ago, and I've not looked back since. I hope to eventually defect fully to Linux. One problem I cannot figure out comes with installing certain applications, particularly tarballs. I understand about untaring them and...
  • How to install Sweep without the source code I want to try Sweep. I'm running Ubuntu (Breezy Badger) and all the help files just talk about the repositories. Having just a CD-ROM drive and no internet, I want to download from magazine coverdiscs, but it isn't obvious what to do! I pulled the fi...
  • How to run Argonium I've been trying to get the Argonium game working on Ubuntu 5.10 but for some reason it won't. I've extracted it and gone into the directory but when I run ./argonium it gives the following errors among its output:

      couldn't exec config.cfg
      /dev/dsp:...

  • How to install Autopackage I have been wanting to install Autopackage 1.0, but don't have a clue how to do so. I have it in my home folder and the command tells me it is a directory, but what next? Do you treat this like a tar file or is there some other wizardry I have to do?...
  • Fedora repositories: what does Livna do? I am about to give Fedora a try as it looks extremely interesting. However, I am at a loss as to what repositories exist for it. I know about the Fedora Extras repository and the Livna one, but I've read multiple sources on the web saying that others...
  • Installing OpenOffice.org: circular RPM dependencies I attempted to install OpenOffice.org. Unarchiving the z-file gave no ./configure directory, only the RPM files. Using rpm from a shell revealed a circular dependency in the files. CORE01 fails to install because it depends on CORE02 to CORE08, and C...
  • How to install Wireshark (formerly Ethereal)? I have just installed SUSE Linux on a redundant PC, as I really would like an understanding of Linux. The install was easy to follow. However, I am a network engineer and would now like to install Wireshark [a network protocol analyser]. Because I am...
  • Dependency problems when installing RPMs I successfully installed Mandriva Linux alongside Windows. I have found myself getting frustrated with all the new things to learn. But I am sticking with it! The one thing I am really struggling with is installing software. I can't get to grips with...
  • Installing updates on Mandriva via CD or DVD I've been trying to install Mandriva. It loaded and it runs but I cannot add the updates disc. I've tried to load it in via the Mandriva Control Center and RPM. When it scans the disc it reports errors and gives the following message: 'Unable to add ...
  • SuperTux missing SDL_image library I have just installed Debian 3.1 and everything seems OK. But then I tried to install the game SuperTux using the Autopackage installation. Everything seemed to work, but now when I try to start it up I get the following message:

      bruno@tux:~$ supert...

  • Installing Mandriva software from the CD/DVD drive I have very recently installed Mandriva 2005 LE. The install went very well for a first time Linux user. But I have a problem with installing some of the additional programs. Sometimes I am informed that Mandriva needs to have my DVD in drive hda (my...
  • Synaptic access forbidden errors I'm setting up a computer for an absolute newbie. He lives very remotely and I will probably never actually meet him. Without him having anyone in his area who knows Linux, I want his computer to be set up to be as newbie-friendly as possible. Two qu...
  • How to install software from a bz2 file I'm 12 years old and have a reasonable computer in my room, which dual boots Mandrake 10.1 and XP. But the only computer with access to the internet is the family XP (I'm not allowed to install Linux or boot from a Live CD). My computer is unlikely t...
  • Installing unsupported software on RHEL I would like to upgrade from MySQL 3.23 to MySQL 4, but my Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES server does not have the relevant package available. I can see that a package is available from the MySQL site but I'm worried that it will break my server. Can yo...
  • How to install via RPM I have been using your excellent Mandrake 10.1 distro with the Gnome 2.6 desktop. This has been installed on a standalone computer, rather than a dual installation. I am considering buying the next edition from Mandrake, as it has worked very well, b...
  • How to install Acrobat Reader on Linux I've just installed Mandrake 10.1 CE and have also just downloaded Adobe Reader for Linux from the Adobe website for a bit of practice at installing something (I'm a newbie). I opened a terminal window and logged in as root (using su) and unzipped th...

PERFORMANCE issues :
(benchmarking, slow response, multi-core CPUs, etc.)

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  • HardInfo installation: 'error while loading shared libraries' I installed HardInfo (the system profiler and benchmark app) on to my Ubuntu 8.04 system. When I run it from the command line I get "hardinfo: error while loading shared libraries:

      libsoup-2.2.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or di...

  • How well does Linux support multi-core CPUs? With the low cost of dual- and quad-core processors, I am interested in how Linux will be able to access and use this technology now and in the near future. I have done some looking, and while some information is available, I was unable to determine ...
  • Mandriva slowing down due to kded I have just installed Free Mandriva Linux 2006. Every time I boot the machine, within a couple of minutes everything slows right down and it becomes difficult to use. I have GKrellM installed and this shows the CPU working flat out. Checking with top...

PHONE-CHAT issues :
(PC-phone, instant messaging, etc.)

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  • How to use Yahoo Messenger on Linux After finally getting my Internet to work in Mandrake 9, which I'm happy about, I want to install Yahoo Messenger. However, I ran into a problem. On the Unix site (http://messenger.yahoo.com/ messenger/ download/ unix.html). I'm not sure which option to...

POWER-MANAGEMENT issues :
(ACPI, suspend, hibernate, etc.)

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  • Fix ACPI on Linux I've been out of the Linux game for a bit, and decided recently to give Ubuntu 5.04 a try. I downloaded the 64-bit version for AMD processors (I'm running an A8N-SLI system). The install went very well, and I liked the distribution instantly. The pro...

PRINT-SCAN issues :
(printer/scanner model issues, permissions, remote printing, etc.)

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  • HP scanner permissions I have decided to upgrade from Fedora 8 to Fedora 10. First I downloaded a live CD and booted that. KDE 4 was a bit of a shock, but overall my first impressions were very good. Then I hit a snag. My HP PSC1410 needs hplip, which was not included on t...
  • Playing host over Wi-Fi My Hardy Heron desktop computer has two printers connected: an HP LaserJet that I use for correspondence and various business reports and an Epson photo printer that I use for my holiday snaps. Both work well, but I would like to be able to use them ...
  • Ubuntu, Dell Vostro 1500, Snapscan E50 scanner: 'invalid argument' from SANE I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my Dell Vostro 1500. With my old Snapscan E50 scanner connected, XSane can see my scanner but shows the following:

      Error: "Failed to open device 'snapscan: libusb:003:006': Invalid argument."

    But if I plug the scanne...

  • Canon scanner not working in Linux - will it work in VMware? I have a Canon professional scanner that will not work with Linux. If I installed Windows in a virtual machine so I can run Windows in Linux, would the scanner be able to run in the VM Windows or does USB control not work in that way? ...
  • Remote printing I'm a teacher in a school and when I started to take care of the computers in the teachers' room they all ran Windows. Now I'm preparing to install Ubuntu on one of them, but the job is difficult because of one 'minor' detail - the printer! They have...
  • Scanning permissions problem I have recently changed from SUSE 10.0 to OpenSUSE 10.2 via a re-install. My CanoScan N640P scanner worked well with XSane/SANE under SUSE 10.0, but will now only work with root privileges. SANE support for this scanner is good. The XSane/SANE releas...
  • SUSE doesn't recognise copier component of HP 3210 Although SUSE 10.2 recognises my HP 3210 all-in-one Photosmart printer and prints OK, it does not recognise the copier bit. The only distro that does so is Ubuntu, but I prefer SUSE because it is more stable on my machine. On an unrelated note, Tombo...
  • Samsung ML-1210 printer not working in Gentoo I'm getting on surprisingly well with the installation I made of Gentoo, but I can't get my USB printer to print. I've gone through the Gentoo Printing Guide and other USB documentation most carefully. I've checked (and triple-checked) my kernel conf...
  • Canon i865 printer won't work in Linux I print photographs as an amateur and for that purpose purchased a Canon i865 printer. I've had it a year and until now it was more than satisfactory for my needs (as a Windows user). Three months ago I moved my home computer to Kubuntu, which is ver...
  • Linux equivalent to Windows FinePrint: KPrinter I have a very useful utility on Windows called FinePrint, which buffers print requests and enables me to preview them, reorder them, delete pages from them, save them, print them 2-up, 4-up, double-sided, booklet... and so on. I would be lost without...
  • Canon LBP-1120 printer not working in Linux I have a dual boot system (Windows XP and SUSE 10.1) and a Canon LBP-1120 laser printer. As stated, the printer works fine on the Windows system. The problem is that try as I might, I cannot make it do anything on the Linux setup. I have downloaded a...
  • OpenSUSE not printing on HP 1200 I recently installed a version of SUSE (SLICK). It all works fine but for the fact that it will not print from any application. My printer (an HP 1200) is recognised correctly but when I try to print, the jobs are processed and wait in the printer qu...
  • Default permissions for sg0 won't let me access it I have a SCSI scanner, the node for which is /dev/sg0. I use KDE for my desktop and Sane and XSane to control the scanner. The problem is that the default permissions for sg0 do not permit me to access it. Whenever I click on the desktop icon for XSa...
  • Get HP Scanjet 2300c to work in Linux I recently converted my small graphic art studio to a GNU/Linux-only environment and wiped my main system clean of Windows, replacing it with Fedora. I have an abundance of open source graphic software tools - Blender, Gimp, Sodipodi, Inkscape, KIcon...

PROGRAMMING issues :
(program checkout systems, compiling programs, etc.)

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  • Automatic Subversion root parameter I have an old box that's running Ubuntu Server 8.04 and has a working installation of Subversion. It currently has a single repository under /svn, but I'm experimenting with having two separate repositories with a common parent directory. I created t...
  • Compiling errors on Ubuntu - FlightGear and Toribash I installed Ubuntu and all went well. I was impressed with the user interface and was able to get networking, Nvidia support and printing up and runnin quite easily. Unfortunately that's as far as I got. I decided to install some software, starting ...
  • Compiling problems - pkg-config search path I'm new to Linux and appreciate 'out of the box' solutions. For example, I use Slackware, and installed Filelight after reading the Install file and doing

      ./configure && make && su -c "make install"

    because the Install file made sen...

  • Compiling software from source code I am very new to Linux, although there do seem to be some similarities to the Amiga of years past. After a few attempts I have finally installed Fedora, dual booting with Win XP. I have tried to install FreeBasic, with no success so far! It does not ...
  • Restoring data in RAID setup when a disk dies I have recently set up a file server using SUSE Enterprise Server 9. There are three hard disks in the system: an 80GB disk and two 120GB disks. The 80GB disk contains the OS. The two 120GB disks are formatted as two RAID 1 partitions, primarily to s...

RAID disk issues :
(configuring, recovering, etc.)

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  • Files disappearing on Apache Tomcat server using RAID We've set up an Apache Tomcat server with two 500 GB drives using software RAID 1. I made a few changes to some files, restarted the server to test them and found the changes I had made to the files were gone. Some files I had deleted had also reappe...
  • Move Debian on to software RAID setup I have been happily running Debian Etch for a few months now, and would like to move it from hdb to a software RAID 1 setup on hde and hdg, My current setup is:

      /boot on hdb1 using ext2.
      / on hdb2 using ReiserFS.
      /home on hdb3, also using ReiserFS.

    ...

  • Set up RAID level 1 at the command line I would like to use LVM and software RAID level 1 on my Red Hat-based server, but due to some administrative issues I'm unable to use the graphical user interface to set it up. Can I do it without going all graphical? ...
  • Get Linux to work with a Mylex Acceleraid card My company recently bought an old but still powerful server for a bargain price on eBay. We loaded Linux on it and it is really providing outstanding value. It has several 18GB SCA 80-pin SCSI drives in a RAID5 array. All this has been up and running...
  • Configuring RAID arrays I have been experimenting with Linux for the past two years and would consider myself to be an enthusiast - if only at quite a basic level. I recently purchased a new computer from MESH and decided to opt for an AMD 3200 Athlon 64-bit processor on an...
  • Can Linux rebuild a broken RAID mirror? I've been reading a book on RAID under Linux and have set up a RAID 1 system with two drives. However, if drive 1 fails and I have to replace, I'm unsure of whether I'll need to partition it first or if it will automatically do that during the recons...

SCRIPT writing issues :
(automating tasks, removing lines in a file, replacing words in a file, zenity issues, etc.)

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  • Grepping by date I've set up a Cron job that runs a Bash script to check a certain server's health - its disk space, load and so on - then email the results to me. The script uses the grep command to find a log file and cat to output lines containing a certain string...
  • Problems with Bash script to install packages I'm writing a Bash script that, among other things, installs assorted packages. I'm using Zenity to make it look sexy in a GUI sort of way and running it on 64-bit Debian 5.0. Unfortunately, if one of the packages I want to install is available on th...
  • What he sed I have a large file containing 800-900 lines. Now I want to write a script that can find a particular expression in the file and then change or replace the one word in that line and another word in line below that particular line. For example, if a f...
  • Ubuntu 8.04 upgrade: Zenity no longer displaying messages In Ubuntu 7.10 I was doing automatic data backups using crontab to run Bash scripts containing Zenity messages. Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 the messages no longer display, though data backup still takes place normally. I have tried many suggestio...
  • Why do distros handle USB memory stick scripts differently? There seems to be a wide discrepancy in how various distros handle scripts on USB memory sticks. Using Konqueror's execute command under the tools menu: Ubuntu runs them without fuss (initially my Feisty upgrade broke this by mounting the stick non-e...
  • Remove entire line containing string in a file I need to grep for a particular 'string' in a file and remove the entire line where the occurrence of the string is found. I want it to work across with a collection of files. Can you help? ...
  • Specify Cron job times in SUSE 9.3 I am having some minor trouble with Cron jobs on my SUSE 9.3 system. Placing scripts in the cron.hourly, cron.daily and cron.weekly folders works fine, but how do I control when the files in those directories are executed? Can I set whether weekly jo...
  • Automating layout with Tetex or Lyx I would like to print an image, JPEG or BMP, and a text file in one report. Is there any freeware that would allow me to do this easily via the command line? I want to pre-generate reports via a script automatically. ...
  • Whether to use sudo or just su I have been trying to create a script to automate various processes. However, I can't figure out how to run certain parts of the script as root, and other parts as my normal user. I don't want to run the entire script as root, just the odd section. I...
  • Access standard input and output as files I'm trying to write a couple of Bash scripts using utility programs that take keyboard input. For example,
    update-alternatives --config xxx
    needs a choice from the keyboard. I want to automate it from a parameter passed when the script is used. At ...

network-SECURITY issues :
(packet blocking, iptables, white-listing, black-listing, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Securely erasing hard drives Recently, I read the Which? article on erasing hard drives: www.theregister.co.uk/ 2009/01/08/ hard_drive_hammer_destruction. I know that the Which? advice, which recommends taking a hammer to old drives, is a shade excessive, but what would your advic...
  • Protecting my data I was burgled last week! They took two TVs and a load of PC equipment including all my external drives. This has made me really paranoid about keeping the data on my laptops and desktop safe. Is there a way to encrypt the hard drives of my PC and lap...
  • On off internet I'm trying to restrict internet access (Wi-Fi) on one of my laptops, but only at set periods during the day and night. I presume it can be done as a Cron job, but I'm not quite sure of the syntax to set out the time frame and if I need to edit Cron a...
  • Use iptables to set up a firewall I want to set up a firewall but I'm not sure where to start. The default firewalls in the distros I've tried are a bit basic - I need something with more control. I've heard that Iptables is the way to go, but it seems very complicated, with some arc...
  • How to exclude a port from a Linux firewall I received this answer from my friend to a question I asked. "Have you set up an appropriate Iptables rule? You need something like

      iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --syn -m state -- state NEW -j NFQUEUE

    If the box is a remote system, you should ex...

  • Only allow FTP access from certain hosts I have an external server that acts as an FTP server for the company personnel and also as an anonymous FTP server for our clients. It's been a good little server until recently, where we find that it's getting abused by folks other than our clients ...
  • Does Linux need security and anti-virus software? I've been toying with getting into Linux for a couple of months now. I tried downloading a distro, but struggled with the amount of technical jargon involved. I've loaded Ubuntu 7.04 and I love it. I'm still struggling to get my head around the fact ...
  • Restrict SSH users: limit them to their own directory I want to set up my SUSE 10.2 system to allow users to connect to my OpenSSH service. I can see any folder on the system when I connect (even as a regular user). How can I have it restrict users so that they can only see folders within the home folde...
  • SSH hardening For some tasks I want to be able to run a remote shell (SSH I guess) on my server. I'm nervous of running extra services on the box though, and wonder if it is really safe to leave an SSH server running. Also, as I know nothing about it, I wonder if ...
  • Update DansGuardian blacklist files automatically My question to you is about DansGuardian blacklist files. As an unknown number of websites are registered on a weekly basis, the need arises for a sysadmin to keep their blacklist files up to date. Not many of us have the budget to do this on a regul...
  • Best security tips for Apache I've just built an Apache web server to host some websites externally. Can you give me some general security tips? ...
  • Restricting services to a single network interface I have a system that is going to be sitting on my internet connection and file sharing on my local LAN. It has two Ethernet cards for this purpose. I am going to configure Iptables, but also wondered if there were a way of restricting services (Samba...
  • Restrict SSH access based on time, and printing usage message I have recently been given the task of running our internal Linux systems. We are planning to allow our developers to have remote SSH access. One of the requirements is that all users connecting from the exterior be presented with a message stating t...
  • Blocking attacks on port 22 I am going to work abroad for a couple of months and I want to have remote access to my network indoors. So I installed FreeNX on SUSE 9.3 and forwarded port 22 on my Netgear router to the machine, and with no effort at all I was able to bring up my ...
  • Monitor open ports and listening processes One of our Linux servers was hacked recently and a backdoor shell installed. This resulted in considerable downtime as our co-location provider, with whom we host a rack of eight servers, unplugged the compromised server until it was repaired by our ...
  • Configure Shorewall to block port 113 with SpeedTouch modem I have set up the firewall in the Mandriva Control Center by unchecking all boxes, which should stop anything getting through. I then went to Steve Gibson's Shields Up! site (https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2) and ran the Common Ports test. Everythin...
  • Secure file transfers by switching from FTP to SCP I have a simple shell script that is scheduled to download files from a remote server by FTP. In the shell script I have hard-coded USERNAME and PASSWORD to string variables to access the remote server. How do I prevent the USERNAME and PASSWORD bein...
  • Notify if a Linux machine has been broken into I have recently been humiliated by my ISP for spamming. It turned out that a forum I had set up on my home box had been hacked and I was mass mailing the whole world. That issue has been fixed but now I'm losing sleep fearing that my server is a zomb...
  • Turn off ports using iptables via a web-based front-end I'm using a Red Hat 9 server as my router and iptables to shut down all unnecessary ports, but sometimes I want to turn off two additional ports using a web page interface, while keeping the existing rules in place. I figured PHP was the best item to...
  • Blocking SSH access to a particular PC with iptables I'm configuring a firewall that's got an eth0 link to the internet and an eth1 link to an internal subnet (172.16.2.0). I've put in the following rule to stop all SSH access to a PC (172.16.2.120) on the subnet via the firewall, thus:

      iptables -A FO...

  • Allow LAN access but not internet access I needed to set up a PC so that access to and from the internet was stopped (DROP) while access to and from the local LAN was allowed (ACCEPT). I looked at a couple of useful tutorials on the web. I was successful with the following commands:
    # ipta...
  • I have a standard Enterprise Linux 3 server with no control panels and no hardware firewall. I only run an HTTP web server that requires MySQL and Sendmail for outgoing mail via PHP. There is only one user on the server me. I have not touched the def...
  • Restricting web access with a proxy server I manage a small network on a residential site, which is looking to restrict staff use of the internet (especially out of hours) to 30-minute sessions per user. The network is a Windows 2000 domain, but the internet area could be on its own subnet li...
  • Making passive FTP work Unfortunately, I have recently had my system security compromised and I am now running iptables to filter traffic into my Fedora server. The server runs a corporate website and anonymous FTP for software downloads. I am allowing incoming traffic to p...
  • Best virus scanner for Linux? I have been looking at (free) antivirus software for Linux and the two that have come to my attention are F-Prot and Panda. I have installed the F-Prot RPM but note that it's command line-only, and try as I may I can't seem to actually get it to load...
  • Has my Linux box been hacked? I have a server that has been acting strangely lately. I sometimes need to press Enter twice at the end of each line when logged in over SSH from home, but this never happens locally. Also, some of the system commands, like lsmod, are giving me segme...
  • Have I got a trojan? I'm running a Debian unstable-based distribution, with chkrootkit for security reasons. It recently gave me a message that reads: "lkm you have 2 process hidden for readdir you have 2 process hidden for ps command warning possible LKM trojan installe...
  • Configuring the kernel for IPTables support Thank you very much for including Gentoo 2004 with your last issue -what an amazing distribution, and what amazing documentation! I have an x86 machine connected to the net through a Draytek Vigor 2600G ADSL Modem/Router. This is also a four-port 10/...

SYSTEM-ADMIN issues :
(user permissions, password issues, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Allow normal user accounts to install packages I sysadmin a number of machines with various distros installed on them. For network security reasons, we tend not to give users privileged accounts (neither root nor sudo). However this can be a pain if they require a new package - they have to reque...
  • Restoring user accounts I used to have Ubuntu 8.10 installed in /dev/sda1 and /home on /dev/sda2 with four user accounts. Then I decided to download Ubuntu 9.04 and replace 8.10 on /dev/sda1. After the installation had finished, I wanted to restore the other three user acco...
  • Switching from sudo to su I am dual booting while in transition to Linux-only OSes on my machines, and I found Ubuntu to be the most complete and overall user-friendly distro; however, I do have minor problems. First, releases later than 6.0.6 have trouble using my laptop scr...
  • Login lockout Can you help me get PCLinuxOS 2007 to boot again? I have it installed on its own hard drive and I was slowly getting to grips with it, but during a recent house move I lost the notebook containing my login details. One forum suggested I just put the ...
  • Sudo on CentOS Why does CentOS say that my account 'is not on the sudoers list'? I've tried looking in the account settings, but to no avail. ...
  • Knoppix passwords I have installed Knoppix on my hard drive and wish to configure dialup with Wvdial on my external modem. To do this I need root permissions but have no password. I have tried to gain permission with a Live CD without success. So how do I gain root/ad...
  • How to use Magic SysRq keys to reboot frozen machines I've been trying to understand the Magic SysRq keys. I foolishly assumed it would be easy and that I would be able to do it without any problems. All it involved was pressing four keys at once. Still, I failed miserably and didn't get it to work. I'm...
  • User account in Ubuntu being refused sudo access My main hard disk is partitioned as a dual boot system - Windows XP on one and Ubuntu on the other. I then added a second hard disk with three FAT32 partitions for data to be shared between the two systems. To use the second disk in Ubuntu, I have to...
  • Batch process creating new users I have been running CentOS since version 3 in the school where I work. I have input 500 pupils into the system one by one. I have set up a domain logon with Samba. Is there any way to bulk input so many user accounts in one go? ...
  • Safe updates, and knowing which data to back up I am the IT manager for a small company that provides web services to international branches, VPN solutions and other services, all on CentOS, as well as internal services such as Samba and CUPS. Patching Linux servers is a relative unknown to me but...
  • Squid permissions problems: winbind_privileged I had a Squid box working fine, but a power spike took out the boot sector of the disk. I have reinstalled (and taken the time to upgrade to Debian Etch). My problem is that the winbind_privileged folder is dynamically created at boot time. When it i...
  • Switchdesk or su in Fedora? I've finished installing Fedora, and have downloaded the 200-plus upgrades. I need to get out of root but can't locate the switchdesk command. I don't want to reinstall to get this. ...
  • Restrict number of processes that a user can run in Ubuntu Is there a way to restrict the number of processes that any one user is allowed to run while using their shell? I am using Ubuntu Dapper. ...
  • Remove Zen-updater icon from appearing on login This may sound a little strange, but, I want to stop the little Zen-updater icon from appearing when a user logs in. Can you tell me how I should go about this? The reason why I want to disable it is that when a domain user logs in, Zen crashes, givi...
  • Restore user to admin group in Ubuntu I have been a bit of a fool and removed admin privileges from all three users on my Ubuntu system. This cut down the System-Administration menu to only a few items. At the moment, I do not have a user in the admin group that I can log in as to manage...
  • How to reset VNC password I set up a remote desktop (through Xandros Control Centre) on a now headless box, and now I can't remember the password. Some Googling showed up nothing useful (the VNC website says to use Vncpasswd - however, it doesn't exist on the box). I cannot a...
  • Verifying hardware on a remote server We've rented a number of dedicated Linux servers from a hosting company. I've confirmed that the disk and memory allocated are as requested, but have been denied physical access to the data centre. How can we verify what make and model of components ...
  • How to audit root account activities I'm looking for a way to audit root's activities on the server. The root password is held by three people who look after the server for me. Any other better way to do it? ...
  • How to read root mail In my daily activities I run my system as a normal user, not as root. So far, so good. What I want to know is if it's possible to read the mail of root while logged in as normal user. I run SUSE 8.2 and there I have the possibility of running a root ...

USB issues :
(USB sticks, USB SD cards, USB ports slow, etc.)

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  • SD card not being recognised I have an Asus Eee PC 900, which is quite happily running Mandriva 2008.1. To give myself some extra storage space, I decided to purchase a 16GB SD card. This solution works well, but when I try a different operating system on the Eee or use my deskt...
  • Disable automount for specific USB drives Is there any way that I can disable automount for a specified external USB drive on Ubuntu 9.04? I'd still like all the other USB drives on the system to mount normally. ...
  • Keeping passwords on a USB key I've been toying with the idea of keeping a file full of passwords and other valuable data on a USB key that I've encrypted with GnuPG. The idea is to be able to plug it into any PC and then decrypt and read the file. I would want to put GPG itself o...
  • Restoring USB keys I've tried out Ubuntu 8.10 using a new 8GB USB stick. Ubuntu is a keeper, so I installed it to disk, but how do I get my USB stick back to where it was? ...
  • Booting Fedora from a USB stick I've tried creating a bootable USB stick in Fedora using a downloaded Fedora 10 ISO. However, when I try to boot from this USB stick I get the message: "Could not find kernel image: Linux". Any suggestions? ...
  • FAT permissions problem I decided I would try putting Ubuntu on a USB stick. But the extra area I allocated for my data files is read and execute only. All directories and files are owned by root. The USB stick partition for /dev/sdb1 is mounted on /cdrom and is a W95 FAT32...
  • Removing hidden Windows partitions I've been contemplating a Linux-on-USB-key project. I have a 4GB Toshiba USB which has an extremely annoying 0.3GB partition with some sort of automount 'smart' software (for Windows, naturally) that tries to self-install when connected to a Windows ...
  • Filesystem fears I've read that it's better to use an ext2 or FAT filesystem on a USB key, because they make them last longer than if you used a journalled system such as ext3 or ReiserFS (or even NTFS). This got me thinking, if you have a USB key that you use to exc...
  • USB thumb drive not showing up after OpenSUSE 11 upgrade I have just installed the latest OpenSUSE 11. I kept all my backup files in a thumb drive (/media/disk) before the installation, which completed without any hitches. When I opened the Konsole terminal and tried to change directory by keying cd /media...
  • USB stick inaccessible on the desktop I am trying to get access to a USB memory stick. Grepping dmesg for USB results in the following

      USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v3.0
      uhci_hcd 0000:00:1f.2: new USB bus registered,
      assigned bus number 1hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found

    So i...

  • Automounting with Udev I have a car PC with a USB port on the front of it, and I've loaded a slimmed down version of PCLinuxOS on to it. What I would like to do is (at init level 3) have Udev automatically mount any USB mass storage device placed into the USB port to /medi...
  • Create a floppy disk to force booting from USB I want to load Linux on to my USB 2.0 external hard drive and use it to boot my laptop. Trouble is, my laptop is an old IBM Thinkpad, so I think I will have to use a floppy disk to force it to boot from the external drive. I'll need to create this se...
  • Change BIOS settings to boot from USB I have a Pentium 3, 866MHz laptop with a 20GB hard disk and Mandriva 2005LE booting with Grub. I wish to install Ubuntu 7.04 on an external USB hard disk, making the machine dual boot. I do realise that access to a USB2 enabled HD will be rather slow...
  • D-Link USB dongle not working in Linux I have a problem with a D-Link DWL-G122 Rev C USB dongle. I tried NdisWrapper on another D-Link DWL-G122 Rev B, and it works with the Windows drivers that comes with it. However, with Rev C, I just can't get it working. Is there any way to determine ...
  • Mepis OnTheGo disk selection dialog is blank I am trying to create an 'OnTheGo' disk from the Live distro version of SimplyMepis 6.0, but the disk selection box remains blank with no options offered. I have tried:
    Booting with the USB Flash drive in place, then mounting it. Inserting it after ...
  • USB flash drive not working on some hardware I have a 2GB USB stick on which I have installed Slax Popcorn Edition. I can easily boot my computer from the stick and save all my changes to the system. Once in a while I run into a system where I would really need to boot it from the USB stick but...
  • SUSE Linux not recognising USB drives I have just installed SUSE Linux 10.0 on to my Toshiba L10 laptop. It went on a treat but it wouldn't recognise my LG USB drive, which is a removable 1GB, so I re-installed SUSE with the stick plugged in and it worked fine. When I took it out again, ...
  • USB flash drive performing slowly in Linux My USB flash memory has recently become very slow, giving only around 5Kb/s on writes. I run Gentoo Linux and this problem seems to have started since I upgraded to a 2.6.12 kernel. ...
  • Booting from external USB and CompactFlash devices Regarding booting from an external USB or CompactFlash device - I have four questions: 1. Is it possible to boot from a USB flash drive if your BIOS doesn't support USB booting? 2. Can a boot CD with Smart Boot Manager pass off the process to the USB...
  • Can't get access to USB drives as normal user I have a couple of pen drives for transferring files between my Windows laptop and my Mandrake 10.1 PC. I can get read access to the pen drive as user but whatever I do, I cannot get write access to the removable drive as a user, only as root. I cann...
  • Fix slow USB ports on Linux I have a D845WN Intel motherboard, which (according to the Intel website) has Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports. Unfortunately I've not been able to attain high speeds, even after installing all the relevant software for my motherboard from the Intel site. I'm ...
  • Is my USB flash drive destroyed? I was copying files to my thumb drive during my lunch when I realised I was late for work. Without regard for my thumb drive, I unplugged it mid-transfer and ran out. The thumb drive suffered the consequences, and now is not being detected by either ...
  • Best Linux distro for a USB flash drive? Can you suggest a good USB key distribution? I've looked at Feather Linux, which is a desktop-type distro, but as I don't think I'll use it that regularly, it would be nice if I had some kind of rescue-type disk, preferably including functionality to...
  • USB filesystem not recognised I'm trying to use a memory stick to transfer files between computers. This is a 256MB USB 2.0 device. Initially, I used it to copy files from a Mac to my Linux box. The device was recognised and the files copied, but I was then unable to delete the f...
  • USB storage driver issues For some time I have been looking to upgrade from Win98 to Linux, but was reluctant to modify my computer running Win98. A few months ago I was given an old Dell Optiplex with PII processor, 4GB hard disk, 128MB RAM and CDROM drive, running Win95. By...
  • Installing an ISO over USB I wish to use Catux-USB. My problem is how can I install the ISO image on to a USB pen drive? The CD writing software I'm using (Nero) only gives me the option to install to the CD-W drive and not to the pen drive. I have access to another version of...

VIDEO issues :
(file format conversions, capture, PC-TV issues, security cameras, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Output video from Linux box to a TV I'm trying to output video from a Linux box to a TV for my son. I've tried Dreamlinux, Macpuppy, GeeXbox Live and Ubuntu 9.04. Only Ubuntu worked, and that needed the Nvidia driver, and that meant the resolution dropped to 800x600. Even then I had to...
  • Changing drive names I have a problem with recompiling a 2.6.22 kernel to be used on my Mythbuntu 8.04.1 setup. I use a Hauppauge HVR-1300 TV card and have discovered by trial and error using Debian Etch that all kernels greater than 2.6.22 cause problems with digital re...
  • Capture audio and video using VoIP Can you recommend some software for capturing audio and video footage using a VoIP package? I have a friend who wants me to upload some video tutorials to the web, but I don't have any software to capture it. I am using a Trust VoIP pack I normally u...
  • Download Flash video SWF files in Ubuntu Linux I'm trying to download streaming Flash video SWF files to a folder for later viewing. I am using Ubuntu 7.10 on a Compaq Presario SR1720NX. Is there some way to do this? When I drag the icon to a folder all I get is the link to the download. ...
  • Open source streaming media server to access videos on a NAS I manage a Linux-based (PCLinuxOS/Karoshi) infrastructure in a school. I want to add a streaming media server with a web-based interface so that staff can easily access videos stored on a NAS. Can you suggest any open source solutions/projects which ...
  • Encoding DVDs into small files for watching on Asus Eee netbook I am enjoying my Eee a great deal. One thing I would like to do with my Eee is use it to watch my DVD movies when travelling. I know I could attach an external DVD drive, but this defeats the purpose of an ultra-portable system, so I would prefer to ...
  • Control remote security cameras I have seen security cameras for sale that come with Windows software to detect movement, record video and send alerts via email or SMS. Can these cameras be used with Linux? What sort of software is available to record, are the other services availa...
  • Convert DVDs to PlayStation Portable (PSP) format in Linux My son has a PlayStation Portable. I'd like to convert some DVDs and other video files to MPEG4 so he can watch them on long journeys. I'm sure Transcode or Mencoder should be able to do this, but their man pages are full of jargon. Is there an easy ...
  • New version of Kino won't capture video A few days ago I installed Kino using Synaptic on my Ubuntu 6.06, I think the Kino version was 0.8 and it worked very well in all respects, including capturing from my camcorder. Today I accepted the offer of an Ubuntu automatic update to Kino 0.9.2 ...
  • Cannot access Desktop:0 output to TV I have a home LAN of five PCs, one of which is set up without mouse, keyboard or monitor but has the TV-Out port connected via S-Video cable to an analogue TV. This PC has a digital HDTV card, and I have configured xorg.conf to clone the video card o...
  • Finding desktop capture (screencasting) software I am trying to find an application that will record whatever I do on my machine so that I can make a small movie of what I am doing. Can you recommend any software for me? ...
  • How to edit QuickTime videos in Linux I want to get into a little video editing on Linux. My digital camera (Kodak DX6490), is not really a video camera, but it does take videos in QuickTime (*.mov) format, but these are not understood by Kino or Avidemux. I downloaded Cinelerra, but hav...
  • Get a TV card working using TVTime and cx8800 driver I bought a cheap TV card, installed it - and guess what? No go using TVTime. Rather than curse and swear, I did a quick check of dmesg, which showed that bttv had picked up the card and detected it OK but registered it to /dev/video1 rather than vide...
  • DVD playback is choppy in Xine I have recently installed Ubuntu on my Toshiba 1800 laptop. It seems to work fine but DVD playback is choppy in Xine and MPlayer crashes as soon as I try to play a movie. Any guidance you can give me would be appreciated! ...

VIRTUALIZATION issues :
(VMware, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Best distros for VMware I want to do video capture, watch TV, audio and video editing. I definitely want to learn to program and if possible get into development, I also want a good gaming system and I want to improve my Linux sysadmin skills. It seems that there isn't one ...
  • VirtualBox kernel module - permanent modprobe installation I am a complete beginner with Linux. I have installed Debian Sarge on my HP 6720s laptop because I hated Vista. I have then added VirtualBox and put Windows XP on it. I managed to get it working, but every time I restart VirtualBox and XP it fails wi...
  • Automated virtualisation On start up I want Ubuntu to start without the need for me to input a username and password and then open VMware and start a virtual machine. I know how to do all of these things manually, but is it possible for me to write a small batch file (if tha...
  • Understanding installation I bought your mag for the first time, intrigued at the prospect of a free OS. Unfortunately, despite trying everything I can think of, I am unable to install VMware. I have a Linux version on trial ware which runs out in the next few days. On OpenSUS...
  • Can't SSH between host and guest OS in VMware I use VMware Workstation to run various virtual machines, both Windows and Linux - for web development and also to try out different distros. Recently I've lost the ability to SSH between the host (Ubuntu) and guest OSes. The ssh commands just hang u...
  • VMware: choosing the right Linux version for Fedora I bought Fedora and now I want to install Fedora on VMware (in a Windows XP host). In VMware there are a few alternatives for Red Hat, such as 'Red Hat Linux' and 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2, 3 & 4'. I guess I can rule out the plain 'Red Hat Linu...
  • Can't install VMware Player at the command line I'm relatively new to Linux. I got my first distro and am very eager to install VMPlayer to test other distros, but the installation instructions do not work for me. I've unpacked the file VMware-player-1.0.1-19317.tar.gz. The unpacking worked fine. ...
  • Can't install VMware Player: 'no vmmon modules suitable' I tried to install VMware Player on a Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop. However, I got the message 'no vmmon modules suitable'. I then tried to uninstall the program, but the computer seemed to be in a loop and I aborted after 10 minutes or so. When I run t...

WEB-BROWSER issues :
(Firefox, etc.)

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  • Removing Firefox extension updates Is it possible to remove certain Firefox add-on updates? I ask this as I prefer Yahoo toolbar v1.5.2, over 1.6 as there are many options missing from the menu bar in the later version. All my other updates for my add-ons are fine. I use Firefox 3.0.1...
  • The fat lady crashes I tried Opera 9.26,9.27 and 9.52 from my Mandriva 2008.1pwp. I then installed some of the widgets that interested me. On trying to use it my PC [Dell Optiplex GX110] kept locking up. I rapidly removed it. Any suggestions? ...
  • Internet connection failure using IPv6 I have tried several distros including Fedora, Mandriva and SUSE, and I always have the same two problems. The first problem is that Firefox rarely manages to connect to the internet, giving a 'timed out' message, which I also get if I try to update ...
  • Set up Linux as a kiosk - just starting up Firefox I finally got a half-decent machine that runs Ubuntu. My girlfriend won't touch a computer unless it runs Windows XP, so it's dual booting. I read ages ago about kiosk machines that would load Firefox on startup then shut down when Firefox was closed...
  • Ugly Firefox buttons on web pages I'm new to Linux, having got rid of Windows XP, and am now using PCLinuxOS 2007 on my Fujitsu Siemens Amilo xi 1546. When using Firefox, the radio buttons on web pages are ugly and not as smooth or round as in Internet Explorer. Is there a fix to mak...
  • Firefox failing to recognise Rockwell IQ148 modem connection I cannot get Firefox to 'see' the modem connection that I've painstakingly set up. I'm fairly sure that it's working correctly, as running pon from the command line causes the modem to dial out, and poff makes it hang up. However, activating Firefox ...
  • Installing Mozilla plugins on SUSE I have just installed SUSE 10.1 and have the following queries. First, where do I install Mozilla plugins? I can't find a mozilla/plugins directory. Second, I created a user during installation but this doesn't have root privileges. How can I achieve...
  • Favicon problems in Firefox I use Mandrake 9.2 and Firefox 1.0.6. In my bookmarks there is a small icon next to each entry - some of the time it appears as a sensible picture with a logo or initial letters appropriate to the name of the website, but some of the time it appears ...
  • How to install QuickTime plugins for Firefox on SUSE I installed SUSE 10.0 OSS: it was easy to install and you get free office stuff, but I cannot find an Apple QuickTime plugin for Firefox. I did try the Quicktime4Linux plugin, but it didn't work (it did until they released QuickTime 7.0). The Apple s...
  • Firefox times out when using IPv6 addresses I have SUSE 9.2 installed on my box at home, and am having problems with browsing the web. I have no problems with Konqueror, but I installed Firefox and Mozilla and neither will surf the web - they always time out. The network settings are the same ...
  • Mozilla is slow to resolve domains Now that my broadband connection is working under Linux (SUSE 9.0 and a Netgear DG834 modem/router), I have noticed that when loading web pages (using Mozilla 1.7) a message usually appears at the bottom of the Mozilla screen saying 'Resolving Host X...

WEB-SERVER issues :
(monitoring, best distro, Apache config, security, upload limits, slow issues, etc.)

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  • Server monitoring I have three Ubuntu servers all running different services (Apache, MySQL, FTP, etc). These computers do not have very reliable hardware, so I was wondering if there is any open source software out there that can monitor multiple servers. I would pre...
  • Admin MySQL through a web browser with phpMyAdmin We have a web hosting account that provides PHP and MySQL with an Apache server. We have FTP access for uploading files but no shell account, which makes setting up SQL databases and the like rather tricky. We are not able to install any extra softwa...
  • Best distribution for web/mail small office server? I'm setting up a web/mail server. I'm a novice, so what would you recommend as a user friendly, secure Linux OS and web/mail server software with an easy interface for sharing Windows files? Preferably something with a large user manual, it will be u...
  • Configure Apache to have personal websites in home directories I want to set up Apache so that users have personal websites in their home directories, with /homes/user/website linking to www.blah.com/~user. I know I can do this using the userdir module. However, the problem is that users mount their home directo...
  • Execute PHP files locally I'm having trouble with browsing .php files on my Linux (Mandriva 2007 Free) machine. It keeps trying to open them with KWrite instead of just running them. As I'm currently trying to teach myself PHP, when I'm running an HTML file that calls a PHP p...
  • Cron job to delete spam comments As I'm getting rather too many comment spam attacks on my web server, I thought I'd set up a cron job to delete the comments automatically ever so often, but I can't get the command to operate. I'd welcome any thoughts on the code I'm using:

      mysql -...

  • Best Linux distribution for Moodle I am looking at implementing Moodle as a course management system (ultimately with a web hosting service that already has Linux, Apache and MySQL). But is there a version of Linux that is best to start with? Moodle permits a Windows install but I thi...
  • Add certificate-based authentication to LAMP server I am building a website (LAMP-based) that will provide sensitive information and store sensitive customer data in the database. The site will be restricted to specific IP addresses but I would like to add certificate based authentication so that ever...
  • Block attempts to use Apache as a proxy server I'm getting entries like the following in my Apache server log: 'GET http://cn.yahoo.com/ HTTP/1.1" 200 291' Note the request for a completely different domain to mine and the protocol prepended to it, which would normally be stripped off. What conce...
  • Monitor services and restart them if they die I am running a number of services on my server - is there a way that I can monitor these services, and restart them if they die? I wondered about using some sort of Cron task. ...
  • Create a web-based TV station in Linux Is it possible to use Linux to create a web-based TV station, broadcasting over the internet, mixing live feeds from webcams or video cameras? Secondly, if it is, is it possible to do this totally with open source? ...
  • Create a load balancer in Linux My company has a number of web servers that we use for intranet/internet hosting. We want to load balance the traffic but don't want to either buy a load balancer or use round robin DNS. Can I do it with Linux? ...
  • Apache connecting to other ports on the same server I run a hosting service with over 100 domains configured on it. Our server seems to have been sluggish for the last few days. I did some preliminary tests (using netstat) and noticed that there were a lot of connections from my server on TCP port 80 ...
  • Block Apache access from malicious user agents and spiders I run my own small site and it seems most of my traffic is from web crawlers. How can I control access to my Apache web server from potential malicious user agents, crawlers, spiders et al? ...
  • Configure Apache to ignore WebDAV requests Our intranet runs on Debian Sarge, with around 1,500 Windows 2000 PCs that can access the web server (we're running Apache 2.0.54). A few of these PCs seem to have a WebDav service running that is trying to connect to the intranet web server, and it'...
  • Best free web server log file analysis program We have got a dedicated server and are running multiple Apache virtual hosts. I would like to produce some simple statistics for each of the virtual hosts without having to buy an expensive statistics package that not all of our customers will need. ...
  • How to set up VNC on CentOS I've installed a minimal CentOS 4 installation on a headless PC at home, which I plan to use for email, DNS, web hosting etc. I'm relatively new to Linux and really like the X-based system-config-tools that Red Hat has provided for system administrat...
  • Generating an SSL certificate for Apache Can you point me in the right direction for generating an SSL certificate and applying it to an Apache web server on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 server and a Fedora server? ...
  • Secure my web and FTP server I am responsible for a web and FTP server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. I have been administering the server and recently configured Logwatch to send me reports. I found entries in the reports that worry me, mainly authentication failures and i...
  • Incorporate Mcrypt support in PHP without recompiling each update I administer a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 server that is used to host mail and web for ten production domains. I use all stock RPMs to avoid complications with updates coming in through our systems management platform, Red Hat Network (RHN). Recently...
  • Monitor Apache HTTPD server in real-time I have recently started a small design business and am now hosting a number of sites for my clients on my dedicated Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 server. As I have numerous access_log files scattered all over the filesystem, what's the easiest way to ke...
  • Limit user to only restarting Apache My web developer has been granted access to FTP and SSH into a dedicated server that we are renting. He can upload pages and manage MySQL together with an Apache include file for the server's site-specific configurations. Since our company's security...
  • Migrating a server's DNS, websites, home directory and email I have had a dedicated Linux server with a hosting company for about six years or so. As part of their customer-retention strategy they have arranged for me to upgrade to a newer server with better bandwidth allowance, SLA [service level agreement] a...
  • Monitor Apache system load My customers have been reporting my website being down, usually around peak times. Could you suggest a simple way to monitor my system load? ...
  • Large file uploads with Apache I would like to use HTTP to upload large files (in excess of 200MB) to a server, because some of our customers aren't able to use FTP due to firewall restrictions (using Perl or PHP as the upload handler). What issues are there with Apache handling t...
  • WebBox not accessible I have three machines connected on my network, and problems working between them. They are: LinBox running Mandrake 10.0, WinBox running Windows 2000, WebBox running Mandrake 9.1 as an internal web server. The network seems to be working only partial...
  • Edit Windows Apache http.conf from Linux I am a newcomer to Linux, and am trying out Mandriva Linux before I make the switch from Windows. On my Windows setup I have installed Apache, PHP and MySQL - all of which I use to test my websites offline, before I expose them to the public. Everyth...
  • Change DocumentRoot in Apache to avoid 404 errors I am setting up an old machine to use as a web server internally on my office network. This is for design purposes before uploading sites to a web host. I am using Mandrake 9.0 and Apache/PHP and have it running OK. I can open the web server using 19...
  • Remove old version of Apache before installing new one I need to install Apache and mod_ssl, but the tutorial says that first I have to get rid of the Apache version that is there already. It was put there by hand from source. Given that I can probably find the install directory (and then delete it), wha...
  • Apache redirecting I was first introduced to Linux a couple of years ago when I started using Plesk. Over time I wanted to do more and more things that Plesk wasn't geared to handle, not at all because it's a bad product but because I have some customers with really we...
  • Apache and PHP filesize upload limits I have a customer on my server who is unable to upload files larger than 500k, yet they have set the /etc/php.ini directive upload_max_filesize = 10M. This should have allowed him to upload his 2-4MB JPEGs without any problem, but he can't. Any file ...
  • Fixing Apache virtual host problems In Apache, Virtualhosts aliases don't work using PHP, though they do work with TXT. Here's a part of my httpd.conf:

      RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower
      RewriteMap host-map prg:/var/www/hosts.php
      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteRule ^/icons/(.+) /var/www/icons/...

  • Hiding an Apache directory listing I've just set up a new server with my corporate website running on Apache. I have a folder called /var/www/html/downloads with lots of files, which my customers or staff can download through various links in the website If I type www.secretdomain.com...
  • Letting users edit pages on a CMS I run a backpackers website and I would like my users to be able to post their own news and photo albums for their family or friends without the need for webmaster interventions and without interfering with each other. What I have in mind is providin...
  • How to survive a Slashdotting I wrote an article a few months back that got mentioned on Slashdot, and, because I hosted the site myself, my humble server got pounded by thousands of visitors in just a few hours. Back then I used Apache 1.3 with MySQL 3.23. I've now got another a...
  • Emailing forms from a Linux webserver First off, let me give you a clear warning. I'm a new convert from the Microsoft camp, so you'll have to go easy on me. Well, new convert isn't entirely accurate: I still use mainly Windows 2000 servers but I'm trying to get as much moved to Linux as...
  • Vector Linux in headless mode I'm setting up an old computer to act as a web server internally on my network, to use for my web design business. I'm planning to try Vector Linux 3.2, which I have on disc, for the OS and Abyss web server. I would like to run it without a monitor o...
  • Analysing web server log files I'm trying to set up a server log file analyser. It runs on one machine (10.0.0.14 on my LAN) but needs an entry in its configuration file to point to the access log file. This log is held on my web server (192.168.0.2 on my DMZ). I know it's a basic...
  • Configuring Apache and NAT I have Mandrake 10.1 with Apache running my own website in Apache's default document root. A friend asked if I could host his site with his DNS (www.somename.com). I said yes and thought it would take about ten minutes to set up, but as I read Server...
  • SSH, mod_rewrite and Apache At my workplace we have a server running the usual Linux, Apache and MySQL combination, acting as a development and testing server for around about 100 sites we're building or have built. The server is only open to access from the internal network, ap...
  • Safe for users to upload PHP scripts? My server hosts about 50 websites for a number of my customers. Most of them have some form of dynamic content, usually PHP based, while some use phpnuke and phpbb. I'm quite an experienced system administrator, if I say so myself, but I'm not a prog...
  • Apache 2 and PHP We're currently migrating some websites from a 2.1ES server onto a new 3.0ES server. The main problem seems to be that 3.0 is using Apache 2.0 rather than 1.3. Our websites all are all PHP based and receive substantial amounts of traffic. On the PHP ...
  • Setting up SSL with Apache I've been using Apache on my web server for some time. I must admit I found it quite difficult to configure from the command line but I eventually got it done, thanks to the help of a lot of kind-hearted Linux folk on the Internet. I now need to add ...
  • Fixing slow Linux servers I just got a new dual Intel Xeon Linux machine running Red Hat Linux 3.0ES, MySQL 3.23.58,PHP 4.3.2 about two months ago. I use it to process and manipulate data, but it seems very sluggish most of the time. Here is a recent top output. I have a feel...

WINDOW-MANAGERS issues :
(alternatives to window-managers in KDE and Gnome, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • A faster alternative to KDE and Gnome - IceWM I have been wondering for a while if there is a faster alternative to KDE or Gnome for my Fedora machine (Athlon 1.2GHz, 256MB). So I decided to try out the IceWM window manager, because I wanted something that was vaguely similar to what I was alrea...

WIRED (and WAN/internet access) network issues :
(can't connect, ethernet, router, modem, IP address,
broadband, ADSL, dial-up, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Puppy Linux Broadcom and Realtek networking not working I have a HP Pavilion laptop with a Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN and Realtek RTL8139/810X FamilyFast Ethernet NIC. I've fallen for Puppy Linux, but when I run the connection wizard and install a module, which I'm told is installed correctly, it asks me to ...
  • Dial-up internet in Ubuntu 9.04 with Gnome-PPP I'm trying to get on the internet with a dial-up connection in Ubuntu 9.04. After searching the forums, I tried to install Gnome-PPP and Wvdial using the package manager, but this asks for an additional six files to be downloaded from the Ubuntu arch...
  • BT Voyager 105 USB modem not working I am using a computer with an AMD 1.6GHz processor. I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 in a separate partition from Windows XP. My internet provider is BT and the USB modem is a BT Voyager 105. This is where my problem starts, as BT tell me they don't reco...
  • Fixing modem and PPP problems using WVDial I am new to Linux and want to move away from Windows completely. I bought a compatible modem recently, but struggled with Ubuntu and Fedora for hours to set it up. Ubuntu did dial out, but then the KPPP daemon crashed. I restarted the computer with m...
  • Overly clever modems I recently converted a friend of mine to Linux - Ubuntu to be exact - and he really likes it, but he needs to connect to the web via a Bandrich C-100 modem. I've tried every suggestion on the forums and nothing works - it will not connect. What am I ...
  • Too many passwords I've just completed an install of Ubuntu 8.10, which is ace apart from the nagging prompt asking me to 'Enter password for default keyring to unlock' every time I log in. The prompt says:
    The application 'NetworkManagerApplet'(/usr/bin/nm-applet) wa...
  • A faster network please I'm thinking about upgrading my home network to Gigabit Ethernet. All my computers have gigabit network cards, but my router has a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch built in. If I connect my router to a Gigabit switch, and connect all my computers to ...
  • SUSE and MadWifi Can you tell me which version of the MadWifi drivers works best with SUSE Linux? Also, is there a free application that will report a numerical value for the frequency at which I'm exchanging bits with my router? By frequency, I mean the number of cy...
  • Third time unlucky I recently took the leap of faith and decided to stop using Live CDs and install Hardy Heron on a standalone system. Hardy is brilliant but as a freshie to Linux I am at a loss as to how to share my internet connection between my one desktop running ...
  • OpenSUSE and SmartAX modem: light turning off in Windows I installed OpenSUSE on to a PC that had been fine with Windows, including browsing the web. With OpenSUSE it was also able to browse web, but on reverting to Windows, there was no LAN light on the modem-router (a TalkTalk-supplied Huawei SmartAX MT8...
  • Get D-Link router working with OpenSUSE 10.3 How do I get my D-Link router (DSL-2640B) and D-Link adaptor (DWL-111) to work with Linux (OpenSUSE 10.3). I don't know if the attached Windows info helps. Thing is, if I change these settings, it may not function under Windows anymore. Also, is it t...
  • Disabling IPv6 in Ubuntu I want to remove IPv6 support. I set about doing /etc/modprobe.d/aliases in the terminal as root, but I got a terse message telling me: 'permission denied' Can you tell me why that is? I have Ubuntu Studio 7.10 and I need the other things working as ...
  • eth0 device not appearing on Dell e1505 with Broadcom Ethernet I am running Ubuntu 8.04 on a Dell e1505 with a Broadcom Ethernet controller. A while ago (I may have been running 7.04 or 7.10 around that time) I installed Windows and updated my BIOS. After that, I noticed the eth0 was gone and I reverted to the o...
  • Choosing a serial modem for Linux I've been having a look at Linux as a replacement for Windows XP and have been very impressed with the availability of the range of software, however I can't get access to the internet. I have an external 56k modem and the few Linux distros I've trie...
  • Debian without internet I am new to Linux and am currently learning the basics using a Debian-based system, but have problems installing new programs. I do not have internet access at home, but use the computers at the local public library (which run on a Windows system) an...
  • HomePlug and play I have a Devolo dLAN HomePlug 85Mbps Ethernet Starter Kit. Devolo provides a software utility to enable encryption between each device, but I don't know how to install the provided software. ...
  • Get Maxon BP3-EXT modem working in Linux I have used Microsoft for about 25 years and I must confess Linux is vastly different and it really takes some coming to grips with. I still consider myself on "L" plates. I am using a Maxon Broadband Wireless Modem Model BP3-EXT to access the intern...
  • Three USB broadband modem, Huawei E220, not working in Linux I have a three-USB broadband modem, Huawei E220, which automatically sets up on Windows and a Mac but not on Linux. Please let me know if any distro produces drivers for this, so I can use it on Linux. ...
  • Get Talk-Talk internet working in Mandriva As a complete newcomer to Linux, I find the whole idea of open source software and the independence it offers appealing. However I seem to have fallen at the first hurdle. Having installed Mandriva Powerpack 2008 as the sole operating system on my ol...
  • Set up Linux box as a remote desktop It is possible to use a Linux box to run a remote desktop hosted on my company's server? I often work from home by connecting to their IP address, logging on to Windows, then running an application. As I understand it, all the processing is carried o...
  • Get USB serial port replicator working under Linux I would love to junk Windows and run a pure Linux system. I have found equivalent software for everything I do and I know from the Live DVDs that my system will work. However I am studying for a Cisco CCNA qualification and use a serial port replicat...
  • Send an email when IP address changes I have access to my PC at work using the corporate VPN. For years the IP address of my work PC hasn't changed, but lately it seems that it changes once or twice a week. Is there any simple way that my PC (Kubuntu 7.10) could send me an email reportin...
  • Edimax ADSL2+ modem not working in Ubuntu I installed Ubuntu some months ago on a new Compaq Presario that already had Vista installed. However, I couldn't access the internet. It was suggested a router would be the answer. I tried an Edimax ADSL2+ in wired mode but still got no response. I ...
  • Need a Linux distribution that recognises PCI modems I work for the University of Western Ontario in Canada and I have access to a lot of old and broken computers that I rebuild and give away to charities. I've used Windows in the past but it's a bit of a pain because of copyrights and its inability to...
  • Make Ethernet cards remember names between reboots How do you get Ethernet NIC cards to remember their names between reboots on a SUSE distro? I'm running SUSE Enterprise 9 on my Linux router/firewall, which has three NICs installed; one for the external internet port, one for our internal network an...
  • Get a remote X connection to work I got into Linux many years ago after installing Red Hat 5.1 on my Amiga 4000. While managing to get to grips with it fairly well, I have never succeeded in getting a remote X session to work. I can log in via SSH and use the shell, but I really want...
  • Force all web traffic to go through a proxy server I've been running a Squid (and SquidGuard) web proxy on my Fedora box. I've set up SquidGuard blocking rules to protect my children from undesirable content. What this means is that on their (Windows XP) machine, I set the internet to route through m...
  • Mandriva not recognising Sitecom DC-009 USB modem I have installed Mandriva 2007 to a Dell 5150. The Dell has no serial or parallel ports, just USB. I have a Sitecom 56k V.92 USB modem, model DC-009, but I cannot get Mandriva to connect to it. The USB keyboard and mouse work fine. I can get the cdc_...
  • Optus internet and Siemens SpeedStream 4200 problems I have broadband with Optus in Australia. I was unable to get Linux to connect to the modem (a Siemens SpeedStream 4200) until I got Gentoo 2006.1. Once it worked I found the difference was that it used dhcpcd and the others used pump or dhclient. Ma...
  • Psion serial port programs not allowing access to Garmin connection I have only one serial port on my motherboard; I also have a Psion 5 and a Garmin Geko 201, both with serial connections. It seems that the programs associated with the Psion run in the background even if the Psion is not connected, and prevent the G...
  • Set up GUI to manage Broadcom BCM4318 network settings I have a stable Linux system that runs my desktop and small home/office LAN. I keep a few spare partitions on my hard disk to try out new distros, and from curiosity I installed Fedora. The main challenge I always have to overcome in such experiments...
  • Start VNC server on boot in Slackware I connect to my home server using VNC (not over SSH yet!). However, it doesn't bring up my 'start' bar on KDE and I automatically log in as the person who started the VNC server (not tested with root!). I would like my system (Slackware 10.2) to star...
  • SSH directly into system in a DMZ I have set up a web server (SUSE 10.0) running inside a virtual machine that is hosted on my SUSE 10.0 box. I have configured it to be in the DMZ of my router (also SUSE 10.0). Web traffic is correctly routed to the box; however, I cannot seem to acc...
  • Modem not working in SLED 10 Try as I might I cannot get my modem working in SLED 10. It keeps asking me for an Ethernet card, which I don't have, and saying that it is not connected. I know the card is not damn well connected because I don't have one! How do I configure the mod...
  • Log network traffic on selected interfaces I need to keep track of how much bandwidth my servers are using. How can I log network traffic for all or selected interfaces? ...
  • Slow network card: what is half duplex mode? My box has really poor network performance. Someone recently mentioned I might be set to half duplex (whatever that is). How can I find this out and what speed I am connected at? ...
  • Simple way to restart Linux networking I have a PC running SUSE 10.0 that is used by everyone in my household for browsing, email, TV and playing movies and music. None of my family has any Linux user knowledge and this has caused some hassles when I am not around. The PC is connected to ...
  • Using NTL broadband with Linux I would like to sign up for NTL's cable broadband package, but they tell me they do not support Linux. Does this mean the system will not work with Linux, or just that they cannot provide advice? I do not doubt that if I plug the modem into the Ether...
  • ADSL network connection with Xircom card not working in Mepis I recently installed Mepis. Unfortunately, the network connection with the internet just does not work. Do you have any clue to how I can get my ADSL connection working with Linux? I have a Xircom Creditcard Ethernet 10/100 + Modem 56. In the connect...
  • Specialised UK ISPs for Linux users I am struggling to find a reasonably priced broadband provider that deals with Linux. I looked for a high-speed dial-up for Linux, which was not successful. So I examined my download statistics under various distros. Fedora comes bottom, with a peak ...
  • Fedora: which network interface card is being used? I've just installed Fedora and am a bit confused as to which of my network interface cards is the one in use; I have two, and on the previous install eth0 was used as the default. Here is the output from ifconfig:

      eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr
      00:...

  • Firefox and Thunderbird not connecting to the internet in Linux I am running a dual-boot system with Windows XP and various Linux distros using interchangeable caddies. My box is connected to the internet by means of a Netgear DG632 router, which has proved OK in most situations. My preferred programs for browsin...
  • Cannot get Motorola SB4200 modem working in Linux I managed to install the KDE desktop environment version of SUSE 10.0 but I cannot get the Motorola SB4200 modem supplied by Blueyonder, my ISP, to connect to the internet via the USB port. I know the forums all suggest using the NIC connection, but ...
  • Best VPN solution for Linux Let me first say that I am a Windows administrator who can 'do' Linux, and at this point I am extremely sick of the cost and maintenance associated with Windows. I'm looking for a solution to replace our Windows virtual private network [VPN] and want...
  • Network multi-pathing on two Ethernet cards Running Red Hat, I have two Ethernet cards plugged into a single switch and a single static IP address. Is it possible to set up network multi-pathing on these two network interfaces so that if one link dies, it fails over to the second without setti...
  • Get Tiscali broadband with Sagem Fast 800 modem working on Linux My setup uses hard drive caddies that enable me to swap to and from Windows XP and Mandriva Linux. I am using Tiscali broadband successfully on Windows XP. My problem is that I cannot set up this connection on Linux and Tiscali doesn't appear to have...
  • How to enable port forwarding in Mandriva I have four computers at home and one of them is acting as a router. This computer has Mandriva Linux 2005 and two network cards installed. It connects to the ISP with eth0 using a static IP address, while eth1 is sharing internet with the other thre...
  • Set up remote desktops for KDE using Krdc/Krfb I have just built a new PC running SUSE 9.3 for my mum. As she lives 80-odd miles away, can I use Krdc/Krfb to help her if she has a problem? We both have 2MB ADSL via Ethernet routers and static IP addresses. Could you point me to a HOWTO? I have Go...
  • Get a Winmodem working with slmodem drivers I'm entirely new to Linux, and am not particularly great with computers in general - any technical terms I've learned have all been in the space of a week! I was enticed by Debian 3.1 and decided to have a go at installing it over WinXP. I've managed...
  • FTP vs SSH - security and chrooting As a design agency receiving artwork and other raw material by email and through the post on CD and DVD, we were considering teaching our clients to upload material to us on to a co-located server running Fedora. At first we were considering implemen...
  • Cable modem connection not working after booting up I just installed SUSE 9.3, and am having a couple of networking problems. I've got the system all running smoothly so far but I'm trying to share my internet connection with two other computers running XP. I'm also trying to have my Linux machine ide...
  • Maintain a persistent SSH connection I have to SSH into three Red Hat servers at one desert outpost (I work for an oil company). The TCP/IP connection to the field servers is an unreliable internet over satellite link. Very often I find myself losing connectivity halfway through an oper...
  • Getting SpeedTouch broadband modem to work in Linux I have just installed SUSE 9.3 - my introduction to Linux. All seemed to go well except that it didn't recognise my SpeedTouch broadband modem. My ISP is Kingston Communications. As I'm a real newcomer to Linux (and an octogenarian to boot), would yo...
  • Knoppix not recognising BT Voyager modem I tried the Knoppix Live CD, and it recognised almost all of my hardware except for my ADSL modem - for me, the most important bit of hardware by a mile. I have a BT Voyager 100 USB ADSL modem, which I received when I first went to broadband with AOL...
  • Find out if a service has gone down on a remote machine I have a remote server thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, all I have is the bandwidth and the hardware. Whenever things go wrong, I either have to pay extra or fix things myself. I am also running a software firewall, using the iptables. When a ...
  • Find an ADSL modem that works with Linux ADSL is hitting even rural areas of northern Scotland these days, hence my need for a suitable Linux-compliant wireless modem/router. I have identified a number of potential devices without knowing their Linux compatibility, which apparently depends ...
  • Connecting to OpenVPN server from outside world I have set up an OpenVPN server on one of my internal machines (a Linux machine) and have a problem talking to it from the outside world. I've tried everything, but I cannot get a connection to the damn server! I have no problem connecting to the VPN...
  • US Robotics 56k modem on Linux I've used Linux SUSE 9.2 for about five years, with a US Robotics 56k modem. I've just installed Homecall broadband from Homecall.co.uk. Installing on Windows went without any trouble but how do I install it on SUSE Linux? Homecall's help desk direct...
  • No internet connection or printing in SUSE 9.2 with BT Voyager 105 I used SUSE 9.2, to creat a dual booting system with MS Windows XP. The installation was smooth - but it won't connect to the internet, and it won't print. I've looked at a few forums regarding my USB modem (a BT Voyager 105), and it seems that plent...
  • BT Home Network 1250 doesn't work under Linux I have been playing around with Linux for about a year, using VMware Workstation on my Windows machine. I know a fair bit about Linux, but I encountered a problem when I decided to install Linux on my real machine. The installation went fine: my prob...
  • Setting up VNC for friends I have been trying to set up a Linux box running Fedora for my friends to play with. They're mostly Windows guys and don't have a lot of command-line experience, so I'm trying to help them into the wonderful world of open source by setting up VNC on ...
  • Speedtouch USB modems on Linux I finally have a broadband connection thanks to a USB SpeedTouch 330 modem, which, according to a multitude of pages on the internet, can be used with Linux. Here is the problem: they all mention that I need to download firmware and perform several s...
  • Which routers are Linux-compatible? I've been running Mandrake Linux 8.2 with Windows 98 SE on my PC. After five months of running both, I've decided to get rid of Windows and the partitions, and use Linux full-time. I have just bought your Complete Linux Handbook 2, and intend to inst...
  • Best ADSL model for Linux users? I've just installed SUSE 9.2 from your latest DVD. I religiously installed each of the main distros as you published them, hoping against hope that I would eventually have a Linux platform which would allow me to connect to the internet. I have a bro...
  • Modem configuration across Linux and Windows I have just installed SUSE 9.2 as a dual boot alongside Windows XP Home, which I still use. I am completely new to Linux, and the installation couldn't have been easier. There are, however, some questions I can't easily find answers for on the net. Y...
  • Making Conexant modems work on Linux I have just bought Linux SUSE 9.2 Professional. The problem I am having is with my internal modem. Written on the modem is CONEXANT CX06834-11. This modem runs well with Windows XP but will not run with SUSE 9.2. Can you tell me what modem (internal)...
  • Getting started with TightVNC I need your help with setting up two TightVNC servers: Windows XP and Mandrake 10.1. I also need help using the client, as I have never used this tool before. I used to have a KVM switch so I could switch between them both but that's now shuffled off...
  • Configuring broadband over ethernet I have loaded Mandrake 9.2 on to a second hard drive (with Windows ME running on the other) and have bought an Ethernet card to run my NTL broadband connection. Broadband runs fine on Windows now, but how do I get it running on Mandrake? Someone sugg...
  • Getting started with chattr Does anybody use the chattr program at all? I was looking at the program's man page recently and it appears to be a very interesting utility. I'm a little surprised that it doesn't seem to get much mention as some of the attribute settings it can cre...
  • Which ISPs support Linux? Have you a list of ISPs that can be accessed from Linux PCs? AOL and BT do not appear to be of any use for a PC running the Linux operating system. No doubt the answer is staring me in the face but I'd be grateful for you to point that out... ...
  • eth0 networking woes I get the 'bringing up interface eth0 FAILED' error as Mandrake 10.1 is loading on my system. I'm dual booting Mandrake with Windows XP, and XP has no problem whatsoever with the network card - there's a cable plugged in and it works fine in XP. I've...
  • eth0 error messages After installing Mandrake 10.1, eth0 is running well. However after reboot, I get this message: "Bringing up eth0: FAILED". Help!

      %cat /etc/resolv.conf
      search nsw.optushome.com.au
      nameserver 203.2.75.132
      nameserver 198.142.0.51
      %lspci | grep Etherne...

  • IP addresses and DNAT I've been banging my head against this one for weeks now. Four years ago I managed to get a machine to DNAT and now I can't do it at all! At the most basic level, I'm trying this code:

      Internet external ip on firewall = 10.x.x.5
      Machine on inside of...

WIRELESS issues :
(connection problems, slow problems, password problems, etc.)

< Return to Table of Contents, above. >
  • Sluggish wireless under Mepis I installed Mepis 8 on my ThinkPad T60 and wireless is extremely slow. The ThinkPad has an Atheros AR5212 802.11abg wireless card using the ath_pci driver. Mepis 7 and Mepis 8 use the same home partition, and I can't understand why Mepis 7 loads page...
  • LIRC forwarding Is there any software you know of that can receive an LIRC signal and then loop it back for resending, or would I have to write something that can do this myself? What I want to do is receive a LIRC input (from a remote) and resend this signal (via a...
  • Belkin wireless card connection problems I bought two Belkin F5D7000 PCI wireless cards, one for use with a Dell Dimension E500 and one for use with an RM Nimbus. The RM is running Xubuntu 8.04 and the Dell Dimension is running Xubuntu 8.10. I installed them both using NdisWrapper and am ab...
  • Fix forgotten WPA password I'm using Ubuntu Hardy on an Acer 5920 and running Windows XP in VirtualBox. I want to share folders between host and guest but am having trouble with my network settings. I can use the internet on the host over a WPA-encrypted link to my router but ...
  • Fedora 9: DNS problems for mobile broadband E220 connection I'm using an E220 USB HSDPA modem under Fedora 9, all working with the new Network Manager 0.7.x. I have a little wireless connection showing up on the task bar and got a IP address. When I right-click on the icon and go to Connection Settings, it ke...
  • Get wireless networking working in Fedora 9 I'm a complete newbie to Linux, and have recently installed Fedora 9. I've been looking forward to getting started, but now find myself getting a bit stuck. I can't figure out how to get my wireless network running. I gather that only a handful of ad...
  • Looking for a suitable wireless access point for Linux Following some recent advice I bit the bullet and bought a Dell laptop, the Inspiron 1525. It's happily running Ubuntu, and it's the first wireless device I have. So I need an access point. I already have a network in place, with a LAMP setup that's ...
  • Broadcom now working with SUSE on Dell M70 laptop I run OpenSUSE 10.1 on a Dell M70 laptop, but have to use NdisWrapper to get my wireless to work. I have to use Modprobe to activate the wireless, which works a treat. I believe my Dell laptop uses the Broadcom wireless chipset. I would like to use O...
  • Pluscom WU-ZD1211B USB wireless stick not working in Linux I'm trying to install OpenSUSE 10.2 on an iMac for my granddaughter. The install went well until I tried to add a Pluscom WU-ZD1211B USB wireless stick, neither the drivers that came with the stick nor from the net seem to install. When running make ...
  • Inteo PRO/Wireless 3945ABG network not working in Linux I previously used Linux in 1996/1997 to run a Unix application on a laptop, as Linux was free and a Sparcbook cost £10K. I recently thought it would be great to use it again and so installed it on my home Dell XPS m1210. I looked around the web...
  • Which kernel for Belkin USB wireless stick? I am trying to set up my system to use my Belkin USB wireless stick with ndiswrapper. The notes tell me I need a certain kernel as a minimum. I'm a new user, so can you tell me how I find this information? Also, can you give me any advice on setting ...
  • BT broadband won't connect with 3945abg drivers I have recently switched to BT broadband and I'm trying to connect to the BT Home Hub using Wi-Fi. I have installed the Intel/PRO 3945abg drivers and iwconfig shows the network interface as up, but KNetworkManager won't connect to the hub. I've set t...
  • Wireless network not working in OpenSUSE I have downloaded and installed OpenSUSE 10.2 and everything seems to go well, except for my wireless network. I am totally new to this and would appreciate a dummy's guide to setting it up. ...
  • Get Belkin F5D7632uk wireless G modem working in Linux I have recently installed Fedora in dual-boot mode on my HP Pavilion t3065 (Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz with 1GB of RAM). All went well until I tried to connect to my Belkin wireless G modem (802.11g - model F5D7632uk ver 1000), and it was only after much...
  • Get Belkin WiFi card working with rt2500 driver I was wondering if you could help with a Wi-Fi/NdisWrapper problem. I'm trying to get a Belkin card to work under NdisWrapper using the rt2500 Windows XP driver. The online instructions are great and I detected the card, worked out what driver I need...
  • Sync Bluetooth headset with Linux I have acquired a new mobile phone with Bluetooth. It also has a Bluetooth hands-free headset. Can I sync this with my computer? To make me really happy, can you tell me if it is possible to use the headset with Skype, or any other internet phone sof...
  • D-Linux network card dropping connection in Mandriva I am having problems with my wireless connection using Mandriva Linux 2006. I am using a D-Link Airplus G+ laptop card (with NdisWrapper) to connect to my D-Link G604T wireless router on bootup. Everything starts OK and if I check /etc/resolv.conf th...
  • ADMtek wireless card won't connect in Ubuntu I'm trying to get online. I have an ADMtek 802.11b wireless card, and Ubuntu has found a driver for it. I'm trying to connect to our LAN, which has WEP encryption. The settings are:

      Mode Managed
      ESSID Eleven
      Key *** (number 4)
      Interface eth1
      Channel
      ...

  • SUSE not switching on NETGEAR card I'm running two Toshiba laptops. The first is a Toshiba Satellite 522 with a built-in Atheros AR5001 wireless adaptor that conforms to the 802.11a/b specifications, the second a Toshiba 8000 with a NETGEAR WG511 wireless card. SUSE 9.3 recognises the...
  • Which Linux distro should I use? I got a Pentium II computer recently from the London Freecycle group (www.freecycle.org), which I want to set up for my dear mother to use for the internet, instant messaging and OpenOffice.org. I also want it to be part of my planned wireless networ...
  • Solving Bluetooth connection problems A while ago I took the plunge and installed SUSE 8.2 with a Centrino wireless card on my Acer laptop. I've since upgraded to 9.2 and have 9.1 Professional installed on my desktop. I expected all sorts of problems with the laptop, but they didn't mate...
  • Wireless adapter configuration I currently use an Alcatel modem (SpeedTouch 330) given to me by my ISP and I simply can't get it to work with Linux (I'm using Gentoo Linux with 2.6.9 kernel). I decided to build a wireless home network, so I'm planning to buy a D-Link DSL-G604T wir...
  • Dell and 54g I have a Dell laptop running FC2 with a Netgear WG511 card. I've downloaded and installed the Prism54 driver and firmware, and worked through the Linux Unwired book, setting all the config files, etc. I've also worked through Negus' Linux Bible for F...

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Page history:

Page was created 2010 Dec 29.

Page was changed 2011 Jan 05.

Page was changed 2011 Nov 14.
(Added css and javascript to try to handle text-size for smartphones, esp. in portrait orientation. Specified an image width in percents to size the image according to width of the browser window. Reformatted the page so that it looks better on a wide variety of viewing devices.)