Linux install problems

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 08:33:38PM -0800, John J. Herda wrote:
> My FC2 Linux installation still has problems.  
> 
> 1.
> Thanks for the help with the datetime format:
>    alias ls="ls --time-style=+%Y-%m-%d^%H:%M:%S"
>    alias ls "ls --time-style=+%Y-%m-%d^%H:%M:%S"
> These work fine for the bash and csh shells but
> xwindow listings still have the datetime in partial
> and mixed order.  

Please elaborate.  What do you mean by xwindow?  What program is
generating these?  Which desktop environment are you using?

> 2.
> I can not seem to find a way to make "sort" sort whole
> lines in ascii order.  It keeps putting text ending in
> non-space before text ending in " ".  This seems so
> bizarre.  

This is because the default locale is now en_US.UTF-8 which produces
somewhat surprising results for non-alpha characters.

You can get the expected traditional Unix behavior by changing the
locale environment variables appropriately.  In (ba)sh, the following
should suffice:

  LC_COLLATE=C; export LC_COLLATE

[Yes, with bash you can do this in one command, but it is
non-portable to Bourne shell and probably some other derivatives.]

> 3.
> Linux cannot read floppies written with Windows98 from
> the other partition of the same computer but these
> floppies can be read on another computer running
> Windows98.  However, Linux does read floppies written
> with WindowsNT on another computer.  

How are you trying to read them?  Generally, you need to use the mount
command to mount the floppy, or use the mtools package to read it like
you would in DOS (more or less).

> 4.
> I have compressed files (filename.Z) read off of a
> floppy but I cannot uncompress them because
> "uncompress" does not seem to be on my computer but I
> do have the man pages.  

Try searching freshmeat or google or your favorite search engine.
There are tools out there to deal with these files...

> 5.
> I was told that Linux could read files from the
> Windows98 partition but I was not told how to do it.  

Mount the filesystem as (probably) vfat.  Use fdisk -l to figure out
what the name of the partition is:

  # fdisk -l

  Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
  255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/hda1   *           1         772     6201058+   7  HPFS/NTFS
  /dev/hda2             773         785      104422+  83  Linux
  /dev/hda3             786        7296    52299607+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
  /dev/hda5             786        5773    40066078+   b  W95 FAT32
  /dev/hda6            5774        6165     3148708+  83  Linux
  /dev/hda7            6166        6557     3148708+  83  Linux
  /dev/hda8            6558        6595      305203+  82  Linux swap
  /dev/hda9            6596        7296     5630751   83  Linux

Here you can see I have two Windows partitions, /dev/hda1 and
/dev/hda5.  Yours will problably be /dev/hda1, but you have to check.

Make a directory to mount the partition onto, let's say /Windows.
Then, use the mount command to mount it:

  # mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /Windows

Now cd to /Windows and see your files!  Ain't Linux great?  ;-)

You can set up /etc/fstab to do this automagically for you at boot
time.  See the man page for fstab for details.  In fact, it may
already be done for you, and you just didn't notice.  You can use the
mount command with no arguments to see what file systems are mounted.

> 6.
> I want to make my default partition csh but I don't
> remember how.  Also want to add other users.  

I think you mean default shell. You can:

1. edit the /etc/passwd file directly, and change it there.  Use the
vipw command to do this -- do not edit the file directly with your
editor.

2. use the chfn program to change it.  See the manpage for
details.

> 7.
> I added some programs from the FC2 installation CDs
> and Linux complained about the partitioning (done with
> Partition Magic) but they seemed to install ok.  

If everything is working, ignore the messages.  This happens
sometimes.

> 8.
> Don't know the difference between KDE and Gnome.  
> We installed Gnome.  Would KDE be more to my liking? 
> If I install KDE, do I have to uninstall Gnome first? 
> Will I loose my non-system files?  
> 

You can have both installed at the same time.  I usually use GNOME,
but it's a personal preference.  [Actually I keep meaning to give KDE
a good hard look, because I'm unhappy with a number of things in
GNOME, but I've been too busy/lazy.]

> 9.
> The Windows98 partition still does not see the network
> (on either side of my router) that it use to see.  
> Linux still does not see the shared printer on the
> other computer running Windows98 but it does see
> outside.  

This is really hard to troubleshoot without access to the machine...
Can you run winipcfg.exe?  What does it say?

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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