Finally switched to linux... what now?

[freeztar]

Hmm..actually, shouldn't there be a way to fix this with grub? If so, how do I go about it?

[enorbet2]

Hey Freeze

Instead of doing this so piecemeal I'm going to take an hour or so to sort this out. The only thing I'll say right now is that the MasterBootRecord was not mangled since Grub still works. Things have changed since last night because it's going to be more difficult to follow our plan since you "stacked" mainly because the reason for installing Slackware's Lilo to it's root partition is so that another bootloader, originally Grub, could be edited so that the Slackware partition was added as a menuitem and the boot process handed over to Lilo from Grub. The original advantage was that it kept all of Ubuntu, aside from swap, sacrosanct and untouched.

 

I already mentioned to NOT select GPM mouse. Did you make a new partition and reinstall or are you still where we left it last night with the stacked (read "fuX0red") system? Grub is not an OPSys so you can't do anything from it except boot. As you may have noticed the Slackware Install disk stops quickly at a prompt where one can type in such things as point the loader to another partition where a kernel is located. So it can be used as an emergency boot of a system whose MBR or bootloader has been mangled.

 

It is important when setting up any kind of multi-boot system to plan ahead which will be handling the boot duties. That helps in the decision as to the order of system installs. Since you already know how to install Ubuntu and apparently wish to use it's Grub, tentatively I'll say reinstall Ubuntu so you have a working Linux system from which you can add Slackware to the grub menu. If this message is late and you now have Slackware installed correctly and running stop right there and we can work out how to add Ubuntu. To begin in earnest you need one working Linux system.

 

Be back within the hour.

[freeztar]

Ok, I'll reinstall Ubuntu first. Thanks for the clarification. :)

[enorbet2]

Hey DefinitelyDisturbed

 

It might be cool to see what's chewing up resources first before downgrading. If you're a pointy-clicky kinda guy you can use KSysGuard. In terminal there are several but this one should help - type "ps aux |more". Either way they will display CPU usage and memory specs by process. Find the culprit and determine if it's an essential process. If not, kill it, and see how your system responds then.

[freeztar]

Ok, I reinstalled Ubuntu 8.10.

Grub was able to keep everything intact and even added the slackware to the menu.

 

I booted up into Ubuntu. It used to display a loading bar with the Ubu logo, but now it gives me the detailed text at loadup. Well, that's better imho. It might be because I chose "login automatically" whereas my last install required login. :)

 

But damn, my mouse does not work in Ubuntu. I have a USB wireless mouse that used to work in Ubuntu. It's working fine in windows right now. The laptop touchpad does not even work. So there's my next battle (do they ever end) :).

 

So, I booted into slackware to get that up and going. I logged in as root and entered "adduser" as requested. Everything was going fine, and then I typed kde. Invalid. I noticed I was still in the root dir so I typed "dir" (old DOS habit ;)). There's only two files there. How do I get to /%usr%/home? Prolly a stupid question, but hey, baby steps...

 

If I can get kde running, then I'll be quite happy. Now, time to figure out this mouse problem. (I noticed that Ubuntu gave a fatal error at boot up when loading the modules.dep. Is this the dependencies? If so, what should I do (assuming I can get the mouse working))

[enorbet2]

Hey Freeze

Sorry to be so late to the fray but last night's client just wiped me out. It's a small company with a mixed network, mostly Macs and a few Windows PCs. Somebody screwed up auto backups and it was a mess and only available after hours. Anyway here's the biggy!

 

Don't type "kde" Type "kdm". I would have "capped" it but as you know case is important in Linux. Kdm is the display manager. It loads "etc/X11/xorg.conf" which gives support for keyboard, mice, video card, monitor(s), fonts, touchscreens, etc. The xorg.conf file can and should be edited manually (after making a copy for backup*) in Slackware after finding out what commands will tweak your hardware best, or in some cases get it just to work right. One of the advantages of having two systems on the same hardware, especially where one is so full of "automatics" as Ubuntu is that one can check out the auto-generated and updated "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" file there as well as friend Google to deterrnine what might work best. Here's some cool keyboard shortcuts, some specific to Slackware, some generic to Linux.

 

Restart X - "Ctrl-Alt-Backspace" (generic)

Resize Screen - "Ctrl-Keypad+" or "Ctrl-Keypad -" (generic)

Replace bad xorg.conf - "cp foo/xorg.bkup /etc/X11/xorg.conf" as root and where "foo" is the directory in which you saved the backup if you save it also in "/etc/X11"

type "cp ./xorg.bkup ,/xorg.conf" the "./" tells the system to only look where you are

you get there just as in DOS with the "cd" command eg: "cd /home/freeztar" or if you were in "/home" already "cd ./freeztar" or even shorter "cd ./fre" and then hit the "Tab" key and Linux will fill in the rest so just "enter" when it does and you're there!

 

From Slackware kdm login screen check out the menues. Besides either the entire alternate desktop or window managers there are also commands already in there while the manager may not yet be installed. You can't do harm. Try a few.

 

Also from that screen, say you want to get back to original CLI (where you had entered "kdm") say to install nVidia drivers or such, just hit "Alt-N" . When back at CLI if you intend to return to X, first type "killall kdm" to stop the existing process and use the arrow key or type anew "kdm" and you're back to X. Very useful for tweaking mouse, especially if an edit fails and prevents X from loading. One of the safety nets specific to Slackware or any system should one edit it so. It's just default in Slackware.

 

Glad you got it sorted. I'll be Bach.

[enorbet2]

Rats! Freeze forgot some important answers. Wireless mice are usually USB. I would go to a terminal and type "dmesg |more" to see what happened to USB and mouse support during the boot process. OR - better - now that you have two systems and assuming "kdm" is all you needed to get into X, you can mount your Ubuntu partition (if it isn't already) and look at, edit, whatever Ubuntu right from Slackware. Even though Debian has some differences, much is still the same in all distros and Xorg is so big a deal few mess with it's fundamentals. So you can compare, either manually with an editor (whether "vim" or "Kedit", emacs, whatever you like)[ remember "vim" is crunchy!] <grin> files such as the xorg.conf files between Slackware and Ubuntu to see what's working in one and not in the other. Also, and this is great!, there are great logs in "/var/log" such as Xorg.0.log (remember your "Tab" key to make it easy) which will log each X items load and disposition. If your vidcard is nVidia there is also nVidia installer log there, as well as "messages" and much more. Xorg.0.log is indispensable. Great tool.

 

BTW "dir" is DOS the equivalent in Linux is "ls". The cool thing is variations can do more than just list files. "lspci" lists all detected pci devices. Terminal is Omnipotent!

[Southtown]

K, I'm sticking with Archlinux. It's small, optimized (i686/x86_64 only,) packages are precompiled or can be made and shared (see [AUR] and [ABS],) and there aren't any 'do-it-for-you' type additions such as Slackware's 'adduser.'

 

I didn't know about that at the time and tried to add my user old-school. Coincidentally, I was in the midst of messing around with /etc/group to gain write permissions in my home directory without resorting to chown when I threw in the towel.

 

LFS however was fun for awhile until the gcc compile kept exiting on a 'no such file or directory' error. Of course I knew it would be a fix-yer-own-damn-bugs type deal. After attempting two tarball/walkthrough versions +/- patches, I decided to end it all with good 'ole:

rm -rf /*

 

YouTube - Running rm -rf / on Linux http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4fzInlyYQo

I'll try that Sabayon that GAHD posted next. It sounds rockin'. Maybe it can steal me from Arch.

[enorbet2]

Yo South

What did you mean by "there aren't any 'do-it-for-you' type additions such as Slackware's useradd." ?

 

While "useradd" exists in Slackware as it is basic to most if not all distros, it doesn't do it for you. It requires more administrative knowledge than "adduser" and even that simply asks a series of questions as to what you want including "do you want to create a home directory and add to default group associations?" It still depends on user input. How is this "do it for you"?

[Southtown]

Yo South

What did you mean by "there aren't any 'do-it-for-you' type additions such as Slackware's useradd." ?

Sorry, my bad. I'm talking about SW's 'adduser.' I didn't realize the 'transposedness' until you asked. I just didn't know enough linux to give myself disk access through groups alone via 'useradd.'

 

While "useradd" exists in Slackware as it is basic to most if not all distros, it doesn't do it for you. It requires more administrative knowledge than "adduser" and even that simply asks a series of questions as to what you want including "do you want to create a home directory and add to default group associations?" It still depends on user input. How is this "do it for you"?

I haven't had any problems in the past with 'useradd' until I ran into Slackware. Then I read a thread at bitbenderforums.com. I noticed the little prompt session for adding users, and I thought it was 'useradd' with no args rather than 'adduser' and that it was Slackware's little twist since I'd never seen it before.

 

Have I been using modified versions of 'useradd' in other distros that give users ownership to their home directory (or disk rw privileges?)

[enorbet2]

Hey Southtown

I'm not up on new distiros un the past three years that boot to CLI so I'm not certain but traditionally "useradd" is strictly manual where you enter the command with a string of switches to instruct it as to what you want it to do altogether. Miss one switch and that function doesn't exist. Unforgiving and difficult but very powerful and flexible.

 

As I mentioned, in Slackware, "adduser" is meniued and includes setting up $HOME. Of course there are various GUI tools like "Kuser" to edit, add whatever groups and permissions, etc and individually from any filemanager one can rt-clk and select "properties" and edit permissions there as well.

[freeztar]

Thanks for the replies enorbet.

 

I tried kdm and it didn't work retuning the error "Bash: kdm: invalid command". I tried "sudo kdm" and it said I didn't belong to sudoers group. So, I tried kdm as su, but that didn't work as well. What am I doing wrong?

 

I'm hoping that everything will work when I get into kdm on slackware, but if it doesn't (or even if it does for Ubuntu's sake) I'll try your advice about comparing xorgs.

 

Fwiw, I was researching the mouse issue on the UbuntuForums and one person suggested using "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg". It seems to have solved another user's mouse issue. So I tried that and it walked me through a bunch of menus (most about keyboard layout). It never showed me a menu for the mouse. I concluded the reconfig and rebooted. Same problem. That should have worked right?

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Hey DefinitelyDisturbed

 

It might be cool to see what's chewing up resources first before downgrading. If you're a pointy-clicky kinda guy you can use KSysGuard. In terminal there are several but this one should help - type "ps aux |more". Either way they will display CPU usage and memory specs by process. Find the culprit and determine if it's an essential process. If not, kill it, and see how your system responds then.

Beeeeeeeezzar!

ran "ps aux |more" in terminal...... quietest my compys been in a long time (she been soundin like she's runnin a marathon lately)....wierd.....#'s on screen don't show any real drains contrary to my gui process monitor which since upgrade shows high draw on Ram and CPU...which coresponds with the typical "I'm workin really hard right now so enjoy this grey screen" situation I be getting a lot now, never before on this computer....the last time I saw anything like it was when I was running DSL-N on my PII entirely in RAM (all 128Meg.:eek_big:).....going through the processes list yields no obvious draws even remotely close to or adding up to 498Meg idling 1G maximum draw....furkin jackalopes!:phones:

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Freezy didja raid synaptic in your quest? All sorts of good stuff there.....solved many a hardware issue scrounging there;)

[enorbet2]

OK Freeze let;s get rollin'

 

UBUNTU - I would be shocked if you couldn't get your mouse working correctly since as I understand it, it worked before right? Same distro version? Ideally tell me where you arrive and what if anything works when you boot Ubuntu. If you have a terminal and keyboard works we're immediately in business. It would be a good idea to Google for your specific mouse and setup in Ubuntu eg : search "Logitech Foo-720 Ubuntu" and write down the xorg.conf parameters/commands if only for reference but likely for peak performance and fast fix. I still haven't heard from you as to results from "dmesg |more" or "/var/log/Xorg.0.log"to see if USB is loading OK and what if anything is in there about the mouse. If the mouse is mentioned USB is working.

 

-workaround- substitute wired mouse and rerun the xorg reconfigure so you can get to desjtop where you're more comfortable and have more resources at your command.

 

 

SLACKWARE - Although it's worth a try since it can't hurt anything to type "kdm" it may be possible that Slackware may glitch on the wireless mouse. Wouldn't hurt to google that too. If you substitute any wired mouse Slackware should be fine too

PROVIDED you are typing "kdm" from the right place!

 

The proper sequence for Slackware is:

Boot to CLI login and login as "root"

type "kdm"

once at X Graphical Login screen

login as user and follow the desktop menu to set style (like 4 checkboxes in steps)

 

Option - if no success in Ubuntu, fix it from Slackware

 

I am up and have Kona!

[enorbet2]

DefinitelyDisturbed

I highly recommend installing GKrellm and enabling the Krells for Processes (if not default) as well as CPU (gotta be default) hdd, ram and swap. Let me know what is shows.

[Southtown]

As I mentioned, in Slackware, "adduser" is meniued and includes setting up $HOME. Of course there are various GUI tools like "Kuser" to edit, add whatever groups and permissions, etc and individually from any filemanager one can rt-clk and select "properties" and edit permissions there as well.

Yeah, I'm sure I was just missing a group. I did what I know from Arch, plus whatever groups I saw that looked interesting.

useradd -m -G users,audio,lp,optical,storage,video,wheel,power -s /bin/bash southie

BTW, could you cat your groups for me real fast so I got some idea?

cat /etc/group | grep enorbet2-or-whatever

Guess I could try again and do it right this time. lol