You knew I'd come asking advice sooner or later...

[-[Raven]-]

:D

Right, installing Mandrake 8.0 went fine, and being the linux n00b I am, I went for all the default packages, and removed the ones I didn't want after gaining some expertise.

Of course, some preparation was needed, as my 30 gig drive was split into 2 partitions of equal size, one for Windows, the other for bits and bobs like mp3s.

So I resized the second partition to 10 gig so as to leave 5 gb for linux (I could have made a linux partition myself but decided to leave it upto Mandrake).

So then shove the disc in, reboot, boot from CD, install from OS. Yes please, use my remaining disk space, yadda yadda.

Its all gone without a hitch, except:

Whenever I boot into linux it sets my second partition to hidden for some reason. I figure this is something to do with it shoving its swapfile on there? Which is irritating, as I have to continuosly boot to dos to turn off the Hidden flag to use the partition under windows.

I understand this might require some use of the terminal, but I only know a few commands (which extends all the way up to the complicated use of vi ;)).

I have no sound. I was impressed that I didn't need any drivers for anything but my sound card, but still. I have a Vortex 2 based card, but ever since Aureal were swallowed by Creative http://linux.aureal.com/ has hardly been helpful.

I found a site that offers up some sound card drivers for linux (opensound.com? I forget), but again being the linux n00b I am, I haven't set it up yet. I haven't exactly had a blast at it yet, and I'll probably manage it, but I was just wondering if there was an easy way to get sound goin'?

:/

[gring00]

Unclear what you mean here. It sounds like you will now have three partitions on your disk,
One 15 gig for windows,
one for mp3s and one for linux (which will more than likely be split up further into swap, /usr and /root or somthing like that).
Mandrake will only show you the linux partitions by default and won't show you the windows ones unless you explicitly tell it to.
You use the mount command to , umm, mount other partitions. E.g.
mkdir /windows
mount /dev/hda1 /windows

this creates a directory in the root of the filesystem called windows, and then mounts /dev/hda1 there. This assumes /dev/hda1 is where the big windows partition is, which it probably is. Mounting a partition can be thought of as attaching it to the filesystem.

Does this make any sense?

hth

[Ironheart]

With your sound problem, try opening a terminal as root and running "sndconfig".

[-[Raven]-]

Rightio, this is what I have now:

One 30 gig disk.

1 Bootable Windoze partition, 15gig
1 Misc. 10gig partition, which is using fat 32.
1 5gig Mandrake 8 partition

Mandrake mounted all the windoze drives from the beginning, thats fine. Obviously Windows can't access the mandrake partition.

When in windows (penny drops) the second partition seems to have been set to hidden (which means I have to keep changing it back using ranish partition manager (3rd party el33t thing)). So in My Computer, where before I had Partitions 1 and 2, I now only have Partition 1.

This only started happening since I installed Mandrake, and I've since found it isn't linux which is doing it, but lilo.

I realise my original post may have been a little bit cryptic now.

I'll try sndconfig thanks ironheart, I read about that somewhere but totally forogt :dime-bar:

Erm.

Probably find out its something really stoopid I've done anyway :D

[aef]

These sort of problems can occur when you're putting a Linux swap file on a Windows drive. Linux normally uses swap partitions, not swap files. Linux swap files are basically a huge kludge, and should be avoided where possible.

Depending on how it's set up, Linux needs to restore the old partition information for that second FAT partition when it shuts down, or Windows will fail to recognise it. I'm pretty wure this is the source of your problems. LILO shouldn't be doing anything to the partition table; if I were to guess wildly, I'd say that Windows just notices something strange about the info for that partition when it boots and considers it "hidden" for that reason.

My advice would be to stop using a swap file and create a swap partition instead, which is generally a better idea. Alternatively, you could try to fix your system so that whatever is currently breaking doesn't. The Linux Swap Space Mini-HOWTO may be useful here.

WRT sound, sndconfig is good (the "one good thing" about Redhat & Co, IMO), but if it really is non-standard, then you'll have to istall that driver. You should get instructions on how to use it, but the process will probably go somehing like:

1) Download driver.
2) Build driver (if it isn't already a binary).
3) Test it by insmod-ing or modprobe-ing into your kernel.
4) Add the appropriate line you your /etc/modules (at least, that's what Debian uses - YMMV).
6) Reboot.
7) Smile happily as it all works.

Step 2 (if necessary) may involve installing the kernel source.

This process can be quite easy or quite painful depending on whether the driver is a well-packaged, well-documented piece of robust code, or a useless piece of crap knocked together by someone who was probably peeling a banana with their toes as they typed. (Me, bitter?)

AEF

[ybw]

Lol

On the subject of modprobing and such.
I recently had to compile some source code to get a module to run a Compaq NIC I have. After doing all the usual operations, the "make install" script put the module in the correct location as far as I can tell(with all the other NIC modules), but I couldn't "modprobe e100" but only "insmod e100".
Any idea what would case this?

Andy

[aef]

Originally posted by ybw
Lol

On the subject of modprobing and such.
I recently had to compile some source code to get a module to run a Compaq NIC I have. After doing all the usual operations, the "make install" script put the module in the correct location as far as I can tell(with all the other NIC modules), but I couldn't "modprobe e100" but only "insmod e100".
Any idea what would case this?

Andy

LOL!

That is /exactly/ the driver I was referring to with the last comment in my post! (What're the chances?)

I'm not going to think about your individual problem - but the driver is generally crappy and has a couple of errors. A friend of mine who has a tendancy to get all obsessive about making obscure/difficult hardware work helped me debuggify it slightly, but I'm still having to use insmod -f to load it into the kernel. If it works at all, be happy. At first, it wouldn't even build under 2.2.19 (though I managed to build it under 2.2.18pre21 and insert it into 2.2.19, again with insmod -f).

I'm slowly learning C, and I /have/ been tempted just to re-write the whole thing...

Now - if I can just get that Compaq on-board sound system working... (This is a work machine, BTW, I don't buy this stuff.)

AEF

[ybw]

ROFL

The NIC was only put in so I could mess about with duel NIC setup's and such, so stability and such doesn't matter much.

If you do re-write the code and need someone to help test it give me a shout.

Andy

[-[Raven]-]

Rightio, I got some drivers for the Vortex 2 from sourceforge, which me being the newbie I am took me a while to get going (got halfway through installing it before remembering to 'su' and then realised after half an hour I couldnt use the make command because the kernel source wasn't installed) :D

As for the hiding the partition problem, it is definitely lilo, as I take off the Hidden flag in DOS, soft-reboot straight back into dos after going through lilo, and its hidden again :) I'll make up a bootdisc to go around lilo to make sure.

It also matches up some stuff I was reading on a website in my travels of the net about lilo, and apparently it does do some stuff with partitions, so I'm going to have a nosy in its various .conf files.

I'll probably mess everything up, but thats the best way of learning in my opinion :)