big time newbie!!!!!!

[mawd]

ok, so they finally talked me into installing linux. i have an extra hard drive for my new laptop, so i installed redhat 6.2 on it. everything seemed to go pretty well. i can log in and everything. but if i type "startx" the screen goes nuts.

ok, so i need to get the correct video drivers. i got an nvidia geforce 2 go card. and found the two files i need to run. i even found the instructions on how to install them.

i saved them to a couple floppies with my winME box, and when i typed "$ rpm -ivh NVIDIA_kernel.i386.rpm" from the /home/username directory, it didn't do anything. i believe it said that the dir wasn't found.

so, i had to do some quick learning how to find the A: drive. quickly i found out there is not A: drive in linux.

if i goto the /mnt directory, i find "cdrom" and "floppy". but if i type dir or ls for either of these directorys, nothing happens.

why can't i find these files?

please help the helpless newbie

[Malakin]

I'm not so familiar with redhat 6.2 but try putting in a floppy, then type "mount /mnt/floppy" then "ls /mnt/floppy/" and see if that works.

If that works then just manually mount and unmount your drives.
to mount "mount /mnt/floppy"
to unmount "umount /mnt/floppy"

If you're using the gui you may be able to right click on the icon then click mount or unmount from there, then open the icon to see the contents.

You should read over some of the documentation red hat has for your distro, it will explain all this.

[jkm]

hi there.

first, i must commend you on your going to find those things on your own. most people just come here and whine these days. so all the power to you.

unix uses a filesystem concept where every aspect of the system is a file. ie: all your harddisk are files on the filesystem. so what you want to do is mount the floppy device on the /mnt/floppy directory.

redhat probably set this up for you, so try typing

mount /mnt/floppy

into your shell.

if this doesn't work, try:

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy, you should now be able to cd into the directory and see your files.

for your cdrom, try mount /mnt/cdrom, or mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom.

/dev/cdrom might not exist, but you can substitute your cdrom device, which should be /dev/hdX if it's ide. you can find out what X is supposed to be by typing dmesg | grep cdrom and checking which device is used for your cdrom driver.

good luck.

if you run into any more problems with mount, try typing, man 1 mount, which should bring up the manual page and will tell you all about mounts other options.

[mawd]

if i type in "mount /mnt/floppy" it says:

end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

just becuase i like to burn cd's. i took the same two files from nvidia and burnt them to a disk.

if i do the mount /mnt/cdrom i can cd the directory and see my two files. but, if i type in the command that nvidia gave me:

$ rpm -ivh NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-1251.rh62.i386.rpm

it says:

error: cannot open /var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm

is it a bad driver? i'm completely lost. thanks for your help.

[Ig0r]

I notice the $ in front of your command and suggest that you be root while (un)installing packages.

[jkm]

yes, that is true.

type "su" without the quotes, and type in your root password, and rerun the rpm command on those files, and then type "exit" or hit control-D to logout of root and back to your normal user.