A little help for a newbie?

[rick420]

Well, where to get started. First off, I managed to install Mandrake 7.2. Never asked me to make a boot disk, so thats the first question How can I make a boot disk now?

Second, I chose GNOME as my desktop, with it at 1024x768 the left side of the screen is curved, I changed it to 800x600 and its not curved anymore--just a little bit of the left side is black. Is this a problem?

Thirdly, Mandrake didn't detect my NIC, how do I get it to detect so I can set up and little home LAN and access the internet?

And one more (sorry for all the questions), when my comp boots up now, it looks for a cd-boot, failure, then GRUB OS loader pops up (which I never had the option of choosing when installing btw). If I choose windows, the win boot.ini loads up and lets me select b/n my win2k/win98. Is there a way for me to get rid of the GRUB part now and just have the boot.ini include Linux in it? I read a good website at little white dog, but the installation they went thru on there didn't look the same for me so I never had a chance to make a boot disk.

Many thousands of apologies for all these dumb newbie questions--just a very excited new Linux user! :D :D :cool: :p

[ifred]

I'll answer the easy ones.

1. To make a rudimentary boot disk all you have to do is copy your vmlinuz kernel image to a floppy. The vmlinuz file is either in your root directory (type in cd / and see if you find a file called vmlinuz) or it might be in your /boot directory (type in cd /boot and see if you find a file called vmlinuz). Once you find the kenel image insert a formatted floppy into the floppy drive and type dd if=<location of vmlinuz file> of=/dev/fd0 (eg. dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0). Once everything is done you should be able to boot directly into Linux using your new boot disk. Keep in mind, however, that this is not the same as a LILO bootdisk which gives you more options at boot time; for making one of those I would suggest reading the bootdisk HOW-TO at: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/index.html

2. For the display problems you could also try manualy adjusting your monitor settings. The blackness on the edge may just indicate that your screen is not centered.

3. The NIC is a tricky problem. You will probably have to add add a line in your /etc/modules.conf file that says something like:
alias eth0 <nic module name> io=<nic i/o setting> irq=<nic irq setting>
(eg. alias eth0 tulip io=0x400 irq=12)

You can check Windows for the i/o and irq settings and the Ethernet HOW-TO will help you figure out what module you need to load try it at: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html

4. I'm not too sure about the editing the Windows boot.ini file but in order to stop GRUB from loading go to a DOS command prompt and type: fdisk /mbr
This will restore your master boot record and cause your computer to boot in the same manner it did before you installed Mandrake (make sure your boot disk works before you do this).

Sorry I could not be more specific but I hope at least some of these points help.

[rick420]

Thanks for the response.

First-It could just be the centering, but it is centered fine in win98/2k. Also, at 1024x768 the screen gets curved.

Second--about the boot floppy. I was under the impression I had to find a file called "linux.bin" and copy that to the root of my win drive and edit the boot.ini file to include this. Sorry about not understanding your instructions, I've just never used Linux before. And I'm using a GNOME desktop (is that what Linux calls it?). Is there a way to just copy it from the GUI?

Third--I have a LINKSYS LNE100TX NIC. I bought that specifically b/c it said compatible w/ Linux on the box and even came w/ Turbo Linux. Windows uses IRQ 11 and i/o EC00-ECFF. I connect to the internet thru a little 2 comp home LAN w/ a cable modem and a LINKSYS router. I think I'll have no problem configuring my network once it detects a NIC.

And one last question: How do I get my networked printer (its connected to my other computer which I share) to work?

Thanks a whole bunch for any info you can give me :)

[ifred]

Second--about the boot floppy. I was under the impression I had to find a file called "linux.bin" and copy that to the root of my win drive and edit the boot.ini file to include this.

This is not required for making the boot floppy in the manner I described.

Sorry about not understanding your instructions, I've just never used Linux before. And I'm using a GNOME desktop (is that what Linux calls it?). Is there a way to just copy it from the GUI?

Yep, GNOME desktop. Anyway, you might be able to use gmc (the GNOME file manager) to copy the kernel image to the floppy but because you are copying an image file it is probably safer to type dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0 at a command prompt (click on the monitor with the foot on your panel to get a terminal with a command line).

Sorry, I've exhausted my knowledge on NICS here. Perhaps a post in the networking forum here would prove useful.

About the printer, I'm too cheap to get one of my own so I'm useless when it comes to setting them up in linux. Good luck.