Several Problems - Slack 12

[rabbit]

1: Menu text is HUGE!  I can't figure out how to reduce it.
2: I can't get my scrollwheel to work.  The click works, but not the scrolling, and ZAxisMapping "4 5" didn't work...

And finally, the biggest problem ever:
Slackware won't detect /dev/sdc1, which is where my backups are.  I can mount my USB drive fine, but not my internalish one (it's a swap drive, and my DVD-ROM drive which goes in the space works fine).  I'm running hald, and Gentoo detected it fine (but Gentoo pissed me off so I'm on Slack now).

I'm fairly sure I'll be able to resolve the scrollwheel given enough time, but right now I really need my backups and stuff.

[iago]

1. Menu? I don't see a menu. You'll have to be more specific.

2. Run xorgconfig (/usr/X11R6/bin/xorgconfig) -- you can set up your video, and it also looks after your keyboard and mouse and stuff. Make sure you back up /etc/X11/xorg.conf first, just inc ase

Unnumbered problem: what's the filesystem? Does dmesg mention the drive? I don't know what I can say about that one, you'd have more luck at linuxquestions.org, I've had quite a good experience with them.

[rabbit]

It's NTFS, and I was trying to use ntfs-3g (it worked on my usb drive), but I couldn't even get Slack to acknowledge that it existed.

Anyway, on a much more uberserious note: After a quick kernel panic and reinstall, I can no longer connect to my network.  I've tried what I can, which is basically limited to modprobe tg3 and restarting dhcpcd...but with no luck.

[iago]

Well, if the filesystem is unrecognized, you'll still see the drive, you just won't be able to mount it. So I can tell you that the drive isn't being found. Why, I couldn't say. Are you sure it got labeled as sdc, and not sda, sdb, uba, ubb, etc?

For the network. try setting a static ip:
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 <ip> netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast <ip, last octet .255>
/sbin/route add default gw <gateway>

For example:
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.o broadcast 192.168.1.255
/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.1.1

Then try pinging by ip: ping 4.2.2.1

That'll tell you if it's a DNS problem (if that works and pinging google.com doesn't)

Good luck!

[rabbit]

Yes, it's very much a DNS problem.

[edit]
Fixed, I had to add nameserver 192.168.2.1 (my router) to resolv.conf for some reason.  I'm not sure why, since sometimes the network has worked right out of install...

[rabbit]

As for the big text:

Look how giant it is!  But the rendered text is fine, as is the title-bar text.  And the menu text size is big in everything :\

[iago]

That big text is strange, I have no idea!

Maybe it's a font thing? Try installing all packages in slackware/x? (on cd1, /mnt/cdrom/slackware/x I think)

That might be a linuxquestions.org question, though...

[nslay]

Thats a font problem.  It probably indicates that X wasn't installed properly.

[rabbit]

The most recent install I just gave up and did full minus KDE.  I'm using the DVD too...Anyway, I'm going to try again on the weekend.  I had to install Windows so I could do my lab tonight (in-class lab) and I didn't have time to try to fix my computer.

[nslay]

The most recent install I just gave up and did full minus KDE.  I'm using the DVD too...Anyway, I'm going to try again on the weekend.  I had to install Windows so I could do my lab tonight (in-class lab) and I didn't have time to try to fix my computer.

In all honesty...wait until spring break or the end of the semester to do this.
FreeBSD 7 is on the verge of release...but I doubt I will update my working systems until I have the time to afford potential problems.

Aside, if you want to use Linux on a daily basis with no dependence on Windows.  I recommend you start with something like Gentoo.   I make this recommendation because Gentoo teaches you a lot about how Linux is packaged and how it works from the ground up (Gentoo is like building a car).  I'm not sure if Slack is nearly as verbose or manual as Gentoo.  I learned Unix this way with FreeBSD...though getting comfy with these systems will be painful and take time.  Knowing how these things work will improve your user experience on Unix...mostly because you know what the hell is going on, and when things break, you know where they broke.

[iago]

Slackware has very little in the way of package-management. For most Slackware stuff, you just download/compile the source. So it's actually one step back from Gentoo, since you don't even have a tool to automate that.

There is a binary-package installer in Slackware (installpkg), but it only has the common stuff, not a lot of obscure stuff.

[rabbit]

I've used Slack before, and I like it.

What I didn't like about Gentoo was that it would eat up all my CPU power to do trivial things, like compile something or move files (4GHz of power should not be used to move 10 gigs of music).  Additionally, portage sucks at calculating dependencies.  For whatever reason, it couldn't understand that I had glib installed, even though I installed glib SEVERAL times.

[Ergot]

Probably something with the USE flags. Ughh those were annoying. IMO, Gentoo is great if you have time to mess with that stuff; it's a long, tedious process but probably worth it in the long run.

[iago]

Probably something with the USE flags. Ughh those were annoying. IMO, Gentoo is great if you have time to mess with that stuff; it's a long, tedious process but probably worth it in the long run.

Much like Slackware

[nslay]

I've used Slack before, and I like it.

What I didn't like about Gentoo was that it would eat up all my CPU power to do trivial things, like compile something or move files (4GHz of power should not be used to move 10 gigs of music).  Additionally, portage sucks at calculating dependencies.  For whatever reason, it couldn't understand that I had glib installed, even though I installed glib SEVERAL times.

Remember, portage has ebuilds...it can install different versions of software altogether.  As for glib, there are multiple versions of glib...it likely wanted to use a specific version for a package you wanted to install.
It sounds like you misconfigured your kernel too...otherwise it'd be using DMA to move those files and not the processor (PIO).

My only dislike of portage over FreeBSD ports is that portage requires you to know and set USE flags for package/compile options...you likely don't know these flags ahead of time (unless you install equery).  FreeBSD ports flashes a nice curses menu with all the options.