Slackware instalation issues

Slackware instalation issues

[erik burggraaf]

Hi list.  I'm finally getting set up with a linux system here, after wining
about it for 2 or 3 years.  It's been fun, but I've got some questions and
consearns not dealt with by the instalation documentation I've read.  Some
are speakup related, others are symply linux related.
First of all, I'm having trouble detecting devices here.  For example,
although my ardic transport is located on com1, I need to issue the command
speakup_ser=0 whenever I load into ramdisk, or the thing won't fly.  How can
I ensure that when I get all this straightened around, my synth will auto
detect?
Next, I keep losing my partition mounts and cd rom drives.  According to the
documentation, they should stay put,but they haven't.  One possible reason
is that my swap is hda2 and my EX2 linux partition is hda1.  I'm off to
switch that around now.  Could there be any other reasons why they don't
stick?
Finally, I've been through all the packages and so on available on the
slackware cd image.  Is it worth installing gnome or x-windows?  They look
nifty, especially gnome, but how speech friendly are they really?
Thanks for any help and advice.
Erik


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Thomas Stivers]

On 10/16/02  3:18 PM -0400, erik burggraaf wrote:
> Hi list.  I'm finally getting set up with a linux system here, after wining
> about it for 2 or 3 years.  It's been fun, but I've got some questions and
> consearns not dealt with by the instalation documentation I've read.  Some
> are speakup related, others are symply linux related.
> First of all, I'm having trouble detecting devices here.  For example,
> although my ardic transport is located on com1, I need to issue the command
> speakup_ser=0 whenever I load into ramdisk, or the thing won't fly.  How can
> I ensure that when I get all this straightened around, my synth will auto
> detect?

You may have to put an append line in your lilo.conf, something like
append = "speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0"
or if you have a cd writer 
append = "hdc=ide-scsi speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0"

> Next, I keep losing my partition mounts and cd rom drives.  According to the
> documentation, they should stay put,but they haven't.  One possible reason
> is that my swap is hda2 and my EX2 linux partition is hda1.  I'm off to
> switch that around now.  Could there be any other reasons why they don't
> stick?

I really don't think it matters if your root partition is hda1 or hda2.
Do you have the partitions you want to be mounted automatically at boot
listed in /etc/fstab? Maybe I'm not understanding you though if devices
are somehow unmounting at random.

> Finally, I've been through all the packages and so on available on the
> slackware cd image.  Is it worth installing gnome or x-windows?  They look
> nifty, especially gnome, but how speech friendly are they really?

The gnome in slackware 8.1 won't work as yet with gnopernicus. The people
in the know say that gnome 2.0 and gnopernicus should have a useable
version released by the end of this year. So you might as well save hd
space and skip x altogether for now.

> Thanks for any help and advice.

Just remember that man is your friend and don't hesitate to ask
questions.

> Erik
> 
> 
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
Thomas Stivers
e-mail: stivers_t@ev1.net
http://stivers-home.dyndns.org

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[erik burggraaf]

Thanks man,  I'm all set.  My box comes up talking now.  Grin.  I think part
of the problem may have been that I opted not to install lilo because the
installer warned that it might dammage partitions.  I'm not sure why this
seemed like a big deel, I've only partitioned the thing 7 or 8 times in the
last few days, but it was late, and I'd just spent hours going through the
new be instalation with verbose prompting.  *holds head*
Well, I'm off to hunt in the docs for some things, but I do have one thing.
It takes for friggin ever to get this box running.  I booted, heard the bios
beep and finding the floppy, then a few seconds of hd whir, then... nada. I
went and set up a cd in the burner, came back, and was half way through a
panic Email when it woke up and started rattling off info about system bios,
and which pages were reserved for what.  Any idea what it could be doing?
Is this normal?  I'm running a p-150 mhz processer, 48 mb ram with a 90 meg
swap partition and a 1.2 g boot partition.  I've done a basic install of
lilo excepting most of the defaults, except of course for passing the
parameters speakup_synth=txprt and speakup_ser=0, and I chose to install to
the mbr instead of a bootable linux partition, because obviously I'm not
going to be running anything but linux for now.
If you could re-assure me on this,  I'd be greatful.
Thanks.
Erik
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Stivers" <stivers_t@ev1.net>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: Slackware instalation issues


> On 10/16/02  3:18 PM -0400, erik burggraaf wrote:
> > Hi list.  I'm finally getting set up with a linux system here, after
wining
> > about it for 2 or 3 years.  It's been fun, but I've got some questions
and
> > consearns not dealt with by the instalation documentation I've read.
Some
> > are speakup related, others are symply linux related.
> > First of all, I'm having trouble detecting devices here.  For example,
> > although my ardic transport is located on com1, I need to issue the
command
> > speakup_ser=0 whenever I load into ramdisk, or the thing won't fly.  How
can
> > I ensure that when I get all this straightened around, my synth will
auto
> > detect?
>
> You may have to put an append line in your lilo.conf, something like
> append = "speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0"
> or if you have a cd writer
> append = "hdc=ide-scsi speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0"
>
> > Next, I keep losing my partition mounts and cd rom drives.  According to
the
> > documentation, they should stay put,but they haven't.  One possible
reason
> > is that my swap is hda2 and my EX2 linux partition is hda1.  I'm off to
> > switch that around now.  Could there be any other reasons why they don't
> > stick?
>
> I really don't think it matters if your root partition is hda1 or hda2.
> Do you have the partitions you want to be mounted automatically at boot
> listed in /etc/fstab? Maybe I'm not understanding you though if devices
> are somehow unmounting at random.
>
> > Finally, I've been through all the packages and so on available on the
> > slackware cd image.  Is it worth installing gnome or x-windows?  They
look
> > nifty, especially gnome, but how speech friendly are they really?
>
> The gnome in slackware 8.1 won't work as yet with gnopernicus. The people
> in the know say that gnome 2.0 and gnopernicus should have a useable
> version released by the end of this year. So you might as well save hd
> space and skip x altogether for now.
>
> > Thanks for any help and advice.
>
> Just remember that man is your friend and don't hesitate to ask
> questions.
>
> > Erik
> >
> >
> > ---
> > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> > Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
> --
> Thomas Stivers
> e-mail: stivers_t@ev1.net
> http://stivers-home.dyndns.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Adam Myrow]

How long did you set the delay in Lilo?

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[erik burggraaf]

I didn't get an option for delay.  I used the safe install, nut the custome
one.  Should that have made a difference?  If so, can I go back and reset it
without having to reconfigure the entire thing.
Thanks,
Erik
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Myrow" <amyrow@midsouth.rr.com>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 8:53 PM
Subject: Re: Slackware instalation issues


> How long did you set the delay in Lilo?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Adam Myrow]

The safe install (or automatic) uses a very long delay.  The trick without
going through the whole thing again is to use a text editor and edit
/etc/lilo.conf.  There will be a line saying "delay=1000" or some number.
The delay is in tenths of seconds apparently, as when I had selected a 5
second delay, it put in delay 50.  Anyway, if you just want to boot
without any pause at all, you could use 0 as the delay value.  I suggest a
short pause in case you have to type something.  For example, hold down
the shift key during the pause and type "Linux single" and you would boot
in single user mode which is designed for maintenance because it doesn't
run most of the startup scripts and leaves networking off.  Even more
extreme is "Linux emergency" which basically drops you at a shell prompt
without running anything but the bare bones.  So, a 5 second delay is
about right for me.  By the way, after editing the configuration file, you
would type "lilo" to reinstall Lilo.  The other option is to just type
liloconfig and you would start over with the interactive Lilo setup.  Good
luck.

linux options, was: Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Gregory Nowak]

I knew about single, but I didn't know about emergency. 
Are there any others?

Greg


On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 09:14:41PM -0500, Adam Myrow wrote:
> The safe install (or automatic) uses a very long delay.  The trick without
> going through the whole thing again is to use a text editor and edit
> /etc/lilo.conf.  There will be a line saying "delay=1000" or some number.
> The delay is in tenths of seconds apparently, as when I had selected a 5
> second delay, it put in delay 50.  Anyway, if you just want to boot
> without any pause at all, you could use 0 as the delay value.  I suggest a
> short pause in case you have to type something.  For example, hold down
> the shift key during the pause and type "Linux single" and you would boot
> in single user mode which is designed for maintenance because it doesn't
> run most of the startup scripts and leaves networking off.  Even more
> extreme is "Linux emergency" which basically drops you at a shell prompt
> without running anything but the bare bones.  So, a 5 second delay is
> about right for me.  By the way, after editing the configuration file, you
> would type "lilo" to reinstall Lilo.  The other option is to just type
> liloconfig and you would start over with the interactive Lilo setup.  Good
> luck.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: linux options, was: Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Adam Myrow]

I think those are the only two.  Emergency and single are documented in
the man page for init.  Do a "man 8 init."  A lot of other interesting
options that can be passed to the kernel are in the bootparam man page.
It is "man 7 bootparam."  Actually, the 7 and 8 are probably not needed,
but I put them in for clarity.

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Christopher Moore]

Another possibility on the partitions is that you didn't save them to the
disk before exiting cfdisk.

Chris
-- 
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (88% of Full)

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Steve Holmes]

Another thing you can do to hear a basic lilo prompt is to include the
following line to your /etc/lilo.conf file (at the beginning):
serial = 0,9600n8
This will cause lilo to speak through your speech synth; obviously,
change the 0 to a 1 if your synth is on the second serial port instead
of the first.

I also have 'prompt' in my file and I use timeout = 150 for a 15
second timeout.

I get delay and timeout confused but for whatever reason, timeout and
prompt work together for me.

I never heard of those second parameters before (single and emergency)
that sounds interesting.

On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 09:14:41PM -0500, Adam Myrow wrote:
> The safe install (or automatic) uses a very long delay.  The trick without
> going through the whole thing again is to use a text editor and edit
> /etc/lilo.conf.  There will be a line saying "delay=1000" or some number.
> The delay is in tenths of seconds apparently, as when I had selected a 5
> second delay, it put in delay 50.  Anyway, if you just want to boot
> without any pause at all, you could use 0 as the delay value.  I suggest a
> short pause in case you have to type something.  For example, hold down
> the shift key during the pause and type "Linux single" and you would boot
> in single user mode which is designed for maintenance because it doesn't
> run most of the startup scripts and leaves networking off.  Even more
> extreme is "Linux emergency" which basically drops you at a shell prompt
> without running anything but the bare bones.  So, a 5 second delay is
> about right for me.  By the way, after editing the configuration file, you
> would type "lilo" to reinstall Lilo.  The other option is to just type
> liloconfig and you would start over with the interactive Lilo setup.  Good
> luck.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
   See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Jude DaShiell]

swap partitions need to be twice the memory capacity on your computer.
So if you have 128mb of memory your swap needs to be 256mb.  On the
installation though with slackware that's slower than was documented in
speakup_install.txt.



On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, erik burggraaf wrote:

> Thanks man,  I'm all set.  My box comes up talking now.  Grin.  I think part
> of the problem may have been that I opted not to install lilo because the
> installer warned that it might dammage partitions.  I'm not sure why this
> seemed like a big deel, I've only partitioned the thing 7 or 8 times in the
> last few days, but it was late, and I'd just spent hours going through the
> new be instalation with verbose prompting.  *holds head*
> Well, I'm off to hunt in the docs for some things, but I do have one thing.
> It takes for friggin ever to get this box running.  I booted, heard the bios
> beep and finding the floppy, then a few seconds of hd whir, then... nada. I
> went and set up a cd in the burner, came back, and was half way through a
> panic Email when it woke up and started rattling off info about system bios,
> and which pages were reserved for what.  Any idea what it could be doing?
> Is this normal?  I'm running a p-150 mhz processer, 48 mb ram with a 90 meg
> swap partition and a 1.2 g boot partition.  I've done a basic install of
> lilo excepting most of the defaults, except of course for passing the
> parameters speakup_synth=txprt and speakup_ser=0, and I chose to install to
> the mbr instead of a bootable linux partition, because obviously I'm not
> going to be running anything but linux for now.
> If you could re-assure me on this,  I'd be greatful.
> Thanks.
> Erik
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Thomas Stivers" <stivers_t@ev1.net>
> To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 3:59 PM
> Subject: Re: Slackware instalation issues
>
>
> > On 10/16/02  3:18 PM -0400, erik burggraaf wrote:
> > > Hi list.  I'm finally getting set up with a linux system here, after
> wining
> > > about it for 2 or 3 years.  It's been fun, but I've got some questions
> and
> > > consearns not dealt with by the instalation documentation I've read.
> Some
> > > are speakup related, others are symply linux related.
> > > First of all, I'm having trouble detecting devices here.  For example,
> > > although my ardic transport is located on com1, I need to issue the
> command
> > > speakup_ser=0 whenever I load into ramdisk, or the thing won't fly.  How
> can
> > > I ensure that when I get all this straightened around, my synth will
> auto
> > > detect?
> >
> > You may have to put an append line in your lilo.conf, something like
> > append = "speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0"
> > or if you have a cd writer
> > append = "hdc=ide-scsi speakup_synth=txprt speakup_ser=0"
> >
> > > Next, I keep losing my partition mounts and cd rom drives.  According to
> the
> > > documentation, they should stay put,but they haven't.  One possible
> reason
> > > is that my swap is hda2 and my EX2 linux partition is hda1.  I'm off to
> > > switch that around now.  Could there be any other reasons why they don't
> > > stick?
> >
> > I really don't think it matters if your root partition is hda1 or hda2.
> > Do you have the partitions you want to be mounted automatically at boot
> > listed in /etc/fstab? Maybe I'm not understanding you though if devices
> > are somehow unmounting at random.
> >
> > > Finally, I've been through all the packages and so on available on the
> > > slackware cd image.  Is it worth installing gnome or x-windows?  They
> look
> > > nifty, especially gnome, but how speech friendly are they really?
> >
> > The gnome in slackware 8.1 won't work as yet with gnopernicus. The people
> > in the know say that gnome 2.0 and gnopernicus should have a useable
> > version released by the end of this year. So you might as well save hd
> > space and skip x altogether for now.
> >
> > > Thanks for any help and advice.
> >
> > Just remember that man is your friend and don't hesitate to ask
> > questions.
> >
> > > Erik
> > >
> > >
> > > ---
> > > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> > > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> > > Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Speakup mailing list
> > > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Thomas Stivers
> > e-mail: stivers_t@ev1.net
> > http://stivers-home.dyndns.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

iptables

[Patrick Turnage]

Hi
 I have a few questions about iptables, nat and speakfreely..

I'm trying to get port forwarding to work for speak freely.
I was wondering if someone has written a iptables script that works good
for allowing a user on my home network with the address of 10.0.0.2 to use
speak freely through either a reflecter or a direct host connection.
My gateway is 10.0.0.1. 
I am doing the following command but it doesn't appear to work.
iptables -t nat -A PRERouting -p udp --dport 4074 -j DNAT --to 10.0.0.2:4074
Is there some other ports that I need to forward to make sure speak freely
is going towork, or am I completely off on the command I was using.. 
I actually have no idea what ports need to be forwarded either way to allow
speak freely to communicate through my nat setup. My kernel is 2.4.18.
thanks for any help
Patrick


-----
Patrick Turnage
E-mail: pturnage@tampabay.rr.com
AOL Instant Messenger: kg4dqk
Home Page:
http://www.access-connect.com

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Adam Myrow]

That stuff about swap being twice the RAM is oudated information from the
early days of BSD that somehow has survived as a sort of Urban legend in
Linux.  The reason for that rule was that early versions of BSD required
that you have the same amount of swap as RAM for the system to run at all
because when a program started, it geve it as much swap as RAM.  Linux and
most other modern operating systems treat swap like extra memory.  So if
you have 128M of swap plus 128M of RAM, it acts as though you have 256M of
memory and swaps only when main memory runs low.

Re: iptables

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.  I hard coded the IPS in my script but here it is
iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -p udp -d 24.214.40.161 --dport 4074:4076
-j DNAT
--to 192.168.1.2
iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -p udp -d 24.214.40.161 --dport 2074:2076
-j DNAT
--to 192.168.1.2
Once you do this, 192.168.1.2 is the only machine on my network that can
use the reflector.

          Kenny


On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 11:55:34PM -0400, Patrick Turnage wrote:
> Hi
>  I have a few questions about iptables, nat and speakfreely..
> 
> I'm trying to get port forwarding to work for speak freely.
> I was wondering if someone has written a iptables script that works good
> for allowing a user on my home network with the address of 10.0.0.2 to use
> speak freely through either a reflecter or a direct host connection.
> My gateway is 10.0.0.1. 
> I am doing the following command but it doesn't appear to work.
> iptables -t nat -A PRERouting -p udp --dport 4074 -j DNAT --to 10.0.0.2:4074
> Is there some other ports that I need to forward to make sure speak freely
> is going towork, or am I completely off on the command I was using.. 
> I actually have no idea what ports need to be forwarded either way to allow
> speak freely to communicate through my nat setup. My kernel is 2.4.18.
> thanks for any help
> Patrick
> 
> 
> -----
> Patrick Turnage
> E-mail: pturnage@tampabay.rr.com
> AOL Instant Messenger: kg4dqk
> Home Page:
> http://www.access-connect.com
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[erik burggraaf]

Well, I have 48 meg ram, and 96 meg swap.  According to this, this should
give me one kickass machine.  Smile.  btw, does anybody know where I could
pick up old hard drives on the cheep?  I realise this is probabley OT for
this list, but I want an extra 4 gig or something to use as data storage, so
I can use some of the audio programs, and maybe teach myself different kinds
of servers, http, ftp, print server and so on.
Thanks,
Erik
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Myrow" <amyrow@midsouth.rr.com>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: Slackware instalation issues


> That stuff about swap being twice the RAM is oudated information from the
> early days of BSD that somehow has survived as a sort of Urban legend in
> Linux.  The reason for that rule was that early versions of BSD required
> that you have the same amount of swap as RAM for the system to run at all
> because when a program started, it geve it as much swap as RAM.  Linux and
> most other modern operating systems treat swap like extra memory.  So if
> you have 128M of swap plus 128M of RAM, it acts as though you have 256M of
> memory and swaps only when main memory runs low.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.404 / Virus Database: 228 - Release Date: 15/10/2002

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Ralph W. Reid]

erik burggraaf staggered into view and mumbled:
>
>Well, I have 48 meg ram, and 96 meg swap.  According to this, this should
>give me one kickass machine.  Smile.  btw, does anybody know where I could
>pick up old hard drives on the cheep?  I realise this is probabley OT for
>this list, but I want an extra 4 gig or something to use as data storage, so
>I can use some of the audio programs, and maybe teach myself different kinds
>of servers, http, ftp, print server and so on.
>Thanks,
>Erik

I like dealing with
<a href="http://www.pcsurplusonline.com/">
this place.
</a>
When I placed an order there last January, I was able to complete the
transaction on line with lynx and a credit card--no java shcripts to
hack through or stumble over.  They have an email list which is sent
out about once per week which includes special discounts, sales, and
give-aways which is not annoying or offensive like so much of the
spam I have to deal with every day.  There are a few other computer
surplus places available on line, but this is the only place I
actually bought something from--I recommend checking them out.

-- 
Ralph.  N6BNO.  Wisdom comes from central processing, not from I/O.
rreid@sunset.net  http://personalweb.sunset.net/~rreid
Opinions herein are either mine or they are flame bait.
CIRCLE CIRCUMFERENCE = 2 * _pi * r

Re: Slackware instalation issues

[Jude DaShiell]

Try local thrift shops they get old computers and parts.