Topic awaiting preservation: Buggy Linux...

I've finally managed to install Fedora on my system *whew that sure took time* but I've got a problem... whenever I start Linux I hear this continuous noise from the speakers much like the sound you hear from the TV when the cable goes out! And whenever I try to play a sound like a CD or something the noise increases, I can hear the song or whatever faintly but that noise is bothering me! It's quite loud.

Also how can I access a FAT32 partition via Fedora?? I know the /usr/ folder is my Linux drive (it is right?) but what about the rest? Me new to Linux... figures!

mkdir /mnt/name_of_you_drive
mount /dev/hda[a-z][0-9] /mnt/name_of_you_drive should do the fat thing. read up on linux partition handling to learn what to pass in a-z and 0-9.

I have no idea on the noise though.

the sound can be becuase Fedora incorrectly detected your soundcard and installed an invalid driver

as for the drive mounting... don't you need to specify a filesystem type? like VFAT?


Justice 4 Pat Richard

(Edited by Skaarjj on 06-09-2005 10:37)

Try playing with audio levels, sometimes PCM in particular can screw up the sound quality if set too high.

Skaarj: the majority of the time, it will guess the FS type correctly.
If it doesn't, yeah, you'll need the '-t' flag:

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/name_of_drive

(is it 'vfat' by the way?)

For what to put for the hda1 thing, your best bet is hda[partition number] (eg. hda1 for partition 1) or sda[partition number].

#fedora on freenode might be able to help you with sound, but they were less than useless for me :\. Things like that are one of the reasons I don't use linux anything like as much as I might do any more. Only for my web server (sarge)

Wrayal

to mount the cdrom you should just have to do

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

If it works and there's no cd in the cdrom drive you might see:
mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: No medium found

as for the sound, depends on what window manager you are using but in KDE, might check KMix to make sure the output and input are on. Other than that, make sure the sound card is plugged into the cdrom drive.

To access your FAT32 partitions check to see if you have the directory /win_c or /win_d. That is what Slackware's default is for the windows partitions. As your Linux boots up, you should see in the log there where the partitions are loading. Could be hda5,hda6 or something like that. Then you can issue the mount command that everyone suggested.

Later,

C:\

Well the CDROM's not giving me any problem I've been using it all day and storing some Linux based articles via it to my /usr/ folder. How do I know which partition is the Linux partition? Is it hda0? I only have one partition for Linux (ext3) which has Linux and everything else and one swap drive. Also I have two other Windows Partitions one with windows and the other with a couple of files.

As for the sound I noticed that as long as I was using GNOME or X it didn't bother me but as soon as I switched to KDE it started and now it's on everywhere, be it GNOME or X!

Ok I fixed the sound issue thank God!! Now I got another problem... how do I play mp3 files?!?! I try to play them and an error appears saying that the format isn't supported... I'm sure I installed a plugin... then again maybe not?? How do I fix that??

see if you have xmms. If it's not in your menu, you may not have it. From a terminal you should be able to type xmms and it "should" run if you have it. I use Slackware so i am not sure that it is the same with Fedora.

If not, then XMMS should play mp3's fine. There is another player that resio suggested but I can't remember what the name of it was. It looked cool but I've always used XMMS. It can use winamp skins and looks just like winamp.

As for the partitions........i've always had a hard time with that. Slackware detected them and mounted them for me but mine are on hda5 and hda7.

Later,

C:\

As far as media players go, I've heard good things about amarok...

If you want to find the partitions on your disk, run cfdisk in terminal. just be careful not to edit anything ;p

(If you have muptiple HDs, you will need to know which device they are, eg /dev/hdb, and then do "cfdisk /dev/hdb")

Wrayal

I've got xmms, I made sure I had it because a friend of mine said that it was good for playing music. I also have rythmbox but niether of them play any mp3's I'm stuck with a few cda's I have and that's all I can play

quote:

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wrayal said:

If you have muptiple HDs, you will need to know which device they are, eg /dev/hdb, and then do "cfdisk /dev/hdb"

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I only have one hard disk i.e. hda but that hd has three partitions one with windows installed one with a couple of files (FAT32) and one with linux (EXT3). I'll try that cfdisk thingy perhaps that'll work.

One more question. I don't think my modem will work in Linux, so I can't use Fedora's up2date feature. In such a case I'm confused, how can I install software manually in Linux? Is it the same as Windows? You know start the installer give the orders and just sit back (not likely)? And if it is then where should I install them; to the /usr/ directory?? And of course what will the installers be!?!? Executables or configuration files or stuff like that?? I'm new and confused what should I do!!!!



(Edited by templar654 on 06-11-2005 08:13)

In Fedora you ideally want the programs you want to install to be packaged as RPMs, the RedHat Package Manager, then it's just a case of entering

rpm -ivh /path/to/your/package.rpm


Justice 4 Pat Richard

not sure but you may need the ogg-vorbis plugin. That may help with the sound. I think you can get it from the XMMS website.

run cfdisk and it should give you your partitions listed. then it's just a matter of mounting them.

mount /dev/hda7 /mnt/win_c

or something like that should let you see the windows partitions. I have mine set to win_c and win_d for the partitions.

Later,

C:\

Problem!! Niether cfdisk nor linuxconf are recognized in the terminal?!?! I enter cfdisk in the terminal and I get this below:

quote:

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bash: cfdisk: command not found

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Even though I'm doing all this as the superuser, the same goes when I enter linuxconf!

Then this came to mind. Hey why not ask the Lab Administrator of my college! He's good at Linux! So I do and he tells me to edit the /etc/fstab file and add the partitions I'd like i.e.

quote:

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/dev/hda1 /dev/hda1 vfat auto,unmask = 0 0 0
/dev/hda5 /dev/hda5 vfat auto,unmask = 0 0 0

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Where, hda1 being my windows partition and hda5 being my seperate partition. And this worked!! BUT! Another problem has arisen!! I type the following in the terminal to mount the partitions and I get this:

quote:

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[root@localhost /]#mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/winD
Cannot create link /etc/mtab~
Perhaps there is a stale lock file?

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I do the same for hda1 and get the same thing. Hmmm... weird especially when I can access the partitions!! Oh well I think it's just some minor error or something and turn off the PC then when I turn it on later I get this in the fedora console:

quote:

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wrong fs type... ...or too many file systems could not mount /dev/hda5/

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I wasn't fast enough to note down what was written in between

Same goes for hda1... did I do something bad?? Fedora seems to be working fine? I can't access the partitions now?? Although I could then...

As for mp3 I'm downloading several plugins as I type for XMMS. Lets see what happens. Oh one more thing I logged in as root and tried to use XMMS, that message came up; I noted it down:

quote:

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Due to patent licensing, and conflicts between such patent licenses of application source code, MPEG - 1/2 audio layer 3 (mp3) support has been removed from this application by Red Hat Inc.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Do not show this dialog again.

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Does this mean I can't ever play an mp3 in Linux



(Edited by templar654 on 06-11-2005 15:23)

Okay I was half way through the download of the latest version of xmms (figured I should just download that, it's bound to have a plugin for mp3) when this came crawling into my head... why don't I just install a trusted player like Real or something else!! I was like "OH I am such an idiot!" so I downloaded the version of RealPlayer 10 for Linux and transfered it to my other system (that's running Linux) and installed it via the technique said on the download page. So now I'm listening to mp3's in Fedora! YIPEEEE!







Yet another problem solved from the backend of my mind! But another problem has come out how do I uninstall software?? The RealPlayer download was in .bin format I know how to get rid of rpm via an article I found but what about removing .bin? Or are they the same thing???



(Edited by templar654 on 06-11-2005 17:22)

for linux, a bin file is like an exe file.

To uninstall something, if you installed it by doing the:
./configure
make
make install

then you can go to the directory that you issued those command and do:
make uninstall

If it's just a bin file, most of those run without actually installing so you just remove the directory

quote:

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templar654 said:

Due to patent licensing, and conflicts between such patent licenses of application source code, MPEG - 1/2 audio layer 3 (mp3) support has been removed from this application by Red Hat Inc.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

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Never seen that before. But I don't run Red Hat either. If you get used to Linux, I would suggest moving over to Slackware. I've had no problems installing anything or getting anything to work with it.

Later,

C:\

It's not too difficult I hope *referring to Slackware*

get used to moving around in Linux for now and then think about switching.

There was a time when Slackware was thought to be almost impossible to get up and running but that's not the case now.

There's no nice pretty gui interface during install and it looks like those old DOS days. But don't worry. It's no big deal. Pretty much just keep hitting enter for the most part

If you have a way to get on the internet while installing (extra computer), then I can certainly help walk you though it via ICQ or something. I must have installed it about 20 times now

Not to say that they all went smooth

Later,

C:\

Hmmm I'll think about it. For now it's best I work my Linux skills in Fedora... damn win partitions...