More RH9 GRIPES

[Kooldino]

So if you've seen me post in here recently, you'll see all the fun I've been having w/ RH9. Anyway, i figured I'd start a thread and list my gripes about it here. Feel free to join in the fun.

*RPM - 'nuff said.

*"Lock Screen" function often does not work.

*mounting floppy drives - you can pull the floppy out, set it ablaze in the woods and roast marshamallow(man) on it, yet the files on the disk will still appear if you do an "ls /mnt/floppy".

If you're looking at the contents of disk1 in the file manager and you pull out the disk and replace it with a completely different disk (disk2), and hit "refresh", it does jack. It shows the files that were in the current directory of the previous disk. To view the NEW disk, you must unmount the floppy, remount it, and reopen it. Ugh.

What's even better is this:

chmod 777 myfile
cp myfile /mnt/floppy (yes, the floppy is mounted)

ls /mnt/floppy

"myfile " is outputted to your screen.

Take the disk and put it in a windows machine.
a:\>dir
File Not Found

GRRR.

then there's always the off chance that you can't unmount the floppy drive. Yay.

*vncserver will not run from the "services" applet, even if it says it does. Works fine if you type "vncserver" at the command line though.

*the "route" command is overly complicated. It's much easier to do on the command line on a Windows or a Sun box. The syntax in RH9 is just mad.

Like me.

[leech]

I agree with RPM's sucking. RPM, as Mallowman pointed out in the other thread, has a tendancy to screw up and lock any chance of you being able to fix the database (I know I've done it a few times on various versions of RH.)

I don't usually use the Lock screen fucntion, but it seems to work all the time here. Which Desktop Environment are you using? (I'm guessing Gnome 2.2 if you're using RH9) I'm using the Debian Gnome2.2 and Lock Screen works great. xscreensaver version is 4.10 (which is what Lock Screen boots...)

This is because, unlike CD-ROMS, the Floppy drive has a physical mechanism that linux can't really lock. (Because of course if you try to pull out a mounted CD, and that directory is in use, it'll hold that little bugger tighter than a fat woman holding a donut.)

Haven't tried changing floppies and refreshing the file manager (mainly because I really don't have multiple floppies to test with, I never use them any more )

Just tried the same thing here.

cp myfile /floppy
ls /floppy
What do you know, it copied it just fine. Not sure what problem you were having there. Debian creates /floppy, /cdromX, /windows as it's mount directories, rather than throwing everything into /mnt.

As far as mounting/unmounting floppies, I use the gnome applet (go to utility and select drive mounter) It works quite well.

For the rest... I haven't really looked for a services GUI under debian, though one of these days I should go through what I have running and optimize it.

Someone tell me if I'm wrong in this, but generally don't you want to use iptables rather than just route?

Leech

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by leech
I don't usually use the Lock screen fucntion, but it seems to work all the time here. Which Desktop Environment are you using? (I'm guessing Gnome 2.2 if you're using RH9) I'm using the Debian Gnome2.2 and Lock Screen works great. xscreensaver version is 4.10 (which is what Lock Screen boots...)

I had a feeling "Lock Screen" just calls your screensaver. I'm running KDE 3.1. My screensavers randomly stopped working as well.

This is because, unlike CD-ROMS, the Floppy drive has a physical mechanism that linux can't really lock. (Because of course if you try to pull out a mounted CD, and that directory is in use, it'll hold that little bugger tighter than a fat woman holding a donut.)

Haven't tried changing floppies and refreshing the file manager (mainly because I really don't have multiple floppies to test with, I never use them any more )

Just tried the same thing here.

cp myfile /floppy
ls /floppy
What do you know, it copied it just fine. Not sure what problem you were having there.

Oh, sorry...I screwed that up. It sees the files there, but a Windows box won't see it.

Debian creates /floppy, /cdromX, /windows as it's mount directories, rather than throwing everything into /mnt.

Cool.

As far as mounting/unmounting floppies, I use the gnome applet (go to utility and select drive mounter) It works quite well.

???

[mallowman]

About the floppy stuff, linux mounts every thing in async mode, even floppy disks. You have to unmount the disk to get the stuff stored in the buffers actually written to the disk. You should always unmount anything before ejecting it, otherwise you run the risk of corrupting something. If it could the kernel would lock the floppy in while it is mounted so you can't eject it without unmounting, but PC hardware doesn't let you do that. About the closest you can get to windows' behavior is to use an automounter that mounts the floppy whenever you try to access it and then unmounts it after a certain amount of inactivity.

I think in RedHat, if you right click on your desktop there is a Disks submenu on the popup menu. There should be an entry for floppy. If you select that, it moutns the floppy and puts an icon on your desktop. When you are finished, you can right click the icon and pick unmount.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by mallowman
About the closest you can get to windows' behavior is to use an automounter that mounts the floppy whenever you try to access it and then unmounts it after a certain amount of inactivity.

Now we're talkin'.

I think in RedHat, if you right click on your desktop there is a Disks submenu on the popup menu. There should be an entry for floppy. If you select that, it moutns the floppy and puts an icon on your desktop. When you are finished, you can right click the icon and pick unmount.

Yep, that's what I do. It's kind of a pain tho. An "unmount and remount floppy" option would be nice.

[mallowman]

If you want to try an automounter setup, here is a quick and dirty initial configuration. Note that I haven't tested this since I don't have a box to test it on right now, but it should work, or at least be close to working.

The first thing to do is to edit the /etc/auto.master file. This tells the automounter which directories it gets to control, and what config file to use for that directory. Try something like this:

/mnt        /etc/auto.mnt  --timeout=60

This sets up the automounter to handle /mnt based on the configuration in /etc/auto.mnt and sets the timeout so a minute after the last access it will unmount. This also means that you cannot manually mount things into /mnt, but that should be a problem since you usually won't make too many ad-hoc mounts.

Then you need to set up the /etc/auto.mnt file to tell it what directories will automount under the /mnt directory. Something like this should work fairly well.

cdrom    -fstype=iso9660,ro    :/dev/cdrom
floppy    -fstype=auto    :/dev/floppy
# wildcard entry, if you try to access /mnt/foo it will try to mount /dev/foo to that directory
*    -fstype=auto   :/dev/&

If you have other devices you want to configure follow the same format. For the second column you put any options that you might use for the -o option to mount or in the fourth column of /etc/fstab. The special one is -fstype, which is handled by the automounter to say what type of filesystem to try to use.

Then you have to enable the automount service. To start it do 'service autofs start' . To make it start on bootup use ntsysv or redhat-config-services.

[TnT]

My biggest problem with RPMs is that it tells you what dependencies there are, but gives no help at getting them.

[leech]

Originally posted by TnT
My biggest problem with RPMs is that it tells you what dependencies there are, but gives no help at getting them.

Exactly! With apt, it just downloads them, if they're not already installed. You just have to say Y if apt-get install xxx needs more than just package xxx.

The Drive mounter applet for gnome.... If you're running Gnome, right click on the panel, select Add to Panel -> Utility -> Disk Mounter. By default it has the Floppy icon. You can also use it for pretty much any other removeable Medium.

Leech

P.S. Not sure if there is something like that for KDE, I don't really use KDE.

[TnT]

GkrellM has functions for device mounting. Has a lot of nifty other features too.

Specifically for KDE I've heard about Karamba which, I think, has some functions you'll find useful.
gDesklets is the equiv for Gnome.

[Kooldino]

mallow & leech - I'll try those sometime soon and let you know what I think!