Questions The Books Don't Answer

[dwainsworld]

Hi All, Hope your Christmas was good.

I have a few questions that I just can't answer from the books I have read and the tutorials that I have followed, so I am wondering if anyone can help me please?


1. OTHER DRIVES.....How do I access other drives e.g. the floppy drive, in Linux?

2. AUTOMATICALLY EXECUTING PROGRAMS AT STARTUP.......I would love to be able to make my firewall to be executed at startup??

3. SWITCHING GUI's......I would like to try out KDE, rather than the GNOME GUI that my redhat 9 has as standard. How do I swap GUI's under Redhat 9?

I will have more Silly Questions later once I have gotten over these ones - and hope that others might post their SQ's so I can learn from them as well.

Regards,

Dwain.

[trickster]

Hi,

1. It depends on the drive. If you are using KDE/Gnome, you can usually right-click on your desktop, and Select Create new Floppy or Create new CD/DVD drive (I think that is what it says.) Then,you go to the properties of that icon, and select /dev/fd0 for the floppy, and /dev/cdrom for the cd drive.

Here is a more complete FAQ.:

http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/lnag_drives.html

2. Open /etc/rc.local on a text editor, and add the command there. It will be the last thing loaded at startup.

3. I think that, if you go to System Tools>More Tools (or something to that effect) There is a Desktop Switching Tool.

[dishawjp]

To do these things from the command line:

1. OTHER DRIVES.....How do I access other drives e.g. the floppy drive, in Linux?

mount /dev/fd0

Then to access the drive:

cd /mnt/floppy

Always umount the drive before removing the disk with the command:

umount /mnt/floppy

I would love to be able to make my firewall to be executed at startup??

As root, type the command "ntsysv" without the quotes and make sure that there is a "*" in front of iptables or ipchains or both, for RH9. The *'s can be toggled using the spacebar. This little tool is handy for starting/stopping services with a graphical program that can be run from the command line.

3. SWITCHING GUI's......I would like to try out KDE, rather than the GNOME GUI that my redhat 9 has as standard. How do I swap GUI's under Redhat 9?

Assuming you don't boot to the GUI (inittab runlevel 3), from the command line, try "switchdesk kde" to switch from gnome to kde, use "switchdesk gnome" to go the other way. If you boot directly to the GUI (inittab runlevel 5), I think that you have to search the menu to find the desktop switching tool.

I'm not much of a GUI person myself :-)

HTH,

Jim Dishaw

[countach44]

for switching desktops, you could just logout of Gnome, get to a CL and type startkde
also your removable media may mount to /media rather than /mnt

[Kernel_Killer]

You are all making it too hard on him with the Desktop Switching. ;D

Log out of GNOME, on the login screen, click "session" on the bottom panel to change the Desktop Environment. If it's not there you can put it there.

My PET that really works for RedHat 9 and Fedora, will show you how to add environments.

[Schotty]

[quote author=Master Copy link=board=1;threadid=8356;start=0#msg75836 date=1072462749]
You are all making it too hard on him with the Desktop Switching. ;D

Log out of GNOME, on the login screen, click "session" on the bottom panel to change the Desktop Environment. If it's not there you can put it there.

My PET that really works for RedHat 9 and Fedora, will show you how to add environments.
[/quote]

Master Copy is proving yet once again he is the most perfect of the two of us. I am just perfect, he is most perfect.

Are we related to Mr. Perfect, Master Copy?

[dwainsworld]

Hi All, I have been working on mounting drives now. I understand the structure and am trying to mount a floppy - here's the details -

[root@c211-30-181-239 root]# mount dev/fd0/ mnt/floppy
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
[root@c211-30-181-239 root]#

I read that this command should automatically specify the filesystem type.

mount -f auto dev/fd0/ mnt/floppy

but it returns the same error.

From the Gnome GUI if I right click the desktop >disks, it highlights the "disks" button and puts an asterisk in it - any ideas why this is - I have managed to format a floppy using the format tool in the GUI accessories, but can't see it anywhere (I am thinking its already mounted if i have formatted it) - so where do I look to find the disk ??


HHHEEELLLPPPPPPP

PS I can change desktop environments now.........

if you want to mount a vfat (windows) floppy:

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

for linux formatted disks I think -t ext2 is the norm.

just a guess though, haven't used a floppy in years.

[dwainsworld]

LOVECHILD - Thanks - Finally got it - Woo Hoo!!

Now I have to move on and try the CD ROM........

[dwainsworld]

Hey - for all those who are following my stumbling through learning linux - I just added a drive mount applet to the Gnome desktop and modified /etc/fstab to make it work - ALL BY MYSELF !!!!!!

Now I am stumbling at CD mounting 101 with the following -

[root@c211-30-181-239 root]# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
mount: special device /dev/cdrom does not exist

Pointers anyone ?????????