[plug] To: Bill Kenworthy

[James Elliott]

On the 30/04/02 Bill Kenworthy wrote:


> James, for the cdrom problem you need to post the contents of /etc/fstab
> first off.  Also have you tried to mount it under root, not just user?
> Mandrake only allows some mounts as root out-of-the-box, but does give
> an error message.  Also, check dmesg.  Last point, is it a cdwriter?

Thanks for your reply and advice Bill.  As I am having a few problems with
Red Hat 7.2 at the moment - to be more honest I should say with my lack of
knowledge of Red Hat 7.2 and Linux - I am actually relying on Windows 98 and
Outlook Express for my mail as I am not entirely confident that I am doing
it right in KDE Mail, Mozilla, or Netscape, and because I have further
complicated things by installing a D-Link DP-602 Internet Gateway which
works fine with my Windows machines but not with Linux

So, with regard to /etc/fstab ... if it is small enough I will copy it to a
floppy disk and then e-mail it to you via the list.  If that doesn't work I
will go back to my dial up configuration, which does work, and send it to
you from Linux.

With regard to the CD-ROM's .... on the main KDE GUI screen there are two
icons:  CD-ROM and CD-ROM1  I have an ordinary (new, ATAPI) CD-ROM as well
as a CDRW writer.

I am sure I have tried mounting the CD-ROM as root and not jut under my
normal username, but I will check that and try again.

In KDE, to mount the floppy disk you simply click on the icon and it mounts
itself, and then later, before removing the disk you click on the icon again
to unmount it .... Aren't the CD-ROM icons meant to work the same?  I am
pretty sure they did in Red Hat 7.1

I don't know anything about Mandrake - except that it exists.

> As for Murdoch (and any university), tutors get paid per hour for
> teaching the courses - I currently run ~3 hours for every hour I get
> paid for - not a good incentive to put in any extra!  A number of tutors
> (and others) from Murdoch are on this list and have a quite large range
> of experience!  Comments on tutor motivation and competency aside,
> problems such as you are having are better directed to the list here as
> there is usually a wider range of experience available for the
> "difficult" problems.

Hey, Bill, I didn't mean to imply for one moment that Tutors and Unit
Coordinators at Murdoch give anything less than 150% ... I am amazed at the
amount of material my current tutor returns in response to questions, and
his attitude is clearly "what can I do to help".  I Only have one unit to go
after this one, and up until now every tutor has been terrific and I am sure
we externals couldn't get by without their help. What I meant to say was
that while I would direct a question straight out of the lecture notes or
tutorials to my Tutor, it is not fair to ask him to spend hours either on
the phone or by e-mail, trying to help me set up my printer.  I have enough
of that in my own business - people who buy a computer form someone else (in
Perth or Esperance) and then ring me in the middle of dinner or while I am
trying to study because they have some urgent problem trying to install a
game for their kids, and want me to spend an hour or so on the phone guiding
them through the process (at no cost!)  :o)  I am sorry if it came out the
wrong way, but what I meant to say was "I have a Uni Tutor for course
related queries, and I was hoping that the PLUG list might be a second
source of help when setting up hardware or for non-course related matters."
Also, as I have decided that I would like to continue to build on the Linux
foundation provided by the Uni unit I am doing, and change completely over
to Linux, PLUG could well be an ongoing source of expertise to consult from
time to time.

I have one computer (AMD K6 233 MHz CPU with 256 Mb SDRAM) with 2x 20GB Hard
Disks.  One HDD (hda) has Windows 98 installed on it and the other (hdc) has
Linux Red Hat 7.2 installed.  I am using GRUB as the boot loader (I was
using Lilo when I had RH 7.1 installed).  The CD-writer is on the same
ribbon cable as the first or Windows HDD (hda).  The CD-writer is the slave
on EIDE1 (hdb? - I guess).  The ordinary CD-ROM is slave device in EIDE2
cable, ie on the same cable as the Linux HDD.

I will send /etc/fstab/ when I re-boot

Kind regards,

James Elliott

********************************************************
Original from Bill Kenworthy:

> On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 00:18, James Elliott wrote:
> > Hi Everybody
> >
> > I have just joined your e-mail list.  I am a mature age, external
student of
>
> > It is reasonably hard work, learning Linux from zero to a reasonable
level
> > of competency, as Universities demand, in one semester (about 15 weeks),
so
> > if anyone is prepared to answer the occasional question, I would be much
> > obliged.  We are assigned Tutors, but anything even slightly off the
course
> > material, and they are not interested - like why my CD-ROM won't mount
under
> > Red Hat 7.2 when it worked fine under 7.1?
> >
> > Anyway ,,, some of your e-mails are filtering through already and I look
> > forward to participating in this forum.
> >
> > Kind regards,
>
>
>
>