[ltp] Mandrake 8.2 vs. TP 600e

[Richard Neill]

Hi Steven,


Steven Crane wrote:
> Well, guys can't say as I'm very impressed so far.

Sorry to hear about that. It *ought* to work!

> 
> The installation manual seems to be a lot less than clear and several of the promised 
> options were simply never offered. 

You did choose an "expert" install didn't you? The standard install 
makes many of its own guesses, some right and some not so. The expert 
one is much better - you have full control, but it still fills in the 
default values so that if you don't understand an option, you can go 
with the default.


Doubling back, as the manual says you are free to
> do - to check the the lm-sensors package was not included in the install - created 
> absolute chaos and I eventually had to resort back to the Redhat 6.1 installation disk to 
> restore the Linux partitions.
> 
> The second installation seemingly worked fine for a couple of hours and then stopped 
> recognising the root password. Pressumably I did something stupid, but I really have no 
> idea what.
> 
> Third installation seems to be fine-ish. At least it is still working a couple of days down 
> the line.

Erk! Sounds like you had a hard time of it indeed.
(You mention RH6.1 - just to check that you actually installed Mandrake 
8.2 in the end?)

> 
> Not unexpectedly it has failed to correctly detect the Sound, Modem and Network.
> 
> More surprisingly I can't find the HOWTOs on any of the CDs. Must be here 
> somewhere but I'm not having much luck turning them up.

They should have been installed automatically if you included the 
documentation options. To add them, use rpmdrake
(under the menu of Configuration -> Packaging -> Software Manager), and 
this will allow you to search for them. (Search for "howto").

> 
> Installing and running "sndconfig" does get a response out of the speakers. The original 
> WAV (?) playback is pretty garbled but the second MIDI sequence sounds perfect. The 
> old IBM RH 6.0 instructions settings worked and they do include a warning that the 
> sndconfig sample is garbled even when sound otherwise functions perfectly. Downside 
> is that although, sndconfig obviously has access to the correct CS42xx driver, 
> Mandrake itself is still attempting to use the CS46xx driver. It seems that I may well 
> have all the pieces but they are yet to be correctly assembled.

Mandrake has quite a lot of its own tools. These are called drakconf and
are in Configuration -> Other -> Mandrake Control Center
This may be of some help to you.


> 
> The internal modem was always likely to be a bit of a problem, although one of the 
> main reasons for choosing the 600e is the high number of reports that it WILL work in 
> Linux... eventually.

Which one is it? If it's the Lucent, you can get it from www.heby.de 
(already packaged up for Mandrake). Also, note that Mandrake uses devfs.
A problem I found (with the Lucent) was that the symlink from
  /dev/modem -> /dev/tts/LT0 was not being created.  This upsets kppp

> 
> The Network will hopefully prove to be fairly simple. The card is a Netgear FA411 which 
> comes packaged with Redhat 6.1 drivers, but seems to be about the only manufacturer 
> NOT listed within Mandrake. If all else fails, I can replaced the PCMCIA card relatively 
> cheaply, but again indications are that it will work when I've had a bit more time to play 
> with it. Not had time to study the Linux documentation that came with the card, so I 
> may have the necessary answers to hand.

It is there - google found it here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/mandrake/Mandrake/current/i586/Mandrake/mdkinst/etc/pcmcia/config
So it should work eventually :-)


Good luck!

Richard

> 
> Okay, back to the books.
> 
> Any pointers, especially from anyone running a combination of Mandrake & 600e?
> 
> ---Steven
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- The Linux ThinkPad mailing list -----
> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> http://www.bm-soft.com/~bm/tp_mailing.html
> 



----- The Linux ThinkPad mailing list -----
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://www.bm-soft.com/~bm/tp_mailing.html