Linux 101

Please don't send me off to RTFM... I'm doing it as we speak, I just need a quick and dirty answer.

Just installed Knoppix. Problems:

- can't see CD-ROM, NTFS partition (ancient memory suggests I should 'mount' or something?)
- can't see modem (need drivers? how to proceed?)
- no sound (need drivers? how to proceed?)

Thanks so much!

Alex
Saturday, December 13, 2003

About CD and partitions... are they mounted?

Eric DeBois
Saturday, December 13, 2003

I.... don't know. Where do I look?

Alex
Saturday, December 13, 2003

get to a prompt, then type
more /etc/fstab

that will print your file system table to the screen, you should see all your drives in there, if they are, but not either they are not set to automount or something else is awry.

Also Knoppix (Linux in general) only mounts ntfs read only.  You can force read write, but you risk corrupting your ntfs partition which I don't think you want.

Mike
Saturday, December 13, 2003

what's a prompt?

grandma
Saturday, December 13, 2003

To see what devices are on your system:
cat /proc/devices
lspci

Either one works, I kinda like lspci.

From there you might have to hunt down specific drivers.  You might check the ALSA page: http://www.alsa-project.org/

As for modems, you may be up the creek.  But check http://linmodems.org/ for drivers.

Of all the stuff that won't be supported, the modem is most likely.  Most other hardware, you should be OK.

On the mouning of cdrom, try:

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

You might make sure that the auto mounter daemon is running for convenience (not something I use myself, so sorry, I won't be much help there).

On mounting NTFS, its likely not compiled into the kernel or as a module.  The NTFS driver, as its a reversed engineered work, may never work.  But, you can apparently mount NTFS readonly by comiling the module (look for /usr/src/linux*) in your kernel, and then you can try mounting NTFS - at least RO.

hoser
Saturday, December 13, 2003

RTFM!

RP
Saturday, December 13, 2003

get to a prompt, then type
more /etc/fstab
---

Actually he probably wants to read /etc/mtab.  fstab shows what *should* mount, mtab shows what is mounted.  As a side note, 'mount' without any arguments will show what is mounted as well.  It essentially runs 'cat /etc/mtab'.

Lastly, fstab and mtab are short files, 'cat' will work as well as 'more'.  Hehe, also 'less' is 'more' than 'more'.  At least less is a more usable version of more.

Also, if the filesystem you want to mount is in /etc/fstab, you can just type 'mount /mnt/cdrom' (assuming /mnt/cdrom is listed in fstab) and it will look it up and mount it correctly.

heh, after writing all of that, I wonder why they call unix hard to use? ;-)

Andrew Hurst
Saturday, December 13, 2003

wow! thanks a lot.

actually I can fire up the console so i'm taking it from here :)

RTFM.

Alex
Saturday, December 13, 2003

Yes there typically are 63 ways to do any given task in Unix.  The more I use it, the more I agree with the Unix Hater's Handbook.

Mike
Sunday, December 14, 2003

> Yes there typically are 63 ways to do any given task in Unix. 

Unlike windows XP of course.  Lets see how do I move that file? 

start->run c:\
ctl c
ctl v

ctl ins
shift paste

start->run cmd
c:\>copy
c:\>del


c:\>move

c:\>xcopy
c:\>rmdir /s

file->open
ctl c
ctl v

etc, etc....

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Monday, December 15, 2003

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