[techtalk] odd problems

[franzoni at edisons.it]

On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Emily Cartier wrote:

> However, there are other goals, and thus other interesting problems.
> Machine B has 3 accounts set up (root, my personal account and an
> account for my sister to play games on). Root can run Gnome and Nethack
> for Gnome. I can run Gnome and Nethack for Gnome. My sister the nethack
> addict cannot run Gnome or Nethack for Gnome. 

Have you tried adding your sister's account to the games group? This could
do it, even if different distributions treat groups differently, and I
don't know Mandrake (I use debian :-)

> Machine B is also refusing to let my personal account access to the
> CDROM drive, at least under Gnome. This behavior started after the last
> reboot. 

The whole thing is quite strange...! 
Ok, some things to check:
* Check if there is the "user" option in the cdrom line in /etc/fstab (it
should)
* Check - if you have shadow passwords, i.e. if there is an /etc/shadow
file - that the entries there match those in /etc/passwd (sometimes
password problems are because non-shadow-aware utils are used on a
shadow-password system, but that's a remote possibility)

I would suggest to try to solve one problem at a time, because it's
possible that they aren't connected. So, * n.1 is obviously for the cdrom
problem, * n.2 is not :-)

> Machine A has some problems too. The most pressing is printing. It's
> hooked up to two printers, an Epson LQ-570+ which prints beautifully no
> matter which printer port it is hooked up to, and a Hewlett Packard
> Deskjet 820 CSe which won't print no matter which printer port it is
> hooked up to. In fact, Linux does not appear to see the HP at all, and
> it seems to be refusing to see more than one printer port at a time.

mh... first of all, you have to make the system see the two parallel
ports, passing the options to the parport_pc driver:

modprobe parport_pc io=0x3bc,0x378,0x278 irq=none,7,auto 

for example is for 3 parallel ports at io addresses of 0x3bc, 0x378 and
0x278 with no irq, irq 7 and irq autoprobed. You could have to change
these values. If you don't have parport_pc as a module, you can pass the
same options in lilo.conf (with the append keyword). See
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/parport.txt for more info :-)

When you're sure that the system sees both ports, configure the two
printers using (? insert Mandrake printer configuration tool here) and try
again. It is possible that the HP printer didn't work because it was
configured on the second port, which wasn't seen.

> I have yet to make any progress on Machine A's modem or ethernet card. I
> think I need to track down a manual for the modem. As for the ethernet
> card, I probably could use a manual, some sleep, and some time to mess
> around with it with the NET-3-HOWTO and Running Linux by my side.
> Machine B's ethernet card isn't working either. Some machine downtime to
> write down relevant bits and pieces off the card, plus some more of the
> same stuff as for the other card should fix it tho.

Which kind of ethernet cards are they? You'll probably find interesting
the documentation in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking, some of the
most common eth card drivers need some options to be passed them on the
modprobe line or on the lilo prompt (just like the parport module above). 

> Emily, who apologizes for the length and lack of organization of this
> post

Eugenia, who apologizes for the lack of organization of this reply ;-)




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