Hello. I'm a hopeless newbie. I have SuSE 8.2 Personal. The system was updated less than 24 hours ago. My floortop has two USB orifices in its front. I've just stuck a cheapo "V-TEC V-Drive USB Flash Drive" http://www.v-tec.com.tw/ memory card into one of them. I heard a jolly beeping sound. Er, now what? YaSTCC's "hardware" tab has nothing about "USB", "removable media", "other memory devices", etc. etc. YaST2's "Hardware Information" probe reaches "14%" and "USB" and thereupon either hangs or stops to think for an extraordinarily long time. Hitting "Abort" does nothing, so I hit Crtl-Alt-Esc (I'm making a lot of use of this key combination these days). http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/usb_devices.html "Setting Up USB Support and USB Devices" is only about older versions of SuSE. The maker of the memory card says it's Linux compatible (whatever that means, if anything) and offers a PDF of instructions that don't mention Linux. I thought I could at least play a CD on this machine. But now, although I'm not aware of having made any changes to the system, KsCD refuses to load and I can't even play CDs while I enjoy spending thirty minutes attempting to do things that took mere seconds in MS-DOS. Ah well. . . . Oh, hello, hitting Ctrl-Alt-Esc after a second abortive attempt at a hardware probe brings up ProcessTable -- sometimes it does this, usually it doesn't; I've no idea why it works differently at different times -- which tells me that seven processes of KsCD are running. I kill the lot. (But afterwards, KsCD still won't load.)
It's a laugh a minute here. I can't even mount a floppy, let alone a USB card. (There's no error message; but nothing happens.) Attempting to format a floppy brings the message "/dev/fd0u1440: Device or resource busy". Well, at least I can use this floortop for websurfing and email.
On Sunday 22 June 2003 08:39, Peter Evans wrote:
Hello. I'm a hopeless newbie.
I have SuSE 8.2 Personal. The system was updated less than 24 hours ago. My floortop has two USB orifices in its front. I've just stuck a cheapo "V-TEC V-Drive USB Flash Drive" http://www.v-tec.com.tw/ memory card into one of them. I heard a jolly beeping sound. Er, now what?
OK, if you press ctrl-alt-F10, you'll see a text screen with some messages on it. (You can press alt-F7 to get back you your desktop.) Can you switch to that screen, plug in the flash drive, and tell us what the messages are? Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg
NB: I'm a clueless newbie.
OK, if you press ctrl-alt-F10, you'll see a text screen with some messages on it.
So I can. Wow!
(You can press alt-F7 to get back you your desktop.) Can you switch to that screen, plug in the flash drive, and tell us what the messages are?
All very reassuring: it decided that SCSI device sda1 was there. Sho' 'nuff, Alt-F7 got me to the desktop and I could then mount, use, and unmount the device. It's working. (I'll give thanks or pay penance by providing freedb.org with the details of at least one more Latvian CD.) I don't know what went wrong yesterday: I don't think that an icon appeared for sda1. On the other hand, yesterday was so full of SuSEgnUlinuxKDE frustrations that I was becoming slightly deranged. Is there a name for the condition the system's in after I've pressed Ctrl-Alt-F10? (Is it perhaps in something-or-other "mode"?) If I know what it's called, I can attempt to read a bit about it.
NB: I'm a clueless newbie. Emboldened by my successful use of a USB memory stick, I pressed Ctrl-Alt-F10 and popped a PD disc into the PD-cum-CD-ROM drive of my inscrutable SuSE 8.2 system. (PD is a now-obsolete medium for which drives were made by Matsushita/Panasonic but almost nobody else; it is to a CD-ROM what a DVD-RAM disc is to a DVD-ROM.) Nothing happened on the screen: no error messages (e.g. to tell me that this appeared to be a defective CD-ROM), nothing. (However, the drive made a convincing buzzing sound and the "occupied" diode came on, so I don't think there's a hardware failure.) http://plaza13.mbn.or.jp/~ooken/linux/lf1000.html has an explanation of how, three years ago, the writer got his Panasonic SCSI PD drive to run under an unspecified version of Linux (his other pages are explicitly about TurboLinux). While the PD drive I have installed now is IDE, I do also have a SCSI drive I could install again, and (somewhere!) a rather nifty Adaptec bus-mastering PCI SCSI card. This page is in Japanese, a language I happen to be able to read. I could attempt to figure it all out -- but I'm wondering whether perhaps I've again overlooked something very obvious, or anyway whether twenty-first-century SuSE has a method that's easier than (or anyway different from) that of twentieth-century TurboLinux. Actually if it all seems difficult I'll probably give it a miss. I'd hate to put lots of effort into getting the PD drive working properly, only to see it die of old age. And the prices of DVD-RAM drives are sinking -- perhaps because they're almost as unpopular as PD.
On Monday 23 June 2003 08:33, Peter Evans wrote:
NB: I'm a clueless newbie.
Emboldened by my successful use of a USB memory stick, I pressed Ctrl-Alt-F10 and popped a PD disc into the PD-cum-CD-ROM drive of my inscrutable SuSE 8.2 system.
(PD is a now-obsolete medium for which drives were made by Matsushita/Panasonic but almost nobody else; it is to a CD-ROM what a DVD-RAM disc is to a DVD-ROM.)
OK, never heard of it but... It's a writable medium then? presumably you aonly want to read from it at this stage..
Nothing happened on the screen: no error messages (e.g. to tell me that this appeared to be a defective CD-ROM), nothing. (However, the drive made a convincing buzzing sound and the "occupied" diode came on, so I don't think there's a hardware failure.)
I wouldn't expect any messages to occur when a disc is inserted.
http://plaza13.mbn.or.jp/~ooken/linux/lf1000.html has an explanation of how, three years ago, the writer got his Panasonic SCSI PD drive to run under an unspecified version of Linux (his other pages are explicitly about TurboLinux). While the PD drive I have installed now is IDE, I do also have a SCSI drive I could install again, and (somewhere!) a rather nifty Adaptec bus-mastering PCI SCSI card.
This page is in Japanese, a language I happen to be able to read. I could attempt to figure it all out -- but I'm wondering whether perhaps I've again overlooked something very obvious, or anyway whether twenty-first-century SuSE has a method that's easier than (or anyway different from) that of twentieth-century TurboLinux.
Have you tried mounting it manually? try: mount -t auto /dev/hdX /mnt with X replaced with a,b,c, or d according to where the drive is. If it fails complaining about filesystem type, then try vfat instead of auto (like in the japanese page)
Actually if it all seems difficult I'll probably give it a miss. I'd hate to put lots of effort into getting the PD drive working properly, only to see it die of old age.
But you (we) could learn so much...
And the prices of DVD-RAM drives are sinking -- perhaps because they're almost as unpopular as PD.
Perhaps DVD+RW would be a better choice - more versatile, easier to set up... Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg
In response to my request for info on PD discs, Dylan suggests that I investigate for myself (following various tips). I'll do that. Trouble is, I'm still at the "drooling idiot" level in Linux Acquisition; if I started to attempt to get this drive working "by myself", it would most assuredly mean firing off a load of stupid questions to this mailing list, and that would be tiresome for everybody. So I think I'll leave the matter for now, and return to it when I've advanced to the "grinning idiot" stage.
On Monday 23 June 2003 07:59, Peter Evans wrote:
NB: I'm a clueless newbie.
OK, if you press ctrl-alt-F10, you'll see a text screen with some messages on it.
So I can. Wow!
(You can press alt-F7 to get back you your desktop.) Can you switch to that screen, plug in the flash drive, and tell us what the messages are?
All very reassuring: it decided that SCSI device sda1 was there. Sho' 'nuff, Alt-F7 got me to the desktop and I could then mount, use, and unmount the device. It's working. (I'll give thanks or pay penance by providing freedb.org with the details of at least one more Latvian CD.)
Just remember to unmount before pulling it out, or data-loss can occur.
I don't know what went wrong yesterday: I don't think that an icon appeared for sda1.
In the 'Behaviour' part of the desktop settings you can configure whether KDE shows these icons or not.
On the other hand, yesterday was so full of SuSEgnUlinuxKDE frustrations that I was becoming slightly deranged.
Is there a name for the condition the system's in after I've pressed Ctrl-Alt-F10? (Is it perhaps in something-or-other "mode"?) If I know what it's called, I can attempt to read a bit about it.
It's one of the 'consoles'. F1-F6 will each give you a text console to use, F7 is the graphical desktop, F10 is the message log. You need to use ctrl-alt-Fx to get from KDE to any other, but only alt-Fx to switch from a text console. HTH Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg
Peter, It's easier to help with problems if you can ask about one thing per mail - hence I've split my answers up... On Sunday 22 June 2003 08:39, Peter Evans wrote: <SNIP>
I thought I could at least play a CD on this machine. But now, although I'm not aware of having made any changes to the system, KsCD refuses to load and I can't even play CDs while I enjoy spending thirty minutes attempting to do things that took mere seconds in MS-DOS. Ah well. . . .
If you open a terminal window, you can run KsCD from the command line and see any errors it produces. The command is simply "kscd" - minus quotes, of course. Can you tell us what the errors are? Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg
Dylan:
It's easier to help with problems if you can ask about one thing per mail
Yes, mea culpa. It seems that my SuSEgnUlinuxKDE system was most put out yesterday by my insertion of a USB memory stick into one of my computer's (I'd thought) hungry orifices. When it was time to go home I couldn't even turn off the computer: it hung at the point described as "Stopping hotplugging devices" and eventually I just had to pull the plug on the drat thing. Today the CD player is working again, and I even scored one ABP (attoBrowniePoint) by providing freedb.org with the track listing of a (Latvian) CD. And now (but in a different thread) to reinvestigate that USB memory stick. . . .
On Sunday 22 June 2003 3:39 am, Peter Evans wrote:
Hello. I'm a hopeless newbie.
I have SuSE 8.2 Personal. The system was updated less than 24 hours ago. My floortop has two USB orifices in its front. I've just stuck a cheapo "V-TEC V-Drive USB Flash Drive" http://www.v-tec.com.tw/ memory card into one of them. I heard a jolly beeping sound. Er, now what?
Many USB devices follow what is called "USB mass storage" devices. Your device may or may not be one of them. USB MS devices are (usually) detected by the 'hotplug' part of the kernel and are defined to the system as scsi devices. (/dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 etc) Additionally, you may or may not find an icon placed on your desktop after hearing the beep. The icon would allow you to mount the device. Usually there would be a mount point also added to /media as in /media/sda1 for example. Assuming you can start from scratch on this and get back to the point where the beep is heard, you want to look in /var/log/messages and see what messages were generated when you plugged in the device. It may tell you that it detected the device, say something about mass storage modules, and tell you the device address. It may also say that "no modules were found for the device" (or something similar to that) and then you're out of luck. I would go back to the vendor and ask for more information. I have a Addonics reader here that is 'linux compatible' but it took me beating up the vendor to get the specific information as to how to get it into the system. But it can be done.
YaSTCC's "hardware" tab has nothing about "USB", "removable media", "other memory devices", etc. etc.
YaST2's "Hardware Information" probe reaches "14%" and "USB" and thereupon either hangs or stops to think for an extraordinarily long time. Hitting "Abort" does nothing, so I hit Crtl-Alt-Esc (I'm making a lot of use of this key combination these days).
http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/usb_devices.html "Setting Up USB Support and USB Devices" is only about older versions of SuSE.
The maker of the memory card says it's Linux compatible (whatever that means, if anything) and offers a PDF of instructions that don't mention Linux.
I thought I could at least play a CD on this machine. But now, although I'm not aware of having made any changes to the system, KsCD refuses to load and I can't even play CDs while I enjoy spending thirty minutes attempting to do things that took mere seconds in MS-DOS. Ah well. . . .
Oh, hello, hitting Ctrl-Alt-Esc after a second abortive attempt at a hardware probe brings up ProcessTable -- sometimes it does this, usually it doesn't; I've no idea why it works differently at different times -- which tells me that seven processes of KsCD are running. I kill the lot. (But afterwards, KsCD still won't load.)
-- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 06/22/03 10:18 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "The fish that escaped is the big one."
participants (3)
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Bruce Marshall
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Dylan
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Peter Evans