on 27 Oct 99, Brad wrote...inter alia, > >> If there is nothing sinister arising out of the above, I propose to apply >> patches 2 to 7 and then on to 12. > >Go to 13, it fixes some problems with 12. In particular, i wouldn't bother >to compile 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12, just do the patching. > I haven't yet done any patching - after spending some time reading and trying to understand things, I was suddenly confronted with two problems I'd been unaware of:-
a. my Internet connection could not be made. b. I could not mount my floppy as previously. Additionally, when I tried to implement Sound, I couldn't. I've spent five days trying to sort these out myself - it's the best way to learn so far as I'm concerned. I thought I was getting a little knowledge of things - that now seems over-optimistic. re a. I normally use SuSE (or RedHat) for Internet connection - mail folders etc are on one or the other. The connection on Debian was OK with 2.0.36, and I did use Lynx for text browsing. I've been waiting to get hold of Pine and perhaps Netscape before moving things over. Wvdial sometimes connects starts pppd and immediately says 'ppp daemon has died (exit code = 1)'. On another occasion when I know the lines were busy it picked this up and said 'try again later' At other times it produces lines of 'machine code', ( I guess talking to my ISP's machine) then aborts. Kern.log says the kernel is not compiled for ppp (I've not used any modules). All the files seem OK to me, /peers/provider, resolv.conf, /chatscripts/ provider, /hosts, /host.conf and /pap-secrets (although this has 'one' immediately above my username * password, which I haven't noticed before). /ppp/options contains only 'lock' and 'debug', whilst /peers/ wvdial is OK as is the wvdial configuration. My limited experience indicates, therefore, it must have to do with the kernel - but what? I enabled 'networking support' which seems the only relevant option. I've re-run 'make config' (good experience for a new- comer) and found nothing helpful. The other distributions connect without difficulty, so presumably it is not hardware. re b. I did think I understood how to mount /floppy. Obviously wrong! Is there a file somewhere to list kernel enabled filesystems? If I edit /etc/fstab to include '/dev/fd0 /floppy ext2 noauto,user 0 0', mount /floppy gives me 'wrong fs, bad option, bad superblock or too many mounted fs'. If I change 'ext2' to 'auto', I get 'you must specify the fs type'. The latter according to what I've read should work and make for a short command-line. In the kernel I enabled all the fs I'm likely to need. What stupidity assails me? I don't regret the time spent trying for answers - merely my inability to get them. When I do get ppp working and go for patching, are there any apart from 8 to 12 incl that do not need to be compiled (between 2 and 13 that is?). If you do have the time to help I shall be grateful. Regards, John.
