Hello First of all I want to thank all your kind responses, it will help me a lot to start using Debian. I will write a single message with comments for all those who replied to me, to avoid flooding the list:
Wolodja: Now I know that not all of the DVDs are necessary. Respect the 'expert' mode installation, when booted the DVD #1 it showed only "Install" and "Graphic Install" (I have tried both of them), but at any moment saw the expert or advanced installation, it just ran itself without asking details. I will try the "Debian way" with most packages, and see if they work for my needs, but at least kernel and mysql I need them from sources, although will leave the original shiping package to avoid breaking dependencies with httpd, etc. Matthias: Thanks for your message, I have a 32bit system, so I guess it will not be problem the LILO, although by now I will keep GRUB while solving the most important parts that are urgent to get my debian box fully functional. Kumar: I've just shut down the graphical login by the gdm. Respect KDE, you mean that if I do "apt-get install kde" it will be fully installed, and kde-core if only require the basics? Respect MySQL, in Slackware I used to extract THE LIBRARIES from the package and leave them installed to let httpd and php work fine since they are compiled with such libs, and apart install MySQL at /usr/local from sources, setting up the PATH and MANPATH to them. About LILO, am gonna google it. Kelly: I have already done the graphic login deactivation. Respect KDE I don't understand what you mean with meta-packages, is it that there are different versions of the same package? if so, how can I choose one of them and know which ones are available? You mention ncurses, a moment ago I was trying to compile the latest kernel, since my current installation has no Qt tried "make menuconfig" and found there was no 'ncurses', tried to install it via 'apt-get' but it reports there was any 'ncurses' package available... does it come with the installation DVDs? or how can I specify it to search for something on internet? Thanks! Johannes: Believe me, I did not find an expert mode installation. I booted the disc #1 and it gave me only the text and graphic installation modes... I will boot with the dvd and check again, anyway have not installed/configured any package yet, so it may help to run the expert mode that is what I want. Hrishikesh: I did the gdm deactivation, but am unable to to the rest since it asks for the kernel with sources, but can't compile the kernel since some packages/programs are missing and still don't find how to install them. I will run the kde installation and in the mean time (I guess it will take a while) will read the documentation and man pages for most of the utilities that you all recommended me to use. Now the new "problems" and doubts... - Some packages/programs are missing, and 'apt-get' does not find them, like qt (tried qt, qt3 and qt4), ncurses, ncurses-devel, etc. but apt says they are not available. Where or how can I get a list of the full available packages and its names? Apparently they are only retrieved from the installation DVDs but not from an internet repository... I have never used 'apt' but as far as I know I should configure a list of repositories(?). - Derived from the previous situation, tried to compile qt3 to build a kernel (make xconfig), but there are missing "X11/???.h" files... do I have to 'apt-get install x11-devel" or something like? Don't know which package install, I mean the name of the package, it should be x11-devel but apt does not find such package :P - My Debian box has ssh (openssh as I could see), but did not find a 'sshd' or similar... it has no server installed since am unable to connect to default port 22... do I require a separate package and which one? and how can I change the default port? Until now, I've always used the latest Tectia free SSH version (3.x, since 4.x it is commercial) and configured it by hand running "sshd -p #port"... - I've just acquired a seagate freeagent usb drive, it was formatted to ext3 but the filesystem got corrupted with my slackware... at first there were simple differences between original and copied files at freeagent drive, but after days the entire filesystem got corrupted. I reformatted it to ntfs with windows and executed many test tools: FULL FORMAT (not quick), Seagate Manager (test drive tool), TuneUP disk doctor (standard and thorough analysis) and the drive appears to be fine... even tried to reformat with 'fsck.ext3 -c -c' to ensure read and write test before creating the filesystem and it does not report any problem, but when I copy files to the usb and try a 'diff', it reports differences... that is one of the multiple reasons that made me try Debian... My question here is, if there is some special partitioning, formatting or disk geometry, now with Debian of course, and if it is possible to leave it in NTFS for rw... so I can use it with both Debian and Windows... I have tried ext2fsd in read-only mode but don't know what could be more dangerous, to access ntfs from Debian or to access ext3 from windows with ext2fsd r/w... Most forums tell about a problem with the power saving spin-down and a solution using a scsi allow_restart option that was already activated (did not need to set it by hand), but the problem was data corruption... note that the drive is new (less than 2 weeks) and apparently it passes all tests under windows... my bet is that the problem was related to slackware and it will work fine with debian, but is there any special treatment for such kind of drives? Again, thanks all of you for your time and patience. Take care, Miguel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
