Yo, very quick Mandrake help here

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-15 10:26pm

XMMS crashed on me and I did "top" in the konsole to look for the xmms task but I can't find it. Any other method I can use to kill this program?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-10-15 11:43pm

Just type "killall xmms" to kill xmms. Anyway, htop is much better since it allows you to scroll down.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-16 12:56am

Thanks.

And one more thing:

http://img96.exs.cx/img96/6934/bootloader1.jpg

Could anyone tell me what those individual Linux boot options mean and how they're different?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-10-16 10:36am

Linux- No framebuffer (no high resolution console)
Linux-fb- Gives you high resolution console (greater than 80x25)
Linux-i686-up- I think it's a kernel optimized for Pentium IIs and up, and supports more than 4GB of RAM.
Linux-P3-SMP- Supports multiple CPUs
Linux-263- The "new" 2.6.3 kernel (the newest is 2.6.

Failsafe- Runs in single user mode, boots to console only w/o GUI and loads minimum amount of daemons.
Windows- Self explanatory
Windows2- Strange why you have two- running Win98 as well?
Floppy- Uses boot sector from floppy.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-10-16 06:41pm

Linux-P3-SMP- Supports multiple CPUs
-- Yeah, this shouldn't be necessary unless you have a workstation computer
Windows2- Strange why you have two- running Win98 as well?
-- It's probably because Mandrake, when it detects more than one FAT32/NTFS partition, will create a second bootloader entry for that second partition. I usually delete the entry.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-16 07:16pm

Would multiple CPUs actually be like dual processors or just hyperthreading CPUs?

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-10-16 08:46pm

Shinova wrote:Would multiple CPUs actually be like dual processors or just hyperthreading CPUs?

Typically, multiple CPUs means multiple processors, i.e. dual or more. But I think that to use HyperThreading under Linux, you need SMP support, so...

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-17 12:39am

Thanks, I was getting confused as to which one was the one I should actually be using and all that.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-17 02:41am

Actually one more thing: what's the difference between the two smp options? Linux-smp and Linux-p3-smp-etcetc?

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-10-17 03:31am

Shinova wrote:Actually one more thing: what's the difference between the two smp options? Linux-smp and Linux-p3-smp-etcetc?

I'd take a wild guess that linux-p3-smp -* is a SMP kernel built for Pentium IIIs with SMP support. linux-smp is just a generic SMP kernel and would probably run on a Pentium I SMP box if you could find one (Mandrake compiles their programs for i586, not i386 like RedHat).

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-19 05:21am

Another thing:

When linux boots up it takes forever detecting hde and hdf.

hda through hdd are okay cause I'm actually using those, but I've got nothing on hde and hdf and linux takes a long time on each and returns no response for each.

Is there a way I can just disable Linux attempting to detect hde and hdf altogether?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-10-25 11:18pm

*hopeful bumbpage*

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-10-26 01:38pm

Somebody else may be able to answer this better, but AFAIK there's no way to disable that without recompiling your kernel, and that would disable detection of all hard drives anyway. (The kernel has the IDE driver built into it instead of loaded as a module -- it needs to be that way for the system to boot)

So I don't think there is any way to stop detection of certain hard drives without physically unplugging them.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-10-26 02:01pm

You should be able to manually set them to 'none' in the BIOS on your motherboard or IDE controller, it's a little less work than physically unplugging them, but you still have to manually toggle their presence.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-10-26 02:29pm

I don't even think that would work, since once the BIOS has done its boot magic the Linux kernel takes over hardware management, basically ignoring the BIOS.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2004-10-26 06:33pm

Crayz9000 wrote:Somebody else may be able to answer this better, but AFAIK there's no way to disable that without recompiling your kernel, and that would disable detection of all hard drives anyway. (The kernel has the IDE driver built into it instead of loaded as a module -- it needs to be that way for the system to boot)

So I don't think there is any way to stop detection of certain hard drives without physically unplugging them.

Most distro kernels use an initrd, which allows everything to be built as a module.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-10-27 02:03am

True, I forgot about initrd. But I still don't think you can selective load the ide module for each drive; you load it, the IDE controllers are detected, and that's the end of it.