Linxux problems

I have just installed Red Hat Linux 7.0 (I know its out of date but I had it on CD and the laptop it is installed on is old) I have finally managed to get the PCMCIA network card working on it. I can ping my windows machines from Linux but windows cannot see my linux machine.

I know the network card is working because linux can see the other PCs.

When I use Lynx it says host cannot be resolved so the internet is not working on it. Does anybody know what the problem is likely to be? I know virtualy nothing about linux.

Thanks.

 

If you can't resolve host names, I'd firstly let look at the DNS settings on your Linux machine.

When you say that Linux can see other PCs but they cannot see it, what do you mean? are you trying to PING or login or map a drive?

 

Yep but do you know how you change the DNS settings? I can't find any programs for it so I am wondering if you have to do it via the consule.

 

Have a look at what's in /etc/resolv.conf (that's how it's spelled, no e on the end of resolv), that's where your nameserver info should be. You'll need to be root to edit it.

I would suggest installing a newer version btw, Red Hat 9 and above is an order of magnitude better than earlier versions when it comes to hardware support and ease of config. More recent Linux kernels have made a lot of improvements to USB support and the like too.

If you're just starting out with installing and configuring Linux, you might want to consider Mandrake. It's very good, very easy to install, and has lots of graphical config tools.

-- Ian

 

Will they work ok on a P233 with 64MB RAM though? The only reason I installed that is because I knew it worked well with my old Cyrix P333 system and Windows 98 was a joke.

 

On a machine of that spec I wouldn't bother with any modern graphical OS, to be honest. Linux or BSD in text mode (no X server or window manager) would be fine, but probably not the most user-friendly way to learn unix admin unless you have a book or two to help you out.

Having said that, it's worth a try. You probably won't get much joy running KDE or Gnome (they'll run, but very slowly), but a more lightweight window manager would probably work OK.

-- Ian

 

Oh, try, as root, running the command linuxconf from a shell if you don't want to edit /etc/resolv.conf directly. linuxconf should be installed, it gives you a crude but useable interface to lots of system config options.

-- Ian

 

Thanks I have gone into that file then changed the DNS server to the IP of my router and the internet works now at least on Lynx anyway.

 

Any support for crappy winmodems yet ? Could never get the setup to work from the winmodems website.

My graphics card was a pain in the a*se to set up under older kernels and I didn't have a hope of connecting to the internet (and Linux without Internet access is like a car without wheels!).

 

It is my understanding that you need to install and run Samba in order to have a linux machine appear as a host on windows networking. Dunno if you've done all of that...

 

Modems? Wassat then? Haven't used one of those for years...

I've heard reports of people getting them to work, but AFAICT winmodems are still hit and miss. Major problem, of course, being the refusal of manufacturers to provide the documentation needed for stable open source drivers to be fully developed.

Issac's right, AT, that if you want to browse and share files from Linux on a Winders network you'll need to install samba. Pretty straightforward, Google should find some HOWTOs.

-- Ian

 

I dont use Linux but I know Winmodems have been supported for years in some distributions.

 

I think you'll find that's "supported" as in "just barely working" Paul.

-- Ian

 

I am downloading the ISO image of Mandrake 10 now. Redhat 7.0 is too old and tricky to get simple things working. Mandrake 10 comes with modern web browsers that support CSS etc built in.

 

I haven't used Mandrake since early releases of version 9, but if it'll run on your hardware, you should find it much easier to use.

-- Ian

 

Bloody hell its running so slow its painful. I had to turn it off while logged in as root in the end because it was being so slow.

Does anybody know if the Mandrake boot program can split an XP partition into two? I think I need to use my desktop XP 2000 with a nice 512MB RAM for Linux as I do want the graphics managers.

 

If it's anything like the earlier installers you may be able to resize the XP partition, but it's a pretty dangerous thing to do, and if it's NTFS it probably won't be able to do it at all. Better to stick in a second drive and install Linux on that, the installer will place the bootloader on the first drive and give you a boot-time menu for which OS to load.

-- Ian

 

I'll do that I have a couple of old 4GB drives lying around so I can use them for the Linux drive. Also the Windows partition is NTFS.

Thanks I will just turn my laptop into a console based web server just for my own personal use. Its easier using PHP/MySQL than it is my windows machine as its not quite authentic if that makes sense.

 

I've managed to get a couple of WinModems to work fine under Linux - a PCTel summit or other based on an SiS chipset, I think and also the Intel 536EP modem. Both are WinModems. In most cases, you'll need to find the right drivers for your distribution. Intel are particularly good at providing drivers for their products. A pity I can't get the 3Com MiniPCI 56K modem up and running on my IBM ThinkPad X20. A great deal of 'googling' has brought me to the conclusion that it can't be done.