Ext Hdd, Desktop Effects And Installation Problems

I'll say first off that i've been using Windows for nearly all my life, occasionally dropping by for a short amount of time to try out distros like Xandros and Ubuntu and Fedora, but i finally decided to perhaps settle with playing around in OpenSUSE 10.3

Thing is that though, i'm a complete newbie at this.

I'm trying to turn on desktop effects for some extra looks on my desktop, and its saying that my nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Go is not in the XGL database. I went and looked around and found that by holding down shift and click i can enable it, but once i did i couldn't start into OpenSUSE anymore without it freezing and god knows what i did, it finally reverted back to normal and now its on disable again... Still don't know how to solve that...

Issue 2: So i've been playing around and i hooked my NTFS formatted ext USB hard disk into the USB ports of this laptop and it gives me an error stating "Unable to mount Volume" or something similar. I never even got close to finding out how to work around this so i gave up and just used my FAT32 formatted flash drive all the way..

Issue 3: I can't seem to install stuff properly. Either something is wrong or i'm a total fool at this (strange to say but i hope its the latter) I first tried to install aMSN 0.97. so this is what i did

- Extracted it to desktop
- cd-ed into the directory and typed "./configure"
- It returns me a "Unable to find TCL directory or TCL package is not TCL-dev"
- So i hop onto the internet from another computer (this computer can't access the internet for now) and i get TCL 8.5.2, extract, cd, ./configure, make, sudo make install but even after all that pidgin still doesn't work.
- Ok, trying to not to give up on ever learning linux, i try to install the latest build of pidgin as mine keeps crashing so what i hear is to first uninstall the older build which i promptly do from the "install software" button.
- Now i'm trying to install pidgin, do the ol cd, and ./configure but its telling me that my libxml2 is not 2.6.0 or greater when in "Install Software" it says otherwise?

I know this might just be annoying for a newbie to completely rant his problems but can someone help me out into further understanding how to use linux...?

i can help you with 2 of the problems (or at least i might be able to)

i cannot with the graphics effects issue, as i have an intel card.

first thing is installing software, you probably don't have a c compiler, so go into yast>software management and do a search for 'gcc'
install gcc and gcc+ and that will help you with the ./configure things ok.

right, second thing is the NTFS drive. if you can't even see the drive (it appears in my computer, but you can't even read the drive) then you need to manually mount it. first thing is download ntfs-3g and ntfs-config.

http://packages.opensuse-community.org/ind...ro=openSUSE_103
you want the first 2 there.

once downloaded and installed open a console window and type 'su' without the quote marks. then enter root password. next type

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdxx /media/drive

where sdxx is the letter and number assigned, for instance it could be sdb1 and /media/drive is the directory you want to mount it to.

hope this helps, any more problems with these 2 post back.

thanks.

edit: for pidgin download this

http://packages.opensuse-community.org/ind...archTerm=pidgin

you should bookmark the webpin search, it has a lot of software there with 1click installs, makes your life a little easier. i had a tcl problem with my messaging client, amsn. can't remember how i got it sorted though sorry. think i just downloaded it and installed it from somewhere :huh:

Oh my god, thanks. You're my lifesaver ahahaha NTFS seems to be working fine now i THINK. Just now when i tried typing :

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdxx /media/drive

it gave me a drive is in use and so i read a bit of what it said and decided to use the -o force up the back... so i typed

mount -t ntfs-3d /dev/sdb1 /media/drive -o force

It returned me some weird error about /media/drive not existing but after i unplugged the file and replugged it seemed to mount properly.

Also maybe it seems silly but i'm trying to steer clear from using those 1-click installs... mainly because i don't have an internet connection on the laptop in question (i'm using a windows based laptop now) and even for ntfs-3g and ntfs-config, i installed them via ./configure, make and sudo make install from source...

I've been transferring files back and forth as well so yeah

Testing and read and write seems to work. You're an absolute legend you know that. *THUMBS UP*

EDIT: And oh, just to inform, yes when installing i did choose to install the developers tools for openSUSE, including the GCC compiler. I use GCC compiler for uni work, compiling .c files so i needed it anyway

And oh maybe its not clear but i like to learn things the manual way before i start getting reliant on automation is there anyway to install Pidgin 2.4.1 from source while avoiding that "You must have libxml2 >= 2.6.0 development headers install to buid" message?

Oh my god, thanks. You're my lifesaver ahahaha NTFS seems to be working fine now i THINK. Just now when i tried typing :

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdxx /media/drive

it gave me a drive is in use and so i read a bit of what it said and decided to use the -o force up the back... so i typed

mount -t ntfs-3d /dev/sdb1 /media/drive -o force

It returned me some weird error about /media/drive not existing but after i unplugged the file and replugged it seemed to mount properly.

Also maybe it seems silly but i'm trying to steer clear from using those 1-click installs... mainly because i don't have an internet connection on the laptop in question (i'm using a windows based laptop now) and even for ntfs-3g and ntfs-config, i installed them via ./configure, make and sudo make install from source...

I've been transferring files back and forth as well so yeah

Testing and read and write seems to work. You're an absolute legend you know that. *THUMBS UP*
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no problem, that's what these forums are here for, i think i might have long stopped with suse if it wasn't for this place. regarding the install problem you still have it's unfortunate you can't use the 1clicks, they are so good. it does confuse me a little though...how come you want to install a messaging client on there if you don't have internet :huh:

anyway, with the tcl error you are getting how are you trying to install it? is it a .tar which you have to configure? try to find an rpm if you can, much easier still. for a messaging client you might want to try amsn, they do a nice and easy installer for that and it's a great program.

anyway, i'm glad to be of some help to at least someone any more problems with mounting you could try and put in an fstab entry, this will ensure it will mount to a certain directory each time plugged in. the fact you had to do a -o force suggests to me the last time the ntfs drive was not shut down, it didn't shut down properly...? i had that as i got fed up with vista shutting down, it had been 4minutes so i held it off.... then got an error mounting, had to force it.

reboot and hopefully it'll be ok. ntfs-3g is a must.

The problem with intalling aMSN is that you are missing some depencies, in htis case tcl/tk. The easiest way to install aMSN is by installing aMSN form the packman repo: you may need to install that repository, I you haven't done it already. It is one of the community repos. After making sure you are subscribed to that repo, install aMSN thru YaST, it will take care of the missing dependencies.

Regarding the video card, it is the very same model I am using: have you installed the nvidia drivers and configure them? 3d accelleration is working fine here (though I have not tried to enable desktop effects).

follow the above for tcl/tk, he seems to know what he's doing more than me :lol: although that's for amsn, not pidgin. but, i recommend amsn, it's very very good.

regarding

you must have libxml2 >= 2.6.0 development headers install to build

there will not, to the best of my knowledge, be able to install it without that. so try and find from somewhere libxml2. i am unaware if i have this or not, but you could try a yast search and see what that yields. ensure you have all the repositories you need, mainly for this, the packman.

i guess, with the 1click installers, i'm just lazy

In the future please one problem per post.
Ill help you with ansn you don't need the source just use the installer here get the Tcl/Tk 8.4 one.

These installers work almost as in windoze

/Geoff

the tcl error is what i get when i'm configuring amsn. If i were configuring pidgin then i'd get the libxml2 error instead, when i KNOW that both tcl/tk 8.4 and libxml2 are installed already. Thats the weird bit. Well, i know that libxml2 is installed because i checked, and as for TCL8.5 was it(i didn't remove tcl/tk 8.4 before doing so because i was a bit afraid that if i removed tcl/tk 8.4 some weird error might happen and i'd have to reinstall the os) , i installed it manually by configuring, making and sudo make install.

i'm really trying to use aMSN so yeah, hopefully all works out. Worse comes to worse i'll use the 1-Click install Note as well that i tried to install aMSN. I tried to install from both packages of TCL 8.4 and 8.5 (those files with the .package extension) by double clicking and running them as an executable but they just disappear and nothing else appears after that.

I'll need to learn how to add software repos though i think i have a brief idea on how to already, all i need now are the details i guess.

Regarding the video driver, no, i have not installed it. I somehow have this weird thinking (please correct me if i'm wrong) that Linux does not require the user to install every single driver from first install, unlike windows. I have stumbled upon a few things along the lines of drivers though, one of them with a .ymp extension. Is that the file to install the drivers?

Also another thing i'm noticing. I'm on my windows now, as my openSUSE can't seem to connect to the internet at my university. At the moment i'm using Intel PROset wireless to manage my wireless and i know that my uni uses TKIP data encryption, TTLS authentication type and PAP authentication protocol. I connect on windows just fine, however when i reboot into linux and set the Network Manager to these settings, it does not connect, rather it keeps on TRYING to connect or fails. Is there some issue with the network manager and security enabled wireless?

oh, and sorry for posting all the problems in one post I didn't want to really set up 3 separate threads as i think some admins might consider them as spamming so i just threw them all in one...

the tcl error is what i get when i'm configuring amsn. If i were configuring pidgin then i'd get the libxml2 error instead, when i KNOW that both tcl/tk 8.4 and libxml2 are installed already. Thats the weird bit. Well, i know that libxml2 is installed because i checked, and as for TCL8.5 was it(i didn't remove tcl/tk 8.4 before doing so because i was a bit afraid that if i removed tcl/tk 8.4 some weird error might happen and i'd have to reinstall the os) , i installed it manually by configuring, making and sudo make install.

i'm really trying to use aMSN so yeah, hopefully all works out. Worse comes to worse i'll use the 1-Click install Note as well that i tried to install aMSN. I tried to install from both packages of TCL 8.4 and 8.5 (those files with the .package extension) by double clicking and running them as an executable but they just disappear and nothing else appears after that.

I'll need to learn how to add software repos though i think i have a brief idea on how to already, all i need now are the details i guess.

Regarding the video driver, no, i have not installed it. I somehow have this weird thinking (please correct me if i'm wrong) that Linux does not require the user to install every single driver from first install, unlike windows. I have stumbled upon a few things along the lines of drivers though, one of them with a .ymp extension. Is that the file to install the drivers?

Also another thing i'm noticing. I'm on my windows now, as my openSUSE can't seem to connect to the internet at my university. At the moment i'm using Intel PROset wireless to manage my wireless and i know that my uni uses TKIP data encryption, TTLS authentication type and PAP authentication protocol. I connect on windows just fine, however when i reboot into linux and set the Network Manager to these settings, it does not connect, rather it keeps on TRYING to connect or fails. Is there some issue with the network manager and security enabled wireless?

oh, and sorry for posting all the problems in one post I didn't want to really set up 3 separate threads as i think some admins might consider them as spamming so i just threw them all in one...
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for your wireless, make another post in the wireless forums, i have an intel pro wireless card and had many problems setting it up. the network i connect to at work is wpa-psk tkip and i had hours and hours of failure, but it's sorted now. as long as you can find the network right now, i'm pretty confident with the intel card i should be able to get your wireless working at uni.

there is a known problem with knetworkmanager with intel cards i believe, i have the intel pro wireless 3945ABG and it failed miserably. but i connect to tkip just fine at work now.

since you can't access internet on suse you can't get wifi-radar 1click install, so on windows download this, then transfer it to suse box

http://packman.links2linux.org/download/wi...pm.1.noarch.rpm