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Re: [LUG] Mandriva Problems

 

Simon Sanders wrote:
> Can someone please advise me? (I'm out of area - Wiltshire - but I follow the 
> DCLUG mailing list).
>
> I have been running Mandrake/Mandriva on a Dell Dimension 1.5MHz for several 
> years and I have usually waited a few months before upgrading as each new 
> version has been released. I have subscribed to Mandrake/Mandriva Club but 
> got nothing out of it apart from earlier access to their mirrors. I am not 
> proficient technically.
>
> I was pretty unhappy with MandrivaLinux 2007 which didn't seem very stable, it 
> seemed to get progressively slower and, irritatingly, it would not switch off 
> when told to. So I was more than happy to upgrade to 2007 Spring a few weeks 
> ago.
>
> A catastrophe! Huge list of things that go wrong including
>
> 1. Often very slow to respond from the menu (OpenOffice and Firefox)
>
> 2. Kontact (KDE) doesn't work properly. In particular, the Contacts function 
> won't hold and display the selected contact after it has been edited.
>
> 3. Peculiar things happen with the display - A short while ago the KDE task 
> bar suddenly disappeared (not tucked away, vanished completely). On a recent 
> occasion all of the contents of displayed dialog boxes and panels suddenly 
> vanished leaving a screen full of blank rectangles. Several times, when I 
> have tried to re-activate a blacked-out display (after leaving it idle for 
> some time) there has been no response at all and when I have switched it off 
> then on again it has displayed the "no signal" screen. On other occasions, 
> after being left on but idle for some time, everything on the screen has been 
> displayed in a sort of over-lapping quintiplicate, completely unintelligible 
> (This happened on ML 2007 as well).
>
> 4. The display locks up altogether with, it seems, increasing frequency. This 
> usually happens when I've become impatient with system response, particularly 
> when using Firefox and I try to do something different from what I'm waiting 
> for the computer to do (if you see what I mean).
>
> Is it possible my system has been compromised? I've tried to follow the log-in 
> display but it passes by too fast to follow. On log-out, I note that:
>
> "Stopping Clam Antivirus Daemon <FAILED>
>
> "Shorewall: netZall:DROP:IN=eth) OUT= MAC SRC=192.168.1.5 DST=224.0.0.251 
> LEN=567 TBS=0X000 PREC=0X00 TTL=255 ID=0 DF Proto=UDP SPT=5353 DPT=5353 
> LEN=547
>
> "Stopping Shorewall"
>
> "WARNING: DISABLE_IPV6+Yes in shorewall.conf but this system does not appear 
> to have ip6tables"
>
> (I don't know if any of this means anything)
>
> I have tried a simple reinstall, which seems to be the same as an upgrade but 
> stays with the same version/release of MandrivaLinux and it doesn't do any 
> good. I could tar my data, wipe the hard drive and reinstall from scratch. I 
> could even take the opportunity to switch to Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
>
> Do I have to archive anything more than the /home directory? Should I 
> include /etc? Is there any way to identify directories and/or files that I 
> should remove before archiving? Will my Mandriva file structure work with 
> Ubuntu/Kubuntu? If yes, can I simply install Ubuntu/Kubuntu as dual boot and 
> wipe out the Mandriva partition later?
>
> Sorry for the long wail but I can't find any help in the incomprehensible 
> Mandriva Club system.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Simon Sanders
>
>   
I installed spring on my laptop and it was OK. Was this an upgrade or 
install? Install is often better and /home is all you should need to 
backup. Your home directory structure will probably be OK with ubuntu, 
but may of the ".kde" etc type directories/files may not be, ie all the 
config stuff for different bits of software. No point in archiving 
anything else, unless you're keeping personal data in other places.

Really you should take off every thing under /home and save it. Then 
create another account of the same name, /home/simon ?, and copy the 
archived contents of /home/simon and sub directories to it. You may find 
you need to change the file permissions to use your stuff after this.

Can I suggest you give PClinuxOS a shot. It's based on Mandriva so 
you'll be familiar with all the config options. Main difference is the 
software update system which is based on apt-get using the Symantic 
front end which is a lot easier and better than urpmi. Also you install 
it from a live disc so you can have a good look at it before deciding.

pclos has a really good range of software in the repositories, is pretty 
excellent at hardware recognition (about the only distro to automaticaly 
recognise my wifi), is neat to navigate and looks good also.

Simon

-- 
Simon Robert
www.oldhouse-cottage.co.uk


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