[Wolves] Re: Wolves digest, Vol 1 #410 - 1 msg

[Adam Sweet]

Hi Howard,

Y'know, thats exactly how I started. Being interested
in the sociology of it all ;)

Right, well I may not have the Rosetta Stone, but I
can give you some pointers...

First of all, things move pretty fast in the Linux
world and I have to say, Mandrake 8 was great, but
it's a bit about 3 years old now (I think, might be
2). It might be worth getting a newer distro, Mandrake
9.1 is out at the mo and 9.2 is in the 2nd release
candidate phase so should be out soon. That would be a
good starting point, you can download the latest from
their site if you have broadband at home or at work.
Otherwise you can get the CD sets from
http://linuxemporium.co.uk for about a tenner.

I assume your router is a small hardware device,
capable of dhcp, that requires no drivers to be
installed on the clients and is connected to a cable
or adsl modem.

Well that should all be fine, in the Mandrake
installation routine (any version) you get chance to
tell it to use dhcp. Do so and assuming your network
card is correctly set up and recognised, all should be
fine and it will 'just work'.

I can't tell you exactly what is wrong with the setup
of your card or how to fix it, simply that it appears
your card is being correctly recognised (assuming it's
an SiS900), but the kernel module module is failing, I
don't know why (you probably worked this much out for
yourself).

I have heard that SiS graphics cards are a bit flaky
under Linux and so maybe other components are too like
motherboard chipsets, sound and network cards. The
shortcut solution is to get a new network card, for as
little as a tenner. Most cards by 3Com, Intel and
other major manufacturers will be fine, cheap generic
cards that use the Realtek chipsets normally get
picked up too, but you will have to be careful. Use
the mandrake network wizard and select your specific
card from the list. Also take a good look at the
others in the list and choose a manufacturer that
seems well supported and go get one of their cards if
you still can't get your card working.

Note most hardware is known by the manufacturer and
chipset (ie Realtek 8139too) rather than the brand and
model (ie Billionton LNA-100B), so maybe even have a
manufacturer and chipset in mind.

Hopefully someone else will be able to tell you how to
sort tyhis out without getting another card, but thats
my suggestion based on my aforementioned assumptions.

Good luck,

Adam

=====
http://www.drinky.org.uk

======================================

Use Linux. Because it's better.

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