[Wylug-help] extreme novice-chaos!!!

[Geoff Fielding]

I've used RiscPCs using RiscOS for many years so normal PCs are a
mystery to me. I have now opted for a Linux system and was persuaded
that I should load my own as "I would learn far more than having it
preloaded". An understatement!

I now have a new machine with an Athlon xp 2800 processor and have
loaded onto it mandrake v10 i586 installation cds. The problems started
slowly but because of my inexperience any problem that caused me to be
unable to use the GUI resulted in me having to reinstall. I've lost
count of the number of times!! On one occasion the install disc
automatically followed an update path but otherwise it has overwritten
everything on disc. It won't even allow the use of existing partitions
- the error message being "An error has occurred, Oops no root
partition" - this despite the partitions being allocated automatically
each time I have installed. The partitions recognised are hda1 and hda6.

I have spent hours looking for DrakConnect but it is nowhere to be
found.

When going in to the Control Centre Manage Connections to ensure that my
modem is configured I always find that it is showing eth0, despite me
having set up my modem during install. I change to modem and press
"apply" then "back". I try to check that "modem" is in fact configured
but when I try to reentre Manage Connections the Control Centre hangs.
After this happens no other programme will load either!! Some create the
error message "KLauncher could not be reached via DCOP".

On shutting the system down I get the messages:
stopping postfix, shutting down postfix     failed   failed

and

starting killall, shutting down postfix      failed   failed


On booting I get:
Determining IP information for ethO          failed

and

Warning: Could not add loopback device to routing table, CUPS may not
work properly.

Incidentally, a point I haven't mentioned is that now most times I load,
the mouse won't move the cursor, ie the cursor is immobile. This seems
to have become progressively worse over the last five days I have been
trying to get the system going.

Any offers? please!

--
Geoff