What's the Dealio with initrd, etcfstab, initrd.img inittab, vmlinuz, grub and parbreastions 519

Douglas Mayne

I know, I know, - no need to rub it in ^ ^

See last comment...;-)

it's funny - I know all that stuff for years now - just the Ext'd (under Linux) was throwing me...as you know, Windoze doesn't have "tools" like those found in *nix.

I apologize - I don't understand that (inline?), if it's unimportant, don't bother ;-)

Understood

So do I - but not being that CLI savvy in Linux yet and basically not knowing how to even start another GUI (wm, icewm, enlightenment, fluxbox, etc) I had no choice. I would MUCH prefer to learn it from the Admin perspective. I'll refrain from further CLI vs GUI comments for now ;-). Heck; I only recently figured out how vim works (atleast well enough to edit the visudo sudoers file)...now I here of nano(used it a few times already, nice) and pico and emacs (heard much ado about it) -- also I want to get to know mc better, yet I don't even know how to differentiate between a Windows Manager, a File Manager, an ncurses Server(?) meant for networking-multiple users at once and one can have MANY sessions open at once, and that either kdm, xdm, gdm can manage (?)...oh boy - I can't even get 2 wm's-fm's going at once

Oh - so I just need to create more users? perhaps using adduser ?

See my issue is what is all this UID, SUID 1000, Umask, etc...I mean My 1 default $USER I created and use can't access things and see things I'd like it to easily...I'd like to understand Why not first - so I don;t keep making New Bad User configurations. Should my CD and DVD be 'rw', rather than 'ro' inetc-fstab ?? -- should the my '-' parbreastion be listed as ro ?? as it is now ? Why is there this errors=remount atdev-hda7 ?

dev-hda7 ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

and what the heck are the trailing 0 and 1 for ? oh brother...

Back on point for me;

I'd guess first and foremost, I'd like to understand IF and WHY and HOW I can use a real installed kernel (kernel-image) ? it seems I'm booting off a small kernel image WITHOUT actually having a kernel installed ?? does initrd.img-2.6.8-2-386 call vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-386

or something like that ?? Should I just run Kpackage and install the appropriate "kernel-image"(2.6.8, i386, approx 50MB ??)

Thank goodness for kpackage - 'apbreastude' gives me strange "boxes as characters" and as borders for window frames and menus - and 'apt-get' is ok, but I'll never remember all the commands (and package names), and there's s-o-o-o many packages...

My PCMCIA (and-or EISA) needs to be fixed (though I have neither ISA, nor PCMCIA devices, but this Intel South Bridge (82371AB-EB PIIX4E) certainly likes to have it's support) - I chose NOT to install PCMCIA (pbutted it up during install) because this is a Desktop, not a Laptop, with seemingly no PCMCIA - BUT, when Knoppix Live (v3.6, 2.6.7 Kernel) was booting (both from LiveCDandwhen installed to HDD), there was definitely PCMCIA support and "hotplug" detecting and configuring devices -- Since installing Debian I get these errors (similar only, since I can't figure out WHERE to get AlL that Boot screen Info from - I tried 'syslogd', and 'messages' many other files, but 'dmesg' seems as close as I can get);

USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2 uhcihcd 0000:00:07.2: Intel Corp. 82371AB-EB-MB PIIX4 USB uhcihcd 0000:00:07.2: irq 9, io base 00001020 uhcihcd 0000:00:07.2: new USB bus registered, buttigned bus number 1 hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected agpgart: Detected an Intel 440BX Chipset. agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 149M cpcihotplug: CompactPCI Hot Plug Core version: 0.2 pcihotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5

start Failures;

pciehp: acpipciehprm:-SB.PCI0 evaluate BBN fail=0x5 pciehp: acpipciehprm:getdevice PCI ROOT HID fail=0x5 shpchp: acpishpchprm:-SB.PCI0 evaluate BBN fail=0x5 shpchp: acpishpchprm:getdevice PCI ROOT HID fail=0x5 input: PC Speaker inserting floppy driver for 2.6.8-2-386 Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077 parport: PnPBIOS parport detected. parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778), irq 7, dma 3 PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP,DMA eth0: DSPCFG accepted after 0 usec.

ACPI is working fine and before I placed those apm= and acpi= entries into GRUB entries, I still had the same two bane: errors about *hotplug* .ko's during Bootup...I recall the PATH to problem files are here;

The bane bootup messages mention files (.ko) found in here;

lib-modules-2.6.8-2-386-kernel-drivers-pci-hotplug

$ ls -l total 540 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33393 2005-08-16 11:13 acpiphp.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8997 2005-08-16 11:13 cpcihpgeneric.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9895 2005-08-16 11:13 cpcihpzt5550.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 82017 2005-08-16 11:13 cpqphp.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6079 2005-08-16 11:13 fakephp.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 112573 2005-08-16 11:13 ibmphp.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40088 2005-08-16 11:13 pcihotplug.ko

The arrows point to specifically the two I can recall (pciehp.ko and shpchp.ko)

So how do I go about giving this system PCMCIA support ?? Through 'make' 'modprobe' ?? Do I have to Re-Run the Debian Installer from CD ??

The shell script "xinitrc" is present but no symlink there;

$ ls -aletc-X11-xinit total 16 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-02-15 07:54 . drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2006-02-22 23:25 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 224 2005-09-01 18:34 xinitrc -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 53 2005-09-01 18:38 xserverrc

Ok - Thank you - I'll mark this area as "bookmarked" lol.., so I can refer to them when I'm done with atleast a stable-solid hardware foundation to build on - does the tilde ' ~ ' mean $HOME ? -or- $USER ? I think. means root and hidden(?) in this instance?

Mi Capito me thinks - thehomey is good ;)

Thank you for your help and support. so far, I really appreciate it -- I didn't want to cross-post either, and I thought of posting (also?) in linux.debian..user, but after the original dissertation, I forgot (doh!). Oh dear, look at how long this post is .....(where's Enrique? OO )