Linux Problems???

[Staticman]

I purchased an AmigaOne G3 in December 2002 and recently I switched to the KDE environment.
The problem is it isnt very stable to a usable extent. I have tried mailing lists but to no avail.
The problem is I log into KDE using "root" as user name and no password and it logs in and loads up fine.

Then randomly every now and again (quite often actually) it chucks me out back to the login screen after going to a black screen displaying an error message saying

"sh: nmblookup: command not found"

Any ideas on how to resolve this serious problem would be greatly appreciated.
I would like to get back to using my AmigaOne ASAP.
Thanks in advance for any help.

[mikeymike]

What version of KDE?  Have you tried another environment/window manager instead?

I think it was KDE 2x that really sucked for stability in my experience.  Don't think I've tried 3x.  1x was a bit clunky I thought.

[Cymric]

First of all, don't use 'root' for normal day-to-day stuff. It's Bad, for very good reasons.

Second, while I confess I don't know how to fix your problem, a search in Google for 'nmblookup' turned up pages claiming it's part of the Samba-suite, and is used for looking up NetBIOS computer names using NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP queries. Not hindered by any knowledge whatsoever, I think this means there's a program which is trying to find some Windows-running computers, and complains bitterly when it fails. I would start by looking at what is running in the background when you start up KDE ('ps ax'), see if there's something Samba-related activity going on. Then I'd do a search with 'grep' in /etc/ for anything containing 'nmblookup' and try to work out if it's called or not. Looking at the crontab ('crontab -l') might help out too. Whatever the cause, I would be most surprised if it was KDE-related at all. Good luck.

[Staticman]

@mikeymike:

Looks like your solution makes the most sense/is easiest to do. Before I used KDE I used a different environment, forgotten what it was called but it was very stable. I think I might try Gnome.
Trouble is I dont have a clue how to do this.

Anyone know how to install Gnome/all the nitty gritty? :-?

[fnord]

I suppose you're using debian gnu/linux, right? then you'd only have to do a apt-get install gnome, but you won't get an up to date version of gnome this way. I know there are debian packages available for gnome 2.2, but a quick search at apt-get.org and google didn't get me any ppc packages. Maybe you'll be happy with the older versions of gnome, I'm not sure, gnome 2.2. made everything a lot easier and more consistent. maybe it's available in unstable for ppc, I'm not sure.
btw if you need a graphical tool for package management and don't want to mess around with apt on the commandline do a apt-get install synaptic and you should get a really nice graphical apt frontend

[Staticman]

No, I'm actually using the SuSe PPC 7.3 distribution which got bundled with the computer.. does it make much difference?

[amigamad]

my a1 came with debian 3.0r1. Kde 2 seemed stable in this the main problem i have is with the wallpaper  and icons  not displaying properly  i gave up messing around with it sunday i have a radeon 8500 and although eyetech tell you what to do to setup graphics after it is installed it did not give me any options to change graphics settings.

[fnord]

oh, sorry, I thought they were shipping Debian with the AmigaOnes, everywhere, but I guess I mixed it up, sorry. Well, yes it does They use different package systems (dpkg/debian, rpm/SuSE). I haven't used SuSE for quuiteee some time *g, but afaik there's something called YOU (Yast online update) these days in SuSE, so you might try out to fire up yast and look if there are gnome 2.2 packages available.  I know of two different (I'm sure there are more) databases of rpm packages. ones rpmfind.net and the other's rpmseek.com. have a look at what rpmseek spits out when you ask it for gnome and PPC here

[Staticman]

Ok.. is it just a case of firing up YAST and installing via the wizard?

I.E. go through the installation process, a quick reboot and it will go straight into GNOME?

Or is it more complex?
I dont want to make a mess out of this here.. :-o

[fnord]

What do you use to fire up XFree86? Do you use a display manager ( for graphical login ... xdm, kdm, gdm etc.)? If you do chances are good that you'll be able to just select gnome at the login then. I don't think you'll mess up anything with installing gnome. Gnome and KDE packages  shouldn't  cause any conflicts at all so you should still be able to login into KDE if for some reason your Gnome installation doesn't work.

[Staticman]

Thanks I'll try it out later today, and post here how I get on.

[Staticman]

-edit-

[Staticman]

OK I emailed eyetech and heres what was said...

You need to update the UBoot - the download and instructions are on the dev mailing list.
Then you probably need to update the linux kernel - again instructions are on the dev mailing list

Any information on how I can safely do this without making the system worse without resorting to mailing list? Links? Instructions???
Any help is greatly appreciated.
I look forward to using my AmigaOne again  :-)

[Staticman]

Come on guys, any ideas??

[scafe]

theres a site which has the source files for every linux kernel at www.kernel.org serch for a PPC kernel source there i recommend ver. 2.4.18 or 2.4.19 its been out for a while and can be considered stable, if you choose a different version avoid those with odd numbers ie. 2.3.xx or 2.5.xx as these are development versions and are not stable trees. Once you have downloaded the source uzip it to a directory you need to be root to do the following commands so anywhere will do /usr/share/ is probably best. open a terminal or shell and cd to the directory of the unpacked kernel and type..
make xconfig
a prompt will apear where you can select options for the kernel it is usally intelligent and will select options suited for your system. once done click on the save config and close button which will return you to the console there you need to run the following commands in this order
make dep
make clean
make bzImage
then after that if you have used any modules you will need to run the relavant commands for them. However i dont know these so goto the LDP at www.tlpd.org and read the KERNELHOWTO this will describe the whole kernel update and install routene including how to configure your loader (LILO, GRUB ect). hope this helps :-D