by wintpe » Jun 7th, '12, 15:04
Help us to help you
Mageia Forum users REMINDER
"many users continue to print one liners with no background info, please take the time to set the context of your question"
Linux is a very complex operating system, and even those of us who have been using/supporting Unix and Linux for may years have trouble identifying a problem, purely on a basic description of a problem. Eg it don’t work.
Its not windows, it does not have built in drivers for every conceivable bit of hardware ever made, and many of the drivers that are included are reverse engineered by an interested person in their spare time.
Also unlike windows, it does not come in one identity, even Mageia can be setup with one of about 8 desktops, with different video drivers, network drivers, webcams, keyboards, mice, and we are not psychic, and we also canot read your mind.
So a detailed description of your system, and the problem, with supporting error, config, package listing, moduleinfo etc will help a great deal.
Take your time to post a question and include as much as you can to help.
Here are some commands that you can run, that the info will be relevant to helpers.
• lspci this lists all the pci devices (add in Hardware cards) in your system.
• lsusb this lists all the usb devices detected on your system.
• lsmod a list of modules that have automatically loaded in response to kernel devices detection
• modinfo modulenamefromlsmod will list details of a module
• dmesg this lists recent kernel and system messages, including failure to load or identify a bit of hardware.
• /var/log/messages the default place for error logs, from syslog (like windows event log)
• /etc/X11/xorg.conf the config file for the Xdisplay server.
• ethtool a command to list lots of info about network
• ethtool -I eth0 will list the version and details of your nic.
• ethtool -S eth0 will list just about every counter related to an Ethernet card.
• dmidecode equivalent to MS system info gives lots of info about your hardware.
• /etc/sysconfig directory where many config files live, relating to network services etc.
• rpm –qa will list all packages on a system, pipe it through grep to reduce this to relevant packages.
• ifconfig -a lists the tcpip settings set on your network cards.
• Linux more often that not will label each ethernet card eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3 in the order it finds them so if you have more that one network card check out the rest.
if you have not worked it out, this all has to be run as cli commands in a terminal, ideally as root.
if youve not used a terminal before think of it as windows commandtool.
to change user to root use the command "su -" followed by the root password.
apologies to anyone who this is obvious to, im just assuming newby Linux user.
Im not suggesting you post all of this, but that which relates to your problem would be helpful, even trimmed to the specific bit of info you are posting about
One other thing, of all the custom bit and pieces related to Linux, we are not experts in all of them, for example ive setup openvpn, but not ipsec, so if you are doing something like that tell us how you think it should be done, and the references/howtos you are using, and what appeared to not work.
Another thing, disks fail, file systems can become corrupt, or deleted due to user error, so back up, usb disks are cheap compared to the loss of data.
Before upgrading your os, why not wait till the new ones been out a little while, dont be the first if you cant answer half these problems for yourself.
Also theres a difference between what should work on a system you have paid for and what would be nice if it worked the way you expected it on a system put together by volenteers in there spare time. The only person who is at fault, is you for not contributing to beta testing or submitting bug reports.
And use clonezilla to backup your old system before you do go for it.
(always in code tags, if you want to avoid a comment from the etiquette police.)
Regards peter
Redhat 6 Certified Engineer (RHCE)
Sometimes my posts will sound short, or snappy, however its realy not my intention to offend, so accept my apologies in advance.