Couple of problems with Mandrake 9.1 – 3581 days old

[floppybootstomp]

Thought it was about time I spent some time with this OS, I've had it installed for some time, but have barely looked at it.

Installed Mandrake 9.1 on a dual boot system, WIN 98 on a 20Gb HDD & Mandrake 9.1 on a second 20Gb HDD. The Linux HDD is split into 2 x 10Gb partitions, as I was thinking of adding Red Hat 9.0 at a later date. Using Lilo to boot.

Couple of problems.

When I first installed, the CD player worked once, then I couldn't open it at all again. With an audio CD in the DVD-ROM drive (it's the only optical drive fitted) I clicked on the CD Mount Desk Icon and was greeted with a window that told me it couldn't find the directory.

So, being used to Microsoft, I re-installed Mandrake.

Same thing happened again. CD player worked once, worked fine, but after closing it, couldn't open it again.

Second problem is none of my three printers are directly connected to this machine, they're all on a Network, 2 on one machine, one on another.

Mandrake detected them all, I configured them all, but I can't print anything, neither a test page or Office Document will print.

I'm wondering if I maybe have a corrupted system disk, as I d/l all three disks in ISO form and used Nero, within WIN XP, to burn them.

All else I've tried seems to work well, I'm here on Mozilla within that install now.

Any help or advice apreciated.

One last thing, this Hitachi DVD ROM drive I'm using really isn't all that good. It won't read some burnt CD-R's that all my other drives will. Not sure if that's relevant or not, but thought I'd throw it in.

[floppybootstomp]

erm, forget the CD player problem, it was, er, hiding in the task bar....

I really am very new to this...

still gotta printing problem though

[Walden]

i believe that is a problem with "cups"??? the only way to print from my printer (the one over the network) is to assign a ip to the printer, then have my programs print to the ip...or somthing to that effect...

[Grogan]

... and you don't actually mount audio CDs (only data CDs that have a filesystem)

DVD drives (in general) I've found to be among the more finicky CDROM drives when reading some brands of CDR disks. Especially older drives. That won't be operating system related.

I don't know much about the printers (I don't bother with printers myself and just haven't had cause to ever set up printing in Linux) but if those printers are shared by Microsoft Networking, you will want to use Samba Printing to print to the shared printers. This can be done through CUPS also, as far as I know.

I'm not sure what all Windows OSes have it available, but if you were to install TCP/IP Printing Services (or Unix Printing Services on a Windows NT Server OS), you could assign those printers an IP address and print to them through the LPD subsystem. Perhaps your router might also have print server capabilities.

Actually whilst typing I found this... it might point you in the right direction. Seems pretty terse though, but follow some links.

http://www.cups.org/sam.html#8_9

[floppybootstomp]

Thanks G, I did browse a few data CD's contents and suspected that may be the case.

I'm sure Samba was mentioned in some of the setup process I went through.

I'll read through that link you've given and have another attempt in the morning.

Although mandrake detected all 3 printers, and the GUI appears to be taking a lot of the hassle out of setting up for beginners, I feel I have to enter the exact file path in each instance at one stage.

I think

I'm also having problems configuring K-Mail, kinda lost my patience for this evening, hehe

I'll find my way around this thing and hopefully, gradually, get down and dirty with text commands.

One day.

[mlangdn]

K-Mail is OK, but I think you will be happier with Evolution or Mozilla mail. That's my 2 cents worth.

Mike