help!customizing my new installed debian

[Highjo]

hi! every body i've been trying to find the linux distro that suits me.After trying ubuntu, fedora core i'm on debian 4.0 ro etch now.i'have acouple of question here.With fedora i don't have any windows based filesystem mounting and ubuntu does that automaticaly.In fedora the mysql server user group has the root user and his password.That desn't seem be the case here.
1. how can i mount my other disk? you can see them in my computer screenshot.I've tried to update my /etc/fstab files adding this:
/dev/hda5 /home/highjo ntfs rw,user,auto 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home/highjo ntfs rw,user,auto 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /home/highjo fat rw,user,auto 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /home/highjo ntfs rw,user,auto 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home/highjo ntfs rw,user,auto 0 0
the result was disastrous i couldn't log in the operating system and was obliged to reinstall the system.
i've tried to mount to /media and the folder was locked.how can i get through this.
2.How can i deal with mysql server. i mean to connect to it through mysql-administrator what would be the hostname?
3.i've never developed php in linux and want to try it.already install it(i guest) apache2 and phpmyadmin.Now comes the IDE probleme.bluefish and quanta + are really poor (unless i dont know how to use it).need something similar to dreamweaver.
4.i have fatal error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device any time i'm tryint to read a dvd avi file.can someone give a suggestion or even suggest a beter reader.kmplayer is not bad,ogle too ant ireally dont like totem.
Ps: please show how install a sofware donloaded from the net.i don't have the net right now.if i need to do any of your suggestion that needs to be downloaded from the net.
i attached a screenshot of my mountint error!
thanks!!!

[Highjo]

hi devils casper.those are the output of the commands you gave me in the ntfs filesystem subject.since its better to create another thread for it i created this one:

/sbin/fdisk -l gave this:
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1764 9728 63978862+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 1 1763 14161266 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 2551 5100 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 5101 7650 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda7 7651 9728 16691503+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda8 1764 2550 6321514+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 2611 20972826 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 2612 4865 18105255 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 2612 3844 9904041 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6 3845 4865 8201151 b W95 FAT32


df -h gave this :

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 14G 4.0G 8.8G 31% /
tmpfs 237M 0 237M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 92K 10M 1% /dev
tmpfs 237M 0 237M 0% /dev/shm


and the contents of /etc/fstab is this :
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda8 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda5 /media/hda5 ntfs defaults,umask=0 0 0

[devils casper]

Hi ! Create mount point ( folder ) and add an entry in /etc/fstab file for each partition. For /dev/hda6 partition :

 su - mkdir /media/hda6

Add an entry in /etc/fstab file:

 /dev/hda6  /media/hda6 vfat  defaults,umask=0  0  0

vfat is for FAT32 FileSystem and ntfs for NTFS partitions. Do the same for all other partitions. Debian supports NTFS read and FAT32 read/write access out of box. You have to install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access.

[Highjo]

Hi! thanks man. as i said before my debian is not connected directly to the internet.With wich code i can install the ntfs-3g?
can w move to the question number 2? how do i actually connect to mysql server.From what i know about fedora(if i'm not wrong), the hostname is localhost, the user is root and the passwrod is the root's password.
thanks a lot again

[dahveed3]

Hi. I haven't posted to this forum before and had even forgotten about it until I got an email from them! Figured I'd check it out. I usually frequent the boards for whatever distro I'm using at the time plus linuxquestions.org. How many boards does one need?

Anyway, I also mis-edited my fstab recently on my current Debian Lenny system and remembered how popular I had read that a Knoppix cd or dvd was in rescuing systems. I had just spent a bunch of time building a nice new system and was horrified by it only booting into read only mode (as you can see by your fstab line it does that in case of error; a safety feature so your files are protected from being written to incorrectly and be destroyed).

I whipped out a Knoppix 5.1.1 DVD I had burnt and played around with some time ago, in the options menu I had it show me a list and typed in (I think) knoppix lang=us or whatever it was it listed as the command, and booted up.

I right clicked and mounted my linux drive from the desktop icon and then right clicked change permissions and agreed to change it to writable.

I did kdesu kate /etc/fstab (well that's what I normally do, but perhaps I needed to cd into the linux drive first, don't remember exactly but you'll see if this happens to you that you need to open fstab on your hard drive and not the knoppix disc!). I edited it back without the changes I had messed up on , saved, closed, and exited kate. Then I hit restart, removed the dvd when instructed to (it ejects for you and gives you a message to remove it), and booted back into Debian!

You have no locale for your vfat line in fstab. For vfat I think a simple utf8=true works. For ntfs-3g it's locale=en_US.utf8 though. Substitute your own country and language if you're not in the US of course.

The documentation and faq's at debian.org and wiki.debian.org can answer a lot of your questions, as can the stuff in /usr/share/doc on your system, your man pages (hard to read for a new fella to Linux but often helps to see what commands and switches are available for programs), and the how-to section of forums.debian.net.

If you search for Aptitude you'll find Daniel Burrows Manual for Aptitude on the net, but I think if you click the help title bar option in aptitude it opens the same thing on your system. I printed out that whole guide! If there's one program you should be familiar with how to use on Debian it is aptitude. From the command line you can do most install, update, upgrade, remove tasks and from the ncurses GUI of it you can do all that and more. Especially on Etch (the apt-get system has been improved on Lenny and Sid) the recommended by Debian manual writers package manager is aptitude. And especially on Etch don't mix using apt-get and aptitude. Since they are more similar on Lenny/Sid it is less troublesome to do that but I still just use aptitude.

Check your /etc/apt/sources.list:

su -
kdesu (or gksu if you're in Gnome) kate /etc/apt/sources.list

or if you're in no GUI mode:

editor /etc/apt/sources.list (opens Nano with a key on the bottom of the screen for easy saving and exiting your changes).

Comment out your installation media with #

If you want the full Debian archive then add contrib non-free to the ends of:

deb ftp.osuosl.org :: Oregon State University Open Source Lab stable/main contrib non-free

same with the deb-src line

deb Debian -- Security Information stable/updates main contrib non-free

I add:

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/stable main
deb-src http://www.debian-multimedia.org/sid main (So I have access to the sources if needed.)

And run after your aptitude update the aptitude install debian-multimedia-keyring so his apt gpg key is installed to use his repo.

su -

aptitude update
aptitude upgrade (if you see things held back cancel out of it and do
aptitude dist-upgrade (so it can install new replacement packages as upgrades as sometimes they are renamed and just upgrade cannot install new packages or remove old ones)

to install stuff
aptitude search kaffeine (for example)
aptitude show kaffeine (to look at the details)
aptitude install kaffeine (to install it and its dependencies and recommends)
aptitude remove kaffeine (to remove it and its dependencies and recommends that are not being used by other packages)
aptitude purge kaffeine (use instead of remove if you don't intend to reinstall kaffeine and want its configuration files to be removed as well).

To open aptitude and its full GUI:

aptitude

To see the status of packages and what version will get installed if you install them:

apt-cache policy kaffeine (for example)

Don't know the answers to your other questions but that's generally how you maintain and manage software on Debian. Use synaptic to get a pretty GUI to look over things, but to actually perform changes (adding, removing, upgrading) most experienced Debian users recommend either apt-get or aptitude, and especially on Etch aptitude is the smarter choice (in my and a lot of folks opinions, but flame wars can result from asking which is better).

If you've run apt-get alot then the first stuff you do when switching to aptitude is:

su-
aptitude update
aptitude keep-all

That, so an uninformed aptitude won't remove most of your system as "unused" software. Aptitude is not aware of package history unless it was used to install the packages and started a record from that point. Running aptitude keep-all secures your current software and aptitude will start recording what it does with your software from then on. It isn't necessary to do that on a freshly installed system as the Debian installer uses aptitude to run tasksel and install the tasks.

Have fun!

Edit-

Oh! ntfs-3g:

aptitude search ntfs
aptitude install ntfsprogs
aptitude install ntfs-3g

Then you create a folder in /media with a name like windows, for example. And you add a line for it as was suggested in the previous post in /etc/fstab with the file system as ntfs-3g.

[Highjo]

WOAH! it seems there is a lot of this to read and to know.Thanks for writting all this stuff.Never heard about aptitude before.will try to get myself on it

[dahveed3]

Heh heh, but once you check out all the info it gets pretty easy.

Just to add since you're interested in read/write support for your XP/Vista partitions, you should read the info on backports.org and install ntfs-3g from there to get the latest version built and backported to use on Etch. It's probably best since the newer versions are safer as far as writing to NTFS partitions. Just don't go nuts and use the backports repo for loads of stuff, only things you specifically need functions not provided by the official Debian Etch repo.

If you want to get a lot of newer stuff, learn Debian and Linux for a while using Etch then consider upgrading to testing. Consult the how-to section of forums.debian.net. Pretty easy. Just don't mix distributions. Choose one and stick to it. If you must mix then read rickh's nice how-to on that forum on safely maintaining a mixed testing/unstable setup.

But that's getting ahead of things. Figure out how to use stable first, along with Debian system administration and the use of KDE and Gnome software and multimedia stuff. If you know what you're doing and are getting bored with the older software on Etch (although Lenny's coming out in the fall so you'd have a new Debian stable release anyway, with the newer software), then look into upgrading.

Quickest way to mess things up is to install a lot of debs downloaded from the web or compiling things. Most software available for Linux is already available in the Debian official repositories. Try finding it there with aptitude search or looking around in Synaptic. Assuming you set up your /etc/apt/sources.list correctly you'll find almost anything available in there.