howdy!

i decided to start using ubuntu on my main pc these days and have since rid myself of windows. its very liberating, let me tell you. i dont dual boot into xp on another hard drive or anything, im just straight up off the windows. cold turkey.

im starting to wonder about the differences in xbox linux distros now. ive been using xdsl forever now. im wondering if the xebian release, or any other releases operate as well on a standard issue xbox (64mb ram). im mainly looking to get pidgin, empathy or gyachi running on the xbox, none of those apps will not run on DSL.

i dont use flash, i dont use java, i only browse online with it, really, and id like to setup an IM client thats not laid out in a text window. i have been looking at xebian, and it doesnt look too bad. any thoughts on this?

You can run anything on dsl that you can run on anything else. You being a linux user already should make the task easier. I would suggest you stick with dsl because it is already slimmed down to nothing. Then build that distro how you want it.

This will also tighten up your linux skills because you don't have all the handy gui based tools of the newer pc distros. You have to build all the handy tools.

The only problems you will have building you will have with all distros. You have to be careful with packages that upgrade x between sarge and etch. You can apt-get -f dist-upgrade threw sarge but there is alot of stuff in etch that will bust your distro. You can still get all the newer python,java,perl and other useful tools to build the newer apps out of etch.

Use these repos for sarge

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian sarge main contrib non-free

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-non-US oldstable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-non-US oldstable/non-US main contrib non-free

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security sarge/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-security sarge/updates main contrib non-free


the etch repos are easy to find if you can't find them let me know and I will give you the ones I use.

Do this with a fresh build I don't know the outcome if you have used the woody repos first.

After you enable apt-get open the emelfm as root then navigate to /etc/apt then open sources.list up with beaver and make sure that all the lines listed have a # sign in front of them. This will comment out the old lines. Then paste in the lines I copied earlier in the post. You will repeat this process when you move to the etch repos.

It might not apt-get -f dist-upgrade first try. You might need to apt-get -f upgrade a time or two and apt-get -f dist-upgrade again. Then go to the etch and get yourself python2.5,perl, and java. And anything else you might need to build newer apps. You can add from there anything that does not mess with x. Then change repos back to sarge. Then apt-get install synaptic with the sarge repos. "synaptic from etch will break your build this app has to come from sarge repos." Now you should have a gui based newer package manager. And now you can switch repos with a gui interface easy. You can now use any of the repos to build from but you can only use the same distro at a time to build from. I would also recommend that you build konquer from sarge. This gives you a good file manager/web browser that has a nautilus like feel.

Any app you want to launch on boot add the command to start it up in /opt/bootlocal.sh "this is because the fstab gets rebuilt every startup which makes if different from other linux builds"

If you need a 2.6 kernel you can get it here


http://www.aelius.com/njh/xbox-linux/

Get the headers too.

Just cd to the directory you downloaded them in with the terminal then issue this command to install the packages.


dpkg -i packagename.deb


Once installed a couple more tweaks are nessacary. From that site listed it has a list of modules you need to copy the modules off of that and paste them in /etc/modules you need to do this because of a change in modules with things like the keyboard and mouse. You can leave the old modules on that file the kernels ignore the modules they dont use. You may see a warning on boot up but dont sweat it it is not hurting anything. This way you can still boot from both kernels. You also need to tweak /boot/linuxboot.cfg on native installs or the linuxboot.cfg located in the root of the E drive on a loopback install."I dont know how to launch from the 2.6 on a loopback install I can install it but I dont know how to launch it"

You should put

title 2.4.31
kernel boot/linux24
append root=/dev/hda2 init=/etc/init ro video=xbox:800x640:hoc=0,voc=0 quiet kbd-reset


title 2.6.18
kernel boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-xbox
append root=/dev/hda2 init=/etc/init kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y



your 2.4 might look a little different than mine you can use the one already listed. The 2.6 can also look like this

title 2.6.18
kernel boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-xbox
append root=/dev/hda2 initrd=initrd kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

This will present you a grub like menu at boot and you can pick the kernel you want to launch. If you want to auto launch a kernel and bypass the menu you can add default "kernel title" like this

title 2.4.31
kernel boot/linux24
append root=/dev/hda2 init=/etc/init ro video=xbox:800x640:hoc=0,voc=0 quiet kbd-reset


title 2.6.18
kernel boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-xbox
append root=/dev/hda2 init=/etc/init kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

default 2.6.18

Hope this helps.

run,

hey man, thanks for the walkthru on upgrading DSL. unfortunately, after running the etch repos, i wound
up breaking my system, losing startx. so now, i am going for a second shot at it on a brand new install.

alright, heres what i wound up doing before startx was deleted:

changed the repos to sarge in the sources.list

ran apt-get update -f upgrade / ... -f dist-upgrade

all of this went very well.

it wound up eventually asking me for gnome/kde/text only output options for answering questions. i didnt know what to choose, so i opted for gnome. i continued the setup from that point on. when the system would ask me if i wanted to upgrade something, i would select Y or I to upgrade it. i did this for every option, which was alot.

OK, then came time to add the etch repos. i googled around and found:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main

deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

deb http://debian.uchicago.edu/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.uchicago.edu/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main


which i found at the following URL:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/de...epositories-379

i updated the repositories just fine with apt-get update (i believe i ran that). it actually took a minute for me to realize i had to update the system that way, because at first i tried simply to apt-get install python2.5, upon which it told me some kind of error, i think i got a tree error of sorts (its been a while now, i should have documented my issues as i went along) - i googled the problem and found i had to execute an rm /var/cache/*.bin to rectify that error...

anyway, i digress. as you stated, files in etch will break your system, and i think this is what broke mine. im going to try again, but if there are any other steps you may be accidentally leaving out, let me know. its almost 1 am right now, ill probably be at this for hours. i will continue to use your instructions verbatim.

i know im forgetting something in my problems, but all i know is when i rebooted after the etch run (i upgradeded python2.5, perl - but java was NOT found in the repo, before i forget) i was running linux SANS startx!

and once again, GOOD LOOKIN OUT on the info! id really like to eventually get Nautilus or something similar to Nautilus running on this! i can get around EMELFM just fine and all, but as you know, nautilus kicks ass. (im provy to pc-man, really on my ubuntu box!)

Thinking you might have to upgrade perl before python. Don't go installing packages until you get threw the whole upgrade because it might cause dependancy problems doing the upgrade. Fresh install and dist upgrade threw sarge then install perl then python with etch and then go back to sarge and build synaptic with apt-get then you can use that to install packages from. This will show you what will be removed or upgraded when you try to install anything. As long as you don't screw with the packages involving x you shouldn't break the system. Your learning the right way even if it is frustrating. Learn what will break the system now so you know what not to mess with when you get it up and running.

You can make nautilus from sarge but there was a reason I can't think of right now why I did not go this route. However konqueor has the nautilus feel as well as a webrowser built in and a whole lot of other goodies which can plug in with it like network support with smb4k. You can get most of the kde environment to plugin with it. I however use linneighborhood for network support set the shares and add linneighborhood to the /opt/bootlocal.sh this way they start automatically and I don't see the app unless I run it again later. I could not get smb4k to auto launch I think is why I went this route.

When it gave you the options you were speaking about where you have to make a choice. Did it have Dialog and text as options as well? I have used both of those options with no problem if that is what you are referring to. I can't say the outcome for sure on the other options it gives.

Anytime it ask me if I want to use the old configs or the new ones that are shipped in the updated packages I usually keep the ones I have. I think this preserves previous settings but adds the new options off the new config in it.


If you ever have problems apt-get -f dist-upgrading threw sarge and it gives a problem about pcmcia or something like that then you need to go into /etc/init.d/ and make a blank text file named "pcmcia" the reason for this is because a new file is trying to overwrite a file named that located there but it can't find it and errors out. If you add that file it installs the packages just fine. I figured that out a long time ago trying to get samba installed on xdsl with etch.


The repos should not matter but if you want to comment them out try using this one for etch

deb http://mirror.linux.org.au/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

run,

im all freshly reinstalled and just got done configuring my 1.6 overscan fix.

OK, now im going to start your upgrade instructions. i just wanted to know before i start, and this may sound goofy to you, but i should install apt-get thru the native xDSL "install apt-get" option before anything, right?

from there, i will change my repos to the sarge, and follow the rest of your directions as follow. like i said, might be a goofy question to ask, since as far as i know, theres no other way to get apt-get before any of this can begin, right?

p.s.
were my etch repos complete by what i listed here? ill need to have a good full etch repo when i get to that point, so i wanna make sure.

p.s.s.


doh! i just saw that in relaton to etch! thanks!


p.s.s.s.
BEGINNING WORK:

switched to sarge repos,

apt-get -f upgrade returns message:
....no such file or directory, you may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems.

will now run apt-get update and go from there.

apt-get update completed, now executing apt-get -f upgrade. which will additional 17.1MB to the system. saying "yes" and continuing.

walked away and came back
to read "error, expected no more than 3 tokens for --msgbox, have 4. --use help to list options.

debconf: whiptail output to above errors, giving up!

...

running tzconfig to set system timezone - selecting for appropriate zone...

time zone set, now system is asking if i want to save or overwrite settings, as your advice run, i will choose to keep the current version (option N; default option)

MESSAGE: it is highly recommended that you allow update-passwd to make the SE (its all it reads is SE) changes - a backup is created so you can always restore your original settings... May i update your system? y/n - selecting Y

after update, continues now to ask to overwrite old files with new, i select N again as advised... (option N)

final messages:
chmod: invalid mode: reference= /etc/shells
dpkg: error processing bash (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing: bash

E: sub process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code 1

now back to root, ready to switch sarge to etch and continue....

You should be alright using the repo I listed by itself. If you run into problems later I will post more but that should get you threw the upgrade by itself. It does for me. I always add them after I am done. That repo is basically pointing the same way as the ones that come default. You just have to change "oldstable to "etch" the other default repos won't work like this for me but that one does. I got this info from the guy who made the last couple of builds of xdsl a member here named stevewal he talks about this in detail in the tutorial section in the pin threads titled xdsl tips and tricks.

You can use the apt-get enable feature located in the xdsl menu to install apt-get. This is how I do it. I just change repos after I install apt-get.

When you use etch you must comment out the start of the lines listed for sarge with a # and vice-versa when using sarge you must comment out etch

Every time you change repos you must apt-get update first before running apt-get -f upgrade or apt-get -f dist-upgrade.

Bad news for you. I looked around for the apps you wanted in your first post and only 1 is located in any of my repos. The one I found was pidgin in etch and it will break the system I am sure. You may however be able to find an older build of the app that may work. It is just not in my repos. The other 2 you will have to find elsewhere as well. pidgin will break with these packages

xfonts-75dpi
xfonts-base
xserver-common
xterm
xutils

and maybe

xlibmesa-glu

Last one I am unsure about but I have busted enough distros to know that the 1st 5 I listed will bust it everytime.



Dont move to etch until you have gotten threw all of sarge with out errors. Juggle with -f upgrade and -f dist-upgrade

The errors you listed look uncommon to me but there is still no need to panic unless you have already replaced some critical ones with etch. There is also a command with apt-get that will try to fix dependacies. It will prompt you with this command and say something like run apt-get with no packages or something. You may need to use this command to get threw sarge. It will tell you what the command is I don't remember it but you will know when you see it. Also check my past previous post in this thread where I talk about the "pcmcia" file. This may also be necessary to do. The funny thing is I don't know why sometimes these tweaks are needed and sometimes they are not. I have done this upgrade a thousand times the exact same way I think and sometimes I have to make these tweaks and sometimes I dont.

on pidgin, no big deal. ill keep trying this upgrade out none-the-less.

i edited my last post in here as i went along so i wouldnt flood the board with updates, let me know if that all sounds correct so far. i havent yet switched to etch or done anything else. basically i am done with the first sarge bit.

PART 2: ETCH
opened up sources.list, commented out all SARGE repos and added in etch repo url:
deb http://mirror.linux.org.au/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

executed apt-get update, which completed successfully.

apt-get -f install perl, completing,

error message as follows:
E: this installation will require temporarily removing the essential package ofe2fsprogs due to a conflicts/pre-depends loop. this is often bad, but if you really want to do it, activate the APT::FORCE-LOOPBREAK option.
E: internal error, could not early remove e2fsprogs

back to root prompt

ok, i just read your edits about sarge. so far as i can tell, my etch didnt do anything, so i will uncomment BACK to sarge and try to get thru sarge with 0 errors before going to etch.

i will also look into your pcmcia tweak, although i was presented with no pcmcia errors.

back to work i go!

continuing
switched back to sarge,
ran apt-get update, completed,

running apt-get -f dist-upgrade, which ultimately returns me to my debconf, whiptail, chmod errors. executing apt-get -f upgrade returns the same output.

maybe ill reboot and see if its broken.... various xfonts files... more...


as well,
should it be known that i am using xdsl .6, because i am.

why? because i am using a 1.6 xbox and the older version does not have support for "resizing" windows by clicking them, which jacks up my whole experience...

successful reboot - nothings broken. yet!

hmmm
with a fresh reboot, i tried to apt-get upgrade, which returned the error:

segmentation faulty tree... 0%

rm /var/cache/apt/*.bin corrects the problem. try again to same effect.
apt-get -f upgrade works, and states the following:

the following packages have been kept back:
apt-utils, base-config, coreutils, cpp, deborphan, e2fsprogs, fluxboxx, fontconfig, libxft2, lilo, pppoeconf, ted-common, ted-gtk, usbutils, util-linux, vorbis-tools, wireless-tools, xbase-clients, xlibs, xlibx-data, xterm

the following packages will be upgraded:
s e v e r a l including whiptail, various xfonts files, more....

110 upgraded, 0 newly installed or removed.

need to get 6/37.5MB of archives.
do you want to continue? select yes....

debconf now gives various errors:
unable to init frontend: dialog..... resize term window to fit, term now asks if i want readline, kdr, gnome, etc, select kde this time...

now asks about keymaps.... select the only option which is OK,

busybox v1.2.2 opens....
setting up bash,
chmod invalid mode (again...) reference /etc/shells
dpkg error again processing bash (--configure) same as before.....

errors were encountered when processing: bash,

back to root.

try apt-get -f install I think that is the command with no packages I think not sure it has been awhile. If it is dependancy issues it should sort it out.

I do the upgrade on the same build I am not a big fan of 7 like I am of 6

apt-get -f install cycles me directly to my chmoddpkg/bash error....

oh crikey!

check this out when you have a second, run:

now i am trying to do this whole upgrade process in bash...

running the command:
dpkg --configure --pending

cycles me up to where my work is halting - SETTING UP BASH

is there a redundancy error happening since i am trying to SETUP BASH from BASH?

should i run this in another terminal window? do i have other terminals available?

Kind of sounds like you jacked up apt-get or dpkg package somehow. You might need to start from scratch again. Something like this has happen to me before but I thought it was because of trying to upgrade apt-get in etch but I could be wrong. The only other thing I can think of that I have done differently is enable gnu utils in the dsl menu at the start.

If I get a minute today I will try a fresh install again and document it. It could also have something to do with how the overscan function of the 1.6 is running. If all possible you might want to try to do the upgrade without the 1.6 fix then after you complete the upgrade tweak the settings manually. There are several ways you can tweak the overscan settings without using the 1.6 fix.

I am 100% sure you can get threw sarge without touching etch repos. Just like I am sure I can get python,java, and perl to install in etch without a 2.6 kernel. I only need to use the 2.6 to run virtualbox and I would not need it then if I could build a 2.4 kernel from source or find an xbox 2.4 kernel deb package. One of these days I will get us a deb package of a 2.4 kernel with the 32-64k fatx cluster patch and the boot from hda58 patch. I have been trying to build it for a while but have been unsuccessful so far.

I have also been trying to get mythtv running on ubuntu with a used capture card I picked up off ebay. Been messing with it since my last post. Been messing with it for days to be honest. I can get it to work in tvtime,tv zapper, and xawtv but not mythtv I can not get it to pick up cable threw the coaxial cable either. I can only get it to play if I loop it threw a vcr or something threw the composite or svideo hookups. You run ubuntu any ideas?

hmm, looking into the chmod command, i find the following link:
http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/chmod.1.asp

this link states that "reference" is not a mode, which comes down to syntax error somewhere in the upgrade process.

somewhere theres a script that is evidentially calling for a reference mode, but the chmod in question has no way of using that command, since its not programmed to do so.

i had read that this may be due to using an unstable debian repo? however from the repos listed, none of these are named as unstable, so i would assume that these are the stable releases.



this really is an obscure error, with only one google link matching up to it entirely and pointing to a super ol forum thread which is OF COURSE open ended with no resolve. i love that stuff.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/i...=9;t=13992;st=0
of course its open ended, its from the direct DSL support forums. the most pathetic "support forum" on the internet.

hmm, that *is* a peculiar issue. so in the other TV apps, the TV tuner function (cable) works, but in mythtv all you get out of it is the composite input? that doesn't make a lot of sense, sounds like theres a driver issue. take a look at the chipset on the card and go from there if you havent already.

i have an old tv/fm card from Phoebe Micro which operates off of the BT878 chipset, and for the life of me i cant get it to pick up as being plugged into my PCI slot in ubuntu right now - back on windows however, it worked just fine.

i wound up giving up because at the time video editing isn't on my agenda. i bought the card years ago so i could dump vhs/hi8 to an old xp box and create avi's of old concert footage i shot. im figuring with the cost of usb video adapters coming down so much that when the time is right ill just grab one of those.

best spot i can think of is the ubu forums if you haven't tried already. i get pretty decent response time in there. decent, mind you, not the best. theres a high rotation of newb Q&A which is quick to push your threads down a few pages, but for the most part i dont ever have to bump to get any help.
http://ubuntuforums.org/

man i wound up having to take a break on the dsl upgrade, but im going to try again with your new tips in your last post. also, if you do get the time and feel up to it, documentation about the whole upgrade process would be really cool. that kinda stuff might even get stickied. i digress, for now, i am outta here. ive had 6 hours sleep in the last 36 hours. drama knows no rest, it seems.

errors were encountered while processing: bash

this is really getting f'in old. run if you have any tips, id appreciate 'em.

this is for the damn birds.

Did you try without the 1.6 screen fix? I thought I had gotten at one time or another every possible error while doing this upgrade but I never have had a bash error. I have had a few random errors that I came across doing the upgrade and they happen for no reason I could figure out but when that happens I just go with a fresh install and don't spend much time on it because I know when it is right it will go threw flawless. A fresh install and upgrade takes less than an hour at a time so I just start from scratch. I will run down the upgrade again.

Install dsl on a loopback or native install. enable apt-get and gnu utils in the menu. Open a file manager under root. go to /etc/apt/sources.list comment all the lines out by starting each line with a "#" sign. Paste the repositories I listed in the earlier post here. Then open a terminal under root then apt-get update. Then apt-get -f upgrade. Then apt-get -f dist-upgrade. It may ask you to run apt-get with no packages if it does use the command it list on the screen. Then apt-get -f upgrade again. You may need to use these 3 commands several times before it goes threw perfect. Sometimes it only takes 2 commands sometimes it takes all 3. Once you finally get threw with no errors change the repo's and add etch repos. If when you are upgrading threw sarge you get snagged up upgrading pcmcia or core utils. Follow instructions on earlier post to get around this. Once you get threw with sarge and have changed repos to etch "you have to comment out the sarge repos before you switch to etch" apt-get update again. Then apt-get install perl once that goes threw then apt-get install python then apt-get install python2.5. After I have done this I switch back to the sarge repos "commenting out etch repos" apt-get update again. Then apt-get install synaptic. Once synaptic is installed I build everything else from its gui interface. At this point you should have the same interface you use with modern pc based ubuntu and should be good to go from there.

You pick up anything you missed from this?

hells bells...

so i didnt realize to add the gnu utils before, so i did that.

i turned off the 1.6 overscan fix and rebooted.

changed repos to sarge.

ran apt-get update,

ran apt-get -f distupgrade,

it took much longer to do this, this time. it asked me to setup the gnome/kde/text whatever dialogs, i chose basic text/terminal mode, it then went and asked me if i wanted to update various packages to what came with the new distribution, i default selected no. i continued this until the end.

the end now as usual gives me a damn error i have seeeen befooore...

E: sub process usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

then im back to a root prompt...

i thought i had it, too, when i added the gnu utils and it went thru so much more for the upgrade process...

the following packages have unmet dependencies:

ALL LIBS

libice6 but it is not installed, etc thru libxtst6 but it is not installed,

unmet dependencies, try using -f

trying:
apt-get -f upgrade

seems to be working... maybe this is what you meant by i may have to try a mix of commands a few times.. its asking questions now, im answering no, ill update when this finishes...


edit: now i get error during pppconfig.... which seeeems to be my last update....

sub process returned error code 1 during pppconfig, at least its not bash this time.

this is going nowhere...

no matter the combination of apt-get -f dist-upgrade, apt get upgrade, updae, -f update, install pppconfig, etc it comes back with the same damn error oveeer and ovvver again...

redundant, it is.

i dont even have wifi built into the box, so can i just avoid adding this last part and start pn the etch part?

You try to apt-get with no packages so it tries to fix dependencies? If that one package is what is holding you back and you can't fix with apt-get command for no packages to fix dependencies then trying etch should not hurt I would think. Worst it can do is crash it and you get to start from scratch again.

alright, check it out, i made progress last night.

i wound up just skipping worrying about pppconfig, since afterall, i dont use a PPP based internet connection, i figured it could rot away never being properly updated. the system didnt mind, either.

i switched to the etch repo, added python, java-package & perl, then switched back to sarge to acquire synaptic. the sarge synaptic is sooo much nicer than the xdsl synaptic! reminded me of working on ubuntu.

i tried adding knoqueror, but i had dependency issues, so i installed kde. took a long time, but kde installed and it also installed konqueror. it ate up most of my 2Gb loopback, which turned me off.


then i decided to check out konqueror. no icon on the desktop, so i term'd it out. it took a minute to load up, but eventually i was presented with a very attractive, clean web browser, which also doubled as a file system browser from what i could tell. it was nice enough, but after installing the entire kde package, i really wanted to see the kde desktop/window manager. i never figured out how to get into that.

from there i decided hell with it, lets try some other window managers, so i added enlightenment. enlightenment was terrible on a 1.6 system. all i had was a teal colored background to look at, and a nice looking menu when i clicked around the desktop. i had no visible options for running any applications, so i shut down for the night and have since waking up, did a fresh install of dsl.

aside from its very outdated appearence, i like dsl a lot. i just wish there was a way to update the window/desktop management. i can run the system just fine, bnut if im going to install kde just to run konqueror, that seems kinda frivolous. konqueror was very attractive, but without having a window manager or desktop enviornment to blend in with it, i felt a little gypped.

any tips on updating the user enviornment (window/desktop mgmt)? also, do you know if there is a way to add a splash screen during the dsl boot process? i was curious about that. even just a standard bitmap image would be cool, i dont need an animated loading bar or anything like that. tho if thats possible, id be willing to put in the work.

don't know about the splash screen but konquer will install without the full kde it only requires the base of kde if I am not mistaken it should do that auto. I also remember installing a whole kde interface before it was nice but not my cup of tea. I don't remember exactly how I did it but I know I did I remember because the menu ran along the bottom of the screen. If you install nautilus you can get a gnome desktop when you launch nautilus I could not figure out how to get it to launch without launching nautilus to get to it. I use the desktop menu on dsl to make icons to launch from and stick with the standard dsl desktop to keep the size down and use less resources leaving more gogo juice for the apps I run. I would suggest you do the same it will run better. I also increase swap size to 1gig. I use mine basically as a torrent-nzb grabber. It downloads as quick as my pc and I get better performance out of my pc because of it. I set the firefox download directory on all my pc's to dump everything in a share on the xbox and I keep vuze and sabnzbd running scanning that directory. The only pain in the ass about the setup is sometimes it screws with the permissions and I have to go into the xbox to change them so I can access them from outside the machine.

Anyhow I am glad you got it worked out I was starting to get worried about you figuring it out. It took me months of trying to figure it all out before I licked it. I am glad to see someone else benefited from the time I spent on learning our system. Maybe know you can help me crush us out a new build for the scene since you are getting up to speed. We really need the 32-64k patched in and launching from hda58 would come in handy to.

right on, man. check it out now, i wound up getting synaptic installed without relying on the etch repos once. i bypassed the whole grabbing java, perl & python apps, and just ran thru with apt-get update, dist update -f, etc. as well, this install wound up upgrading without one hitch for me.

i did have issues, but i juggled the upgrade/update/etc commands, and it completed one hundred percent with no flaws. no bash errors, no pppconfig errors, nada. i also went ahead and selected "yes" to install the newer versions of the softwares when prompted as opposed to saying no, i also allowed the system to update its user levels when it asked me.

i agree that the use of eye-candy based environments (kde) on such a slim system will render most applications useless. i think at least having a selection of color themes available to get rid of all the GRAY would help alot, tho. i dont even need flashy round corners or anything, just a way to theme it even like win98 would be nice. i have been looking for themes for JWM and havent found much out there. i decided that im going to try to install one of the themes i found and tweak its properties to see if i could clean one up a bit.

the JWM is great, the biggest bonus it has in my opinion is the resizablity of windows, which is imperitive to 1.6 based users. being able to click and manipulate the window size as it overscanned off screen helped me out before i figured out how to edit and enable the 1.6 screen fix. i think including an updated 1.6 geometry value in the system at download/burn would help a lot of users. if the screen size is defaulted a slight bit smaller for 1.6 users, it will make navigating in an overscaned area much muuuch easier on the newbs. i think the overscan at first boot is a big enough turn off for a lot of newbs to say screw it and just walk away bitching that they cant run windows. because lets face it, most newbs are windows fans who have neevr used linux a day in their lives. thats how it was for me, only im a big enough hack to put in the work and learn it. i wound up being taken with DSL, and these days have abandoned windows.

i think having an easier method to mount hard drive partitions and USB devices will also welcome newbs. one problem i had this xmas was a buddy of mine got a clip mp3 player, and it wasnt detected by karmic koala. ubu 9.0c does detect the device however. it was very frustrating. i wound up plugging the usb into the DSL and it was connected with no problems, only i was unable to browse to it as i couldnt determine its mount point. as much as i dont like the fluxbox WM, i do like how it has the "mount device" applet on the desktop. bringing that into the JWM would be great. point and click mounting is nice for newbs who dont want to tackle fstab just yet.

i still have yet to get torrenting downloading into my F: partition, but i havent given up on it. i think with my newer knowledge of linux overall itll be easier for me to figure out. i also want to be able to compile ISO's from downloads thru the DSL. this will make downloading certain applications used on the xbox muuuch easier than downloading them to a pc, compiling them, and then ftp'ing them over to the xbox.



since there is no real work going on with DSL, and i have experience with linux in general terms of its working system, i think it would be great to see a new release, and i would have no problems contributing work to make it happen. its basically dead in the water in terms of "official" development out there, and i have been waiting actually to hear from someone else who uses DSL enough to want an update.

for my swap i just stick with 768 at the moment, with of course the puny 2Gb loopback system. i dont fully understand why it is currently limited to 2Gb for LB FS. i tried using 4000 in terms of FS size at installation once and it left me with like a 200Mb FS.