Question: I keep getting these errors during updates: “Installation failed, some files are missing:…”. What can I do about it?
Answer: You would be better off changing mirror. Mandriva's headquarters are in Paris and usually the french mirrors get updated faster. Testing is easy, just download a couple of files manually from each mirror and check which mirror gets you the fastest download speed. Simplest way to change your mirrors: launch the Mandriva Control Center, then MCC > Software Management > Configure media sources > Uncheck the “Enabled” box for your existing sources, or if you prefer, select them all for removal with a shift-click, then click “remove”. Then use the “Add” button to add a different source, different locations will be listed as options. If you prefer to work from the command line, edit /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg with your favorite editor, replace http:<old mirror>/<path to Mandriva on old mirror>/… by http:<new mirror>/<new path>/…
Question: Doesn't compressing /usr make reading files slower?
Answer: There is no measurable loss in performance. Without compression, OpenOffice Writer takes 17 seconds to launch. With compression, it still takes 17 seconds to launch!
Question: I am finished installing Mandriva 2008.1, rebooted, and noticed that many services get started at boot time. Which ones can I disable and what's the simplest way to do it?
Answer: Open the Mandriva Control Center (you'll have to authenticate as root first) and in the System tab, open the gear icon (“Manage system services by enabling or disabling them”). Check/uncheck those services that you want started or not at boot time. Clicking on the “Info” button next to each service will show a short description of the service. Here is a list of the services I have disabled (for my particular setup):
In my eeePC desktop setup, I also disabled the file indexing package that was installed by default (Beagle), as this saves on power.
Question: I have just installed Mandriva 2008.1 and it shows my CPU as 900MHz?
Answer: As noted elsewhere in this wiki, the Linux kernel measures CPU clock relative to FSB clock x maximum multiplier for your CPU (for the Celeron in the eeePC 701, this is 9), and it just assumes the FSB is 100MHz. So 9 x 100MHz = 900MHz. However, unless you have overclocked the FSB (using the eee.ko module), your FSB is still 70MHz, and your CPU is clocked at 9 x 70MHz = 630MHz, even though Mandriva shows 900MHz. It is possible to increase the FSB to 100MHZ so the CPU is truly running at 900MHz Overclocking an eee with Mandriva Overclocking may cause your eee to overheat and may damage it.
Question: I have a 2G eeePC. Can I install Mandriva 2008.1? Isn't it going to be too slow? Is 512MB RAM enough?
Answer: Mandriva 2008.1 installs usually require > 2GB of disk space, so you'll need to install to a 4GB SDHC card or USB key (around $15 these days). Apart from that, you'll be fine with a 2G running Mandriva 2008.1. Also see the tips about improving performance. 512MB of RAM is enough to run Mandriva 2008.1: with KDE 3.5.9, Firefox with various pages with Flash, Konqueror, Amarok and Konsole launched I am using < 360MB RAM.
Question: I am going to install Mandriva 2008.1. How do I partition the 4GB SSD/SDHC card/USB key? Do I need a swap partition?
Answer: A single 4GB (or larger) partition, mounted as /, will do fine. The recommended filesystem is Reiserfs, but you can also use ext3fs. Finally, you don't need a swap partition (unless you want Suspend-to-Disk aka Hibernate, see below).
Question: I am going to install Mandriva 2008.1 on my eeePC. Where should I install; the 4GB partition SSD, the 12GB SSD (sdb), SDHC card or USB key? Which one is faster?
Answer: Not really a Mandriva 2008.1 related question, but here is the answer anyway.
First, fastest to slowest:
But does raw i/o speed really matter once Linux is booted? YMMV, but for normal usage (i.e. browsing the web, editing small documents, reading and writing mail), it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. However fast access times DO!.
Second, consider the practical aspects of each alternative: if you install on the SSD, you'll overwrite the original Xandros distribution and you are stuck with the original SSD capacity. If you install on a USB key, you'll have it protruding from the side of your eeePC, and accidentally removing the USB key while the system is up and running will result in an ugly crash, with possible loss of data (i.e. you may have to reinstall). If you install on an SDHC card, it takes up your SDHC slot, and there is no visual indication of i/o taking place (no led) (and there is a risk of accidental removal, but smaller compared to the USB key), plus the OS will boot slower. Use a USB stick for faster, more flexible removable OS. Use a SD for neater tucked away, more comfortable and more permanent OS.
Question: I am going to install Mandriva 2008.1 to the SSD on my eeePC, and I would like to have my /home on an SD/SDHC card. Can I do that?
Answer: Sure. The simplest and safest way is to do a normal SSD install (check the install HOWTO) and anytime after the first reboot:
mkfs.reiserfs /dev/sdX1
mkdir /tmp/nhome; mount /dev/sdX1 /tmp/nhome
cp -a /home/* /tmp/nhome
umount /tmp/nhome; mount /dev/sdX1 /home
vol_id -u /dev/sdX1 >> /etc/fstab; echo " /home reiserfs rw,noatime,notail,exec 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
For those who prefer to use a GUI instead of the command line: (assuming you are using KDE)
Question: When resuming from suspend-to-RAM, my SSD or SD card are missing (if I double-click the desktop “media:/” icon), and the error message “The KDE mediamanager is not running” comes up. Does this mean I need to activate something to be able to see them?
Answer: This error is caused whenever there is an SD card inserted and you are booting from SSD. This is easy to solve, it involves setting the “persist” kernel parameter for the USB device to 1 (On). It is 0 by default (Off).
Add the following line to your rc.local file (in /etc/rc.d):
echo 1 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/persist
When booting from SD card you may get a similar error due to the SSD being powered off during suspend. The fix for that error has not been documented yet.
Question: I followed the instructions at the bottom of the Mandriva 2008.1 eeePC Installation HOWTO to setup my software sources. I then tried to setup the wireless madwifi driver, but I still only have the ndiswrapper option. Have I missed a step… or done something wrong?
Answer: Did you remember to enable the wireless device in the BIOS? Is the blue WiFi led on? If not, reboot, enter the BIOS by pressing F2, enable the wireless device and save to CMOS. As your eeePC restarts, check that the blue WiFi led is on. Otherwise the Linux kernel will not detect the Atheros wifi adaptor when loading the modules and MCC won't offer to install the madwifi packages.
Question: I installed Mandriva 2008.1 and KDE 3.5.9 on my eeePC, but KDE is extremely slow and unresponsive. Is there anything I can do about it?
Answer: Sure. Actually you probably have KPowersave clocking down the CPU to save power, so your CPU is running at 80MHz or so, and of course KDE feels sluggish. Right-click on the KPowersave icon in the System Tray (that's the battery/line power icon) and set the CPU frequency policy to “Performance”. Another way to do it, through the command line, is to set /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq to a reasonable value like 675000; it is 110000 by default (110 * 0.7 =~ 80MHz).
Question: I installed Mandriva 2008.1 and noticed that my wireless signal doesn't seem to be as strong as in Xandros. Is it just me?
Answer: No, it's not just you! Unfortunately the reverse-engineered madwifi driver available for Mandriva seems to use a different algorithm for measuring signal quality, compared to the Asus/Atheros driver used in Xandros. So even when I am one foot away from my wifi router I only get 60% signal quality or so. I wouldn't worry too much about it though, as I have managed to get reasonable-to-good transfer rates and the madwifi driver has proved stable (I can leave my eeePC running Mandriva downloading for > 24 hours and not a single hiccup).
Question: I wanted to “trim down the fat” of my Mandriva setup and removed/de-installed quite a few packages. But now I notice <insert list of things here> doesn't work anymore. What can I do?
Answer: Re-install. Unless you know exactly what you are doing (say, you are a Mandriva developer), it's a bad idea to remove packages or go around erasing directories in /usr or other system directories. The same applies to de-selecting packages during install. You can do what you want in your home dir, but leave the system alone. If you are totally desperate for more disk space, compress /usr (see HOWTO). Remember the old Linux adage: if you break it, you get to keep the pieces! ;)
Question: Does Mandriva support 2GB of RAM on the eeePC?
Answer: Short answer, yes. Long answer: sure enough, once you install Mandriva on the SSD or on an SDHC card, the installed kernel is the laptop kernel compiled for 686-class processors which supports up to 4GB of RAM. The generic 586 kernel used for the live CD or for the installer supports only 1GB of RAM, because neither the installer nor the live CD require > 1GB RAM. If you didn't follow the Installation HOWTO (shame on you!) and installed from either the One Gnome or One KDE live CDs, you have to manually upgrade your 586 kernel to the laptop kernel.
Question: LCD black after resuming from Suspend-to-RAM. On both the eeePC 2G surf, 8G and 900, when resuming the system after it has suspended to RAM, the LCD screen fails to light up again and I have to switch to a console (Ctrl-Alt-F1) and back (Ctrl-Alt-F7) as a workaround. Any real solution?
Answer: First apply all the latest updates. Mandriva have fixed this issue. If you still have problems try this (in a console as root):
echo DISPLAY_QUIRK_S3_BIOS=\"true\" >> /etc/pm/config.d/config
Reboot and test suspending to RAM, it should work now.
Question: Is Mandriva 2008.1 compatible with the eeePC 900?
Answer: Yes. The eeePC 900 hardware is (almost) fully supported, just like the eeePC 701. Please note that suspend-to-ram/resume requires the small fix from A15 above. The same instructions as found in the Installation HOWTO apply to the eeePC 900, with the added option of installing to the secondary SSD. Note that some new trackpad features (two fingers zoom, etc) may not be implemented yet, although the trackpad itself works fine. Also check A24 below if you have problems with the 1.3MP webcam not being usable in Skype. You should also make sure you have all the latest updates applied and have upgraded to the latest kernel. See the HOWTO on upgrading kernels [upgrading_a_kernel_on_mandriva_howtoInternal Link]
Question: In the Mandriva Installer, I don't get a choice to create a reiserfs partition?
Answer: Select the tab for the correct device to partition (sdX, where X is usually a, b, c or d). Delete any previous partitions that you are not going to use. Now click on the “Create” button. The next window will ask you to select a partition type; choose “Journaling - reiserfs” (sometimes this is the rightmost choice, partly hidden because of the eeePC 700 small screen size - but it's there).
Question: Why do the HOWTO and the FAQ always recommend the use of reiserfs, and not ext3? Or ext2?
Answer: This is an apparently simple question but the answer can get quite technical and quickly generate more than a few flame wars. So, separating facts from advice:
So as you can see, there is only anecdotal evidence in support of reiserfs over ext3. Both are journaling filesystems and neither one was designed for use on Flash storage devices.
Question: The first time I launched Gnome I had a popup saying the battery was broken. Is it?
Answer: This is a small bug. Just ignore the message and click on the “Don't show this message again” option. Your battery is not broken.
Question: Hey, I just installed Mandriva and I don't have Xfce, even though I checked the “Other desktops” box when choosing the packages to install! Where's my Xfce?
Answer: Your Xfce is just a few keystrokes away. In a console as root, type:
urpmi task-xfce
Now, now, see, that wasn't so difficult! ;)
Question: I have installed Mandriva on an SDHC card as explained in the Installation HOWTO. But now every time I boot, I get the filesystem checked (fsck), so it takes a good 5 minutes to boot. What's happening and is there a solution?
Answer: The halt script (in /etc/init.d) is not giving the SDHC card enough time to save all the data written to it (i.e. the filesystem doesn't get cleanly unmounted). A simple workaround is to edit slightly the /etc/init.d/halt file, as follows:
sync sync sync sleep 5
If this doesn't work try to change 5 to 10, 5 seconds sometimes isn't enough (at least this is my experience with a 2G surf -Kentaur). The result should look like this:
sync sync sync sleep 10
This actually seems to be a problem with (hardware?)buffers that are not drained by normal unmount and sync-operation. A better solution is to do some reading with unmounted partition. Put in same place as the other examples:
/sbin/tune2fs -l /dev/disk/by-id/usb-USB2.0_CardReader_SD0_146030377350-0:0-part1>/dev/null
change the cardreader id to your problem drive. Remember to read A15 (above) before you reboot ;).
Question: I have installed Mandriva 2008.1 from the Free DVD as indicated in the HOWTO, but I notice many codecs are missing. How can I install them?
Answer: Many codecs depend on proprietary code and so cannot be included in the Free DVD, and cannot be found in Mandriva's package repositories either. But there is a simple solution: to add the Penguin Liberation Front (PLF) repositories to your software sources. If you do not know how to add a source for the PLF online repositories then:
The above configures the PLF source. Now you can easily install the faad2 (AAC), real-codecs, win32-codecs, ffmpeg, libxine1 and mplayer packages using the Mandriva Control Center (MCC).
Question: I am trying to download the Mandriva Free DVD for the 3rd time now, on my first two tries the download froze at around 97% (wasting three hours of my time on each try). What's happening?
Answer: As noted in the Installation HOWTO, the Mandriva Free DVD iso file is slightly larger than 4GB, and the Windows FAT filesystem is limited to filesizes less than 4GB. So either use an NTFS filesystem or any Linux filesystem that supports filesizes > 4GB (e.g. ext3fs, reiserfs,etc) to save your DVD iso file. If downloading directly to a USB key/hard disk, make sure it is formatted as NTFS or ext3fs/reiserfs first, since many USB keys are shipped from the factory formatted with FAT16, which definitely does not support 4GB files.
Question: On the eeePC 900, the default uvc driver for the webcam apparently does not work well with Skype. Any solution available?
Answer: There is an updated kernel available with a later version pf the uvc driver that works. All you have to do is upgrade your kernel and reboot. See the HOWTO on upgrading kernels Upgrading a Kernel in Mandriva
Question: Should I install from one of the Mandriva One CDs (Gnome or KDE) or from the Free DVD?
Answer: If you intend to follow the recommended procedure from the Installation HOWTO, you should install from the Mandriva Free DVD (or its ISO image on a USB storage peripheral). Or if you don't want to download the >4GB ISO image of the Mandriva Free DVD, try installing using the FTP install method (also described in the Installation HOWTO), which only requires you to initially download a small (12MB) installer image.
Question: When the screen sleeps due to powersave, or when I suspend-to-RAM with the default Fn+F1, upon resuming the backlight is incredibly bright!
Answer: Please add this line to /etc/pm/config.d/config:
DISPLAY_QUIRK_RESET_BRIGHTNESS="true"
This issue is similar to A15 above, in that Linux Power Management has to be configured specifically for the eeePC, and there may be differences between eeePC models.
Question: How can I overclock my eee 701
Answer: Please see here Overclocking an eee with Mandriva
Question: How can I adjust/remove the TouchPad tapping sensitivity
Answer: Install (as root) the package gsynaptic-x.x.x-2mvd.rpm, open a Konsole and run gsynaptic (as user), go to the “Tapping” tab and adjust to taste.
