Best of Technical Support

I share two boxes, one Windows and one Linux, with one KVM. Both work when I start up the desktop, in this case GNOME/Enlightenment. When I switch from the Mandrake desktop to the other system, then back again, I lose mouse support entirely. I've checked cables, restarted the gpm dæmon and pressed Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to leave the desktop. When I restart the desktop, the mouse is detected again, but only for as long as I don't switch to Windows and then back again.

With the Windows side, I can switch to Linux and back with no problem, and every time I start the desktop on Linux it works—but only until I switch the screen away and back again. Any ideas as to what this needs to fix? Linux/Mandrake 7.1 is running on a Dell P90 (old) with PS/2 mouse, gpm runs with gpm -t ps/2. Could some other dæmon I'm not running because of security be what's causing the problem? I have amd, atd, innd, lpd and portmap disabled.

—Dave Dennis, dmd@speakeasy.org

This is most likely not a problem with the Linux setup. PS/2 mice have a configuration that is initialized during startup. A KVM is responsible for restoring this configuration on switch back to a machine; Linux is totally unaware of the switch.

—Christopher Wingert, cwingert@qualcomm.com

I recently upgraded my kernel and forgot to run LILO before rebooting. Now, if I start up from a different disk, that disk can be mounted and fsck shows it is clear. However, I can't boot from it.

—Willie Strickland, willie@istrick.com

Use the boot disk to boot from the hard drive with a command similar to this at the LILO prompt:

linux root=/dev/hda1

Then edit your lilo.conf and run LILO, as if you'd just installed the new kernel.

—Ben Ford, ben@kalifornia.com

I have networked Linux machines on my home network consisting of two desktop machines and a laptop. I would like to get my mail on any machine but can do so only on the older desktop machine. I have set up the Netscape preferences identically on all machines. On the newer machine and the laptop I get the message “Netscape unable to locate the server mail”, when I try to retrieve mail. The server “mail” is the name given by my ISP (Cox@home), which works perfectly fine on the older machine. On the other machines, when I try to get new messages, Netscape always asks for my password even though in the preferences I have explicitly selected the “remember password” button, so I'm wondering if NS is reading the wrong preferences file.

—Eric Smith, esmith289@home.com

Sounds like your one working machine has the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for your ISP and the others do not. Try adding the rest of the hostname to the configuration for Netscape (i.e., mail.example.com, if example.com is your domain name). Alternately, you could update your /etc/resolv.conf “search” configuration line and add the correct domain name so that you don't have to type in all the time.

—Christopher Wingert, cwingert@qualcomm.com

To check that you have edited /etc/resolv.conf correctly, do a host mail from the shell to see what “mail” is resolving to.

—Don Marti, dmarti@ssc.com

I am trying to use autoupdate 3.1.5. When I type autoupdate, I get this error message:

CWD failed no such directory or file

When I run autoupdate --debug 2, it is able to log in as anonymous user, then it says:

CWD failed.
Error: Failed to check directory at ftp.redhat.com:
pub/redhat/linux/updates/7.1/en/os
no such file or directory.

—Adharsh Praveen R., adarsh@multitech.co.in

You should add a “/” in front of the directory passwd to autoupdate, i.e., /pub/redhat/linux/updates/7.1/en/os.

—Christopher Wingert, cwingert@qualcomm.com