I'm a little stressed by all this and other aspects of the nightmare
that is moving to a new city, so I just hit reply and sent the below to
Bill when I intended to get it back here on the Ottawa LUG list. Below
is what I wrote:
On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 13:07 -0400, Bill Strosberg wrote:
>
> 1) Your DVD writer usually will write CDs fine. If you look on the
> front panel it probably has an alphabet soup of compatible media
listed,
> including CD-R, CD-RW along with DVD+R(W) and DVD-R(W).
>
I suppose it will. I swapped it last night for what I thought
was a CD
Writer, turns out I never thought to look and I got a 56x CD read only
drive instead. I'm coming out of a moving nightmare and the old grey
cells aren't clicking like they usually do. I'm also under a lot of
stress. I plead temporary loss of competance.
> 2) There lots of DVD writing software available, and I remember one
of
> the Linux magazines had a VHS to DVD conversion article in it this
past
> year or so. Google is your friend. I'd first try this before digging
> for your CDR drive.
>
Thanks. Now what did I do with that DVD writer,... Oh, I took
it out
because Fedora didn't acknowledge it's existence. It doesn't seem to be
big on hardware auto-recognition and/or configuring.
> 3) The DSL modem from your ISP is usually an external beast with a
> Ethernet cable to your PC. Most ISPs are using PPPoE (PPP over
> Ethernet), so every distribution in the known world includes our own
> David Skoll's RP-PPPoE package for connecting. Each distribution
tints
> and tweaks things a little to conform to their own configuration file
> issues, but usually pppoeconf will work from the command line. This
is
> a curses-based text interface to setting up the DSL modem
connection.
> Plug your DSL modem into an Ethernet interface on your PC, as well as
> the phone line and run pppoeconf - if you follow the instructions you
> should be connected in seconds. Know your username [ at ] isp [ dot ] com and DSL
> password before trying.
>
Thanks forthe fast response. Here's an idea of what I'm facing.
I started a console as root and entered pppoeconf and got a "Command not
found." With my limited knowledge, that's a stopper.
> 4) Please implement some type of comprehensive firewalling.
> Preferably before connecting the Internet, so you don't become some
l33t
> d00dz spam spewing zombie b*tch. If you are already firewalled, make
> sure you change the default gateway interface to the appropriate PPP
> device, not the Ethernet port it uses. xDSL uses an unaddressed
> Ethernet port to connect to the DSL modem, and the actual external
> device used is usually PPP0. Most Linux boxes connecting to the
> Internet are dual homed with Ethernet interfaces to an internal
network
> as well and an external Ethernet interface connecting to the DSL
modem.
> Shorewall (an iptables wrapper) has worked very well for me. It has
> Webmin modules available as well.
>
Oh, I'll try. There is a firewall that I have played with and
as far
as I know it's running on the current connection. There's not a lot of
feedback from it as I remember.
> 5) If you have any trouble, ask! One of us in your neighborhood
will
> probably offer to come on site and help if need be. (I'm a far East
> ender in Orleans).
>
> 6) If you want Nvidia drivers and feel the need to financially
support
> developers, you may be better to download the drivers and send a
> donation to the GNU.org, the EFF or wherever suite your fancy.
Sending
> Mandriva money may not have the same real benefit for the folks who
> write and support software.
>
That sounds like a good idea.
> Hope this helps.
It's a start, Thanks. And NOW?...