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Fscking Madness About once a month, no matter what distribution of Linux I use, upon bootup it checks the filesystem and fails. It then asks me to give the root password for maintenance, and then when I try to run FSCK manually, it just says "parallelizing FSCK version XX.XX" and does nothing. What can I do besides re-installing my Linux system each time? -Calvin Robertson The Penguin responds: The Penguin would seriously question the integrity of your hard disk drive. Since you haven't included information regarding whether you have an IDE or SCSI, it's really hard to diagnose a problem such as this. However, just to be safe, we would recommend having a Systems Technician take a look at your PC in order to diagnose a possible hard disk issue--preferably a technician who is certified to work on your respective system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Beginning The Journey I am currently running an X client on my Irix5.3-based SGI machine. Can I install one of the many other themes offered by www.themes.org or www.enlightnement.org? As a newbie to the UNIX environment, I know I learn best by example. I am wondering if you have run across any books that are more like tutorials than dictionaries? I am imagining a book that is built around the idea of "Lesson Plans"--where each lesson is built upon the previously learned lesson. Have you run into such a book that takes a newbie from ground zero and makes the newbie someone to be able to set up and run his own complete machine (and by complete I mean settin up TCP, FTP, APOP, SMTP, HTTP, and other services)? Also, I have access to other flavors of Linux: Caldera, Red Hat, Debian, and MkLinux. I have had no success with some of them, while others have been successful. My question is: If I download a file to install on one of these platforms, does it have to be written for that flavor of Linux? – T.J. Wise The Penguin responds: Ok, we'll start with your first question. Since you've mentioned that it is an Irix5.3machine, it is highly doubtful that Enlightenment has a precompiled binary for your particular system. However, you could always download the source and compile it for your platform. Themes will work, once you have a working version of Enlightenment running. Regarding particular books to buy, we would recommend the Sams Publishing line of books, such as Red Hat Unleashed, Samba Unleashed and many others. The answer to your third question is relatively easy in that most software that you buy will include support for practically any version of Linux that you use. Some software will actually include support for the latest kernel, with most requiring at least a Linux system with kernel 2.0 installed. All newer distributions of Linux contain the 2.2.x series of kernels. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Winmodem Madness I did it! I finally installed Linux! I installed Mandrake simply because I heard it was easy to use (which it is) and it has a built- in partition resizer. I have it installed and I'm slowly figuring out the GUI and the commands. There is, however, one problem--my modem doesn't work and is not detected. I have a Motorola SM56 PCI speakerphone modem on com3. Any ideas? –Joel Citron The Penguin responds: The Penguin happened to run over to Motorola and the answer doesn't look good. Unfortunately, the SM56 is a dreaded Winmodem. Some, and we do mean, SOME modem manufacturers have made drivers for their respective winmodems. But we couldn't find anything on the SM56, other than its support for Windows. Do yourself a favor--go out and buy a non-Winmodem. Besides, Winm