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[lee n. field]

Can I remove the updates or would a format and reinstall be the better choice?

Probably can, but I don't know how, never having needed to.  It's easier to reinstall.  If you partition right (/home on separate partition), and don't format the partition /home is mounted on, a reinstall is a trivial fix.

7.04 is the current version, BTW.

[ZooT_aLLures]

"If" I knew the keyboard shortcuts for Ubuntu, I could work with the thing, but none of my Linux books have those listed, and the Ubuntu forums are strange to navigate. Unlike Windoze, ubuntu just drops old distros and if your question wasn't asked and answered, then you are out of luck as they have moved on to the "next" distro.

So then stop looking for UBUNTU specific keyboard shortcuts......and start looking for generic linux keyboard shortcuts...as there's probably not much difference....

I've got one of those too and it's giving me fits.  A 760xl (?),  I think? 

You can get that information from the IBM website....even if it is a stinker to find.......I've got a 760eL here

[padre29]

IBM is now Lenovo, when i had that thinkpad 356 I was still able to find the phdisk utility for download, so they are maintaining their archives well actually.

[lee n. field]

"If" I knew the keyboard shortcuts for Ubuntu, I could work with the thing, but none of my Linux books have those listed, and the Ubuntu forums are strange to navigate. Unlike Windoze, ubuntu just drops old distros and if your question wasn't asked and answered, then you are out of luck as they have moved on to the "next" distro.

In Gnome, System, Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts.  Customize to your hearts content.

[padre29]

Alrighty, I fdisked and reformatted the Ubuntu Box, with a brief try at XP, and the same touchpad problem popped up with XP as with updated Ubuntu 6.06.

So if I update Ubuntu again, what packages should I not install to keep the touchpad still functioning?

[Mr. Bill]

So if I update Ubuntu again, what packages should I not install to keep the touchpad still functioning?

I don't think anyone but an Ubuntu hardware guru could take a guess at this.  And it would still just be a guess.

[oldzoot]

is one of the updates gpm ?  That is General Purpose Mouse driver for redhat.  Maybe the same thing in ubuntu ?  ( I am a redhat guy myself)

Oz

[oldzoot]

There are 2 possible sources of the problem  1. The linux kernel   and 2.  anything else.

We can test for #1  if you are able to boot the old, original kernel  (I am assuming the kernel got updated)  If you see a grub boot menu when starting the machine,  choose the old kernel.   If the problem goes away,  we know the issue is in the kernel and we can concentrate on back-reving the driver for the mousepad.

If the problem is still there,  it would seem to be some other component. 

The mouspad is handled in the X-window system,  often with the GPM module sitting between the kernel device driver and the X-window system.

Some interesting diagnostics that might help -  do these on the freshly installed system before update and again after update:

uname -a >>  /root/diag1.txt

lsmod >> /root/diag1.txt

   These should put the output of the uname (gets us the kernel version) and lsmod (shows the modular driver tree )
into a text file in /root/ called  diag1.txt.

After update,  do the same thing into  /root/diag2.txt .    Then we can see the differences.


Cntrl-Alt F[1-6]  should get you a text based screen  not interfered with by the spastic mouse.

Oz

[padre29]

Well oldzoot, the way that I am approaching this is that it is entirely experimental, a spare laptop that is not functioning in Windows, why not try Linux on it?

I don't have to configure a wireless card and I have a spare Ethernet card..

Right now the mouse is working fine, it's external but it works so I'll just leave well enough alone.

Interesting that Linux utilities are command line based.

[oldzoot]

If things are working well enough, great!

Yup,  in *nix  ( unix, linux and associated variants)   the operating system itself is not a gui system.   Unix was originally used from terminals as simple as teletypes.   The X-Windows system is an add-in layer to allow graphics including the potential of a display manager desktop environment.

Another thing about *nix is that those command line utilities are like tinkertoys.   It is trivial to feed the output of one into another and another and so on.   So, for example,  if you are running a web server and want to know the pid of it, you could do something like:

ps -ef        and look for httpd  or you could  do

ps -ef | grep httpd   

The vertical bar is called  "pipe"  and tells the system to take the output of the ps -ef command  and feed it into the input of the  grep httpd  command.    grep  is the "global regular expression parser"  but I think of it as  "search for"    in it's most basic form  it will print lines from the input which contain something that matches what it has been told to look for - in this case httpd.

anyway,  after a few years using linux   you get warped enough that somehow all makes sense.

Another level of fun is writing shell scripts.    this is essentially a text file  of commands that you would type into the system to do something.     At work,  I fairly regularly need to make sets of identical computers ( kind of like clusters )  and I use shell scripts to execute the same batch of commands on a bunch of systems.   This makes it easy to get a computer to a known state of system layout,  patching,   configuration  and security profile  while I am reading mental militia !   ( my purpose in life is to script myself out of a job, but not tell anyone! )

OZ

[Roy J. Tellason]

Another thing about *nix is that those command line utilities are like tinkertoys.   It is trivial to feed the output of one into another and another and so on.

Yup,  and some surprisingly powerful things can be done this way...

anyway,  after a few years using linux   you get warped enough that somehow all makes sense.

Yes...   :-)

Another level of fun is writing shell scripts.    this is essentially a text file  of commands that you would type into the system to do something.     At work,  I fairly regularly need to make sets of identical computers ( kind of like clusters )  and I use shell scripts to execute the same batch of commands on a bunch of systems.   This makes it easy to get a computer to a known state of system layout,  patching,   configuration  and security profile  while I am reading mental militia !   ( my purpose in life is to script myself out of a job, but not tell anyone! )

OZ

One thing that turned out to be a pleasant surprise is that after poking around a bunch I found out that a lot of the "commands" that one gets with a Slackware install _are_ shell scripts.  Some use bash,  some use perl,  or perhaps other things to interpret the text commands in them,  but they're still human-readable,  which means you can tinker some more if you want...

[ZooT_aLLures]

The mouspad is handled in the X-window system,  often with the GPM module sitting between the kernel device driver and the X

Yeah.............that makes sense........GPM and X are fighting over the device......
Try killing GPM in the startup files or kill GPM via top and see what happens...

[oldzoot]

another way to kill a service

see if you have a service command         which service    may return a path to the program service  in which case you could

service gpm stop  [ or  start  restart  status ]


or you can execute the control script  by


/etc/init.d/gpm   stop   [ or start or restart or status ]

Note:  the path to the "init script directory"  may be slightly different for various distributions.  You are looking for a directory with a bunch of scripts,  each named for some service  such as    networking   nfs   xinetd httpd    and so on.

It is usually best to start and stop things with these scripts because the scripts do a bit of housekeeping - as well as sometimes starting any services that the one you are trying to control may depend on.

OZ

[ZooT_aLLures]

Note:  the path to the "init script directory"  may be slightly different for various distributions.

Yeah..........and that's one of the few real differences between the various linux distributions.............and one that can drive ya' nuts 

[oldzoot]

Note:  the path to the "init script directory"  may be slightly different for various distributions.

Yeah..........and that's one of the few real differences between the various linux distributions.............and one that can drive ya' nuts 

One easy way around that is to make symbolic links from whatever directory your system thinks it needs to ones that you are used to using.   For example:

if your system uses   /etc/init.d    but you are used to /etc/rc.d/init.d  you can

mkdir /etc/rc.d/
ln -s  /etc/init.d/  /etc/rc.d/init.d   

and viola!  you have the directory you are used to working with,   which is simply another name for the one the system thinks it needs.

Make your life easier!   There is already enough stuff to confuzzle us.

Oz