RedHat/Fedora problems

[Aijaz Akhtar]

1. I have two distros installed ? WhiteBox Enterprise at one of the laptops and PCQLinux at an office PC. Both are RedHat/Fedora clones and have the similar problems. Even while logging as Root, the Windows partitions are not accessible. I tried to modify etc/fstab file as under
/dev/hda7 vfat Windows_C
/dev/hda8 vfat Windows_E
/dev/hda7 vfat Windows_F
And created three directories in mnt folder named as Windows_C/E/F (D drive is NTFS). But now while booting; it gives the error as bad fstab file. And also an additional mtab file. How can I make my Windows accessible? Likewise, my USB stick is not shown, and despite selecting usbprobe while installing, when I issue the command, Bash says 'Command not found.'
Common problems in all distros:
2. I have installed some rpm files through rpmdrake as well as through command
rpm --install <rpm_file_name> --nodeps
And it apparently gave no errors. But where this application has gone? It does not create any short cut in Launcher (Start Menu in Win lingo). Likewise, even when tar.gz files are unzipped in a known folder, how can I know which is an executable file that is to be run.
3. If all tar.gz files are to be /configure and /make install, do they install as in Windows?

And finally can anybody get me an installable Damn Small Linux. I have already given LuitLinux (with XFCE) as my choice for the next Digit CD/DVD. I am at Nagpur at the moment.

[pradeep_chauhan]

the format is wrong use this in /etc/fstab replace the /mnt/share by /mnt/Windows_C and so on...

/dev/sda5 /mnt/share vfat defaults 0 0

[ujjwal]

Yes as Pradeep said, you have to use the full path, that is /mnt/Windows_X for specifying the mount point.

About installing applications, first of all, don't use the --nodeps switch unless you are sure that you have the dependencies installed on your system. If the software gives dependency errors, install the software it requires first. You can also use a package manager like yum to automatically download and install the software & its dependencies.

And yes, apart from (maybe) your official distributions RPMs, other RPM's or source compiled software will not add a menu item on their own. The reason for this is simple, consider that there are so many window managers and desktop environments out there, everyone uses what he likes, and each one uses its own form of menu listing.

Try invoking the application from the terminal, like "mozilla" or something. Also use "man <software>" for information, if the manual pages were installed.

And as for .tar.gz files, if these files contain the source code of the software, they install very differently from windows, the whole application is created from its source code. It's a little cumbersome first, but it allows to fine tune every a of the software. And recently I have heard some package managers automate the whole process, making it much easier.

[Aijaz Akhtar]

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,r o 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/Windows_C vfat default 0 0
/dev/hda9 /mnt/Windows_E vfat default 0 0
/dev/hda10 /mnt/Windows_F vfat default 0 0
Last three lines were added by me. I have created these folders in my mnt folder pertaining to the Fat32 Win partitions.