Burning CDs and other pastimes

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Burning CDs and other pastimes
started by: Alisdair Kelly

Posted by Alisdair Kelly on Aug. 26 2004,20:12

Well, my head is bloodied but unbowed. I have been running DSL 0.71 on my frankenstein box (PII-450/128RAM and 40GBhdd) for a few months. While I've tweaked and added a few things, up to today getting my Plextor 16/10/40 burner to successfully burn files has been unsuccessful unless operating from the CLI. While I don't object to using the CLI for CDRecord, I admit that I'm spoiled by using a GUI to do the same tasks under "that other OS". When I operate under normal conditions as a user, Gcombust kept refusing to burn anything. It amy have been CDrecord that was sending the error message that "you aren't running as root or you don't have permission to do this". Curse word, curse word. Being a relative newbie to Linux, I lurked and googled and beat my head on the monitor. Changed the ownership of the files that I wanted to back up to a CD: nogo. Changed the ownership of Gcombust: nogo, changed ownership of CDrecord: you guessed it nogo.
Finally rebooted to root and gave it one more shot. This time it worked after making a couple of additional adjustments to the preferences section of Gcombust. I don't praticularly like the GUI with the tiny buttons. It's kinda hard to tell if the bleedy things are enabled or disabled without experimenting.

Not sure that I would reccomend Gcombust at this time, but it can be made to work if you want to sacrifice the time and a few blanks.

Other misadventures involve editing the xinitrc (?) to allow a fully enhanced desktop to load at boot. Works well for me if I'm booting to root, doesn't work for user. Eventually that will be figured out too.

XScreesaver and I are still amusing ourselves. Some time I'll get it to load at boot rather than having to enable it from the desktop. You can select to run a single screen or let it cycle through its library of screens at random. One of the ones that freaks me out is the melting desktop. I would suggest that if your running DSL from the hdd, that you use apt-get to install xsreensaver or get the deb package instead of the dsl extension. Of course you can also compile your own and maybe not have any problems with the silly thing. It will take some tweaking to get it running smoothly otherwise.

Next step in misadventures is getting samba up and running as a print server for LAN. Plans are to set up a laser printer and an HP Business Ink Jet for the LAN with access from the Winders boxen. Well, that may take a back seat to installing a 3Com switch and rebuilding the LAN first.

Posted by mpie on Aug. 26 2004,20:45

you can add xscreensaver to your xserverrc to have it running at boot.....
sorry about gcombust, you could have used bashburn if it was for an iso, its a sort of hybrid no real gui but more info than using the command line..
Stick with it though it gets easier

Posted by Alisdair Kelly on Aug. 26 2004,21:42

Hi mpie!
I'll take a look at adding the xscreensaver to the xserverrc later this evening. Thanks for the tip!

I've tried bashburn, had problems with it which is why I tried Gcombust (and went down in flames for a while). I'll keep experimenting and learning. I have to admit that it does take a bit to understand all the nuances and pecularities of the OS. But I expected that. If I wanted a easy 'ride' I'd have used something other than DSL :laugh:

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 26 2004,22:50

Running gcombust with "sudo gcombust" command should work without much hassle.

DSL 0.7.3 automatically loads enhanced desktop, if you're interested in upgrading.

Posted by Alisdair Kelly on Aug. 27 2004,15:18

[QUOTE]Running gcombust with "sudo gcombust" command should work without much hassle.

Howdy, I'll give that a try. I may have tried that the other day, but "ye aulde analog brain" probably got the syntax wrong. I may try a couple of other front ends before making a final decision on what to use. May even start from scratch with the new DSL 0.8. (Currently am still using 0.71)

Posted by Alisdair Kelly on Aug. 27 2004,20:58

Short update on Gcombust and permissions:
I tried to run the program by 'sudo-ing" and was successful only when I added the exact location of the executabe.
"sudo /opt/gcombust/bin/gcombust"
Also found some useful tips in the Gcombust FAQ (there is not howto anymore)
www.abo.fi~/jmunsin/gcombust/FAQ.shtml