<html><head><title>Technical Support : Frequently Asked Questions</title></head><body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<!-- Introduction -->
<center><hr><font size=9>I</font><font size=8>ntroduction to </font><font size=9>T</font><font size=8>echnical </font><font size=9>S</font><font size=8>upport</font><hr></center>
<p>We support all of our CDROM products. However, in order to guarantee a quick response to everyone who contacts us, we ask that you first check to make sure your question hasn't been answered in our FAQ below, or in any of the other relevant documentation. We'd also like to remind you that you are only eligible for technical support if you purchased one of our CDROM products.</p>
<h4>Notes on our Shareware Collections</h4>
<p>Many of our CDROM products are collections of shareware and freeware programs from the Internet. While we can help you to use our CDROM browser software to extract the files to your local computer, we can not teach you how to use the individual programs. If you have a problem with one of the programs included on one of our CDROMs, you should contact the author of the software. We do not have the resources to keep tabs on the thousands of developers who have produced software on our CDROMs. If you can not find the author through the normal means of reading the documentation, searching the web, and searching the newsgroups, then please don't mail us because we won't be able to find him or her either!</p>
<h4>Notes on our Game Toolkits</h4>
<p>Our game toolkits usually provide additional maps and utilities for popular games. You must already own a copy of the actual game to use the correctly. If you have trouble installing one of the add-on programs, then you should contact the author of that program or the software company that developed the game. Please keep in mind that we do not make, sell, produce, or distribute Quake, Hexen, or any other ID Software titles, therefore we can not provide technical support for them.</p>
<h4>Notes on our Unix distributions</h4>
<p>We will gladly help you with any problems you encounter during the installation of Linux or FreeBSD. However, we ask that you thoroughly read all the documentation before calling us. It is also a good idea to search the newsgroups before emailing us. The <a href="http://www.dejanews.com">Dejanews</a> newsgroup database contains every message posted to usenet in recent years. You can easily type in something like 'linux ppp configuration' or 'freebsd login_getclass error' and get the answers to your questions before you could normally even pick up the phone.</p>
<p>Advanced Network troubleshooting problems with Linux or FreeBSD are a
little out of the scope of our free installation technical support. You can
find many commercial network consultants for Unix on the internet.</p>
<dd> - difference between slackware and redhat<br>
<li><a href="#FreeBSD">FreeBSD</a>
<dd> - booting problems<br>
<dd> - hardware compatibility<br>
<dd> - ppp configuration<br>
<dd> - printer configuration<br>
<dd> - freebsd vs linux<br>
<br>
<!-- FTP Questions -->
<a name="FTP"><hr><h3>Our ftp site (ftp.cdrom.com)</h3>
<hr>
<p><li>I would like to mirror your archive, could you please send me
more information</p>
<p>No information is really neccessary. You can mirror our archive
just like you'd mirror any other archive, just make sure you follow
the standard guidelines.</p>
- Set up your mirror for an off-peak time such as after midnight
PST.<br>
- Email the maintainers of the directories you mirror, so they may
keep their mirror lists up to date.<br>
<p>We of course do not have time to TEACH you how to use mirroring
software. Type 'man mirror' under Unix.</p>
<p><li>Do you have any files that let me do this?</p>
<p>Probably, you tell me. We have over 1 million files online and
noone here has memorized what every single one does; that's what the
index files are for. If you have a question about one of our CDROM
products we will happily assist you, but we are spending a great deal
of money providing this free service, and we cannot find files for
you or teach you how to use them unless you've purchased one of our
CDROM's. If you know the name of the file you are looking for, you
can use our online search engine <a
href="http://www.cdrom.com/archive">here</a>.</p>
<!-- QRZ Questions -->
<a name="QRZ"><hr><h3>QRZ Ham Radio Callsign Database CD-ROM</h3>
<hr>
<p><li>I'm having a problems using the QRZ! Volume 9 CD on a Macintosh. When
I double click the yellow call sign icon it asks me for a database folder, and
I don't know what to do. The older versions of the CD didn't used to do this?!
</p>
<p>Select 'callbk'</p>
<p><li>Why aren't birthdates included in the newest volumes of the QRZ CD?</p>
<p>In February of 1997, the FCC stopped tracking birthdates. Since the QRZ database is derived from the FCC database, we no longer have access to this information.</p>
<!-- 2000 True Type Fonts -->
<a name="2000"><hr><h3>2000 True Type Fonts</h3><hr>
<p><li>What filename contains the font 'XXXXXX'? (Where 'XXXXXX' is any font name)</p>
<p>You can find a list of all the filenames and their respective formal font names <a href="http://www.cdrom.com/pub/4cust/2000ttf.names">here</a>.</p>
<!-- GNU Software -->
<a name="GNU"><hr><h3>GNU Software</h3><hr>
<p><li>I can't seem to use the GNU C++ compiler included on the CD, it
appears that maybe some of the libraries are missing? Where can I get
these libraries?</p>
<p>Sorry for the mistake, you may download the the complete libg++
<p><li>I'm having trouble using the install script from your GNU
CDROM.</p>
<p>The install script calls a little helper-script named "copyit".
Even though copyit is in the same directory as the install script,
you'll get error messages saying that it couldn't be found.</p>
<p>Why? On some systems, you have to invoke the copyit script by
actually running "./copyit" instead of just "copyit" by itself.
Since the install scripts use "copyit" (and not "./copyit"), you
might have some problems. You can't modify the script and change
the reference to "./copyit" because you wouldn't be able to save
the changes (CDROM not writable issues). </p>
<p> About the easiest way that I've seen to work around the problem
is to temporarily add the installation directory to your path.
The directory to add would look something like
/mnt/gnu_199702/solaris/bin, thought this varies greatly from
system to system. If you don't know how to add a directory to
your path, try typing "man tcsh" or look at the documentation
for the shell you are using.</p>
<p> After the new directory has been added to your path, the install
scripts should work fine. </p>
<!-- Linux -->
<a name="Linux"><hr><h3>Linux</h3><hr>
<p><li>The <em>bare.i</em> bootdisk on newer linux distributions fails to see my
cdrom drive. I used to be able to use the <em>idecd.i</em> file from older
distributions but this file is no longer included. How can I get my cdrom
drive to work?!</p>
<p>Some of the PCI services in the linux kernel have changed. Try typing in
<strong>ramdisk hdb=cdrom</strong> at the <strong>boot:</strong> prompt. If this works for you, you can then
add this to the lilo configuration.</p>
<p><li>I just bought "[Redhat/Slackware] Linux Unleashed", and can't
get it to install. What do I do?</p>
<p>Contact Sams Publishing (the authors of the book). We have no
agreement with them and can't support other peoples' products.</p>
<p><li>How can I get PPP installed?</p>
<p> There are various documents covering ppp configuration available online at <a href="http://www.linux.org">http://www.linux.org</a>. After you have read these we will gladly give you some assistance with any specific problems you are having. Howver, we cannot explain the basic process of installing ppp any better than the actual developers did when they wrote the documentation, so we cannot help you until you've read the <strong>PPP-HOWTO</strong>.</p>
<p><li>How do I get my printer to work in Slackware 3.2?</p>
<p> Make sure and download the latest service patch from our website,
there were some reported problems with printing that this patch
resolves. Also, if you are getting network error messages such as
'connection to lp@mabry.jackson failed - connection refused job' then
you need to check your network configuration. You may want to
download and install slackware-3.2/contrib/bsdlpr.tgz instead if you
are still having difficulties.</p>
<p><li>What video card should I buy for XFree86?</p>
<p>View the hardware compatibility list at <a href="http://www.xfree86.org">http://www.xfree86.org</a> to see what video cards will work with X. Xi Graphics and Metro Link sell commercial high performance X servers that support additional video cards that may or may not be supported by XFree86.</p>
<p><li>What's the difference between Slackware and Redhat?</p>
<p>Linux is the name of an operating system kernel originally written
by Linus Torvalds. A real operating system needs much more than just
a kernel to do anything useful, so various companies and organizations
have created Linux distributions based on the Linux kernel and free
software from the internet (GNU,XFree86,etc..). Slackware has long
been known as the most popular and up to date Linux distribution, but
there are a few other very nice distributions. Red Hat offers lots of
graphical configuration utilities not typically found in other
distributions. While this is nice for novices, it's often difficult
to fix any problems that arise since the tools tend to abstract users
from the underlying operating system. Basically Slackware is more of
a programmer or hacker's style distribution, while Red Hat is more of
a simplistic-user's distribution. You can learn more about the
differences between the two distributions by visiting our 'Operating
Systems' web pages.</p>
<!-- FreeBSD -->
<a name="FreeBSD">
<hr><h3>FreeBSD</h3><hr>
<p><li>Is my hardware compatible with FreeBSD</p>
<p> There is a hardware compatibility list in the FreeBSD handbook. You might also want to search the newsgroups for your particular hardware to see what other users have to say about its performance under FreeBSD.</p>
<p><li>How can I get PPP installed?</p>
<p> There is an entire chapter in the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook.html">FreeBSD handbook</a> dedicated to getting PPP up and running. You should first try the 'user ppp' method. If you are unable to get that running for some reason, try the 'kernel ppp' method. If you still cannot get either version to work try to find the cause of the problem. Is the modem actually dialing? Can the modem dial out with other programs such as Minicom? We will be happy to try and help you get ppp running if you've completed the above steps and can give us some useful information that can help diagnose the problem. We unfortunately do not have the manpower to 'walk' everyone through ppp installation, especially since the documenation is so clear in this respect.</p>
<p><li>How to I get printing installed?</p>
<p> There is an entire chapter in the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook.html">FreeBSD handbook</a> dedicated to setting up your printer with FreeBSD. This chapter is very straightforward, but if you still have questions we will be happy to help!</p>
<p><li>My book, The Complete FreeBSD, says to use atapi.flp, but I cannot find this file on my CDROM. Is it defective?</p>
<p>The FreeBSD community moves so quickly that its almost impossible to keep up with all the latest changes in any form of printed documentation. The atapi.flp functionality was incorporated into boot.flp after version 2.1.5. All of the online documentation has been updated.</p>
<p><li>I keep getting a 'login_getclass' error whenever I try to
login/su to root with FreeBSD 2.2.2. The errata.txt file says that I
need to simply copy the login.conf file to /etc, but the file isn't on
the CD!</p>
<p>Unfortunately we ran out of space on the CD and had to remove the
directory it was in, but we forgot to update the errata.txt file. You
can get the neccessary login.conf file <a href="/~murray/login.conf">here</a>.</p>
<p><li>What are the advantages / disadvantages of FreeBSD and Linux?
Which one should I buy?</p>
<p>There are pros and cons for any operating system. In general
it all depends on an individual's specific needs. FreeBSD is
regarded as having superior networking, while Linux has a larger user
base and more commercial software support. People will preach to you
about which one is better and why, but the only way to
make an intelligent decision is to visit both the <a
href="http://www.freebsd.org">FreeBSD</a> and <a
href="http://www.linux.org">Linux</a> web pages and decide for
yourself. An operating system's performance is hardly measured by the
design of its web page however, so ideally you should try them both
<p>If you still have a question not addressed above, please contact us. Email is the preferred method, as you can send us the exact error message(s) you are getting and we will have an easier time solving the problem.</p>
