Newbie Questions

makisupa bsd.makisupa at sbcglobal.net
Fri Oct 7 14:05:35 PDT 2005


Been using Linux awhile...recently migrated a laptop to FreeBSD.  Its a
bit old and BSD runs nicely on the deprecated hardware.  I am using
6.0-BETA 5 despite warning to the contrary because my atheros based wifi
card works well -- i had all kinds of trouble in 5.4.  Running gnome
2.12.
My newbie questions:

1.  I am pretty sure that FAM is not running.  The newest version of the
package is installed. I followed the directions from the gnome FAQ and
the pkg_message. 'killall -HUP inetd' gives me 'no matching processes
were found.'  When i launch something like gnome-menu-editor i get a
'failed to connect to the FAM server' message in the terminal.
Similiarly, whenever i gedit a file su'd as root i get a
'gnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to the session manage:
authentication rejected, reason:  None of the authentication protocols
specified are supported and host based authentication failed.'  Please
help...its very annoying as the gnome does not update worth a damn as
you move, add, and delete files.  I realize the instructions were for
gnome 2.10 and i probably missed something obvious.

2.  Is there a way to turn DMA on for a certain device or devices and
not every ATAPI drive?  I got permissions and whatnot straight to allow
a users to mount CD/DVD drives -- my CD drive does not work correctly in
DMA mode. BUT, i will need DMA in order to play DVDs correctly (see
below). I passed the hw.ata.atapi_dma="1" option in my /boot/loader.conf
file. is there a option i can pass that only enables DMA on my acd1
(dvd) and ad0 (hd) but NOT acd0 (CD)?

3.  DVD playback.  Just trying to use the totem default in my gnome
install.  I get a 'failed to retrieve capabilities of device /dev/acd1:
inappropriate ioctl for device'.  I've googled the hell out of this and
came up with little helpful info.  Any ideas?

Thanks for your help.  I think i'm doing fairly well for only running
BSD for a couple of days...but if i could get these minor things
straightened out i'd be set (and have a rockin' little laptop).  FreeBSD
definately seems more intuitive than most of the linux distros i've
used...

Thanks,

Mak.



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