Answer: If your mouse isn't working but it was before, then something probably didn't get started right. Just hit the ALT + F2 keys and that will bring up a window. Type: reboot the system will reboot and see if it loads right this time. If not you might need to troubleshoot further by using dmesg to see why it isn't loading right. Check for dmesg help for information on that.
Answer: If using Gnome as your Desktop then click on the Foot Icon and go to Configuration/Printing/Kups - Cups Admin . If you have Linux-Mandrake 8.0, Kups may not have installed during installation, use your Package Manager or,.. to find it on one of the CD's and install it. When Kups - Cups Admin is installed you can setup the printer there. Pretty self-explanatory, clicking 'add printer' brings up the Add Printer Wizard. See picture below for what to do to add a printer.
Answer: If using Gnome as your Desktop then click on the Foot Icon and go to Applets/Utility/Tasklist . This will show what ever application you have running in the taskbar. I have had it change for some unknown reason before. Warning: Doing it multiple times will make multiple taskbars.
Answer: You can easily move around items on the taskbar to suit your taste. Just right click on a blank spot on the bar and select move. The 4 arrow move cursor will popup and just move the item to where you want and then left click to make it stick there. Don't like it, move it again.
Answer: I have read all kinds of information on backing up a Linux system and like I mention in the prelude most of it didn't work or would have, but didn't have all the information cause they didn't give it or it was for an older system and things have changed. An example is when I tried to make a bootable CD. You have to have a boot image file. No one was clear on where to put it. I found one website that mentioned that you have to put it in the /boot folder of what you are trying to make an ISO of. That is what is some sites meant by putting the boot.image file Relative to what you are making a ISO of. That is why I try to include all relevant information and to tell you what type of system I tried it on, that way you hopefully have more of a clue. Anyway on to the short but sweet TARing of your system.
This is pretty simple, if you want more information read the MAN pages for TAR. You can do this by opening up a terminal and typing in: man tar. That will pull it up and give you the options you can use. Important: I have found that when trying to archive all the permissions,.... you are much better off if you go into CONSOLE mode. You can do this by logging out and click the Shutdown button and choose Console. Or you could boot into Maintenance mode. This is like going into DOS when using Windows. Maybe I am wrong on this, but I have never had a successful restore if I don't do this. Except for maybe a few permissions going into Console mode to backup and restore has worked everytime I have used it.
I wrote a script file to do this for me and save my backups on the Windows98 harddrive or you could burn it to CDRW for storage. As you can see the script first changes to the folder in Windows that I want to store it in and then starts the backup. I also gzip it for further compression.
The options I assigned are: z - filter the archive through gzip. c - create a new archive. v - verbose, so you can see what is going on. f - use archive file named. Note I could fix the script up to prompt for a name I want to archive to, check to see if it was already used,.... this script doesn't do that though and you will have to change the archive name each time or just copy over the old one.
Now to recover go back to Console mode. This is the script file I use to do that.
This changes to the root directory and starts UNTARing. Some of the options are the same, the new ones are: x - extract, relative to the current directory. p - restore the named files to their original modes. z - filter the archive through ungzip.
That is all their is to it. I have used it several times for testing purposes and when I screwed something up. NOTE: This is very Important: If you backup your whole system like this (ie. especially the /boot folder) run LILO after or you better make sure you have your Bootdisk handy. You run lilo by opening up a terminal and typing: lilo -v. The -v part is verbose, just to make sure you see what it has done. I have just tested this and it works also: Include lilo -v at the end of your recovery script, I am changing the picture to include this or just leave it out and do it manually. Other methods have left me reinstalling the whole system again. By the way I will write a tutorial on this, but to execute a script file you do this. Write it, then right click on it and select properties. Then make it Executable. Then to run it go open a terminal (if in Console mode don't have to do this you are already there.) Type in the file name with this in front: . / For example, if you file is named: Recoverbackup then type in: . /Recoverbackup. Now go backup your system.
Answer: There is an error in the command line when you select to open the Mandrake How To's from the menu. KDE opens them up fine, Gnome doesn't though, the funny thing is that you can type the same command line into a terminal and it will work. So if you use Gnome all you have to do it right click on the How To's from the menu to get to Properties. Lucky this problem isn't in KDE cause you can't right click on it's menu items. On the Command line box you should see this: $Browser /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/HTML/en/index.html . Note: if you are not using an english version then the en part will be for your language. Now to fix this, just add this to the front: sh -c. It should look like this now. sh -c $Browser /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/HTML/en/index.html . That is all there is to it. This should be fixed in some update. I submitted this problem and the maintainer told me how to fix it and said that the menu entries have been modified so it will work with both Window Managers now. Until then you can do this.
Answer: Sometimes when you try to Logout or Reboot or even Halt, the system will hang and you can't do anything else. There are two ways to get around this cause something in the background refuses to die. If you hit this combo of keys: Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc it will take you back to the login screen. Then you can login as another user, reboot or halt from that screen. Alternately you can use this combo also to go to Console mode: Ctrl-Alt-F1 and this takes you to console mode (ie Text mode). From there you can type in: reboot or halt or login. You will have to login first as a user before you can use console mode. If your user doesn't have permission to reboot or halt the system you will have to login as root and do it. Then later you might want to setup permission for the user to halt or reboot the system.
Answer: This is especially bad when your mouse stops working and you try to use Mandrake Control Center with the keyboard. Just can't do it! You can select the titles, like Hardware, but you can't select any subtitles like mouse, display,... I wrote a bug report for this, but I guess it was decided that since you can do the same thing in console mode that that was were to go. So how to do this? It is very simple. Simple hit this combo of keys: Ctrl-Alt-F1 to go to console mode, or if you have another problem like XWindow won't start so can't get to XWindows, but can get to Console mode then you can fix it here. To start the Text Based Mandrake Control Center simply type: mcc . I have only use this so far to reconfigure the mouse, but the rest of the options are there and if I have any problems with them I will let you know. You can use the keyboard to configure just like you would in Mandrake Control Center with XWindows.
Answer: If you networked computers work and Internet Connection Sharing works, but you can't get your email, and your computer connected directly to the modem or cable modem does work with email. Than what you may have is a FQDN's. Don't worry though cause FQDN's (Fully Qualified Domain Names) are a problem with some ISP's like @Home. They tell you to just put 'mail' as your server name when you setup your email account. That works great for the computer connected directly to the internet. It doesn't work with the Networked computer sharing the Internet access. It needs a little more help.
What you have to do is simple. If you only use one mail program like me, then you can do this. But if you like to use more than one type of email program then look at my global fix below in the Resolv.conf part. Open up a terminal on the computer that the email does work on. You may have to be root to do this so if so then type in su and the password. Then when that is done if you have to, you ping the mail server. My ISP says the name of the server is mail . So if type in the command ping and the name of the mail server. My command was: ping mail . That will return the IP Address of the mail server and/or name of the mail server in full. I don't think anyone needs any help here, so I am not going to put any graphics up here for it.
Now, just go back and put the full name OR the IP Address in for the name server where you previously had a much smaller name like mail . Should work fine then.
Now after some discussion on cooker I was informed of a global fix for this problem. It is just as simple. You will have to be root to do this, so start the File Manager (Super User Mode) program and go to /etc/resolv.conf in there add to: search name of server . For example if your response from ping was mail.shrcs1.az.home.com then enter: search shrcs1.az.home.com and then you can just enter mail for the server name in any of the mail programs that you use and it will know where to go. You will have to reboot or restart the network for this to take effect (ie. /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart). I haven't tried entering the IP Address in there instead. If anyone has and wants to report a sucess, let me know.
One other thing. On the computer I had this problem with. I didn't install Netscape, I was using Mozilla. Well it was really slow after I got it working. So if you are using Mozilla, you will have to install Netscape as well. I know! Mozilla is much better than Netscape, but at this time it still shares some things with Netscape. Big waste of space as far as I am concerned.
Answer: Internet Connection Sharing is one of the easiest things to setup on Linux. Well, sort of. The wizard for it does it all as far as the setup of the connection sharing is concerned. But there are a few things you have to do. These are the requirements that must be met: 1) You must have networking setup for the computers involved. 2) You must have the server computer (the one actually connected to the internet) working and able to connect to the internet. 3) You will have to modify two firewall files with the IP Address of the computer you are wanting to share the internet. 4) You only need to Run the ICS Wizard on the Server computer, not the client. 5) As of now because of a bug you will have to run the Firewall Wizard to still have the ICS working after you reboot next time. There is a fix you can do, but you should have the firewall install anyway, so I won't list the fix. They will actually fix it in a update in the future. The firewall Wizard is also started from the Mandrake Control Center and is self-explanatory so I won't have a tutorial on it. Those are the hard parts if you haven't done them before.
To start the Internet Connection Sharing Wizard (from now on will be called ICS) you either open a terminal in root and type in: drakgw or start the Mandrake Control Center.
Now you just get a little reminder that you have to setup the computers to network if you haven't done so already.
This is where you pick the NIC (ethernet) card to use. Don't use the one that connects to your ISP! Use the one connected to the computer you are wanting to share with.
Here is just a warning that you already configured this NIC. Now if you picked the wrong one, well sorry. No, just hit the previous button. If you already setup your network (which I think is best, cause you at least know that part works) then ignore this. If you didn't setup the network, then remember to after you are done. Just click on the Next button.
It will then load file(s) that it needs to set this ICS up. Iptables is one of the modules it needs. Just a hint, this is also why you have to run the firewall after this to have ICS work on the next reboot.
Now it is finished. Your not, but it is. I am trying to get them to put an option in here that lets you say which interface you want to share the internet with. But for now you will have to set that up. So you are done as far as the Wizard is concerned.
Okay now that that is done. Don't leave the Mandrake Control Center yet. Click on Security, then Firewall. This Wizard is pretty easy. So you won't need help here. Just read and answer.
Now there are two files in /etc that you will have to edit to finish this up. In your /etc/rc.d/ folder are where the firewall files you need to edit are. The first one to edit is: /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall.inet_sharing-2.2 and the second one is: /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall.inet_sharing-2.4. The first one isn't really used with this firewall because it uses ipchains, but if you revert back to it at some point and wonder why your connection sharing isn't working you may have forgot if you don't edit it also. So edit both. Edit both files where I show you at the points where the default IP Address for the network. You need to put the client IP Address in there. For example if your client ethernet card is 192.168.0.2 then you would see exactly what I have there.
Now you should be able to share the internet connection with the other computer. You will probably have to restart the network with /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart on the server computer. Hey, if that don't work still, reboot them and try again. There shouldn't be any other problems.
Answer: Hard to say if this is really a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) problem or not. I used that information to solve this problem though. Actual problems were as a User I couldn't start programs, except for Konqueror, that required Root Password. Programs like Rmpdrake, Mandrake Control Center, Userdrake,.... It would take the password then nothing would start. If opened a console and logged in as SuperUser (Root) I would get this error:
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server.
Xlib: Client is not authorized to connect to Server.
I think the problem is with pam_xauth. I say think, which you will see why later. The pertainent description from the Man Pages for pam_xauth are as follows:
pam_xauth - forward xauth keys between users
pam_xauth.so is designed to forward xauth keys (sometimes referred to as "cookies") between users.
Without pam_xauth, when xauth is enabled and a user uses the su command to assume superuser priviledges, that user is not able to run X commands as root without somehow giving root access to the xauth key used for the current X session. pam_xauth solves the problem by forwarding the key from the user running su (the source user) to the user whose identity the source user is assuming (the target user) when the session is created, and destroying the key when the session is torn down.
This means, for example, that when you run su from an xterm session, you will be able to run X programs without explicitly dealing with the xauth command or ˜/.Xauthority files.
By default, pam_xauth will only forward keys when the root user is the target user. Source users can add the names of other users that they trust as target users in the file ˜/.xauth/export; once they have done so, even root is not trusted unless it is listed in the ˜/.xauth/export. etc.
In short if you log in a terminal or start an application as root, when you end that program it kills that xauth key for root. To see this happening go to the /home/user/.xauth/refcount/root/hostname/unix:0 folder. Then open a terminal, login as SuperUser and you will see a file (key) created there. If you don#039;t see it you don't have it set to autorefresh so hit the refresh button. Then close the terminal and you will see the key (file) disappear.
Now here is where when I said earlier I think it was pam_xauth. I opened a terminal and typed in users and it had my name twice. I was using two Xsessions and it wouldn't create another one (a third one) for Root. Rebooting or restarting Xsession didn't help either. Still not sure how I did this.
The fix was rather simple once I figured it out. I deleted the file in the .../unix:0 folder. Then checked and only one user was using an Xsession. Walla, I could login as SuperUser again and run the programs I couldn't earlier.
Answer: You probably didn't LOSE your mail, you just can't access it anymore. I wrote this right after I had it happen to me. Got some mail, part of the mail windows starts acting squirrely and I can't close it. I have to ALT-CTRL-Backspace and that doesn't work either. So I have to hit the reset button on the computer. When I got back I lost my mail, it was there, but Mozilla acted like it wasn't and wanted to make a new mail account. I have had this happen before with mozilla (what ever they say about outlook express, at least I have never lost my mail from it. It recovers better). I noticed that my preferences.js was missing and looking in the prefs.js file that it was corrupted. Okay, so there is a Import option with mozilla and it says you can Import Mail. I have never had that work. The little window never shows anything to import. You can't use that, so what do you do. I looked for an update to Mozilla and installed it, then my Url bar wouldn't work correctly. I could use a bookmark to go somewhere, but if I manually entered a url it would just sit there.
You could just start over, hey if you did not have any mail worth saving then it really isn't that important. But you might lose your address book also, usually Import does work for this if you know where it is (it is called abook.mab in Mozilla). If you need or want to recover your lost mail, I figured out how to make Mozilla do it. Unfortunetly it requires unintalling and reinstalling it properly. Properly cause I have tried this before without uninstalling and it did not work.
Procedure:
Got to your Users (all of them if you have more than one) and in the .mozilla folder go to the Mail folder a couple or folders in there. Note: I haven't done this, but if your other users are not affected by this problem, you might be able to just copy their .mozilla folder somewhere safe and then copy it back over the new one when done. Now copy the Mail folder(s) somewhere safe.
Also copy the bookmarks.html and abook.mab files in the directory above in the same safe place. When you have to files copied some place safe you are ready for the next step.
Now time to uninstall. I have never had any luck with Software Manager on this cause you cannot change the setup and tell it to Uninstall without Dependancies. I either use a console or Kpackage. Either way you do it, Uninstall: mozilla , mozilla-mail , mozilla-irc without Dependancy checks, if you don't do this you will be uninstalling a lot of things you don't want to. If you had any devel packages installed with mozilla I guess you might want to uninstall them also. You don't have to uninstall Nautilus-mozilla though.
When you are done uninstalling them, you will have to still go to Root and Users Home and delete the .mozilla folders. Then go to /usr/lib and delete the Mozilla folder there.
Now comes to another choice again. With Kpackage I have never had any luck installing the packages that it requires for dependancies. It will just tell you that it needs this package. You have to figure out the order of install. I do like to use Software Manager for this. So with Software Manager reinstall the removed packages either from the install CD or from a place like cooker. Where ever you decide.
When done start Mozilla again, setup you preferences the way you like them. Create all the mail accounts that you had before. Edit/Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings,... /Add Account. Don't get any mail though, just setup the accounts. Don't worry about the passwords. Exit Mozilla when you are done.
Now copy the contents of each mail account back into the mail accounts you just created. You might be able to copy the folder, but I opened the folders and copied the contents and recommend the same to you. If you need to, open the Inbox file and look at some of the mail to determine which account it goes to. Also, each account in mozilla that has the same server will just have a number after it, so you can use the order you created each account to figure out which one the old mail goes to. I had pop.charter.net, pop.charter-1.net, pop.charter-2.net. Overwrite anyfiles it ask about.
Now you should be able to open the Mail and see the original email back in place. You can now get your mail, enter the passwords and your new email will be appended to the old list like normal.
To be safe now, I would copy these files and folders to a safe place incase something happens in the future where you actually loose the mail. preferences.js , prefs.js , bookmarks.html , abook.mab files and Mail folder.
Answer: This tutorial is how to setup Kmail. It is not an in-depth everything tutorial. It tells you how to set it up mainly for having seperate folders for each email account. If you only have one account then you still will learn valuable stuff here, but you will not have to make the seperate folders and filters.
Little history: The tutorial above this on Mozilla Mail losing my mail accounts I thought would be the end of the mail problem. But trying to install a new compiler I uninstalled the old due to conflicts. During this procedure I removed libstdc++ for the gcc compiler. I didn't know the computer wouldn't reboot after that. Thank God above for the Mandrake Rescue mode on CD#1 of 8.1. I recovered quickly and was back up. Then Mozilla was acting the same again. Lost my mail account access and it wanted to make new ones. Also Mozilla it's self was doing the same, url history bar not working, settings lost,... bookmarks gone. Your email is more important than the browser, I have been using Konqueror a lot more lately instead of Mozilla. So I permenantly moved my mail to Kmail. It has some better features then Mozilla Mail, except for one aspect. It lets you setup multiple accounts, but it doesn't let you setup seperate folders for each account. It makes you share them. I have found a way to setup seperate folders for the accounts and so far only share Trash & Drafts with the accounts. It would be nice to have each account totally seperate, but most people do not really care about the Trash and Drafts being seperate anyway. I will work on the aspect and hopefully come up with a solution.
Finally, on with the Tutorial. So you did or didn't lose you mail accounts in Mozilla OR you just want to move you mail to Kmail. This tutorial is for you. If you want to setup Kmail for just one account or want to import another mail account other than Mozilla mail to Kmail, you will still learn something here, for more information not covered here go to the Help in Kmail and it will take you to the Kde site for more indepth information for other issues and FAQ's.
Start Kmail. Go to Folder / Create ... In the picture below you will see the setup. Give it a name. This is just the name for the folder, it does not have to match your email user name. So make it anything you want. Make sure it is set to top level. The Default part doesn't matter, just leave it alone. If you look in the Kmail folder (default is: /home/username/Mail) you will see a file instead, it will look like that until you create child folders. Do this for each account you want to set up. You now need to create a child folder, you only need to create one, cause that will then change the Account folder to an actual folder in the Mail folder. So Right click on one of the newly created folders in Kmail, select Create Child Folder and name it inbox . Do this for each new Account Main folder you created.
Close Kmail. Now, if you are not going to copy Mozilla Mail to Kmail then you can either use the import utility if they have one for you mail type (go to Kmail Help to find out, Mozilla wasn't one of them when I looked), or skip this part cause you don't want to import. If you do not want to import and just start new, but with seperate folders on Kmail Accounts then go back to above section, make a sent child folder for each, like you did with the inbox. The go to second section below this.
With Kmail closed we are going to copy parts of Mozilla Mail to the newly created folders. Go to your Mozilla ( .mozilla/.../Mail) folder and choose the first Account you want to move. Open that folder (it should be named after the receive server you named when making the account in mozilla, example mine was called: pop.charter.net, pop.charter-1.net) and there should be files in there. Look at the sent file to make sure you have to correct account by looking at the headers of the email in there. When you have to correct account. Copy only the folders with single names (Sent, Inbox, Drafts, Trash), the others aren't needed. Go to the Kmail Mail folder (called Mail in home directory) and then to the proper folder (example: .Decibelshelp.directory folder) for that account you created earlier. DELETE Everything in there, everything! We only created something there to make the created folder an actual folder. Now, paste the files you copied from Mozilla there. Now you have a choice. I had you make a (inbox) earlier. You can rename each of the files you pasted to lower case first letter or leave them upper case, choice is up to you, but that is how they will look in Kmail. Do this for each Account you want to transfer. Note: I would make the first letter lower case. Then inbox will be the first one in accounts, when they are upper case for some reason the order changes to alphabetical and doesn't when lower case. This is what mine looks like. You will have to start Kmail to see the left side of the picture look like that and might have to click on each folder in Kmail to see it.
Start Kmail again. If you put email from Mozilla in there you can see it now. If you don't then you probably didn't delete the previous contents of the folder. Go back and do it again. We need to create actual Accounts now. Go to Settings / Configure KMail . On the left you will see multiple choices, the main parts we need are the Indentity and Network. For the First one you just leave the Default Identity there, don't have to click New. For each additonal one click the new one and create a new Identity. When you click New you will get the pop-up window (New Identity) you see below in the main setup window.
So, for the first one, Default, just enter the name you want to see on your email and your email address. Then click the Apply buton. Then for additional Accounts click the new button and enter the name you want on your email and if you want, you can copy and existing identity and have some of the fields filled in, I think it only copies the email address though for this example, so this doesn't matter, cause you probably want a different email address. Still I did it and just changed the email address. If you make a mistake and want to delete an Identity or later get rid of an email Account, just choose the Identity and then click the Remove button or you could use the Rename button if you just want to change the Identity name.
To Setup Send and Receive Mail click on the Network on the left. You will see this window now. Most people probably have SMTP, so enter your server, the default port is probably ok, mine was. Then Add button in the Incoming Mail Section. Choose the type Account you have, I have POP3 account. Click Ok and you will get this next pop-up.
This is where you setup the Receiving for the Incoming Mail for the Account. If you have other than POP3, you have to figure out the settings for that window. Enter the pertinent information, choose the options you want. Like store your password, delete mail from server when done downloading, check for mail at certain interval. BUT, the Most IMPORTANT item is the Destination Folder!! Make sure you choose the Inbox for the Account it goes to. This is the whole reason for this tutorial. So use the drop down menu there and choose the Account inbox for this Account. When done, you can go to the other options on the left and setup the account. When done click the Apply button.
We need to setup the Sent folder now. There is not a way that I know of in Kmail to have it go to a certain Sent without making a Filter. I think this is bad design on Kmail part. Individual Accounts should be able to be setup. But they don't so we will make a filter to do so.
First you need to send yourself some mail. So send yourself some mail from Each Account, Then Receive the mail. If you setup everything correctly you should have the new mail in your Inbox folder for each Account. Go to the Inbox for one of the Accounts, click on the mail. Go to Message / Create Filter / Filter on From... Then choose from the Available Filters window the email that matches this Account. Set the Filter Criteria Section up for the email address for this account to be the item the filter is looking for. In Filter Actions make sure you have move to folder selected and choose the SENT folder for proper Account. Lastly, in Advanced Options make sure you have to set to outgoing messages . Click Apply and then go and do this for each Account you have setup. Now you should have any email you send going to the proper Account Sent folder instead of the community sent-mail folder.
I have not found a way to delete the community top level boxes yet. Will just have to leave them there unless I find a way. The Trash and Draft ones in each Account, well, you could leave them there and just move stuff there or use the community ones. You can right click on a email and choose the 'Move to' option and choose one of the Account folders. That is what I do.
There are some other neat options in KMail of which I will mention a few. You can right click on a email and Set Status to things like unread, replied, flagged and others. If you replied to a email it will automaticially set the replied status symbol to the email. I also don't know if this works yet, but got a SPAM email. I found a filter option called bounce. It is suppose to send the email back as undeliverable. It is in the Filter Action drop down menu. Just choose to filter from the SPAM person and the action to bounce. I also setup the additional filter to Trash it afterwards. Another neat feature that I didn't have with Mozilla is that if you have a crash while writing a letter is will save the file as ~/dead.letter (/home/username/dead.letter) and you can retrieve it with a text editor like Gedit. Also if Kmail doesn't properly save a email from the server than it will not delete it from the server. Also if for some reason the server is not working and it can not Send your email it will put it in the Community Outbox. Later you can go to File / Send Queued and it will send the mail from there. Note: If you like email with JavaScript and Flash then Kmail isn't for you cause they won't work. Security reasons.
I didn't like KMail until I found out about some of the better feature, but still don't like the way you have to go around to setup Individual Folders to have seperate Accounts. At least that problem though bad is not unsurmountable. So problem solved except for the Drafts and Trash.
This tutorial was based on Versions: Kde: 2.2.1 , Kmail: 1.3.1
Answer: Recently learned this unknown command option. It is rather picky on the GNU Compiler version it will use. Some people say it is the Makers of MPlayer, they say it is the Compilers. I don't know who's problem it is. I do know that I had to install the libpng-devel package in order to get configure to finish. It never asked for it, just said libpng was not installed. Well, to make a long story short. I had Gcc version 2.96 on my system that came with Mandrake 8.1 . I installed the 3.0.1 that also came with the ISO. I switched with a command I saw in the information while installing it (gcc -V 3.0.1) Which will: Run gcc version number
Then I posted the question about it on MandrakeUser and someone knew the answer. Works like a charm, you can switch to one then switch back to the other or even another if you have one installed. Lot of these compilers don't get along with each other though, so I doubt too many people have more than 2 on the computer.
The command after my little story is: update-alternatives --config gcc You will see the picture below what my output is. The colorgcc isn't a selection even though it shows up, it just colors the warning/errors of the output. So your choice here would be 1 or 3. The default (the one that it is currently using) is shown with the * . You can test which one you are using by typing in a shorter command: gcc -v Which: Display the programs invoked by the compiler. But will also display the version at the bottom.)
