Flávio Amieiro's questions

I'm trying to install Debian on my macbook without using rEFIt. Fedora worked just fine before, and Debian installs allright, but it uses grub2, and the EFI just won't see it. I've tried the expert install, but it doesn't give me the option to choose which grub version I want.

So, how can I install Debian Lenny using grub 1 instead of grub 2?

UPDATE: I just installed Ubuntu and it worked, so the problem is really grub2. Since I don't want to run gnu/linux with 'windows mode on', I would still like to install Debian, so any thoughts are appreciated.

Another Update: I finally got it working, and posted an answer, since it's been said many times (in podcasts, etc) that's the way to proceed in cases like this.

I got autofs to mount a partition. It works fine, except I can't get it to mount with write privileges to regular users.

I tried with this in auto.master:

/misc /etc/auto.misc --timeout=60

and this in auto.misc:

data -fstype=vfat,rw :/dev/sda5

And I didn't get it to work.

When I was using fstab, the solution was to let users mount it passing the user mount option. Is there a way to make autofs mount stuff as the current user?

EDIT: forgot to mention, using the user option in auto.misc also didn't work.

Every now and then I have to work with hardware, be it assembling a new box, or just cleaning it a little bit, and I always have this question: how should I apply the thermal compound to the CPU? When should I have to do it (should I clean it and apply it again for a CPU that already has it)?

I have a partition on my Hard Drive that I want users to be able to mount, but it shouldn't be automatic, so I've put this in my /etc/fstab:

     /dev/sda5       /media/data    vfat    defaults,user,noauto    0   0

It works great for command line. The partition is mounted only when someone explicitly mounts it.

But whenever a user starts gnome, it automounts the partition, even though fstab says it is not suposed to be mounted automatically.

I know this is almost certainly a gnome setting, but I just couldn't find it in gconf-editor (it looks too much like the Windows register editor for me).

Can anyone help me figure this out?

When setting up a variable in .bashrc, should I use this?

export VAR=value

Or would this be enough?

VAR=value

What is exactly the difference (if there is one)?