HELP HP N54 Microserver won't boot DSL (Newbie)

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[mtech61@gmail.com]

Hi There

I have just purchased an HP N54 AMD Proliant Microserver to use as an online FTP server. It currently has Windows XP Pro on it and using Filezilla Server my customers critical data get's backed up to my server every night via ADSL (only 7 Customers so not huge load on server). However I purchased the HP Proliant Microserver as it has a motherboard mounted USB Socket to boot the OS from and DSL worked looked so good on my other server I was dying to try it. The Size and Power efficiency appealed to me so I sold my little Gateway GT110-F1 Server  which worked fine but was very noisy.

I Can't even boot from the CD or USB now, there must be a setting I need to change somewhere? I just get a blinking prompt in the top left corner of the screen. The Manuals say that it supports Red-Hat Linux but the DSL appeals to me. I also tried Lubuntu on my previous server which seemed promising but I would really like DSL for it's small footprint etc.

I am an almost complete Newbie but willing to learn. I really only have three basic needs:

1. Remote Access from my Windows 7 PC (presumably using X11 or something similar) now using Windows RDP client fine to control Server
2. FTP Server software like Filezilla Server I have on the XP install at the Moment (ProFTPD perhaps?)
3. DSL or DSL-N Small footprint OS, either booting from CD, USB Pen or HDD either one will be fine.

Can anyone point me in the right direction firstly why DSL won't boot? Does anyone have any experience with these HP Proliant Microservers and DSL

[CNK]

I actually installed DSL on a Proliant from ~2005. These "Microservers" look like rather different beasts though. Something like a server designed by people who normally work on desktop PCs.

Anyway, as for booting, as long as you're an "almost complete newbie", have you set up the BIOS for USB/CD booting? Usually this is called "Boot Priorities" or something similar in the BIOS settings. For how to get to the BIOS settings, look at the manual. USB or CD have to be before the HDD/s for them to boot.

DSL comes with BetaFTPd, but it's hard to find docs for (I might have found some information once, but I'd have to check on another computer, ask if you want me to check for it). It doesn't have a GUI either, so you might want to look for something more like FileZilla. ProFTPd doesn't have a GUI either (at least not as standard, there might be separate interfaces available), it is much easier to find docs for though.

can't help you with remote access in DSL though (haven't tried it), try looking in the MyDSL repository for remote access programs.

[mtech61@gmail.com]

I'm an almost Newbie in terms on Linux not PC's. I can boot from the USB no Problem and eventually figured out that if I add the line DSL acpi=off to the boot options it will happily boot into
DSL.

I am at a bit of a quandry as I have also got Lubuntu 13 loaded and I am wondering if it's easier to strip lubuntu down even further or if it's footprint is small enough, then it may be happier with modern hardware. I Like the look of DSL and especially the top right hand side Systems specs App (Not sure what that's called?)

I will dig through the repository and see what's there, thanks for the response. If Filezilla Server could be ported into Linux or there was a GUI Based FTP server I would only have to get the Remote desktop issue solved. I am happy dabbling with commandline options but I am struggling to learn Linux and get things up and running simultaneously. At the end of the day I boot back into XP and let Filezilla Server handle all the Backups and then next morning boot back to linux to play around and learn.

[CNK]

I am at a bit of a quandry as I have also got Lubuntu 13 loaded and I am wondering if it's easier to strip lubuntu down even further or if it's footprint is small enough, then it may be happier with modern hardware.

Well I would have thought that all you'd need in this case was support for SATA HDDs (boot option "sata", in case you didn't know) and your Network Card. DSL should support these well enough, so I don't see what difference it would make.

Lubuntu will have a better range of packages though, so you probably won't need to compile anything. On the other hand, stripping stuff out might be a tricky task, and you won't bring it down to a DSL size/resource usage. Do you know about TinyCore? It's something of a spin-off of DSL that has better modern hardware support and comes with practically no pre-installed software but a GUI and package downloader (depending on what version you choose). The idea is that you download everything you want from the package archive. The archive is more up to date than DSL's, but far smaller than the Ubuntu one that Lubuntu uses.

I Like the look of DSL and especially the top right hand side Systems specs App (Not sure what that's called?)

Yes I like the DSL interface as well. I like the more basic approach to that of the mainstream distros. The desktop status program is called "Torsmo" (torsmo.sourceforge.net), it can be configured quite extensively by editing the config file "/home/dsl/.torsmorc" (remember to change user to "root", otherwise you won't have permission to modify it).

[fatmac]

If you are still not happy, there is another very small footprint distro called SliTaz, might be worth your while to take a look.
(It runs 'live' in ram, can be remastered, can be installed.)