Frugal Grub Install on Toshiba 310cdt LaptopForum: User Feedback Topic: Frugal Grub Install on Toshiba 310cdt Laptop started by: popkid Posted by popkid on Jan. 10 2006,14:32
Hi, first post here in the forums, so sorry if I ask any dumb questions!I know a little bit about unix/linux os as I use hpux11 and RH at work, but I'm totally new to the installation/systems side of stuff. I have been playing around with DSL 2.0 on this old laptop I have lying around (just for fun really to see what could be achieved on an older machine) its a Toshiba Satellite 310CDT (pentium 199 mmx) with 2gb hard drive and 32Mb of RAM, it has a Xircom Cardbus 10/100 ethernet/modem PCMCIA card (which I got working fine under dsl by switching the Tosh's bios to cardbus instead of auto) also I had to use the syslinux distro otherwise the boot would just hang at the hardware detection phase. Initially, not knowing much about the DSL frugal option I did a full hd install (from the fluxbox menu option) and had some fun with it. I got the sound to work after reading a helpful post in these forums and I played around with xmms a bit before downloading GNU utils and I went off apt-getting "nedit" (which I know from my work) before managing to break the install by getting into a dependency loop with the perl package (was trying to get xmltv to work, more on this later). Anyway, in googling and searching here I read about the frugal install and given my propensity for breaking stuff (a little knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands!) I thought this sounded like a good option for my machine as I could experiment with the OS a good deal and restore to a clean install on reboot if needed. So I set up a grub frugal install using some tips I located in the wiki pages here through google (can't find them by actually browsing the wiki from dsl page though...) setup with 55Mb hda6 for image, 92Mb Swap on hda5 and /home /opt on hda1 After some tinkering I got this working just fine with nedit installed via the .uci in MyDsl and got opera working as an "optional" MyDsl .uci package and got sound working again. This is where I start to get stuck though, I tried upgrading to GNU utils .dsl and it seems to download ok but then comes up with an "Alert!" warning message and then nothing in fluxbox/x works, all you can do is cycle the power and then because the filesystem wasn't unmounted before, you need to reboot again to remove duplicates entries in mydsl menu. similar to above happens when I tried the samba.dsl package... Now I read in another post that this could be because the ramdisk is full? Does this mean that with only 32Mb ram I really should do a full HDD install? Because under frugal I have only installed nedit .uci and (optional only) opera .uci and already I'm out of room... I'm a bit limited therefore... Or is there workarounds to keep the frugal install (using symbolic links?) I was just confused as to how the ramdisk/memory/swap is utilised, as when the machine locks it is still displaying over 50% memory free and 97% swap free... now, my other question, has anyone got xmltv working under dsl? I couldn't find anything in the forums confirming this but when I had the full hd install I couldn't get the .deb package for xmltv to install due to there being a dependency loop involving some dsl specific utils not allowing perl to install. Buoyed up by my limited success with dsl I also tried a barebones debian install (using fluxbox and minimal utilities rather than kde/gnome) and got xmltv working under that with no problem (couldn't find a viewer for the output .xml data though that would run without gnome!) just an idea I had to use dsl as a backend for using the machine as a searchable tv guide. sorry for the long post, loving dsl so far and I'm an enthusiastic newbie! Thanks for any help or ideas, pK;) Posted by demo.bau on Jan. 10 2006,16:53
I've experienced exactly the same problems when running frugal install... the empty "Alert!" message, and error message about lack of space (yet, there is plenty) when installing some of the myDSL packages. I think it has something to do with the permissions and the read only access to the /usr/bin folder... but don't have any solution for it. I was forced to do normal HD install to be able to install and run feh and unclutter. Hopefully somebody with more experience in DSL can have some ideas? To avoid the non-responsive DSL after unsuccessful install I use Ctrl+Alt+Del, which seems to shutdown X, and then press couple of "Enter" to get a prompt, after that type "sudo shutdown -r now" Hope this helps! Posted by popkid on Jan. 10 2006,17:07
Hmmm.... I'd managed to Leave fluxbox and Ctrl-Alt-Del to quit X, but even after that nothing works.... so "sudo *****" would just return "-su sudo, unkown command" even ls doesn't work! not too helpful! Interesting you think it could be permissions related? But nedit and opera worked, I'll try and work something out, like I said, this is just a toy project so I'm not too scared of breaking stuff, can always reinstall and start again! pK;) Posted by demo.bau on Jan. 10 2006,17:22
Interesting indeed... I was able to run "shutdown -r now"... can't remember whether with sudo or not... and you are correct - I was not able to run ls. In fact I posted a long post about my experiences < here >The permissions thing came to me when I used another computer with 1GB or RAM and booted DSL with toram option. Then I activated apt-get, and installed both feh and unclutter, and looked at where feh files are located... Looking at MyDSL < packages list > the gnu-utils.dsl is marked with red square and it looks like the red marked are packages not suitable for frugal. Anyone of the experienced guys out there please correct me! Posted by popkid on Jan. 10 2006,18:24
Ah... I've been looking for a list of the packages, thanks for posting the link, and though, you are correct and the gnu-utils are marked as a red box, they are also specifically listed as an example of a green box app in the introduction at the top of the page!Never Mind, I'll see if I get anywhere and post back if I do... pK;) Posted by popkid on Jan. 11 2006,00:03
Ok, well, no joy on the frugal with .uci approach.... I tried dsl2.1 since it got its release today, but there seems to be a bug (for me at least) it never umounts the mydsl extensions so every time I boot it's created a new menu entry (worked fine in 2.0) also I get a load of error messages on shutdown from the dmix app in the bottom righthand corner (invalid request: volume, invalid request: 50) and the modprobe fix for my soundcard doesn't work under 2.1...In the process of returning the machine to a 2.0 dsl hd install! I'll get there in the end! pK;) Posted by popkid on Jan. 12 2006,02:11
Progress Report!I am learning I think! I have now redone a full hd install of DSL2.0 (2.1 gives me problems), this is much more stable than the grub frugal for me and I have tried to mitigate against the possibility that I will break stuff whilst playing by writing myself a little backup script using "cp -a" to make an archive copy of the whole install barring "/proc". so hopefully I can repair things If I screw up. Working from hd rather than ramdisk I installed gnu-utils no problem and used synaptic to get nedit. I couldn't find one using apt but I managed to download a .deb package (using dillo!) for opera ((static)) 8.51 then used dpkg to install (seems to work fine), Then I removed all the firefox bits I could find (it was dog slow and I never used it) I've also worked out how to get icons on the desktop for Nedit and Opera, not a bad nights work! and it's been fun. I'm really impressed with how well dsl works on this old machine. I'm going to try moving my backup of my install to a different partition next so I can boot to either my "safe" or "experimental" versions I'll report back if I ever find a way of getting xmltv working pK ;) post made from opera 8.51 runnning under DSL2.0 on a P199mmx 32Mb laptop! |