Boot cant find files

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Boot cant find files
started by: bryantwalley

Posted by bryantwalley on April 07 2006,00:53

Hey everyone,

I downloaded the dsl iso (new and old hardware versions). It boots from the cd and appears to load two files files. I see a penguin then It looks for usb devices, then looks for cdrom then gives me this message

Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Please press reset button to quit.

Additional builtin commands available
cat mount unmount
insmod ummod lsmod

I have a Toshiba Portege 3480ct PIII600 w/ 128mb ram and 12g Hard Drive. The cdrom is pcmcia and the floppy is usb (both original Toshiba if it matters).

What can I do? Will DSL work on this Laptop? I have Dlink DWL-650+ wireless card. All I neet to do with this laptop is boot and surf the internet. I would like to do a hard drive install. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Posted by DrWatt on April 07 2006,05:01

It doesn't sound to me like it is booting off the CD at all. You will get the penquin as it loads the initial system off the boot floppy. Then, it looks for the Knoppix file system.You will see message like "accessing DSL image at.. " If it cant find the Knoppix image, it will dump you back into the basic shell you are seeing.

Do you know if it is seeing your CD at all?

Posted by bryantwalley on April 07 2006,11:39

It is booting from the cd. I have also booted form the floppy. When I boot from the floppy the error message is a lot longer but the end result is the same.

Posted by bryantwalley on April 08 2006,02:42

This must be why so many people use windows. Yes it is really bloated. Yes it is really slow. Yes it has to constantly be patched. But it installs and it works. Maybe one day.

Posted by Iang on April 08 2006,08:48

Do you have another PC available that you could check the CD downloaded OK? See if it will boot & try & identify whether the PC is the problem or not.

If the CD is OK, you could try downloading a Knoppix liveCD & see if that boots OK. There's much in common between the two. If Knoppix works (or at least boots - it will be tediously slow on your machne), it's probably worth persisting with DSL.

DSL can be very frustrating for non-linux savy folk, like me, but is very good when up & running, so worth a bit of time.

Posted by bryantwalley on April 08 2006,15:57

The CD does boot on another computer and runs. I have also downloaded Knoppux, Gentoo, Ubunto, and a version of Mandrake. All have the same boot problem. I am not interested in running a bloated OS. That is why I need to get this thing working. I have also tried coppying the files to the hard drive and it will not work. (used boot: fromhd=/dev/hda1) still not working. I am not familiar with the terminology of linux but what seems to be happening is after the cd boots and loads to the first screen, I get the boot prompt. When i try to proceed from there it is like it can't remember where the cdrom is. When I try to boot from the hard drive it is giving me a lot of errors. I made a folder named KNOPPIX (all caps) in the root, and coppied all of the files to this folder.

Any ideas anybody??

Posted by bryantwalley on April 08 2006,23:50

This problem is resolved. Copied entire cd to thumbdrive, plugged thumbdrive into usb port. Booted from CD. It found files on thumbdrive and installed. Does not find wireless card.
Everything else seems to work ok. Installed to harddrive.

Posted by humpty on April 09 2006,05:01

yes, it didn't boot from HD because of the extra KNOPPIX directory you created. I hope you did a 'frugal' install, cos' it
would save yourself a lot of trouble later.