DSL experiences - a HD install prob so far

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: DSL experiences - a HD install prob so far
started by: Mercz

Posted by Mercz on May 22 2004,17:51

Heya

I decided to dust off the old 486 DX4 out and try DSL 0.7 on it

Seeing you couldn't boot from CD from it, i created a boot disk and it worked fine. I ran DSL and found the X to be a bit slow (well derrr with 486 and 16MB RAM), but for what i want to do (mini ssh and ftp box) it ran quite fine

I was pleased enough with it to do a HD install. This is where i ran into problems.

The HD is 1GB. I put ~1000MB as a linux parition (hda1 - does it matter if hda1 is bootable part or not?) and ~50MB swap (hda5). I used the DSL CD to boot in (with X) and ran the cfdisk utility via command line. It seemed fine and wanted a reboot. Did so and fine.

Then I went to install it onto the HD, booted into DSL (via X) and ran the hd install script via root (it took me to a full screen command lline where i had to run the script again to make it work). No problems during install, LILO'ed fine and then it wanted to reboot.

When it reboots and goes to read HD, it displays the number 40 all over the screen and does nothing else. What have I done wrong? Tried several times with no luck.

Posted by roadie on May 22 2004,18:26

If DSL is the only OS, the partition has to be made bootable otherwise there is nothing to boot.

If you made hda1 bootable, then Lilo did'nt work.

roadie

Posted by Mercz on May 22 2004,18:42

DSL is the only OS and I have made 1 linux partition and 1 swap partition just for DSL. The linux partition is bootable.

LILO ran fine during the setup procedure, so what would you suggest I do to fix it up?

Posted by mpie on June 10 2004,23:38

check your bios on your hard drive,ifit is adjustable try putting to auto as i have had simular when i tried ti restrict available mem on my dell e1 t3

Posted by hasty on June 17 2004,06:14

First I'd try to rewrite lilo again to the mbr.
Boot from the cd, mount and chroot into the installed DSL and re-run lilo

The great thing is that it doesn't take long to reinstall DSL, even on a monster hard drive

Posted by AwPhuch on June 17 2004,17:38

Well
I always completely wipe a new drive before putting on any os, due to the fact that if the new install sees data on the partition it might think it to be bad sectors or whatnot

I use dban, and have created some floppies that will automatically wipe the drive for you

< http://awphuch.no-ip.com:1079/dban/auto.build/ >

Then partition the drive after that...

Brian
AwPhuch