Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDS

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDS
started by: greenlead

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,15:23

I happen to have an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDS (16 meg of ram, pentium 133 ( i think)). Simple story: Old hardware.

I saw the story about people managing to run it on a 486, so I figured I had to try it out, just for kicks!

I started out by just using fb800x600.

I keep getting a segmentation fault, etc. One of the interesting lines says: "Unable to handle kernal paging request at virtual address 6aa7e574".

Any command line tricks I can use to get it to start up?

I'll try to remember to come back and keep you posted on my efforts. :cool:

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,15:35

ok
I just used "fb800x600 dsl failsafe", and I actually got it to come up without crashing.

Now, it is prompting me to "Enter Runlevel". I have tried this in the past, and it always crashes, saying there are no more tasks to accomplish, or something along those lines.

I think I'll try "1".???

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,15:36

Quote

INIT: Entering runlevel: 1
INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel
[]

and it is just sitting there. Is this normal?

Now what???

Posted by henk1955 on Sep. 09 2004,15:44

try runlevel 5 (xserver mode)

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,16:02

I'm trying it now, I had to actually reset the computer and CTRL+C didn't get me a prompt.

i tried "fb800x600 dsl failsafe" and it crashed this time. So, now I am trying "fb800x600 dsl failsafe". For some reason it is crashing this time. I am getting a "segmentation fault" and loads of gibberish.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 09 2004,17:05

With only 16 megs ram, you may need to start s l o w l y ..

First, try "fb800x600 failsafe 2"
This should boot into a root console only..

If successful, then you should create a swap partition on your HD.

Once you have created a "type 82" partition on your HD, reboot
See if having the swap allows you to boot and startup X

73
ke4nt

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Sep. 09 2004,17:08

try "dsl xsetup"

set it to 800x600x16. thats what i do for my Satellite Pro 420CDS (with the new, lightning=fast 4x cdrom!!!!)

-J.P.
SaidinUnleashed

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,17:54

I really want to avoid modifying my harddrive. I have a perfectly good OS on it already.

Besides, what fun is it if I cheat?

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,18:00

ok, trying "dsl xsetup"...

it started the second half of the process, then appeared to go unresponsive. I couldn't quite tell if it was doing anything, since I couldn't see the text at the bottom of the screen.

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,18:01

am now trying "fb800x600 dsl xsetup"

OK, got prompt for "Enter runlevel".

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,18:04

it asked me for the runlevel, I told it "2".

Once again, I am getting:

Quote

INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel
[]

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,18:08

now trying "fb800x600 failsafe 2"

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,18:09

ok, I'm not getting a prompt. All I am getting is a blinking cursor, that it accepting keyboard input. It is not executing any commands.

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 09 2004,18:18

BTW: How do I tell which version of DSL I have? My father downloaded it recently, so I know it is semi-current, I would just like to now more precisely.

Posted by henk1955 on Sep. 09 2004,19:20

i have a Toshiba 210CS 120Mhz 16Mb
it runs dsl 4.1. framebuffer X

boot from floppy, dsl is in c:\knoppix directory
fb800x400 noswap

its not fast but is usable

Posted by davide on Sep. 10 2004,11:43

ok, let's state a couple of things.
It's good you want to re-give birth to an old laptop. recycling old hardware is funny and ecofriendly. It is also true that some people managed to run dsl on such old hardware pretty well.
however. ..miracles just don't happen.
As far as I know you really have to set up a swap partition on your hard drive if you want xwindows to start.
morevoer, there are also some hints on how to parttionate the disk (i.e. I've heard that swap partition should be the first on old hardware, beacuse it'sread and written very often by the machine and therefore need to be put in the fastest accessible area of the disk).
I also happen to read that you *may* use a swap partion that is a file on a fat32(windows) partion. that would mean not deleting your windows OS.
unfortunately I can't give you any reference right here and now. maybe you should google around a bit and check i.e. knoppix website.

good luck

Posted by cbagger01 on Sep. 10 2004,21:29

Yeah,

The concept is called a "swapfile".

You can create a swapfile inside your normal DOS/Win3.1/Win95/Win98 hard drive partition and make DSL use it instead of a dedicated swap partition.

This file just appears like a normal file inside your Windows system. For example, if you make a 32MB swapfile and named it "swapfile.swp", this file would work with DSL and just appear as a normal 32MB file inside Windows.

Search the forums for keyword "swapfile" or "swap AND file" and search ALL FORUMS and FROM THE BEGINNING or NEWER.

Also, there should be some help out there on Google, too.

If you just want to get into the system in text mode, I would expect that something like:

dsl failsafe vga=normal 2

would get you to a command prompt.

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 13 2004,02:53

ok, thanks. I was out of town for a couple of days, and it is always nice to see more replies!

Thanks, guys!

BTW: I use Fedora Core 2 at home, and have been using Linux for about a year.

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 13 2004,03:26

I just discovered a file on my HD called WIN386.SWP. It is 22,528KB in size. So, I told Windows that I would manage my own virtual memory settings, and told it that I wanted it to have a minimum size of 64 MB. If i am correct, this will make the file 64 MB in size.

So, then, how do I tell DSL to use this file?

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 13 2004,03:35

looks like I was right, it increased the size. The new size is 65, 536 KB.

Will DSL make use of a Windows SWP file?

Posted by cbagger01 on Sep. 13 2004,03:49

Good question.

I have never tried to use a windows swap file for DSL purposes.

I suppose if you REALLY wanted to save disk space you could give it a try.

However, my advice is to leave your Windows swap file to the old size and create a new linux swap file using the procedures that are described here or elsewhere. The linux swap file setup is done while you are booted up and running linux.

Posted by greenlead on Sep. 15 2004,05:08

i'm not having much luck figuring out how to make use of the virtual memory

if someone wants to lay it all out, i would be willing to try, but for right now, i'm giving up.

Posted by cbagger01 on Sep. 15 2004,12:23

A month ago, awphuch posted this link in a forum message:

< http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~aruljohn/linuxGuide/swapSpace.html >

or you could use Modrak's script:

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....wapfile >

and another link:

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....nd+file >

Posted by DaCuBaN on Oct. 08 2004,10:16

I'm getting similar problems with a Toshiba Satellite Pro 420CDT: Coincidence? :laugh:

I'm getting some "kernel paging request" errors when trying to boot with fb800x600, and failsafe returns with an "interrupt handler" error. Suffice to say with my limited knowledge of linux and googling skills, I'm coming up dry...

Any thoughts (other than bin the lappy or reinstall 9x) would be appreciated. :cool:

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 08 2004,14:03

Quote (greenlead @ Sep. 12 2004,23:35)

looks like I was right, it increased the size. The new size is 65, 536 KB.

Will DSL make use of a Windows SWP file?

I dont think its the same thing man...
Might check it to see if it does...however I dont think those are the exact same files

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 08 2004,14:07

Quote (greenlead @ Sep. 15 2004,01:08)

i'm not having much luck figuring out how to make use of the virtual memory

if someone wants to lay it all out, i would be willing to try, but for right now, i'm giving up.

< http://www.linuxquestions.org/questio....=109511 >
< http://www.linux.com/howtos/Swap-Space-1.shtml >

does this help

Quote

Sharing a swap file with linux and windows ( post #1)

So, I read a while ago that it was considered generally a quite difficult thing to create a swap file (or partition) which could be shared by both windows and linux on a dual boot system.
WRONG. !!

After all you dont need large redundant files on your system do you ?

Here's how I have my machine set up:

Dual boot Win XP (other versions will work also), and RedHat linux 9.0 (other distros/versions _should_ work also. Feel free to post replies to this if specific variations on this theme are needed to make it work on other OS versions).

First off, you need a partition or drive which is visible to both windows and linux. This could be:
- Your windows partition. Although be warned that if this is NTFS, linux won't be able to write to it (at least my system doesn't) so that's a non-starter. You need to use an alternative.
- A dedicated FAT (16 or 32) swap partition.
- Another drive altogether (with FAT file system). This is the set-up I have.

I am not going to go into here what size swap you should be using (if any), nor do I intend to explain how to create/move/copy/resize partitions on your HD. But, here are the outline apporxiamte steps you need to take for both systems to be happy.

First things first: When installing linux, you should not specify a special linux swap partition. Ignore the warning about not using a swap partition for now. If you already have linux set up (probably most of you, but I did it from scratch), you could go about removing the current reference to the swap partition in /etc/fstab, and then convert your swap partition to FAT, so that you can share it with windows.

Boot windows and change the page/swap file settings to use a file on the shared space of your choice (on my machine this is D: second hard disk). Under Win XP/2K/NT this creates a file called pagefile.sys. On other Windows versions 95/98/ME etc i think it's called win386.swp. You will need to know the precise location and name of this file in order to set it up with linux. You should be able to find it quite easily because of it's enoumous size.

That's windows taken care of. You will probably have to reboot back into windows immediately so that it can create/move the appropriate files.

Configuring linux is a little more tricky (it always is, isn't it ?). There are a couple of things you need to change, and one of these is necessary at every boot of linux, however, this can be taken care of in the startup scripts.

The first thing to do, as a test before we modify the system is issue a couple of commands to check that linux has the appropriate permissions to use the swap file properly. Open up a console, and find the swap/page file that windows created. On my system, under linux this is /mnt/data/pagefile.sys.

Run a quick check with (you should be root to do this):

code:

mkswap /mnt/data/pagefile.sys
swapon /mnt/data/pagefile.sys

The first command sets the file up for swap use with linux. The second activates it as a swap space.
Verify that linux is using swap by issuing a 'free' command. It should list the amount of used/free swap and memory. If on of these commands fails, you should check out the write attributes of your drives/partitions/files. Linux needs to write to this file, quite obviously.

Now, you want these things to happen automatically when you boot linux. The second part is easy, you need an entry in your /etc/fstab file which looks remarkably like the old one:

code:

..
/mnt/data/pagefile.sys swap swap defaults 0 0
..

Then, when the system calls for all swap spaces to activate, it sees this entry and all is good.
However, not much is going to happen if you booted windows in the meantime and overwrote the file with windows junk. So on every linux boot we need an mkswap command. I put mine in the /etc/rc.sysinit file. I'm not sure if it should really belong in here, but it works for me. A word of warning: Be VERY careful when editing this file. !!

In the file I found the very LAST occurrance of the command 'swapon -a', and just before it I put in:

code:

..
mkswap /mnt/data/pagefile.sys
..

Now when linux boots, it runs through the rc startup script and automatically configures the use of your windows swap/page file for it's own use.

Sweet! That's all there is to it. I know I've written quite a lot here, but really there is nothing to it.

I hope it works for you.. really there's only a few things you need to change, and they're not difficult.

Doug Hammond.

Dude no offense but < STFW >

Brian
AwPhuch