Disappearing Hair
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Disappearing Hair
started by: dmoc
Posted by dmoc on July 04 2006,14:14
*had* a working frugal install on a hd configured as...hda1, 4G, windows
hda2, 4G, frugal (thought I could also mount other dirs here?)
hda3, 3G, home and opt
hda4, 128M, swap
The crunch came when I tried a "dpkg -i <blah>" which resulted in "No space left on device" (various paths). So I have moved usr and tmp to hda3 (i think
) but my latest attempt resulted in same error but for /var/lib/dpkg/status (a file). So now I'm thinking...1) I am effectively doing a hd-install bit by bit
2) Why let all the space on hda2 going to waste?
Must admit I'm getting lost. Third time I've tried a frugal and thought I'd be lucky this time.
Posted by mikshaw on July 04 2006,14:38
| Quote |
| thought I could also mount other dirs here? |
You need to "mount --bind" in order to mount directories to a mountpoint within a mountpoint (should also use "frugal" boot option so hda2 will be writeable). An alternative is to use "toram" boot option, but it seems like you are already too short on ram.
Your ramdisk is getting filled quickly...in that situation I would consider using only tar.gz (since you have a persistent opt) and uci extensions....or think about increasing your ram, increasing your swap partition, or installing DSL as a traditional harddrive system.
Posted by roberts on July 04 2006,15:50
The frustration of using "write" (dozens of symlinks) and mount --binds can all be avoided with unionfs. Use boot option unionfs
Posted by dmoc on July 04 2006,16:07
Thanks for the suggestions I'll give them a go. How do I clean up my current installation, ie, just the single deb pkg that failed to install? I would like to avoid wiping out all my other changes if poss.btw: yeah I am short on ram as my sony vaio pcg-505fx only has 64M. I'm using the "frugal" boot option but maybe I'd be better of doing a proper hd install?
Posted by mikshaw on July 04 2006,18:03
A reboot should clean up anything that has been added apart from whatever is being backed up, but since you're using persistent home and opt the backup isn't really important unless you need to back up something in /etc. Any applications added to system directories will be wiped out.If it were me with only 64mb, I'd either do traditional harddrive install or rely entirely on tar.gz, uci, and unc extensions for additional software. And i'd use tar.gz only if i was also using persistent /opt
I also want to clear up my statement about "mount --bind"...i think i said it wrong. My point was that using persistent directories on the same partition as KNOPPIX will fail unless you use toram because KNOPPIX is already mounted (unless you use toram). In order to mount a directory located on a mounted partition you need to use "mount --bind", which is not covered by the boot script. The script will mount that partition if it is not already mounted (which is why it works with toram), but it will fail if the partition is already mounted. This is at least what the situation was several months ago...i haven't tried it since.
Posted by roberts on July 04 2006,18:04
With frugal and with dsl 3.x use uci and unc type apps.Go read the articles regarding "Atticware" to understand why debs and dsls are not the way for lowram systems.
Posted by dmoc on July 05 2006,07:34
What are unc's? My problem is I need to get the deb pkg for wpa_supplicant installed otherwise I cannot connect to my wireless router (and I don't want to use WEP). The only other alternative I have seen to to recompile the kernel avoiding SMP. Right? Without WPA I have to resort to Windows... ugh!
Posted by roberts on July 06 2006,00:43
Someone recently posted a howto on wpa from debs.Going from debs to unc should be a very easy task.
Maybe the maker of that howto would be so kind to contrubute.
Posted by dmoc on July 06 2006,10:39
Would be if it wasn't for dependencies. Do you have a link? I've seen < >this post< > but that was over a year ago and the poster's only activity. Getting frustrated, only a couple of hours to get frugal install but then no progress for two days trying to wpa.