How to save boot settings

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: How to save boot settings
started by: jerome2

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 25 2004,03:16

I am new to linux and to DSL.

I had to use the failsafe option inorder to get My dell box to boot.

The desktop will not display unless I use the failsafe option, after it starts the xserver I get a blank screen.

I did a hd install that I managed to get working at the expense of my windows xp partition and all the information on it, a tough lesson learned.

I have a winmodem and wont be buying a hardware modem anytime soon, but I want to build apon what information I have by downloading pieces of software for it at a time.

For now I would like to know how to save the settings that alllowed the xserver to work when I selected the failsafe option.

thanks

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 25 2004,10:43

it seems this board isnt too active ...

Posted by mpie on Aug. 25 2004,10:53

one booted copy the bootlocal.sh to your filetool.list and save the file to list to your restore partition if your a live disk user,
if your a hd install copying it to your xserverrc file should mean it boots like this each time, but it should have stored your settings anyway.....

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 25 2004,22:48

It seems that your the only user thats been active much recently.

Quote

could you give more specific instructions.
Let me see if I got it right.

Add it to filetool.list just by adding the line? Or is there a path to it?
bootlocal.sh

And this xserverrc I will look in to this later as well.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Aug. 26 2004,02:41

Quote

it seems this board isnt too active ...

Quote

It seems that your the only user thats been active much recently.

Another example of a thread killer....

To note: There has been almost 2000 posts in the last 30 days..
Feel free to join in ...
73
ke4nt

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 26 2004,03:27

Ok well I am just accostomed to posting on other forums where 100's of people are on at any given moment, no offence

Posted by ke4nt1 on Aug. 26 2004,03:58

What kind of Dell computer do you have?

Does the boot option "vga=normal" help any?

You can try the "xsetup" option in DSL-0.7.3 at boot time,
For example " dsl xsetup vga=normal "
and bypass the automatic xserver startup.

Play with the choices, and if you get a black screen again,
use "ctrl-alt-bksp" to get you back to the shell prompt..
Then type "xsetup.sh" to try other choices..
I hope you find one you like...

73
ke4nt

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 26 2004,04:40

Try booting with:

dsl xsetup

and choose 640x480x16 as your resolution.

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 26 2004,06:45

I recently noticed something that i have been overlooking.

Error: Only One Processor Found

I went into the bios and turned off hyper threading. And still got the same error.

I think this is my problem, when the xserver starts I get an error due to some problem involving my processor.

ctl+alt+bksp does not help, I need to turn the computer off and back on.

I noticed this because when I type :
failsafe
I dont get the same error about not detecting multiple processors.

I was playing around with the other boot options, vga=normal dosent seem to help.

I was trying them like this
dsl no{apg}
etc ... Is that the correct format?

Right now my guess is if I can find the option to disable processor detection or something similar that the xserver will start.

thanks

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 26 2004,10:31

after 3 days of playing with dsl I finally found out what options I need inorder to boot (0.7.3).

I enter this at the blue screen when it asks for a list odf options:

dsl nosmp noagp

Now if I could only figure out how to make this happpen from a hd install everytime I boot I will be able to focus on other things.

Posted by mpie on Aug. 26 2004,11:45

/etc/bootlocal.sh ......... once you are booted to a functioning desktop add to filetool.list....
your settings are then used every boot.......

if its hd these settings should be saved....

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 26 2004,12:09

This forum needs an irc channel and a faq real bad. Or dosent but I just havent found it?

Posted by DonttPanic on Aug. 26 2004,18:25

Quote (jerome2 @ Aug. 26 2004,08:09)

This forum needs an irc channel and a faq real bad. Or dosent but I just havent found it?

I believe there is an IRC channel, but last I visited, there was noone there. Maybe we should have people idling in there? I dont even remember what the channel is right now, but it's the default channel when you first open nIRC.

As for an FAQ, there's SO much to explain in an FAQ for damn small that I feel the best FAQ is the search function on this forum.

Posted by mpie on Aug. 26 2004,19:20

my apologies....its in /opt/bootlocal.sh

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 27 2004,00:30

Quote (mpie @ Aug. 26 2004,15:20)

my apologies....its in /opt/bootlocal.sh

It took me quite a while to find that.

Even then I dont think thats the right place.

#!/bin/bash
# put other system startup command here
/sbin/syslogd

What I did was edit /etc/lilo.conf and added these options to append

append=" nosmp noagp "

The nosmp option stopped the error : Only One Processor Detected
The noagp option allowed the xserver to boot. And since I didnt use failsafe my mouse wheels started to work.

Then ran
nano /usr/sbin/lilo_something_cant_rember
and also
/sbin/lilo

and it updated lilo. I also created a boot message saying to chose the second option to get to windows

boot/bootmess.txt
which I created in nano.

By the way I get a new error now it says that I supplied an invalid argument for the display and askes me to give a correct one and shows a list of values like
80x60
...
for the colum width and colum height. Is there any way that I can get around this automatically?

thanks

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 27 2004,02:13

Yes.

Add the command

vga=normal

to your append string and rerun lilo.

Posted by jerome2 on Aug. 27 2004,06:36

vga=normal

When I ran lilo after adding this to append in lili.conf lilo said that I should remove the "vga=" I think lilo called it an invalid token.

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 27 2004,18:21

My bad.

Try putting:

vga=normal

on it's own empty line, directly after the "append" line, without any quotes on the vga=normal line.

Posted by Scarletdown on Sep. 06 2004,07:44

Quote (DonttPanic @ Aug. 26 2004,14:25)

irc.freenode.net

#damnsmalllinux

I found the channel yesterday afternoon after a bit of trial and error.

I will most likely be hanging out there all the time, though I may be idle a lot.

Posted by jerome5 on Sep. 06 2004,12:04

great welcome to #damnsmall