myDSL files not recognized during boot;
Forum: Apps
Topic: myDSL files not recognized during boot;
started by: MrD
Posted by MrD on Nov. 21 2005,21:01
HiVery interesting distro -- I like the simplicity.
I'm having some trouble on several fronts though. Most of has to do with myDSL not working as expected.
I've downloaded and installed several apps including gtk2-0705, Abiword gtk2, Firefox gtk2, gnu-utils in the /mnt/hdb3/home/dsl and the ../optional dir. However they are not executed during boot, nor do they appear in the myDSL menu. I did get a calculator to work at one time but it's not appearing anymore. It's like I've changed something and DSL doesn't process the myDSL stuff anymore.
Also -- I placed start_gtk2 in /opt/bootlocal.sh, however, since gtk doesn't start at boot, I end up with an "command not found" error in the boot up screen.
Lastly, when I click the myDSL button inside of Emelfm, I get a menu item, but I also get a myriad of errors e.g. for gtk2-0705.dsl:
cat: /home/dsl/.dsktop: no such file or dirctory
tar: Write Error: no space left on device
tar: Cannot create dir etc/deforma/hints
tar: etc/deforma/hints/gsfonts.hints: No such file...
error writing /etc/mtab/tmp: No space left on device
Cannot allocate color
BTW 'free' indicates I have 449k available.
I've spent the last few hours reading the boards and looking for a clue -- I am stumped.
Any help would be appreciated -- pls include full path to any config files you may mention.
Thx!
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Nov. 22 2005,00:17
You don't have enough ram to load the extensions you are trying to load.Simple as that.
-J.P.
Posted by MrD on Nov. 22 2005,02:22
Hmmm Ok I'll check into that. I have 768mb of memory installed and about the same space in a swap partition. I can load the iso to hdb2. Any other suggestions on how to confirm it's a memory problem? thx!
Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 23 2005,02:49
There is a limited amount of space available in the "root" ramdisk where /etc is located.If you load too many files into the "/etc" directory, you will get this error.
Because the initial ramdisk size is small, you will get this error regardless of the amount of RAM or Swap available.
The solution is:
Do a full hard disk installation.
or
Don't load too many of these extensions at the same time.
or
Copy the contents of /etc over to /ramdisk/etc and then create a symlink that points /etc --> /ramdisk/etc
Posted by MrD on Nov. 23 2005,05:44
Thanks -- this is getting more interesting. I have figured out how to get myDSL apps to work and also how to break them again. First, a couple of changes: I added 1gb of RAM today for total of 1.5 gb. I've been wanting to do that for a while, so thx DSL/Knoppix for the excuse to bling some RAM. Secondly, I'm now using DSL v2rc2 (was v1.5)
I moved all my *.dsl apps to /mnt/hdb2 as a temp holding space, then totally cleaned off /mnt/hdb3. I wanted a clean slate. Nice thing about DSL is that's easy to do.
At reboot, did the following command, and on a whim, decided to copy the cd contents to the harddrive using the tohd=hdxx parameter:
| Code Sample |
| boot: dsl home=hdb3 opt=hdb3 tohd=hdb2 |
What happened next totally floored me. ALL myDSL apps loaded!! I didn't specify a mydsl=xxxx location. Holy crap! -- how does this work?
So I did a couple of experiments.
| Code Sample |
| boot: dsl home=hdb3 opt=hdb3 toram |
Result -- no myDSL apps
I moved GTK2-0705 and AbiWord GTK dsl apps back to /mnt/hdb3/home/dsl. I renamed the others *.bak and rebooted:
| Code Sample |
| boot: dsl mydsl=hdb3 home=hdb3 opt=hdb3 toram |
Result -- no myDSL apps!
Hmm. So then rebooted again using the harddrive parameter:
| Code Sample |
| boot: mydsl=hdb3 dsl home=hdb3 opt=hdb3 fromhd=hdb2 |
Result -- no myDSL apps!
So is this how it suppose to work or am I tripping over a bug? I need to test a little more to answer that myself. However, as for now I will not use the "mydsl=hdxx" startup parameter, just let it default. This gets interesting too -- because "mydsl=hdxx" parameter defaults to the cdrom *however*, if one uses the "fromhd=hdxx", the hd device becomes the cd device. OK, that threw me for a loop!! I figured that out by trying to mount the hdb2 drive and then getting an error msg "device busy and so on"
So -- for now I'm saving myDSL apps to the root of the hdb2, starting DSL from hdb2 using the "fromhd=hdxx parameter, and setting my home and opt on hdb3. I won't be using "toram" or "mydsl=hdxx".
| Code Sample |
| boot: dsl home=hdb3 opt=hdb3 fromhd=hdb2 |
Result: Abiword GTK looks great.
Any further explanation of how myDSL suppose to work would be helpful.
Thx!