Can't copy mydsl files to /cdrom
Forum: USB booting
Topic: Can't copy mydsl files to /cdrom
started by: fodder
Posted by fodder on June 08 2006,00:01
Been using LiveCD for some time and love it - just started using USB boot. I succeeded in creating a USB-ZIP bootable pen drive (using the included tool) that has DSL on sda1 and I put the mydsl extensions in sda2.(I just found out that this is wrong but most things actually worked fine that way - the reason I started looking for answers is that OpenOffice 2.0 was running really slow. :-)
So I just tried to copy my mydsl extensions to the /cdrom folder but I keep getting the error: "No space left on device" and I know that the drive is big enough (512megs) but am not sure about the partition size.
My questions are:
1) The /cdrom directory that I am supposed to put the extensions in is the one that is created on a normal USB boot up accessable from the root directory (not mnt/cdrom/ and not KNOPPIX/cdrom), correct?
2) When I created the drive I included in the startup cheat codes "mydsl=sda2". If I succeed in getting the extensions into the /cdrom directory, what will that need to be changed to? (I ask because I have changed it to "mydsl=cdrom" and it looks on the actual cdrom. :-)
3) I don't remember a way to control partition size using the "Install to USB Pendrive" tool - did I miss something? Or is my problem elseware?
Thanks for any help.
Posted by roberts on June 08 2006,00:27
For a usb-zip install you have done things correctly.usb-zip creates a small partition to meet ZIP specs.
There is not enough room to store extensions in the first partition mounted as /cdrom.
Therefore leave your setup as is, using sda2 to store your extensions.
Posted by fodder on June 08 2006,17:30
| Quote (roberts @ June 07 2006,20:27) |
| For a usb-zip install you have done things correctly. |
Thanks so much for the quick response.
I'll try and revert to the non-beta OpenOffice 1.1.4 to see if it will run correctly. It was kind of weird, OOo 2.0 (beta - UCI) would open and edit an Impress presentation fine, but when I tried to display it, it was reeeeeeeeealy slow - choppy transistions, etc. (no video or anything, just vanilla slides.) I did notice that it was significantly faster when using a USB 2.0 port as opposed to a 1.1, but it was still way too slow - and my pendrive is a brand new Sony (relatively high r/w speed). But when OOo was stored on the hard drive, it worked fine.
Anyway, thanks again and I'll post my results in a little while. Any additional thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Posted by humpty on June 08 2006,19:23
you can do a speed test which is really meant for HDs but works forpendrives;
sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 34 MB in 3.12 seconds = 10.90 MB/sec
Posted by fodder on June 08 2006,21:29
| Quote (humpty @ June 08 2006,15:23) |
| you can do a speed test which is really meant for HDs but works for pendrives; sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda |
Thanks for the tip;
Multiple tests on my 512M Sony MicroVault returned right around 9 Mb/sec.
Not the best, but not terrible, either. I'm still trying to download OOo 1.1.4 - keep getting bad checksums.
More info soon...
EDIT: I forgot to say in my second post, that I put OOo 2.0 on a LiveCD and even when running "toram" it did the same thing as the pendrive - i.e. ran really slow and at times would cause OOo to shut down.
Posted by fodder on June 09 2006,00:24
Ok, just figured out what the problem is. When I first put this system together I looked on OpenOffice.Org and it says for GNU/Linux distros, the minimum memory requirements are 128Megs. No problem, I thought, I have 256Megs, and when I tried it using a LiveCD with all my mydsl apps on a hard drive everything worked fine.However, I just noticed that on the info page that pops up when you download OOo as a mydsl app, it says that OpenOffice needs 384Megs of memory.
So, apparently, it worked fine with my setup because my slideshows were simple enough that I guess when DSL paged the extra memory from the hard drive there was no noticeable slowing.
Now that I eliminated the hard drive in favor of a pen drive, the memory requirements caught up with me.
I guess I'll be buying some more RAM soon.
Posted by cbagger01 on June 11 2006,03:32
Go to the UCI section of the MyDSL repository.There is OpenOffice packaged into *.uci extension format that uses MUCH less memory. Should easily run on 256MB of RAM and probably even on 128MB too.
Posted by fodder on June 13 2006,16:41
| Quote (cbagger01 @ June 10 2006,23:32) |
| Go to the UCI section of the MyDSL repository. There is OpenOffice packaged into *.uci extension format... |
Yeah, that's what I've been using.
I've tried all the different UCI distros.I'm thinking that the problem only shows up when trying to display Impress slideshows, there isn't much else in the suite that would need the extra memory.
FINAL UPDATE (06/20/06): I just dropped an additional 256 Megs of memory into my box and it works like charm now. So UCI OOo 2.0Beta works great when booted off a USB pendrive but does need the 384Megs of RAM (as displayed in the MyDSL repository info) for Impress to work correctly.