0.6.1
Forum: Site News
Topic: 0.6.1
started by: John
Posted by John on Feb. 26 2004,02:54
The frugal_install script (written by Robert) is really very cool! If anyone has been working with the poorman's setup, this adds some nice capabilities.< http://damnsmalllinux.org/notes.html >
Posted by sevengraff on Feb. 26 2004,06:34
distrowatch announced this release even, how nice! I'm going to check out the frugal_install. looks like a lot of good additions in this release.
Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 26 2004,13:42
I wonder if wvdial has been included in 0.6.1. I had noted that it was in 0.5.3.1, but not in 0.6. The current list of packages on the site shows:wvdial 1.53.0.1 PPP dialer with built-in intelligence.
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I just wanted a confirmation of that, since I did have modem detection issues when using 0.6.
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Posted by John on Feb. 26 2004,15:12
No it is not, I am open to putting it back in though. But, what happens if you try to use pppconfig?
Posted by caulktel on Feb. 26 2004,16:52
John,6.1 is great. Thanks to you and Robert. What exactly is this
frugal install? I'm all for frugal, but just can't seem to find out what it does or where to find the script.
Joel
Posted by roberts on Feb. 26 2004,18:25
Frugal install is to run DSL as a compressed image copied to a hard drive. Some people have been doing things like this but usually they end up with a boot floppy. Since, I don't like boot floppies, I made this script to install compressed image with lilo. It requires a very small partition (60MB) versus the regular hard drive install (200MB). You can optionally specify many of the "boot time" shortcuts to include automatically. You can specify where the backup/restore is located. So basically it is a partition of the hard drive appearing as the cdrom but with your custom boot time options. It must be run from a currently running liveCD. So now we have an option for those systems that have no cdrom and no floppy and a small hd say like 80MB, you could physically move the hard drive to a more capable system. Boot up the liveCD make your partitions, root, swap, and data and then do a frugal install. Now move the hd back to the old computer and you are ready to go, no boot floppy required.
You could also use this to make a small custom server.
Posted by caulktel on Feb. 26 2004,21:39
Robert,Thank you for the info on frugal install. This sounds exactly like what I have been looking for to run my streaming audio server on. Is the command, "frugal install" to start the script?
Thanks again for all your hard work on this project.
Joel
Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 27 2004,00:18
John,When I run pppconfig, I answer all the questions, and my modem is not detected. This has happened on two machines that have modems that do work with 0.5.3.1. On the box that I am on now, it works in kppp with Redhat 9. But, I have had no success getting the modem set up in 0.6 on this box.
I am able, however, to copy the wvdial files to a floppy, and install them in
a running 0.6, and setup my filetool.lst to put 'em in the tarball for next time.
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I would think that with the winmodem problem, it would be to our advantage to have as many modems detected as possible. I paid over
$70.00 for one of the modems, and on a laptop, $230.00 for the other, a pcmcia.
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I hear that Quest is offering "naked broadband" a Digital Subscriber Line without a land-line phone. This trend might well spread throughout the industry.
I don't know, but I read a post here (somewhere) that Damnsmall would detect a broadband connection without much, if any, setup.
This is the coming thing, but lots of us still use dial-up, especially on older
boxes or home-builts (mine) that are hard to fit with the new broadband equipment.
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Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 27 2004,00:32
roberts,I'm going to try the frugal install. Right now, I have three hard drives in this box, and have Windows 98 on one, with /knoppix and filetool.sh there. On another drive I have a small partition with backup.tar.gz and filetool.lst.
I have to use the boot floppy, or put DSL in the cdrom drive, and use
knoppix restore=/dev/hdb2 at boot time. I have Redhat 9 on another drive, and have the grub bootloader on the Windows drive.
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I'm wondering if I could get the grub bootloader to pick up the Damnsmall frugal install setup somehow, so I would just have one boot manager.
I'll have to work with that. Can always fall back on the floppy.
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I've set up lots of hard drives using big boxes, then placed them, ready to go, in a little box of some sort, and with a little config of /etc/fstab, or X, I'm ready to go. Also had nice Debian setups that were copied to
drives to install in machines. (To much trouble to go thru the Debian
installation process on _every_ machine, especially if one has to
apt-get install kde
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Posted by roberts on Feb. 27 2004,00:43
Rapidweather,If I recall, the 0.5.+ versions for dial-up ppp had the user do three things. One was to make a link to the modem from /dev/
to /dev/modem. Then the user was put into a vi screens to manailly enter information.With pppconfig which is a standard debian package, my modem is not automatically detected either, but I get a list to choose from. I happen to select /dev/ttyS1 and then it works. So, my question is what are you selecting and after you run pppconfig take a look at /dev/modem what is it pointing to, and what does it display on the older version?
Posted by roberts on Feb. 27 2004,00:44
Cauktel,You must run it as root. It is called frugal_install.sh and it is in /usr/sbin
Posted by DrWatt on Feb. 28 2004,04:02
Has anyone been able to get apt-get to work in version 0.6.1 yet? Tried it in 0.6.0 and it failed. I don't see anything in the notes saying its been addressed.
Posted by roberts on Feb. 29 2004,08:49
apt-get via dpkg-restore works only for the full hard drive installed systems. However, there will be a further option forthcomming.
Posted by caulktel on Mar. 03 2004,05:29
Robert,Do you think it would be possible to do a frugal install to compact flash card via a USB flash card reader/writer? If so, I could then plug it into my IBM Thin client and boot from it. What do you think? Any Ideas?
Joel
Posted by roberts on Mar. 04 2004,03:29
Cualktel, I Don't know about USB card reader/writer, as I don't have very new computers. I have a PCMCIA adaptor to hold compact flash. Also there are CF to IDE apaptors as well. With those, frugal install is the way to go. Very cool. I am looking at the PCMCIA thing now as that would be an easy way to demo DSL on a laptop with no cdrom and even no hard drive. What is your thin client specs?
Posted by caulktel on Mar. 04 2004,05:04
Robert,The Thin Client I am thinking of using is a IBM Netvista 2200l 8363-tus that will boot to a compact flash. I just bought it on E-Bay and have not received it yet, I have been looking around the net, and have found quite a bit of info on it. I'm not sure what specs you are looking for, it has everything in it, but no hard drive, except for the compact flash, because it was designed to boot to the network or flash drive. I just think this would be so cool to do as it would have no moving parts or fans in it and would stream audio with Xmms just fine. Oh BTW, it's a Pentium 233 cpu, and it can take up to 288 meg of ram, which would just be great for DSL, which I love. Thanks Robert for any light you can shed.
Joel