HD Install with loadlin - almost works!

Forum: HD Install
Topic: HD Install with loadlin - almost works!
started by: gjhicks

Posted by gjhicks on April 21 2004,06:52

Hi,

I want to be able to boot from my hard disk and so I did the following:

1) Made a 400mb Linux ext2 partition on my hard drive. Under RedHat 9, this partition appears as "/dev/hda5".

2) Booted with the DSL CD and used the standard HD Install procedure to copy DSL to the 400mb partition.

3) Made a boot floppy, using "dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0".

4) Copied the "vmlinuz" and "miniroot.gz" files from the boot floppy to a folder on my WIndows drive.

5) In that folder, which already had "loadlin.exe", prepared a batch file with the following command: loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz /dev/hda5 ro

6) Ran batch file and it all seemd to work, for a while!!

7) Got the "Welcome to Damn Small Linux..." message but the next message was:

"Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry dropping you to a very limited shell, press reset button to quit."

Any suggestions??

Regards,

Geoff.

Posted by skaos on April 21 2004,15:41

You could try to remove initrd=miniroot.gz from the loadlin batch file. I think (but I may be wrong) that this only is needed when you use the compressed filesystem on the CD (or from disk).

Posted by gjhicks on April 22 2004,05:34

Thanks for the suggestion - now I get tantalisingly close to success!

At the end of the usual plethora of information about the boot process, I got the following messages:

hostname 2.08

modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module fb0

X10: Fatal IO error 104 (connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

I guess that tbe absence of the floppy drive is one of the problems? This is something I can't alter. My IBM Thinkpad 600x has a 'hot swap bay' that can contain either a CD Rom or a floppy. I don't have the floppy. The BIOS doesn't care, it just assigns fb0 to the non-existent floppy drive. Actually, the same problem exists in Windows, where the A: drive is always this non-existent drive. Hence, any routine hard coded to use the "A: drive" or "/fb0" will fall over.

Maybe my assumption of the /fb0 problem is incorrect.

Anyway, is there a way to get this HD install working?

Regards,

Geoff.

Posted by skaos on April 22 2004,09:44

fb0 is the framebuffer (fd0 is the floppy drive) and is used by the Xfbdev X-server (I think). If you can get to the command line you could run the Xsetup.sh script (or maybe it is xsetup.sh, I don't remember) and select Xvesa instead of Xfbdev.

If it still doesn't work, it may be that you need a clean dos or win boot (I got this from the Basic Linux forum): for dos press F5 during boot, and for Win9X press F8.

Posted by gjhicks on April 23 2004,03:06

Thanks for setting straight the fd0 vs fb0 stuff.

I tried you advice on the X-server. At the prompt, after a 'failed' loadlin/HD startup of DSL, I edited the Xsetup script in the /home/damnsmall directory, replacing the reference to Xfbdev with Xvesa. Unfortunately, same almost complete startup, with same error.

On the startup method: I have the MS-Win automatic GUI start switched off, the PC always boots to a menu, from which I select "command prompt only". Then I go to the directory holding loadlin and vmlinuz and exectute the batch file mentioned above.

Any other suggestions glady accepted.

I can't believe that anyone would rather boot from a floppy or screw around with their HD boot sector if they could boot with a batch file, using loadlin.

Regards,

Geoff.

fb0 is the framebuffer (fd0 is the floppy drive) and is used by the Xfbdev X-server (I think). If you can get to the command line you could run the Xsetup.sh script (or maybe it is xsetup.sh, I don't remember) and select Xvesa instead of Xfbdev.

If it still doesn't work, it may be that you need a clean dos or win boot (I got this from the Basic Linux forum): for dos press F5 during boot, and for Win9X press F8.

Posted by skaos on April 23 2004,09:57

I guess that the word "clean" is ambiguous - what I meant was that when booting you have to bypass autoexec.bat and config.sys, I think you need "secure modus and command prompt only" (or something like that). This works with basic linux 3.10 (which uses Xvesa as well) - I really don't know about DSL, but it could be worth a try.

Posted by gjhicks on April 24 2004,02:05

Well - Hello World!

I got DSL to load from the HD, using loadlin.

I am now "talking" to you via the Dillo app.

Thanks for all your assistance.

Geoff.