CFdisk is going off the screen

Forum: HD Install
Topic: CFdisk is going off the screen
started by: Sparkytfl

Posted by Sparkytfl on Mar. 24 2006,07:08

I'm trying to run cfdisk to format the drive and do partitions. problem is my laptop's resolution is fixed at 800x600 and when i boot off the cd into text mode the text is at the very bottom, and when i open cfdisk, it goes off the bottom so i can't see any prompts. I can't seem to figure out how to start ind both text mode and 800x600. some special way of grouping the commands together? any help would be appreciated.

also, i'm seeing that people are setting up different partitions for system, swap, and other stuff. can I just use one for all of those, or do i need multiples?

I've got plenty of other problems, but I'll just start with this.

Posted by skaos on Mar. 24 2006,10:46

You could write 'dsl vga=normal' at the "boot:"-prompt. There may also be some frame buffer setting you can use.

Posted by doobit on Mar. 24 2006,14:10

I think it's alt-Shift-F2 to get the menu to move the window then you can move the window that's in focus no matter where the mouse is placed on the screen.

Posted by Sparkytfl on Mar. 24 2006,20:05

well entering "fb800x600" lets me boot into the full GUI and everything, but i can't get cfdisk to work there (says "fatal error can't open". guessing that mounting/unmounting has something to do with that but it says it either way). I can get cfdisk working if I boot saying "dsl 2" but then i can't see the bottom or the right side of it to follow the instructions. I guess I'm looking for a way to combine dsl2 and fb800x600, but I can't figure out the syntax of it.

Posted by doobit on Mar. 24 2006,20:54

You should be able to do cfdisk from any terminal as root. Enter sudo su cfdisk and then the path to the partition you want to cfdisk. I do not believe you will be permitted to cfdisk the same partition you booted from. You do not need to be in X to use cfdisk. Enter bash at the prompt to get into a bash terminal then enter sudo su cfdisk /dev/hdxyz

Posted by Sparkytfl on Mar. 24 2006,21:38

oh awesome. so i did the boot from cd thing to the gui, opened bash, and instead of typing in cfdisk first I typed sudo su, enter, then cfdisk. it actually opened. yeah I have no idea what sudo su is. or X. I've never felt like such a noob before. I've dealt with dozens of win installs but this is all like "uh duh?" for me.

i'm finally getting around to searching for guides on this site. this one looks like it'll help me i hope. http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_to_the_Hard_Disk

Posted by doobit on Mar. 24 2006,21:57

X is sort of a nickname for the video server. There are several different ones, and many, many types of desktops so we just lump them all together and call them X when you are talking about using a graphical user interface. The commands sudo and su put you in super-user or administrator mode as long as the terminal is open. You need to be in that mode to do anything that can cause major damage to your operating system, so be careful with it.