Can't install to HD - noob

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Can't install to HD - noob
started by: wafer

Posted by wafer on Jan. 07 2007,01:30

Ok, so I've scoured this forum for help with getting DSL installed on my system HDD...which is:

Sony laptop (PCG-N505VE) with a USB floppy drive and PCMCIA CD Drive (PCGA-CD51), 6G HDD, 64M RAM, Celeron 366M.

My situation is fairly unique, DSL floppy and CD boots do not work on my laptop unless I have KNOPPIX on my C: drive (which is another problem altogether - I don't want win98 on my system at all). The problem with both of these boot methods (I believe) is that the USB and PCMCIA drives/interfaces get initialized by DSL during boot and stop functioning as a regular IDE cd-rom drive or regular floppy drive (like they were behaving at the beginning of the boot sequence). Interestingly, the Xubuntu Alternate Install CD boots just fine - I was able to install it, but it's a slug on this machine. If there's an easy fix for this boot issue (modifying some files on the DSL-Live CD), I'd love to know what that might be. Anyway, as it is, I have to have win98 installed on C: (hda1).

First, I want to know if my installation procedure is correct:

Partition drives (as in HDD Install wiki) hda2 is 256M linux swap - type 82, hda3 is remaining (approx 5G) linux -type 83 - it shows as Linux ext2 (I have not set a boot flag in either of these partitions). hda1 is my Win95 FAT32 partition for Win98 - Boot flag is set for this partition.

Continued with instructions in HDD Install wiki to end (including the HD install FAQ referenced there).

Next I installed GRUB according to the GRUB install wiki.

When I boot my system, GRUB starts, but when I try to boot into DSL, I get this message:

Booting 'DSL'

kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda3 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue

Windows boots fine, but not DSL.

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong here? Special issues a noob might overlook when following the install procedures because his target system has "special needs"? Are there any special things I need to do while making the partitions - i.e. formatting, boot flags, etc? Have I done things out of order? Am I supposed to install GRUB first? Am I supposed to abort the LILO portion of the HDD install procedure if I'm going to use GRUB? I noticed the frugal switch above, is that supposed to be there, or not, or does it matter? I also noticed on one of the wiki's that the /boot tree should be copied to the HDD along with KNOPPIX. It wasn't there when I did the DSL and GRUB installs. Would this help out at all? Something to do with frugal? I didn't think I was doing a frugal install when I followed the hdd install guide (isn't frugal install a different installation method?)

I'm competely new to Linux and wanted to use this system to start learning.

Also, I don't really want win98 on this machine. If anyone has any ideas short of tearing apart the computer that might work for me, I'd appreciate it. I've tried making a DOS boot floppy so I could create a very small dos partition on the HDD for KNOPPIX that I could eventually merge into the swap partition, but couldn't get the PCMCIA CD-ROM to work from the DOS boot disk - I put all of the driver files for that drive I could find on the DOS boot disk (only the .sys files - might need other files?), though I'm not certain I did everything right with the config.sys file (might need to change something else?). I could include the boot disk file list and contents of config.sys file here if anyone is interested in helping out on that end.

Thanks a ton for any help.

Wafer

Posted by wafer on Jan. 07 2007,03:18

Ok, I think I figured out my major issue here. Apparently I'm an idiot and I chose LILO as my bootloader, then proceeded to install GRUB.

If you have Windows installed on hda1, I believe you need to follow the GRUB route - but I'm a noob idiot, so that may not be true.

The FAQ should probably be updated to outline this important distinction. Currently it tells you to do the LILO thing - and like a good little noob, I did exactly what it said to do - which, according to Murphy was exactly wrong for my specific case.

So I can successfully boot DSL from my HDD. So that solves about 90% of my problem. Still like to make this machine totally "Windows Free" but it's not that important.

Thanks -

Wafer

Posted by roberts on Jan. 07 2007,04:25

Often the sony cdrom can boot from CD but fails to find KNOPPIX image.
This can be fixed by booting your Sony from cdrom like this:

boot: dsl ide2=0x180, 0x386 pci=off

Once you can boot from cdrom, then you can wipe Windows partition.
Plus the installation is much easier from cdrom.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Jan. 07 2007,07:10

Quote

If you have Windows installed on hda1, I believe you need to follow the GRUB route - but I'm a noob idiot, so that may not be true.

For anyone who's following up on this, this is not true. (although probably some bootloaders work better on some setups than others)

Posted by wafer on Jan. 07 2007,17:30

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Quote

That was the trick! Worked like a charm. Once I changed the way dsl boots from the cd, it worked as advertised, and hdd installation went smoothly. I now have a "Windows Free" dsl box.

For the benefit of others that may not have a Sony pcmcia cd-rom, would the command line be the same, or do those addresses (I'm guessing that's what those are) generally change from vendor to vendor, and where do you get that info???

This info really should be included in the Wiki and FAQ somewhere (although I'm not sure how "frequently" this comes up - I've seen one other guy post a question like this in the forum). I'd be happy to add it to the Wiki, but I'm no expert by any stretch. It can always be edited, right?

Thanks again roberts!

And thanks for clearing up my faux pas about the boot loader ^thehatsrule^. What's the difference between the two - is it like the difference between McDonalds and Burger King, or is one geared for dual boot with Windows and the other not? My impression was that GRUB allowed you to boot into both Linux and Windows, but I didn't see any info about LILO allowing you to do this - though once I read the < GRUB > wiki, my bootloader research ended.

Thanks again.

Wafer

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Jan. 07 2007,20:24

They are both bootloaders, just have slightly different features, (but for some of my older computers I have only gotten lilo to work). They both can chainload to other bootloaders as well. Afaik, the main difference is that lilo is loaded all into the mbr, while grub can have its "stage2" on some other media (easier and safer for editing menu entries).

Posted by wafer on Jan. 07 2007,22:40

Good info. Thanks hatsrule.

Thanks again to both you and Roberts on this. Now I have to learn how to unlearn Windows.

wafer