livecd doesn't boot fully - please help

Forum: HD Install
Topic: livecd doesn't boot fully - please help
started by: jnutter

Posted by jnutter on Jan. 21 2007,18:03

I replaced the bios battery in my Acernote Light and now it will boot from the CD. This is a P75 with 16MB of memory.

The splash screen comes up with either the DSL-3.1-syslinux.iso or the DSL-3.1.iso CD. Both boot partially.

The syslinux goes to a gray screen with an X for a cursor that eventually turns into an arrow cursor. The CD drive continues to run forever and the cursor will move when I use the touch pad. After about 1/2 hour of this, I gave up.

The regular iso livecd fails to boot becuase it can't write to the .Xauthority and ends up at a command prompt.

I'm lost at this point. I was execting the the livecd to boot to some sort of a GUI where I would be able to follow the instructions get rid of the Windows 95 while I do a HDD install.

Am I doing something wrong or do I have the wrong expectations? Should I try to install DSL another way?

Any help would be appreciated.

Posted by roberts on Jan. 21 2007,18:39

Try this, at the first boot prompt:

boot: lowram legacy

What screen resolution does your laptop have, 640x480, 800x600?

You may need to specify with a vga code.
Again at the first boot prompt pressing f3 will display vga codes to try, perhaps

boot: lowram legacy vga=788

Another option is to boot to runlevel 2
boot: dsl 2
then at the prompt
# mkdosswapfile

Then try again as above

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Jan. 21 2007,18:43

You may also need to add "mem=16M" (as a bootcode)

Posted by jnutter on Jan. 21 2007,23:22

Thanks for the suggestions.

It's got a 1024x768 display.

I've been at it for an hour now, trying all of those things with both CDs. I've had no luck. I did manage to make the swap file. It didn't seem to help much.

The isollinux give me an error when it tries to a modprobe, says it can't find module fb0.

The syslinux still has problems creating the /home/dsl/.xauthority file. Says it's giving up, then a no such file or directory (errno2); unable to connect to xserver followed by a no such process (errno3); server error and then the command prompt dsl@tty1[dsl]$

Does any of that help?

Would 64 mb of memory cure all of my problems, or would I be wasting my money trying to make this old lap top work?

Thanks again for your help. I am open to any suggestions.

Posted by roberts on Jan. 22 2007,00:06

I have run DSL in 32MB. Never had a chance to actually try 16MB.

But first things first, lets try to see if the video can be addressed.

Have you tried ?

vga=normal

What about the mouse?

Hopefully you don't have a built in one and an external one plugged in as well. Sometimes that can cause X start failures.

Also add the boot option dosswapfile to be sure that the swapfile is being used.

Posted by jnutter on Jan. 22 2007,00:23

The mouse is a built in touch pad, but the computer sees it as a generic PS2 2 button mouse.

I tried his at the boot prompt: lowram legacy vga=normal dosswapfile

and I just got a glimmer of hope... There's a window on the screen... Still booting... and it's the getting started with DSL screen in a browser. I think we have a winner!

Thanks!!!

Edit got the hd install done. Win95 is gone. Thanks!

Posted by skaos on Jan. 22 2007,15:41

I'm not sure if 16 MB is enough to boot into graphical login. You could try "dsl 2" (without quotes) at the boot prompt and then do a hard disk install (including a swap partition).

Roberts, you can use mem=16M at the boot prompt to simulate 16 MB memory.