boots to welcome to DSL whats next?

Forum: HD Install
Topic: boots to welcome to DSL whats next?
started by: Moldy

Posted by Moldy on Jan. 26 2007,08:27

I have a inspiron 3200 lappy with no USb boot and no cdrom I made a boot disk which got me to the "welcome to DSL" it says cant find knoppix filesystem press reset button to quit.

What do I need to do to get DSL on this machine?

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 26 2007,13:49

You can copy the KNOPPIX image to your usb stick (works for me) or hd (maybe) and then tell the bootloader to look there for it.

The syslinux.cfg file on my boot floppy looks like this (note the "fromusb")

DEFAULT linux24
APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init fromusb toram lang=us noapm apm=off vga=791 initrd=minirt24.gz frugal noapm apm=off nomce noapic quiet restore=sda1 mydsl=sda1 BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix
TIMEOUT 300

Posted by Moldy on Jan. 26 2007,19:53

I forgot to mention the laptop has no OS it just has a bios i upgraded to latest bios hoping it might support USB booting but it doesnt.
How do I copy the image? I tried it but it doesnt find knoppix on my usb drive. I tried making a live cd to boot on my desktop and then make the usb drive but the cd doesnt boot. I made it just as it says to I downloaded the current iso then used roxio to make a boot disc. it doesnt work.

I have tried reading through just about every tutorial there is on the DSL wiki and it is really confusing for a newb like me. I really need a tutorial step by step on how to do it not some vague explanation that assumes I know tons of stuff. IF its easier please direct me to a DSL site for newbs.

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 27 2007,04:29

I'm guessing you have windows on your desktop - if this is the case, you can download the zip file for the embedded version of DSL.

Once you have the zip file, you can extract the knoppix image and place it on your USB stick - the floppy "fromusb" boot should then work on your laptop

Posted by Moldy on Jan. 27 2007,07:17

I dont think my laptop will boot from usb because the bios doesnt list it as an option in the boot order. It will recognize a usb drive though when I boot from floppy disk. I just need to figure out the technique to getting the right files on the USB.

I got a live cd to work in my desktop it will go into the DSL os and it seems to work but figuring out how to get it onto USB to install to laptop is impossible.
I tried using my laptop hard drive adapter to put the harddrive in my desktop but that didnt work.

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 27 2007,07:54

If your laptop will boot from a floppy then you don't need the BIOS option to boot from USB.

What happens is that the floppy boots linux24, then minirt24.gz and then looks "somewhere else" for the KNOPPIX file.

"Somewhere else" can be a cd, USB or hd, you just have to tell the floppy boot where to look - in your case, it seems either "fromusb", or "fromcd" would be the way to go.

So:

1. Extract /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX to your USB from the embedded version of DSL under windows using winzip.

or

2. Boot your desktop using the live cd and copy /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX to your USB using emelFM.

Once you have /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX on your USB, then use a text editor and open the file syslinux.cfg on the floppy and add the bootcode "fromusb" to the file as per my earlier post.

If everything has gone OK, when you boot from floppy it will load the knoppix image from your usb and you will be in business.

'Hope this helps.

Posted by Moldy on Jan. 27 2007,18:34

Heres what I did
I made a boot floppy and edited the file like you had me do so now it tries to read from the usb I extracted the knoppix file to the usb but the dsl searches through a bunch of drive names such as dev/hda those sorts but cant find the knoppix file.

I realize this is taking alot of your time I appreciate your help I have spent hours and hours and hours literally. trying to find how ot do this in laymans terms.

I am currently on here from DSL! some success but I still havent got it to the laptop I think I figured out how to use the emelfm program but when copying to usb it says the operation is not permitted I used the super user emelfm from right clicking on dektop etc. it only copied 2048 bytes. I tried it again copy from the cdrom it copied the 47.2mb or whatever it was and it wouldnt find it on the laptop.
You keep using /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX when i see the file in emelfm it is named KNOPPIX is this significant?
Again thank you for your help.

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 28 2007,03:33

Usually the file named KNOPPIX is in a folder named KNOPPIX - hence /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX.

If the boot floppy searches dev/hda etc, then you could try copying the KNOPPIX file to your hd and see if that works.