Live-CD, floppy, everything fails...


Forum: HD Install
Topic: Live-CD, floppy, everything fails...
started by: ewenger

Posted by ewenger on Oct. 11 2004,21:38
I have the following system:

2xPPro180
Adaptec SCSI with disk at sda and cdrom at scd0
128 MB RAM

When I try booting from CD I get the ISOLINUX text and then it fails saying it can't find the CD.  I have Redhat installed on sda with 32MB at sda1 and the rest (minux swap) at sda2.  I copied the KNOPPIX folder from the CD to sda2 (so I have /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX).  I tried booting from the floppy and it searches everywhere and the gives up.  Since the floppy has no diagnostic ability I can't figure out what's next.  I can boot from a Tom's Rootdisk/Bootdisk and see everything but I don't know how to boot into the KNOPPIX image from there.  Any suggestions?

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 12 2004,03:29
Try making the "USB boot floppy" instead of the regular one.

It should search sda1 for /KNOPPIX but it might also search sda2.

If not, flip-flop your two partitions and use the USB boot floppy and it should work properly.

Posted by ewenger on Oct. 12 2004,18:02
I can't figure out how to flip-flop my partitions...
Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 12 2004,22:32
Assuming that you have no important data on your partitions, you can use a program like cfdisk (or even Microsoft DOS/Windows 95/98 boot floppy with FDISK program copied into it) to delete your old sda1 and sda2 partitions and then create a new FAT or FAT32 sda1 partition. (leave yourself some leftover blank space so you can create the swap partition later on).

Then copy the \KNOPPIX directory over to your newly created partition and reboot with the USB boot floppy.

Once you are running under DSL you can use cfdisk and mkswap to create your swap partition.

Good Luck.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 12 2004,22:40
Have you gone into your adaptec bios, at startup,
and set the cdrom to be the bootable device?  
I'm guessing so if your seeing the ISOLINUX onscreen ..

Does the CDROM boot on other devices/computers ?
My SCSI drive DOES NOT LIKE cdroms burned
at higher speeds than 4X ..

The /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX image wont boot like a HDInstall.
So booting from the SCSI Hard Drive wont work until you setup
either a frugal install or a HDInstall to the drive, which includes lilo.

What type of adaptec card do you have your SCSI devices
attached to ?

Could you "temporarily" attach an IDE CDROM to the box, until
your install is complete?

73
ke4nt

Posted by ewenger on Oct. 15 2004,15:14
Yesterday I burned a copy of knoppix-std and it boots perfectly on this machine as is (from the SCSI CD-ROM).  I wonder what the difference is between distros?  I still want DSL since I can download the "mydsl's" to get more apps as they become available...

Eric

Posted by roberts on Oct. 15 2004,19:24
Looking at the description of Knoppix-std at distrowatch I see it was based on a Knoppix with kernel 2.4.21. Therefore I suspect it is a syslinux boot system.

Your issues, first no boot with isolinux. Since a Dual P-Pro is an older system and all scsi, it does not surprise me.

Second using the syslinux 0.8.0 boot floppy still does not have room for all the scsi modules. It really only supports ide-cdroms for machines that have their bios balking at using isolinux

I would guess that dsl-0.7.3, the last syslinux based version, would boot on your system.

This again brings up the issue, if an effort should be made to continue the 0.7.x series.

If you have the time and make the effort to download and try 0.7.3  please post your results here.

Posted by ewenger on Oct. 28 2004,00:14
Apparently ISOLINUX sucks and SYSLINUX rocks.  For me at least.  0.7.3 boots fine. Can I install 7.3 to my hd and then upgrade to 8.x?
Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,00:21
I am looking for an answer to that last post. I think I know the answer but just want to see someone else type it.
Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 24 2004,03:40
No
Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,03:45
thot so......
Posted by twoflatfish on Nov. 27 2004,00:11
I've had the same problem. DSL 0.8.0 is not recognized with a CDRom boot-up, but previous versions are. I have an old Hitachi laptop with 1Gb HD and 80 MB Ram. Very difficult to find a distro that is small enough to run efficiently. Morphix lite GUI runs in RAM but slowly .. probably because of all swapping it has to do. On Hard disk install of Morphix lite there is no Xserver that works...but that's another story. DSL 0.8 looked like the answer but I can't get a boot from the CD rom. Is there any work-around that will boot the 0.8 cdrom from a boot floppy?
Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 27 2004,01:02
yes..

grab the boot floppy image here ..

< http://www.ibiblio.org/pub....0.8.img >

it uses another bootloader, so your chances are excellent that the boot floppy
will get you started, then once you decide that DSL works for you, install to
HD to eliminate the need for the floppy.

73
ke4nt

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