Successful install of DSL to a PII 233 lappy
Forum: HD Install
Topic: Successful install of DSL to a PII 233 lappy
started by: aveline
Posted by aveline on Feb. 12 2005,08:00
I finally installed dsl to My little laptop tonight. While I did it though, I got wondering some things:- why does the dsl docs tell you to make just one big partition? Other distros say make a /, home & swap partition setup usually. I have a swap space that I wanted to share tween dsl & mepis but i can't see a way to do this?
- I also wanted to share a /home part. tween mepis & dsl but again, it doesn't seem possible or at least theres no documentation in dsl saying how to do it. On other distros i know this is possible to do but I've not seriously looked into doing it till now w/dsl & mepis.
Aveline
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 13 2005,06:53
If you create a swap partition in Mepis, it will be autodetected and used by DSL. No additional work is needed on your part.As for sharing the /home partition, I would not recommend it. In order to get it to work with DSL, you would need to disable the fstab rebuild routine at boot time and then rm the contents of the existing /home directory so that you can use it as a mountpoint. Finally, you will need to mount /home every time that you boot up, early on in the boot process. Which probably means adding a new script or modifying an existing one early in the init process.
I'll say it again: I wouldn't recommend doing it, but anything is possible.
Good Luck.
Posted by aveline on Feb. 14 2005,00:33
| Quote (cbagger01 @ Feb. 12 2005,23:53) |
| If you create a swap partition in Mepis, it will be autodetected and used by DSL. No additional work is needed on your part. <snip> I'll say it again: I wouldn't recommend doing it, but anything is possible. Good Luck. |
OY!!! omg ok screw sharing /home. Thx.
hm well I think I alluded to wanting to get to dual boot mepis & dsl somewhere in this or another post and I apologize for that bit (will blame painkillers & bein massively stoned tyvm) as I saw later posts on grub & how to use it. Seems mepis installs Grub & it won't pick up a linux install automatically. Bleh, oh well... anyway apologies for not RTFBBS (this forum) more thoroughly first.
Thx for the info on the /swap too. Much appreciated as I'm trying to also get this cool little project called Hikarunix (Go for linux) working too. Its based totally on DSL and thats kinda cool.
Aveline
Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 14 2005,03:27
cbagger:I'm not going to say that I'm right, but it seems to me that it wouldn't be so difficult as you make it out to be. I don't know what the fstab rebuild routine is, but if fstab is rebuilt to automatically create and mount /home on the root partition each time you boot, I think it can be ignored.
Bootlocal runs before the user logs in, so you should be able to use bootlocal to umount /home and mount your custom home partition. Whatever few files are currently in the DSL home just won't be available after this, so they don't necessarily need to be removed. You could also remove these files from /home using bootlocal before umount.
Posted by aveline on Feb. 14 2005,04:36
I wanted to thank the ppl from these threads:< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=2578 >
and the threads on this forum (HD Install) for their info & input on GRUB. I got Hikarunix & Mepis to work fine by themselves with Grub as the bootloader.
I have one finaly question tho about Grub & DSL. In the code examples from the above link some have :
mydsl_dir=(/dsl-0.8.0/base /dsl-0.8.0/henk) <- obviously a directory but what does this line do exactly & is it necessary? Would it be useful to use this kind of line for the Hikarunix install I have going?
Thx!
aveline
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 15 2005,04:35
I don't think that it would be difficult to create a separate /home partition, which is why I provided the conceptual path to doing it.However, I do think that it would be very easy to mess things up if not done carefully.
But my biggest concern is that configuration files for different distros should not be kept in the same user directories.
For example, if the DSL .xinitrc gets clobbered by the Mepis .xinitrc then bad things will happen.