MyDSL and HD install

Forum: HD Install
Topic: MyDSL and HD install
started by: jesseakc

Posted by jesseakc on June 22 2005,19:39

I would like to have a better understanding of why MyDSL tends to break on a hard drive install. I like the way MyDSL adds icons and I find it way easier to use then synaptic. People always say "don't use it in root" or sudo MyDSL's. Well, I've made the mistake a few times and paid the price with a reinstall of the OS, but, the past couple of times, I know for a fact that I have not been installing .dsl's as root and it still seems to be messing up. Is there any way we can avoid/fix this problem? Thanks.

Jesse

Posted by Jonah Thomas on June 29 2005,18:37

My problem is maybe smaller. I can start up DSL from the hard disk. I can download .dsl files and install them, and they work.

I can reboot and they still work -- provide dthey don't use the gtk2 package. If they use that, they don't work after the reboot.

I can click on the "MY-DSL/Update to GTK2" thing and I can see it use more and more memory and then less and less, it's doing something when I try to install it. It just isn't doing something that lets other DSL applications depend on it.

I particularly noticed the problem after I installed another partition under /home/dsl. I put the bigger part of my disk in
/home/dsl/bulky. My method to do that was to write a short script in /etc/init.d named "start-home" which did

mount /dev/hdl4 /home/dsl/bulky

And I made a directory "bulky" in /home/dsl

And I added a line to /etc/inittab to run that script:

jet:2345:wait:/etc/init.d/setup-home

I can find things in hda4 now but MY-DSL has stopped working for *.dsl files unless I add them to the my-dsl menu on this paricular reboot.

Posted by Jonah Thomas on June 30 2005,07:41

I found part of my problem. One of the GTK2 links is set to /ramdrive/lib/libXft.so.2.1.1 which is just right for the LiveCD but which does me no good running from the hard disk without a ramdrive.

When I changed it to just /lib/libXft.so2.1.1 then Firefox worked. But I don't know yet how long it will stay changed.

Also of course DSL won't let me move icons out of root areas when I'm dsl and of course I don't want to run my-dsl from root. I'm not completely clear why this isn't a problem on the LiveCD, but it isn't.

Maybe it would work to run from /ramdrive/ with the hard disk too. It would be faster but more chance to lose data.

Posted by ke4nt1 on June 30 2005,16:21

What version of firefox is this?

73
ke4nt

Posted by Jonah Thomas on June 30 2005,23:27

It's firefox-gtk2-1.0.4.uci.

After booting from the hard disk I can install GTK2 and install firefox, and run them both and they work. But to run them after a reboot I have to install them again which results in an extra copy of each in the menu. The firefox icon doesn't go onto the desktop because the script calls for moving it out of a directory I don't have write access to. deleted the multiple extra copies from /tmp/menu.tmp and from /home/dsl/.fluxbox/menu. Then I loaded GTK2 with busybox so it wouldn't get deleted, and fixed the link to /ramdisk, and when I couldn't figure out how to open the firefox*.uci file I redirected the menu link to a copy of firefox 1.0.4 that I downloaded from Mozilla. It wastes disk space but I have more disk space than I have time to get things working right just now.

Some MY-DSL apps work on my hard-disk system. So far it's the ones that need GTK2 that fail, and they work once. The things I've found that give them problems are first the link to /ramdisk, and second the scripts have to be called from dsl but some of them need root permissions.

I first noticed the problems when I tried to put /home onto a separate partition. I had so much trouble figuring that out that I finally just made the new partition be /home/dsl/bulky and I'll put things there that take extra space.

In the short run I'm trying to avoid the problems I don't have time to solve. But I'd like to find out how to load *.uci files. I like the idea of cutting out some of the bloat you don't need. That's useful on hard disks too even when there's plenty of space. "Zeke said, 'Why take out the trash now? The house isn't full yet. And it might be good for something someday.'"