booting from cd on IBM Thinkpad

Forum: Laptops
Topic: booting from cd on IBM Thinkpad
started by: JohnJS

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 14 2006,15:42

Just received my DSL CD. Am having difficulty trying to get it on my old IBM Thinkpad 755cd puter (Pent equiv 40mb ram 1 gig hd).
It has both FDD and CD using the same bay.
I tried F1 at power-up to change the start sequence but to no avail.
Any suggestions?
TIA.
PS: Works fine on my desktop (P2 233mhz 320mb ram). Just have to figure out how to install it on my slave HD. Tried Suse 10.1 but it crawls. That's the reason for DSL.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 14 2006,20:24

Are you using the isolinux version?

Try the syslinux version, usually helps with older systems.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 14 2006,20:39

Thanks for quick response.
Newbie question: how do I get syslinux?.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 14 2006,22:01

You could download it in
damnsmalllinux.org > Download

But it seems like you got your original media from someone else?

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 15 2006,14:35

Received the CD from John at DSL.org. (3.0.1). Will try to download syslinux if it is not too large. (Using dialup).
Thanks.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 16 2006,03:50

Downloaded bootfloppy.img 1.4m. Unable to copy it to a floppy. Error: "too large for floppy". Floppy shows 1.38 space.
Any suggestions how I can get it on a floppy?
TIA.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 16 2006,14:34

How are you copying it to the floppy?

Windows: use rawrite
Linux: use dd

See boot floppies under the wiki for more info

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 16 2006,16:27

Thanks.
Now have boot floppy.
But now after splash screen I get "Can't find Knoppix file system. Dropping you to a (very limited) shell. Press reset button to quit."
"Additional builtin commands available: cat mount umount insmod rmmod lsmod"
Knoppix#".
What to do now?.
Many thanks for your assistance.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 16 2006,16:29

Forgot to add that I copied all files from the cd to a KNOPPIX directory.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 16 2006,17:18

Wondering if I should download syslinux.The cd I have is isolinux. Maybe that's why it can't find the files. As you can tell I'm very new to Linux.
Thanks.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 16 2006,20:08

I think the easiest would be to leave your cd in there while you boot with your syslinux floppy.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 17 2006,15:42

Thanks ^thehatsrule^
can't do that as my thinkpad only has one bay for cdrom or floppy.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 20 2006,15:36

Finally got to boot from syslinux floppy with cd files copied to harddisk.
Now startup stops after:
entering runlevel 5
xinit: broken pipe (errno32): unable to connect to xauthority.
xinit: no such process (errno 3): unexpected signal 13.
dsl@tty1[dsl]$_

PS builtin modem never worked on this 486dx4. Have been using 3com lan/modem pcmcia with Win98se.
Any suggestions?

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 20 2006,16:28

[EDIT]: This thread looks useful: < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....72;st=0 >

Are there any other errors, warnings, (or the like) before that?
Maybe try booting with failsafe - check the wiki page on cheatcodes for more info.

See < http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CD >
which shows < http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/MWave_MDSP2780 >
which looks like bad news

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 20 2006,19:00

Thanks ^thehatsrule^.
Decided to leave the old laptop as a backup for my Desktop/Win2k. Not worth trying to get blood out of a turnip.
By the way DSL works fine on my desktop (which is also 'old').
By the way is it possible to save the dial-up and email configs so that I don't have to set it up each time I use DSL?.
Many thanks for your time and effort.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 20 2006,20:14

Using a frugal? Look up backup/restore.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 20 2006,22:33

Is "frugal" a min installation. I am running DSL from the cd in ram.
Tried backup/restore. It will backup to my floppy "backup.tar" shows up but I cannot restore it using backup/restore panel. Tried using f2 at startup and dsl restore=fd0 also dsl restore=floppy. But no luck. Since it is a .tar file do I have to unzip it?

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 21 2006,02:43

hm, it should be backup.tar.gz in the / or your floppy
so using restore=floppy should be correct...

Using the livecd whether or not you boot with toram, is still a type of frugal (media is a cd)

You should use mydsl-load.

Posted by JohnJS on Oct. 22 2006,15:19

Thanks ^thehatsrule^.
Finally got it working. (at start-up F2, dsl restore=fd0). Now back/restore to my floppy is done automatically.
The above is on my desktop. I gave up on the laptop.
Appreciate your efforts to help me.