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Topic: problem installing myDSL extension, going by book or not...

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ospreyeagle Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 15
Joined: Jan. 2006

Posted: Feb. 14 2006,02:24

I have a frugal install as described in install pdf
hda2: holds the image
hda3: holds /opt and /home

I wanted to install ayttm for messaging. I downloaded the file with myDSL and saved it to /opt.
I tried to install in terminal and emelFM and get the following message
cp: cannot create symbolic link '/ramdisk/usr/share/mount.app/noperms.txt' to '/KNOPPIX/usr/share/mount/app/noperms.txt':no space left on device.

get same error for different files notmountable.txt, online-help.txt etc
cp: cannot create directory '/ramdisk/usr/share/xpdf
and other directories xmms etc..

I get the same error if I save the .dsl file in /home/mk/
Once I attempt this computer pretty much freezes and I can not shut it down.
I am sure this is a silly problem but any help would be really appreciated.

antti

Group: Members
Posts: 12
Joined: Feb. 2006

Posted: Feb. 22 2006,16:41

I was just planning to write the same post, because my problem is the same.

My frugal install is quite similar, persistent /opt and /home. I also have a swap partition of 236 Mb.

I cannot install any .dsl-extensions. The system basically freezes after the attempted installation. Applications won't start anymore. I can close open windows though.

Looking through other users' posts, I was thinking that this was a memory and ramdisk issue because I only have 32 Mb of RAM on my old laptop. But then I tried to install parted, which is very small, and still the result was the same.

What could be the issue? UCI extensions seem to install (or mount) very nicely, I'm currently typing this in Opera. I would be happy to get just Abiword working on this machine, and ALSA probably too. But they are only available as .dls extensions, aren't they?

Any help much appreciated. Thanks.

cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Feb. 22 2006,18:05

If you type:

df -a

How much free space do you have in your ramdisk?

I think that your ramdisk is full and you need to either:

1) Do a full hd install

2) Cut back on the total number of *.dsl and *.tar.gz extensions being used.

or

3) Create a Linux Swap partition and format it.

sudo su
cfdisk /dev/hda

(Create a new Linux Swap paritition, say for example 128MB in size and located at partition number 4. Write and exit cfdisk)

mkswap /dev/hda4
swapon

And then reboot.

antti

Group: Members
Posts: 12
Joined: Feb. 2006

Posted: Feb. 23 2006,08:16

This is what df gives as an output for my file systems:

Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/ram0 2.9M 598.0k 2.3M 20% /
/dev/hda2 53.4M 49.2M 1.4M 97% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 117.4M 117.4M 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/ramdisk 205.3M 36.0k 205.3M 0% /ramdisk
/dev/hda5 872.6M 37.9M 789.7M 5% /mnt/hda5
/mnt/hda5/home/dsl 872.6M 37.9M 789.7M 5% /home/dsl
/mnt/hda5/opt 872.6M 37.9M 789.7M 5% /opt
/mnt/hda5/opera850.uci 14.2M 4.2M 0 100% /opt/opera850.uci

So it seems I should have plenty of space on my /ramdisk (205 M). That must be because of the randomly sized swap partition. Currently I have no .dsl-extensions installed, because they won't install.

What seems suspicious to me is the size of the root / -- only 2,9 Mb! And what is /dev/ram0?

When DSL tries to install .dsl-extensions, it attempts to write something on /, am I right? And there is almost no space at all available...

Is it possible to enlarge root (/)? Or what is the problem? Should I have a bigger partition for the cd image (hda2), if the installer script tries to write something there?

I have been studying DSL for a month or two now, and still its file systems are rather mysterious to me. I like the distro very much, but I'd love to have Abiword installed, so I could use it for some serious work too, not just computing fun...

Going for a normal HD install is no option for me, because as I have understood it only supports US keyboard.

Thanks again.

cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Feb. 23 2006,18:13

When booting from livecd or frugal, "/" is an initial Ramdisk that is created at boot time.

It is a very small ramdisk and any files and subdirectories that are contained inside the ramdisk will fill it up quickly.

The biggest culprit of this is files that go into the /etc directory because /etc is part of "/" and is not a separate mountpoint, nor is it a symlikn to a ramdisk directory.

Normally, when you install a *.dsl extension, DSL will create a writable file system for areas such as "/usr" for example. /usr is then symlinked to /ramdisk/usr , so any files inside /usr do not count towards the "/" filesystem size limit.

So while the "/" size is interesting, I doubt that it would produce "No space left on device" messages because the link file is located at /ramdisk/usr/share/mount.app/noperms.txt

HOWEVER, it is possible to get errors when you run out of "I Nodes" even if you do not run out of disk space.

If this is true, your best bet is to do a traditional HD installation or buy more memory.

If there was a way for the RAMdisk creation script to increase the "I Node" count, this would also help. But I am just speculating that your problem is "I Nodes".

But in my opinion, a user with 32MB of RAM or less should use an HD install instead of a frugal/livecd. No matter how you slice it, an HD install is more memory efficient.

16 replies since Feb. 14 2006,02:24

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