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Topic: DSL gurus/gods please help - MyDSL and XFree86, MyDSL & XF86 WIKI methods don't work too< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
eirikr Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2006
Posted: June 01 2006,21:38 QUOTE

Dear DSL gurus/gods,

I successfully "poorman installed" DSL 2.4 on a IBM ThinkPad 560E.  Everything look cool, except the screen are running on 640x480 4 bit color, no icon at all on Desktop.  Search results on forum seem to indicate that fb800x600 and xsetup.sh don't work on this notebook.  I am trying to get XFree86.dsl running with no success.  I am a linux newbie and am quite confused.

More searches came up with a few posts, but none of them can solve my problems.  Including a post with a success story on 560E + DSL + XFree86. (No details there, emailed author already)

It is a long read, I am not sure if I included all the relevent info.  Any help will be appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

This 560E has no network, no USB and no cd-rom, only floppy.  It has 32MB RAM now but I have a 64MB coming and will make it 80MB RAM.  I downloaded the iso image and dsl extensions to another PC then transfered the files to the 560E with direct cable connection.  (I think that might cause problem with dsl extension because the owner and group were changed to root, but I changed the files to user 'dsl' and group to 'users'.  Not sure if it is the right group.)  I don't want to invest in a pcmcia network card except as last resort... if I can just network the 560E with my PC with PLIP and PLIP parallel cable.  (plip ALMOST  worked when I tried a Debian PLIP install, but that's another story...)

560E spec:
Pentium 166MMX (256K L2 cache)
32MB RAM, will be upgraded to 80MB (560E max RAM is 80MB)
12.1" active matrix screen with 800x600 resolution
(Graphic chip set from IBM spec: ThinkPad Cyber 9385/82 PCI, 2MB video ram)
(Other successful xf86config file for 560E on the net:
 Sections "Device" and "Screen" use "Trident 9382", "cyber9382" chipset, "tgui" ClockChip)
 560E xf86config file is here:
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/bresnan....l-16bpp

2GB HDD, partition table:

hda1   bootable  Primary    FAT16        732MB  --> Win95
hda2                Primany   Linux           60MB  --> DSL image
hda5                Logical    Linux             1GB  --> home, opt, mydsl, backup/restore
hda6                Logical    Linux swap    320MB

After 2 days of reading posts and countless re-installs, HD install finally works with frugal_grub.sh.  Boy does DSL looks cool on the 560 or what! ;-)

My menu.lst lines to boot DSL - I've changed the second line:

title DSL with mydsl, restore, persistentancy, and hostname

kernal /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda2 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm noscsi furgal dma restore=hda5 home=hda5 opt=hda5 mydsl=hda5/home/dsl/mydsl host=BOX

initrd /boot/minirt24.gz


Then I copied the XFree86.dsl downloaded by my networked PC (using M$ Windoz' Direct Cable Connection) to /mnt/hda5/home/dsl/mydsl folder, as specified in menu.lst.  The /mnt/hda5/ folder also contains home/, lost+found/, opt/ and var/  Not sure if I need to do the dos2unix thing for the .dsl file, or it is just for text file.

Read MyDSL installation wiki and XF86Config-4 wiki
(http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/XF86Config-4)
But don't understand what this means: change /home/dsl/.xserverc to exec /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 - nolisten tcp, and (copy included in/home/dsl/XFree86_config_files)  - can someone tell me what this is?  

And the XFree86_config_files will be there when XFree86 installed successfully, right?

I tried all 3 methods in MyDSL installation wiki, but none of them worked.
1. 640x480 4bit desktop - no MyDSL icon (actually, no icons at all on the desktop.  Is that normal?  Tried to run MsDSL from xTerm but not successful)
2. MyDSL button in EmelFM (not superuser) does not work
 - 22 lines of "cannot create directory' /ramdisk/usr/share/keymaps/include': No space left on device
                  "cannot create directory' /ramdisk/usr/share/lilo': No space left on device
                   .................
      last line: cannot create directory' /ramdisk/bin': No space left on device
  - then 14 lines of "/etc/init.d/mkwriteable: line 18: cp: command not found
           "/etc/init.d/mkwriteable: line 19: ln: command not found
             ...............
    last line: /etc/init.d/mkwritable: line 31: touch: command not found
  - then "/etc/init.d/mydsl-install: line 43: busybox: command not found
            /etc/init.d/mydsl-install: line 54: umount: command not found
  -then "/usr/bin/mydsl-load: line 1: ls: command not found
           /usr/bin/mydsl-load: line 1: wc: command not found
           /usr/bin/mydsl-load: line 1: awk: command not found
           /usr/bin/mydsl-load: line 1: ls: command not found
  finally /usr/bin/mydsl-load: /usr/bin/iconsnap.sh: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

A search on the forum found some replies - ramdisk is too small - according to the posts even a big swap - 320MB doesn't help, so not sure how to correct this.....

3. mydsl-load - same result as method 2

Last question:  After I started emelFM in non-superuser mode, I cannot su back to root anymore.  Even on xTerm that I started as root before emelFM started, root priviliage is gone and I cannot execute any command at all - like, ls.  And I cannot shutdown or reboot.  Only ctrl-alt-del works.  How do I correct this?

DSL looks very cool on the 560E, but with only 640x480 4 bit color......hack, it can look even cooler at 800x600 64K, right?  So, help help help, please!
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eirikr Offline





Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2006
Posted: June 07 2006,06:39 QUOTE

Problem solved:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....94;st=0
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1 replies since June 01 2006,21:38 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >

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