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Topic: noob wants dual boot dsl/win95, planning to add 20g hd to antique comp

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filbertius Offline

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Posts: 15
Joined: Jan. 2007

Posted: Jan. 21 2007,15:25

a few things i am still trying to clear up...

i have not been able to find a text editor besides beaver, and have not gotten beaver to allow me to edit device.map (have been looking in the wiki and forums unsuccessfully).

the posting threads i have found so far on grub problems seem to be mostly referring to frugal install, and i am hoping to make a full install.

as to which device.map i have been trying to edit - i have assumed that the full install would need me to edit one on hdb. i haven't yet found a device.map below /cdrom/
so far all i can find is /KNOPPIX/boot/grub/device.map - just now tried to use the edit button on emelfm, which brought up beaver, which i still can't make any visible change with.

one other thing i realize may be messing me up - i make the bootable cd a while back. i wrote "dsl 2.3" on the disk. it shows to load INIT 2.78 KNOPPIX and 2.4.26 KERNEL. is that part of my problem?

^thehatsrule^ Offline

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Posted: Jan. 21 2007,18:55

Quote

i have not been able to find a text editor besides beaver, and have not gotten beaver to allow me to edit device.map (have been looking in the wiki and forums unsuccessfully).

Which editor you use doesn't matter, it's the permissions.

Quote

the posting threads i have found so far on grub problems seem to be mostly referring to frugal install, and i am hoping to make a full install.

Not too sure what you mean, as it seems you are also using a frugal installation? Anyways, frugal is the recommended choice.

Quote

as to which device.map i have been trying to edit - i have assumed that the full install would need me to edit one on hdb. i haven't yet found a device.map below /cdrom/
so far all i can find is /KNOPPIX/boot/grub/device.map - just now tried to use the edit button on emelfm, which brought up beaver, which i still can't make any visible change with.

Using toram or something similar? You can still mount the partition in i.e. /mnt/hdXx then look in /mnt/hdXx/boot/grub

Quote

one other thing i realize may be messing me up - i make the bootable cd a while back. i wrote "dsl 2.3" on the disk. it shows to load INIT 2.78 KNOPPIX and 2.4.26 KERNEL. is that part of my problem?

No... but are you booting from livecd? You have to make it clear how you are running DSL.

filbertius Offline

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Posts: 15
Joined: Jan. 2007

Posted: Jan. 21 2007,19:39

i have been booting using the livecd (currently the only way the computer will boot). when trying to boot on hd, i get the black grub screen lock-up. when i boot with the livecd, the computer does show that dsl is using my swap partition on hdb1. is that already a frugal install (except for no way yet to dual boot)?

i am looking for a way to have some version of linux entirely on the hd (without needing to plug in a cd at all). my internet connection is medium speed at best, so i'd prefer going with dsl or something not too much bigger.

if someone feels there is a better choice than dsl, i'd appreciate input.

mostly i just want to get something running so that i can learn enough to quit asking so many stupid questions.

thanks
gary:p

roberts

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Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 21 2007,20:03

DSL can be installed in many ways. Many times your answer depends on specifically which way it was installed and with what options were selected.

While grub is very powerful, it is not that noob friendly.

The location of the menu.lst depends on how DSL is installed.
A traditional hard drive install would be /boot/grub/menu.lst
if a frugal, it would be /cdrom/boot/grub/menu.lst,
if frugal with the toram option then you would have to mount the drive, say hda2 and then it would be /mnt/hda2/boot/grub/menu.lst

The minimalistic grub installer I have put into DSL, should work without editing. If Windows is on hda1 and dsl is installed elsewhere on hda. The installer asks you if Windows is on hda1.

The lilo boot loader I have made to install in the target partition.
Then you mark the partition active to use it.

Another boot loader that is noob friendly for a mixed or complex, multi OS, environment is gag boot loader.

http://gag.sourceforge.net

No edting of files, this boot loader looks at all partitions of user selected drive(s) and presents menu choices of which to boot. With DSL should you use lilo. Lilo works well with gag. My test system has four drives with gag, hda1 Win95, hda12 DSL Traditional, hdc1 WinXP, hdd1 DSL frugal.

Not that you need to use gag.

With choices comes complexity, but also much flexibility.

HTH

filbertius Offline

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Joined: Jan. 2007

Posted: Jan. 21 2007,21:00

i have looked at menu.lst and see lots of references to hda which i imagine i need to change to hdb.
i have also see the "toggle readonly" selection in beaver's edit menu - but i still can't make it do anything.
where do i need to go to change permission, and might menu.lst be the only one i will need to change?

thanks

21 replies since Jan. 14 2007,05:30

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