Installation doubts

[x18]

Hello,

DSL is totally new to me, so I feel like being in the dark.

I've run live and then installed DSL on my old Pentium II laptop, but I've some doubts:

1. "Ensure to be already connected to the net before running the installer..."
    As a newbie, I don't know how a computer with a blank disk can be already connected to any net.
    So I didn't connect it to any network and performed a basic installation.
    Hope I haven't lost anything.

2. "To use a separate boot partition you need our cli installer"
    Fine, where is it? What's its name? Is it on the CD? Or how do I get it?

3. My laptop used to run RedHat 8 and then Fedora 4. Both of them provided the siliconmotion video driver.
    Since it's missing in the distro, I guess it's impossible to run X unless I install that driver.
    To do that I need to build it by gcc.
    How do I get and properly install the gcc package, if any?

4. In fact I have to modify Grub to start the o.s. console. For who have unsupported video cards, to start the system at the command line level would be a very appreciated option.
    And what about the old /etc/inittab file? How to modify runlevels manually?

5. Man pages are missing and I couldn't find any up-to-date on-line help, so I feel totally blind.
    How do I get man pages?

Thank you so much in advance.

[Yan]

I'm confused: where do you see "Ensure to be already connected to the net before running the installer..."  and "To use a separate boot partition you need our cli installer"? I don't see them anywhere in the installation program.

Silicon Motion seems to be a SoC (system on chip) GPU. I've never heard of it. What's the exact model of your laptop? Whatever it is, you can download the necessary driver even if it's not on the CD.

[x18]

Thank you so much for replying.

Those messages show *after* launching cli-installer.

My laptop is an ASUS L7300 Pentium II 300 MHz.

This is the latest siliconmotion driver release:
https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2023-S...61502.html

Anyway, from where can I download the gcc package for DSL, please?

[Yan]

Is this your laptop? It says Celeron, but Celeron is a kind of Pentium II. It also says 32 MB of RAM, and if that's really all you have, I doubt whether you can install and run DSL 2024 at all. DSL is based on AntiX, and AntiX says you need 512 MB. To know how much RAM you have, do free -h.

When I run cli-installer, I see this:

This installer does NOT offer the option for using a separate boot partition.
This installer does NOT offer encryption.
If you want the above mentioned features, use our gui installer.

So it doesn't say to use the cli installer to have a separate /boot partition, but to use the gui installer.

Now, apparently you don't see the GUI installer, so I'm wondering how you're running DSL. You're supposed to burn the ISO to a CD disk, then boot from the CD disk. Is that what you did? If that's what you did and you don't see the GUI, I suppose that means that DSL can't run the GUI on your system and you have no choice but to use the CLI installer.

I suggest you try to install in text mode, without worrying about being connected or about your graphics driver at first. If you can't even install, that answers the question about whether you have enough RAM. If you can install, then try to connect to the Internet (a wired connection would be simpler than a wireless connection) and run this to install gcc:

sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install gcc

[x18]

Asus made various L7?00 models, Celeron to P III, all with built-in 32 Mb RAM plus optional RAM to add. Mine is P II with 32 + 128 = 160 Mb RAM.
I'm running Windows 2000 in dual boot on it.
About the 512 Mb minimum requirements, that's bad news. I expected DSL to be a low RAM requirements OS running (also) on older hardware (I still got a Pentium 1 and a 486DX PC).

Yes, since the siliconmotion driver is missing I've run the installation selecting "text", expecting to boot the system in text mode. Instead, once it is installed it starts X automatically. That's not what I wish at first because it results in a broken system.

I've read "use our gui installer" (now I realized it: GUI) but if it means I have to install the OS in graphical mode I just can't because I can't run any graphical environment without the right driver.
I think that should be rethinked: primarily to allow people to make a multi partition installation in text mode (I need a /boot partition to stay within that holy 1024th cylinder)
The graphical mode follows it later.

Yes, I've already installed DSL and it's now running in text mode. Expected to succeed in running X as well, though with some efforts.

Thank you for your reply.

[x18]

UPDATE:

I've been able to update the OS and install gcc.

Running ./configure in the driver directory it asks for packages that seem not to exist in DSL, at least with these names:

xorg-server, xproto, fontsproto.

They don't show in the "apt list" search.

How can I do?

[grindstone]

You have a lot going on at once. 

1.  A:  Wired connection.  What it meant to be connected at install is with a wired connection. 

Maybe John can weigh-in, but I believe the best order to go at things is to get the "DSL File Restore" files, then apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, and then begin installing things such as the build-essentials, etc.

2.  A:  You've already found the cli-installer, but for the benefit of others, it's:
/usr/local/bin/cli-installer

5.  In the case of starting w/o X, poking around in the flux menu entries reveals the equivalent "DSL File Restore" to be
/usr/local/bin/restore
which will pull down 17XMB which extracts to 5XXMB of man pages and useful things. 

3.  Again, you're past this point, but for the benefit of others (corrections welcome too), do the restore, then update and upgrade, THEN you can install "build-essential" to get gcc to build things (but it'll probably eat every ounce of that hardware alive for a good while--make sure you have swap active).

4.  Good point.  I think John had a workaround to start single user mode that will appear in a future release.

As for inittab, we feel your pain but this is runit and not SystemV init and you will not be the only person to have these questions.  To get a rough handle on switching runlevels (and everything else), look here and on this page. 

< Maybe a condensed version belongs in some cli-visible README type thing for those that need to start scaffolding w/o X working???  Or maybe runit basics and whatever other stuff need to be added as pages in /usr/share/dsl/FAQ/index.html???  perhaps that FAQ becomes text and chucked in /skel ???  Just ideas...  >

Pragmatically, the RAM requirements for usage amount to what your browser needs.  DSL as you can see boots in considerably less than 512MB and, if you can tolerate limitations in browsing and stick the the lightweight browsers (netsurf/dillo/links) etc, one can live in 256MB running X.  For firefox, double that and more would be better IMO. 

What about the framebuffer driver?  Have you tried passing
xorg=fbdev
to the kernel at boot? 
Otherwise, don't forget DSL is downstream from AntiX so there's more history/knowledge there (antixforum.com) as well.  AntiX resources are a bit distributed, so again for benefit of others, some detail about live system boot parameters can be found at a tuxfamily url. 

< Maybe another set of info to be included in FAQ or txt README or ??? >

The xproto, xorg naming requires more investigation than can happen for me right now.  Those may be questions resolvable upstream (read: AntiX, MX, Debian) as you may view your DSL packages with something like:
sudo dpkg --get-selections | grep xorg

to see that there certainly is an xorg server, it just has a different expected name, etc.

[Yan]

Yes,  since the siliconmotion driver is missing I've run the installation selecting "text", expecting to boot the system in text mode. Instead, once it is installed it starts X automatically. That's not what I wish at first because it results in a broken system.

Starting in text mode is easy. In /boot/grub/grub.cfg, in the "menuentry" for Damn Small Linux 2024, add "3" at the end of the line that starts with "linux". That means to go to runlevel 3. You can also edit the line in Grub when booting. This should work for any Linux distribution.

Running ./configure in the driver directory it asks for packages that seem not to exist in DSL, at least with these names:
xorg-server, xproto, fontsproto.
They don't show in the "apt list" search.
How can I do?

Do you really have to compile from source? There's a package called xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion; try that.

By the way, do apt search, or apt search all, not apt list.

[x18]

Thank you for your long reply.

Meanwhile I have found those 3 packages and built the driver.

I have also installed the one you stated, after removing mine.

Either ways give me an error when launching 'sudo Xorg -configure' : open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory.

That happens to modesetting as well, after 'falling back to old modprobe method'.

Maybe are there further missing packages? Please help me, thanks.

UPDATE:

Meanwhile I've tried xorg=fbdev and xorg=vesa but unsuccessfully.

[grindstone]

We need more. What have you tried--exactly. How are you booting--exactly. xorg=siliconmotion? vesa? fbdev? nothing?
What versions of the existing driver and what version you built (1.7.9.10?)
As an old linux person, you know the drill. Read the boot logs carefully--what files are not found--anything kernel-related? Have you upgraded kernels--do the versions match in the Xorg log?

In fact, just post that stuff:

sudo inxi -Fxv6
sudo dmesg
Xorg.0.log
lsmod