Linux Question/Problem.

scojones · 28-01-2003 4:11pm #1

Hello all, here's the scenario. I have an old enough laptop that has no cdrom drive. It only has a floppy drive. I can connect the laptop to my other box(that has cdrom, ect...) via a serial cable. What i want to do is install Linux on this laptop. I don't want all the works like X and whatnot, just the basics, the gcc stuff, etc... The hard drive on the laptop is small - only two gigs. At the moment the laptop has win98 on it. What steps should i take in order to install Linux on it? Is there any way of installing from the cdrom on box B to the hdd on box A? Box A has no network card - not relevant for serial connection. I feel this is a silly problem with a simple solution but i just don't see it. One of those days. Please help! Cheers.

Typedef · 28-01-2003 4:22pm

I'd say the best thing to do is to install something like Debian from floppy, then look into apt-getting the rest of the distro through an external modem.

When I say 'best' I mean easiest.

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/users-guide/ch-instpdebian.en.html

Bod

scojones · 28-01-2003 4:26pm

Sorry Typedef, i forgot to say it doesn't have a modem either ;/

Typedef · 28-01-2003 4:33pm

No external modem?

In either case install from floppies.

Then you can make a parallel port network.

Here check out.

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue43/bennet.html

scojones · 28-01-2003 4:36pm

That's great Typedef. Now I can smile again. I owe you beer if you go to the boards beach party

scojones · 31-01-2003 10:15am

I'm writing this _before_ i look the problem up - just incase someone replies by the time i've checked it out. Anyway i've done what the howto said, comp with cd-rom is now the nfs server, ips asigned ect ect, I made a linux bootdisk for the laptop - but it won't boot. I kind of expected this It's an old ibm thinkpad. It gets far into the boot up. It checks what hdd's are there, then tries to mount it, i get an error like this one: VFS error: cannot mount fs. Is this a problem with thinkpads? Cheers.

Typedef · 31-01-2003 11:17am

With an inital boot disk you shouldn't be trying to mount 'any' partitions on a hard disk, because you haven't created them, formatted them or installed any software to them, so that would be illogical.

I'm thinking you should have a boot floppy and a root floppy, where all of the pertinent binaries for installation of Debian get loaded into ram.

Basically.

scojones · 31-01-2003 11:24am

I sent you a pm Typedef, basically i'm not installing debian it's slack8.0. I didn't create a root filesystem on a floppy so it was trying to mount the hdd on the laptop with nothing on it, just like you said (doh!). I need to create a bootdisk, a disk with the root filesystem on it and a disk with plip.o parport.o parport_pc.o and parport_probe.o, right?

Typedef · 31-01-2003 11:43am

Like I said to you in pm.

Re: linux

quote:

sjones wrote on 31-01-2003 11:21:
Right, i'm actually not installing debian, rather slackware 8.1 but i'm using that howto. I guess i didn't make the bootdisks correctly. I just did "dd if=vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0" but i didn't create any rootdisk or anything. I've just read the howto's and downloaded some disk images and i'll try when i get home. Any suggestions? Thanks again.

Righteo grasshopper.

In the slackware cd's root directory there is a dir that says bootdsks.144

In there you need to dd a bootdisk and root disk to two seperate disks.

The boot disk goes first and then the root disk when prompted.

There are instructions in the bootdsks.144 and rootdsks dir to tell you how to do that properly.

Typie

scojones · 03-02-2003 12:05pm

Right, i got the rootdisks, they came w/o init so i put that on there. Now it loads them properly, mounts the fs, but stops right after it says "freed up 64K memory". Nothing else happens. So i'm clueless. I contacted slackware - awaiting a reply. This is slackware8.1. Has anyone had similar problems?

Typedef · 03-02-2003 1:02pm

No init?

Very strange.

I'd say get the 8.0 boot and root disks from www.slackware.com under the link GetSlack.

ribbid

scojones · 04-02-2003 10:05am

OK i got the 8.0 boot+root(disks) and they worked. I booted into Slackware, got a bit excited. loaded parport.o parport_pc.o and plip.o. BUT (feck sake i'm wondering is this worth it by now) there was no /proc/parport directory and plip had no irq setting so ince there was no /proc/parport directory i couldn't assign it one. If there was i would have done "echo 7 > /proc/parport/0/irq". I've read through countless readme's and howto's and they all say that if the dir doesn't exist it should be created when i load the parport module. It's kernel 2.4.5 (out of date, yadda yadda will upgrade when i get **** moving - however its gona be a dev box so i don't care). Where do i go from here?

Typedef · 04-02-2003 11:45am

dmesg | grep plip *

says what?

Try
modprobe plip irq=whatever io=something.

scojones · 04-02-2003 11:52am

it says something along the lines of "plip0 loaded IRQ-less. This mode is very inefficient!" Oh modprobe can do that? i read the manual but didn't see that. Hmm. I am sorry about all these stupid questions but the lappy is at home so i can only ask a question here and report back the following day :mad: I'll try the modprobe thing later and i'll get back to you Typie.

Typedef · 04-02-2003 11:57am

yeah... try more /proc/interrupts

so you don't try using an irq that is in use.

scojones · 06-02-2003 9:43am

I got everything working. The comps talk to each other. I ran the setup and went to install. I gave it the mounted directory to read the packages from "/slackinstall/slackware" that dir contains the a, xap ect ect but it couldn't read them. it said they didn't exist. hmm.

Typedef · 06-02-2003 9:58am

Here is what I'd do.

change directory to the directory you have the root of the slack cdrom mounted on and then type

setup

There should be no ambiguity about installation paths then.

edit: oh and I'd mount the remote slack cd at /cdrom, the installer should say something like "cdrom already mounted at /cdrom" etc.

scojones · 06-02-2003 11:18am

"change directory to the directory you have the root of the slack cdrom mounted on and then type

setup"

Tried it. No joy :rolleyes:

Typedef · 07-02-2003 10:55am

The installer should ask you, if you want to try and install packages from the current directory.

does it do that?

scojones · 17-02-2003 10:53am

No it doesn't ask that

Typedef · 17-02-2003 11:57am

cd to the mounted directory.

Then type

pkgtool

that should ask you if you wish to install from the current directory.

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