Damn Small on Dell Windows XP Computer
Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: Damn Small on Dell Windows XP Computer
started by: Rapidweather
Posted by Rapidweather on Jan. 31 2004,21:26
I got a new Dell PC, with XP preloaded, and a LCD screen. This post concerns installing/running Damn Small Linux on it.
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Since I have the Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse, I have to press
the F-Lock key and F2 to get into Setup, to change the boot order to look to
the floppy > cdrom drive > hard drive for boot media.
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That way, I can use a boot floppy or just run off the DSL cdrom.
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The screen went blank after a short while, during the bootup, long before the
/knoppix folder could be discovered. I solved that with:
boot: knoppix vga=normal
Then, I use the Xvesa Xserver.
Next choice, USB mouse > No.
Next, Imps/2 mouse wheel > Yes
Then I picked 1024x768 for my 17 inch Dell Ultrasharp monitor.
Since I have a 128 MB graphics card, I could then pick 32 bpp.
Then, Xwindows starts, with the usual Dillo message, and I am off and
running.
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I had a 64 MB USB drive already with a filetool.lst and backup.tar.gz on it
from a laptop, with MozillaFirebird already downloaded and backed up on
this drive.
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I inserted the USB drive, mounted it with:
#mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
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Then I went in the menu to "restore", and did that. DSL used the USB
drive just fine.
I Enhanced, with desktop Icons, double clicked on MozillaFirebird, and that
booted right up, with a local web page that I had placed on the USB drive
when it was used with the laptop.
I was seemingly ready to begin web surfing, so I then:
#cd /etc
#wvdialconf wvdial.conf
Unfortunately, the winmodem supplied with the Dell could not be picked up
by wvdial.
I'll have to use an external hardware modem attached to the serial port to get connected.
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As an aside note here: If you restore from a computer that can use wvdial
to connect, you have a nice /etc/wvdial.conf file, that only has to have the
modem set in it. Some of my wvdial.conf files have /dev/ttyS1, others just have /dev/modem. When you run #wvdialconf wvdial.conf on the new computer,
your old file will just be modified to reflect the proper device, be it /dev/ttyS2 or whatever. Your ISP username, password, telephone number will remain in place.
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So you can immediately dial up after running wvdialconf with:
#wvdial
and you should get connected.
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Some issues with placing a /knoppix folder on a windows XP filesystem on a
Dell computer:
/etc/fstab shows (after booting DSL) the hard drive partitions to be:
/dev/hde2 (where windows XP resides)
and /dev/hde1 (some sort of Dell restore partition)
Notice that the hard drive names are not 'hda", but "hde".
So, when I placed a /knoppix folder in the Windows XP partition,
Damn Small Linux could not find it, so I had to boot off the CD, instead
of the hard drive. The advantage to placing a /knoppix folder (from the CD)
on the hard drive is that once you get running, applications load much quicker than off the CDROM itself.
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So, I could not do that, on this computer, without adding a small second slave hard drive, placing an ext2 file system on it with /sbin/mkfs /dev/hdb1, and putting my /knoppix folder there, where DSL could find it. (it will).
If, however, you boot off the CD, DSL will not look for the hard drive /knoppix folder, it'll just go with the CD! So you have to use a boot floppy.
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Here is a nice fluxbox menu file to use for those of you with USB memory sticks:
< http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/fluxbox_menu >
You will notice the "Dial" and "Hangup" menu items at the top of the menu.
We need these, and the item to mount the usb drive placed in the next version of Damn Small Linux, to make our work easier.
Here is another menu that is for Floppy Disk restore users:
< http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/fluxbox_menu_2 >
Some parts of these menus would be helpful if included in Damn Small Linux.
I know I'll buy a CD or two when they are!
