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Topic: Installed to HD, but can't save anything., Probably a n00bish question

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nogoodreason Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 6
Joined: April 2008

Posted: July 17 2008,19:09

Hi guys,

Apologies if this is a very n00bish question; I'm new to Linux and still finding my feet.

I've dug out an old HP from my attic, formatted the hard disk (20GB) and want to make DSL the sole operating system. I partitioned the disk into 2 partitions:

hda5
300MB
Logical

hda2
19.5GB
Boot
Primary

I then selected 'install to Hard Drive' (Debian install) and installed DSL to hda5. The install worked, but every time I boot up the computer I'm required to re-enter all my settings (resolution, keyboard language, etc) and any changes I make are not saved upon shutting down. If I tick the 'backup' box when shutting down or rebooting, a warning message comes up saying 'Request to save settings, but no backup device has been selected'.

I imagine there's an easy fix, but it's slightly beyond my current level of understanding. I would really appreciate it if someone could offer me some help in what to do.

lucky13

Group: Members
Posts: 1478
Joined: Feb. 2007

Posted: July 17 2008,21:52

What's on hda2? If DSL is the only OS you intend to install, why did you only set up 300MB for it? Why did you set it on a logical partition instead of primary? Why did you make the other non-DSL partition bootable if there's no OS on it? (Unrelated to this issue, why no swap?)

1. Boot it. When you can either get a console prompt or open a terminal, do this:

Code Sample

sudo fdisk -l

2. Paste the results of that back here so we can see your partitions.

You could do a frugal install and set up one swap partition, one 55MB partition for the image, and use all the rest for your /home and /opt. DSL is a lot easier to use like that because it's not Debian.

FWIW, at the present I have DSL installed as the sole OS on this particular hard drive (Debian-style). I have three primary partitions and three set up as logicals. DSL is installed on the bootable partition and I set up extra partitions for /home and other directories I wanted to be persistent and free of /. But that's a lot of work getting DSL back into Debian-shape. I recommend Debian if you want a Debian system; use DSL as a frugal install and you'll be a lot happier.

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FYI: you can have max four primary partitions but one of them, the fourth, can be used for logical or "extended" partitions. So if you want seven partitions you'd have hda1, hda2, hda3 as primary partitions and hda5, hda6, hda7, hda8 as extended (four isn't counted as a single partition but rather the sum of the extended partitions on it). If you're not going to use more than one or two partitions plus a swap, there's really not a good reason to set up logical partitions.

Edit: If you did a hard drive install, you don't need to do the backup. That's for frugal/USB/etc. installs. It would be worth your time to edit the command in .jwmrc (which contains the menu if you're using jwm; otherwise ~/.fluxbox/menu) so "shutdown" means "sudo shutdown -h now" and so on.

--------------
"It felt kind of like having a pitbull terrier on my rear end."
-- meo (copyright(c)2008, all rights reserved)

nogoodreason Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 6
Joined: April 2008

Posted: July 18 2008,08:29

(And here my ignorance of Linux HD partitions shows :;):

)

I couldn't find a way to create a 'swap' in cfdisk, and I only created a 300mb partition because I was following the installation guidelines to the word.

Could you please advise?

I'm guessing I should delete these partitions and create, say, just a 20GB primary boot partition and install DSL onto that? {Or do I need to reserve some space for a 'swap' partition and, if so, how much?}

Sorry to be a pain. I'm eager to learn, but currently quite clueless about a few things!

curaga

Group: Members
Posts: 2163
Joined: Feb. 2007

Posted: July 18 2008,08:32

You create a swap partition by creating a normal one, and then selecting "Type" and then selecting 82 (the list shows all partition types you can create).
edit: after creating you do need to format it with mkswap /dev/XXX

I'd say one big partition for DSL Hd install and a small one for swap. How much ram do you have?

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nogoodreason Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 6
Joined: April 2008

Posted: July 18 2008,08:45

Quote (curaga @ July 18 2008,08:32)

I'd say one big partition for DSL Hd install and a small one for swap. How much ram do you have?

Currently 128mb SDRAM (reckon it's worth opening it up and trying to add a little more?)

I intend to use this system almost exclusively for surfing the net, and don't really plan to store anything big on the hard drive, so I'd have no problem with making quite a large swap file if it would improve performance.

12 replies since July 17 2008,19:09

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