Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 03:24:31PM +0200, deloptes wrote: Joey Hess wrote: Scarletdown wrote: initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-486 [Linux-initrd @ 0x10b3000, 0x76cdf9 bytes] After that, she's locked up tight, and all I can do is power off. This is obviously a problem with initrd. Set too large for such a low memory system perhaps? I doubt it, since your initrd is only 7 mb. This seems more likely to be a problem with your bootloader. Quite possibly grub is not configured to read the initrd from the correct disk device. It can be hard to get that right when preparing an disk image on another machine. Or possibly, given the age of the hardware, the initrd is not located near enough to the front of the drive for grub to be able to access it. (Which is why having a separate /boot partition first used to be a good idea.) I would take a live-cd or usb disk (there are images available). Avoid using gnome or kde - your system wont make it. A Live CD puts some files in a ramdisk, and thus wastes some more RAM. I mean to install from it ;-) ... cause it will use the kernel that it is booting with (AFAIK) If you are able to boot from the live cd or usb then you can use those kernels for your new system (or for a fallback to debug further) Did you try reinstalling grubinto your MBR or debugging the initrd? In your situation I would just put this old disk in my new pc and install using debootstrap. then configure the system and put the drive back in the target pc. it will take about 1h. regards good luck regards -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/hqubh0$u6...@dough.gmane.org
Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
Joey Hess wrote: Scarletdown wrote: initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-486 [Linux-initrd @ 0x10b3000, 0x76cdf9 bytes] After that, she's locked up tight, and all I can do is power off. This is obviously a problem with initrd. Set too large for such a low memory system perhaps? I doubt it, since your initrd is only 7 mb. This seems more likely to be a problem with your bootloader. Quite possibly grub is not configured to read the initrd from the correct disk device. It can be hard to get that right when preparing an disk image on another machine. Or possibly, given the age of the hardware, the initrd is not located near enough to the front of the drive for grub to be able to access it. (Which is why having a separate /boot partition first used to be a good idea.) I would take a live-cd or usb disk (there are images available). Avoid using gnome or kde - your system wont make it. I've had always problems with initrd when not installing from cd. But I'm good in debugging it. I.e. you should edit /etc/modules and put the disk relevant modules there and recreate the initrd image. This is happening when you install different kernel after basic install. Or if you install with debootstrap and swap the drives. You could actually easy debug it if you add the kernel option init=/bin/sh and then check what's wrong. I.e. wrong disk drives or not loaded or not available modules. regards -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/hqs72f$9e...@dough.gmane.org
Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 03:24:31PM +0200, deloptes wrote: Joey Hess wrote: Scarletdown wrote: initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-486 [Linux-initrd @ 0x10b3000, 0x76cdf9 bytes] After that, she's locked up tight, and all I can do is power off. This is obviously a problem with initrd. Set too large for such a low memory system perhaps? I doubt it, since your initrd is only 7 mb. This seems more likely to be a problem with your bootloader. Quite possibly grub is not configured to read the initrd from the correct disk device. It can be hard to get that right when preparing an disk image on another machine. Or possibly, given the age of the hardware, the initrd is not located near enough to the front of the drive for grub to be able to access it. (Which is why having a separate /boot partition first used to be a good idea.) I would take a live-cd or usb disk (there are images available). Avoid using gnome or kde - your system wont make it. A Live CD puts some files in a ramdisk, and thus wastes some more RAM. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100423182939.gx16...@pear.tzafrir.org.il
Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
This may, at first glance, appear to be an exercise into insanity, but it is a rather important little project to me. I have this old Toshiba Satellite laptop (P-120, 6GB had drive, and a whoppong 24MB RAM) that is currently running 98SE Lite. It runs adequately on Windows, but now I would like to make it dual boot with Debian. Specifically, I want to mostly use it as a thin client to connect to a more heavy duty Debian box so I can use apps like Firefox, OpenOffice, VLC, etc from anywhere within range of my wireless router. To prep the drive, I put it in one of my build boxes and fired up gparted (to make the ext3 and swap partitions) and then ran partimage to put a saved bare bones network capable base install on the new partition. The build box boots the bare bones build beautifully. However, the laptop hangs when I try to boot into Linux. Specifically, the last thing shown on the screen before nothing else happens is: initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-486 [Linux-initrd @ 0x10b3000, 0x76cdf9 bytes] After that, she's locked up tight, and all I can do is power off. This is obviously a problem with initrd. Set too large for such a low memory system perhaps? If so, what can be done to fix this? I know that there are distros specifically geared toward bare bones systems (like Vectorlinux for example), but really, as far as I can tell, this build is already stripped down to almost nothing (Midnight Commander, elinks, sudo, and samba). Vector looks appealing, but it is Slackware based, and I would really really really prefer to keep all my systems Debian oriented.
Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 6:30 PM, Scarletdown scarletd...@gmail.com wrote: ...but now I would like to make it dual boot with Debian. However, the laptop hangs when I try to boot into Linux. Specifically, the last thing shown on the screen before nothing else happens is: im interested to know why your choosing debian rather then damn small? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/l2jf8d5d4f31004211844y7d05d2f0xcf1584d060f33...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Scarletdown scarletd...@gmail.com wrote: Damn Small is fine for a live distro. However, I did not like having to jump through so many hoops to get it configured the way I wanted (even permanently changing the hostname was a big hassle). just wondering, best reason there is having everything on the same os. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/k2hf8d5d4f31004211849xb177b9f8q23107b4c0f8ee...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 06:30:58PM -0700, Scarletdown wrote: This may, at first glance, appear to be an exercise into insanity, but it is a rather important little project to me. I have this old Toshiba Satellite laptop (P-120, 6GB had drive, and a whoppong 24MB RAM) that is currently running 98SE Lite. It runs adequately on Windows, but now I would like to make it dual boot with Debian. [...] The build box boots the bare bones build beautifully. However, the laptop hangs when I try to boot into Linux. Specifically, the last thing shown on the screen before nothing else happens is: initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-486 [Linux-initrd @ 0x10b3000, 0x76cdf9 bytes] After that, she's locked up tight, and all I can do is power off. This is obviously a problem with initrd. Set too large for such a low memory system perhaps? If so, what can be done to fix this? Perhaps. You could certainly build a kernel that doesn't require the initrd. You'd probably benefit a lot from running a custom kernel anyway. .02 A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian on a Super Lean Laptop Part I - Making it Work
Scarletdown wrote: initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-486 [Linux-initrd @ 0x10b3000, 0x76cdf9 bytes] After that, she's locked up tight, and all I can do is power off. This is obviously a problem with initrd. Set too large for such a low memory system perhaps? I doubt it, since your initrd is only 7 mb. This seems more likely to be a problem with your bootloader. Quite possibly grub is not configured to read the initrd from the correct disk device. It can be hard to get that right when preparing an disk image on another machine. Or possibly, given the age of the hardware, the initrd is not located near enough to the front of the drive for grub to be able to access it. (Which is why having a separate /boot partition first used to be a good idea.) -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
