I am attempting to familiarise myself with Linux by using a Live CD version of Damn Small Linux on my Tecra 8000 laptop.

The system appears to boot OK, goes through the blue and green print until "Running dsl-4.4.10" then 5 more lines of text stopping at :

"xauth: creating new authority file/home/dsl/ .Xauthority" (TWICE)

...then a flashing cursor; no GUI and no response to typical Unix commands.

No screen grabs possible I am afraid.

I may have a corrupt CD image but it seems to work well as far as it goes.

Any ideas? I have already searched this and other forums.

I've never used D.S.L. but check and see if you have a file in /etc/X11 called "xorg.conf" and post it. If you don't, making one may solve your problem.

Linux can use a number of different window managers and/or "desktop environments" but they all use X as the base. Even if the other software is screwed up, you should still be able to get a blank (actually, it's a black and white mod, which is tiny little checkered) screen with a cursor on it somewhere that hopefully moves around with the mouse.

That's the tabula rasa of GUI.

ps. If X hangs at start like this you can probably quit out of it with ctrl-c, or switch to another virtual console with alt-ctrl F1-6
pps. If you come back, try using "Damn Small Linux" in your title instead of DSL, which I think you can install that way too

try puppy limux one of the ones that will work on your machine is 2.16 and many people are still keeping it up dated the new one is 4.12 but it is to big for your laptop it may work on it but 2.16 is for yours. and fast. http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads if you can get 412 to run on your laptop that opens the door to everything. the 2.4 kernel is a little bit limited for today's newer hardware. not saying you cant make it work. this is a list of all down loads. http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...ns/puppylinux/
it should also find your modem to on that model. I ran 2.01 for a long time now I run 4.12 on my toshiba. but it has 128 mb ram. when it had 32 mb ram I used 2.01

Is this your notebook?
Toshiba Tecra 8000 - PII 333 MHz - 13.3" TFT - 64MB RAM

I’m able to boot DSL on my wife’s Gateway PII 233 MHz tower. It does have 160MB so that may make a difference. I don’t know how much RAM DSL needs, 64MB might not be enough. Are you using the option to load the entire OS into memory? IIRC you must have a minimum 128MB for that to work.

If you can confirm that you have enough RAM to live boot DSL then I suggest you download / burn another CD or try another brand of media or try another burner or other burning software if problems persist. I’ve had good success with DeepBurner (free Windows burning software). You could also try another small distro like SliTaz. I understand it will load / run in 16MB RAM. Good Luck.

Thanks for all the inputs - I will get back to you after I have worked through them.

It is the Tecra 8000 with 64Mb RAM - I am trying to find a good use for such a limited machine!

thanks again

I never was able to get dsl to boot my toshiba 2105cds. It was a driver issue it would start then die. so I used puppy 2.16 puppy 2.01 worked great with 32 mb ram.

You could try booting with "dsl lowram" or "dsl xsetup"
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Cheat_Codes

I tried Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux on another laptop my wife uses, a Tecra 8200 (with 256 Mb RAM).

DSL ceased booting after a few lines - less successful than the T 8000.
Puppy Linux reached the video card stage then hung on Xvesa.

To determine if it is a laptop shortcoming I downloaded a much larger Live CD wersion of Zenwalk (5.2). It booted very well, came up with a GUI and even recognized the onboard wireless card, probably because it is a much more complex and sophisticated distro.

I aim to use Zenwalk to familiarise myself with Linux - then reattempt another DSL or Puppy installation on the 64MB RAM Tecra 8000,which is otherwise redundant. I suspect my DSL download was corrupted so I will get a new one.

Thanks for all your inputs, I will be back in the forum once I have a better grip on Linux

I installed DSL on an old CTX - The CD is broken, and I could not get DOS to recognize the USB port - however you may be able to use the work arounds that I employed.

First I had to get DSL on the hard drive - this was started on a window XP Box - start by downloading FreeDownloadManager and use it ti download MagicIso, BG Rescuse (a 2 Floppy Linux Distro) and the DSL ISO image - I downloaded the current ISO.. On the windows box I used MagicIso to extract the files from the DSL ISO image, and copied them to a usb stick.

I created a boot disk using winrawwrite so that I counld boot the laptop with BG Rescuse - than I copied the DSL files to the hard drive - in linux I created the directory, than copies the files from the USB Stick - Place the DSL files in a directory \dsl and place the knoppix file in \KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX - the caps and location of the Knoppix file are both important.

Place loadlin in the DSL Directory

The green screen will disappear if DSL is loaded with the "vga=771" is added to the command line - see the DSL wiki link below - the "771" will have to be taylored to your machine.

Boot to the dos prompt - use a WIN 95 98 or ME - even freedos will work

CD to the DSL directory and type "loadlin linux24 initrd=minirt24 vga=771"

and watch the magic

the links are below

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
http://www.magiciso.com/
http://www.filewatcher.com/m/loadlin.exe.32225.0.0.html - note download from an english speaking site
http://www.giannone.eu/rescue/current/#Downloads - note download both floppies and rawwrite
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Vga%3Dxxx

Is there any reason not to install more RAM? Surely any OS would run better on more than 64MB of RAM.