Yahoo! Now you will learn the true power of the Live CD distributions (Knoppix was originally created as a fancy, fully-functional system rescue disc).
By the way, if you want to give this up and just install Knoppix, you can do that, too
.
But OK, here's what we want to do... We want to start from the beginning of all this to make sure we know what we're doing-- we've wandered far afield in our travels
.
OK, the original problem was that you could not boot into your newly installed FC1 system, because the Firstboot Wizard, responsible for final configuration options, would not run.
There are two proposed solutions to this:
1) get the boot process to skip the Firstboot Wizard and just go on;
2) Try to correct the error so that the Firstboot Wizard will run properly.
I'm aiming for #2, as I strongly suspect that the Firstboot Wizard may finalize some important settings that the system should not be run without setting.
So let's try to get it working.
You were previously advised to edit the XFree86 configuration file, and that's a good place to start, as the most likely reason that the Firstboot Wizard is not able to run is that it is not able to be displayed (because your X settings are not working; supported by the fact that you couldn't do a graphical install in the first place).
So we need to see the contents of two files:
1) your bootloader configuration file (either
grub.conf or
menu.lst, both found in /boot/grub/); and
2) the XFree86 config file (found in
/etc/ or
/etc/X11/; named
XF86Config or
XF86Config-4).
For the following two steps you will need root access, but since the first one takes place in a file manager, you can use one of the minor advantages of the KDE desktop environment. Look in your
Kicker (that's the proper name of the "K-menu", analagous to the Start Menu in Windows, on the end of your panel, where there's a "K" icon), and look in System Tools for "File Manager (Super User)". When you select this entry, you may be given a password dialog; there is no root password for Knoppix, so just leave it blank and hit OK. This should get you to the root access version of Konqueror, KDE's file manager and web browser (don't browse the web while root, please!). Now being a Live CD and not installed to the HDD, Knoppix (like all other Live CDs) does some legerdemain to make the filesystem look like it's on your HDD, but we don't care about that. What we want is to see the location of the mount point for your HDD partitions, and create one if necessary (that's why we need root access; if we just wanted to look, we could do that as a user, but you might as well learn the lay of the land now, and get a little practice in with the tools you will have available to you under Linux).
You should be in root's home directory, which is called
/root/. The idea behind this is that if there was a problem with the /home section of the filetree, and root had to log in to fix it, it wouldn't do much good if root's home directory was in /home with the other borked files, as then root couldn't log in either (since all your personal config files are in your home directory).
So go up a level to the Knoppix / (filetree root). Then go down to /mnt/. Are there folders there representing the various HDD partitions (there should be)? If so, you're done here; just make a note of the names of the folders. If not, we'd have to create one, which is probably a big pain on a Live CD, but hopefully could be done (if necessary, which it probably is not) via the normal means of choosing File=>New=>Directory from the menu. If this seems to be necessary, and seems to be possible, name the directory something like FC1. Leave the FM (file manager) open; we'll be needing it later.
Now open a console (Konsole, since it's KDE) and type
su and hit Enter. Normally you would need root's password, but this has not been set for Knoppix, so no worries there.
Your prompt will change from a "$", indicating user access, to a "#", indicating root access, and all commands typed into this terminal will be performed as if root had requested them (this is why you never need to log in as root under Linux, unless the system won't boot, or your user account is borked). Requests performed from the desktop, the panel or any other console/Konsole/terminal will still be performed with user access.
So
su to root and type
mount /mnt/hdb3 (or whatever the name of the mount point is). If that doesn't work, try
mount -t ext3 (I assume the filesystem is ext3, if not use the appropriate one, such as
ext2 or
reiserfs)
/dev/hdb3 /mnt/hdb3.
This should mount your half-finished FC partition. We also want to mount your /boot partition, if that was created as a separate partition from the main filetree, but first we have to find out if that was done or not.
So back to the file manager that you left open, and head over to the mount point you just mounted hdb3 to. See if there's a /boot directory, and if so, are there any files in it. If so, then go to the /grub directory, find
menu.lst or
grub.conf (whichever exists), select it and right-click, then choose Open With.... and choose a text editor (I like Kate, but you can use Kedit if you want; KWrite is a bit too much for this job). The file will open in a text editor.
If there are no folders or files in /boot, we'll have to mount that separately, but atm we don't know what partition it's on. Best guess is obviously /dev/hdb2, as that's the only possible choice (/boot is not on any partition formatted as Linux Swap, and hdb2 is the only other Linux fs available).
So mount /dev/hdb2 the same way you mounted /dev/hdb3, and follow the steps above to open up the grub config file in a text editor.
Now browse to the /etc folder in /mnt/hdb3 (or whatever the mount point is for hdb3) and look for either
XF86Config, or
XF86Config-4 in /etc/ itself or look for one of these same two files in /etc/X11/.
When you find one, right-click it, and open it in a text editor the same way you did before.
Select the text of each of the open files and post them here using Mozilla or the user-access Konqueror Web Browser, and then we'll go further (or youngstorm will be back and will have instructions for how to disable this firstboot thing
).
