really got mad

spx2 · 12-24-2005, 10:24 AM

now i have a system at home here in focsani romania
i got with my family in these holidays i thought if i came
home i could use this system of mine.
its a 1200mhz amdduron
128mbram
integrated video card
3gb harddisk seagate i think
floppy disk drive
cdrom drive(now its in the dumpster
ill explain why)
display 14inch
keyboard.
a network card on it too.
ethernet...i always see that stuff when i try to boot.
now allot of time ago it had a windows 98 on it
i tried to and succesfully put linux with someone
else's cdrom because mine was working only after i booted
windows meaning it didnt want to boot it.
so i managed to put mandrake 10 on it and after that
i tried something wrong and i f***** it up
so after that i had no os on it.
tried relentlesly to put something on it
nothing wanted to f****** boot
no windoze,no linux,no freebsd no nothing
i tried about 14 times now switching all possible
combination of jumpers on harddrive and ide cables with
stuff there...all possible ide detection stuff in bios.
all that stuff
nothing f****** works
nothign
also tried damns small linux didnt even booted
and cdrom stalled and display of computer stared
at me while the cursor was clipping on the screen.
and i wanted to take my f***** hammer and hit it
as hard as i could and then take all that mangled stuff
to the dumpster(but i didnt thats why i cam here)
!!!!!
my problem is that i dont want to give up
i hang on with my teeth until i make it
well seems this time my computer broke my teeth off.
no luck
i lost allot of nights on this and i need help now.
now last night i tried to get tiny linux for small
antic relics recycled computers and put that on disks
numbered the disks 14 in total.
and tried tiny linux here at the net cafe and it worked
perfectly(managed to install tiny linux at net cafe
computer...also f***** its mbr up and got away
really fast before someone could see me).
i walked home verry happy thinking it will work home
too and ill get a working system home for the hollidays
so i can get some math programs done and some other
bash scripts i wanted to work on.
i got home after i endured 2km of f***** cold weather.
i booted from the first 2 disks as said in documentation
there and then when it came to partitioning harddisk
it gave some very weird errors as if it couldnt
partition my harddisk altough my harddisk from home as
i know works fine.
but when i installed at the net cafe tiny linux
it took some amount of time to partition.
but home it just got from the blue yellow interface to
console printed quickly some stuff about not finding
some paths and then got to the part where it starts to
ask for each of the 12 disks to install packages from
them.
but after i selected my floppy disk as a: it just gaves
me a prompter with a shell with prefix only a #
and then terminates and reboots.
now i tried all combinations for boot
ramdisk root=/dev/fd1
ramdisk root=/dev/hda1
ramdisk root=/dev/hda
ramdisk root=/dev/hda2
ramdisk root=/dev/hda3
ramdisk root=/dev/hda4
ramdisk root=/dev/hda5
ramdisk root=/dev/hda6
altough i only have to hda1 to hda 5.
also tried to boot from cdrom with
ramdisk root=/dev/hdd
also with
ramdisk root=/dev/cdrom
also tried
mount root=/dev/hda to hda5
also tried all stuff with mount too.
i pulled my hair off
i got the cdrom out of the minitower
i tried to unscrew the screws,some didnt wanted
to go out so i smashed the thing with my bare
hands(this at 3:00 am in the morning)
and i threw at and it hit the wall splattering
all over.
i took my broomstick put it all to the dumpster.
than smoked a cig,drank a beer and then
slept until 1:00PM.
dreamt about it also.
also i have to mention i tried all boot
sequences possible from linux.
also i have dealt with normal linux and windoze boxes.
i dont know any explanation
i would like advice

comprookie2000 · 12-24-2005, 11:55 AM

I have had motherboards that were bad and they will do alot of strange stuff.

J.W. · 12-24-2005, 02:41 PM

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

My advice: Take a break from the computer for a couple of days, then try using a Live CD such as Knoppix, which will let you use a full fledged Linux system without actually installing anything to the hard drive. Once you are more comfortable with Linux, installing it to your hard drive will probably seem easy. Good luck with it

spx2 · 12-25-2005, 06:06 PM

you dont understand its not about having it run from ram or harddisk.
from cd it dont wanna boot so i ripped up the cdrom drive into bits.
damn small linux on live cd is also knoppix
and it dont wanna even install to hdd from
damn floppies...so its worse

spx2 · 12-27-2005, 01:13 PM

progress on the problem
i managed to get some funky dvd-rom from a friend
partitioned hdd in two partitions
/dev/hdd1 3.1gb
/dev/hdd2 0.1gb
booted xp and installed it.
in hdd1 installed xp
in hdd2 installed damnsmalllinux
and also installed grub
when i booted i see something like
grub error
and it stops
i reinstalled windows xp again and damnsmalllinux now
not letting it to write grub stuff
now i have windows xp and damnsmalllinux but i can
only run windows xp as it starts after i start my computer.
i tried to boot damnsmalllinux by putting in my floppy disk
a boot disk i had near me wich was boot disk for tiny linux
and i wrote mount root=/dev/hdd2 and it booted but somewhere it
asks me for password for root and it says there are some files
missing
now i just want to make a boot diskette for damnsmalllinux
i have it on /dev/hdd2.
how do i do this ? on windows

saikee · 12-27-2005, 01:50 PM

I wouldn't be too harsh with a 3.1Gb for XP and 0.1Gb for DSL. The DSL 2.1 I have has a footprint close to 0.4Gb.

To get into you DSL, if it is operable, you can always boot up the DSL installation CD, make a partition to mount hdd2 and chane root into it so that you can do wantever you like "inside" the hdd2 DSL, including a creating a bootable floppy, assuming your DSL is complete. Normal commands after booting up DSL CD are

Code:

mkdir /mnt/hdd2
mount /dev/hhd2 /mnt/hdd2
chroot /mnt/hdd2
grub-install /dev/fd0 <----for creating a bootable floppy
grub-install /dev/hd0 <----if you want DSL's Grub into MBR

I think DSL would accept most root-privileged commands if "sudo" is added in front of each command.

spx2 · 12-28-2005, 08:10 AM

i dont have dvd-rom or cdrom now
i just have my floppy drive to boot from
so i am thinking about going somewhere where i can run
DSL and making that grub-install /dev/fd0
i tried that already with grub-install /dev/fd01440 or something like that
i saw that my floppy drive led was lit and it wrote something
on the diskette.
and then i booted and it didnt work in the sense that
it did not boot from my /dev/hdd2 so what should i have done?
i have a one-shot try as a computer with cdrom or dvdrom is
not very near me

saikee · 12-28-2005, 08:59 AM

If you have a Grub floppy that should solve 95% of your problem because it can boot every Dos, Windows, Linux, Solaris and BSD I installed.

Chapter 3.1 of Grub Manual refers. The required stage1 and stage2 are inside DSL but also are available in many Live CDs.

This thread documents the Grub instructions booting 100+ systems.

spx2 · 12-29-2005, 01:37 PM

ok the rabbit hole gets deeper
lets see where this story leads to...im learning
something from this trouble im getting into also so
im somewhat happy also.
ok
i got my tiny linux boot disquette and booted
with ramdisk root=/dev/hdd2 and as always
it booted,i saw colored text(wich is not specific
to tiny linux so it seems ive finally booted
damn small linux) problem is now i cant understand
why it always says that it cannot run some modules
and it cannot write some logs and configuration
files on my harddisk /dev/hdd2.
then i tried to mount /dev/hdd2 /mnt/hdd2 as someone
in this post said and got some message that that
kernel 2.2.6 does not support this
so wtf?!?!?!?
i knew that 2.2.6 is a relique,antiquity.
so i try to find out why am i running this kernel
altough the dsl version was pretty new(this year i
burnt the cd from wich the install to /dev/hdd2 was
made)and give it
uname -a
i find that i was running kernel 2.2.6 distro - unknown.
i didnt quite understand but probably it was running
the kernel from the boot disquette and not from /dev/hdd2
so i wanted to find the kernel of dsl
and i gave it
find | grep kernel
and i find something like
./lib/modules/kernel/2.4.31 so obviously i had some
really old version kernel running.
so now i try fsck /dev/hdd2 and it said that
my /dev/hdd2 had no fs recognizable by my
fsck so it wanted to do some convertions
also i modified a line in lilo.conf on the
boot diskette that said ramdisk = something /dev/fd01440
to ramdisk = something /dev/hdd2
and i let it(ext3 was not compatible with 2.2.6 kernel version)
and it did something there...
now i rebooted
i put the diskette in and booted again from it with
same command i used above
and then it wrote some stuff on harddisk
it also let me this time to run X wow!!!!
because it could write some configuration stuff on harddrive
and yes now i had X.
i could write on my harddrive this was awesome!!!
and i put my ps2 mouse because ofcourse the usb one
didnt want to work on 2.2.6 kernel
so i got my distro working <100% and now trying to make it
work 100% was going to bring me right were i started off
meaning 0% but let me tell you how that was possible...
i thought is there any posibility of making dsl run
instead of wxp ?
and there was cfdisk
so i did cfdisk /dev/hdd
i saw there were 2 partitions
hdd1
and hdd2
hdd1 had the boot flag on
i put the boot flag on for hdd2 and disabled it for hdd2
(i saw it was possible that both of them had the boot
flag on at the same time,wonder what the heck would
have happened if i would have let that that way and
tried to boot)
and i booted and i got no windows xp
no damnsmalllinux
just some weird annoying expected message
Error booting from harddrive or something like that.
very nice stuff...
now im let off where i started...
ill dig it up until i get a solution
i hope i find it with your help also

saikee · 12-29-2005, 05:17 PM

I am afraid you have to go back to your disquette again

If your DSL has the 2.4.31 kernel then it is recent and you should have Grub 0.91 there. I checked mine and can confirmed both the DSL 2.0 and 2.1 rc2 have 2.4.31 kernel. The latter is the latest.

Linux doesn't use the boot flag. That was your 1st mistake to play around with it.

XP needs the boot flag switched on and you shouldn't switch it off. That was your 2nd mistake.

Since you never had a workable boot loader in the MBR you should ask DSL to replicate it but you didn't and lost it now. That was your 3rd mistake.

I trust you can take care the 1st and 2nd mistakes. For the third you should while inside DSL replicate Grub into MBR by

Code:

grub-install /dev/hda

Since you have difficulty of booting XP and DSl why don't you use DSL to make a Grub floppy as follow (all been described in Post #8
While you are in DSL, change directory /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc, just pop in a floppy and type

Code:

dd if=stage1 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1
dd if=stage2 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 seek=1

This floppy boots up to a Grub prompt
My guess is that you can type

Code:

root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot

to boot your XP. For you DSL the instruction is either

Code:

root (hd0,1)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

or

Code:

root (hd0,1]
kernel /boot/linux24 ro root=/dev/hdd2 
boot

If you manage to get DSL up just edit it /boot/grub/menu.lst with the above manual instruction for boooting XP and you should find both systems will be booted by XP, after you replicate Grub into the MBR.

There is no rabbit hole after all, so go back to get drunk in the party!

Happy new year.