Linux woes

Eoin · 12-09-2002, 04:18 AM

Hi, suppose first I should let ye know I’m definitely a newbie to Linux so apologies if this is stupid.

Anyway basically I wanted to understand Linux a bit better so I decided to follow the Linux From Scratch Book. Version 4.0. I started with a blank harddrive, partitioned it into three (1 from swap) installed Vector Linux on one partition, and prepared to install LFS on the other.

No need to bore you with details, but all seemed to be going well till it came to LILO, then nothing LFS wouldn’t boot, or actually it may have booted however the screen stayed blank. No big deal though, probably something I’d messed on.

The real problem came with the fact that Vector seemed to boot grand, but wouldn’t start x. Ram VASM (Vector setup program) and it complained about missing directories/files. I was stumped so just reinstalled Vector, and managed to LILO to boot both Linux Versions this time.

Then I proceeded to install XFree86 on LFS, seemed to work. Then installed Fluxbox, it complained about not being able to find terminal-emulators, but eventually got it to work.

So great, for half an hour things were going quite well, but the menus in my LFS Fluxbox were pretty empty so I decided to boot into Vector to compare the menu files.

Didn’t do much, booted back into LFS, hmm, the color depth and resolution reverted back to the way they were when I first installed XFree86. Tried changing the /etc/XF86Config-4 file, no effect. Same for the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.

Booted back into Vector to copy its config file over. Hmm, xterm won’t run. Atrem was running so used that, copied the file. Reboot, hmm, sends TERM and KILL signals, says something about all processes being finished but doesn’t reboot. Computer won’t respond, press reset.

Boot into LFS, config file has no effect. Getting frustrated so decide to check Vector. Seems to be booting ok but then asks me to enter runlevel, try 3, nothing. Same for 5.

So theres my story, which in summation simply reads; while installing LFS I managed to screw up an install of Vector TWICE. Worse both times the install seemed to die as a result of rebooting as I don’t think I’d done anything too major just prior to its death.

Also my LFS install which seemed to work grand just stopped getting the color depth and resolution right after a reboot prior to which no changes were made. Is rebooting in Linux this risky

So if anyone is still reading, I’d like to ask some questions;

1) Which XF86Config is read, /etc/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or something else maybe?
2) Fluxbox_generate_menu complained that there were no terminal-emulators in my path. I got around this by specifying xterm with the –t option, but how would I define a terminal-emulator in my path. When I installed in Vector this error didn’t occur.
3) Any ideas why Vector died? Note both times the death wasn’t instant. I’d boot in, notice something was amiss, reboot, then things would be worse. One or two reboots later it’d be dead. Could this be a harddisk problem?

Thanks for reading,
Eoin.

adam_boz · 12-10-2002, 05:08 PM

1) The only thing that I can think of is that you are having permission problems with those files. Are you logged in as root? You can also put a XF68config file in the users home directory... try that out if nothing else works.

2) Try editing the menu file by hand. It's really not too difficult to see the syntax in the file ( ~/.fluxbox/menu). here's a little snippet from mine:

Code:

[begin] (Fluxbox-0.1.10)

[submenu] (Terminals)
        [exec] (xterm) {xterm -fg white -bg black}
[end]

[submenu] (Browsers)
        [exec] (mozilla) {mozilla}
[end]

that part'll give you an xterm mozilla on the menu.

3) I've never used vector, but this whole situation does sound really wierd.

sorry if I didn't help much, this is all I can think of.

good luck

Eoin · 12-11-2002, 07:47 AM

Yeah it is wierd, but most likely is all my fault. I'm sure I made some stupid mistakes installing LFS.

I know for a fact certain progs which should have been installed weren't in the various bin directories, find for example. Which could easily have been a sign of larger and bigger mistakes.

To avoid the hassle I simply reinstalled vector, wiped and then re-did LFS. Wasn't too bad actually, with some hefty copy & pasting I got the whole process done in about 3 hours

.

Will try xfree and fluxbox again tonight, fingers crossed...

iocain · 12-21-2002, 02:09 PM

The corruption back and forth you were seeing is pretty strange, all right. Some situations which might cause such a thing could include one of the distros mounting the other one's partitions improperly. Such as if you used Ext3 as your filesystem for LFS, but Vector mounted its partition(s) as Ext2. If your partition table was out of whack enough to have overlapping partitions, that would certainly produce problems as you boot back and forth, but most likely worse problems than you saw.

If you continue having trouble, I'd suggest installing just one distro for a while -- the one that seemed to work best for you -- and maybe experiment again with dual-booting after you've gotten more comfortable with some of the configuration options. Best of luck!