I installed dsl on my laptop, a old hp omnibook 3000 with about 64MB RAM and a 4GB HDD. i can boot into dsl fine using the xvesa setting but the display is messed up. i want to try and boot into xfbdev to fix this, but i always get this to show up.

Loading /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/.us.kmap.gz
xauth: creating new authority file /home/dsl/.xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /home/dsl/.xauthority

modprobe: modeprobe: Can't locate module fb0
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

I am not sure how old your omnibook is. It sounds like it is at least a little bit newer than an old Compaq laptop that I tried to get DSL running on. I never was successful getting graphics to work on it. I do remember getting lots of error messages, perhaps one similar to the one you are getting. After doing a lot of Internet search and playing around I finally gave up. But I do seem to remember that if you wanted to use xbfdev, you had to pass the video mode at boot time. But I have forgotten details.

On a brighter note, when I tried to find out how old your laptop is, I ran across this link titled GNU/Linux on HP OmniBook Laptops. It is sponsored by HP! If you haven't already done so, you might see if that page can lead you anywhere.

Thanks i will look into that link.

EDIT: since time of original post i have sucessfuly gotten DSL to boot into xbfdev off the CD, however i get the above errors when i try and boot from the hard drive.

My guess is you aren't using the same boot time parameters. When booting from the CD, these would consist of the parameters in isolinux.cfg or syslinux.cfg (on the CD) plus any parameters you typed at the boot prompt. Did you do a "regular" install or a "frugal" install? Do you know what you are using for a bootloader (probably LILO or GRUB) when you boot from your hard drive?

OK.

I can successfully boot DSL from my hard drive. it requires the CD to be in and when i get to the splash screen i use the command "boot: dsl fromhd=/dev/hda1 xsetup". at the xsetup menu i select xbfdev, IMPS/2 mouse and US keyboard. DSL then loads the GUI successfully .

i attempted a hard drive install. i have 3 partitions hda1:linux boot, 600mb hda2:backup, 160mb hda3:linux swap, 3000somethingmb. i followed the instructions in the hard drive install and when i rebooted, the system could not find a file. i think it was "KNOPTIX". anyway, i rebooted with the cd and used the cheat code "dsl tohd=/dev/hda1" to copy all the files over to hda1. this fixed the missing file .

Now for the real problem. no cd in i get to the GRUB menu and boot from the default DSL selection. everything works fine until i get to xsetup. i follow the procedure as above and end up with the fatal error 104 .

i am a linux n00b so correct me if i am wrong but i think a have a furgal install because DSL runs mostly from the hard drive and uses the cd a little bit. what i want is a full hard drive install, no cd required.

any help is appreciated, thanks.

The file's name is KNOPPIX. (DSL traces its roots back to the KNOPPIX distro, and apparently they never changed the name of this file!) This file is nearly 50MB and contains the compressed filesystem that is used when you run DSL as a live CD or from a frugal installation. In other words, it is the bulk of DSL. The other components are the kernel, the initial ramdisk (commonly called initrd, but DSL calls the file something else which I don't remember at the moment), and the bootloader (syslinux or isolinux when booting from CD or floppy -- probably LILO or GRUB when booting from hard drive).

I have never done a frugal installation. Once, with DSL 1.0, I did a regular installation for somebody else. My understanding of a frugal installation is that it is almost the same thing as a live CD except that the files are on the hard drive instead of a CD. I.e. it is still running from the file KNOPPIX. A regular install does not use the file KNOPPIX. Rather it copies all the files (uncompressed) into a regualr file system on the disk. Neither a frugal install or a regular install should require a CD at all. At least that is how I understand it.

From the error that it couldn't find KNOPPIX, it sounds like you did a frugal install. (But I have no idea where that file went!) Booting from CD with the tohd= option copied that file to the hard drive.

When you get this error, does it leave you at a command line prompt where you can type in commands? If so, type

And write down what the results are. (Kind of low tech and error prone. If you know how to make the file persistent -- so it survives a reboot -- you can redirect the output to a file on your hard drive instead.) Then boot from the CD in the way that works, and do the same thing from the terminal emulator (I believe this is a desktop icon that look somewhat like a monitor) and see if they are the same as when you got the error.

Using the command you gave me, after i got the error and typed in the command it showed meOn the good boot when i typed in the command it gave mei tried to type the good code into the GRUB command line and got the unrecocnized command. as a said im a linux n00b, that includes GRUB

looks like i will spend another day trying to get this to work .

EDIT: I just got it to boot directly from the hard drive no CD required. At the GRUB loader use all i need now is to figure out how to save this as the default boot option

I think your question is where the heck is the configuration file. If so, the file you are looking for is called either grub.conf or menu.lst. I am going to guess (yeah, just a stab in the semi-dark) that it is in a directory called grub on /dev/hda1.

If you find the file and need help changing it, post the existing file here.

It sounds like you are almost home.

Thanks for all of your help so far. I have found the configuration file and know which line i need to edit. however the file is read only. how can i change this??

Usually only root can write to this file, although I believe it is common for everybody to be able to read it. For example, one of my config files:

If this is the situation, you should be able to edit it by putting sudo in front of your editor command. An alternative (not the only one) is to change the owner to dsl (if that is the user you are running as):

It would be a good idea to change it back afterwards:

In both cases, substitute the actual path and filename for path/filename. For example: /mnt/sda1/grub/menu.lst

i got it figured out thanks. now to get the sound to work.

Good luck! I've had an abysmal record on getting sound to work on my linux systems. It worked just fine from live CDs on serveral computers belonging to friends. But on my own old computers I am 0/3. I did n't get sound from Linux until a bought a computer preloaded with Linux.

You might check out that link I gave in post #2 again. See if it contains any help for sound.

Thanks to those who posted to the above thread.
I found it useful in resuscitating a
Toshiba 300CDT laptop.