Newbie needs Slax CD Bootup Help
 

newbie here trying to get Windows PC (XP Pro) to boot linux from the CD distro of Slax.

Works fine on one computer... hangs on another.

Bootup process starts and Slax begins displaying the bootup messages...
Then hangs after this message is displayed...

Setup Directory for Changes

I restart the boot process and tell Slax to run in debug mode

Slax tells me...

can't access tty
job control turned off

What does this mean? Is this the problem? How fix?

There is a line in the bootup config tile in Slax...

'changes=slaxsave.dat'

I think Slax is attempting to setup a file to save some config info in... but Slax doesn't normally use the Hard Disk and therefore must save in RAM.

I've been told that this line of code in the config file 'may' be the problem but they didn't know how to fix it.

They could be right... they could be wrong... I need help as I really need for this PC to boot up from the Slax CD.

Can anyone swap a few messages with me till I get it going?

I'll check and follow-up on post in the morning when I get back to the office.

Thanks for _any_ help.

This is a just mismatch of the video driver by Slax. It is a frequent error in Linux because of the generic drivers being used. Sometimes it can also be due to the monitor frequencies or a fancy keyboard/mouse. Basically Slax fails to get the X Windows up using its drivers to match the detected hardware.

The standard operation of a Live CD like Slax is to boot up the PC and use the "ram memory" to hold the Linux filing system in transit. The hard disk is never touched unless insisted on by the user, like writing and transferring data in the "mounted" partitions which Slax will mount all of them automatically, include Windows NTFS partitions which are mounted with ntfs-3g suitable for writing on them.

The cure of a mismatch video driver depends on how far Linux has got. If you press ctrl+alt+backspace and get the BASH shell terminal then you can fix it by running
You need to know the video card though where it is a "nv", "radeon", "ati" or "vesa" etc. Most video cards will run satisafctorily with "vesa", which is the common standard Slax uses by default, but occsionally you can hit problems.