Greetings,

Finally had time yesterday to try installing Linux on my old Libretto 110CT, using the 'laughably easy install method' shown below from someone in the Libretto Mailing List....

Unfortunately, the old Libretto's can't boot from a CD drive. So this makes Linux installation much more difficult for a Linux newbie like me....

Right now I don't have another PC to put my hard drive into to install that way...

I got a USB cable for my EXP CDRW/DVD drive so I could install as shown below.

Have a Mandrake 9.1 CD.

The boot floppy booted, clicked on 'Install Mandrake'...

Then I get the next Welcome to Mandrake Linux 9.1 screen but has an error message in the window

"No CD-ROM device found"
-> click OK
-> Next window says:

"Please choose....

Which driver should I try to gain SCSI access....

Floppy.o
Isofs.o
Cdrom.o
Ide-cd.o
Scsi_mod.o
Sr_mod.o
Sd_mod.o
3w-xxxx.o
Advansys.o
aha1542.o
atp870u.o
Dtc.o
Initio.o
qla1280.o
sym53c416.o
Tmscsim.o
nsp32.o
aic7xxx.o
aic7xxx-old.o
pci2000.o
Qlogicisp.o
Sym53c8xx.o"

After you select, you get a new window that asks:

"Please fill in entries.....

Please enter the parameters to give to the kernel:

Options_________________________ "



So could someone please advise as how I should answer the above???

Or should I give up on this approach... ;-)

Thanks for any help!

Mark
Frustrated Libretterati...



on 9/7/04 9:38 PM, wrote:

> Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 22:41:06 -0600
> Subject: Re: [LIB] How to Install Linux on 110CT w/FD/CD?
>
> On Tuesday 07 September 2004 08:42 pm, Mark Srebnik wrote:
>
> Mandrake 9.2 was laughably easy for me to install on my 110ct.
>
> Ingredients:
>
> 1 x Libretto 110ct, 64mb Ram, HD
> 1 x Libretto Docking Station (With USB Port)
> 1 x Libretto PCMCIA Floppy
> 1 x USB CDRW
> 1 x Mandrake 9.2 USB Boot floppy
>
> Mandrake has a single floppy that will bootstrap a USB cdrom drive. After
> booting from the floppy, it recognizes a USB cdrom as a regular CDROM drive,
> and you keep feeding it CDs the same you would a normal installation. Much
> easier than installing Win2k on the same machine. (I had to resort to the 2.5
> IDE adaptor to get Windows installed, as I couldn't get dos drivers for any
> of my PCMCIA or USB drives working)

I'm afraid I have to disappoint you here, Mandrake doesn't always correctly recognize USB drives on Libretto's...
I tried it myself on my Libretto 100CT with a simple USB1.1 external harddisk and this just
produces a stream of letters on the screen or the error you described, either with Mandrake 8, 9 or 9.2. I didn't try 10.
Since I only have 32MB RAM on this thing my options were limited to NFS installation over
the network with a Xircom 10/100 + Modem 56 PCMCIA card, or by sticking the harddisk
in another laptop (such as my Thinkpad R31).
Now if you had a PCMCIA external CD-Rom drive, the story would be different.. because that works.

You can look up the thread I made some time ago, here.here to see my experiences..
it may or may not be useful to you.
To keep things short, I have Mandrake 9.0 running on my Libretto 100CT right now with Blackbox as my
primary window manager (very lightweight) and KDE for occasional play. (heavier desktop).
my only leftover struggles are the Yamaha soundcard, USB on the extended port replicator and getting
the screen on 800x480 resolution.. I have not been able to do this and haven't been able to find
help yet either. but i'm still actively looking as I want this to work eventually.

Perhaps you can borrow a laptop for an hour or two and do your install through it, or find one of
those cheap IDE adapter cables to hook the harddisk up to your desktop computer.. or, since you
have the 110CT with 64MB RAM.. you might want to borrow a PCMCIA network card and attempt
to install over HTTP. you'll need Apache on your desktop pc, and the contents of the Mandrake
CD's inside the root folder of Apache so your Libretto can find it there.

I've ran out of ideas for now but i'll be back.. it's nice to see another Libretto user

Thanks so much Xolo for your detailed and helpful reply!

Actually, my external CD drive is PC Card type. However, in order to try and install the way it was suggested, I bought a USB type cable for it! That was a waste of money I guess...

So maybe I'll try and install again with the PC Card cable on it...

I do have a PC Card type 10/100 network card, but not another PC....my other computer is a PowerMac desktop....

Will see what happens and report back...

Thanks,

Mark

if you do have the PCMCIA cable/card for the drive then you might have better luck with
that with the cdrom.img bootdisk, if it is recognized, installation should be a breeze..
and if your Mac has a webserver (I remember hearing that this came with the OS perhaps?),
you could always try to host the files on it and use the 10/100 network card in case the
cd-rom won't be recognized..
i'm going to try and fix my Libretto tonight so it will display X at 800x480... wish me luck

Thanks for the advice Xolo.

Going to try again soon....will report back after that...

Hope things go well for you!



Mark

Hi again,

OK, some progress made....

Got clarification from guy who gave advice shown in my first post...

Said I needed to make boot floppy from other image file on CD; 'hdcdrom_usb.img'....

Did that using 'rawwinen' in 'dosutils' directory...

Floppy booted Libretto and saw Mandrake Install window and then asked whether to install from CDROM or Hard Drive. Selected CDROM and it recognized CDROM and started install process!

The first few steps went OK, but seemed to have hit a snag now...for the past 10 minutes my floppy drive is working and the install window says "configuring PCMCIA cards". Will let it go a bit longer but I have a feeling installer is stuck....

Will report back again later....

Mark

libretto install (floppy + network)

got one yesterday. today 's running debian (sorry, no mandrake, but should work there similar).

how:
made a one floppy start disk with everything compiled in i'd need to get network and a shell (pcmcia-card + cardmgr, basic net, lilo, ftp, busybox - see the lfs-howto). made a small ext2 partition where i put the debian linux.bin (kernel), the root.bin (initrd) the rescue.bin and drivers.tgz (i keep this 50M partition as kind of rescue/install drive for future installs).

i installed mbr/lilo to boot the debian woody install-floppy and fetched the basic sarge stuff from a local nfs or ftp server. as the base system was running i connected to the nearest debian ftp server and downloaded the rest.

this 110ct really is a lovely thing. :-)

sl mritch.

Glad you're enjoying your Libretto and got Linux running mritch!

You're obviously way ahead of me in the Linux dept....

In the meantime, have tried hard drive install, but get error messages...


Also, tried hard drive install for VectorLinux, but get error messages...


Oh well....



Mark

maybe this will be a help for you:

there is a quite easy guide called "packet linux" - howto. google for it. it explains exact how to build your own little bootfloppy with a linux system on it. the thing with the libretto is that you can't bopt the second floppy which comes with most distributions as the "root" floppy. everything has to fit on one drive, but if the lil' system runs you're able to mount another or use your network card or cdrom drive.

read the lfs-howto also. it's far more indeep, but you know your system well if you got through.
static busybox is kind of all in one shell and will keep you from compiling to much :-) it's also very useable as rescue shell in case of a harddrive fault.

if you have specific questions don't hesitate...

good luck!
sl mritch.

Thanks for the suggestion mritch!

Will look for packet linux...and let you know if I have any questions....

Thanks again,

Mark

http://home.hccnet.nl/pr.nienhuis/MDLinux.html

just surfed the web and came across here. havn't looked at it closer.

sl mritch.

Thanks again for your help mritch!!

Small world after all...

I'm familiar with that website and the guy Philip as he's on the Libretto mailing list!

He's been trying to help me as I've posted on that list recently....

Thanks,

Mark

I have managed to overcome the same problem with Mandriva 2006. The answer is on linuxforums dot org, but I'm not allowed to post a link to it - will do so when I have made 5 posts!!

The article title on that site is "Mandriva 2006 Install from USB CD Drive"

OK here's the link:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/t53...-cd-drive.html

Thanks for your help, nickdrums...

Unfortunately, don't have my lil' Libby anymore...but this might help someone else....

Mark