HD Install :: multiple frugal install - booting to the wrong one

First, let me describe my setup.

AMD K6-2 450MHz, 160M RAM. Its pretty old, but I mainly use it to ssh to linux servers in the lab I work in and run remote programs (tunneling X). Kind of like a thin client type thing.

hda1 - Windows install
hda5 - big (comparatively) bloated linux install
hda6 - linux swap (512M)
hda7 - DSL 2.4
hda8 - DSL 3.0 RC2 (I see that 3.0.1 is out - will have to play with this tomorrow)
hda9 - ext2 partition for MyDSL, opt, and backup

I got to this point is a round about way. I had a dual boot with Windows and linux. It was a common distro with KDE and all the bells and whistles and my poor old computer was quite slow running it. I was impressed with the DSL live CD when I tried it, and decided to do a frugal install. Since it took so little room, I figured I would leave my old linux install intact in case I needed it for some reason. I resized my linux install partition and made room for a few small partitions (hda7-9). I did a frugal install on hda7 using DSL 2.4. Things went well and I got pretty much what I wanted working (ssh server, static IP, new hostname, etc., MyDSL, opt, and backup on hda9). I was hoping to install DSL 3.0RC2 on hda8 (I have just seen that 3.0.1 is actually out now, but I figured I would explain my problem anyway). I did the frugal install of 3.0RC2 on hda8. I was hoping to be able to test the RC2 while still using the same restore and MyDSL as the DSL 2.4 install (hda7). My problem was that I cannot get it to boot the hda8 install. The grub install clearly points to hda8, but somewhere during the bootup it decides to use hda7 (2.4) anyway. I figured that maybe it had something to do with my backups on hda9, so I moved all the files into some folders hoping that it would then just do a standard boot. I don't know if it still found the backup or what (I didn't have grub running any restore=hda9 options, and the backup was in a folder, not in the root of the partition). I still boot up the hda7 install even after choosing a grub boot menu option pointed at hda8. Any ideas on what's up here? Is there a problem trying to run two different frugal installs? This may not be too urgent since 3.0.1 is out, but it would be nice to be able to test out new versions without loosing the current install.

Aside from that long questions, I have a couple of other quick ones.

1) can I change the default login name to something other than dsl? Since I am spending most of my time ssh'ing to servers, it would be nice to be able to use my normal login.

2) I can create new users, but they seem to be a little differnt than the default dsl user. As dsl, I can ssh to a server and run x programs. If I try it as a different user, I can ssh just fine but can seem to tunnel X.

3) if I use the dsl boot option "secure", it says I will be prompted for root and user passwords. Would this then mean that after the first login it would ask for password before logging in? I would rather have to have a password to login, and possibly even be able to have multiple user accounts (and not just automatically logging into one).

Thanks everyone for a great little distro!

Kawayanan

There should be no problem using multiple frugal installs...I have 3 installed on the same partition at the moment. The backup has nothing to do with which system is booted...it is read only after the kernel has loaded and the filesystem is mounted. My only guess is that you have something wrong in menu.lst

1) The only way I can think to do this without making a mess is to make sure that the only thing that changes is the user name. Unless you don't mind breaking a lot of DSL's features, you should keep the uid 1001, the gid 50, the home directory /home/dsl, and make sure your user can sudo. Even doing this may cause troubles in, for example, mydsl. User dsl is a fundamental part of DSL's unique features, so i wouldn't recommend changing your default user unless you have no plans to do a lot of DSL-specific tasks.
2) you may need to start the x session as the other user. I don't know much about this, so that's all I'm going to suggest.
3) Secure will prompt for the creation of both root and dsl passwords, but prompting to enter passwords after this depends on the context. In a typical setup the sudo command does not require a password, and user dsl is logged in automatically by means of user root suing to dsl rather than being an interactive processes.
I've changed my frugal system to behave in the "traditional" way, prompting for a user name and password for login, and providing virtual terminals in order to run multiple simultaneous sessions. You can see the process I used here:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=7936

Quote (mikshaw @ June 22 2006,22:42)

I am pretty sure that there isn't a problem in the menu.lst. I actually left it the default menu.lst after doing the second frugal install (hda8, install was done from live CD). During boot, I can check the boot options and it is clearly pointed at hda8 but boots off of hda7. I still have no idea what is going on, but I think I will clear everything and install 3.0.1 and see what happens.

Quote (mikshaw @ June 22 2006,22:42)

1) The only way I can think to do this without making a mess is to make sure that the only thing that changes is the user name. Unless you don't mind breaking a lot of DSL's features, you should keep the uid 1001, the gid 50, the home directory /home/dsl, and make sure your user can sudo. Even doing this may cause troubles in, for example, mydsl. User dsl is a fundamental part of DSL's unique features, so i wouldn't recommend changing your default user unless you have no plans to do a lot of DSL-specific tasks.

Thanks for the info. It sounds like I should just leave the dsl account alone :P

Quote (mikshaw @ June 22 2006,22:42)

2) you may need to start the x session as the other user. I don't know much about this, so that's all I'm going to suggest.
3) Secure will prompt for the creation of both root and dsl passwords, but prompting to enter passwords after this depends on the context. In a typical setup the sudo command does not require a password, and user dsl is logged in automatically by means of user root suing to dsl rather than being an interactive processes.
I've changed my frugal system to behave in the "traditional" way, prompting for a user name and password for login, and providing virtual terminals in order to run multiple simultaneous sessions. You can see the process I used here:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=7936

Thanks, this looks like it might be something I want to try. I am looking into the post you linked to. Thanks for the reply.

Kawayanan

You may need to specify the location of your DSL frugal KNOPPIX file in the kernel's append line by using the "fromhd" cheatcode.

In other words, it shoud look like this:

dsl mydsl=hda8 restore=hda8 fromhd=/dev/hda8

for your "hda8" installation in your grub menu.

By default, DSL will automatically search for a /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file located on any data partition.

It probably searches your hda partitions in sequential order until it finds one at /dev/hda7 so you will need to explicitly specify the location for your /dev/hda8 frugal installation.

Quote (cbagger01 @ June 25 2006,22:07)

Ok, that makes sense. I know that there was something pointing to the correct partition in grub, but I don't know if "fromhd" was used. I'll give the fromhd cheat code a try when I get to work. Thanks for your help.

Kawayanan

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