HD Install :: Can't get it to boot



hi
i did  a cd install on  an old computer and it worked brilliantly - love it.
But i  am now doing  a floppy and network hardrive install and when it comes to starting  from the Dsl boot disk it fails and i get:
INIT: No inittab file found
INIT: Entering runlevel 2
INIT: no more processes left in  this level.
_

The install stuff is on  a harddrive so it should run from it, i don't particularly want to start dsl from there - i would prefer to just install it properly to a harddrive if that were possible.

i  am a noobie
thanks

It is now running  from harddrive disk image.
i re-partitioned the hardrive so that the image ended up on hda1 which i  read somewhere was important. But still had the same inittab problem.
then tried, with frugal boot disk, booting with dsl mem=16M as this is a 486 laptop and it seems to have worked!
i  have a blank desktop with  an X that moves slowly.
now i just have to work out how to start a terminal and try  and get  a HD install.

Stared at the screen for  a bit and moved the mouse about  a bit  but  eventually had to turn off the power.

restarted using dsl 2 mem=16M which got me to  a command prompt but with  an unhappy harddrive ( because i had just turned off the power)

Ran e2fsck -n /dev/hda1 to see if it needed fixing, it didn't but had to fix the other partitions with -p.

About to try hd install

FYI, if you want a leaner X-Windows system, try booting with:

dsl mem=16M noicons nousb noagp

And see if you can run some applications from the "Right-Click" main menu like dillo.

Also, setting up a DOS swapfile or a Linux swap partition should help things out quite a bit, even in text mode.

thanks you.
wiped everything  and started again, booting with
dsl mem=16M noicons nousb noagp
and got a desktop. It was very slow but i was able to switch desktop styles to minimal which was much faster - the mouse almost kept up.  tired to start a few programs beginning  with mozilla which was probably  a bit rash, nothing  really worked after that not even getting  to  a terminal so i had to pull the plug in  the end.

Restarted anddid a harddrive install  which failed to boot.

wiped everything  and started again, booting with
dsl 2 mem=16M noicons nousb noagp noscsi
(but can i do nocd too or would it be nocdrom?)
to try the harddrive install from comand line.

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