HD Install :: New to linux and need help with installing dsl

MacrossFX,

Try booting with:

lowram xsetup

or

dsl vga=xxx xsetup

where "xxx" is a framebuffer mode from the F3 menu.

Then choose the xfbdev driver when prompted.

xvesa might also work for lower resolutions like 800x600x16bit for example.

UPDATE

I got it up and running by doing the hd install first. I think my cdrom as too slow to run it as a livecd. Anyway I got it up and running but I have some problems and questions:

1. I can get into the main desktop window. The background however is a patterned grey/white and I can't seem to change it with the wallpaper selector. Is there a way to change it?

2. When I boot up dsl after entering my username and password, is there a way to just boot-up into a command line interface instead of right into X? Even though dsl is small, X still runs sluggish on this old machine and I'd rather just use a command line interface and boot into X when I really need it.

3. I'm not sure if this is hardware related but it seems when the cpu load is on full load, the system seems to just lockup. I understand this is an old cpu and maybe dsl won't be able to save it.

4. (This is related to 3) I may be able to get a hold of a pentium 2xx mhz system with 32mb of ram. Would that run dsl significantly better than my current pentium 120 mhz with 16mb ram?

1. Your chosen graphics mode is too low color depth for wallpaper setting.

2. Edit your bootloader config file and add the number

2

to your "append" statement. This will tell DSL to boot into runlevel 2 which is command line text interface

3. DMA is probably not enabled for your hard drive. Try opening a terminal window and type:

sudo su
hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

and see if your computer loading/disk access is better.

If so, add the "dma" word to your append statement, or add the

hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

to your /opt/bootlocal.sh file.

4. Yes. The new processor will help, but the extra 16MB of RAM will do wonders for your performance. Also, make sure that you create a swap partition or swap file on your hard drive. Finally, I recommend adding the minimal parameter to your append statement or better yet, add the parameters listed at the bottom of this wiki page:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Cheat_Codes

to reduce OS memory usage.

I tried the "normal" hd installation, but after lilo/grub choice is not possible to boot from hd (on hda1 W98, on hdb1 ext2, on hdb2 swap). Did I miss something? Thanks

I opened up an xterminal window but I can't seem to do anything in it. Anything i type doesn't work. It doesn't seem to be the same as the unix systems setup at my school where opening a terminal window will put me right into a directory whereas here when i open a terminal it says something along the lines of root@tty1. What am i supposed to do?

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