What to do after the install... part 2.. so, your computer still boots...

A continuation of my journal on changes I've made after doing a frugal install of DSL 1.2.0

Once again I'd suggest you read through or search The Fourms to find answers to your problems. What I'm writing here is just my log. I've been known to be wrong.... often.

Some additional things I've modified to my Frugal DSL install.

6) I'd like to save some of these changes so they're still around next time I boot or my hard drive hiccups. So far I've added the following entries to /home/dsl/filetool.lst

home/dsl/.emelfm
home/dsl/.beaver/General
home/dsl/.xinitrc
home/dsl/.fluxbox

7) Start Firefox. The homepage on Firefox startup is www.dslos.com/start It would be nice if this page had links to DSL forums, documentation or even the DSL homepage, but it doesn't. A new user might think the links are about DSL since the Business Card Desktop logo is there but the links will not take you to any DSL specific info. Try this, type www.damnsmalllinux.org in the address box. Hit enter. Now click EDIT...PREFERENCES. You should be in the General area. In the Home Page section click the USE CURRENT PAGE button.

I also turn off the Bookmark toolbar to give me a little more viewing area. To do this click VIEW...TOOLBARS...BOOKMARK TOOLBAR.

Close Firefox. Now figure out where in your home directory (hint: it's similar to the name of a creature that stomps Tokyo) your change have been made. Add these files or directories to your backup list. filetool.lst

8) When DSL starts up your xdesktop and Dillo is fired up and displaying some documentation. Good stuff, Might be a little out of date but well worth the read. At least the first couple of times. Then it gets a little annoying. To stop Dillo from poping up at the start do this... Start emelfm. On the left hand side navigate to your home directory. If you haven't changed anything then you should be there already. Usually it's /home/dsl Now make sure the button with the label "H" is selected. This allows you to see Hidden files in the directory. Edit the file .xinitrc Somewhere towards the end should be a line like this: dillo /usr/share/doc/dsl/getting_started.html &>/dev/null &

Put a pound sign in front of it to comment it out. Now it looks like this: #dillo /usr/share/doc/dsl/getting_started.html &>/dev/null &

Save the file. Exit all your applications. Do a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. This shutdowns X. Then type xinit and X starts back up (with any luck...)

Checkpoint...
With all hard drives mounted and only a terminal running, here are some of the stats:

dsl@dsl120:/$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/ram0 2.9M 599.0k 2.3M 20% /
/dev/hda4 648.5M 48.8M 566.8M 8% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 116.2M 116.2M 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/ramdisk 56.5M 12.0k 56.4M 0% /ramdisk
/dev/hda2 1.9G 4.8M 1.8G 0% /mnt/hda2
/mnt/hda2/home/dsl 1.9G 4.8M 1.8G 0% /home/dsl
/mnt/hda2/opt 1.9G 4.8M 1.8G 0% /opt
/dev/hda3 687.1M 499.7M 152.6M 77% /mnt/hda3
/dev/hda1 752.8M 491.4M 261.4M 65% /mnt/hda1
/dev/hdd1 1.5G 232.4M 1.3G 15% /mnt/hdd1
/dev/hdc6 972.8M 703.7M 219.7M 76% /mnt/hdc6
/dev/hdc5 980.5M 170.3M 760.4M 18% /mnt/hdc5
/dev/hdc2 988.2M 121.7M 816.3M 13% /mnt/hdc2
/dev/hdc1 980.5M 800.5M 130.2M 86% /mnt/hdc1
/dev/hda4 648.5M 48.8M 566.8M 8% /mnt/hda4
dsl@dsl120:/$ free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 78164 76032 2132 0 7536
Swap: 128516 8 128508
Total: 206680 76040 130640
dsl@dsl120:/$

9) For some reason the sound card on this machine does not initialize during the normal boot. I'm not sure why not, I do hear the speakers pop during boot up but apps have no sound. No matter, I added this to /opt/bootlocal.sh
sudo modprobe sb

then save the file. Since it a bootlocal.sh is a script (the .sh gives it away). You'll need to change the permissions so that it's executable by everyone. In emelfm, left click on the file name to highlight it. Then right click and select Properties....Permissions. Make sure all the boxes under the Exec column are selected.

I reboot and the sound is working

10) After reading the forums I discovered that my grub menu.lst file may have the wrong parameter for mydsl. I want any .dsl files that I've downloaded to be reloaded each time I boot. I usually download the files to the /opt directory so I need to point the mydsl parm at that directory. This is the menu.lst entry now:

title DSL 1.2 Frugal
color magenta/blue black/magenta
kernel (hd0,3)/boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/hda4 dsl nomce nodma quiet frugal restore=hdc6 host=dsl120 home=hda2 mydsl=hda2/opt opt=hda2 fromhd=/dev/hda4
initrd (hd0,3)/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz
makeactive
boot

Just in case I haven't said this before.... I've used LILO on and off for several years. It's one of those things that once you get it working you never want to change it because it's a pain. One small mistake and your machine isn't bootable. I recently tried GRUB (used the DSL liveCD and downloaded the grub.dsl). It's great. Once you have it installed you can make all your boot changes by editing a text file. You don't have to rewrite the mbr again. I find it real handy for things like DSL where I'm experimenting with different boot parms.

That's all I'm going to break, eh, I mean update, today. Unless that "Do It Yourself Brain Surgery" kit comes in the mail tomorrow I may tackle installing Samba.

Good luck