DSL Tips and Tricks :: Notes on Frugal Install with Grub and working myDS

Here are my notes from my (finally) successful frugal install with grub bootloader and working (ie- persistent) myDSL apps on a single drive 166 Mhz Dell with 32 M RAM. Might be of interest to other noobs. Apologies to clivesay, some is a repeat of your document. I've included it all for clarity.

-Download boot floppy image and CD .iso. Burn these as described elsewhere. You may not need the floppy, I did.

-boot onto floppy/CD and enter
>dsl 2
at prompt to boot into text mode.

-run cfdisk and prepare partitions. I used:
- /dev/hda1 - 75M for image, set as bootable
- /dev/hda2 - 150M for swap (set type to 82!)
- /dev/hda3 - rest of drive for /home, mydsl, and backup/restore.

-write partitions and exit cfdisk.

-Prepare partitions:

>mke2fs /dev/hda1
>mke2fs /dev/hda3
>mkswap /dev/hda2
>swapon /dev/hda2

-reboot with floppy/CD into level 5 (just let it boot)

-right-click on desktop and select APPS>TOOLS>FRUGAL INSTALL>FRUGAL GRUB INSTALL
at image partition, enter >hda1 (or the appropriate)
at install from, enter> l (that's L for Live CD)
at format question, enter >y

-when install completes, remove floppy/CD and reboot. Select one of the grub menu items.

- Hopefully, now we're successfully running off our HD install.

-Now, we'll edit the grub menu. Open a terminal window:
>sudo su
>mount /mnt/hda1
>nano /mnt/hda1/boot/grub/menu.lst
Comment out the undesired three line sets. I left only the set labeled "myDSL w/ mydsl, restore, persistency, hostname, & passwords"

I edited the middle line here as follows (your partitions may be different than mine):
>make sure that opt=hda3 home=hda3 mydsl=hda3
>now add dsl in front of mydsl=hda3
the entire line looks like this:

kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda1 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm noscsi frugal dma restore=hda3 home=hda3 opt=hda3 host=DSL1 dsl mydsl=hda3

Note that the extensions don't seem to re-install without the dsl in front of mydsl=hda3.

-save, exit and reboot.

-Hopefully, we successfully rebooted.

-Now we'll create the folder for optional myDSL extensions. These will NOT automatically install, but will be options on the myDSL (right-click) menu.
Open a terminal window.
>sudo /mount/hda3
>sudo mkdir /mnt/hda3/optional
>sudo chown dsl /mnt/hda3/optional
Close the window.

-Now to install extensions. This is what works for me, there may be better ways. I install each to /tmp. Then if I want it to be optional (not installed, but available), I move it to /mnt/hda3/optional. If I want it to install automatically, I move it to /mnt/hda3. I do this manually after mounting hda3 first.

- Hope this helps. enjoy!

WOW!!!

Excellent post...This is exaclty how I did mine too

I dont use restore since the /home dir is now a persistant or permanently written to hd, and you dont need to backup something that is written to the HD

My frugal runs very very well on a 133Mhz Compaq LTE 5300 with 32Meg RAM, I kicked up the swap to 128Megs...

You probably dont need more than 55-60Meg for your frugal "disk image" partition

P.S. The grub bootloader was soo much easier to modify than lilo

Brian
AwPhuch

Ok, i tried the first bit, I typed in "dsl 2", it loads, everything seems fine, then it gets to "Call Trace: [<c01308180>] . . . ", with a whole bunch more of thosde funny square brackets around it.

Any suggestions? And i apologize if I am bumping an old thread.

I got it working in a slightly different way, using existing grub (modiying the .conf file) from existing Fedora installation, and copying cd contents to hdb1 (partition on added HD). I couldn't use the install script cause it only works to hda.

Boot process works fine, but it spends a while, just after the big DSL logo, looking for the CDROM. Anyway to get rid of this as it wastes a bit of time?

Here is the bottom half of my grub.conf file:

title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img

title DSL-frugal-base-norestore (hdb1)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/hdb1 base norestore
initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz

title DSL-frugal-toram-mydsl-restore (hdb2)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/hdb2 toram mydsl=hdb2 restore=hdb2
initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz

Thanks for any suggestions on getting rid of that wait time.

ps. AwPhuch, if your backing up other files too (such as a XF86Config-4 file), you still need to backup and not just use a persistent home. Thanks to the OP though, I didn't realise that the persistent home to HD thing existed!

Quote (s_t_bris @ Oct. 06 2005,19:13)

Yah I realized that afterwards...if you make changes in something that isnt in the /home or /opt (persistant) directories..then you need to back them up..just remove anything of reference of the /opt or /home or it will overwrite any changes that you make (learned the hard way! DOH!)

Brian
AwPhuch

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