[ltp] Help Needed

[Richard Neill]

Dear David,

I think you're slightly confused about auto-running CDs.

 > Plainly even with the latest bios update on the A21E it does not
 > recognise USB devices to boot from. My LInspire CD will run
 > automatically from my USB CD on a Windows machine but not my Linux.

When you say "auto-run", do you mean

a)An operating system is already running. When you insert the CDROM, it 
opens a file browser (eg konqueor, or internet explorer)

or

b)When you restart the machine, the BIOS will boot from the USB-CD device.

If (b), then it means that the BIOS on your A21e does not support 
booting from the usb-cdrom.

If (a), then you should simply be able to mount the CD device manually.
(Run the dmesg command to see what's happening, and then use the mount 
command).

--------

Am I correct in thinking that you just want to find some way to install 
Ubuntu Linux on your (CD-ROM less) A21e?

If so, what resources do you have at your disposal? Do you have another 
computer, running either Windows or Linux? If so, you could try doing a 
network install. This should work - I used a similar method to install 
on my X20.

http://hugi.to/blog/archive/2006/12/23/ubuntu-pxe-install-via-windows
http://wiki.koeln.ccc.de/index.php/Ubuntu_PXE_Install
http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_on_ThinkPads_without_CD-ROM_drive

Alternatively, you could try to rescue your Linspire system. It's almost 
certainly not as badly broken as you think.
  sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
followed by a reboot (or restart kdm/gdm) should solve your GUI problem.

Best wishes,

Richard



skipper wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have a strange problem - which I have tried to solve - so here goes. I 
> had a working 600E with Linspire 5.0.59 which had a Debian core version 
> 2.6.10 - latest version of Linspire v6 has UBUNTU. My 600E had a 
> motherboard failure.
> 
> I also have an A21E - it has no CD Drive - it has a battery as I use the 
> A21E to navigate my boat. It seemed to me a "simple" matter of sticking 
> the 600E's hard disk in the A21E. It worked ok - but Linspire had a few 
> problems with mouse (ps/2 serial and usb) which failed to work and an 
> inability to connect to my nic - there are display issues when 
> Linspire's GUI loaded psychedelic. No matter how many times I ran 
> redetect or diagnose - in fact Linspire's GUI eventually vanished and I 
> have access via the prompt as root and Midnight Commander to get around.
> 
> I am faced with doing a reinstall - either Linspire or UBUNTU. I have 
> created a UBUNTU bootable 1 gig pen drive - I have also a usb CD drive. 
> Alas GRUB will not boot either one and CDs don't auto-run on my 
> Linspire/Debian system as in Windows. I have also tried copying the 
> contents of my Linspire CD onto the pen drive and dumping that on the 
> dard disk but as of this time I've had no success in getting grub to 
> boot anything up. Must be possible.
> 
> Plainly even with the latest bios update on the A21E it does not 
> recognise USB devices to boot from. My LInspire CD will run 
> automatically from my USB CD on a Windows machine but not my Linux. 
> There must be a way to start an install either from files copied to the 
> hard disk or via my USB CD. I just can't figure out the "howto." I don't 
> mind installing UBUNTU over what I have as I have saved all the data or 
> any other Distro that works on the A21E.
> 
> Practical thoughts would be useful because I have tried the Linspire 
> UBUNTU Foruns and LinuxQuestions.org - I wonder why I left OS/2 - oh 
> well.......................
> 
> Regards,
> 
> David
> PS Hello Ted Frater - Kathryn and I are on a boat in Cyprus.
> 
>