[ltp] Help Needed

[skipper]

Dear Richard,

Whilst waiting for a reply yesterday, I decided to copy the Linspire 5 
CD Contents to a folder called install on the hard disk and then edit 
the menu.lst for grub.

This did two things - (1) A white screen of death tillI changes bios 
settings (2) a kernal panic - this was resolved much to my surprise by 
the following.

As stated, plugging in the usb cd at boot time with a cd inserted - was 
not picked up untill I plugged it in at the root prompt. But when I 
selected the install or repair from my grub.lst and then pluged in the 
usb cd with the linspire 5 install disk - it actually ran even though on 
the grub commands pointed to the hard drive - though the install crashed 
because it could not find the cd. But inserting during the install 
procedure worked!

I now have Linspire 5 on the 10 gig drive. I may now install UBUNTU! 
Linspire 5 finds and works with everything on the A21E perfectly! This I 
hope will be one of the few e-mails from a Windows O/S.

Considering I had such difficulty installing via the usb cd - hmm I have 
UBUNTU v7 on a bootable CD - it's just getting it started without 
editing menu.lst or copying fles to the hard disk. I will go the UBUNTU 
route.

I will post how I get on!

Regards,

David


Richard Neill wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> Glad this is slightly helpful.
>
>  > I suppose I expected that as my Linspire/Debian had identified my 
> USB CD
>> Drive if I stuck the Linspire 5 install disk in it would just boot up 
>> and I could either repair or reinstall. I have given up that idea.
>
> Unfortunately, what the BIOS can boot from is usually rather more 
> restricted than the list of devices the OS can use once booted.
>>
>> The basic resources I have are Xircom RealPort2 10/100 NIC - which is 
>> not picked up when I run redetect or diagnose which are the other two 
>> options in my grub menu.lst to boot the Linspire O/S - the GUI no 
>> longer loads.
>
> Does the A21e not have an internal network port on the back of the 
> machine? You won't be able to network boot (PXE boot) from a PCMCIA card.
>
> If you're trying to *install* via the network, it needs to be 
> something the BIOS can see (it should appear in the boot options as 
> "boot via LAN".
>
>>
>> Question: How do I get Debian whatever to find it it? 
> >
>
> [Not relevant for installation, but may help to know this anyway:]
>
> If you run (as root) the command    ifconfig  -a
> you should get a list of all detected devices. It should appear as eth0
> or possibly eth1.
>
> If you then run     ifconfig      (without the -a switch), it will 
> list the devices which are currently online.
>
> Use           dhclient eth0         to obtain a network connection.
>
> Then I could do a
>> network install at this internet cafe! In fact I have an 8 port hub 
>> and another laptop which I can plug in - it's just getting my system 
>> from the root prompt to get (1) the NIC card identified and (2) how 
>> do I browse the network to access the other laptop to do the install 
>> - I have Midnight Commander and Mozilla.
>
> You need to use ssh.  Is the other laptop running Linux, or Windows?
> Will the internet cafe let you install programs on their Windows 
> machines? Will they let you download up to 2 GB of data?
>
>>
>> Another Question. If I do a network install and choose to wipe 
>> everything off, will I not loose the network connection? I know it's 
>> a dumb question - but it makes me a little smarter!
>>
>
> No. Essentially, during an install, everything that actually matters 
> lives in RAM. Providing you don't kill power midway through, by the time
> the install is finished, everything will be written out to disk.
>
>> I had thought to create a folder "install" and copy everything from 
>> either the Linspire or UBUNTU install CD via my 1 gig stick and try 
>> to get grub to boot from there. I'm reading the grub docs on this 
>> point. This seems to be a simple solution though I've not got 
>> anywhere with this approach at this time.
>>
>
> That should be workable, but it could be tricky. Try doing this:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent
>
>
>> I have the 1 gig pen drive - which enables me to transfer files 
>> between my A21E and any CD using another laptop to transfer between 
>> the two and of course the USB CD. Though I have connect it a few 
>> times to get the system to read the files on a CD.
>>
>> I can either try a repair to get Linspire 5 up and running or do a 
>> new install of UBUNTU. A repair would keep what I have in the way of 
>> programmes and I know where I am with the Linspire 5 - going to 
>> UBUNTU would be new - I'm open minded at this time!
>>
>
> Would suggest you go for Ubuntu in the end.
>
>
> In summary, I think you have these options:
>
> * Try moving the disk temporarily to the other laptop. Use its CD to 
> do the install. Move it back.
>
> * Use your other laptop to install Ubuntu onto a pendrive. [You'll 
> need a 4GB pendrive for this to work, unless you are comfortable with 
> doing a server-install]. Then, copy the newly installed system onto 
> your A21e.
> You can use your damaged linspire installation to copy across.
>
> * Network install onto the A21e. (Requires an internal network card, 
> NOT a PCMCIA one).
>
> * Buy, or borrow an internal CD-ROM for the A21e. Quite cheap on eBay.
> This may, in fact, be the easiest way for you to get everything working.
>
> * Buy a USB-HDD enclosure for your A21's disk. (Cost about $10). Then, 
> plug that into your other machine. Boot the other machine with the 
> Ubuntu installer. Then, install onto the A21's disk. [Be *careful* not 
> to install on the wrong disk!]
>
>
> Essentially, you have to decide to either:
>
> 1)Find some way to install direct onto your laptop's disk, either by 
> moving the disk to a different machine, or by finding a device the 
> BIOS can boot.
>
> 2)Use your damaged linspire system to copy a complete installation 
> over from somewhere else. You need a fully installed and working Linux 
> system to copy from.
>
> 3)Try to repair the linspire system. If it boots up as far as a root 
> prompt, it is possible to fix it. Does Linspire use xorg, or XFree86?
> To find out, run
>    ls /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> and
>    ls /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
> Then, (take a copy first), and edit that file. You could also try 
> moving it somewhere else, leaving nothing in its place. See whether 
> the system is smart enough to regenerate a default file for you on 
> reboot.
>
>
> Lastly, this page may help you. It's my documentation of the A22p, 
> which is quite similar to the A21e. It refers to Mandrake 2006, but 
> some of the stuff there may be of use.
> http://www.richardneill.org/a22p-mdk11-0.php
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Richard
>
>
>
> P.S. How comfortable are you with using (or learning about):
>    bash, rsync, ssh, mount, mkfs, fdisk, nano  ?
>
> Your problem is soluble, but it's going to be quite advanced to fix.
> The "wizardy" is quite fun to learn, but there is a fair amount of it 
> that you'll need. So, do decide what you want to do.
>
> The simple/quick way is to buy some more hardware - either an ultrabay 
> CD-ROM, a large pendrive, a USB->Mini-IDE adapter (i.e. a USB hard 
> disk enclosure for laptop size disks), or a thinkpad mini-PCI card 
> with network/modem.
>
>
>
>> Regards,
>>
>> David
>>
>> Richard Neill wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>