Situation- Laptop (2003 made Toshiba 2410) with dead secondary controller, so no CDDVD drive, BIOS does not support any form of booting from USB. Laptop has working floppy (had to repair it) distros that are good for older units like that that also support booting from diskettes, and then can mount and install from a USB CDDVD rom drive.
View 7 RepliesI have an old laptop I'd like to try Bodhi linux on from a usb stick. I've got it installed running on a newer laptop so I know the usb install works. I've searched considerably & haven't found the dummy version of how to boot any distro on usb from a floppy. I have used a DSL floppy to boot Damn small on usb. Is there an easy way to boot Bodhi or any other linux distro that is on usb using the same floppy? I type dsl fromusb to get damnsmall to run. Bodhi fromusb doesn't work.
View 1 Replies View RelatedLubuntu is nice - but it seems the LXDE version is not as up to date as Fedora LXDE Spin or even Debian squeeze with LXDE installed. I do like Chromium on Lubuntu though... its faster and a nice touch. I am looking for a lightweight 64-bit distribution for my main laptop (it is by no means "old" or "low spec" but I like that Lubuntu starts up in like 2 secs).
LXDE version seems not to be recent (esp in 10.04 version which seems to work more stably for me - with Nvidia drivers etc)64 bit install is currently a pain - requires first install of minimal CD or alternate CD both of which required wired Ethernet, then install of lubuntu from PPA. Native 64-bit support would be nice. Linux Mint LXDE, for example, is also only 32-bit.
I am trying to write a floppy boot image to my floppy drive (as root):
Code:
dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0
dd: opening `/dev/fd0': Read-only file system
[code]....
Can anyone recommend a good fairly current distro which provides Gnome and well-supports an Nvidia Geforce 9600 GSO card? It appears the current versions of Ubuntu 10.10 and Linux Mint 11 do not, meaning they are now useless to me.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have a linux box set up as a multi-purpose server for my home with three Windows client PC's. The linux box is based on a slightly modified Slackware 9.0 distribution using Linux 2.4.20 and an unfortinately old, slow AMD processor with a miserable 512Kb RAM. The linux box serves the CIFS file system to the Windows boxes, runs the SQUID HTTP proxy, the Apache web server, a print server, does masquerading, mail serving and a very effective firewall using iptables.
This system, although slow, has run perfectly for several years.Let me say that again - This system works perfectly.I had decided that now is the time to upgrade the hardware, so I bought a Gigabyte LGA775 motherboard which has two 1Gb network interfaces on it, an ASUS 256Mb PCI-E display card, 2Gb of DDR3 RAM, an Intel Core2-Quad processor and a bunch of 500Gb SATA drives to set up a RAID5 array (but I intend that the system boot off one of several 40Gb PATA drives I have).I set up the processor, motherboard, display card, RAM, a SATA DVD Drive and a 40Gb PATA hard disk in a "breadboard" layout and installed distro 13.1, being careful to set up the static IP for the local network, dhcpcd to get an IP address from the cable modem (my internet connection) and to enable ip_forward in the network configuration.
Then I installed a script invoked by /etc/rc.d/rc.local which installed all the SAME iptables rules as my old Linux box. There was one minor glitch when I had to change 8 occurrences of "-d ! $LOCAL_NET to" "! --destination $LOCAL_NET" but that was no problem. I also set up /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/hosts , the BIND server files etc. etc. exactly as in the old box.
I am able to ping mirror.aarnet.edu.au (this is at the heart of Australia's internet hub network - if it's down the whole bloody thing is down) and have the system find the correct IP from the designated nameservers and contact that server with a return trip time of 35ms. I am able to run a telnet session from one of the Windows boxes and edit files on the Linux server. So both network interfaces work and I've got them the right way around.I am able to run FTP on one of the Windows boxes and connect through to mirror.aarnet.edu.au, although it seems to hang when I try a DIR (but then so does the old linux system).
I need a small distro... that i can fit into a 1.44 Mb floppy disk... so i can install latest lilo.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI am having a Promise TX4650 RAID controller & trying to create a driver floppy for installing the drivers. Also am using RHEL 5, I can create the driver floppy, but when I type "mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy" I get error: "mount: mount point /media/floppy does not exist".Can I get the files in a format other than the ext2 floppy image, so that we do not need to use a floppy drive?There is a readme file inside the driver archive & you can use that as a reference.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have several (small) bootable linux distros on USB sticks, and I would like to use them on several computers, some of which do not have USB boot support. Many of these also do not have a CD drive.In order to get around this problem I would like to create a bootable floppy disk that can load the system from the USB stick (similar to http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i.../Boot_Floppies). I have found quite a few floppy images on the internet (like the one above), but I haven't yet got one that works and boots the USB sticks that I have (i.e. one that can boot Tiny Core).Is this actually possible (it seems to be, but I haven't got it to work yet) and does anyone know how I can do it?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have this ancient Dell Dimension V333 with a Pentium II 333 MHz and 320MB RAM that my family needs for web browsing, word processing, etc. What I need is a distro that is easy to setup and install and easy to use because they have only ever used windows (and a little ubuntu).
View 10 Replies View RelatedI'm trying to set up a machine to "drive" a piece of equipment (a metal plate embosser [kind of like a daisywheel printer for credit card sized pieces of metal], FWIW). What I ideally want is a linux distro that I can boot from CD (I think the term is Live CD?), log itself in as a user and display only a console. It needs to be able to support windows fileshares and python.
Essentially it needs to boot, connect to a single fileshare on a Win2k8 machine, and be able to execute a couple of scripts that will output to a serial port. One of them will be more or less the following:
wget http://WEBSITE/?<parameter passed to script> --quiet --output-document=<name of serial port>
The other is a somewhat more complicated Python script that processes a CSV spreadsheet and produces data for the machine.
I am trying to flash my bios but they only supply an exe or a floppy image. obviosly I am not running windows to run the exe and I dont have a floppy drive. So I have been trying to copy the floppy image to a cd with little success.Size of boot image is 2884 sectors -> genisoimage: Error - boot image 'F1B.IMG' has not an allowable size.The way I understand it thats 4 sectors over the 1.44Mb floppy size? Is there a way I continue anyway? Seeing that I will be putting it on a cd I cant see that the size is going to matter
View 14 Replies View RelatedI've installed RHEL 5.3 on a Dell Desktop. I don't want to install GRUB to the MBR. Is there a way to boot up RHEL from a floppy?I've installed GRUB on to a floppy but not having much luck starting up RHEL. In the past Slackware has allowed me to startup the kernel from a floppy using LILO. I was hoping that there is way for RHEL too.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have problem with my laptop Samsung VM7000. The BIOS has a password on which I don't know. It has no HDD and the CD-ROM is damaged. I have a FDD floppy drive and two USB slots, they work (tested). To remove password I tried this http://dogber1.blogspot.com/2009/05/...ered-bios.html but it didn't work.Then I've found a Linux based password cracker http://www.pccmos.com/ but, since my cd drive is dead, I can't launch it. I can write it on a flashdrive, but my laptop is not booting from flash, so I have to make a floppy-boot-disc to boot flash via floppy, but how?
View 2 Replies View RelatedOS: Windows XP
Virtual Machine: Bochs-2.4.5
I want to learn some details about linux booting, so I begin writing a small boot program myself. Yesterday, I was writing a small boot program and planned to use it boot a Bochs virtual machine. The boot program is written in assembly language and compiled with nasm.I use bxiamge.exe in Bochs and create an floppy image called boot.img and configure the Bochs virtual host to boot from this floppy image. My question is how to write the compiled boot.bin program into the floppy image(boot.img)?
I scored a Dell poweredge 6300 from a local pawn shop. It has the capability to boot from cd-rom, but apparently not with isolinux, which is what the debian installer cd uses. I was able to boot to UBCD411 (Ultimate Boot CD, which uses syslinux), but didn't see any option to boot to a CD (maybe I'm missing something here?). I tried using the boot floppy from this site. I didn't expect it to work (it's from the Woody era), and it did not. I got a message that says SYSLINUX ver.XXXX CBIOS boot failed. I went to [URL].. and looked for a boot floppy image for Lenny, but apparently it doesn't exist. I did however find the boot floppy image for Etch.
To be honest, even if I did find the Lenny floppy boot image, I'm not sure how to use it to point the system to the installer CD. So, I have two questions:
1) Does anyone know of a boot floppy image for Lenny, or if I could use the Etch boot floppy image?
2) How would one boot from floppy, then point the system to the installer CD?
System info:
(4) Xeon Pentium 2 processors 500 Mhz
(6) UltraSCSI hard drives
(1) SCSI cd-rom drive
(1) SCSI dvd-rom drive
(1) Floppy drive
(1) 10/100 NIC
I'm open to any other suggestions as to how I could install Debian Lenny on this machine.
How to setup/install a vividwireless USB broadband 4g modem on Ubuntu 11.04 distro?
# lsusb... yes, the modem type is an Huawei bm358 Wimax USB stick from vividwireless vendor,it shows mac address as follows: 641f03d903e...
cottoned on to the blah about bogus 4g... why the lies I wonder, apparently there is no 4g in Australia!
Nothing is working,[URL] My bootable pendrive is not seen by grub. The tab in grub, e, gives my 3 partitions only
[URL]
I am building a v2.6 kernel floppy disk distro to run on a 1992 computer. FWIW The specs on the computer are
* 66 MHZ processor
* 12 MB ram
* 400 MB HD
* EGA monochrome video card
It runs Linux quite nice actually. I want to get it online with a null modem cable and use the other Linux box as a gateway to the internet. I have networking, TCP and slip support in the kernel. I do now know if I have all the needed network configuration files. I am able to ping 127.0.0.1. If I try to ping the other computer, I get a "network is unreachable" error. Tell me any commands to run on either box and I will attempt to do so. Remember the old computer is running a stripped down toolset since its only two floppies worth.
I am not able to boot distros installed in my /dev/sda HDD. I was using the linux distros in sda for a long time now. But, suddenly it has stopped booting. So, temporarily i have install a new one on sdb so that the problem can be fixed. That HDD is also not showing up in my BIOS boot priority list.
Code:
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders, total 78165360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5454455
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 31888079 15944008+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 61433854 78043135 8304641 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 * 42456960 61432559 9487800 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 31889408 42436607 5273600 6 FAT16
/dev/sda5 77723648 78043135 159744 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 61433856 77721599 8143872 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10337 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x454545545
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 15181 50682239 25333529+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 * 50682240 156295439 52806600 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb5 15183 14348879 7166848+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb6 14348943 25613279 5632168+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7 25613343 50682239 12534448+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Is there something weird about the FLOPPY DRIVE on F12? Nothing associated with it works & I can't get an icon for it. Also the FLOPPY FORMATTER no longer works. (mine is an internal drive)- I had some really miner quirks with it in 10 but it worked. I had some workaround launchers that I used until an upgrade semi-fixed it. (It would give a false error that it couldn't run but did. I just ignored it.)
I tried to edit FSTAB to cure a problem of my BACKUP drive showing up twice*** so while I was in there I added the stuff for the floppy & it still doesn't work. If I try to mount it manually, I get the error that /dev/fd0 doesn't exist.I tried to find some info on it & it SEEMS that there MAY be a bug but I'm not sure as the info is a bit confusing as to just what version & such they are talking about. And there was also the problem that all the stuff seemed to be OLD or not related to my problem.I why I quite hacking at my system, is that all my workaround launchers & the formatter say that there are GNOME things missing & they can't run. So I figure that there is something missing or screwy already & that I'd better ask BEFORE I make things worse or actually break something.With the fact that floppies are about gone, it's getting to be not that big of a deal but I still find myself having to use them for repair purposes (albeit, not as much) & it gets to be a bit of a pain to fire up M$ just to do something like this.
*** It appears that the one in FSTAB was the one I needed, so where would the OTHER one be so I can get rid of it? Or at least make it auto mount.
If I can install more than one distro on my Multiple boot pc. I already have, Mandriva, Win xp, and Win 7 on. But you know how it is, you want to try out all the linux systems if that is possible. I guess using a live cd would allow me to do it. I do not want to bugger up the systems I already have on.
View 9 Replies View Relatederror message:Unable to scan Floppy Drive for media changes Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a USB drive on which I want to install Arch Linux (using the installer, not unetbootin or something similar, as I want the drive to be persistent.) The computer from which I want to boot this USB supports booting from a USB floppy, not a normal drive. Is there any way for me to make a USB floppy on another drive and use that to boot the normal USB drive?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a laptop dual booting to Windows 7 and Opensuse 11.2. However, I'd like to switch to a different Linux distro (probably Ubuntu, that's what I'm used to)
Is there a way for me to do it without losing the Windows 7 setup/data?
I have a box with Novell Suse linux installed. It asks for username and password I do not have and cannot figure out. I also have a SantaFe distro CD with which I would like to replace the Suse on the box. I cannot get the box to BIOS to change the boot order to boot from CD. I would like to break free of Windows, but can't seem to get there from here...
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have been trying to do some testing with server cloning and partitioning and hit some walls. The server is question is a Dell PowerEdge 2950 and the Distro's I have tried are :-
Clonezilla-live-1.2.8-46-i686
Parted Magic 6.2 & 6.2
The problem is a little strange is that the console appears to keep reporting either unreadable sectors on sr0 for clonezilla till SQUASHFS fails to load/locate and it panic's or in the case of Parted Magic.. copying files to RAM ..cp: read error: Input/output error
Mounting pmagic-6.2.sqfs... mount: wrong fstype, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so Mounting //sqfs_disk/pmagic-6.2.sqfs failed.
type "exit" to reboot the computer
bash-4.1#
Now the only problem here is I can't check the log's or dmesg the thing because it freezes the KVM and as I am offsite I have no spares with me Parted Magic does boot on a number of other servers like the R900 but will not boot at all here, I have tried safemode and disabling various other flag's but I must be missing something.
Have 3 linux distros on 3 hard drives. lost one distro from boot loader. how do I restore missing distro to boot loader? drive was not written to when one distro (drive) was updated.Example drives a, b, and c each had listing on boot loader, now after upgrade to distro on drive b order on boot loader is drive b then a and none for c.
View 5 Replies View RelatedGot an old computer running XP like a snail Would like to use as a childs first computer Specs Pentium 3 799Mhz 128 RAM 20GB HDD Looking for an appropriate version of Linux Distro if any to set up and run.
View 14 Replies View Relatednominate a disastrous distro from past or present that was simply AWFUL and what exactly was so bad about it?
View 14 Replies View Related