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ofb
11-16-2002, 05:50 AM
okay, i'm new to linux but not to computers so we've got the proverbial dangerous little knowledge here.

tried two iso's and various hdinstall howto's and still no success.

knoppix gets the second drive all to itself, win sits on the first. i do a stock install with lilo. i boot from the boot disk it writes. [i guess lilo is on the second drive hence i cannot boot w/o boot disk? but that's a minor mystery that can be cleared up later. this box won't be knx's final home.]

knx loads and i end up in a cli, without kde firing up as it does from the cd or when the cd is simply copied to a drive.

login as root and try startx. x tries and then fails, scrolling off the screen with troubles. startkde puts me in a repeating failure loop till i ctrl-alt-del and go back to the work i'm neglecting.

suggestions? am i simply trying the wrong command? shouldn't the boot disk take me straight into kde?

the test box is a mere pentium 1, but it's happy enough running knx from the cd. second drive is 3gig properly partitioned with cfdisk into about 2900mb hdc1 and 280mb hdc5 as type82. each install attempt has gotten a fresh partitioning so there won't be anything left on the drive to interfere. have made something over six attempts so i'm pretty comfortable with the process.

A. Jorge Garcia
11-16-2002, 04:29 PM
Did you run knx-hdinstall from the root shell? This should set everything up fine in an uncompressed version of KNOPPIX so you need about 2.2 GB of disk space but less RAM.

ofb
11-16-2002, 09:15 PM
Did you run knx-hdinstall from the root shell?

yes. the most recent method i've used is david mcnab's at http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html

--

question: should the boot disk take me into kde, or into a login cli like it does?

perhaps half my trouble is installing to hdc instead of hda. perhaps david's method works fine for people running just knx, or knx as hda.

what i'm wondering is perhaps everything is actually fine, but that a default hdinstall to hdc like i've done a requires further configuration of lilo, since i cannot boot knx except with the floppy.

in which case it may follow that startx and startkde fail after i login because some paths are not correct.

Tech2k
11-16-2002, 09:30 PM
Hi,
Try "whereis kde" to get the path.If you told it to use the graphical loggin when running the knx-hdinstall script it should go right to kde.I have installed many many times and mine does anyway.I just installed agian last night and said "no" to the graphical login so now I start x with this command "startx -e fluxbox" give that a try.

11-16-2002, 10:55 PM
"whereis kde" yields "/usr/include/kde"

the startx command, all variations, get the same scrolled screen of trouble, the relevant portions of which may be,

"XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed0 with 0 events remaining."

"Fatal server error: no screens found"

startkde yields a loop that scrolls off the screen with a repeating,

"kpersonalizer: cannnot connect to X server"

confounding me further is that during boot, the info scrolling past on the way to the login prompt looks good, including "Starting K Desktop Manager: done"

--

i'm afraid i don't recall a yes/no option for graphical login during install. i expect i'd select yes, or default on that one. will keep an eye for it on next try.

since i've done several installs with the same result, i'd like to get the above cleared up a bit before i repeat the process.

A. Jorge Garcia
11-17-2002, 12:00 AM
Did you change /etc/inittab? Make run level 5 and reboot, see how that goes.

11-17-2002, 12:22 AM
Did you change /etc/inittab? Make run level 5 and reboot, see how that goes.

tell me what that means and where and how to type it in, and i'll be delighted to. :)

sorry, linux is new to me. hence i decided to try knoppix for my overdue conversion. i'm afraid i'll have to ask for patience and idiot instructions around the cli.

Tech2k
11-17-2002, 01:22 AM
If it worked ok from the cd did you have to hit F2 and use a "cheatcode" if so it sounds like it didnt carry over after the hdd install (common problem) can you get to a text console and try xf86cfg.

11-17-2002, 02:53 AM
If it worked ok from the cd did you have to hit F2 and use a "cheatcode" if so it sounds like it didnt carry over after the hdd install (common problem) can you get to a text console and try xf86cfg.

yes it works fine from the cd, and when the cd is copied straight to hdd instead of hdinstall. don't need to f2.

xf86cfg gave me an xwindows gui. i had a look around, and since i don't have detailed info for that monitor, i made no changes and quit, to return to a full screen of text which included this gem which goes roughly,

warning: cannot allocate colormap entry for "rgb:f/f/8"
warning: cannot convert arguments to display list function "foreground"
warning: cannot convert string "foregroung rgb:8/8/4;lines 1,-1,-1,-1,-1,1;foreground rgb:f/f/c;lines -1,0,0,0,0,-1" to type xawdisplaylist
warning: cannot convert string "xlogo64?foreground=gray90&background=gray92" to type pixmap
warning: cannot convert string "gradient:verticl?dimension=3&start=gray85&end=gray95" to type pixmap
warning: cannot allocate colormap entry for "rgb:a/5/5"
x connection to :8.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown)


tried startx again. same problems.

tried reboot. same problems.

A. Jorge Garcia
11-17-2002, 03:23 AM
OK, it sounds like your booting off the HD in to console mode (no X, no KDE), right?

If so, open a text editor like joe and edit /etc/inittab and change the line that says

#Default runlevel ...
id:3:initdefault:

to

#Default runlevel ...
id:4:initdefault:

so you boot into X.

Good Luck!

11-17-2002, 03:54 AM
#Default runlevel ...
id:3:initdefault:

to

#Default runlevel ...
id:4:initdefault:



alas, no joy. same old trouble.

my original was id:5:initdefault:, actually. tried it at 4. set it back to 5 for now.

11-17-2002, 05:48 PM
the startx command, all variations, get the same scrolled screen of trouble, the relevant portions of which may be,

"XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed0 with 0 events remaining."

"Fatal server error: no screens found"


Sounds like a problem the XConfig file... there is a flag to override
the values of X... I think (double check with the `man` on it) you
can do something like `X --probeonly` or maybe it's `X --probe`
and the XFree server will attempt to autodetect the configuration
rather then rely on what knoppix autodetected....

so something like:

export DISPLAY=:0
X --probeonly & startkde

should get you up and running.... (do a `man X`)

-Ironstorm

ofb
11-19-2002, 11:26 PM
Sounds like a problem the XConfig file... there is a flag to override
the values of X... I think (double check with the `man` on it)


thanks, but either i don't understand or something in the above isn't quite right. i did check the man files and i did try the flags in a few variations with no difference.

what i did not find was an XConfig file itself to examine and possibly edit. does that go under another name?

--

moving from detail to general ... obviously some people are using hd-install successfully. since i've tried two iso's and a few methods with always the same result of a CLI that won't fire up the GUI, i have to wonder if the issue is that i'm installing to the second drive.

so direct question: has anyone installed knoppix to hdc successfully?

newby
12-08-2002, 12:53 AM
I'm new to Linux, so may be i'm just talking sh*t and it's good to ignore.

Could it be that if you change the harddisk that boot in BIOS, that your boatloader-problem is solved? (sorry my english, just don't know how to say it)

I also think that pentium 1 is just not good enough for a harddisk install with kde 3. Resources with the cd are possible handled in a different way, so it works on cd, but not on your harddisk.


Good luck

A. Jorge Garcia
12-09-2002, 03:53 AM
I ran knx-hdinstall and got a full debian install! Very nice.

I did this, however, at the expense of my WINDOZE partition. That's no great loss as I backed-up my personal data and can reinstall WIN98 for the others that use this PC.

My question: is there no way to use knx-hdinstall with cfdisk without trashing your current partitions? I thought that this would be possible. If so, I'd like to perfect this procedure for use at my work without problems....

ILoveChessAndCompScience
12-15-2003, 04:22 PM
I ran knx-hdinstall and got a full debian install! Very nice.

I did this, however, at the expense of my WINDOZE partition. That's no great loss as I backed-up my personal data and can reinstall WIN98 for the others that use this PC.

My question: is there no way to use knx-hdinstall with cfdisk without trashing your current partitions? I thought that this would be possible. If so, I'd like to perfect this procedure for use at my work without problems....

Indeed. I totally agree.
<3 ILoveChessAndCompScience!!!!!!

matukituki
01-08-2004, 12:20 AM
Just installed 3.3 a few days ago using knx-hdinstaller. No problems were had with keeping existing partitions (one each of Win2k and Ext3), though I did have to edit /etc/lilo.conf in order to manually add windows onto the lilo menu.

Overall, very impressed with the script - recognised everything, including SATA drive and Promise controller.