"Initiating starting sequence" forever...

**kepler** · 11-02-2004, 08:01 PM

Hi,

I'm trying to use for the first time Knoppix. When it shows the command line I do ENTER and it begins to search for current hardware, etc...until it arrives to a screen with a voice telling "initiating starting sequence". After a few seconds, the screen turns black, and there it comes again, the same image with the same voice "initiating starting sequence"...and forever...and ever...

What am I doing wrong?

PS - my mouse doesn't work too...

Regards,

Kepler

**CrashedAgain** · 11-02-2004, 08:39 PM

Usually booting problems with Knoppix can be solved by entering a 'cheatcode' to bypass whatever piece of the startup which is making problems. Press f2 at the boot logon to see the available cheatcode.
The ones that most commonly work are nodma or noapci. You will also want to specify your language, for english use 'knoppix lang=us' or 'knoppix lang=en'.

**rcook** · 11-02-2004, 09:39 PM

Try starting with cheatcode 2. That should bring you to the command line.
My recollection is that the speech "initiating starting sequence" is associated with starting Xwindows (KDE).

**CrashedAgain** · 11-03-2004, 05:18 AM

Originally Posted by rcook

Try starting with cheatcode 2. That should bring you to the command line.
My recollection is that the speech "initiating starting sequence" is associated with starting Xwindows (KDE).

The speech sequence is in /etc/X11/Xsession/45xsession before it starts any window manager so the start sequence is getting to the point of attempting to start a window manager. Possibly it is having problems starting X or KDE, try booting 'knoppix 2' to get to a terminal mode then try 'startx' to start kde or 'startxfce' to see if xfce works.

**kepler** · 11-04-2004, 02:08 AM

Hi,

First of all, if I type startx, everything stays as before - but at least I have the command line. After an enormous effort, I was able to partition my disk, in a small amount of 16 MB, system FAT ( don't ask...). Now, the idea is to put the files to compile in that partition; the question is: what commands should I use from Knoppix to compile those files ( please be very explicit...)? They are in drive F. Must I format this drive to Linux? And then, how do I reach them to compile them?

Any help is welcome.

Regards,

Kepler

**OErjan** · 11-04-2004, 11:03 AM

what do you want to compile? why? is this for installing a driver or something such?

**kepler** · 11-04-2004, 12:11 PM

I've got a win32 system, running Windows XP. What I want is to compile C source files to run in the Linux environment. Everyone told me that I can do that with Knoppix - but I would have to have a small partition to put the files on, and retrieve the compiled ones.

Kepler

**OErjan** · 11-04-2004, 12:41 PM

yes gcc is a working c-compiler, and it is ofcource available in Knoppix,
just what EXACTLY do you want? is it to compile staticaly just one or two minor programes or do you want to develop more serious things?
no matter what i would go with a hdd install, perhaps of Knoppix, or perhaps some other dist more aimed at hd install. say fedora (remember to incorporate development packages) mandrake, Slackware or Debian.
with a HD install things become simpler to some extent, you can add/remove programes easily and read/write files without much trouble.

**kepler** · 11-04-2004, 12:58 PM

What I want is, from time to time, compile about 10 C source code files to Linux executables. I've already made a partition ( Linux Swap ) - but there comes my firt doubt: I don't see it in Windows anywhere; so, how can I put the C files that I want to compile there ( in that specific partition )?

Second: running GCC; I'm in the root of knoppix - What do I do? To wich directory do I move in? What command and where do I run the MAKE utility or GCC itself?

I'm a bit lost here...

Can you help me? This is quite urgent - the person who was compiling my source code to Linux is too busy ( so he says...). I can't depend of him for life.

Regards,

Kepler

**OErjan** · 11-04-2004, 07:18 PM

the Swap is just "virtual memory".
to have storage easily read/written to between the two you need a fat32 partition (vfat in linuxspeak).
for simplicity we say yoiu have one. if you just go to that parition.
where you ofcourse previously have stored the source (and compannions) in separate directories for each binary.
the reason for separate directories being that otherwise the ./configure, ./make and company might get confused to what file to work with.
to make the binaries enter the directory do ./configure folowed by make.
jnow we come to the tricky part. do you want to make packages to be installed? do you want to make executable binaries (already done with make) or?