New Debian based Distro

[champagnemojo]

Cheat codes don't seem to work. I have to run noscsi to boot up my laptop but it won't take it. You can access the screen to type in cheatcodes if you're fast enough...but I tried knoppix, knoppix26, munjoy etc. and none of it worked. Oh well.

[nishtya]

Thanks, eco. That thing boots so fast, in three shots hadn't seen a pause/prompt just the damn small linux and stuck on loading.

Sounds like you have installed it. Does it offer a chance to decline lilo/grub on mbr and boot with a floppy? My present setup is a dual boot with 98 and kanotix. Knoppix is still on a partition of the linux disc and I boot that with a floppy. Was thinking about replacing the knoppix with this munjoy for a testrun until new knoppix is out, anyway

oh, Durand, I have retired from kernel compiling no more...nonononononono

[eco2geek]

Sounds like you have installed it. Does it offer a chance to decline lilo/grub on mbr and boot with a floppy?

I tried to install it on a virtual machine within Win2K. So far I've been unsuccessful as it doesn't like my virtual machine's virtual hard drive and ends up in a kernel panic. Going to have to try a virtual boot floppy.

It does give you the choice of either installing LILO or nothing to the MBR (but doesn't offer GRUB).

(I downloaded the "plastik" theme from KDE-Look.org and installed it on Knoppix and it looks very nice.)

[eco2geek]

Well, I tried installing Munjoy on the partition where I had Knoppix. It had the same problem that Debian Sarge did: it doesn't automagically configure X to work with my AGP 8x NVidia Geforce 4 video card. So when kdm starts, I get a blank black screen and the monitor quickly goes into power-saving mode.

One of these days, I'm going to ask for help with finding the solution to that problem...

But for now I installed Kanotix 05/2004.

[nishtya]

Hope you like it, Eco I am running BH4 myself and am enjoying it very much. I already upgraded KDE to 3.2.2 and fixed the resultant bugs so don't want to bother starting over with BH5 right now. Even have ALSA behaving within reason with aRTS. I really should though as it is a bughunter release and I suppose it doesn't help Kano any unless I am running his latest. I also should keep better notes

I had the blank screen problem on one nvidia install on my knoppix. In that case it was the common "no screens...whatever" error. All I had to do was change inittab to default to start "3" instead of "5" and then from console mode edit the xconfig for nvidia and made a couple of changes in resolution. DDC never worked properly with this monitor with that X setup. If you try sarge again you might want to start in 3 and see what error message you get when trying to start X. I didn't have the problem when I installed nvidia 5336 on bughunter. Worked with no editing of xconfig and is picking the right refresh. Like I said, very happy with it though willing to take a look at munjoy.

Suppose I really should have a go at the man10 I have, but I looooove debian. Apt is like so much shopping without the heavy price to pay.

BTW...how are you managing to run two linux distros on the same disk if you are? I am unable to get lilo configured to "triple boot". I can have two linux distros on my secondary disk and w98 on the primary disk. But I have to boot one of the linuxes with a floppy. Have tried a couple of times, but wind up with lilo trying to boot one of the linuxes with the kernel of the other, or something weird like that. Frankly not sure lilo can do it and the floppy solution for one of them isn't really that big of a deal.

[eco2geek]

Truth be told, I've just got the one distro on here. (I managed to screw up Knoppix by trying to install the kde-games package and forgot to specify version numbers, so it began upgrading all of KDE to the latest version. For kicks and grins I followed it to its logical conclusion, and it still ran, but it did install/change some low-level init scripts that conflicted with Knoppix's init scripts, so I just decided to start over with a fresh install.)

I'm very wary of LILO and GRUB. I have an old computer that used to be my main one, that had Win9x on it, where for some reason neither would work. Both would hang. I had to repair the MBR on it three separate times after various experiments. The last time, I had carefully made a GRUB boot floppy and it worked just fine, so I knew "menu.lst" was correct, but it didn't work once on the hard disk. Ended up using LOADLIN from the DOS prompt.

This can be nervewracking when you don't have a backup...

On this Win2K box I use a version of GRUB for Windows, made by the Topologilinux guys, that lives on the NTFS partition and is accessed through NTLdr. (I also upgraded the version of Windows on that old computer mentioned above, and use the Topologilinux GRUB on that one to boot into Red Hat.) Using it to triple boot would just be a matter of editing "menu.lst".

The only downside to it is that you have to reinstall it after you defrag your NTFS partition. And it doesn't work with Win9x.

[nishtya]

ahh, Eco, here I always figured you for having a herd of linux testbed boxen or 160 gig disk with a dozen different distros

BTW, how did you get a successful plastik install? Last night I did a whopper of a KDE upgrade and/or update (newbie, don't forget I use many linux terms interchangably ) and plastik was the one failure. I ended up having to do dpkg --configure -a to get the others finished. The plastik error was something about being unable to change/overwrite some plastik already installed/configured. I gotta start writing these errors down but so much is done clandestinely, middleofthenight nosleep

[kansas]

BTW...how are you managing to run two linux distros on the same disk if you are? I am unable to get lilo configured to "triple boot". I can have two linux distros on my secondary disk and w98 on the primary disk. But I have to boot one of the linuxes with a floppy. Have tried a couple of times, but wind up with lilo trying to boot one of the linuxes with the kernel of the other, or something weird like that. Frankly not sure lilo can do it

Lilo can do it. I have run as many as 20 different versions of Linux and MSWindoze from the same HD, all booting with lilo. This is how I do it. There are probably other ways.

1) Set up a Linux distro. Use Lilo. (If you are planning to dual-boot with MSWindoze, it is easiest if you install Windoze first.) Lilo can now boot the Linux distro that installed it, but can't boot another Linux because it can't find that Linux's kernel.
2) In the distro that is set up to boot with Lilo, make a directory for the kernels of whatever other Linux distros you want to install. I call mine "kernels".
3) Copy the kernel of the other installed Linux to this directory.
4) Edit /etc/lilo.conf and make a "stanza" that applies to the second (or third, or fourth) Linux. Write it like the stanza of the first Linux, but path to "image=/kernels/vmlinuz---" (whatever the name of the other kernel is). Set "Label" to reflect the name of the new distro, and set "Root" as the path to the new distro.
5) As root, run "lilo" after you have edited and saved the config file.
6) Reboot. If there was a line in the first part of lilo.conf that said "prompt", you should now get a menu of all the distros set up in lilo. Choose one.

[nishtya]

ahhhhhhhh 2&3 are why my previous stabs at it didn't work. I did not copy the other's to the booting linux. So lilo would try to boot a different distro with another's kernel?

Since I have only three partitions on my linux hard drive, I am not doing too badly with using a floppy for second linux distro. I have kanotix & knoppix and they share a linux swap partition. I figure if I install a distro that I only want to play with and it does overwrite mbr I can just use my floppy to get back into knoppix and run lilo to overwrite it back

Not sure if I will try it, but adding to my humungous "information" folder. I am thinking about setting up a real searchable database for myself with all my linux information now - it really is getting big. Anybody have any suggestions on what to use? (in my previous IT life I was an access dba & analyst, yeah, I know boohiss ) I haven't tried mysql or anything yet in linux, still learning way much basic stuff.

[eco2geek]

ahh, Eco, here I always figured you for having a herd of linux testbed boxen or 160 gig disk with a dozen different distros

Oooooh I'd like to! Gonna get another hard drive for this computer and then the sky's the limit! (I've got Debian Woody on a third computer by itself, but it's only a P266, so that's about as far as it'll go.)

(After Cuddles' experience with my last suggestion, that WMF thumbnail viewer -- dunno if you want to follow any of my suggestions....) On Kanotix 05/2004 plastik is part of "kdeartwork-theme-window 3.2.2-1" and I don't know how or if you could separate it out for removal or upgrade.

On Knoppix I just used the Debian Sid package "plastik_0.3.7_i386.deb" available here and it installed (and uninstalled) fine.