Knoppix on Dell Inspiron 1100..yahooo!

[linuxprince]

finally did it!

so thought might post it for some newbie like me!

well it all started with some one posting a link in fatwallet...downloaded the iso and booted the laptop from CD...amazingly everything worked(sound,even my netgear MA401 wireless card.my prev exp with mandrake a few days ago was worse with no sound and no network)

so went ahead and tried to install knoppix on HD as booting from CD is slow and i want to enjoy good things without troubling myself much...

ok heres the procedure i went thru(read thru all at once. u will know where i made mistakes and learnt them..)

used partition magic in windows to create a linux partition for 5 GB and swap of 256 MB and fat partition of 1 GB( heard that linux recognizes fat)....then

restarted the system with cdrom as first boot and knoppix CD in

1) booted as usual

2) launched a shell and logged in as root and typed knx-hdinstall

3) kind of walkthru...took around 20 mintues to copy the files

4)asked me if i wanted to use LILO...said yes( my blunder!)

5) asked me whether i wanted to choose mailserver,sambha server....etc..i chose no for everything except for KDE login

thought i am done and restarted the Laptop

BLANK SCREEN no windows no linux

tried to get to do fix mbr with windows XP CD from dell...went into recovery console and stupid thing says my password is incorrect though i type it correctly...

read thru some posts here in the forum by some nice guys and learnt that winxp has a flaw which allows u to get into recovery console when i boot with win2k CD...borrowed one from a friend and got into the recovery console and executed the "fixmbr" command

and XP started to boot perfectly but still no sign of knoppix!

googled and got this software from http://www.osloader.com/ ( a boot manager)...installed it from windows and rebooted....

i got a boot option to boot into windows or linux....tried to get into linux...again BLANK SCREEN

ok i thought some LILO must have screwed it up...and went with the install of knoppix again..the only differnece being i said no when during the end of the install knoppix asked whether i want to use LILO....

and there u go folks....when i rebooted i got the dual option as before but this time
KNOPPIX fired beautifully and here i am posting this post using MOZILLA from Knoppix...my sound card works,wireless(obviously! )

have to figure out a way to access my FAT partition...

[mrcool]

was i dumb?

i am linuxprince too!

[knk]

I burnt Knoppix Linux into a CD and was trying to boot from the CD on my new Dell Inspiron 1100. The BIOS version was A25. During boot Setup i gave the first priority to CD but still the my laptop didn't boot from the Knoppix CD.

What could be the problem? I don't have a Floppy disk drive in my laptop ?

I believe the new laptops could boot from CD? Is this a BIOS problem?

[zanoman]

Finally I worked it out with your help !
I couldn't understand why a basic Inspiron 1100 DELL laptop couldn't use Knoppix.

I'm not a linux master, but I add my install and setting process :

I had many many pbs to install it, first I thought it cames from my partition which was over the 1024th cylinder (partition magic warning) and couldn't boot with the installed Knoppix (3.3).
I had "false partition table" each boot or "wrong partition table" (can't remember), and couldn't get back to XP.
I'm working with an A22 BIOS revision
I found that the cfdisk (Knoppix install) had "bootable" on the linux partition and not on NTFS, I changed it (at this time I was worrying if it can hurt XP boot, now I'm ready to test everything) and it worked (I mean XP)

Next try :
So I moved the whole NTFS to the end and had a linux partition at the start of the disk (2,5 Go)
Then same pb : LILO didn't installed well (MBR stuff) and messed up.
I didn't fixmbr from XP disk but installed OSloader and reinstalled Knoppix (10th time, like an old Win 95 : plug and pray !).
Then it booted !!!!! first time Knoppix on my 1100
but in 640x480.

I turned to 1024x768 in config and reboot, just to test !
No more KDM (GUI) at startup
"kdm" (to launch GUI) tries to launch and get back to terminal
"startx" the same

BUT i've walked around many forums to find commands and tried :
"X -configure" (beware X --configure does something else)
it creates a xf86config.new in the root folder and tells you that you can test the server with :
XFree86 -xconfig /root/XF86Config.new

I tested and get a full screen X screen (just the gray matrix startup screen with the X mouse icon). I was surprised it was a full screen since no one reports a full screen on a inspiron 1100 due to video drivers.

Now, to finish :
with "mc" (midnight commander : very very usefull) I deleted XF86Config-4, XF86Config-4.in, XF86Config, XF86Config-4.backup, XF86Config-4.new in /etc/X11 (I tried to keep some but it didn't worked), copied XF86Config.new from /root to /etc/X11 and renamed it to XF86Config-4 and launched "kdm"

And it works !! Full screen !! 1024x768.
But in 256 colors for the moment (but I don't care, I need space and speed not fancy colors)

Yahoooooooo (2)

I will post this message to others since people don't "search" forums sometimes and stuck to their feed.
Further tests appreciated from others now !!!

[linuxprince]

glad that it helped u a bit!

i am proceeding again with knoppix the newer one! wish me luck

[linuxprince]

*repost*

[linuxprince]

hmmm..i didnt have any problems with the video drivers..i normaly dont pass any mode while booting..i just hit return

i got fullscreen right from start

I beleive there is something called display configuration where u can configure it as a dell laptop 1024 disp!

update :lilo on knoppix 3.6 works well..it recognizes the partitions and allows to boot to windows with no hassle