knx-hdinstall + low RAM

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I installed the CD onto the hdd of an old PC with a PII233 and only 32 MB RAM (hda3). I added a 200MB linux swap partition to this (hda2). It boots up thru to KDE and everything works. But its a SNAIL! Yes, hda1 is still running windoze - so sue me!

So I was playing around with /etc/inittab and set the run level to 2 instead of 5. Is this the same as running the CD with KNOPPIX 2 on the boot: line?

Well, I thought so. Anyway, it boots with a console screen, no X or KDE and only lets me login as root. Now that's fine for me, but when I release this install into the wild (to my students), I'd rather they login as a normal user that I create as root. I can't login as anything else. How do I fix this?

The only other option is to live with a slow KDE machine or have them login with TWM as the window manager. This gives all the GUI functionality but isn't quite so slow. They usually only need Konsole, KATE and Konqueror which all work in TWM.

Thanx,

[RockMumbles]

Hello, IIRC, on my Knoppix hd install /etc/rc2.d had one entry, so you are basically running in a runlevel similar to runlevel 1 on a normal linux machine. Compare the /etc/rc5.d directory to the /etc/rc2.d and /etc/rc1.d directories on your system.

You'll either have to add the necessary links to rc2.d to run in a 'normal' runlevel 2 which I think would be everything except your graphical login manager, or maybe better run in runlevel 5 but go into rc5.d and chmod kdm (gdm, or xdm) to non executable. Then you will start without the kdm (or gdm, or xdm) graphical login, login to a console and then use startx to start X. Make a ~/.xinitrc file that exec's the window manager you wish to use.

You should save some overhead by not running the graphical login manager. I'm going to put together a similar system myself soon.

HTH

rock