I am trying to install Damn Small Linux 4.0 on my Toshiba Portege 7000CT. During LiveCD Boot.
Heres what it says

Scanning for USB devices....Done
Accessing DSL image at /dev/scd0...
Total Memory found 158888kB
Creating /ramdisk (dynamic size=124048k)on shared memory...Done
Creating directories and symlinks on ramdisk....Done
Starting init process.
INIT:Version 2.78-knoppix booting
Running Linux Kernel 2.4.31.
Processor 0 is Pentium 2 (Deschutes) 266mhz 512Kd Cache
ACPI Bios found,activating modules: ac Battey button fan processor thermal

After that it just stops and does nothing
Any Ideas


THE Penguin stands tall

Does it freeze or does it hang (what happens if you press Ctrl+Alt+Del)?

If it's hanging (responding), you may have a problem starting X - try booting withand see what happens; if you get a prompt, you should be able to run(I think DSL boots to a root prompt; on a user's prompt, use sudo).

Or try booting with noacpi... Anyhow, a full list of cheat codes is here: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i...hp/Cheat_Codes

And if that doesn't work you might try at the boot prompt.

Luck,
_nick

Edit: Sorry, i can't read.

Hi,

You have my sympathy. My Toshiba 480CDT used to stop one line sooner than yours. After much trial and error, I was able to solve the problem by booting with the "lowram" cheatcode, which skips a lot of the steps during booting. That worked well, but it did cut out other stuff that I wanted.

Later, having time to experiment with the various "no----" cheatcodes (instructing the booting to skip specific steps) I tracked the trouble down to usb. Now I boot "nousb" when using DSL, and it works great, [although I assume there's no usb usability!] Perhaps there is just one hardware item causing your problem that you could isolate in this way?

As background information: I am dual booting (modified frugal installs) with DSL on hda1 and DSL-N on hda2. DSL-N can detect my usb; DSL cannot. So, I am hopeful of being able to use DSL-N for usb functions (my cd rewriter) at a later date, while still enjoying DSL's speed and versatility for everything else.

Best wishes,

T.

P.S.: The more I do with DSL, the more I love it!

I fiqured what was the problem
because Kernel 2.6 didn't have support for my older hardware
so I downloaded the apporiate version

Hey there. Hope your still active to see this. I signed up for a few questions AND to tell you thanks. I'm trying to put DSL on my toshiba satellite pro 490xcdt and the 'nousb' did the trick.

Does this mean I can never use a USB on here tho? It was integral to what I wanted to use my lappy for

Regret I don't know the answer yet... haven't had time to work on it. It would be most valuable to me, too, to know how to use the USB after having to do a "no usb" boot in DSL. Has anyone here done this?

I found a old toshiba and am trying to put dsl on it. it was running win2kpro and very poorly at that. In trying to remove the win2kpro i got frustrated and just ended up running killdisk to kill windows...and everything else on there. The toshiba has a floppy drive. the cd drive is broken and wont read. and the old bios couldn't boot from usb. i've been getting it to start booting from usb with a dsl boot disket. Mine goes further then yours,

PCMCIA found,starting cardmgr
cardmgr[119]; starting, version is 3.2.2
USB found managed by hotplug : (Re-)scanning USB devices...sync:[001 002 ]Done.
autoconfiguring devices... Done
Mouse is Generic ps/2 wheel mouse at /dev/psaux
soundcar: Acer laboratories Inc. [ALi]IM5451 PCI South Bridge Audio driver=trident
AGP bridge detected
Scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /ect/fstab...

then it stops doing anything. any ideas how i can get dsl to run so i can make it the os? other wise i got my self a paperweight with buttons.
any help is good i'm very new to linux

well, if it gets stuck at the harddrive part i'd say start there. download "The Ultimate Boot Disc" (just google it) and use one of the partition managers to set up your partitions (I use the cute partitioner). Maybe even use it to zero the drive if that first bit doesn't work.
DSL has cfdisk for partitioning, but I kept having strange issues where the partition table would claim more space than existed on the disc when I used the cfdisk command.

You should always try to post at least a little info about the machine itself. I have a Toshiba too, but if you ran Win2k on yours then it must be better than the one I've got.

Also, what boot options have you tried? I have to use nousb but you say you have a floppy allowing it to boot from usb, this is interesting to me because I never could find a way to make my Toshiba do that. Have you ever managed a full boot at all?

Your lack of CD DRIVE is the hardest part.

If that don't work you could just let me have it

Hi again,

Just a note on how I solved the "not having a good cd drive" problem in a low-tech way, in case it would be of help to you:

eBay occasionally has a cd drive for the Toshiba 480cdt and also the external floppy drive which makes it possible to run both floppy and cd together. After posting a search there, in a few months I had the necessary parts for about £10 sterling.

I found the manual for the laptop on the Toshiba website. (Inconveniently, it was in "live" form (not print) that has to be downloaded and installed before the relevant parts can be printed.) I downloaded it to a Win 95 machine for the purpose.

Since I do not have a cd writer, I obtained the cd through an outfit called LinuxCD.org. They have many distros ready for shipping for a minimal service fee, plus will write specific requests for you to cd or dvd. (The site does require script - it took me a while to figure that out, since I don't normally use script in my browser....) They have been consistently prompt, helpful, and reliable, and I would recommend them highly as a result.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: This is at www.linuxcd.org and NOT at linux.cd.org, which is one of those horrible "squatters"!!!)

The only drawbacks to this approach that I found was the need for having a Paypal account and secure system, to use it, plus a bit of cash. So it won't work if you don't have access to a secure system and quite a bit of time! But perhaps it may suit you.

I hope this may be useful. Best regards.

Tisha

[QUOTE=AndaleTheGreat;3448279

Also, what boot options have you tried? I have to use nousb but you say you have a floppy allowing it to boot from usb, this is interesting to me because I never could find a way to make my Toshiba do that. Have you ever managed a full boot at all?

Your lack of CD DRIVE is the hardest part.

If that don't work you could just let me have it [/QUOTE]



I have Damn small boot disk that has the option to
Boot: dsl fromusb
but i havent manged a full boot yet due to the previousely stated problem. i think it may be due to the fact that i used killdisk to whipe the HD clean and it is freezing since there is no partion on the drive. or fdisk/or cfdisk. no kernle what so ever... if anyone has insite send it my way. cause right now i'm lost.

have you run with options toram and norestore?
the reason for norestore is i had a corrupted drive once and it would not load DSL on that comp cuz it kept checking first for a restore on a bad drive. i ran with norestore and got it.
really, my suggestion is to start at the lowest end possible, using the options to remove everything you can. put it all back one option at a time til it stops working.
I'm sorry i can't be of more help, but noone else seems to be responding so i thought i'd work with what i know to have worked for me.

OK--This is strange-I also have a old Toshiba 7000CT-no CDROM, 1 USB-wont boot from, and 1 floppy. I got DSL to boot from USB using the DSL bootfloppy, ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distribu...small/current/

Then, I could boot from the USB, but it would freeze at the"acpi bios found, etc." It never gets to "autoconfiguring devices".
I tried failsafe-no luck!
I have successfully installed these distro's on the Toshiba 7000CT(160MB RAM, puny 4GB HD, Neomagics graphics)---GoblinX 2.7 Mini or Micro, Wolvix Hunter or Cub, Puppy 4.1.2, and the very best one I found that could run fast and would give me a good resolution(better than 640x480) is Crunchbang-Lite 8.04. I can't give enough praise to Crunchbang, as it seems to be especially setup so that the GUI buttons aren't "out-of-reach", meaning that if your running in 640x480-you can't click any button cause it's offscreen!
The Cons to Crunchbang are that it will gobble-up about 10%-20% more RAM than either GoblinX, Wolvix, or Puppy. And installed it takes up about 1.5GB of my 4GB HD!
I really wanna get DSL onto my laptop-so I'll be reading this thread alot!

Well i've tried norestore toram and loram....notihng still it gets to the
Scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab
sooo frustrating.
could this all be due to the fact that i have a freshly swiped hd (via kill disk) and no partitions?

Could you try removing the hard drive, to see if that makes a difference?

My reasoning is that I've seen references on the web to running DSL without a hard drive (some successful, some not), so this might be a way to isolate whether it is causing your problem....

(Just a guess!)

Good luck!