Hello!

I am trying to install DSL to a HDD. The computer is a Pentium, 166 (I believe, maybe 266- I am not at home) Mhz with 64Mb Ram and two HDD. It had Windows 98 running on it. I am trying to install to the 2nd HDD, a 833 Mb.

I was successful installing via floppy/CDROM, but had not partitioned the HDD for a swap. I tried to do so using cfdisk, and after a few tries was not successful. I wrote zeroes to the disk using dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (where hda is my 833 Mb disk).

I then tried installing several times. My last attempt I erased all the partitions and repartioned (725 Mb linux, balance linux swap). I got verification from cfdisk that the partitions wrote successfully. I went through the install procedure using a floppy/cdrom, picking option "3" (HDD install). I choose the Lilo boot manager, multiple users, no referencing of files options. I then reboot, remove the floppy/cdrom. At this time, the boot fails. I get to the point where it is (paraphrased) 'checkingg DMI pool'. It never gets past this point. The hard drive is apparently not recognized by bios (?). I went through various bios options, but none seemed to help. I did forget to mkwap on the last attempt, but I did in previous attempts, and got the same result. I will do that before proceeding.

Note: I tried the Grub installer once, but it also did not work. When I tried to switch to Lilo, the Grub install still lingered and hung up. This is when I "zeroed" the disk with dd.

One issue is that if DOS based cfdisk is used, special arrangements need to be made (writing zeroes to the first 512 bytes of the boot sector or something like that), but I am assuming that DSL cfdisk is Linux cfdisk, not DOS 6.x .

Any ideas? Any help would be much appreciated!

I think the instructions on damnsmalllinux.org are wrong and have been that way for a year. I get stuck on mkliloboot -- command not found. But no answers yet where I posted that question below.

Interesting thing is that the installation worked the first time, but I did not partition, so I had no swap. Maybe I should try and decode the script, and see how DSL partitions.

Another thing I may try is to erase the partitions, reinstall default (like the first time), then after successfully booting (if this occurs), I will create a swap on hdb1 (a second smaller hard dirive).

Well, I zeroed out the disk again, and installed DSL onto /dev/hda . This worked. It states (on the dektop) there are 124 Mb of swap. Not sure if the DSL script created it. I will check out later. cfdisk indicates only one partition of 853 Mb (Free Space/PRI). I tried using cfdisk to create a swap space on /dev/hdb1 (130 Mb). Not sure if the device is being recognized.

At least I am making progress.