[hllug] "It was then that I knew I had made my first mistake..."
- From: Cranz Nichols <wb5bkl@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: LIST - HLLug <hllug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:05:23 -0600
- with apologies to Lyle Lovett*
Here is a long and boring account of the errors I made while trying
to get DSL running on an old ThinkPad 380D laptop. I hope you find it
either informative or amusing.
I made dozens of errors, but I believe that there were just four really
bad ones. Some would say that attempting to install DSL on this old
laptop was my first mistake, but....
When I got the laptop, it would not boot. Some Googling revealed that
it was a clock battery problem. Once the battery was replaced, I could
boot and saw that there was a version of Windows 95 on the machine. As
I had promised to wipe the disc, I decided to go ahead with the DSL
install.
Lee provided a DSL demo/install CD and we gave it several tries at the
Marble Falls HLLUG meeting, but during the infrequent times that the
CD drive got through the boot, the distorted display stymied me.
We did try several vga settings, but the proper combination of vga
entry, running xsetup.sh, running startx, and trying to operate in RAM
did not lend itself to a quick fix. The duff CD drive and lack of
knowledge did me in.
Lee did suggest that an HD install would allow an easier fix to the
display problem (he was right), so I took it home and continued my
attempts.
Over the next several weeks, I would occasionally try various options,
continuing to fight the bad CD drive. A few times, I got far enough
to format the disc and made my (most serious) FIRST MISTAKE:
I was trying to format the disc from the BEGINNING of the available
space and not the end. I would learn, the hard way, that this
apparently interfered with the grub installation - though the error
presented ("/dev/cloop does not have any corresponding BIOS driver"),
seemed to have no relationship to the grub install. Later, I would
learn that I had successfully installed the OS on the disc - several
times - but the grub install always failed.
At the next Marble Falls HLLUG meeting, John did a hard drive-ectomy
and Lee provided a IDE adapter.
At home, I connected the laptop HD to a Fedora system using the
IDE/USB adapter and saw that the OS was present. This was
encouraging. Then I made my SECOND MISTAKE:
I was not connecting it consistently. I connected it to a Fedora
system and noted that I had an OS installed, but when I substituted the
laptop hard disc for the hard disc in one of my old CompaQs, I did not
realize that one of the connectors was unpolarized and that resulted in
an ambiguity in the connection. It took some time for me to figure this out.
Connected properly, I was off and running.
Again, I did a cfdisk and partitioned and then a hard disc install
with the laptop HD in the CompaQ. Each time, the install would fail
when it got to the boot loader portion, regardless of whether I chose
grub or lilo. The error displayed ("/dev/cloop does not have any
corresponding BIOS driver") was reported commonly on the internet, but
no solutions were ever proposed that actually addressed my problem.
While my son Ian was here, I gave it one more try, telling him that
I suspected partitioning problems. I partitioned from the END of the
hard drive and the problem was immediately solved and the DSL system
booted nicely in the CompaQ surrogate..
Ian then helped me reassemble the ThinkPad, with no parts left over
other than the infamous spring that John or Lee left for us.
A boot of the ThinkPad was semi-successful, with the OS obviously
loaded but the display was almost completely unusable.
Here is where I made my THIRD MISTAKE: I ignored Ian's advice to
connect an external display to use while attacking the ThinkPad
display problem.
After many frustrating attempts to use xsetup.sh to address the
problem, I turned to grub and researched it on the internet. Several
sources suggested that the vga "cheatcode' be changed to 787 to
address the problem.
I learned how to break into the grub boot loader and change its
settings on the fly - this was very helpful - but I had no success
because of my FOURTH MISTAKE: I did not understand the relationship
between the grub loader and the changes produced by xsetup.sh...
I would try a vga cheatcode, boot to a distorted display, then run
xsetup.sh and startx without success. The next boot would be with a
_different_ cheatcode - thus apparently negating the changes I completed
with xsetup.sh. Sigh.
I continued to struggle, learning how to convert hex display codes to
vesa after finding the supported modes for the video card. Everything
pointed me back to the first code I had tried, 787.
Finally, I stumbled on the proper sequence of changes. Change the
grub vga entry - boot - run xsetup.sh - and then reboot with the SAME
vga code. Sigh
Life is a learning experience.
cln
Meanest Man on Emeralds Drive
* from "Her First Mistake"
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