Hello from Ottawa …

[Member RJLegault]

…Canada, not Kansas 🙂

Been using Linux since Kernal 1.5 and been through Redhat(pre-Canonical), Mandrake, Suse,Ubuntu Xbian, Mint and MX (best general-pupose desktop ever)before deciding to try Antix to breathe some life into my old laptop.

They each had pros and cons and it has been fun watching Linux become a dull-fledged desktop system.

The target machine is a 10 year old beast with the screen dangling from broken hinges that I still use with a similarly outdated external monitor

My main machine is an HP Elitebook on which I will continue to.enjoy MX Linux.

Thanks for se great diatro! I think the Systemd Borging of Linux is sad, and I plan to stay clear of it as long as possible – so thanks for not falling down that well.

Sadly my efforts to get Antix 17 up on the old beast have not been successful, so far. The bios won’t support USB boot and a burned ISO won’t boot on either of my machines

I tested both of them with Xubutu live with no issue, but the DVD drive hates Antix.

Will post diagnostics later.

It does boot from USB on my contempprary laptop and is brilliant for older hardware – so I am not giving up yet.

Thanks to the team and community

Randy

[Forum Admin Dave]

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I have had the worst of luck lately trying to install off of cds / dvds. I think it is because they are so rarely used on the target machines. They seem to work fine on the one computer that the disk drive is used more regularly on. Instead (when I cannot boot usb) I remove the hdd and connect it to another computer via an usb converter. Partition it so there is the main install ext4 partition (majority of the drive) and a small ext4 partition (to be used as swap later). I then copy the iso and extract it to the small partition. After that I install grub to the mbr of the disk and point it to the small partition configured like a “live usb” or “frugal install”. After this and installing the drive back into the old computer I boot the computer and install to the main partition (without swap at the moment). After the reboot finishing the install I run gparted and format the small partition for swap and edit fstab to add the swap partition.

Hope this helps if you cannot get an install any other way.
P.S. If you plan to try other iso’s (or upgrade / reinsall) it is nice to leave the small partition for the ISO and make a separate swap partition. That way you can copy the iso to the small partition and modify grub to point to it. Saving you from most of the above procedure with removing the drive and adapting it with another computer, chrooting, and manually having to modify fstab for a swap partition.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member RJLegault]

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Have already been working in that direction following:

Installation Tips (antix.mepis.org)

I also moved the vmlinux and initrd.gz files to the root of the partition.

Turning to grub configurations — completely stumped.

I have many times built dual boot with Grub, but never with the overlay of scripting Antix uses.

I am not sure where to begin to add the required specification to boot from the partition.

Any thoughts?

Randy

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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screen dangling from broken hinges that I still use

Howdy and Welcome. Been in your shoes before.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/fixing-old-gear.html

More than once even

Grub editing is done /etc/default/

harry@biker:~
$ cd /etc/default
harry@biker:/etc/default
$ ls
acpid         console-setup  grub       irqbalance  nss       rsyslog        tmpfs
acpi-support  cron           grub.bkup  keyboard    ntpdate   saned          ufw
avahi-daemon  cryptdisks     halt       locale      numlockx  smartmontools  unclutter
bluetooth     dbus           hwclock    networking  rcS       ssh            useradd
bsdmainutils  devpts         ifplugd    nfs-common  rsync     tlp            wicd

Notice my backup < named grub.bkup > ? I backup certain files right after a install. Just habit now. I don’t dual boot anymore either, Though I used to be a grub4dos fanatic years ago.

Now I just swap out hard drives instead of editing grub. Takes me about 5 minutes. You might want to start a thread in New Users for your grub problem.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by rokytnji.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Oh yeah. My IBM T23 and Panasonic CF-48 don’t support usb boot in the bios either. But I get usb to boot off of usb 1.1 ports with my PLOP Floppy disk I made for the panasonic. Plus. My PLOP CD I made for my IBM laptop.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

It is just easier for me than making a grub to boot to usb cd or floppy image. I know D.O. made a frugal install tutorial recently though I have not checked it out yet. Been busy on my motorcycles. \

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member RJLegault]

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will follow this path when I get a few minutes:

/usr/share/info/grub.info.gz
File: grub.info, Node: Multi-boot manual config, Next: Embedded configuration, Prev: Shell-like scripting, Up: Configuration

6.3 Multi-boot manual config
============================

Currently autogenerating config files for multi-boot environments
depends on os-prober and has several shortcomings. While fixing it is
scheduled for the next release, meanwhile you can make use of the power
of GRUB syntax and do it yourself. A possible configuration is detailed
here, feel free to adjust to your needs.

First create a separate GRUB partition, big enough to hold GRUB. Some
of the following entries show how to load OS installer images from this
same partition, for that you obviously need to make the partition large
enough to hold those images as well. Mount this partition on/mnt/boot
and disable GRUB in all OSes and manually install self-compiled latest
GRUB with:

‘grub-install –boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda’

In all the OSes install GRUB tools but disable installing GRUB in
bootsector, so you’ll have menu.lst and grub.cfg available for use.
Also disable os-prober use by setting:

‘GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true’

in /etc/default/grub

Then write a grub.cfg (/mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg):

menuentry “OS using grub2” {
insmod xfs
search –set=root –label OS1 –hint hd0,msdos8
configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg
}

menuentry “OS using grub2-legacy” {
insmod ext2
search –set=root –label OS2 –hint hd0,msdos6
legacy_configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst
}

menuentry “Windows XP” {
insmod ntfs
search –set=root –label WINDOWS_XP –hint hd0,msdos1
ntldr /ntldr
}

menuentry “Windows 7” {
insmod ntfs
search –set=root –label WINDOWS_7 –hint hd0,msdos2
ntldr /bootmgr
}

menuentry “FreeBSD” {
insmod zfs
search –set=root –label freepool –hint hd0,msdos7
kfreebsd /freebsd@/boot/kernel/kernel
kfreebsd_module_elf /freebsd@/boot/kernel/opensolaris.ko
kfreebsd_module_elf /freebsd@/boot/kernel/zfs.ko
kfreebsd_module /freebsd@/boot/zfs/zpool.cache type=/boot/zfs/zpool.cache
set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom=zfs:freepool/freebsd
set kFreeBSD.hw.psm.synaptics_support=1
}

menuentry “experimental GRUB” {
search –set=root –label GRUB –hint hd0,msdos5
multiboot /experimental/grub/i386-pc/core.img
}

menuentry “Fedora 16 installer” {
search –set=root –label GRUB –hint hd0,msdos5
linux /fedora/vmlinuz lang=en_US keymap=sg resolution=1280×800
initrd /fedora/initrd.img
}

menuentry “Fedora rawhide installer” {
search –set=root –label GRUB –hint hd0,msdos5
linux /fedora/vmlinuz repo=ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/x86_64 lang=en_US keymap=sg resolution=1280×800
initrd /fedora/initrd.img
}

menuentry “Debian sid installer” {
search –set=root –label GRUB –hint hd0,msdos5
linux /debian/dists/sid/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/vmlinuz
initrd /debian/dists/sid/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/initrd.gz
}

Notes:
* Argument to search after -label is FS LABEL. You can also use UUIDs
with -fs-uuid UUID instead of -label LABEL. You could also use
direct ‘root=hd0,msdosX’ but this is not recommended due to device
name instability.

[Forum Admin Dave]

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Going off of memory (without doing it again, as I never get it first try 😉 ) once you have made the partitions and extracted the iso to the partition you would
Mount the partition (typically sdb[0-9]) assuming sdb2 (would need to find out with blkid or fdisk -l
mkdir /mnt/sdb2 && mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/sdb2
Then see what directory the grub folder is in (/boot/grub/ I think)
find /mnt/sdb2 |grep -i “grub”
then install grub to the mbr of sdb
grub-install –boot-directory=/boot/grub /dev/sdb (it might be /mnt/sdb2/boot/grub)
then edit /mnt/sdb2/boot/grub/grub.cfg and add an entry to it like (please note sdb changes to sda as it will be the primary drive when you move it to the other computer)
`menuentry “Live For Install” {
set root='(hd0,msdos2)’
linux /antiX/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 bdev=/dev/sda2 quiet
initrd /antiX/initrd.gz
}

Edit: just noticed d.o. Has a video on frugal installs which should help

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Dave.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by anticapitalista. Reason: shrunk video

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member RJLegault]

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TX a lot of this is a refresher for
E. Been a while since I didn’t just use installer.

[Member RJLegault]

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I tried: USB boot / DVD boot / Boot from partition / boot from USB external HD / Core / Full – no joy.

Prepared to say that this is an issue with Antix, since Xubutu and MX-linux live discs boot.

MX-17-1 installed and runs very well. Stripped out xfce and going with LXDE.

Would like to see the Antix cli tools ported to MX.

Will check in from time to time to see if a working live DVD image becomes available.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by RJLegault.

[Member seaken64]

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Hi RJLegault. Welcome to antiX.

I am also new to antiX and I also found some anomolies with booting antiX-17. I don’t understand it all myself. FWIW I did finally get it installed by using my DVD drive with the Live USB key inserted into the USB port. This happened by accident. I had tried to use Plop from the DVD drive to boot the USB but it wouldn’t work. I decided to burn a DVD and I booted from that. I got into the menu and launched the live session. The installer started from the DVD but then switched in mid-stream to the USB and finished the install from that USB drive. I got the live session up and then chose to install from the icon on the desktop.

Maybe you can get your USB to boot with Plop? Or maybe a function key to choose the boot device? I had to use F12 on this old P-III.

Sean

[Moderator caprea]

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Yeah, I also had this happening the first time by accident.
But you can choose this option, if you have a DVD and a usb-stick with the same antix-system.
Choose under the F4 options the from=usb and even a PC which won’t support USB boot, will boot from the usb-stick.
Very nice feature !

[Member RJLegault]

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Hmm. Will have to give that a try.

The target machine is generally left on and I noticed that over the course of a few days running MX-17 LXDE, conky hogged 75% of the available memory (as reported by conky and htop).

Will check back when I try the double media trick. I can see how it might work.

R

[Author]

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