- This topic has 104 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated Apr 7-6:42 am by Irina060.
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madibi
@Irina060
I have not written any more as people much more competent than me have intervened.
One thing I usually do with old hdd’s is to buy a case with a usb output to use them as large USB sticks.
Now I have 2 of those hd with antiX and I use it for a lot of purposes. So I think to know a bit what I am going to say.What you have is an old laptop that doesn’t boot with antiX live, Instead we know that it works with an antiX installed on an usb stick.
What I suggest is:
why not use antiX by starting it from the usb stick? Always!
Then, in a second moment you can transfer the /home partition to the internal hd. This for both reasons of space and speed.At a third time, if you want, through another legacy PC you can also complete the installation of antiX to the internal hd. Having the /home partition already on the internal hd you will no longer have to redo all the customizations.
This 3rd step is completely optional- This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by madibi.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by madibi.
Irina060
Well, that option is interesting not gonna lie, but I dont see the appeal. Btw I use a msata ssd as hdd. It is much smaller but using an msata to ide adapter I can use it just fine and I find it faster. Also sadly most ide hdd are clicky and start to fail at times.
One option I tried was taking the laptop ssd place it in an external usb case and try to install antix that way and it does install but the grub is messed up.
I will keep trying for days and maybe even weeks before considering your idea of using the usb always, because although it will work I dont like it as much like thatModdIt
Irina060 wrote: Btw I use a msata ssd as hdd using an msata to ide adapter.
Which is an extremely important piece of previously witheld information.
And may well be the reason why you are unable to get a booting installation.
Try to install to a device the computer was designed for without any third
party adapter your chance of success will be far greater.- This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by ModdIt.
Using msata solved a couple of issues I had on windows 7. I would prefer to keep the msata at all cost because it is more reliable. Also copying the installer from the live cd works but the installer doesnt recognise the partitions. And gparted doesnt even recognise the ssd. Chroot now doesnt recognise anything. But super grub2 cd recognises both windows xp and 7 which still boot using that utility. Could I install grub4dos from there?
I still havent tried the live usb method with the gfx-cpio.xxx which probably wont work but Im trying everything at this pointHey, so the gfx-cpio.xxx live usb worked flawlessly (kinda, with some graphical errors), desktop load 100% fine and Im now prociding to install antix. I’ll come back with results in some time, hopefully there are no more issues. I’ll let everyone know 🙂
It is going through the installation yet. It took some hours and now it is stuck at 95%, installing grub. But it gave me this error (which I will upload as image) “grub installation failed. You can reboot the live medium and use the grub rescue menu to repair the installation”. Should I just wait and see if it goes past this but itself or should I do the repair option? Im thinking I could completly delete grub and try to install it again, or place the windows 7 cd to repair boot and then try this installation again.
I feel Im almost there but this grub thing is giving so much troubleTrying to reinstall grub gave me this error: cannot read `dev/sda/’: input/output error
Trying to fix grub gave me this error: usr/bin/grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of `dev/sda3’
I dont know what that really means but sucks. I’ll try more tomorrow 🙂@irina060
I have updated the titel of the thread and added info to first post so as to give potential helpers a more complete and
factual picture of the situation.
In future, please when asked for information on hardware give a full description and stop pointing to antiX for issues occurring
due your extremely unusual hardware experiments.- This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by ModdIt.
@moddit
I have a desktop Acer from 2007 (former win XP) where I put a very old hd 2,5″ from a died laptop and and adapter isa-sata. There my antiX was installed with no probs and the few times I use it, it works flawlessy.@Irina060
what surprise me in your descriptions is that installing antiX in your system takes a lot of hours. On very old hw from 2002 my antiX installation lasted max 45′. I’d rather focus my attention on the hw compatibility of your system. To my experience very old hw doesn’t work very well with new generation hw (as your ssd is).
Anyway, my suggestion, for your very old and a bit complicate hw, is to dedicate the smallest usb stick that you have to to make the boot (it’s enough one <512Mb).
Then, to make it to work:
1. you have an antiX installed in sda, now without grub,
2. you put an usb stick in sdb,
3. with boot repair, you install grub in sdb.
4. when you want to start antiX, you boot through plop the usb stick in sdb to boot your antiX in sda.The advantage of this system is that in this way you can immediately test if your system works properly with antiX
EDIT
In case of a new installation (again), when you have to say to the installer where to put grub, you write the port where it is located the usb stick dedicated to grub. This one should be different from the port where there is the antix-iso- This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by madibi.
Hi, yes Im sorry I didnt include that information earlier I didnt know it was relevant. I also apologise I didnt want to sound like it was antix fault, at first I thought it might have been but the athlon desktop proved me wrong. I only want to install antix to this system I didnt mean any trouble.
I will try to install grub to sdb after a bit of twicking first. Now the boot repair is asking me to select a /boot location… but I dont have one I only created a root and home partitions. Should I try to delete the home partition, add more space to root and then create a boot partition with about 5gbs? I didnt know I needed a /boot partition as I tried to install grub to sda MBR.
caprea
The idea of madibi is perhaps a good compromise, anyway it’s good to hear you can now boot a live-cd or usb.
I’m glad about your perseverance solving your problems and until now the thought would not have occurred to me you are giving antiX the fault.
I guess your ssd is seen in bios as as boot-device, you could might try to change it from sata to ahci mode, but then your already installed windows probably gets a problem to boot.
Edit: Bootrepair asks for the “location”, which is sda in your case
and for “select root location” which is the partion where antiX is installed- This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by caprea.
Windows xp and 7 gave me no trouble really. My bios is pretty simple, no ahci mode or anything. It detects it as a standard ide drive. Although now non of the windows can boot on their own because of the grub that doesnt recognise my partitions (this is the grub that was installed when I tried to use an external usb enclousure, I cant seem to get rid of it). They are still there and bootable with super grub2 disk. Now Im trying to install grub again but it is asking for a /boot partition.
Hi Irina, my comments were intended to inform not accuse.
Having had interesting experiences with adaptersboth donated and purchased, IDE SATA, SATA IDE, IDE to MSATA, it is easier to
understand (hopefuly) issues knowing what is in use.
Some adapters never work, some worked sometimes on some devices, and some, in particular the more expensive powered type
have proved really good. But getting stable 5 Volts safely in a laptop can be quite involved.
As caprea pointed out if you have a setting legacy boot, sata ahci do try the different options. Caveat. Not just windoze will
get a problem if changes are made after installation, linux can also break.What makes me suspect the adapter might be problematic is that you also had issues with the athlon device and same setup.
Do you have details for the adapter, searching with specific details can yield helpful information.
That it is possible to boot from USB-CD is good, quite a feat for such an old device, and your perseverance is indeed admirable.
The adapter does have much written on it: “msata to ide, 2014-13-12, rev 3.3” The package it came in had this written: “28759 A52D2” No brand or anything else sadly.
The bios doesnt include a legacy boot option or sata. I installed xp with sata drivers included on a floppy (from my dads old collection) and 7 was no issue. Now to be completly honest, I dont mind losing both xp and 7 because those install easily and I only have a couple of games on them, along with some programming stuff too but I already have it backed up. So if it is better to install antix and then xp and 7, you tell me and I will wipe the ssd and try to do that. At this point I’ll try anything 🙂caprea
One more thing comes to mind, you have to, always before installation, update the installer.Bug fixes have been added and compatibility
improved since the release of antiX21.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install --reinstall antix-installer
Hopefully you have a working internet connection during live-session.
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