A few problems...

PermaBanned

PermaBanned

PermaBanned

Soldato
Joined
7 Jul 2009
Posts
16,234
Location
Newcastle/Aberdeen
Well in an act of kindness i decided to fix my dad up with a PC from spare parts lying around the house. It's gone a lot better than i thought it would have... here's the basics:

PII with MMX
ATI Rage Pro 3D (assuming drivers work? how to check)
Creative CT2959
7GB Maxtor HDD
280MB RAM
and what makes it all worth it... Slitaz!

So yeah, boots up in well less than a minute and works fine for most tasks... namely web browsing and word processing. I'd be quite happy to leave it at that, but i thought i should iron out the niggles and 'optimise' it before handing it over. So if you don't much mind i'll start out with the three major ones (discounting the above):

  • Sound - As far as i'm aware EVERY Creative ISA Sound Card is supported by the ALSA drivers. Drivers that are included with every 2.6 kernel (Slitaz 3.0 uses 2.6.30.6). So i'm not entirely sure why it doesn't work. And by doesn't work i mean 'no sound output at all'. Strange thing is, i can't see the volume control on the panel and i'm unable to open alsamixer. I did install this card after the OS installation however, but i did have the same problems beforehand.
  • Swap - I decided to complement the RAM by using some precious hard drive space as SWAP. 900ish MB just to round it off. Again, i did this after the OS installation but i'm not entirely sure it's seen it, never mind used it. It's not in 'Mountbox' but i don't really know how to check. System Information showed a certain number of bytes that looked close enough to 280MB, the 'Virtual Memory' was higher but again i'm not sure.
  • Minitube - Less important i know, but rather than installing flash i thought it would be a good idea to try out this Minitube program i heard people talking about in the 10.04 thread. Obviously with a PII you'd still have to be patient but that's not the problem... the problem is that i have no idea how to install it :D

So that's it for now... i'm a bit stumpted, might be a few problems with the distro itself but i did check the MD5 before. Thanks in advance :)
 
Superewza said:
Sound - As far as i'm aware EVERY Creative ISA Sound Card is supported by the ALSA drivers. Drivers that are included with every 2.6 kernel (Slitaz 3.0 uses 2.6.30.6). So i'm not entirely sure why it doesn't work. And by doesn't work i mean 'no sound output at all'. Strange thing is, i can't see the volume control on the panel and i'm unable to open alsamixer. I did install this card after the OS installation however, but i did have the same problems beforehand.
Click to expand...

Could you post the output of lspci, please? :)

Superewza said:
Swap - I decided to complement the RAM by using some precious hard drive space as SWAP. 900ish MB just to round it off. Again, i did this after the OS installation but i'm not entirely sure it's seen it, never mind used it. It's not in 'Mountbox' but i don't really know how to check. System Information showed a certain number of bytes that looked close enough to 280MB, the 'Virtual Memory' was higher but again i'm not sure.
Click to expand...

I think you should be able to check if the partition is actually there by issuing "fdisk -l" as root.

Did you just make a swap partition or did you activate it as well? I think you need to do "mkswap /path" to do that. Then you need to make sure that you add it to /etc/fstab. So imagine that you've created your swap partition as /dev/sda4. You would then add the following to /etc/fstab:

Code: 
/dev/sda4              swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

And when you reboot, it should be seen. To check, you can use "free -m" and this will show you how much swap space you have. This is what it looks like on my server.

Code: 
joel@canary ~
> free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           494        484         10          0         70        316
-/+ buffers/cache:         97        397
Swap:         2047          0       2047
 
Sure (sorry it took so long, had to find a PS/2 mouse with a middle button to paste):

Code: 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 02)
00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9/0/1 Ethernet Pro 100 (rev 05)
00:14.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
00:14.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:14.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:14.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro AGP 1X (rev 5c)

As for the partition, i just made it. But i can't check it, because sudo doesn't work. I installed it from the package manager and ran the command, this is what i got:

Code: 
[[B]user[/B]]@slitaz:~$ sudo fdisk-l

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

    #1) Respect the privacy of others.
    #2) Think before you type.
    #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password: 
[[B]user[/B]] is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.

But then obviously without sudo i can't edit the sudoers file.

Code: 
[[b]user[/b]]@slitaz:~$ leafpad /etc/sudoers
Failed to open file '/etc/sudoers': Permission denied

So it just goes in a loop. The program that gives me permissions can't give me permissions because i don't have permissions... if that makes sense. My fstab looks like this however (without me making any changes):

Code: 
# /etc/fstab: Information about static filesystems.
#
proc            /proc        proc    defaults          0       0
sysfs           /sys         sysfs   defaults          0       0
devpts          /dev/pts     devpts  defaults          0       0
tmpfs           /dev/shm     tmpfs   defaults          0       0
#/dev/hda3       /home        ext3    defaults          0       2
#/dev/hdb1       /mnt/data    ext3    defaults          0       2
/dev/hda2       /home        ext3    defaults          0       2
/dev/cdrom      /media/cdrom iso9660 user,ro,noauto       0       0
/dev/hda3	swap	swap	default	0 0

and the 'free -m' command just gives me this:

Code: 
[[b]user[/b]]@slitaz:~$ free -m
BusyBox v1.12.0 (2010-03-12 18:25:03 CET) multi-call binary

Usage: free 

Display the amount of free and used system memory

Thanks.
 
Actually, it doesn't matter now. The power supply gave up pretty much as i was typing and rather than just replace it i remembered i have a PIII era Celeron rig that i bought from a friend for £1. Should be fine, but since it's only got two slots and i'm using the same RAM i've only got something like 198MB. Thing now though is that i've got a few choices of distribution, i think i'll let him make the ultimate decision but what do you think, out of these?

Lubuntu
Debian XFCE
Slitaz
Mint 8 LXDE
Debian XFCE Base with LXDE and some more apps to make it act and look like Lubuntu or Mint 8 but hopefully with a Debian base it will be a lot faster.
Something else.

Thanks.
 
Superewza said:
Actually, it doesn't matter now. The power supply gave up pretty much as i was typing and rather than just replace it i remembered i have a PIII era Celeron rig that i bought from a friend for £1. Should be fine, but since it's only got two slots and i'm using the same RAM i've only got something like 198MB. Thing now though is that i've got a few choices of distribution, i think i'll let him make the ultimate decision but what do you think, out of these?

Lubuntu
Debian XFCE
Slitaz
Mint 8 LXDE
Debian XFCE Base with LXDE and some more apps to make it act and look like Lubuntu or Mint 8 but hopefully with a Debian base it will be a lot faster.
Something else.

Thanks.
Click to expand...


with that amount of ram it might be an idea to use a base install of debian and install only the packages you want. I've done the same on one of my boxes which has a similar spec. it is quite nicely running fluxbox window manager with a few light weight apps and it's got quite a spring in it's step :)
 
Oh, another one i forgot to add to that list was Crunchbang Slater.

I tried Arch before and while i love any distro that includes space invaders in the bootloader i just couldn't get the installer to give me a working OS with a GUI.

But i'm liking NicNac's suggestion... thing is though the boot speed in 10.04 is blisteringly fast, and i don't think i could replicate that by installing different packages.

But if Lubuntu uses about half as much RAM as Xubuntu, and Debian XFCE also uses about half as much then an LXDE based Debian build would be brilliant.
 
Oxy said:
Arch linux destroy's all.

Did you follow the beginners guide?
Click to expand...

I did not, where might that be?

I'll tell you something though, all this messing around with 10 year old hardware has made me realise that for most users all of this cutting edge multi core technology just isn't necessary. I could probably make do with an Intel Atom or VIA C7 with the right OS.
 
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide

The Arch wiki is perhaps the best wiki I've ever used. You can also get support on #archlinux and, if needs be, you can email me about stuff, or ask here. :)

As for the Atom thing, yeah, you really could. A 330 and ION is what one of my friends runs, with Arch, and that's good enough for a whole bunch of things. I kinda feel guilty that I've got an i7 and use it for less intensive things than they do >.<
 
Thanks for the link, i'll look through it but really, how hard can it be to make an installer like pretty much every other distribution has? Even Slitaz is easy to install, so it can't be a question of resources of size.

Hmm... currently doing my work experience placement for the council in Quadrant IT dept. and they often use TCDs, or Thin Client Devices. Now having a look through the BIOS of one it seemed pretty decent, a 1GHz Via C7 with 512MB RAM. Little onboard storage, but i could deal with that considering you can get similar models on the bay used for around £10.

That's less than it would cost to upgrade the RAM in this machine!
 
The Arch wiki is truely amazing, blows debian and ubuntu help pages out of the water.

Arch is ace because it's easy to install with some small linux knowledge, you get to choose the GUI, the programs etc. Take this for instance I was having problems with Alsa so instead of faffing around I just removed it and installed OSS, which worked by default with better quality. :p

Arch wiki is sent from heaven.
 
Superewza said:
You wouldn't need a good wiki if it was easy to use to begin with.

I'm just saying :p
Click to expand...


lol. Why do you think I never had to make posts much here asking for help?... It's because everything is in the Arch wiki.

I find ubuntu a bitch to use because it doesn't do things in a KISS way. The dev's change/hack a lot of things, bodge is a little to strong :p
 
Superewza said:
You wouldn't need a good wiki if it was easy to use to begin with.

I'm just saying :p
Click to expand...

I found that installing Arch was the hardest part. After that, everything was pretty simple. However, I appreciate the KISS approach isn't for everyone and as such a lot of people won't enjoy the fact that the distribution, its developers and the package maintainers don't try to do things for you.

As an alternative, Debian would be good, though I do find it slightly heavier on resource usage. If you could get that with LXDE going well, it would probably be good enough for your needs :)
 
JHeaton said:
I found that installing Arch was the hardest part. After that, everything was pretty simple. However, I appreciate the KISS approach isn't for everyone and as such a lot of people won't enjoy the fact that the distribution, its developers and the package maintainers don't try to do things for you.

As an alternative, Debian would be good, though I do find it slightly heavier on resource usage. If you could get that with LXDE going well, it would probably be good enough for your needs :)
Click to expand...

It's not that they don't do things for you (just talking about the installation here), it's that they seem to go out of their way to make it hard for you.

I'm really getting into this TCD idea though, i'm suprised it isn't more popular. I found one with an AMD Geode LX800 and 256MB RAM for £10 new.
 
I liked Arch, but with its building from a minimum approach I felt compelled to keep a manual change log of all my modifications (and whether I ended up reverting them) to try and keep a handle on the state of the system. Quite stressful but perhaps a personality quirk :p
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom