Linux Links : : : Deathmarch Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 : : : Ownage : : : Bigger and Better : : : Debian and Others (on the CSx) : : : Toshiba Debian

Linux Deathmarch Part 3

"Install Linux on a 486 Laptop you will." "Awww, Master Yoda, couldn't I just levitate my x-wing out of the swamp using only the power of my mind again? It'd be much easier. "

Disclaimers:

1. Most Linux installations are easier than this. Don't be put off. If you have a CD drive it's a piece of piss, apparently! Read all about it on the BBC

2. I hope this will be of benefit to anyone who really doesn't understand any Linux terminology. However, at the time of writing (9-2-02), I haven't really put this to the test. I'll update it as I go along and realise things I could have done better.

For this recipe you will need:

1 Toshiba T3600CT
Bootdisk 'bareapm.i'
Rootdisk 'color.gz'
Supplement 'pcmcia.dsk' if you're going to use a pcmcia card to load some of the packages.
The 'a' series of disks, along with the 'n' series if you want to use that too.
Any documents you need at hand. The Linux Installation HOWTO was handy in my case, and I sneaked a peak at Linux on Laptops and the Duke of url's Slackware review as I went along.
A list of all the hardware used in your machine. You can find this by looking at My Computer>Control Panel>System>Device Manager in windows. Take note of the modem and mouse in particular, and note down such things as COM ports and IRQs as well as any info about the drivers. I didn't need to use much of this info, but you never know.
The software mentioned above can be found at Slackware Project . I used the set from Slackware 7.1. I can't really account for this choice. I couldn't seem to get at version 8 and I thought the smaller, older versions would have trouble with newer software packages I might install later.

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Penguins of War!

At lunchtime, armed with a cheese toastie and a beaker of ribena, I boot up with bareapm.i in the floppy drive. The starting screen invites me to enter some parameters. I say 'What?' and press on regardless. The embryonic system then decompresses the files it needs and prompts me to put in the rootdisk. I do. Strange words and figures scroll by. I gawp. At last, a message welcomes me to Slackware 7.1. I read the info and type in pcmcia to install the pcmcia.dsk floppy. bzzt! beep! bzzzt! bzzzzzzzt-t! goes the machine.

The next step is to partition the hard drive.

I try a dry run with fdisk but get lost so take the cissy option and enter cfdisk instead. Even this way I almost mess it up, but I manage to delete the windows partition and set up some new ones. I'm a bit worried about the fact that the hard disk has a bad sector. Can I set up the partitions in such a way that they avoid this area of the disk? Well, maybe some people could, but I ain't one of 'em. I put my head down and push on through.

I decide to set up three Linux native partitions and one swap. This is what I've been told to do by lots of web sites. First, I add a 120MB primary partition and select it as the bootable partition. Then another primary of 30MB, and and a third of 630MB. Finally, I devote the rest to swap space by creating a logical partition, selecting 'type' and choosing type 82 (linux swap). The others were type 83 (linux native). This is possibly not the best way to go about it, but it seems to work, so what the heck!

So I'm left with:

Up to this point, everything is going on in RAM, which is 'volatile' memory. I could pull the plug right now and Windows would live on. The next step, though, is the Rubicon:

I select 'write'. Am I sure? You bet I'm sure...

5 seconds later, it tells me it's finished. This seems too quick. I do it again. Same thing. Well, the Windows partition is gone. I'm reminded of the battle between stormtroopers and Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Is that a geek thought? Hmmm...Perhaps I'd better think about more manly things such as fast cars and breasts. For now, though, I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose and reboot as instructed. Oops! Apparently, I should've had the boot disk in because it now tells me:

Starting Windows 95...
Type the name of the Command interpreter
(e.g., C:\Windows\Command.com)
a:>

I type 'reboot', but apparently it can't take a joke, so I shove in bareapm.i and stick my bic in the reset button hole.

This time I blast through the process of loading the three disks until I get past pcmcia.dsk. Now, instead of running cfdisk, I run setup.

Out of the Black and into the Blue

The blue menu used by Setup is less scary than all that white-on-black. I think I can skip over 'Keymap' because the tosh uses a roughly-ordinary keyboard. It hasn't got many buttons, but it's not Cyrillic or anything, so I cross my fingers and move on to..

'Addswap', which detects my swap partition, and allows me to format it appropriately. Sorted.

Then it's on to 'Target', which allows me to set up the remaining three partitions. I format each one with the 'thorough' option to detect the bad disk space (which it fails to do) and pick the default setting for inode density.
hda1 is going to be reserved for '/' (the root directory)
hda2 is for '/home' (I thought 3 users with 10MB each...) and
hda3 is for /usr (which is for everything else.)
This formatting of the individual drives is a much longer, more satisfying process.

I choose floppy drive as my install medium of choice. 1.44 MB drive A, to be precise.

For 'source', I remove the check-marks from all the boxes except 'a', using the space bar and hurry on to...

'Install'. I pick 'Newbie' style and almost wet myself with excitement as I realise I'm past all the tricky stuff and into the home stretch. the floppy drive eats one disk after another like a stoner with the munchies going through a bag of jelly babies.

I Love the Smell of Bootdisks in the Morning.

Half way through A10, there is a loud, persistent, repetitive beeping. I wonder what's happening, but it doesn't seem to slow things down, so I don't really panic until...

THE SCREEN GOES BLACK!!!

The lead, you see, had come out of the back of the machine, and I'm such a lamer that I don't even know what a low battery alarm sounds like.

Crap up a tree! Well, that's the stupidest thing I've ever done with a computer. I turn it back on, but it says 'missing operating system' and I have to go through all the rigmarole of restarting with the bootdisk. This time I cut corners, do a basic reformat rather than a thorough one, and belt through the rest of the setup wishing Mr Torvalds had never been born and, preferably, that the land mass of Finland had never risen from the ocean. (N.B., I have since revised this view, at least insofar as it relates to Finland. They make good vodka, apparently)

When I finally get past a16, I am prompted to install the kernel, which I choose to do from the original bareapm.i bootdisk. Then I am asked if I want to create a new bootdisk from the new installation. I do as advised and pick a LILO bootdisk. Next up is mouse configuration. Whipping out my hardware list, I pick a COM port (or a...I think it's called /dev/tty in linux...something like that.) and move on to the next section, where I get to choose between several near-identical screen fonts. whoop-de-doo. To be honest, by this stage, I've no idea what's going on, but have a fair idea that these are questions that can be undone and redone later when I've found my way around the system. I pick default on the Linux loader, the choice of console, and anything else it wants to know. Then I give it a password and reboot.

(drumrolldrumrolldrumrolldrumroll)

And a working (if rather minimalist) Slackware installation unfolds on the screen in front of me. It asks me for my ID and password and tells me I have mail - presumably some 'welcome' message from the system itself, telling me where to start. I reckon this should be easy and I bash away for a bit, combining the words 'get', 'mail', 'view', 'read' and 'ls' in various combos, with or without the word 'root' and each time the shell tells me I'm talking bollocks, and to please, please, sort my life out...

The Penguin Goes From Strength to Strength.

Turning off the machine to go and make dinner, (I used a Linux cheat sheet to find the command for this...Turning it off, I mean, not making dinner. I still haven't found a Linux command that makes the dinner, but I expect if they do write one, Bill Gates will nick it...umm, where was I?), I realise this is going to take some work. Never mind. I learned about Windows by being spoon-fed on the user-friendly surface of the GUI, before delving deeper into its innards. I'm learning about Linux from the ground up. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to find my way around the skeleton system then, according to the current plan, install the 'n' series from disks, and ftp in the rest. I'd really like to get a GUI up and running, with perhaps a few little tools. Nothing fancy, just a text editor and perhaps this PHP/MySQL thing I've heard so much about.

So there you have it.

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