antiX-forum

I finally managed to boot antiX (M7-rc2) on my Portege 3110ct using an iso file on the hdd and grub. It has a 300MHz PII, 64 MB ram and a 512 MB linux swap partition. The only CD drive is an external USB that is not bootable with SBM. Anyway the GUI loads fine, but when I run the Mepis install utility it causes the machine to freeze, and not always at the same spot. I'm fairly certain it's because X is simply gobbling up what little resources there are. Is there a utility to install antiX outside of X? I can easily get Vector Linux installed and running on this POS but even it is too slow. I'm hoping antiX will save the day.

At the moment, syndil, there isn't an option to install antiX outside of X
What does Vector use? Is there a debian-based installer outside X?
If there is I'll try it in tests.

You could try to reduce the resources used at boot, by trying the minimal option, and see if install works from there. When testing in VirtualBox, antiX-rc2 managed to install (very slowly) with 48MB RAM and 128MB swap (but a much faster processor than yours). 64RAM was 'normal'.

I am a Linux newbie so I can't tell you if it's Debian based or not.. but I do know Vector is based on Slackware if that helps. The configuration/setup tool is something called "vasm" (Vector Administrative and Services Menu) which I am pretty sure is nothing more than a set of neatly packaged scripts. But it is an extremely well put together distro, as far as I can tell. Then again I just started playing with Linux a week ago... I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to boot Knoppix on the 3110 via PXE. If I hadn't done that, I would have never been able to copy the .iso files over.

Anyway the fact that it can even run Knoppix (although painfully slowly) should mean that it should be able to run antiX. I wonder if perhaps the Live boot of antiX is not making use of my swap partition. When I got to the qtparted step of the installer, the drive was called "sda" instead of "hda."

How do I specify the minimal option?

Second post (my other one is somewhere in cyberspace).

Firstly, the 2.6.22 kernel names partitions as sd rather than hd, so no need to worry there. Your swap should be found by gparted as sda2 (for example). If it isn't you'll need to do it again.

antiX should install pretty easily (though slowly) on 64MB RAM with a swap of 128MB.

At the grub menu, choose the minimal boot option (Small I think it is called) and then try and install.

I think you are right about the swap not being used on the livecd. A quick way to check is by looking at the conky stats in the top left of the screen.

BTW I noticed there is now an rc2 forum so I guess this thread should be moved there.

I finally got it to boot properly using the following grub menu.lst configuration:

Code: Select all

KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND nfsdir=10.0.0.1:/mnt/iso nodhcp lang=us ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off nomce vga=771 initrd=initrd.gz BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda2


This was passed to the 3110ct via PXE, thus the odd stuff. vmlinuz and initrd.gz were in /tftpboot on the knoppix machine. I found it was just quicker and easier to edit and save the menu.lst file on the knoppix machine than it would have been to continually modify grub on the laptop.

I think the only thing I did differently was specify the ramdisk size, but I don't remember exactly how I had it set up yesterday.

Anyway antiX is running much, much better now that I got that straightened out and the installer no longer locks up. Takes care of that mystery. There are a couple of issues though.

Just to clarify the situation, here is how I am booting:

3 partitions on HDD
sda1 empty
sda2 has previous /home data, antiX iso, and /mepis from iso
sda3 512mb swap

1st issue is that I cannot seem to get the iso to boot. I had thought that's what I had been doing, but it turns out I was booting from the /mepis directory. If I delete the mepis info from /mepis and specify fromiso=/dev/sda2/antix-M7-rc2.iso in grub, it will not boot. Not sure what's going on there. When I was using fromiso yesterday, it was actually scanning all devices until it found /mepis on /dev/sda2, not actually booting from the iso.

2nd issue... After booting from /mepis on sda2, I attempted to install antiX using sda1 as root, sda2 as /home and sda3 as swap (had to select none/existing since the LiveCD is using it). The problem is that since I booted from sda2, the process fails when the installer tries to re-mount sda2 as /home. Would be nice to be able to boot from sda2 and also specify it as /home in the installer. For now I will simply move /home there once the install is finished.

Very minor issues, I think, and not ones that people will ever encounter if they are able to actually just boot from the CD like normal. The installer is still chugging along smoothly right now.

Well done for getting it to boot, and you say you are a noobie

Hope you like antiX to make it all worthwhile.

I never thought about playing with Linux until I installed Xandros for a friend one week ago, and I don't think that really counts as a Linux experience--it was easier to install than XP. Guess I just learn quickly! A week ago I wouldn't have even understood what my previous post meant.

Loving antiX so far. This Portege laptop has always been one of my favs due to its design and small size and I've always wanted to revive it and make it useful again somehow. Congratulations on the excellent work and I look forward to the final release!

You going to go through all that again for the final?

You must like antiX